The subjectivist principle follows from three premises: (i) The acceptance of the ‘substance-quality’ concept as expressing the ultimate ontological principle. (ii) The acceptance of Aristotle’s definition of a primary sub- stance, as always a subject and never a predicate. (i111) The assumption that the experient subject is a pri- mary substance. The first premise states that the final metaphysical fact is always to be expressed as a quality inhering in a substance. The second premise divides qualities and primary substances into two mutually exclusive classes. The two premises together are the foundation of the traditional distinction between uni- versals and particulars. The philosophy of organism denies the premises on which this distinction is founded. It admits two ultimate classes of entities, mutually exclu- sive. One class consists of ‘actual entities,’ which in the philosophical tradition are mis-described as ‘particulars’ ; and the other class consists of forms of definiteness, here named ‘eternal objects,’ which in comparison with actual entities are mis-described as ‘universals.’ These mis- descriptions have already been considered (Part II, Ch. I, Sect. V).
Descartes held, with some flashes of inconsistency aris- ing from the use of ‘realitas objectiva,’ the subjectivist principle as to the datum. But he also held that this mitigation of the sensationalist principle enabled the ‘process’ within experience to include a sound argument for the existence of God; and thence a sound argument for the general veridical character of those presumptions
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as to the external world which somehow arise in the process.
According to the philosophy of organism, it is only by the introduction of covert inconsistencies into the sub- jectivist principle, as here stated, that there can be any escape from what Santayana calls, ‘solipsism of the pres- ent moment.’ Thus Descartes’ mode of escape is either illusory, or its premises are incompletely stated. This covert introduction is always arising because common sense is inflexibly objectivist. We perceive other things which are in the world of actualities in the same sense as we are. Also our emotions are directed towards other things, including of course our bodily organs. These are our primary beliefs which philosophers proceed to dis- sect.
Now philosophy has always proceeded on the sound principle that its generalization must be based upon the primary elements in actual experience as starting points. Greek philosophy had recourse to the common forms of language to suggest its generalizations. It found the typical statement, ‘That stone is grey’; and it evolved the generalization that the actual world can be conceived as a collection of primary substances qualified by uni- versal qualities. Of course, this was not the only gen- eralization evolved: Greek philosophy was subtle and multiform, also it was not inflexibly consistent. But this general notion was always influencing thought, explicitly or implicitly.
A theory of knowledge was also needed. Again phi-
losophy started on a sound principle, that all knowledge
is grounded on perception. Perception was then ana-
lysed, and found to be the awareness that a universal
quality is qualifying a particular substance. Thus per-
ception is the catching of a universal quality in the act
of qualifying a particular substance. It was then asked,
how the perceiver perceives; and the answer is by his
organs of sensation. Thus the universal qualities which
qualify the perceived substances are, in respect to the
The Subjectivist Principle —¥-241
perceiver, his private sensations referred to particular substances other than himself. So far, the tradition of philosophy includes, among other elements, a factor of extreme objectivism in metaphysics, whereby the subject- predicate form of proposition is taken as expressing a fundamental metaphysical truth. Descartes modified traditional philosophy in two opposite ways. He increased the metaphysical emphasis on the substance- quality forms of thought. The actual things ‘required nothing but themselves in order to exist,’ and were to be thought of in terms of their qualities, some of them essen- tial attributes, and others accidental modes. He also laid down the principle, that those substances which are the subjects enjoying conscious experiences, provide the primary data for philosophy, namely, themselves as in the enjoyment of such experience. This is the famous subjectivist bias which entered into modern philosophy through Descartes. In this doctrine Descartes undoubt- edly made the greatest philosophical discovery since the age of Plato and Aristotle. For his doctrine directly tra- versed the notion that the proposition, ‘This stone is grey, expresses a primary form of known fact from which metaphysics can start its generalizations. If we are to go back to the subjective enjoyment of experience, the type of primary starting point is ‘my perception of this stone as grey.’ Primitive men were not metaphysi- cians, nor were they interested in the expression of con- crete experience. Their language merely expressed use- ful abstractions, such as ‘greyness of the stone.’ But like Columbus who never visited America, Descartes missed the full sweep of his own discovery, and he and his suc- cessors, Locke and Hume, continued to construe the func- tionings of the subjective enjoyment of experience accord- ing to the substance-quality categories. Yet if the enjoy- ment of experience be the constitutive subjective fact, these categories have lost all claim to any fundamental character in metaphysics. Hume—to proceed at once to the consistent exponent of the method—looked for a
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universal quality to function as qualifying the mind, by way of explanation of its perceptive enjoyment. Now if we scan ‘my perception of this stone as grey’ in order to find a universal, the only available candidate is ‘grey- ness.’ Accordingly for Hume, ‘greyness,’ functioning as a sensation qualifying the mind, is a fundamental type of fact for metaphysical generalization. The result is Hume’s simple impressions of sensation, which form the starting point of his philosophy. But this is an entire muddle for the perceiving mind is not grey, and so grey is now made to perform a new role. From the original fact ‘my perception of this stone as grey,’ Hume extracts ‘Awareness of sensation of greyness’; and puts it forward as the ultimate datum in this element of experience.
