Conceptual experience can be infinite, but it belongs to the nature of physical experience that it is finite. An actual entity in the temporal world is to be conceived as originated by physical experience with its process of com- pletion motivated by consequent, conceptual experience initially derived from God. God is to be conceived as originated by conceptual experience with his process of completion motivated by consequent, physical experi- ence, initially derived from the temporal world.
The perfection of God’s subjective aim, derived from the completeness of his primordial nature, issues into the character of his consequent nature. In it there is no loss, no obstruction. The world is felt in a unison of imme- diacy. The property of combining creative advance with
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the retention of mutual immediacy is what in the previ- ous section is meant by the term ‘everlasting.’
The wisdom of subjective aim prehends every actuality for what it can be in such a perfected system—its suffer- ings, its sorrows, its failures, its triumphs, its immedia- cies of joy—woven by rightness of feeling into the har- mony of the universal feeling, which is always immediate, always many, always one, always with novel advance, moving onward and never perishing. The revolts of de- structive evil, purely self-regarding, are dismissed into their triviality of merely individual facts; and yet the good they did achieve in individual joy, in individual sorrow, in the introduction of needed contrast, is yet saved by its relation to the completed whole. The image —and it is but an image—the image under which this operative growth of God’s nature is best conceived, is that of a tender care that nothing be lost.
The consequent nature of God is his judgment on the
world. He saves the world as it passes into the immedi-
acy of his own life. It is the judgment of a tenderness
which loses nothing that can be saved. It is also the
judgment of a wisdom which uses what in the temporal
world is mere wreckage.
Another image which is also required to understand his consequent nature, is that of his infinite patience. The universe includes a threefold creative act composed of (i) the one infinite conceptual realization, (11) the multiple solidarity ot free physical realizations in the temporal world, (iii) the ultimate unity of the multi- plicity of actual fact with the primordial conceptual fact. If we conceive the first term and the last term in their unity over against the intermediate multiple freedom of physical realizations in the temporal world, we con- ceive of the patience of God, tenderly saving the turmoil of the intermediate world by the completion of his own nature. The sheer force of things lies in the intermediate physical process: this is the energy of physical produc- tion. God’s réle is not the combat of productive force
526 Process and Reality
with productive force, of destructive force with destruc- tive force; it lies in the patient operation of the over- powering rationality of his conceptual harmonization. He does not create the world, he saves it: or, more ac- curately, he is the poet of the world, with tender patience leading it by his vision of truth, beauty, and goodness.
The vicious separation of the flux from the permanence leads to the concept of an entirely static God, with emi- nent reality, in relation to an entirely fluent world, with deficient reality. But if the opposites, static and fluent, have once been so explained as separately to characterize diverse actualities, the interplay between the thing which is static and the things which are fluent involves contradiction at every step in its explanation. Such philosophies must include the notion of ‘illusion’ as a fundamental principle—the notion of ‘mere appearance.’ This is the final platonic problem.
Undoubtedly, the intuitions of Greek, Hebrew, and
Christian thought have alike embodied the notions of a
static God condescending to the world, and of a world
either thoroughly fluent, or accidentally static, but
finally fluent—‘heaven and earth shall pass away.’ In
some schools of thought, the fluency of the world is
mitigated by the assumption that selected components
in the world are exempt from this final fluency, and
achieve a static survival. Such components are not
separated by any decisive line from analogous components
for which the assumption is not made. Further, the
survival is construed in terms of a final pair of opposites,
happiness for some, torture for others.
Such systems have the common character of starting
with a fundamental intuition which we do mean to
express, and of entangling themselves in verbal expres-
sions, which carry consequences at variance with the
initial intuition of permanence in fluency and of fluency
in permanence.
God and the World 527
But civilized intuition has always, although obscurely,
grasped the problem as double and not as single. There
is not the mere problem of fluency and permanence.
There is the double problem: actuality with permanence,
requiring fluency as its completion; and actuality with
fluency, requiring permanence as its completion. The
first half of the problem concerns the completion of
God’s primordial nature by the derivation of his con-
sequent nature from the temporal world. The second
half of the problem concerns the completion of each
fluent actual occasion by its function of objective immor-
tality, devoid of ‘perpetual perishing,’ that is to say,
‘everlasting.’
This double problem cannot be separated into two
distinct problems. Either side can only be explained in
terms of the other. The consequent nature of God is
the fluent world become ‘everlasting’ by its objective
immortality in God. Also the objective immortality of
actual occasions requires the primordial permanence of
God, whereby the creative advance ever re-establishes
itself endowed with initial subjective aim derived from
the relevance of God to the evolving world.
But objective immortality within the temporal world does not solve the problem set by the penetration of the finer religious intuition. ‘Everlastingness’ has been lost; and ‘everlastingness’ is the content of that vision upon which the finer religions are built—the ‘many’ absorbed everlastingly in the final unity. The problems of the fluency of God and of the everlastingness of passing ex- perience are solved by the same factor in the universe. This factor is the temporal world perfected by its recep- tion and its reformation, as a fulfilment of the primordial appetition which is the basis of all order. In this way God is completed by the individual, fluent satisfactions of finite fact, and the temporal occasions are completed by their everlasting union with their transformed selves, purged into conformation with the eternal order which is the final absolute ‘wisdom.’ The final summary can
528 Process and Reality
only be expressed in terms of a group of antitheses, whose apparent self-contradiction depend on neglect of the diverse categories of existence. In each antithesis there is a shift of meaning which converts the opposition into a contrast.
