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

is the perceiver. This is not an example of conscious perception. For the subjective form of a simple physical feeling does not involve consciousness, unless acquired in subsequent phases of integration. It seems as though in practice, for human beings at least, only transmuted feelings acquire consciousness, never simple physical feel- ings. Consciousness originates in the higher phases of integration and illuminates those phases with the greater clarity and distinctness.

Thus a simple physical feeling is one feeling which feels another feeling. But the feeling felt has a subject diverse from the subject of the feeling which feels it. A multi- plicity of simple physical feelings entering into the propo- sitional unity of a phase constitutes the first phase in the concrescence of the actual entity which is the common subject of all these feelings. The limitation, whereby the actual entities felt are severally reduced to the per- spective of one of their own feelings, is imposed by the categoreal condition of subjective unity, requiring a har- monious compatibility in the feelings of each incomplete phase. Thus the negative prehensions, involved in the production of any one feeling, are not independent of the other feelings. The subjective forms of feelings depend in part on the negative prehensions. This primary phase of simple physical feelings constitutes the machinery by reason of which the creativity transcends the world already actual, and yet remains conditioned by that actual world in its new impersonation.

Owing to the vagueness of our conscious analysis of complex feelings, perhaps we never consciously discrimi- nate one simple physical feeling in isolation. But all our physical relationships are made up of such simple physical feelings, as their atomic bricks. Apart from inhibitions or additions, weakenings or intensifications, due to the history of its production, the subjective form of a physical feeling is re-enaction of the subjective form of the feeling felt. Thus the cause passes on its feeling to be reproduced by the new subject as its own, and yet

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as inseparable from the cause. There is a flow of feeling. But the re-enaction is not perfect. The categoreal de- mands of the concrescence require adjustments of the pattern of emotional intensities. The cause is objectively in the constitution of the effect, in virtue of being the feeler of the feeling reproduced in the effect with partial equivalence of subjective form. Also the cause’s feeling has its own objective datum, and its own initial datum. Thus this antecedent initial datum has now entered into the datum of the effect’s feeling at second-hand through the mediation of the cause.

The reason why the cause is objectively in the effect,
is that the cause’s feeling cannot, as a feeling, be ab-
stracted from its subject which is the cause. This pas-
sage of the cause into the effect is the cumulative charac-
ter of time. The irreversibility of time depends on this
character.

Note that in the ‘satisfaction’ there is an integration of simple physical feelings. No simple physical feeling need be distinguished in consciousness. Physical feelings may be merged with feelings of any type, and of whatever complexity. A simple physical feeling has the dual character of being the cause’s feeling re-enacted for the effect as subject. But this transference of feeling effects a partial identification of cause with effect, and not a mere representation of the cause. It is the cumulation of the universe and not a stage-play about it. In a simple feeling there is a double particularity in reference to the actual world, the particular cause and the particu- lar effect. In Locke’s language (III, III, 6), and with his limitation of thought, a simple feeling is an idea in one mind ‘determined to this or that particular existent.’ Locke is here expressing what only metaphysicians can doubt.

By reason of this duplicity in a simple feeling there is a vector character which transfers the cause into the effect. It is a feeling from the cause which acquires the subjectivity of the new effect without loss of its original

364 Process and Reality

subjectivity in the cause. Simple physical feelings
embody the reproductive character of nature, and also
the objective immortality of the past. In virtue of these
feelings time is the conformation of the immediate pres-
ent to the past. Such feelings are ‘conformal’ feelings.

The novel actual entity, which is the effect, is the re- production of the many actual entities of the past. But in this reproduction there is abstraction from their vari- ous totalities of feeling. This abstraction is required by the categoreal conditions for compatible synthesis in the novel unity. This abstractive ‘objectification’ is rendered possible by reason of the ‘divisible’ character of the satis- factions of actual entities. By reason of this ‘divisible’ character causation is the transfer of a feeling, and not of a total satisfaction. The other feelings are dismissed by negative prehensions, owing to their lack of com- pliance with categoreal demands.

A simple physical feeling enjoys a characteristic which has been variously described as ‘re-enaction,’ ‘reproduc- tion,’ and ‘conformation.’ This characteristic can be more accurately explained in terms of the eternal objects involved. There are eternal objects determinant of the definiteness of the objective datum which is the ‘cause,’ and eternal objects determinant of the definiteness of the subjective form belonging to the ‘effect.’ When there is re-enaction there is one eternal object with two-way functioning, namely, as partial determinant of the objec- tive datum, and as partial determinant of the subjective form. In this two-way role, the eternal object is func- tioning relationally between the initial data on the one hand and the concrescent subject on the other. It is playing one self-consistent role in obedience to the cate- gory of objective identity.

