Consciousness is the subjective form involved in feel- ing the contrast between the ‘theory’ which may be erro- neous and the fact which is ‘given. Thus conscious- ness involves the rise into importance of the contrast between the eternal objects designated by the words ‘any’ and ‘just that.’ Conscious perception is, therefore, the most primitive form of judgment. The organic philoso- phy holds that consciousness only arises in a late deriva- tive phase of complex integrations. If an actual occasion be such that phases of this sort are negligible in its con- crescence, then in its experience there is no knowledge, owing to the fact that consciousness is a subjective form belonging to the later phases, the prehensions which it directly irradiates are. those of an ‘impure’ type. Con- sciousness only illuminates the more primitive types of prehension so far as these prehensions are still elements in the products of integration. Thus those elements of our experience which stand out clearly and distinctly in our consciousness are not its basic facts; they are the derivative modifications which arise in the process. For
1Cf. Part III, for the full account.
246 Process and Reality
example, consciousness only dimly illuminates the pre- hensions in the mode of causal efficacy, because these prehensions are primitive elements in our experience. But prehensions in the mode of presentational immediacy are among those prehensions which we enjoy with the most vivid consciousness. These prehensions are late derivatives in the concrescence of an experient subject. The consequences of the neglect of this law, that the late derivative elements are more clearly illuminated by con- sciousness than the primitive elements, have been fatal to the proper analysis of an experient occasion. In fact, most of the difficulties of philosophy are produced by it. Experience has been explained in a thoroughly topsy- turvy fashion, the wrong end first. In particular, emo- tional and purposeful experience have been made to fol- low upon Hume’s impressions of sensation.
To sum up: (1) Consciousness is a subjective form arising in the higher phases of concrescence. (ii) Con- sciousness primarily illuminates the higher phase in which it arises, and only illuminates earlier phases deriv- atively, as they remain components in the higher phase. (iii) It follows that the order of dawning, clearly and dis- tinctly, in consciousness is not the order of metaphysical priority.
The primitive form of physical experience is emo- tional—blind emotion—received as felt elsewhere in another occasion and conformally appropriated as a sub- jective passion. In the language appropriate to the higher stages of experience, the primitive element is sympathy, that is, feeling the feeling in another and feeling conformally with another. We are so used to considering the high abstraction, ‘the stone as green,’ that we have difficulty in eliciting into consciousness the notion of ‘green’ as the qualifying character of an emo- tion. Yet, the aesthetic feelings, whereby there is pic- torial art, are nothing else than products of the contrasts
Phevsubjectivis T Principle_w-247
latent in a variety of colours qualifying emotion, con- trasts which are made possible by their patterned rele- vance to each other. The separation of the emotional experience from the presentational intuition is a high abstraction of thought. Thus the primitive experience is emotional feelings, felt in its relevance to a world beyond. The feeling is blind and the relevance is vague. Also feeling, and reference to an exterior world pass into appetition, which is the feeling of determinate relevance to a world about to be. In the phraseology of physics, this primitive experience is ‘vector feeling,’ that is to say, feeling from a beyond which is determinate and pointing to a beyond which is to be determined. But the feeling is subjectively rooted in the immediacy of the present occasion: it is what the occasion feels for itself, as derived from the past and as merging into the future. In this vector transmission of primitive feeling the primitive provision of width for contrast is secured by pulses of emotion, which in the coordinate division of occasions (cf. Part IV) appear as wave-lengths and vibrations. In any particular cosmic epoch, the order of nature has secured the necessary differentiation of function, so as to avoid incompatibilities, by shepherding the sensa char- acteristic of that epoch each into association with a defi- nite pulse. Thus the transmission of each sensum is associated with its own wave-length. In physics, such transmission can be conceived as corpuscular or undula- tory, according to the special importance of particular features in the instance considered. The higher phases of experience increase the dimension of width, and elicit contrasts of higher types. The clash of uncoordinated emotions in the lower categories are avoided: the aspect of inhibition and of transitory satisfaction is diminished. Experience realizes itself as an element in what is ever- lasting (cf. Part V, Ch. II), and as embodying in itself the everlasting component of the universe. This gain does not necessarily involve consciousness. Also it involves enhanced subjective emphasis. The occasion
248 Process and Reality
has become less of a detail and more of a totality, so far as its subjective experience is concerned. The feeling of this width, with its enhancement of permanence, takes the form of blind zest, which can become self-defeating by excess of subjective emphasis. The inhibitions of zest by lack of adequate width to combine the contraries inherent in the environment lead to the destruction of the type of order concerned. Every increase of sensitiv- ity requires an evolution towards adaptation. It must be remembered, however, that emotion in human experi- ence, or even in animal experience, is not bare emotion. It is emotion interpreted, integrated, and transformed into higher categories of feeling. But even so, the emo- tional appetitive elements in our conscious experience are those which most closely resemble the basic elements of all physical experience.
The distinction between the various stages of concres-
cence consists in the diverse modes of ingression of the
eternal objects involved. The immanent decision, whereby
there is a supervening of stages in an actual entity, is
always the determinant of a process of integration
whereby completion is arrived at—at least, such ‘formal’
completion as is proper to a single actual entity. This
determination originates with conceptual prehensions
which enter into integration with the physical prehen-
sions modifying both the data and the subjective forms.
