Process and Reality (Gifford Lectures, 1929) — Alfred North Whitehead

342 Process and Reality

This category of subjective unity is the reason why no
feeling can be abstracted from its subject. For the sub-
ject is at work in the feeling, in order that it may be
the subject with that feeling. The feeling is an episode
in self-production, and is referent to its aim. This aim
is a certain definite unity with its companion feelings.

This doctrine of the inherence of the subject in the process of its production requires that in the primary phase of the subjective process there be a conceptual feel- ing of subjective aim: the physical and other feelings originate as steps towards realizing this conceptual aim through their treatment of initial data. This basic con- ceptual feeling suffers simplification in the successive phases of the concrescence. It starts with conditioned alternatives, and by successive decisions is reduced to coherence. The doctrine of responsibility is entirely con- cerned with this modification. In each phase the cor- responding conceptual feeling is the ‘subjective end’ characteristic of that phase. The many feelings, in any incomplete phase, are necessarily compatible with each other by reason of their individual conformity to the subjective end evolved for that phase.

This category of subjective unity is a doctrine of pre- established harmony, applied to the many feelings in an incomplete phase. If we recur therefore to the seven kinds of ‘proper’ entities, and ask how to classify an incomplete phase, we find that it has the unity of a proposition. In abstraction from the creative urge by which each such phase is merely an incident in a process, this phase is merely a proposition about its component feelings and their ultimate superject. The pre-estab- lished harmony is the self-consistency of this proposition, that is to say, its capacity for realization. But such ab- straction from the process does violence to its nature; for the phase 7s an incident in the process. When we try to do justice to this aspect of the phase, we must say that it is a proposition seeking truth. It is a lure to the super- vention of those integrating feelings by which the mere

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potentiality of the proposition, with its outstanding
indeterminations as to its setting amid the details
of the universe, is converted in the fully determinate
actuality.

The ground, or origin, of the concrescent process, is the multiplicity of data in the universe, actual entities and eternal objects and propositions and nextis. Each new phase in the concrescence means the retreat of mere propositional unity before the growing grasp of real unity of feeling. Each successive propositional phase is a lure to the creation of feelings which promote its reali- zation. Each temporal entity, in one sense, originates from its mental pole, analogously to God himself. It derives from God its basic conceptual aim, relevant to its actual world, yet with indeterminations awaiting its own decisions. This subjective aim, in its successive modifi- cations, remains the unifying factor governing the suc- cessive phases of interplay between physical and con- ceptual feelings. These decisions are impossible for the nascent creature antecedently to the novelties in the phases of its concrescence. But this statement in its turn requires amplification. With this amplification the doctrine, that the primary phase of a temporal actual entity is physical, is recovered. A ‘physical feeling’ is here defined to be the feeling of another actuality. If the other actuality be objectified by its conceptual feelings, the physical feeling of the subject in question is termed ‘hybrid.’ Thus the primary phase is a hybrid physical feeling of God, in respect to God’s conceptual feeling which is immediately relevant to the universe ‘given’ for that concrescence. There is then, according to the cate- gory of conceptual valuation, i.e. Categoreal Obligation IV, a derived conceptual feeling which reproduces for the subject the data and valuation of God’s conceptual feel- ing. This conceptual feeling is the initial conceptual aim referred to in the preceding statement. In this sense, God can be termed the creator of each temporal actual entity. But the phrase is apt to be misleading by

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its suggestion that the ultimate creativity of the universe is to be ascribed to God’s volition. The true metaphysi- cal position is that God is the aboriginal instance of this creativity, and is therefore the aboriginal condition which qualifies its action. It is the function of actuality to characterize the creativity, and God is the eternal primordial character. But of course, there is no meaning to ‘creativity’ apart from its ‘creatures,’ and no meaning to ‘God’ apart from the creativity and the ‘temporal creatures,’ and no meaning to the temporal creatures apart from ‘creativity’ and ‘God.’

Category II. There can be no duplication of any ele-
ment in the objective datum of the satisfaction of an
actual entity, so far as concerns the function of that
element in that satisfaction.

This is the ‘category of objective identity.’ This cate- gory asserts the essential self-identity of any entity as regards its status in each individualization of the uni- verse. In such a concrescence one thing has one rdle, and cannot assume any duplicity. This is the very mean- ing of self-identity, that, in any actual confrontation of thing with thing, one thing cannot confront itself in alien roles. Any one thing remains obstinately itself playing a part with self-consistent unity. This category is one ground of incompatibility.

Category III. There can be no ‘coalescence’ of diverse
elements in the objective datum of an actual entity, so
far as concerns the functions of those elements in that
satisfaction.

This is the ‘category of objective diversity.’ There the term ‘coalescence’ means the self-contradictory notion of diverse elements exercising an absolute identity of func- tion, devoid of the contrasts inherent in their diversities. In other words, in a real complex unity each particular component imposes its own particularity on its status. No entity can have an abstract status in a real unity. Its status must be such that only it can fill and only that actuality can supply.

