But in the formation of this integrated datum there must be determination of exactly how this eternal object has ingress into that datum conjointly with the remain- ing eternal objects and actual entities derived from the other feelings. This determination is effected by the subjective forms of the component conceptual feelings. Again it is to be remembered that, by the first categoreal condition, this subjective form is not independent of the other feelings in the earlier phase, and thus is such as to effect this determination. Also the integral feeling has its subjective form with its pattern of intensiveness. This patterned intensiveness regulates the distinctive relative importance of each element of the datum as felt in that feeling. This intensive regulation of that eternal object as felt in the integrated datum, is determined by the subjective form of the conceptual feeling. Yet again, by reference to the first, and seventh, categoreal conditions, this intensive form of the conceptual feeling has depend- ence also in this respect on the other feelings of the earlier phase. Thus, according as the valuation of the conceptual feeling is a ‘valuation up’ or a ‘valuation down,’ the importance of the eternal object as felt in the integrated feeling is enhanced, or attenuated. Thus the valuation is both qualitative, determining how the eternal object is to be utilized, and is also intensive, determining what importance that utilization is to assume.
Thus a valuation has three characteristics:
(1) According to the categories of subjective unity, and
The Primary Feelings 369
of subjective harmony, the valuation is dependent on the other feelings in its phase of origination.
(ii) The valuation determines in what status the
eternal object has ingression into the integrated nexus
physically felt.
(i111) The valuation values up, or down, so as to deter-
mine the intensive importance accorded to the eternal
object by the subjective form of the integral feeling.
These three characteristics of an integral feeling, de-
rived from its conceptual components, are summed up in
the term ‘valuation.’
But though these three characteristics are included in a valuation, they are merely the outcome of the sub- jective aim of the subject, determining what it is itself integrally to be, in its own character of the superject of its own process.
Consciousness concerns the subjective form of a feel- ing. But such a subjective form requires a certain type of objective datum. A subjective form in abstraction loses its reality, and sinks into an eternal object capable of determining a feeling into that distinctive type of definiteness. But when the eternal object ‘informs’ a feeling it can only so operate in virtue of its conformation to the other components which jointly constitute the definiteness of the feeling. The moral of this slight dis- cussion must now be applied to the notion of ‘conscious- ness.’ Consciousness is an element in feeling which be- longs to its subjective form. But there can only be that sort of subjective form when the objective datum has an adequate character. Further, the objective datum can only assume this character when it is derivate from initial data which carry in their individual selves the reciprocal possibilities of this objective synthesis.
A pure conceptual feeling in its first mode of origina- tion never involves consciousness. In this respect a pure mental feeling, conceptual or propositional, is analogous
370 Process and Reality
to a pure physical feeling. A primary feeling of either
type, or a propositional feeling, can enrich its subjective
form with consciousness only by means of its alliances.
Whenever there is consciousness there is some element
of recollection. It recalls earlier phases from the dim
recesses of the unconscious. Long ago this truth was
asserted in Plato’s doctrine of reminiscence. No doubt
Plato was directly thinking of glimpses of eternal truths
lingering in a soul derivate from a timeless heaven of
pure form. Be that as it may, then in a wider sense con-
sciousness enlightens experience which precedes it, and
could be without it if considered as a mere datum.
Hume, with opposite limitations to his meaning,
asserts the same doctrine. He maintains that we can
never conceptually entertain what we have never ante-
cedently experienced through impressions of sensation.
The philosophy of organism generalizes the notion of
‘impressions of sensation’ into that of ‘pure physical
feeling.’ Even then Hume’s assertion is too unguarded
according to Hume’s own showing. But the immediate
point is the deep-seated alliance of consciousness with
recollection both for Plato and for Hume.
Here we maintain the doctrine that, in the analysis of the origination of any conscious feeling, some component physical feelings are to be found; and conversely, when- ever there 1s consciousness, there is some component of conceptual functioning. For the abstract element in the concrete fact is exactly what provokes our consciousness. The consciousness is what arises in some process of syn- thesis of physical and mental operations. In this doctrine of ideas, Locke goes further than Hume and is, as I think, more accurate in expressing the facts; though Hume adds something which Locke omits.
Locke upholds the direct conscious apprehension of ‘things without’ (e.g. Hssay, II, XXI, 1), otherwise termed ‘exterior things’ (II, XXIII, 1), or ‘this or that particular existence’ (III, III, 6), and illustrated by an individual nurse and an individual mother (III, III, 7).
The Primary Feelings 371
In the philosophy of organism the nexus, which is the
basis for such direct apprehension, is provided by the
physical feelings. The philosophy of organism here
takes the opposite road to that taken alike by Descartes
and by Kant. Both of these philosophers accepted
(Descartes with hesitations, and Kant without question)
the traditional subjectivist sensationalism, and assigned
the intuition of ‘things without’ peculiarly to the
intelligence.