He has discarded the objective actuality of the stone- image in his search for a universal quality: this ‘objective actuality’ is Descartes’ realitas objectiva.’ Hume’s search was undertaken in obedience to a metaphysical principle which had lost all claim to validity, if the Cartesian dis- covery be accepted. He is then content with ‘sensation of greyness,’ which is just as much a particular as the original stone-image. He is aware of ‘this sensation of greyness. What he has done is to assert arbitrarily the ‘subjectivist’ and ‘sensationalist’ principles as applying to the datum for experience: the notion ‘this sensation of greyness’ has no reference to any other actual entity. Hume thus applies to the experiencing subject Descartes’ principle, that it requires no other actual entity in order to exist. The fact that finally Hume criticizes the Car- tesian notion of mind, does not alter the other fact that his antecedent arguments presuppose that notion.
It is to be noticed that Hume can only analyse the sensation in terms of an universal and of its realization in the prehending mind. For example, to take the first examples which in his T'reatise he gives of such analysis, we find ‘red,’ ‘scarlet,’ ‘orange,’ ‘sweet,’ ‘bitter.’ Thus Hume describes ‘impressions of sensation’ in the exact terms in which the philosophy of organism describes con-
Lh Subjectivist Principle 243
ceptual feelings. They are the particular feelings of universals, and are not feelings of other particular exist- ents exemplifying universals. Hume admits this identi- fication, and can find no distinction except in ‘force and vivacity.’ He writes: “The first circumstance that strikes my eye, is the great resemblance between our impressions and ideas in every particular except their degree of force and vivacity.”
In contrast to Hume, the philosophy of organism keeps ‘this stone as grey’ in the datum for the experience in question. It is, in fact, the ‘objective datum’ of a certain physical feeling, belonging to a derivative type in a late phase of a concrescence. But this doctrine fully accepts Descartes’ discovery that subjective experiencing is the primary metaphysical situation which is presented to metaphysics for analysis. This doctrine is the ‘reformed subjectivist principle’, mentioned earlier in this chap- ter. Accordingly, the notion ‘this stone as grey’ is a derivative abstraction, necessary indeed as an element in the description of the fundamental experiential feel- ing, but delusive as a metaphysical starting point. This derivative abstraction is called an ‘objectification.’
The justification for this procedure is, first, common sense, and, secondly, the avoidance of the difficulties which have dogged the subjectivist and sensationalist principles of modern philosophy. Descartes’ discovery on the side of subjectivism requires balancing by an ‘objectivist’ principle as to the datum for experience. Also, with the advent of Cartesian subjectivism, the sub- stance-quality category has lost all claim to metaphysical primacy; and, with this deposition of substance-quality, we can reject the notion of individual substances, each with its private world of qualities and sensations.
In the philosophy of organism knowledge is relegated
to the intermediate phase of process. Cognizance belongs
to the genus of subjective forms which are admitted, or
244 Process and Reality
not admitted, to the function of absorbing the objective content into the subjectivity of satisfaction. Its ‘impor- tance’ is therefore no necessary element in the concrete actual entity. In the case of any one such entity, it may merely constitute an instance of what Locke terms ‘a capacity.’ If we are considering the society of successive actual occasions in the historic route forming the life of an enduring object, some of the earlier actual occasions may be without knowledge, and some of the later may possess knowledge. In such a case, the unknowing man has become knowing. There is nothing surprising in this conclusion; it happens daily for most of us, when we sleep at night and wake in the morning. Every actual entity has the capacity for knowledge, and there is grad- uation in the intensity of various items of knowledge; but, in general, knowledge seems to be negligible apart from a peculiar complexity in the constitution of some actual occasion.
We—as enduring objects with personal order—objec- tify the occasions of our own past with peculiar com- pleteness in our immediate present. We find in those occasions, as known from our present standpoint, a sur- prising variation in the range and intensity of our real- ized knowledge. We sleep; we are half-awake; we are aware of our perceptions, but are devoid of generalities in thought; we are vividly absorbed within a small region of abstract thought while oblivious to the world around; we are attending to our emotions—some torrent of pas- sion—to them and to nothing else; we are morbidly discursive in the width of our attention; and finally we sink back into temporary obliviousness, sleeping or stunned. Also we can remember factors experienced in our immediate past, which at the time we failed to notice. When we survey the chequered history of our own capac- ity for knowledge, does common sense allow us to believe that the operations of judgment, operations which require definition in terms of conscious apprehension, are those operations which are foundational in existence either as
fie SUBJE@TIVIST PRINCIPLE __245
an essential attribute for an actual entity, or as the final culmination whereby unity of experience is attained!
The general case * of conscious perception is the nega- tive perception, namely, ‘perceiving this stone as not grey. The ‘grey’ then has ingression in its full character of a conceptual novelty, illustrating an alternative. In the positive case, ‘perceiving this stone as grey,’ the grey has ingression in its character of a possible novelty, but in fact by its conformity emphasizing the dative grey, blindly felt. Consciousness is the feeling of negation: in the perception of ‘the stone as grey,’ such feeling is in barest germ; in the perception of ‘the stone as not grey,’ such feeling is full development. Thus the negative per- ception is the triumph of consciousness. It finally rises to the peak of free imagination, in which the conceptual novelties search through a universe in which they are not datively exemplified.