The Theory -of Feelings 345

The neglect of this category is a prevalent error in
metaphysical reasoning. This category is another ground
of incompatibility.

The importance of these categories can only be under-
stood by considering each actual world in the light of a
‘medium’ leading up to the concrescence of the actual
entity in question. It will be remembered that the
phrase ‘actual world’ has always reference to some one
concrescence.

Any actual entity, which we will name 4A, feels other actual entities which we will name B, C, and D. Thus B, C, and D all lie in the actual world of A. But C and D may lie in the actual world of B, and are then felt by it; also D may lie in the actual world of C and be felt by it. This example might be simplified, or might be changed to one of any degree of complication. Now B, as an initial datum for A’s feeling, also presents C and D for A to feel through its mediation. Also C, as an initial datum for A’s feeling, also presents D for A to feel through its mediation. Thus, in this artificially simpli- fied example, A has D presented for feeling through three distinct sources: (i) directly as a crude datum, (ii) by the mediation of B, and (iii) by the mediation of C. This threefold presentation is D, in its function of an initial datum for A’s feeling of it, so far as concerns the mediation of B and C. But, of course, the artificial sim- plification of the medium to two intermediaries is very far from any real case. The medium between D and A consists of all those actual entities which lie in the actual world of A and not in the actual world of D. For the sake of simplicity the explanation will continue in terms of this threefold presentation.

There are thus three sources of feeling, D direct, D in
its nexus with C, and D in its nexus with B. Thus in the
basic phase of A’s concrescence there arise three prehen-
sions of the datum D. According to the first category

346 Process and Reality

these prehensions are not independent. This subjective unity of the concrescence introduces negative prehen- sions, so that D in the direct feeling is not felt in its formal completeness, but objectified with the elimination of such of its prehensions as are inconsistent with D felt through the mediation of B, and through the mediation of C. Thus the three component feelings of the first phrase are consistent, so as to pass into the integration of the second phase in which there is A’s one feeling of a coherent objectification of D. Since D is necessarily self- consistent, the inconsistencies must arise from the sub- jective forms of the prehensions of D by B directly, by C directly, and by A directly. These inconsistencies lead to the eliminations in A’s total prehension of D.

In this process, the negative prehensions which effect the elimination are not merely negligible. The process through which a feeling passes in constituting itself, also records itself in the subjective form of the integral feel- ing. The negative prehensions have their own subjective forms which they contribute to the process. A feeling bears on itself the scars of its birth; it recollects as a subjective emotion its struggle for existence; it retains the impress of what it might have been, but is not. It is for this reason that what an actual entity has avoided as a datum for feeling may yet be an important part of its equipment. The actual cannot be reduced to mere matter of fact in divorce from the potential.

The same principle of explanation also holds in the case of a conceptual prehension, in which the datum is an eternal object. In the first phase of this conceptual prehension, there is this eternal object to be felt as a mere abstract capacity for giving definiteness to a physi- cal feeling. But also there are the feelings of the objecti- fications of innumerable actual entities. Some of these physical feelings illustrate this same eternal object as an element providing their definiteness. There are in this way diverse prehensicns of the same eternal object; and by the first category these various prehensions must be —

The Theory of Feelings 347

consistent, so as to pass into the integration of the subse-
quent phase in which there is one coherent complex
feeling, namely, a conceptual feeling of that eternal
object. This subjective insistence on consistency may,
from the beginning, replace the positive feelings by
negative prehensions.

In the explanations of the preceding section, only the
first category has been explicitly alluded to. It must
now be pointed out how the other categories have been
tacitly presupposed.

The fact that there is integration at all arises from the condition expressed by the category of objective identity. The same entity, be it actual entity or be it eternal object, cannot be felt twice in the formal con- stitution of one concrescence. The incomplete phases with their many feelings of one object are only to be interpreted in terms of the final satisfaction with its one feeling of that one object. Thus objective identity re- quires integration of the many feelings of one object into the one feeling of that object. The analysis of an actual entity is only intellectual, or, to speak with a wider scope, only objective. Each actual entity is a cell with atomic unity. But in analysis it can only be understood as a process; it can only be felt as a process, that is to say, as in passage. The actual entity is divisible; but is in fact undivided. The divisibility can thus only refer to its objectifications in which it transcends itself. But such transcendence is self-revelation.

Thus the process of integration, which lies at the very heart of the concrescence, is the urge imposed on the concrescent unity of that universe by the three categories of subjective unity, of objective identity, and of objective diversity. The oneness of the universe, and the oneness of each element in the universe, repeat themselves to the crack of doom in the creative advance from creature to creature, each creature including in itself the whole of

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history and exemplifying the self-identity of things and their mutual diversities.

The third category is concerned with the antithesis to oneness, namely, diversity. An actual entity is not merely one; it is also definitely complex. But, to be defi- nitely complex is to include definite diverse elements in definite ways. The category of objective diversity ex- presses the inexorable condition—that a complex unity must provide for each of its components a real diversity of status, with a reality which bears the same sense as its own reality and is peculiar to itself. In other words, a real unity cannot provide sham diversities of status for its diverse components.