Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

potentiality of the proposition, with its outstanding indeterminations as to its setting amid the details of the universe, is converted in the fully determinate actuality.

The ground, or origin, of the concrescent process, is the multiplicity of data in the universe, actual entities and eternal objects and propositions and nextis. Each new phase in the concrescence means the retreat of mere propositional unity before the growing grasp of real unity of feeling. Each successive propositional phase is a lure to the creation of feelings which promote its realization. Each temporal entity, in one sense, originates from its mental pole, analogously to God himself. It derives from God its basic conceptual aim, relevant to its actual world, yet with indeterminations awaiting its own decisions. This subjective aim, in its successive modifications, remains the unifying factor governing the successive phases of interplay between physical and conceptual feelings. These decisions are impossible for the nascent creature antecedently to the novelties in the phases of its concrescence. But this statement in its turn requires amplification. With this amplification the doctrine, that the primary phase of a temporal actual entity is physical, is recovered. A ‘physical feeling’ is here defined to be the feeling of another actuality. If the other actuality be objectified by its conceptual feelings, the physical feeling of the subject in question is termed ‘hybrid.’ Thus the primary phase is a hybrid physical feeling of God, in respect to God’s conceptual feeling which is immediately relevant to the universe ‘given’ for that concrescence. There is then, according to the category of conceptual valuation, i.e. Categoreal Obligation IV, a derived conceptual feeling which reproduces for the subject the data and valuation of God’s conceptual feeling. This conceptual feeling is the initial conceptual aim referred to in the preceding statement. In this sense, God can be termed the creator of each temporal actual entity. But the phrase is apt to be misleading byp. 344 its suggestion that the ultimate creativity of the universe is to be ascribed to God’s volition. The true metaphysical position is that God is the aboriginal instance of this creativity, and is therefore the aboriginal condition which qualifies its action. It is the function of actuality to characterize the creativity, and God is the eternal primordial character. But of course, there is no meaning to ‘creativity’ apart from its ‘creatures,’ and no meaning to ‘God’ apart from the creativity and the ‘temporal creatures,’ and no meaning to the temporal creatures apart from ‘creativity’ and ‘God.’

Category II. There can be no duplication of any element in the objective datum of the satisfaction of an actual entity, so far as concerns the function of that element in that satisfaction.

This is the ‘category of objective identity.’ This category asserts the essential self-identity of any entity as regards its status in each individualization of the universe. In such a concrescence one thing has one rdle, and cannot assume any duplicity. This is the very meaning of self-identity, that, in any actual confrontation of thing with thing, one thing cannot confront itself in alien roles. Any one thing remains obstinately itself playing a part with self-consistent unity. This category is one ground of incompatibility.

Category III. There can be no ‘coalescence’ of diverse elements in the objective datum of an actual entity, so far as concerns the functions of those elements in that satisfaction.

This is the ‘category of objective diversity.’ There the term ‘coalescence’ means the self-contradictory notion of diverse elements exercising an absolute identity of function, devoid of the contrasts inherent in their diversities. In other words, in a real complex unity each particular component imposes its own particularity on its status. No entity can have an abstract status in a real unity. Its status must be such that only it can fill and only that actuality can supply.

p. 345

The neglect of this category is a prevalent error in metaphysical reasoning. This category is another ground of incompatibility.

SECTION VI

The importance of these categories can only be understood by considering each actual world in the light of a ‘medium’ leading up to the concrescence of the actual entity in question. It will be remembered that the phrase ‘actual world’ has always reference to some one concrescence.

Any actual entity, which we will name 4A, feels other actual entities which we will name B, C, and D. Thus B, C, and D all lie in the actual world of A. But C and D may lie in the actual world of B, and are then felt by it; also D may lie in the actual world of C and be felt by it. This example might be simplified, or might be changed to one of any degree of complication. Now B, as an initial datum for A’s feeling, also presents C and D for A to feel through its mediation. Also C, as an initial datum for A’s feeling, also presents D for A to feel through its mediation. Thus, in this artificially simplified example, A has D presented for feeling through three distinct sources: (i) directly as a crude datum, (ii) by the mediation of B, and (iii) by the mediation of C. This threefold presentation is D, in its function of an initial datum for A’s feeling of it, so far as concerns the mediation of B and C. But, of course, the artificial simplification of the medium to two intermediaries is very far from any real case. The medium between D and A consists of all those actual entities which lie in the actual world of A and not in the actual world of D. For the sake of simplicity the explanation will continue in terms of this threefold presentation.

There are thus three sources of feeling, D direct, D in its nexus with C, and D in its nexus with B. Thus in the basic phase of A’s concrescence there arise three prehensions of the datum D. According to the first categoryp. 346 these prehensions are not independent. This subjective unity of the concrescence introduces negative prehensions, so that D in the direct feeling is not felt in its formal completeness, but objectified with the elimination of such of its prehensions as are inconsistent with D felt through the mediation of B, and through the mediation of C. Thus the three component feelings of the first phrase are consistent, so as to pass into the integration of the second phase in which there is A’s one feeling of a coherent objectification of D. Since D is necessarily self-consistent, the inconsistencies must arise from the subjective forms of the prehensions of D by B directly, by C directly, and by A directly. These inconsistencies lead to the eliminations in A’s total prehension of D.