terminations. The how of the limitations, and the how of the additions, are alike the realization of eternal objects in the constitution of the actual entity in ques- tion. An eternal object in abstraction from any one particular actual entity is a potentiality for ingression into actual entities. In its ingression into any one actual entity, either as relevant or as irrelevant, it retains its potentiality of indefinite diversity of modes of ingres- sion, a potential indetermination rendered determinate in this instance. The definite ingression into a particular actual entity is not to be conceived as the sheer evocation of that eternal object from ‘not-being’ into ‘being’; it is the evocation of determination out of indetermination. Potentiality becomes reality; and yet retains its message of alternatives which the actual entity has avoided. In the constitution of an actual entity:—whatever compo- nent is red, might have been green; and whatever com- ponent is loved, might have been coldly esteemed. The term ‘universal’ is unfortunate in its application to eter- nal objects; for it seems to deny, and in fact it was meant to deny, that the actual entities also fall within the scope of the principle of relativity. If the term ‘eter- nal objects’ is disliked, the term ‘potentials’ would be suitable. The eternal objects are the pure potentials of the universe; and the actual entities differ from each other in their realization of potentials. Locke’s term ‘idea,’ in his primary use of it in the first two books of the Essay, means the determinate ingression of an eter- nal object into the actual entity in question. But he also introduces the limitations to conscious mentality, which is here abandoned.
Thus in the philosophy of organism, Locke’s first use of the term ‘idea’ is covered by the doctrine of the ‘ingres- sion’ of eternal objects into actual entities; and his sec- ond use of the same term is covered by the doctrine of the ‘objectification’ of actual entities. The two doctrines cannot be explained apart from each other: they con- stitute explanations of the two fundamental principles—
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the ontological principle and the principle of rela- tivity.
The four stages constitutive of an actual entity have been stated above in Part II, Chapter III, Section I. They can be named, datum, process, satisfaction, deci- sion. The two terminal stages have to do with ‘becom- ing’ in the sense of the transition from the settled actual world to the new actual entity relatively to which that settlement is defined. But such ‘definition’ must be found as an element in the actual entities concerned. The ‘settlement’ which an actual entity ‘finds’ is its datum. It is to be conceived as a limited perspective of the ‘settled’ world provided by the eternal objects concerned. This datum is ‘decided’ by the settled world. It is ‘prehended’ by the new superseding entity. The datum is the objective content of the experience. The decision, providing the datum, is a transference of self- limited appetition; the settled world provides the ‘real potentiality’ that its many actualities be felt compatibly ; and the new concrescence starts from this datum. The perspective is provided by the elimination of incompati- bilities. The final stage, the ‘decision,’ is how the actual entity, having attained its individual ‘satisfaction,’ thereby adds a determinate condition to the settlement for the future beyond itself. Thus the ‘datum’ is the ‘decision received,’ and the ‘decision’ is the ‘decision transmitted.’ Between these two decisions, received and transmitted, there lie the two stages, ‘process’ and ‘satis- faction.’ The datum is indeterminate as regards the final satisfaction. The ‘process’ is the addition of those ele- ments of feeling whereby these indeterminations are dis- solved into determinate linkages attaining the actual unity of an individual actual entity. The actual entity, in becoming itself, also solves the question as to what it is to be. Thus process is the stage in which the crea- tive idea works towards the definition and attainment of a determinate individuality. Process is the growth and attainment of a final end. The progressive defini-
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tion of the final end is the efficacious condition for its attainment. The determinate unity of an actual entity is bound together by the final causation towards an ideal progressively defined by its progressive relation to the determinations and indeterminations of the datum. The ideal, itself felt, defines what ‘self’ shall arise from the datum; and the ideal is also an element in the self which thus arises.
According to this account, efficient causation expresses the transition from actual entity to actual entity; and final causation expresses the internal process whereby the actual entity becomes itself. There is the becoming of the datum, which is to be found in the past of the world; and there is the becoming of the immediate self from the datum. This latter becoming is the immediate actual process. An actual entity is at once the product of the efficient past, and is also, in Spinoza’s phrase, causa sui. Every philosophy recognizes, in some form or other, this factor of self-causation, in what it takes to be ultimate actual fact. Spinoza’s words have already been quoted. Descartes’ argument, from the very fact of thinking, assumes that this freely determined opera- tion is thereby constitutive of an occasion in the endur- ance of an actual entity. He writes (Meditation IT): “T am, I exist, is necessarily true each time that I pro- nounce it, or that I mentally conceive it.” Descartes in his own philosophy conceives the thinker as creating the occasional thought. The philosophy of organism inverts the order, and conceives the thought as a constituent operation in the creation of the occasional thinker. The thinker is the final end whereby there is the thought. In this inversion we have the final contrast between a philosophy of substance and a philosophy of organism. The operations of an organism are directed towards the organism as a ‘superject,’ and are not directed from the organism as a ‘subject.’ The operations are directed from antecedent organisms and to the immediate organ- ism. They are ‘vectors,’ in that they convey the many
From Descartes to Kant 229
things into the constitution of the single superject. The creative process is rhythmic: it swings from the publicity of many things to the individual privacy; and it swings back from the private individual to the publicity of the objectified individual. The former swing is dominated by the final cause, which is the ideal; and the latter swing is dominated by the efficient cause which is actual.