The limitation whereby there is a perspective relega- tion of eternal objects to the background is the charac- teristic of decision. Transcendent decision includes God’s decision. He is the actual entity in virtue of which the entire multiplicity» of eternal objects obtains its graded relevance to each stage of concrescence. Apart from God, there could be no relevant novelty. Whatever arises in actual entities from God’s decision, arises first conceptually, and is transmuted into the physical world (cf. Part III). In ‘transcendent decision’ there is transi-
PiEeSUBLECTIVIS T PRINCIPLE . 249
tion from the past to the immediacy of the present; and in ‘immanent decision’ there is the process of acquisition of subjective form and the integration of feelings. In this process the creativity, universal throughout actual- ity, is characterized by the datum from the past; and it meets this dead datum—universalized into a character of creativity—by the vivifying novelty of subjective form selected from the multiplicity of pure potentiality. In the process, the old meets the new, and this meeting constitutes the satisfaction of an immediate particular individual.
Eternal objects in any one of their modes of subjective ingression are then functioning in the guise of subjective novelty meeting the objective datum from the past. This word ‘feeling’ is a mere technical term; but it has been chosen to suggest that functioning through which the concrescent actuality appropriates the datum so as to make it its own. There are three successive phases of feelings, namely, a phase of conformal feelings, one of ‘conceptual’ feelings, and one of ‘comparative’ feelings, including ‘propositional’ feelings in this last species. In the conformal feelings the how of feeling reproduces what is felt. Some conformation is necessary as a basis of vector transition, whereby the past is synthesized with the present. The one eternal object in its two-way function, as a determinant of the datum and as a deter- minant of the subjective form, is thus relational. In this sense the solidarity of the universe is based on the rela- tional functioning of eternal objects. The two earlier phases can be put together as the ‘supplemental’ phase.
An eternal object when it has ingression through its function of objectifying the actual world, so as to present the datum for prehension, is functioning ‘datively.’ Hence, to sum up, there are four modes of functioning whereby an eternal object has ingression into the consti- tution of an actual entity: (i) as dative ingression, (ii) in conformal physical feeling, (il1) in conceptual feeling, (iv) in comparative feeling.
250 Process and Reality
But the addition of diverse eternal objects is not of the essence of ‘supplementation’: the essence consists in the adjustment of subjective importance by functioning of subjective origin. The graduated emotional intensity of the subject is constituting itself by reference to the physical data, datively there and conformally felt. Al references to ‘attention’ usually refer to such supplemen- tation in which the addition of diverse eternal objects is at a minimum; whereas references to ‘emotion’ usually refer to such supplementation complicated by profuse addition of diverse eternal objects. Supplementary feel- ing is emotional and purposeful, because it is what is felt by mere reason of the subjective appropriation of the objective data. But it is of the essence of supplementary feeling that it does not challenge its initial phase of con- formal feeling by any reference to incompatibility. The stages of the subjective ingression of eternal objects involve essential compatibility. The process exhibits an inevitable continuity of functioning. Each stage carries in itself the promise of its successor, and each succeeding stage carries in itself the antecedent out of which it arose. For example the complexity of the datum carries in itself the transition from the conformal feelings to supplemen- tary feelings in which contrasts, latent in the datum, achieve real unity between the components. Thus com- ponents in the datum, which qua dative, are diverse, become united in specific realized contrast. As elements in the datum, the components are individually given, with the potentiality for a contrast, which in the supple- mentary stage is either included or excluded. The con- formal stage merely transforms the objective content into subjective feelings. But the supplementary stage adds, or excludes, the realization of the contrasts by which the original datum passes into its emotional unity.
This account enables us to conceive the stage of con-
sciousness as a prolongation of the stage of supplementa-
tion. The concrescence is an individualization of the
whole universe. Every eternal object, whether relevant
Cates DhwOrivis PRINCIPLE 251
or irrelevant to the datum, is still patient of its contrasts with the datum. The process by which such contrasts are admitted or rejected involves the stage of conceptual feeling; and consciousness is evidently only a further exhibition of this stage of supplementary feeling. Con- ceptual feelings do not necessarily involve consciousness. This point is elaborated in detail in Part ITI.
Again. in this explanation, ‘contrast’ has appeared as
the general case; while ‘identification’ is a sub-species
arising when one and the same eternal object is con-
trasted in its two modes of functioning.
Thus the two latter stages of feeling are constituted by the realization of specific modes of diversity and iden- tity, the realization also involving an adjustment of intensities of relevance. Mere diversity, and mere iden- tity, are generic terms. Two components in the consti- tution of an actual entity are specifically diverse and specifically identical by reason of the definite potential contrast involved in the diversity of the implicated eter- nal objects, and by reason of the definite self-identity of each eternal object. The specific identity arising from the synthesis of diverse modes of functioning of one eter- nal object is the ‘individual essence’ of that eternal object. But the concrescence reaches the goal required by the category of objective unity, that in any subject one entity can only be felt once. Nothing can be dupli- cated. The many potentialities for one entity must be synthetized into one fact. Hence arise the incompatibilities productive of elimination.
Properly speaking, modes of functioning are compared, thereby evoking specific contrasts and specific identifica- tions. The two latter stages of feeling are the stages of comparison; these stages involve comparisons, and comparisons of comparisons; and the admission, or exclu- sion, of an indefinite complexity of potentialities for com- parison, in ascending grades.
The ultimate attainment is ‘satisfaction.’ This is the final characterization of the unity of feeling of the one