Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

The theory of ‘prehensions’ embodies a protest against the ‘bifurcation’ of nature. It embodies even more than that: its protest is against the bifurcation of actualities. In the analysis of actuality the antithesis between publicity and privacy obtrudes itself at every stage. There are elements only to be understood by reference to what is beyond the fact in question; and there are elements expressive of the immediate, private, personal, individuality of the fact in question. The former elements express the publicity of the world; the latter elements express the privacy of the individual.

An actual entity considered in reference to the publicity of things is a ‘superject’; namely, it arises from the publicity which it finds, and it adds itself to the publicity which it transmits. It is a moment of passage from decided public facts to a novel public fact. Public facts are, in their nature, coordinate.

An actual entity considered in reference to the privacy of things is a ‘subject’; namely, it is a moment of the genesis of self-enjoyment. It consists of a purposed self-creation out of materials which are at hand in virtue of their publicity.

Eternal objects have the same dual reference. An eternal object considered in reference to the publicityp. 444 of things is an ‘universal’; namely, in its own nature it refers to the general public facts of the world without any disclosure of the empirical details of its own implication in them. Its own nature as an entity requires ingression—positive or negative—in every detailed actuality; but its nature does not disclose the private details of any actuality.

An eternal object considered in reference to the privacy of things is a ‘quality’ or ‘characteristic’; namely, in its own nature, as exemplified in any actuality, it constitutes an element in the private definiteness of that actuality. It refers itself publicly; but it is enjoyed privately.

The theory of prehensions is founded upon the doctrine that there are no concrete facts which are merely public, or merely private. The distinction between publicity and privacy is a distinction of reason, and is not a distinction between mutually exclusive concrete facts. The sole concrete facts, in terms of which actualities can be analysed, are prehensions; and every prehension has its public side and its private side. Its public side is constituted by the complex datum prehended; and its private side is constituted by the subjective form through which a private quality is imposed on the public datum. The separations of perceptual fact from emotional fact; and of causal fact from emotional fact, and from perceptual fact, and of perceptual fact, emotional fact, and causal fact, from purposive fact; have constituted a complex of bifurcations, fatal to a satisfactory cosmology. The facts of nature are the actualities; and the facts into which the actualities are divisible are their prehensions, with their public origins, their private forms, and their private aims. But the actualities are moments of passage into a novel stage of publicity; and the coordination of prehensions expresses the publicity of the world, so far as it can be considered in abstraction from private genesis. Prehensions have public careers, but they are born privately.

p. 445

SECTION VI

The antithesis between publicity and privacy is reflected in the classification of eternal objects according to their primary modes of ingression into actual entities. An eternal object can only function in the concrescence of an actual entity in one of three ways: (i) it can be an element in the definiteness of some objectified nexus, or of some single actual entity, which is the datum of a feeling; (11) it can be an element in the definiteness of the subjective form of some feeling; or (iii) it can be an element in the datum of a conceptual, or propositional, feeling. All other modes of ingression arise from integrations which presuppose these modes.

Now the third mode is merely the conceptual valuation of the potential ingression in one of the other two modes. It is a real ingression into actuality; but it is a restricted ingression with mere potentiality withholding the immediate realization of its function of conferring definiteness.

The two former modes of ingression thus constitute the ways in which the functioning of an eternal object is unrestrictedly realized. But we now ask whether either mode is indifferently open to each eternal object. The answer is the classification of eternal objects into two species, the ‘objective’ species, and the ‘subjective’ species.

An eternal object of the objective species can only obtain ingression in the first mode, and never in the second mode. It is always, in its unrestricted realization, an element in the definiteness of an actual entity, or a nexus, which is the datum of a feeling belonging to the subject in question.

Thus a member of this species can only function relationally: by a necessity of its nature it is introducing one actual entity, or nexus, into the real internal constitution of another actual entity. Its sole avocation is to be an agent in objectification. It can never be an element inp. 446 the definiteness of a subjective form. The solidarity of the world rests upon the incurable objectivity of this species of eternal objects. A member of this species inevitably introduces into the immediate subject other actualities. The definiteness with which it invests the external world may, or may not, conform to the real internal constitutions of the actualities objectified. But conformably, or non-conformably, such is the character of that nexus for that actual entity. This is a real physical fact, with its physical consequences. Eternal objects of the objective species are the mathematical platonic forms. They concern the world as a medium.

But the description of sensa given above (Part II, Ch.
VIII, Sect. III) will include some members of the
subjective species.