in general not distinguishable. In this respect, causal efficacy stands in contrast to presentational immediacy with its direct illustration of certain distinct regions. But there are exceptions to this geometrical indistinct- ness of causal efficacy. In the first place, the separation of the potential extensive scheme into past and future lies with the mode of causal efficacy and not with that of presentational immediacy. The mathematical measure- ments, derivable from the latter, are indifferent to this distinction; whereas the physical theory, expressed in terms of the former, is wholly concerned with it. In the next place, the animal body of the percipient is a region for which causal efficacy acquires some accuracy in its distinction of regions—not all the distinctness of the other mode, but sufficient to allow of important identifi- cations. For example, we see with our eyes, we taste unth our palates, we touch with our hands, ete.: here the causal efficacy defines regions which are identified with themselves as perceived with greater distinctness by the other mode. To take one example, the slight eye-strain in the act of sight is an instance of regional definition by presentational immediacy. But in itself it is no more to be correlated with projected sight than is a contemporary stomach-ache, or a throb in the foot. The obvious cor- relation of the eye-strain with sight arises from the per- ception, in the other mode, of the eye as efficacious in sight. This correlation takes place in virtue of the iden- tity of the two regions, the region of the eye-strain, and the region of eye-efficacy. But the eye-strain is so im- measurably the superior in its power of regional defini- tion that, as usual, we depend upon it for explicit geo- metrical correlations with other parts of the body. In this way, the animal body is the great central ground underlying all symbolic reference. In respect to bodily perceptions the two modes achieve the maximum of sym- bolic reference, and pool their feelings referent to identi- cal regions. Every statement about the geometrical rela- tionships of physical bodies in the world is ultimately
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referable to certain definite human bodies as origins of
reference. A traveller, who has lost his way, should not
ask, Where am I? What he really wants to know is,
Where are the other places? He has got his own body,
but he has lost them.
The second ‘ground’ for symbolic reference is the con- nection between the two modes effected by the identity of an eternal object ingredient in both of them. It will be remembered that the former ‘ground’ was the identity of the extensive region throughout such stages of direct perception and synthesis, when there was a diversity of eternal objects, for example, eye-region, visual sensa, eye- strain. But now we pass to a diversity of regions com- bined with an identity of the eternal object, for example, visual sensa given by efficacity of eye-region, and the region of the stone perceived in the mode of presenta- tional immediacy under the illustration of the same visual sense. In this connection the ‘make-believe’ character of modern empiricism is well shown by putting into justa- position two widely separated passages’ from Hume’s Treatise: “Impressions may be divided into two kinds, those of sensation, and those of reflection. The first kind arises in the soul originally, from unknown causes.”’ And “Tf it be perceived by the eyes, it must be a colour; .. .”
The earlier passage is Hume’s make-believe, when he is
thinking of his philosophical principles. He then refers
the visual sensations ‘in the soul’ to ‘unknown causes.’
But in the second passage, the heat of argument elicits
his real conviction—everybody’s real conviction—that
visual sensations arise ‘by the eyes.’ The causes are not
a bit ‘unknown,’ and among them there is usually to be
found the efficacity of the eyes. If Hume had stopped to
investigate the alternative causes for the occurrence of
visual sensations—for example, eye-sight, or excessive
consumption of aleohol—he might have hesitated in his
1Cf. Book I, Part I, Sects. II and VI (italics mine).
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profession of ignorance. If the causes be indeed unknown, it is absurd to bother about eye-sight and intoxication. The reason for the existence of oculists and prohibition- ists is that various causes are known.
We can now complete our account of presentational immediacy. In this perceptive mode the sensa are ‘given’ for the percipient, but this donation is not to be ascribed to the spatial object which is thereby presented, the stone, for example. Now it is a primary doctrine that what is ‘given’ is given by reason of objectifications of actual entities from the settled past. We therefore seek for the actual occasions to whose objectifications this donation is to be ascribed. In this procedure we are only agreeing with the spirit of Descartes’ fifty-second prin- ciple (Part I): “For this reason, when we perceive any attribute, we therefore conclude that some existing thing or substance to which it may be attributed, is necessarily present.” Common sense, physical theory, and physio- logical theory, combine to point out a historic route of inheritance, from actual occasion to succeeding actual occasion, first physically in the external environment, then physiologically—through the eyes in the case of vis- ual data—up the nerves, into the brain. The donation— taking sight as an example—is not confined to definite sensa, such as shades of colour: it also includes geomet- rical relationships to the general environment. In this chain of inheritances, the eye is picked out to rise into perceptive prominence, because another historic route of physiological inheritance starts from it, whereby a later occasion (almost identical with the earlier) is illustrated by the sensum ‘eye-strain’ in the mode of presentational immediacy ; but this eye-strain is another allied story. In the visual datum for the percipient there are first these components of colour-sensa combined with geometrical relationships to the external world of the settled past: secondly, there are also in the datum the general geo- metrical relationships forming the completion of this potential scheme into the contemporary world, and into
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the future. The responsive phase absorbs these data as material for a subjective unity of feeling: the supple- mental stage heightens the relevance of the colour- sensa, and supplements the geometrical relationships of the past by picking out the contemporary region of the stone to be the contemporary representative of the effi- cacious historic routes. There then results in the mode of presentational immediacy, the perception of the region illustrated by the sensum termed ‘grey.’ The term ‘stone’ is primarily applied to a certain historic route in the past, which is an efficacious element in this train of circum- stance. It is only properly applied to the contemporary region illustrated by ‘grey’ on the assumption that this contemporary region is the prolongation, of that historic route, into the presented locus. This assumption may, or may not, be true. Further, the illustration of the con- temporary region of ‘grey’ may be due to quite other effi- cacious historic routes—for example, to lighting effects arranged by theatrical producers—and in such a ease, the term ‘stone’ may suggest an even more violent error than in the former example. What is directly perceived, cer- tainly and without shadow of doubt, is a grey region of the presented locus. Any further interpretation, instinc- tive or by intellectual judgment, must be put down to symbolic reference.
