Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

pattern is dominated by indifference to truth; and the other emotional pattern by attention to truth. This indifference to truth is otherwise to be expressed as readiness to eliminate the true objectifying pattern exemplified in the objective datum of the physical feeling in question; while the attention to truth is merely the refusal to eliminate this pattern. But these emotional elements in the subjective forms are not dictated by any diversity of data in the two feelings. For except in the case of the direct negative judgment, the datum is the same in both types of feeling. The emotional form of a feeling cannot be merely deduced from datum felt, though it has close relation to it. The emotional pattern in the subjective form of any one feeling arises from the subjective aim dominating the entire concrescent process. The other feelings of the subject may be conceived as catalytic agents. They are intellectually separable from the feeling in question. But that feeling is in fact the outcome of the subjective aim of the subject which is its locus; and the emotional pattern is the peculiar way in which the subject asserts itself in its feeling. This explanation of the status of the emotional pattern is merely an application of the doctrine that a feeling appropriates elements of the universe, which in themselves are other than the subject; and absorbs these elements into the real internal constitution of its subject by synthesizing them in the unity of an emotional pattern expressive of its own subjectivity.

This mutual dependence of the emotional pattern of a feeling on the other feelings of the same subject, may be termed the ‘mutual sensitivity’ of feelings. It is also one aspect of the incurable ‘particularity’ of a feeling, in the sense that no feeling can be abstracted from its subject.

SECTION VII

‘Physical purposes’ constitute a type of comparative feelings more primitive than the type of intellectual feelBrGiiht; Linwoms OF EXPERIENCE 421ings. In general, it seems as though intellectual feelings are negligible, so as only to obtain importance in exceptional actual entities. We have no means of testing this assumption in any crucial way. It is however the assumption usually made; and therefore it may be presumed that there is some evidence which persuades people to embrace the doctrine. But in fact no evidence, one way or the other, has ever been produced. We know that there are some few entities on the surface of this earth with intellectual feelings; and there our knowledge ends, so far as temporal entities are concerned.

In the more primitive type of comparative feelings indetermination as to its own ingressions—so prominent in intellectual feelings—is the aspect of the eternal object which is pushed into the background. In such a type of physical purposes the integration of a physical feeling and a conceptual feeling does not involve the reduction of the objective datum of the physical feeling to a multiplicity of bare logical subjects. The objective datum remains the nexus that it is, exemplifying the eternal objects whose ingression constitutes its definiteness. Also the indeterminateness as to its own ingressions is eliminated from the eternal object which is the datum of the physical feeling. In the integral comparative feeling the datum is the contrast of the conceptual datum with the reality of the objectified nexus. The physical feeling is feeling a real fact; the conceptual feeling is valuing an abstract possibility. The new datum is the compatibility or incompatibility of the fact as felt with the eternal object as a datum in feeling. This synthesis of a pure abstraction with a real fact, as in feeling, is a generic contrast. In respect to physical purposes, the cosmological scheme which is here being developed, required us to hold that all actual entities include physical purposes. The constancy of physical purposes explains the persistence of the order of nature, and in particular of ‘enduring objects.’

p. 422

The chain of stages in which a physical purpose originates is simpler than in the case of intellectual feelings: (i) there is a physical feeling; (ii) the primary conceptual correlate of the physical feeling is generated, according to categoreal condition IV; (iii) this physical feeling is integrated with its conceptual correlate to form the physical purpose. Such physical purposes are called physical purposes of the first species.

In such a physical purpose, the datum is the generic contrast between the nexus, felt in the physical feeling, and the eternal object valued in the conceptual feeling. This eternal object is also exemplified as the pattern of the nexus. Thus the conceptual valuation now closes in upon the feeling of the nexus as it stands in the generic contrast, exemplifying the valued eternal object. This valuation according to the physical feeling endows the transcendent creativity with the character of adversion, or of aversion. The character of adversion secures the reproduction of the physical feeling, as one element in the objectification of the subject beyond itself. Such reproduction may be thwarted by incompatible objectification derived from other feelings. But a physical feel-~ ing, whose valuation produces adversion, is thereby an element with some force of persistence into the future beyond its own subject. It is felt and re-enacted down a route of occasions forming an enduring object. Finally this chain of transmission meets with incompatibilities, and is attenuated, or modified, or eliminated from further endurance.

When there is aversion, instead of adversion, the transcendent creativity assumes the character that it inhibits, or attenuates, the objectification of that subject in the guise of that feeling. Thus aversion tends to eliminate one possibility by which the subject may itself be objectified in the future. Thus adversions promote stability; and aversions promote change without any indication of the sort of change. In itself an aversionp. 423 promotes the elimination of content, and the lapse into triviality.