This category is in truth only a particular application of the second category. For a ‘status’ is after all some- thing; and, according to the category of objective iden- tity, it cannot duplicate its réle. Thus if the ‘status’ be the status of this, it cannot in the same sense be the status of that. The prohibition of sham diversities of status sweeps away the ‘class theory’ of particular sub- stances, which was waveringly suggested by Locke (II, XXIII, 1), was more emphatically endorsed by Hume (Treatise, Part I, Sect. 6), and has been adopted by Hume’s followers. For the essence of a class is that it assigns no diversity of function to the members of its extension. The members of a class are diverse members in virtue of mere logical disjunction. The ‘class,’ thus appealed to, is a mere multiplicity. But in the prevalent discussion of classes, there are illegitimate transitions to the notions of a ‘nexus’ and of a ‘proposition.’ The ap- peal to a class to perform the services of a proper entity
is exactly analogous to an appeal to an imaginary terrier to kill a real rat.
This diversity of status, combined with the real unity
of the components, means that the real synthesis of two
component elements in the objective datum of a feeling
The Theory-of Feelings 349
must be infected with the individual particularities of each of the relata. Thus the synthesis in its complete- ness expresses the joint particularities of that pair of relata, and can relate no others. A complex entity with this individual definiteness, arising out of determinate- ness of eternal objects, will be termed a ‘contrast.’ A contrast cannot be abstracted from the contrasted relata.
The most obvious examples of a contrast are to be found by confining attention purely to eternal objects. The contrast between blue and red cannot be repeated as that contrast between any other pair of colours, or any pair of sounds, or between a colour and a sound. It is just the contrast between blue and red, that and nothing else. Certain abstractions from that contrast, certain values inherent in it, can also be got from other con- trasts. But they are other contrasts, and not that con- trast; and the abstractions are not ‘contrasts’ of the same categoreal type.
In another sense, a ‘nexus’ falls under the meaning of the term ‘contrast’; though we shall avoid this applica- tion of the term. What are ordinarily termed ‘relations’ are abstractions from contrasts. A relation can be found in many contrasts; and when it is so found, it is said to relate the things contrasted. The term ‘multiple con- trast’ will be used when there are or may be more than two elements jointly contrasted, and it is desired to draw attention to that fact. A multiple contrast is analysable into component dual contrasts. But a multiple contrast is not a mere aggregation of dual contrasts. It is one contrast, over and above its component contrasts. This doctrine that a multiple contrast cannot be conceived as a mere disjunction of dual contrasts is the basis of the doctrine of emergent evolution. It is the doctrine of real unities being more than a mere collective disjunction of component elements. This doctrine has the same ground as the objection to the class-theory of particular sub- stances. The doctrine is a commonplace of art.
Bradley’s discussions of relations are confused by his
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failure to distinguish between relations and contrasts. A relation is a genus of contrasts. He is then distressed— or would have been distressed if he had not been con- soled by the notion of ‘mereness’ as in ‘mere appearance’ —to find that a relation will not do the work of a con- trast. It fails to contrast. Thus Bradley’s argument proves that relations, among other things, are ‘mere’; that is to say, are indiscretions of the absolute, apings of reality without self-consistency.
SECTION Ix
One use of the term ‘contrast’ is to mean that particu-
larity of conjoint unity which arises from the realized
togetherness of eternal objects. But there is another,
and more usual, sense of ‘particularity.’ This is the
sense in which the term ‘particular’ is applied to an actual
entity.
One actual entity has a status among other actual en- tities, not expressible wholly in terms of contrasts be- tween eternal objects. For example, the complex nexus of ancient imperial Rome to European history is not wholly expressible in universals. It is not merely the contrast of a sort of city, imperial, Roman, ancient, with a sort of history of a sort of continent, sea-indented, river-diversified, with alpine divisions, begirt by larger continental masses and oceanic wastes, civilized, bar- barized, christianized, commercialized, industrialized. The nexus in question does involve such a complex con- trast of universals. But it involves more. For it is the nexus of that Rome with that Europe. We cannot be conscious of this nexus purely by the aid of conceptual feelings. This nexus is implicit, below consciousness, in our physical feelings. In part we are conscious of such physical feelings, and of that particularity of the nexus between particular actual entities. This consciousness takes the form of our consciousness of particular spatial and temporal relations between things directly perceived. But, as in the case of Rome and Europe, so far as con-
The Theory of Feelings 351
cerns the mass of our far-reaching knowledge, the par-
ticular nexus between the particular actualities in ques-
tion are only indicated by constructive reference to the
physical feelings of which we are conscious.
This peculiar particularity of the nexus between actual entities can be put in another way. Owing to the disas- trous confusion, more especially by Hume, of conceptual feelings with perceptual feelings, the truism that we can only conceive in terms of universals has been stretched to mean that we can only feel in terms of universals. This is untrue. Our perceptual feelings feel particular existents; that is to say, a physical feeling, belonging to the percipient, feels the nexus between two other actu- alities, A and B. It feels feelings of A which feel B, and feels feelings of B which feel A. It integrates these feel- ings, so as to unify their identity of elements. These identical elements form the factor defining the nexus between A and B, a nexus also retaining the particular diversity of A and B in its uniting force.
