Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

Thus the notion of ‘order’ is bound up with the notion of an actual entity as involving an attainment which is a specific satisfaction. This satisfaction is the attainment of something individual to the entity in question. It cannot be construed as a component contributing to its own concrescence; it is the ultimate fact, individual to the entity. The notion of ‘satisfaction’ is the notion of the ‘entity as concrete’ abstracted from the ‘process of concrescence’; it is the outcome separated from the process, thereby losing the actuality of the atomic entity, which is both process and outcome. ‘Satisfaction’ provides the individual element in the composition of the actual entity—that element which has led to the definition of substance as ‘requiring nothing but itself in order to exist.’ But the ‘satisfaction’ is the ‘superject’ rather than the ‘substance’ or the ‘subject.’ It closes up the entity; and yet is the superject adding its character to the creativity whereby there is a becoming of entities superseding the one in question. The ‘formal’ reality of the actuality in question belongs to its process of concrescence and not to its ‘satisfaction.’ This is the sense in which the philosophy of organism interprets Plato’s phrase ‘and never really is’; for the superject can only be interpreted in terms of its ‘objective immortality.’

‘Satisfaction’ is a generic term: there are specific differences between the ‘satisfactions’ of different entities, including gradations of intensity. These specific differences can only be expressed by the analysis of the components in the concrescence out of which the actual entity arises. The intensity of satisfaction is promoted by the ‘order’ in the phases from which concrescence arises and through which it passes; it is enfeebled by the

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‘disorder.’ The components in the concrescence are thus ‘values’ contributory to the ‘satisfaction.’ The concrescence is thus the building up of a determinate ‘satisfaction,’ which constitutes the completion of the actual togetherness of the discrete components. The process of concrescence terminates with the attainment of a fully determinate ‘satisfaction’; and the creativity thereby passes over into the ‘given’ primary phase for the concrescence of other actual entities. This transcendence is thereby established when there is attainment of determinate ‘satisfaction’ completing the antecedent entity. Completion is the perishing of immediacy: “It never really is.”

No actual entity can be conscious of its own satisfaction; for such knowledge would be a component in the process, and would thereby alter the satisfaction. In respect to the entity in question the satisfaction can only be considered as a creative determination, by which the objectifications of the entity beyond itself are settled. In other words, the ‘satisfaction’ of an entity can only be discussed in terms of the usefulness of that entity. It is a qualification of creativity. The tone of feeling embodied in this satisfaction passes into the world beyond, by reason of these objectifications. The world is self-creative; and the actual entity as self-creating creature passes into its immortal function of part-creator of the transcendent world. In its self-creation the actual entity is guided by its ideal of itself as individual satisfaction and as transcendent creator. The enjoyment of this ideal is the ‘subjective aim,’ by reason of which the actual entity is a determinate process.

This subjective aim is not primarily intellectual; it is the lure for feeling. This lure for feeling is the germ of mind. Here I am using the term ‘mind’ to mean the complex of mental operations involved in the constitution of an actual entity. Mental operations do not necessarily involve consciousness. The concrescence, absorbp. 131ing the derived data into immediate privacy, consists in mating the data with ways of feeling provocative of the private synthesis. These subjective ways of feeling are not merely receptive of the data as alien facts; they clothe the dry bones with the flesh of a real being, emotional, purposive, appreciative. The miracle of creation is described in the vision of the prophet Ezekiel: “So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.” *

The breath of feeling which creates a new individual fact has an origination not wholly traceable to the mere data. It conforms to the data, in that it feels the data. But the how of feeling, though it is germane to the data, is not fully determined by the data. The relevant feeling is not settled, as to its inclusions or exclusions of ‘subjective form,’ by the data about which the feeling is concerned. The concrescent process is the elimination of these indeterminations of subjective forms. The quality of feeling has to be definite in respect to the eternal objects with which feeling clothes itself in its self-definition. It is a mode of ingression of eternal objects into the actual occasion. But this self-definition is analysable into two phases. First, the conceptual ingression of the eternal objects in the double role of being germane to the data and of being potentials for physical feeling. This is the ingression of an eternal object in the role of a conceptual lure for feeling. The second phase is the admission of the lure into the reality of feeling, or its rejection from this reality. The relevance of an eternal object in its réle of lure is a fact inherent in the data. In this sense the eternal object is a constituent of the ‘objective lure.’ But the admission into, or rejection from, reality of conceptual feeling is the originative decision of the actual occasion. In this sense an actual occasion is causa sui. The subjective forms of the prehen-

1Cf, Ezekiel, xxxvii.

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sions in one phase of concrescence control the specific integrations of prehensions in later phases of that concrescence.