This is a theory of monads; but it differs from Leibniz’s in that his monads change. In the organic theory, they merely become. Each monadic creature is a mode of the process of ‘feeling’ the world, of housing the world in one unit of complex feeling, in every way determinate. Such a unit is an ‘actual occasion’; it is the ultimate creature derivative from the creative process.
The term ‘event’ is used in a more general sense. An event is a nexus of actual occasions inter-related in some determinate fashion in some extensive quantum: it is either a nexus in its formal completeness, or it is an objectified nexus. One actual occasion is a limiting type of event. The most general sense of the meaning of change is ‘the differences between actual occasions in one event.’ For example, a molecule is a historic route of actual occasions; and such a route is an ‘event.’ Now the motion of the molecule is nothing else than the dif- ferences between the successive occasions of its life-history in respect to the extensive quanta from which they arise;
The Extensive Continuum 125
and the changes in the molecule are the consequential differences in the actual occasions.
The organic doctrine is closer to Descartes than to
Newton. Also it is close to Spinoza; but Spinoza bases
his philosophy upon the monistic substance, of which
the actual occasions are inferior modes. The philosophy
of organism inverts this point of view.
As to the direct knowledge of the actual world as a datum for the immediacy of feeling, we first refer to Descartes in Meditation I, “These hands and this body are mine’’; also to Hume in his many assertions of the type, we see with our eyes. Such statements witness to direct knowledge of the antecedent functioning of the body in sense-perception. Both agree—though Hume more explicitly—that sense-perception of the contempo- rary world is accompanied by perception of the ‘withness’ of the body. It is this withness that makes the body the starting point for our knowledge of the cireumambient world. We find here our direct knowledge of ‘causal efficacy.’ Hume and Descartes in their theory of direct perceptive knowledge dropped out this withness of the body; and thus confined perception to presentational immediacy. Santayana, in his doctrine of ‘animal faith,’ practically agrees with Hume and Descartes as to this withness of the actual world, including the body. Santayana also excludes our knowledge of it from given- ness. Descartes calls it a certain kind of ‘understanding’ ; Santayana calls it ‘animal faith’ provoked by ‘shock’; and Hume calls it ‘practice.’
But we must—to avoid ‘solipsism of the present moment’—include in direct perception something more than presentational immediacy. For the organic theory, the most primitive perception is ‘feeling the body as functioning.’ This is a feeling of the world in the past; it is the inheritance of the world as a complex of feeling; namely, it is the feeling of derived feelings. The later, sophisticated perception is ‘feeling the contemporary world.’ Fiven this presentational immediacy begins with
126 Process and Reality
sense-presentation of the contemporary body. The body,
however, is only a peculiarly intimate bit of the world.
Just as Descartes said, ‘this body is mine’; so he should
have said, ‘this actual world is mine.’ My process of
‘being myself’ is my origination from my possession of
the world.
It is obvious that there arise the questions of compara- tive relevance and of comparative vagueness, which con- stitute the perspective of the world. For example, the body is that portion of the world where, in causal per- ception, there is some distinct separation of regions. There is not, in causal perception, this distinctness for the past world external to the body. We eke out our knowl- edge by ‘symbolic transference’ from causal perception to sense-presentation, and vice versa.
Those realists, who base themselves upon the notion of substance, do not get away from the notion of actual entities which move and change. From the point of view of the philosophy of organism, there is great merit in Newton’s immovable receptacles. But for Newton they are eternal. Locke’s notion of time hits the mark better: time is ‘perpetually perishing.’ In the organic philosophy an actual entity has ‘perished’ when it is complete. The pragmatic use of the actual entity, constituting its static life, lies in the future. The creature perishes and is immortal. The actual entities beyond it can say, ‘It is mine.’ But the possession imposes conformation.
This conception of an actual entity in the fluent world is little more than an expansion of a sentence in the Timaeus: ° “But that which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason, is always in the process of becoming and perishing and never really is.” Bergson, in his protest against “spatialization,” is only echoing Plato’s phrase ‘and never really is.’
® Jowett’s translation. Professor A. E. Taylor in his Commentary On the Timaeus renders the word 86€a by ‘belief’ or ‘judgment’ in the place of Jowett’s word ‘opinion.’ Taylor’s translation brings out the
Platonic influence in Descartes’ Meditations, namely Plato’s 56€a is the Cartesian judicium.