It is as true to say that God is permanent and the
World fluent, as that the World is permanent and God
is fluent.
It is as true to say that God is one and the World many, as that the World is one and God many.
It is as true to say that, in comparison with the World,
God is actual eminently, as that, in comparison with God,
the World is actual eminently.
It is as true to say that the World is immanent in God, as that God is immanent in the World.
It is as true to say that God transcends the World, as that the World transcends God.
It is as true to say that God creates the World, as that the World creates God.
God and the World are the contrasted opposites in terms of which Creativity achieves its supreme task of transforming disjoined multiplicity, with its diversities in opposition, into concrescent unity, with its diversities in contrast. In each actuality these are two concrescent poles of realization—‘enjoyment’ and ‘appetition,’ that is, the ‘physical’ and the ‘conceptual.’ For God the con- ceptual is prior to the physical, for the World the physi- cal poles are prior to the conceptual poles.
A physical pole is in its own nature exclusive, bounded by contradiction: a conceptual pole is in its own nature all-embracing, unbounded by contradiction. The former derives its share of infinity from the infinity of appeti- tion; the latter derives its share of limitation from the exclusiveness of enjoyment. Thus, by reason of his priority of appetition, there can be but one primordial nature for God; and, by reason of their priority of en- joyment, there must be one history of many actualities in the physical world.
God and the World 529
God and the World stand over against each other,
expressing the final metaphysical truth that appetitive
vision and physical enjoyment have equal claim to
priority in creation. But no two actualities can be torn
apart: each is all in all. Thus each temporal occasion
embodies God, and is embodied in God. In God’s nature,
permanence is primordial and flux is derivative from the
World: in the World’s nature, flux is primordial and
permanence is derivative from God. Also the World’s
nature is a primordial datum for God; and God’s nature
is a primordial datum for the World. Creation achieves
the reconciliation of permanence and flux when it has
reached its final term which is everlastingness—the
Apotheosis of the World.
Opposed elements stand to each other in mutual re- quirement. In their unity, they inhibit or contrast. God and the World stand to each other in this opposed requirement. God is the infinite ground of all mentality, the unity of vision seeking physical multiplicity. The World is the multiplicity of finites, actualities seeking a perfected unity. Neither God, nor the World, reaches static completion. Both are in the grip of the ultimate metaphysical ground, the creative advance into novelty. Hither of them, God and the World, is the instrument of novelty for the other.
In every respect God and the World move conversely to each other in respect to their process. God is primor- dially one, namely, he is the primordial unity of relevance of the many potential forms: in the process he acquires a consequent multiplicity, which the primordial character absorbs into its own unity. The World is primordially many, namely, the many actual occasions with their physical finitude; in the process it acquires a consequent unity, which is a novel occasion and is absorbed into the multiplicity of the primordial character. Thus God is to be conceived as one and as many in the converse sense in which the World is to be conceived as many and as one. The theme of Cosmology, which is the basis of all reli-
530 Process and Reality
gions, is the story of the dynamic effort of the World
passing into everlasting unity, and of the static majesty
of God’s vision, accomplishing its purpose of completion
by absorption of the World’s multiplicity of effort.
The consequent nature of God is the fulfilment of his
experience by his reception of the multiple freedom of
actuality into the harmony of his own actualization. It
is God as really actual, completing the deficiency of his
mere conceptual actuality.
Every categoreal type of existence in the world pre- supposes the other types in terms of which it is explained. Thus the many eternal objects conceived in their bare isolated multiplicity lack any existent character. They require the transition to the conception of them as effi- caciously existent by reason of God’s conceptual realiza- tion of them.
But God’s conceptual realization is nonsense if thought of under the guise of a barren, eternal hypothesis. It is God’s conceptual realization performing an efficacious role in multiple unifications of the universe, which are free creations of actualities arising out of decided situa- tions. Again this discordant multiplicity of actual things, requiring each other and neglecting each other, utilizing and discarding, perishing and yet claiming life as obstinate matter of fact, requires an enlargement of the understanding to the comprehension of another phase in the nature of things. In this later phase, the many actualities are one actuality, and the one actuality is many actualities. Each actuality has its present life and its immediate passage into novelty; but its passage is not its death. This final phase of passage in God’s nature is ever enlarging itself. In it the complete ad- justment of the immediacy of joy and suffering reaches the final end of creation. This end is existence in the perfect unity of adjustment as means, and in the perfect multiplicity of the attainment of individual types of
God and the World 531
self-existence. The function of being a means is not disjoined from the function of being an end. The sense of worth beyond itself is immediately enjoyed as an over- powering element in the individual self-attainment. It is in this way that the immediacy of sorrow and pain is transformed into an element of triumph. This is the notion of redemption through suffering, which haunts the world. It is the generalization of its very minor exemplification as the aesthetic value of discords in art.
Thus the universe is to be conceived as attaining the
active self-expression of its own variety of opposites—
of its own freedom and its own necessity, of its own mul-
tiplicity and its own unity, of its own imperfection and
its own perfection. All the ‘opposites’ are elements in
the nature of things, and are incorrigibly there. The
concept of ‘God’ is the way in which we understand this
incredible fact—that what cannot be, yet is.