This account makes it plain that the perceptive mode of presentational immediacy arises in the later, origina- tive, integrative phases of the process of concrescence. The perceptive mode of causal efficacy is to be traced to the constitution of the datum by reason of which there is a concrete percipient entity. Thus we must assign the mode of causal efficacy to the fundamental constitution of an occasion so that in germ this mode belongs even to organisms of the lowest grade; while the mode of presen- tational immediacy requires the more sophistical activity of the later stages of process, so as to belong only to organisms of a relatively high grade. So far as we can judge, such high-grade organisms are relatively few, in
262 Process and Reality
comparison with the whole number of organisms in our immediate environment. Presentational immediacy is an outgrowth from the complex datum implanted by causal efficacy. But, by the originative power of the supple- mental phase, what was vague, ill defined, and hardly relevant in causal efficacy, becomes distinct, well defined, and importantly relevant in presentational immediacy. In the responsive phase, the grey-colour, and the geo- metrical relations between the efficacious, bodily routes and the contemporary occasions, were subjective sensa- tion associated with barely relevant geometrical rela- tions: they represented the vivid sensational qualities in the enjoyment of which the percipient subject barely dis- tinguished vague indirect relationships to the external world. The supplemental phase lifts the presented dura- tion into vivid distinctness, so that the vague efficacity of the indistinct external world in the immediate past is precipitated upon the representative regions in the con- temporary present. In the usual language, the sensations are projected. This phraseology is unfortunate; for there never were sensations apart from these geometrical rela- tions. Presentational immediacy is the enhancement of the importance of relationships which were already in the datum, vaguely and with slight relevance. This fact, that ‘presentational immediacy’ deals with the same datum as does ‘causal efficacy,’ gives the ultimate reason why there is a common ‘ground’ for ‘symbolic reference.’ The two modes express the same datum under different proportions of relevance. The two genetic processes in- volving presentational immediacy must be carefully dis- tinguished. There is first the complex genetic process in which presentational immediacy originates. This process extends downwards even to occasions which belong to the historic routes of certain types of inorganic enduring objects, namely, to those enduring objects whose aggre- gates form the subject-matter of the science of New- tonian Dynamics. Secondly, prehensions in the mode of presentational immediacy are involved as components in
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integration with other prehensions which are usually, though not always in other modes. These integrations often involve various types of ‘symbolic reference.’ This symbolic reference is the interpretive element in human experience. Language almost exclusively refers to presen- tational immediacy as interpreted by symbolic reference. For example, we say that ‘we see the stone’ where stone is an interpretation of stone-image: also we say that ‘we see the stone-image with our eyes’; this is an interpreta- tion arising from the complex integration of (i) the causal efficacy of the antecedent eye in the vision, (ii) the presentational immediacy of the stone-image, (iii) the presentational immediacy of the eye-strain. When we say that ‘we see the stone with our eyes,’ the inter- pretations of these two examples are combined.
The discussion of the problem, constituted by the con- nection between causation and perception, has been con- ducted by the various schools of thought derived from Hume and Kant under the misapprehension generated by an inversion of the true constitution of experience. The inversion was explicit in the writings of Hume and of Kant: for both of them presentational immediacy was the primary fact of perception, and any apprehension of causation was, somehow or other, to be elicited from this primary fact. This view of the relation between causa- tion and perception, as items in experience, was not orig- inal to these great philosophers. It is to be found pre- supposed in Locke and Descartes; and they derived it from mediaeval predecessors. But the modern critical movement in philosophy arose when Hume and Kant emphasized the fundamental, inescapable, importance which this doctrine possesses for any philosophy admit- ting its truth. The philosophy of organism does not ad- mit its truth, and thus rejects the touchstone which is the neolithic weapon of ‘critical’ philosophy. It must be remembered that clearness in consciousness is no evidence
264 Process and Reality
for primitiveness in the genetic process: the opposite doctrine is more nearly true.
Owing to its long dominance, it has been usual to assume as an obvious fact the primacy of presentational immediacy. We open our eyes and our other sense- organs; we then survey the contemporary world decorated with sights, and sounds, and tastes; and then, by the sole aid of this information about the contemporary world, thus decorated, we draw what conclusions we can as to the actual world. No philosopher really holds that this is the sole source of information: Hume and his fol- lowers appeal vaguely to ‘memory’ and to ‘practice,’ in order to supplement their direct information; and Kant wrote other ‘Critiques’ in order to supplement his Critique of Pure Reason. But the general procedure of modern philosophical ‘criticism’ is to tie down opponents strictly to the front door of presentational immediacy as the sole source of information, while one’s own philosophy makes its escape by a back door veiled under the ordinary usages of language.