Also the more complex multiple nexus between many actual entities in the actual world of a percipient is felt by that percipient. But this nexus, as thus felt, can be abstracted from that particular percipient. It is the same nexus for all percipients which include those actual entities in their actual worlds. The multiple nexus is how those actual entities are really together in all subse- quent unifications of the universe, by reason of the objec- tive immortality of their real mutual prehensions of each other.
We thus arrive at the notion of the actual world of any actual entity, as a nexus whose objectification constitutes the complete unity of objective datum for the physical feeling of that actual entity. This actual entity is the original percipient of that nexus. But any other actual entity which includes in its own actual world that original percipient, also includes that previous nexus as a portion of its own actual world. Thus each actual world is a nexus which in this sense is independent of its original
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percipient. It enjoys an objective immortality in the future beyond itself.
Every nexus is a component nexus, first accomplished in some later phase of concrescence of an actual entity, and ever afterwards having its status in actual worlds as an unalterable fact, dated and located among the actual entities connected in itself. If in a nexus there be a realized contrast of universals, this contrast is located in that actual entity to which it belongs as first originated in one of its integrative feelings. Thus every realized contrast has a location, which is particular with the par- ticularity of actual entities. It is a particular complex matter of fact, realized; and, because of its reality, a standing condition in every subsequent actual world from which creative advance must originate.
It is this complete individual particularity of each actu- ality, and of each nexus, and of each realized contrast, which is the reason for the three categoreal conditions— of subjective unity, of objective identity, and of objective diversity. The word ‘event’ is used sometimes in the sense of a nexus of actual entities, and sometimes in the sense of a nexus as objectified by universals. In either sense, it is a definite fact with a date.
The initial data of a complex feeling, as mere data, are many; though as felt they are one in the objective unity of a pattern. Thus a nexus is a realized pattern of the initial data; though this pattern is merely relative to the feeling, expressive of those factors in the many data by reason of which they can acquire their unity in the feel- ing. This is the second use of the term nexus, mentioned above.
Thus, just as the ‘feeling as one’ cannot bear the ab- straction from it of the subject, so the ‘data as one’ can- not bear the abstraction from it of every feeling which feels it as such. According to the ontological principle, the impartial nexus is an objective datum in the conse- quent nature of God; since it is somewhere and yet not by any necessity of its own nature implicated in the
The Theory of Feelings 353
feelings of any determined actual entity of the actual
world. The nexus involves realization somewhere. This
is the first use of the term nexus.
In two extreme cases the initial data of a feeling have a unity of their own. In one case, the data reduce to a single actual entity, other than the subject of the feeling; and in the other case the data reduce to a single eternal object. These are called ‘primary feelings.’ A particular feeling divorced from its subject is nonsense.
There are thus two laws respecting the feelings con- stituting the complex satisfaction of an actual entity: (i) An entity can only be felt once, and (ii) the diverse feelings, in the same subject, of the same entity as datum which are to be unified into one feeling, must be compatible in their treatment of the entity felt. In con- formity with this pre-established harmony, ‘incompati- bility’ would have dictated from the beginning that some ‘feeling’ be replaced by a negative prehension.
The subjective forms of feelings are best discussed in connection with the different types of feelings which can arise. This classification into types has regard to the differences among feelings in respect to their initial data, their objective data, and their subjective forms. But these sources of difference cannot wholly be kept separate.
A feeling is the appropriation of some elements in the
universe to be components in the real internal constitu-
tion of its subject. The elements are the initial data;
they are what the feeling feels. But they are felt under
an abstraction. The process of the feeling involves nega-
tive prehensions which effect elimination. Thus the ini-
tial data are felt under a ‘perspective’ which is the
objective datum of the feeling.
In virtue of this elimination the components of the
complex objective datum have become ‘objects’ interven-
ing in the constitutions of the subject of the feeling. In
the phraseology of mathematical physics a feeling has a
354 Process and Reality
‘vector’ character. A feeling is the agency by which other things are built into the constitution of its one subject in process of concrescence. Feelings are constitutive of the nexus by reason of which the universe finds its uni- fication ever renewed by novel concrescence. The unl- verse is always one, since there is no surveying it except from an actual entity which unifies it. Also the universe is always new, since the immediate actual entity is the superject of feelings which are essentially novelties.
The essential novelty of a feeling attaches to its sub- jective form. The initial data, and even the nexus which is the objective datum, may have served other feelings with other subjects. But the subjective form is the immediate novelty; it is how that subject is feeling that objective datum. There is no tearing this subjective form from the novelty of this concrescence. It is envel- oped in the immediacy of its immediate present. The fundamental example of the notion ‘quality inhering is particular substance’ is afforded by ‘subjective form inhering in feeling.’ If we abstract the form from the feeling, we are left with an eternal object as the remnant of subjective form.