though elusive, element in our perceptions of presenta- tional immediacy. This ‘withness’ is the trace of the origination of the feeling concerned, enshrined by that feeling in its subjective form and in its objective datum. But in itself this ‘withness of the body’ can be isolated as a component feeling in the final ‘satisfaction.’ From this point of view, the body, or its organ of sensation, becomes the objective datum of a component feeling; and this feeling has its own subjective form. Also this feeling is physical, so that we must look for an eternal object, to be a determinant of the definiteness of the body, as objective datum. This component feeling will be called the feeling of bodily efficacy. It is more primi- tive than the feeling of presentational immediacy which issues from it. Both in common sense and in physio- logical theory, this bodily efficacity is a component pre- supposed by the presentational immediacy and leading up to it. Thus, in the immediate subject, the presenta- tional immediacy is to be conceived as originated in a late phase, by the synthesis of the feeling of bodily efficacity with other feelings. We have now to consider the nature of the other feelings, and the complex eternal object concerned in the feeling of bodily efficacity.
In the first place, this eternal object must be partially identified with the eternal object in the final feeling of presentational immediacy. The whole point of the con- nection between the two feelings is that the presenta- tional immediacy is derivative from the bodily efficacy. The present perception is strictly inherited from the antecedent bodily functioning, unless all physiological teaching is to be abandoned. Both eternal objects are highly complex; and the complex elements of the second eternal object must at least be involved in the complex elements of the former eternal object.
This complex eternal object is analysable into a sense-
datum and a geometrical pattern. In physics, the geo-
metrical pattern appears as a state of strain of that
actual occasion in the body which is the subject of the
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feeling. But this feeling of bodily efficacy in the final percipient is the re-enaction of an antecedent feeling by an antecedent actual entity in the body. Thus in this antecedent entity there is a feeling concerned with the same sense-datum and a highly analogous state of strain. The feeling must be a ‘strain’ in the sense defined in the previous section. Now this strain involves a geometri- cized region, which in this case also involves a ‘focal’ region as part of itself. This ‘focal’ region is a region of dense concurrence of straight lines defined by the ‘seat.’ It is the region onto which there is so-called ‘projection.’ These lines enter into feeling through a process of integration of yet simpler feelings which primarily con- cern the ‘seat’ of the pattern. These lines have a two- fold function as determinants of the feeling. They define the ‘strain’ of the feeler, and they define the focal region which they thus relate to the feeler. In so far as we are merely considering an abstract pattern, we are dealing with an abstract eternal object. But as a deter- minant of a concrete feeling in a concrete percipient, we are dealing with the feeling as relating its subject (which includes the ‘seat’ in its volume) to a definite spatial region (the focal region) external to itself. This definite contemporary focal region is a nexus which is part of the objective datum. Thus the feeling of bodily efficacity is the feeling of the sense-datum as generally implicated in the whole region (of antecedent ‘seats’ and focal regions) geometrically defined by the inherited strains. This pat- terned region is peculiarly dominated by the final ‘seat’ in the body of the feeler, and by the final ‘focal’ region. Thus the sense-datum has a general spatial relation, in which two spatial regions are dominant. Feelings of this sort are inherited by many strands from the antecedent bodily nerves. But in considering one definite feeling of presentational immediacy, these many strands of transmission of bodily efficacy, in their final deliverance to the ultimate percipient, converge upon the same focal region as picked out by the many bodily ‘strains ©
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In the integration of these feelings a double act of transmutation is achieved. In each of the successive feelings transmitted along the successive actual entities of a bodily nervous strand there are two regions mainly concerned; and there is a relation between them consti- tuted by intermediate regions picked out by the linkage of the pattern. One region is the focal region already discussed, the other region is the seat in the immediate subject, constituting its geometrical standpoint. The ‘strain’ of the final actual entity defines the ‘seat’ and the ‘focal region’ and the intermediary regions, and more vaguely the whole of a ‘presented’ space. This final feel- ing of bodily strain—in the sense of ‘strain’ defined in the previous section—is the last of a route of analogous feel- ings inherited one from the other along the series of bodily occasions along some nerve, or other path in the body. There will be parallel routes of such analogous feelings, which finally converge with concurrent rein- forcement upon the single occasion, or route of occasions, which is the ultimate percipient.
Each of these bodily strain-feelings defines its own seat and its own focal region and intermediaries. The sense-datum is vaguely associated with the external world as thus felt and defined. But as such feelings are ‘trans- muted,’ either gradually, or at critical nodes in the body, there is an increasing development of special emphasis. Now emphasis is valuation, and can only be changed by renewed valuation. But valuation arises in conceptual feelings. The conceptual counterpart of these physical feelings can be analysed into many conceptual feelings, associating the sense-datum with various regions defined by the strain. This conceptual feeling, by its reference to definite regions, belongs to the secondary type termed ‘propositional feelings.’ One subordinate propositional feeling associates the sense-datum with the ‘seat’ of the feeler, another with the ‘focal’ region of the feeler, another with the intermediary region of the feeler, another with the seats of the antecedent elements of the
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nervous strand, and so on. The total association of the sense-datum with space-time is analysable into a be- wildering variety of associations with definite regions, contemporary and antecedent. In general, and apart from high-grade organisms, this spatio-temporal associa- tion of the sense-datum is integrated into a vague sense of externality. The component valuations have in such cases failed to differentiate themselves into grades of intensity. But in high grade cases, in which presenta- tional immediacy is prominent, one of three cases hap- pens. Either (i) the association of the sense-datum with the seats of some antecedent sets of feelers is exclusively emphasized, or (ii) the association of the sense-datum with the focal region of the final percipient is exclusively emphasized, or (ili) the association of the sense-datum both with the seats of antecedent feelers and with the focal region of the immediate feeler is emphasized.
