Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

But God’s conceptual realization is nonsense if thought of under the guise of a barren, eternal hypothesis. It is God’s conceptual realization performing an efficacious role in multiple unifications of the universe, which are free creations of actualities arising out of decided situations. Again this discordant multiplicity of actual things, requiring each other and neglecting each other, utilizing and discarding, perishing and yet claiming life as obstinate matter of fact, requires an enlargement of the understanding to the comprehension of another phase in the nature of things. In this later phase, the many actualities are one actuality, and the one actuality is many actualities. Each actuality has its present life and its immediate passage into novelty; but its passage is not its death. This final phase of passage in God’s nature is ever enlarging itself. In it the complete adjustment of the immediacy of joy and suffering reaches the final end of creation. This end is existence in the perfect unity of adjustment as means, and in the perfect multiplicity of the attainment of individual types ofp. 531 self-existence. The function of being a means is not disjoined from the function of being an end. The sense of worth beyond itself is immediately enjoyed as an overpowering element in the individual self-attainment. It is in this way that the immediacy of sorrow and pain is transformed into an element of triumph. This is the notion of redemption through suffering, which haunts the world. It is the generalization of its very minor exemplification as the aesthetic value of discords in art.

Thus the universe is to be conceived as attaining the active self-expression of its own variety of opposites— of its own freedom and its own necessity, of its own multiplicity and its own unity, of its own imperfection and its own perfection. All the ‘opposites’ are elements in the nature of things, and are incorrigibly there. The concept of ‘God’ is the way in which we understand this incredible fact—that what cannot be, yet is.

SECTION VII

Thus the consequent nature of God is composed of a multiplicity of elements with individual self-realization. It is just as much a multiplicity as it is a unity; it is just as much one immediate fact as it is an unresting advance beyond itself. Thus the actuality of God must also be understood as a multiplicity of actual components in process of creation. This is God in his function of the kingdom of heaven.

Each actuality in the temporal world has its reception into God’s nature. The corresponding element in God’s nature is not temporal actuality, but is the transmutation of that temporal actuality into a living, ever-present fact. An enduring personality in the temporal world is a route of occasions in which the successors with some peculiar completeness sum up their predecessors. The correlate fact in God’s nature is an even more complete unity of life in a chain of elements for which succession does not mean loss of immediate unison. This element in God’s nature inherits from the temporal counterpartp. 532 according to the same principle as in the temporal world the future inherits from the past. Thus in the sense in which the present occasion is the person now, and yet with his own past, so the counterpart in God is that person in God.

But the principle of universal relativity is not to be stopped at the consequent nature of God. This nature itself passes into the temporal world according to its gradation of relevance to the various concrescent occasions. There are thus four creative phases in which the universe accomplishes its actuality. There is first the phase of conceptual origination, deficient in actuality, but infinite in its adjustment of valuation. Secondly, there is the temporal phase of physical origination, with its multiplicity of actualities. In this phase full actuality is attained; but there is deficiency in the solidarity of individuals with each other. This phase derives its determinate conditions from the first phase. Thirdly, there is the phase of perfected actuality, in which the many are one everlastingly, without the qualification of any loss either of individual identity or of completeness of unity. In everlastingness, immediacy is reconciled with objective immortality. This phase derives the conditions of its being from the two antecedent phases. In the fourth phase, the creative action completes itself. For the perfected actuality passes back into the temporal world, and qualifies this world so that each temporal actuality includes it as an immediate fact of relevant experience. For the kingdom of heaven is with us today. The action of the fourth phase is the love of God for the world. It is the particular providence for particular occasions. What is done in the world is transformed into a reality in heaven, and the reality in heaven passes back into the world. By reason of this reciprocal relation, the love in the world passes into the love in heaven, and floods back again into the world. In this sense,

God is the great companion—the fellow-sufferer who understands.

p. 533

We find here the final application of the doctrine of objective immortality. Throughout the perishing occasions in the life of each temporal Creature, the inward source of distaste or of refreshment, the judge arising out of the very nature of things, redeemer or goddess of mischief, is the transformation of Itself, everlasting in the Being of God. In this way, the insistent craving is justified—the insistent craving that zest for existence be refreshed by the ever-present, unfading importance of our immediate actions, which perish and yet live for evermore,

INDEX

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

Alexander, S., 42, 65

Aquinas, Thomas, 16, 166

Aristotle, v, 16, 32, 45, 63, 79, 80,
81, 93, 128, 147, 209, 239, 241, 319,
507, 520, 522

Augustine, 21

Bacon, Francis, 7, 21

Bentley, 148

Bergson, vii, 49, 65, 174, 319, 336,
428, 489

Berkeley, 16, 497

Bixler, Professor 4 rae

Bradley, vii, vili, 69,
289, 304, 349

O87, 281,

Carr, Professor Wildon, 65
Carson, Wi eed, S22
Cayley, Arthur, 149, 505, 507

de Laguna, Professor T., 440, 454

Democritus, 146, 471

Descartes, v, 1x, 9, 10, 16, 29, 63-
65, 76-86, 97, 107, 112, 116-126,
140, 186, 196, 198, 206-209, 218-
233, 239-243, 260, 263, 289, 319,
335, 365, 371, 441, 471, 495, 496,
508

Dewey, John, vii

Euclid, 97, 460
Ezekiel, 131

Freud, 48
Galileo, ix, 75

Haldane, Elizabeth, 65n

Heath, Sir T. L., 460, 461

Hegel, 16

Henderson, Professor L. J., 136

Heraclitus, 318, 471

Hume, v, vi, 16, 63, 64, 76-80, 84,
87, 39, 114, 125, 127, 129, 132-

p. 537

134, 140, 144, 172-175, 179-181,
187-189, 196, 198-216, 221-237,
238-253, 259, 263-267, 270, 272,
348, 370, 371, 377, 380-382, 389,
480-482, 497, 520, 521

James, William, vii, 78, 105, 106
Jebb, Sir Richard, 143

Jowett, 126

Justinian, 519

vi, 16, 44, 63, 79, 111, 112, ; 135, 140, 172, 173, 187, 198, , 212, 218-237, 238, 239, 263, 270, 289, 320, 328, 371, 379,

Kemp Smith, Professor Norman,
185, 328
Keynes, J. Maynard, 314

Leibniz, 16, 29, 40, 47, 76, 124,
289, 384

Locke, v, vi, ix, 16, 28, 29, 37, 43,
63, 65, 77-94, 114, 116, 118, 123,
126, 140, 173, 178, 187, 196, 198-
216, 218-229, 238-244, 263, 286,
299, 320, 324, 335, 348, 363, 370,
371, 408, 409, 418, 480, 496

Lucretius, 146

Maxmiiller, 235
Maxwell, 139, 474
Michelangelo, 513

Mill, John Stuart, 17, 18
Milton, 146
Motte, Andrew, 109

Newton, vi, ix, 15, 109, 110, 111,
112, 113, 114, 118, 119, 123, 124,
125, 126, 140, 142, 143, 144, 145,
146, 319, 471

Northrop, Professor F. S. C., 508

Nunn, Professor T. P., vil

Plato, v, ix, 11, 16, 63, 67, 68, 70,

p. 538

94, 97, 111, 126-129, 140-147, 209,
241, 318, 319, 370, 381, 461

Ross, Professor W. D., 79, 522
Russell, Bertrand, lin’

Santayana, 77, 85, 215, 216, 231,
240