The Order of Nature
In this, and in the next chapter, among modern phil- osophers we are chiefly concerned with Hume and with Kant, and among ancient philosophers with the Timaeus of Plato. These chapters are concerned with the allied problems of ‘order in the universe,’ of ‘induction,’ and of ‘general truths.’ The present chapter is wholly con- cerned with the topic of ‘order.’ For the organic doctrine the problem of order assumes primary importance. No actual entity can rise beyond what the actual world as a datum from its standpoint—its actual world—allows it to be. Each such entity arises from a primary phase of the concrescence of objectifications which are in some respects settled: the basis of its experience is ‘given.’ Now the correlative of ‘order’ is ‘disorder.’ There can be no peculiar meaning in the notion of ‘order’ unless this contrast holds. Apart from it, ‘order’ must be a syno- nym for ‘givenness.’ But ‘order?’ means more than ‘vivenness, though it presupposes ‘givenness,’ ‘disorder’ is also ‘given.’ Each actual entity requires a totality of ‘sivenness, and each totality of ‘givenness’ attains its measure of ‘order.’
Four grounds of ‘order’ at once emerge:
(i) That ‘order’ in the actual world is differentiated
from mere ‘givenness’ by introduction of adaptation for
the attainment of an end.
(ii) That this end is concerned with the gradations of
intensity in the satisfactions of actual entities (members
of the nexus) in whose formal constitutions the nexus
128 Process and Reality
(ie. antecedent members of the nexus) in question is objectified.
(iii) That the heightening of intensity arises from order such that the multiplicity of components in the nexus can enter explicit feeling as contrasts, and are not dismissed into negative prehensions as incompatibilities.
(iv) That ‘intensity’ in the formal constitution of a
subject-superject involves ‘appetition’ in its objective
functioning as super]ect.
‘Order’ is a mere generic term: there can only be some definite specific ‘order,’ not merely ‘order’ in the vague. Thus every definite total phase of ‘givenness’ involves a reference to that specific ‘order’ which is its dominant ideal, and involves the specific ‘disorder’ due to its inclu- sion of ‘given’ components which exclude the attainment of the full ideal. The attainment is partial, and thus there is ‘disorder’; but there is some attainment, and thus there is some ‘order.’ There is not just one ideal ‘order’ which all actual entities should attain and fail to attain. In each case there is an ideal peculiar to each particular actual entity, and arising from the dominant components in its phase of ‘givenness.’ This notion of ‘dominance’ will have to be discussed later in connection with the notion of the systematic character of a ‘cosmic epoch’ and of the subordinate systematic characters of ‘societies’ included in a cosmic epoch. The notion of one ideal arises from the disastrous overmoralization of thought under the influence of fanaticism, or pedantry. The notion of a dominant ideal peculiar to each actual entity is Platonie.
It is notable that no biological science has been able to express itself apart from phraseology which is mean- ingless unless it refers to ideals proper to the organism in question. This aspect of the universe impressed itself on that great biologist and philosopher, Aristotle. His philosophy led to a wild overstressing of the notion of final causes during the Christian middle ages; and thence, by a reaction, to the correlative overstressing of
The Order of Nature 129
the notion of ‘efficient causes’ during the modern
scientific period. One task of a sound metaphysics is to
exhibit final and efficient causes in their proper relation
to each other. The necessity and the difficulty of this
task are stressed by Hume in his Dialogues Concerning
Natural Religion.
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 attain- ment 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 proc- ess, thereby losing the actuality of the atomic entity, which is both process and outcome. ‘Satisfaction’ pro- vides the individual element in the composition of the actual entity—that element which has led to the defini- tion 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 super- seding 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 dif- ferences between the ‘satisfactions’ of different entities, including gradations of intensity. These specific differ- ences can only be expressed by the analysis of the com- ponents 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
130 Process and Reality
‘disorder.’ The components in the concrescence are thus ‘values’ contributory to the ‘satisfaction.’ The con- crescence is thus the building up of a determinate ‘satis- faction,’ 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 con- crescence of other actual entities. This transcendence is thereby established when there is attainment of deter- minate ‘satisfaction’ completing the antecedent entity. Completion is the perishing of immediacy: “It never really is.”
No actual entity can be conscious of its own satisfac- tion; 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 em- bodied 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 constitu- tion of an actual entity. Mental operations do not neces- sarily involve consciousness. The concrescence, absorb-
The Order of Nature 131
ing 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, emo-
tional, 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.” *