The fundamental notion of the philosophy of organism is expressed in Locke’s phrase, “it is past doubt there must be some real constitution, on which any collection of simple ideas co-existing must depend.” Locke makes it plain (ef. II, II, 1) that by a ‘simple idea’ he means the ingression in the actual entity (illustrated by ‘a piece of wax,’ ‘a piece of ice,’ ‘a rose’) of some abstract quality which is not complex (illustrated by ‘softness,’ ‘warmth,’ ‘whiteness’). For Locke such simple ideas, coexisting in an actual entity, require a real constitution for that entity. Now in the philosophy of organism, passing beyond Locke’s explicit statement, the notion of a real constitution is taken to mean that the eternal objects function by introducing the multiplicity of actual entities as constitutive of the actual entity in question. Thus the constitution is ‘real’ because it assigns its status in the real world to the actual entity. In other words the actual entity, in virtue of being what it is, is also where it is. It is somewhere because it is some actual thing with its correlated actual world. This is the direct denial of the Cartesian doctrine, “. . . an existent thing which requires nothing but itself in order to exist.” It is also inconsistent with Aristotle’s phrase, “neither asserted of a subject, nor present in a subject.”
I am certainly not maintaining that Locke grasped explicitly the implications of his words as thus developed for the philosophy of organism. But it is a short step from a careless phrase to a flash of insight; nor is it unbelievable that Locke saw further into metaphysical problems than some of his followers. But abandoning the question of what Locke had in his own mind, the ‘organic doctrine’ demands a ‘real essence’ in the sense of a complete analysis of the relations, and inter-relations of the actual entities which are formative of the actual entity in question, and an ‘abstract. essence’ in which the specified actual entities are replaced by the notions of unspecified entities in such a combination; this is the notion of an unspecified actual entity. Thus the real
94 Process Amd? Reality
essence involves real objectifications of specified actual entities; the abstract essence is a complex eternal object. There is nothing self-contradictory in the thought of many actual entities with the same abstract essence; but there can only be one actual entity with the same real essence. For the real essence indicates ‘where’ the entity is, that is to say, its status in the real world; the abstract essence omits the particularity of the status.
The philosophy of organism in its appeal to the facts
can thus support itself by an appeal to the insight of
John Locke, who in British philosophy is the analogue to
Plato, in the epoch of his life, in personal endowments,
in width of experience, and in dispassionate statement of
conflicting intuitions.
This doctrine of organism is the attempt to describe the world as a process of generation of individual actual entities, each with its own absolute self-attainment. This concrete finality of the individual is nothing else than a decision referent beyond itself. The ‘perpetual perishing’ (ef. Locke, B II, C XIV, D 1) of individual absoluteness is thus foredoomed. But the ‘perishing’ of absoluteness is the attainment of ‘objective immortality.’ This last conception expresses the further element in the doctrine of organism—that the process of generation is to be described in terms of actual entities.
The Extensive Continuum
WE must first consider the perceptive mode in which there is clear, distinct consciousness of the ‘extensive’ relations of the world. These relations include the ‘exten- siveness’ of space and the ‘extensiveness’ of time. Undoubtedly, this clarity, at least in regard to space, is obtained only in ordinary perception through the senses. This mode of perception is here termed ‘presentational immediacy.’ In this ‘mode’ the contemporary world is consciously prehended as a continuum of extensive rela- tions.
It cannot be too clearly understood that some chief notions of European thought were framed under the influence of a misapprehension, only partially corrected by the scientific progress of the last century. This mistake consists in the confusion of mere potentiality with actu- ality. Continuity concerns what is potential; whereas actuality is incurably atomic.
This misapprehension is promoted by the neglect of the principle that, so far as physcial relations are con- cerned, contemporary events happen in causal inde- pendence of each other. This principle will have to be explained later, in connection with an examination of process and of time. It receives an exemplification in the character of our perception of the world of contemporary actual entities. That contemporary world is objectified
1 This principle lies on the surface of the fundamental Hinsteinian
formula for the physical continuum.
96 Process and Reality
for us as ‘realitas objectiva,’ illustrating bare extension with its various parts discriminated by differences of sense data. These qualities, such as colours, sounds, bodily feel- ings, tastes, smells, together with the perspectives intro- duced by extensive relationships, are the relational eternal objects whereby the contemporary actual entities are ele- ments in our constitution. This is the type of objectifica- tion which (in Sect. VII of the previous chapter) has been termed ‘presentational objectification.’
In this way, by reason of the principle of contemporary independence, the contemporary world is objectified for us under the aspect of passive potentiality. The very sense-data by which its parts are differentiated are sup- plied by antecedent states of our own bodies, and so is their distribution in contemporary space. Our direct perception of the contemporary world is thus reduced to extension, defining (1) our own geometrical perspec- tives, and (ii) possibilities of mutual perspectives for other contemporary entities inter se, and (ili) possi- bilities of division. These possibilities of division con- stitute the external world a continuum. For a continuum is divisible; so far as the contemporary world is divided by actual entities, it is not a continuum, but is atomic. Thus the contemporary world is perceived with its poten- tiality for extensive division, and not in its actual atomic division.
