Secondly, Hume’s doctrine is necessarily irrational. For if the impressions of sensation arise from unknown causes (ef. Hume, loc. cit.) a stop is put to the rationalistic search for a rational cosmology. Such a cosmology re- quires that metaphysics shall provide a doctrine of rele- vance between a form and any occasion in which it par- ticipates. If there be no such doctrine, all hope of approximating to a rational view of the world vanishes.
Hume’s doctrine has no recommendation except the pleasure which it gives to its adherents.
The philosophy of organism provides for this relevance by means of two doctrines, (i) the doctrine of God embodying a basic completeness of appetition, and (11) the doctrine of each occasion effecting a concrescence of the universe, including God. Then, by the category of conceptual reproduction, the vector prehensions of God’s appetition, and of other occasions, issue in the mental pole of conceptual prehensions; and by integration of this pole with the pure physical prehensions there arise the primitive physical feelings of sensa, with their subjective forms emotional and purposive. These feelings, with their primitive simplicity, arise into distinctness by rea- son of the elimination effected by this integration of the vector prehensions with the conceptual appetitions. Such primitive feelings cannot be separated from their subjec- tive forms. The subject never loses its triple character of recipient, patient, and agent. These primitive feel-
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ings have already been considered under the name of
‘physical purposes’ (cf. Part III, Ch. V). They corre-
spond to Hume’s ‘impressions of sensation.’ But they do
not originate the process of experience.
We see that a feeling of presentational immediacy comes into being by reason of an integration of a concep- tual feeling drawn from bodily efficacy with a bare regional feeling which is also a component in a complex feeling of bodily efficacity. Also this bare regional feeling is reinforced with the general regional feeling which is the whole of our direct physical feeling of the contempo- rary world; and the conceptual feeling is reinforced by the generation of physical purpose. This integration takes the form of the creative imputation of the complex eternal object, ingredient in the bodily efficacity, onto some contemporary focal region felt in the strain-feeling. Also the subjective form is transmitted from the concep- tual valuation and the derivate ‘physical purpose.’ But this subjective form is that suitable to the bodily effi- cacity out of which it has arisen. Thus the mere region with its imputed eternal object is felt as though there had been a feeling of its efficacity. But there is no mutual efficacity of contemporary regions. This transference of subjective form is termed ‘symbolic transference.’ *
An additional conceptual feeling, with its valuation, arises from this physical feeling of presentational imme- diacy. It is the conceptual feeling of a region thus char- acterized. This is the aesthetic valuation proper to the bare objective datum of the presentational immediacy. But this valuation is less primitive than that gained from the conceptual prehension by symbolic transference. The primitive subjective form includes a valuation as though the contemporary region, by its own proper con- stitution, were causally effective on the percipient sub-
* Cf. my three Barbour-Page lectures Symbolism, at the University of Virginia, New York, Macmillan, 1927, and Cambridge University Press; and also above, Part II, Ch. VIII.
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ject. The secondary valuation is the aesthetic apprecia- tion of the bare fact: this bare fact is merely that region, thus qualified. Thus the contemporary world, as felt through the senses, is valued for its own sake, by means of a later conceptual feeling; but it is also valued for its derivation from antecedent efficacity, by means of trans- mutation from earlier conceptual feeling combined with derivate ‘physical purpose.’
But none of these operations can be segregated from
nature into the subjective privacy of a mind. Mental
and physical operations are incurably intertwined; and
both issue into publicity, and are derived from publicity.
The vector character of prehension is fundamental.
It is the mark of a high-grade organism to eliminate, by negative prehension, the irrelevant accidents in its environment, and to elicit massive attention to every variety of systematic order. For this purpose, the cate- gory of transmutation is the master-principle. By its operation each nexus can be prehended in terms of the analogies among its own members, or in terms of analo- gies among the members of other nexts but yet relevant to it. In this way the organism in question suppresses the mere multiplicities of things, and designs its own contrasts. The canons of art are merely the expression, in specialized forms, of the requisites for depth of experi- ence. The principles of morality are allied to the canons of art, in that they also express, in another connection, the same requisites. Owing to the principle that con- temporary actual entities occur in relative independence, the nextis of contemporary actual entities are peculiarly favourable for this transference of systematic qualities from other nexiis to themselves. For a difficulty arises in the operation of the category of transmutation, when a characteristic prevalent among the individual entities of one nexus is to be transferred to another nexus treated as a unity. The difficulty is that the individual actuali-
484 Process and Reality
ties of the recipient nexus are also respectively objectified in the percipient subject by systematic characteristics which equally demand the transference to their own nexus; but this is the nexus which should be the recipient of the other transference. Thus there are competing qualities struggling to effect the objectification of the same nexus. The result is attenuation and elimi- nation.
When the recipient nexus is composed of entities con- temporary with the percipient subject, this difficulty vanishes. For the contemporary entities do not enter into the constitution of the percipient subject by objecti- fication through any of their own feelings. Thus their only direct connection with the subject is their implica- tion in the same extensive scheme. Thus a nexus of actual entities, contemporary with the percipient sub- ject, puts up no alternative characteristics to inhibit the transference to it of characteristics from antecedent nexus.