Physical science is the science investigating spatio- temporal and quantitative characteristics of simple physi- cal feelings. The actual entities of the actual world are bound together in a nexus of these feelings. Also in the creative advance, the nexus proper to an antecedent

The Primary Feelings 365

actual world is not destroyed. It is reproduced and added to, by the new bonds of feeling with the novel actualities which transcend it and include it. But these bonds have always their vector character. Accordingly the ultimate physical entities for physical science are always vectors indicating transference. In the world there is nothing static. But there is reproduction; and hence the permanence which is the result of order, and the cause of it. And yet there is always change; for time is cumulative as well as reproductive, and the cumu- lation of the many is not their reproduction as many. This section on simple physical feelings lays the foundation of the treatment of cosmology in the philos- ophy of organism. It contains the discussion of the ulti- mate elements from which a more complete philosophical discussion of the physical world—that is to say, of nature—must be derived. In the first place an endeavour has been made to do justice alike to the aspect of the world emphasized by Descartes and to the atomism of the modern quantum-theory. Descartes saw the natural world as an extensive spatial plenum, enduring through time. Modern physicists see energy transferred in defi- nite quanta. This quantum-theory also has analogues in recent neurology. Again fatigue is the expression of cumulation; it is physical memory. Further causation and physical memory spring from the same root: both of them are physical perception. Cosmology must do equal justice to atomism, to continuity, to causation, to mem- ory, to perception, to qualitative and quantitative forms of energy, and to extension. But so far there has been no reference to the ultimate vibratory characters of organisms and to the ‘potential’ element in nature.

Conceptual feelings and simple causal feelings consti-
tute the two main species of ‘primary’ feelings. All
other feelings of whatever complexity arise out of a
process of integration which starts with a phase of these

366 Process and Reality

primary feelings. There is, however, a difference between the species. An actual entity in the actual world of a subject must enter into the concrescence of that subject by some simple causal feeling, however vague, trivial, and submerged. Negative prehensions may eliminate its distinctive importance. But in some way, by some trace of causal feeling, the remote actual entity is pre- hended positively. In the case of an eternal object, there is no such necessity. In any given concrescence, it may be included positively by means of a conceptual feeling; but it may be excluded by a negative prehen- sion. The actualities have to be felt, while the pure potentials can be dismissed. So far as concerns their functionings as objects, this is the great distinction between an actual entity and an eternal object. The one is stubborn matter of fact; and the other never loses its ‘accent’ of potentiality.

In each concrescence there is a twofold aspect of the creative urge. In one aspect there is the origination of simple causal feelings; and in the other aspect there is the origination of conceptual feelings. These contrasted aspects will be called the physical and the mental poles of an actual entity. No actual entity is devoid of either pole; though their relative importance differs in differ- ent actual entities. Also conceptual feelings do not necessarily involve consciousness; though there can be no conscious feelings which do not involve conceptual feelings as elements in the synthesis.

Thus an actual entity is essentially dipolar, with its
physical and mental poles; and even the physical world
cannot be properly understood without reference to its
other side, which is the complex of mental operations.
The primary mental operations are conceptual feelings.

A conceptual feeling is feeling an eternal object in the primary metaphysical character of being an ‘object,’ that is to say, feeling its capacity for being a realized determi- nant of process. Immanence and transcendence are the characteristics of an object: as a realized determinant it

The Primary Feelings 367

is immanent; as a capacity for determination it is transcendent; in both réles it is relevant to something not itself. There is no character belonging to the actual apart from its exclusive determination by selected eternal objects. The definiteness of the actual arises from the exclusiveness of eternal objects in their function as de- terminants. If the actual entity be this, then by the nature of the case it is not that or that. The fact of in- compatible alternatives is the ultimate fact in virtue of which there is definite character. A conceptual feeling is the feeling of an eternal object in respect to its genera capacity as a determinant of character, including thereby its capacity of exclusiveness. In the technical phrase- ology of these lectures, a conceptual feeling is a feeling whose ‘datum’ is an eternal object. Analogously a nega- tive prehension is termed ‘conceptual,’ when its datum is an eternal object. In a conceptual feeling there is no necessary progress from the ‘initial data’ to the ‘objective datum.’ The two may be identical, except in so far as conceptual feelings with diverse sources of origination acquire integration.

Conceptual prehensions, positive or negative, consti-
tute the primary operations among those belonging to
the mental pole of an actual entity.

The subjective form of a conceptual feeling has the
character of a ‘valuation,’ and this notion must now be
explained.

A conceptual feeling arises in some incomplete phase of its subject and passes into a supervening phase in which it has found integration with other feelings. In this supervening phase, the eternal object, which is the datum of the conceptual feeling, is an ingredient in some sort of datum in which the other components are the objective data of other feelings in the earlier phase. This new datum is the integrated datum; it will be some sort of ‘contrast.’ By the first categoreal condition the feelings

368 Process and Reality

of the earlier phase are compatible for integration. Thus
the supervention of the later phase does not involve
elimination by negative prehensions; such eliminations
of positive prehensions in the concrescent subject would
divide that subject into many subjects, and would divide
these many subjects from the superject. But, though
there can be no elimination from the supervening phase
as a whole, there may be elimination from some new
integral feeling which is merely one component of that
phase.