But these regions are not apprehended in abstraction from the general spatio-temporal continuum. The pre- hension of a region is always the prehension of systematic elements in the extensive relationship between the seat of the immediate feeler and the region concerned. When these valuations have been effected, the category of transmutation provides for the transmission to the succeeding subject of a feeling of these regions qualified by (i.e. contrasted with) that sense-datum. In the first case, there are purely bodily sensations; in the second case there are ‘projected’ sensations, involving regions of contemporary space beyond the body; in the third case there are both bodily feelings and sensations externally projected. Thus in the case of all sensory feeling, there is initial privacy of conceptual emphasis passing into publicity of physical feeling.
Thus, by the agency of the category of transmutation, there are two types of feelings, for which the objective datum is a nexus with undiscriminated actual entities. The feelings of the first type are feelings of ‘causal effi- cacy’; and those of the second type are those of ‘presenta-
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tional immediacy.’ In the first type the analogous ele-
ments in the various feelings of the various actualities of
the bodily nexus are transmuted into a feeling ascribed
to the bodily nexus as one entity. In the second type,
the transmutation is more elaborate and shifts the nexus
concerned from the antecedent bodily nexus (ie. the
‘seat’) to the contemporary focal nexus.
Both these types of feeling are the outcome of a com-
plex process of massive simplification which is charac-
teristic of higher grades of actual entities. They
apparently have but slight importance in the constitu-
tions of actual occasions in empty space; but they have
dominating importance in the physical feelings belonging
to the life history of enduring organisms—the inorganic
and organic, alike.
In respect to the sensa concerned, there is a gradual transformation of their functions as they pass from occasion to occasion along a route of inheritance up to some final high-grade experient. In their most primitive form of functioning, a sensum is felt physically with emo- tional enjoyment of its sheer individual essence. For example, red is felt with emotional enjoyment of its sheer redness. In this primitive prehension we have aboriginal physical feeling in which the subject feels itself as enjoying redness. This is Hume’s ‘impression of sensation’ stripped of all spatial relations with other such impressions. In so far as they spring up in this primitive, aboriginal way, they—in Hume’s words—“arise in the soul from unknown causes.” But in fact we can never isolate such ultimate irrationalities. In our experience, as in distinct analysis, physical feelings are always derived from some antecedent experient. Occasion B prehends occasion A as an antecedent subject experiencing a sensum with emotional intensity. Also B’s subjective form of emotion is conformed to A’s subjective form. Thus there is a vector transmission of emotional feeling of asensum from A to B. In this way B feels the sensum as derived from A and feels it with an emotional form
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also derived from A. This is the most primitive form of the feeling of causal efficacy. In physics it is the trans- mission of a form of energy. In the bodily transmission from occasion to occasion of a high-grade animal body, there is a gradual modification of these functions of sensa. In their most primitive functioning for the initial occasions within the animal body, they are qualifications of emotion—types of energy, in the language of physics: in their final functioning for the high-grade experient occasion at the end of the route, they are qualities ‘in- herent’ in a presented, contemporary nexus. In the final percipient any conscious feeling of the primitive emo- tional functioning of the sensum is often entirely absent. But this is not always the case; for example, the percep- tion of a red cloak may often be associated with a feeling of red irritation.
To return to Hume’s doctrine (cf. Treatise, Part
III, Sect. V) of the origination of ‘impressions of
sensation’ from unknown causes, it is first necessary
to distinguish logical priority from physical priority.
Undoubtedly an impression of sensation is logically the
simplest of physical prehensions. It is the percipient
occasion feeling the sensum as participating in its own
concrescence. This is the enjoyment of a private
sensation.
There is a logical simplicity about such a sensation which makes it the primitive, aboriginal type of physical feeling. But there are two objections to Hume’s doctrine which assigns to them a physical priority. First, there is the empirical objection. Hume’s theory of a complex of such impressions elaborated into a supposition of a common physical world is entirely contrary to naive experience. We find ourselves in the double role of agents and patients in a common world, and the con- scious recognition of impressions of sensation is the work of sophisticated elaboration. This is also Locke’s doctrine in the third and fourth books of his Hssay. The child first dimly elucidates the complex externality of particu-
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lar things exhibiting a welter of forms of definiteness, and then disentangles his impressions of these forms in isola- tion. A young man does not initiate his experience by dancing with impressions of sensation, and then proceed to conjecture a partner. His experience takes the con- verse route. The unempirical character of the philo- sophical school derived from Hume cannot be too often insisted upon. The true empirical doctrine is that physi- cal feelings are in their origin vectors, and that the genetic process of concrescence introduces the elements which emphasize privacy.