Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

The state of things, according to the philosophy of organism, is very different from the Scholastic view of St. Thomas Aquinas, of the mind as informing the body. The living body is a co-ordination of high-grade actual occasions; but in a living body of a low type the occasions are much nearer to a democracy. In a living body of a high type there are grades of occasions so coordinated by their paths of inheritance through the body, that a peculiar richness of inheritance is enjoyed by various occasions in some parts of the body. Finally, the brain is coordinated so that a peculiar richness of inheritance is enjoyed now by this and now by that part; and thus there is produced the presiding personality at that moment in the body. Owing to the delicate organization of the body, there is a returned influence, an inheritance of character derived from the presiding occasion and modifying the subsequent occasions through the rest of the body.

We must remember the extreme generality of the notion of an enduring object—a genetic character inherited through a historic route of actual occasions. Some kinds of enduring objects form material bodies, others do not. But just as the difference between living and non-living occasions is not sharp, but more or less, so the distinction between an enduring object which is an atomic material body and one which is not, is again more or less. Thus the question as to whether to call an enduring object a transition of matter or of character is very much a verbal question as to where you draw the line between the various properties (cf. the way in which the distinction between matter and radiant energy has now vanished).

Thus in an animal body the presiding occasion, if there be one, is the final node, or intersection, of a complexp. 167 structure of many enduring objects. Such a structure pervades the human body. The harmonized relations of the parts of the body constitute this wealth of inheritance into a harmony of contrasts, issuing into intensity of experience. The inhibitions of opposites have been adjusted into the contrasts of opposites. The human mind is thus conscious of its body inheritance. There is also an enduring object formed by the inheritance from presiding occasion to presiding occasion. This endurance of the mind is only one more example of the general principle on which the body is constructed. This route of presiding occasions probably wanders from part to part of the brain, dissociated from the physical material atoms. But central personal dominance is only partial, and in pathological cases is apt to vanish.

CHAPTER IV
ORGANISMS AND ENVIRONMENT

SECTION I

So far the discussion has chiefly concentrated upon the discrimination of the modes of functioning which in germ, or in mere capacity, are represented in the constitution of each actual entity. The presumption that there is only one genus of actual entities constitutes an ideal of cosmological theory to which the philosophy of organism endeavours to conform. The description of the generic character of an actual entity should include God, as well as the lowliest actual occasion, though there is a specific difference between the nature of God and that of any occasion.

Also the differences between actual occasions, arising from the characters of their data, and from the narrowness and widths of their feelings, and from the comparative importance of various stages, enable a classification to be made whereby these occasions are gathered into various types. From the metaphysical standpoint these types are not to be sharply discriminated; as a matter of empirical observation, the occasions do seem to fall into fairly distinct classes.

The character of an actual entity is finally governed by its datum; whatever be the freedom of feeling arising in the concrescence, there can be no transgression of the limitations of capacity inherent in the datum. The datum both limits and supplies. It follows from this doctrine that the character of an organism depends on that of its environment. But the character of an environment is the sum of the characters of the various societies of actual entities which jointly constitute that envip. 168p. 169ronment; although it is pure assumption that every environment is completely overrun by societies of entities. Spread through the environment there may be many entities which cannot be assigned to any society of entities. The societies in an environment will constitute its orderly element, and the non-social actual entities will constitute its element of chaos. There is no reason, so far as our knowledge is concerned, to conceive the actual world as purely orderly, or as purely chaotic.

Apart from the reiteration gained from its societies, an environment does not provide the massiveness of emphasis capable of dismissing its contrary elements into negative prehensions. Any ideal of depth of satisfaction, arising from the combination of narrowness and width, can only be achieved through adequate order. In proportion to the chaos there is triviality. There are different types of order; and it is not true that in proportion to the orderliness there is depth. There are various types of order, and some of them provide more trivial satisfaction than do others. Thus, if there is to be progress beyond limited ideals, the course of history by way of escape must venture along the borders of chaos in its substitution of higher for lower types of order.

The immanence of God gives reason for the belief that pure chaos is intrinsically impossible. At the other end of the scale, the immensity of the world negatives the belief that any state of order can be so established that beyond it there can be no progress. This belief in a final order, popular in religious and philosophic thought, seems to be due to the prevalent fallacy that all types of seriality necessarily involve terminal instances. It follows that Tennyson’s phrase,

... that far-off divine event To which the whole creation moves, presents a fallacious conception of the universe. An actual entity must be classified in respect to its

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