From the point of view of the philosophy of organism, the credit must be given to Hume that he emphasized the ‘process’ inherent in the fact of being a mind. His analysis of that process is faulty in its details. It was bound to be so; because, with Locke, he misconceived his problem to be the analysis of mental operations. He should have conceived it as the analysis of operations constituent of actual entities. He would then have found mental operations in their proper place. Kant followed Hume in this misconception; and was thus led to balance the world upon thought—oblivious to the scanty supply of thinking. But Hume, Kant, and the philosophy of organism agree that the task of the critical reason is the analysis of constructs; and ‘construction’ is ‘process.’ Hume’s analysis of the construct which constitutes a mental occasion is: impressions of sensation, ideas of impressions of sensation, impressions of reflection, ideas of impressions of reflection. This analysis may be found obscurely in Locke. But Hume exhibits it as an orderly process; and then endeavours—and fails—to express in terms of it our ordinary beliefs, in which he shares.
For subsequent empiricists the pleasure of the dogma has overcome the metaphysical rule of evidence: that we must bow to those presumptions, which, in despite of criticism, we still employ for the regulation of our lives. Such presumptions are imperative in experience. Ration- alism is the search for the coherence of such presump- tions. Hume, in his series of ideas and of impressions derivates from impressions of sensation, implicitly allows
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that the building-up of experience is a process of addi- tion to original data. The philosophy of organism, in this respect, agrees with Hume. It disagrees with Hume as to the proper characterization of the primary data. In Hume’s philosophy the primary impressions are char- acterized in terms of universals, e.g. in the first section of his Treatise he refers to the colour ‘red’ as an illus- tration. This is also the doctrine of the first two books of Locke’s Essay. But in Locke’s third book a different doctrine appears, and the primary data are explicitly said to be ‘ideas of particular existents.’ According to Locke’s second doctrine, the ideas of universals are derived from these primary data by a process of com- parison and analysis. The philosophy of organism agrees in principle with this second doctrine of Locke’s. It is difficult, and trifling, to determine the exact extent of the agreement; because the expositions of Locke and Hume bring in the very derivative operations involving con- sciousness. The organic philosophy does not hold that the ‘particular existents’ are prehended apart from uni- versals; on the contrary, it holds that they are prehended by the mediation of universals. In other words, each actuality is prehended by means of some element of its own definiteness. This is the doctrine of the ‘objectifica- tion’ of actual entities. Thus the primary stage in the concrescence of an actual entity is the way in which the antecedent universe enters into the constitution of the entity in question, so as to constitute the basis of its nascent individuality. A converse way of looking at this truth is that the relevance to other actual entities of its own status in the actual world, is the initial datum in the process of its concrescence. When it is desired to empha- size this interpretation of the datum, the phrase ‘objec- tive content’ will be used synonymously with the term ‘datum.’ Of course, strictly speaking, the universals, to which Hume confines the datum, are also ‘objects’; but the phrase ‘objective content’ is meant to emphasize the doctrine of ‘objectification’ of actual entities. If experi-
From Descartes to Kant 231
ence be not based upon an objective content, there can be no escape from a solipsist subjectivism. But Hume, and Locke in his main doctrine, fail to provide experience with any objective content. Kant, from whom ‘process’ is mainly a process of thought, accepts Hume’s doctrine as to the ‘datum’ and turns the ‘apparent’ objective con- tent into the end of the construct. So far, Kant’s ‘appar- ent’ objective content seems to take the place of the ‘satisfaction’ in the philosophy of organism. In this way there can be no real escape from the solipsist difficulty. But Kant in his appeal to ‘practical reason’ admits also the ‘satisfaction’ in a sense analogous to that in the phi- losophy of organism; and by an analysis of its complex character he arrives at ultimate actualities which, accord- ing to his account, cannot be discovered by any analysis of ‘mere appearance.’ This is a very complex doctrine, which has been reproduced in all philosophies derivative from Kant. The doctrine gives each actual entity two worlds, one world of mere appearance, and the other world compact of ultimate substantial fact. On this point, as to the absence of ‘objective content’ in the datum for experience, Santayana” seems to agree with Hume and Kant. But if his introduction of ‘animal faith’ is to be taken as a re-examination of the datum under the influence of the sceptical conclusion from Hume’s doctrine, then he, as his second doctrine, is prac- tically reasserting Locke’s second doctrine. But if he is appealing to ‘practice’ away from the critical examina- tion of our sources of information, he must be classed with Hume and Kant, although differing from them in every detail of procedure.
In view of the anti-rationalism of Hume’s contented appeal to ‘practice,’ it is very difficult to understand —except as another example of anti-rationalism—the strong objection, entertained by Hume and by his ‘empiri- cist? followers, to the anti-rationalistic basis of some forms of religious faith. This strain of anti-rationalism
5 Cf. Scepticism and Animal Fath,
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which Locke and Hume explicitly introduced into phi- losophy marks the final triumph of the anti-rationalistic reaction against the rationalism of the Middle Ages. Rationalism is the belief that clarity can only be reached by pushing explanation to its utmost limits. Locke, who hoped to attain final clarity in his analysis of human understanding in divorce from metaphysics, was, so far, an anti-rationalist. But Hume, in so far as he is to be construed as remaining content with two uncoordinated sets of beliefs, one based on the critical examination of our sources of knowledge, and the other on the critical examination of beliefs involved in ‘practice,’ reaches the high watermark of anti-rationalism in philosophy; for ‘explanation’ is the analysis of coordination,