Hume’s addition consists in expressing and discussing, with the utmost clarity, the traditional sensationalist dogma. Thus for Hume, as for Locke when he remem- bers to speak in terms of this doctrine, an ‘impression’ is the conscious apprehension of a universal. For example, he writes (Treatise, Part I, Ch. I), “That idea of red, which we form in the dark, and that impression which strikes our eyes in sunshine, differ only in degree, not in nature.’ This means that a consistent sensation- alism cannot distinguish between a percept and a con- cept. Hume had not in his mind (at least when philoso- phizing, though he admits it for other sorts of ‘practice’ ) the fourth category of explanation, that no entity can be abstracted from its capacity to function as an object in the process of the actual world. ‘To function as an object’ is ‘to be a determinant of the definiteness of an actual occurrence.’ According to the philosophy of organism, a pure concept does not involve consciousness, at least in our human experience. Consciousness arises when a synthetic feeling integrates physical and concep- tual feelings. Traditional philosophy in its account of conscious perception has exclusively fixed attention on its pure conceptual side; and thereby has made difficul- ties for itself in the theory of knowledge. Locke, with his naive good sense, assumes that perception involves more than this conceptual side; though he fails to grasp the inconsistency of this assumption with the extreme subjectivist sensationalist doctrine. Physical feelings form the non-conceptual element in our awareness of
372 Process and Reality
nature.’ Also, all awareness, even awareness of concepts, requires at least the synthesis of physical feelings with conceptual feeling. In awareness actuality, as a process in fact, is integrated with the potentialities which illus- trate either what it is and might not be, or what it is not and might be. In other words, there is no consciousness without reference to definiteness, affirmation, and nega- tion. Also affirmation involves its contrast with negation, and negation involves its contrast with affirmation. Further, affirmation and negation are alike meaningless apart from reference to the definiteness of particular actualities. Consciousness is how we feel the affirma- tion-negation contrast. Conceptual feeling is the feeling of an unqualified negation; that is to say, it is the feeling of a definite eternal object with the definite extrusion of any particular realization. Consciousness requires that the objective datum should involve (as one side of a contrast) a qualified negative determined to some defi- nite situation. It will be found later (cf. Ch. IV) that this doctrine implies that there is no consciousness apart from propositions as one element in the objective datum. *Cf. The Concept of Nature, Ch. I,
The Transmission of Feelings
AccorDING to the ontological principle there is nothing which floats into the world from nowhere. Everything in the actual world is referable to some actual entity. It is either transmitted from an actual entity in the past, or belongs to the subjective aim of the actual entity to whose concrescence it belongs. This subjective aim is both an example and a limitation of the ontological prin- ciple. It is an example, in that the principle is here applied to the immediacy of concrescent fact. The sub- ject completes itself during the process of concrescence by a self-criticism of its own incomplete phases. In another sense the subjective aim limits the ontological principle by its own autonomy. But the initial stage of its aim is an endowment which the subject inherits from the inevitable ordering of things, conceptually realized in the nature of God. The immediacy of the concrescent subject is constituted by its living aim at its own self- constitution. Thus the initial stage of the aim is rooted in the nature of God, and its completion depends on the self-causation of the subject-superject. This function of God is analogous to the remorseless working of things in Greek and in Buddhist thought. The initial aim is the best for that impasse. But if the best be bad, then the ruthlessness of God can be personified as Até, the god- dess of mischief. The chaff is burnt. What is inexorable in God, is valuation as an aim towards ‘order’; and ‘order’ means ‘society’ permissive of actualities with pat- terned intensity of feeling arising from adjusted con-
374 Process and Reality
trasts. In this sense God is the principle of concretion ; namely, he is that actual entity from which each tem- poral concrescence receives that initial aim from which its self-causation starts. That aim determines the initial gradations of relevance of eternal objects for conceptual feeling; and constitutes the autonomous subject in its primary phase of feelings with its initial conceptual valuations, and with its initial physical purposes. Thus the transition of the creativity from an actual world to the correlate novel concrescence is conditioned by the relevance of God’s all-embracing conceptual valuations to the particular possibilities of transmission from the actual world, and by its relevance to the various possi- bilities of initial subjective form available for the initial feelings. In this way there is constituted the concrescent subject in its primary phase with its dipolar constitu- tion, physical and mental, indissoluble.
If we prefer the phraseology, we can say that God and the actual world jointly constitute the character of the creativity for the initial phase of the novel concrescence. The subject, thus constituted, is the autonomous master of its own concrescence into subject-superject. It passes from a subjective aim in concrescence into a superject with objective immortality. At any stage it is subject- superject. According to this explanation, self-determi- nation is always imaginative in its origin. The deter- ministie efficient causation is the inflow of the actual world in its own proper character of its own feelings, with their own intensive strength, felt and re-enacted by the novel concrescent subject. But this re-enaction has a mere character of conformation to pattern. The sub- jective valuation is the work of novel conceptual feeling; and in proportion to its importance, acquired in complex processes of integration and reintegration, this autono- mous conceptual element modifies the subjective forms throughout the whole range of feeling in that concres- cence and thereby guides the integrations.
In so far as there is negligible autonomous energy, the
The Transmission of Feelings 3875
subject merely receives the physical feelings, confirms their valuations according to the ‘order’ of that epoch, and transmits by reason of its own objective immortality. Its own flash of autonomous individual experience is negligible for the science which is tracing transmissions up to the conscious experience of a final observer. But as soon as individual experience is not negligible, the autonomy of the subject in the modification of its initial subjective aim must be taken into account. Each crea- tive act is the universe incarnating itself as one, and there is nothing above it by way of final condition.