Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

A subjective form has two factors, its qualitative pattern and its pattern of intensive quantity. But these two factors of pattern cannot wholly be considered in abstraction from each other. For the relative intensities of the qualitative elements in the qualitative pattern are among the relational factors which constitute that qualitative pattern. Also conversely, there are qualitative relations among the qualitative elements and they constitute an abstract qualitative pattern for the qualitative relations. The pattern of intensities is not only the variety of qualitative elements with such-and-such intensities; but it is also the variety of qualitative elements, as in such-and-such an abstract qualitative pattern, with such-and-such intensities. Thus the two patterns are not really separable. It is true that there is an abstract qualitative pattern, and an abstract intensive pattern; but in the fused pattern the abstract qualitative pattern lends iself to the intensities, and the abstract intensive pattern lends itself to the qualities.

Further, the subjective form cannot be absolutely disp. 357jomed from the pattern of the objective datum. Some elements of the subjective form can be thus disjoined; and they form the subjective form as in abstraction from the patterns of the objective datum. But the full subjective form cannot be abstracted from the pattern of the objective datum. The intellectual disjunction is not a real separation. Also the subjective form, amid its own original elements, always involves reproduction of the pattern of the objective datum.

As a simple example of this description of a feeling, consider the audition of sound. In order to avoid unnecessary complexity, let the sound be one definite note. The audition of this note is a feeling. This feeling has first an auditor, who is the subject of the feeling. But the auditor would not be the auditor that he is apart from this feeling of his.

Secondly, there is the complex ordered environment composed of certain other actual entities which, however vaguely, is felt by reason of this audition. This environment is the datum of this feeling. It is the external world, as grasped systematically in this feeling. In this audition it is felt under the objectification of vague spatial relations, and as exhibiting musical qualities. But the analytic discrimination of this datum of the feeling is in part vague and conjectural, so far as consciousness is concerned: there is the antecedent physiological functioning of the human body, and the presentational immediacy of the presented locus.

There is also an emotional sensory pattern, the subjective form, which is: more definite and more easily analysable. The note, in its capacity of a private sensation, has pitch, quality, and intensity. It is analysable into its fundamental tone, and a selection of its overtones. This analysis reveals an abstract qualitative pattern which the complex relatedness of the fundamental tone-quality with the tone-qualities of its select overtones. This qualitative pattern may, or may not, include relations of a spatial type, if some of the overtones comep. 358 from instruments spatially separate, for example, from a spatial pattern of tuning forks.

The fundamental tone, and its overtones, have, each of them, their own intensities. This pattern of intensities can be analysed into the relative intensities of the various tones and the absolute intensity which is the total loudness. The scale of relative intensities enters into the final quality of the note, with some independence of its absolute loudness.

Also the spatial pattern of the tuning forks and the resonance of the music chamber enter into this quality. But these also concern the datum of the feeling. Also in this integration of feeling we must include the qualitative and quantitative auditory contributions derived from various nerve-routes of the body. In this way the animal body, as part of the external world, takes a particularly prominent place in the pattern of the datum of the feeling. Also in the subjective form we must reckon qualities of joy and distaste, of adversion and of aversion, which attach integrally to the audition, and also differentially to various elements of the audition. In an earlier phase of the auditor, there is audition divested of such joy and distaste. This earlier, bare audition does not in its own nature determine this additional qualification. It originates as the audition becomes an element in a higher synthesis, and yet it is an element in the final component feeling. Thus the audition gains complexity of subjective form by its integration with other feelings. Also, though we can discern three patterns, namely, the pattern of the datum, the pattern of emotional quality, and the pattern of emotional intensity, we cannot analyse either of the latter patterns in complete separation either from the pattern of the datum, or from each other.

The final concrete component in the satisfaction is the audition with its subject, its datum, and its emotional pattern as finally completed. It is a particular fact not to be torn away from any of its elements.

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SECTION XII

Prehensions are not atomic; they can be divided into other prehensions and combined into other prehensions. Also prehensions are not independent of each other. The relation between their subjective forms is constituted by the one subjective aim which guides their formation. This correlation of subjective forms is termed ‘the mutual sensitivity’ of prehensions (cf. Part I, Ch. II, Sect. ITI, Categoreal Obligation VII, ‘The Category of Subjective Harmony’).

The prehensions in disjunction are abstractions; each of them is its subject viewed in that abstract objectification. The actuality is the totality of prehensions with subjective unity in process of concrescence into concrete unity.

There are an indefinite number of prehensions, overlapping, subdividing, and supplementary to each other. The principle, according to which a prehension can be discovered, is to take any component in the objective datum of the satisfaction; in the complex pattern of the subjective form of the satisfaction there will be a component with direct relevance to this element in the datum. Then in the satisfaction, there is a prehension of this component of the objective datum with that component of the total subjective form as its subjective form.

The genetic growth of this prehension can then be traced by considering the transmission of the various elements of the datum from the actual world, and—in the case of eternal objects—their origination in the conceptual prehensions. There is then a growth of prehensions, with integrations, eliminations, and determination of subjective forms. But the determinations of successive phases of subjective forms, whereby the integrations have the characters that they do have, depends on the unity of the subject imposing a mutual sensitivity upon the prehensions. Thus a prehension, considered genetically, can never free itself from the incurable atomicityp. 360 of the actual entity to which it belongs. The selection of a subordinate prehension from the satisfactlon—as described above—involves a hypothetical, propositional point of view. The fact is the satisfaction as one. There is some arbitrariness in taking a component from the datum with a component from the subjective form, and in considering them, on the ground of congruity, as forming a subordinate prehension. The justification is that the genetic process can be thereby analysed. If no such analysis of the growth of that subordinate prehension can be given, then there has been a faulty analysis of the satisfaction. This relation between the satisfaction and the genetic process is expressed in the eighth and ninth categories of explanation (cf. Part I, Ch. II, Sect. IT).