The contemporary world as perceived by the senses is
the datum for contemporary actuality, and is therefore
continuous—divisible but not divided. The contempo-
rary world is in fact divided and atomic, being a multi-
plicity of definite actual entities. These contemporary
actual entities are divided from each other, and are not
themselves divisible into other contemporary actual
entities. This antithesis will have to be discussed later
(cf. Part IV). But it is necessary to adumbrate it here.
This limitation of the way in which the contemporary actual entities are relevant to the ‘formal’ existence of the subject in question is the first example of the general
The Extensive Continuum 97
principle, that objectification relegates into irrelevance, or into a subordinate relevance, the full constitution of the objectified entity. Some real component in the objec- tified entity assumes the réle of being how that particular entity is a datum in the experience of the subject. In this case, the objectified contemporaries are only directly relevant to the subject in their character of arising from a datum which is an extensive continuum. They do, in fact, atomize this continuum; but the aboriginal poten- tiality, which they include and realize, is what they con- tribute as the relevant factor in their objectifications. They thus exhibit the community of contemporary actualities as a common world with mathematical rela- tions—where the term ‘mathematical’ is used in the sense in which it would have been understood by Plato, Euclid, and Descartes, before the modern discovery of the true definition of pure mathematics,
The bare mathematical potentialities of the extensive continuum require an additional content in order to assume the role of real objects for the subject. This con- tent is supplied by the eternal objects, termed sense-data. These objects are ‘given’ for the experience of the sub- ject. Their givenness does not arise from the ‘decision’ of the contemporary entities which are thus objectified. It arises from the functioning of the antecedent physical body of the subject; and this functioning can in its turn be analysed as representing the influence of the more remote past, a past common alike to the subject and to its contemporary actual entities. Thus these sense-data are eternal objects playing a complex relational rdle; they connect the actual entities of the past with the actual entities of the contemporary world, and thereby effect objectifications of the contemporary things and of the past things. For instance, we see the contemporary chair, but we see it with our eyes; and we touch the contempo- rary chair, but we touch it with our hands. Thus colours objectify the chair in one way, and objectify the eyes in another way, as elements in the experience of the subject.
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Also touch objectifies the chair in one way, and objectifies the hands in another way, as elements in the experience of the subject. But the eyes and the hands are in the past (the almost immediate past) and the chair is in the present. The chair, thus objectified, is the objectification of a contemporary nexus of actual entities in its unity as one nexus. This nexus is illustrated as to its constitution by the spatial region, with its perspective relations. This region is, in fact, atomized by the members of the nexus. By the operation of the category of transmutation (cf. Parts III and IV), in the objectification an abstraction is made from the multiplicity of members and from all components of their formal constitutions, except the occupation of this region. This prehension, in the par- ticular example considered, will be termed the prehension of a ‘chair-image.’ Also the intervention of the past is not confined to antecedent eyes and hands. There is a more remote past throughout nature external to the body. The direct relevance of this remote past, relevant by reason of its direct objectification in the immediate sub- ject, is practically negligible, so far as concerns prehen- sions of a strictly physical type.
But external nature has an indirect relevance by the transmission through it of analogous prehensions. In this way there are in it various historical routes of inter- mediate objectifications. Such relevant historical routes lead up to various parts of the animal body, and transmit into it prehensions which form the physical influence of the external environment on the animal body. But this external environment which is in the past of the con- crescent subject is also, with negligible exceptions, in the past of the nexus which is the objectified chair-image. If there be a ‘real chair,’ there will be another historical route of objectifications from nexus to nexus in this environment. The members of each nexus will be mutually contemporaries. Also the historical route will lead up to the nexus which is the chair-image. The com- plete nexus, composed of this historical route and the
The Extensive Continuum 99
chair-image, will form a ‘corpuscular’ society. This society is the ‘real chair.’
The prehensions of the concrescent subject and the formal constitutions of the members of the contemporary nexus which is the chair-image are thus conditioned by the properties of the same environment in the past. The animal body is so constructed that, with rough accuracy and in normal conditions, important emphasis is thus laid upon those regions in the contemporary world which are particularly relevant for the future existence of the endur- ing object of which the immediate percipient is one occasion.
A reference to the Category of Transmutation will show
that perception of contemporary ‘images’ in the mode of
‘presentational immediacy’ is an ‘impure’ prehension.
The subsidiary ‘pure’ physical prehensions are the com-
ponents which provide some definite information as to
the physical world; the subsidiary ‘pure’ mental prehen-
sions are the components by reason of which the theory
of ‘secondary qualities’ was introduced into the theory
of perception. The account here given traces back these
secondary qualities to their root in physical prehensions
expressed by the ‘withness of the body.’
If the familiar correlations between physical paths and the life-histories of a chair and of the animal body are not satisfied, we are apt to say that our perceptions are delu- sive. The word ‘delusive’ is all very well as a technical term; but it must not be misconstrued to mean that what we have directly perceived, we have not directly per- ceived. Our direct perception, via our senses, of an imme- diate extensive shape, in a certain geometrical perspective to ourselves, and in certain general geometrical relations to the contemporary world, remains an ultimate fact. Our inferences are at fault. In Cartesian phraseology, it is a final “inspectio’ (also termed ‘“intuatro’) which, when purged of all ‘judicium’—1i.e. of ‘inference’—is final for belief. This whole question of ‘delusive’ perception must be considered later (cf. Part III, Chs. III to V) in more