A high-grade percipient is necessarily an occasion in the historic route of an enduring object. If this route is to propagate itself successfully into the future, it is above all things necessary that its decisions in the imme- diate occasion should have the closest relevance to the concurrent happenings among contemporary occasions. For these contemporary entities will, in the near future, form the ‘immediate past’ for the future embodiment of the enduring object. This ‘immediate past’ is of over- whelming influence; for all routes of transmission from the more remote past must pass through it. Thus the contemporary occasions tell nothing; and yet are of supreme importance for the survival of the enduring object.
This gap in the experience of the percipient subject is
bridged by presentational immediacy. This type of
experience is the lesson of the past reflected into the
present. The more important contemporary occasions
are those in the near neighbourhood. Their actual worlds
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are practically identical with that of the percipient sub- ject. The percipient prehends the nexiis of contemporary occasions by the mediation of eternal objects which it inherits from its own past. Also it selects the contem- porary nexus thus prehended by the efficacy of strains whose focal regions are important elements in the past of those nextis. Thus, for successful organisms, presenta- tional immediacy—though it yields no direct experience about the contemporary world, and though in unfortu- nate instances the experience which it does yield may be irrelevant—does yield experience which expresses how the contemporary world has in fact emerged from its own past.
Presentational immediacy works on the principle that
it is better to obtain information about the contemporary
world, even if occasionally it be misleading.
Depth of experience is gained by concentrating em- phasis on the systematic structural systems in the environment, and discarding individual variations. Every element of systematic structure is emphasized, every individual aberration is pushed into the background. The variety sought is the variety of structures, and never the variety of individuals. For example we neglect empty space in comparison with the structural systematic nexus which is the historic route of an enduring object. In every possible way, the more advanced organisms simplify their experience so as to emphasize those nextis with some element of. tightness of systematic structure.
In pursuance of this principle, the regions, geometri- cized by the various strains in such an organism, not only lie in the contemporary world; but they coalesce so as to emphasize one unified locus in the contemporary world. This selected locus is penetrated by the straight lines, the planes, and the three-dimensional flat loci asso- ciated with the strains. This is the ‘strain-locus’ belong- ing to an occasion in the history of an enduring object.
486 Process and Reality
This occasion is the immediate percipient subject under consideration. Each such occasion has its one strain- locus which serves for all its strains. The focal regions of the various strains all lie within this strain-locus, and are in general distinct. But the strain-locus as a whole is common to all the strains. Each occasion lies in its own strain-locus.
The meaning of the term ‘rest’ is the relation of an occasion to its strain-locus, if there be one. An occasion with no unified strain-locus has no dominating locus with which it can have the relationship of ‘rest.’ An occasion ‘rests’ in its strain-locus. This is why it is nonsense to ask of an occasion in empty space whether it be ‘at rest’ in reference to some locus. For, since such occasions have no strain-loci, the relationship of ‘rest’? does not apply to them. The strain-locus is the locus which is thoroughly geometricized by the strain-feelings of the percipient occasion. It must have the property of being continent of straight lines, and of flat loci of all dimensions. Thus its boundaries will be three-dimensioned flat loci, non- intersecting. A strain-locus approximates to a three- dimensional flat locus; but in fact it is four-dimensional, with a time-thickness.
Reviewing the discussion in the preceding sections of this chapter and of Chapter IV of Part II, we note that, in reference to any one actual occasion M, seven (but ef. Section VI) distinct considerations define loci composed of other actual occasions. In the first place there are three loci defined by causal efficacy, namely, the ‘causal past’ of M, the ‘causal future’ of M, and the ‘contempo- raries’ of M. An actual occasion P, belonging to M’s causal past, is objectified for M by a perspective repre- sentation of its own (i.e. P’s) qualities of feeling and in- tensities of feeling. There is a quantitative and qualita- tive vector flow of feeling from P to M; and in this way, what P is subjectively, belongs to M objectively. An
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actual occasion Q, belonging to M’s causal future, is in the converse relation to M, compared to P’s relation. For the causal future is composed of those actual occasions which will have M in their respective causal parts. Actual occasions, & and S which are contemporary with M, are those actual occasions which lie neither in M’s causal past, nor in M’s causal future. The peculiarity of the locus of contemporaries of M is that any two of its mem- bers, such as # and S, need not be contemporaries of each other. They may be mutually contemporaries, but not necessarily. It is evident from the form of the definition of ‘contemporary,’ that if R be contemporary with M, then M is contemporary with R. This peculiarity of the locus of M’s contemporaries—that R and S may be both contemporaries of M, but not contemporaries of each other—points to another set of loci. A ‘duration’ is a locus of actual occasions, such that (0) any two members of the locus are contemporaries, and (@) that any actual occasion, not belonging to the duration, is in the causal past or causal future of some members of the duration.
A duration is a complete locus of actual occasions in ‘unison of becoming,’ or in ‘concrescent unison.’ It is the old-fashioned ‘present state of the world.’ In refer- ence to a given duration, D, the actual world is divided into three mutually exclusive loci. One of these loci is the duration D itself. Another of these loci is composed of actual occasions which lie in the past of some members of D: this locus is the ‘past of the duration D.’ The re- maining locus is composed of actual occasions which lie in the future of some members of D: this locus is the ‘future of the duration D.’
By its definition, a duration which contains an occasion
M, must lie within the locus of the contemporaries of M.
According to the classical pre-relativistic notions of time,
there would be only one duration including M, and it
would contain all M’s contemporaries. According to
modern relativistic views we must admit that there are
many durations including M—=in fact, an infinite