GOD
Aristotle found it necessary to complete his metaphysics by the
introduction of a Prime Mover—God. This, for two reasons, is an
important fact in the history of metaphysics. In the first place if we
are to accord to anyone the position of the greatest metaphysician,
having regard to genius of insight, to general equipment in knowledge,
and to the stimulus of his metaphysical ancestry, we must choose
Aristotle. Secondly, in his consideration of this metaphysical question
he was entirely dispassionate; and he is the last European metaphysician
of first rate importance for whom this claim can be made. After
Aristotle, ethical and religious interests began to influence
metaphysical conclusions. The Jews dispersed, first willingly and then
forcibly, and the Judaic-Alexandrian school arose. Then Christianity
closely followed by Mahometanism, intervened. The Greek gods who
surrounded Aristotle were subordinate metaphysical entities, well within
nature. Accordingly on the subject of his Prime Mover, he would have no
motive, except to follow his metaphysical train of thought whithersoever
it led him. It did not lead him very far towards the production of a God
available for religious purposes. It may be doubted whether any properly
general metaphysics can ever, without the illicit introduction of other
considerations, get much further than Aristotle. But his conclusion does
represent a first step without which no evidence on a narrower
experiential basis can be of much avail in shaping the conception. For
nothing, within any limited type of experience, can give intelligence to
shape our ideas of any entity at the base of all actual things, unless
the general character of things requires that there be such an entity.
The phrase, Prime Mover, warns us that Aristotle’s thought was enmeshed
in the details of an erroneous physics and an erroneous cosmology. In
Aristotle’s physics special causes were required to sustain the motions
of material things. These could easily be fitted into his system,
provided that the general cosmic motions could be sustained. For then in
relation to the general working system, each thing could be provided
with its true end. Hence the necessity for a Prime Mover who sustains
the motions of the spheres on which depend the adjustment of things.
To-day we repudiate the Aristotelian physics and the Aristotelian
cosmology, so that the exact form of the above argument manifestly
fails. But if our general metaphysics is in any way similar to that
outlined in the previous chapter, an analogous metaphysical problem
arises which can be solved only in an analogous fashion. In the place of
Aristotle’s God as Prime Mover, we require God as the Principle of
Concretion. This position can be substantiated only by the discussion of
the general implication of the course of actual occasions,—that is to
say, of the process of realisation.
We conceive actuality as in essential relation to an unfathomable
possibility. Eternal objects inform actual occasions with hierarchic
patterns, included and excluded in every variety of discrimination.
Another view of the same truth is that every actual occasion is a
limitation imposed on possibility, and that by virtue of this
limitation the particular value of that shaped togetherness of things
emerges. In this way we express how a single occasion is to be viewed
in terms of possibility, and how possibility is to be viewed in terms
of a single actual occasion. But there are no single occasions, in the
sense of isolated occasions. Actuality is through and through
togetherness—togetherness of otherwise isolated eternal objects, and
togetherness of all actual occasions. It is my task in this chapter to
describe the unity of actual occasions. The previous chapter centered
its interest in the abstract: the present chapter deals with the
concrete, _i.e._, that which has grown together.
Consider an occasion α:—we have to enumerate how other actual occasions
are in α, in the sense that their relationships with α are constitutive
of the essence of α. What α is in itself, is that it is a unit of
realised experience; accordingly we ask how other occasions are in the
experience which is α. Also for the present I am excluding cognitive
experience. The complete answer to this question is, that the
relationships among actual occasions are as unfathomable in their
variety of type as are those among eternal objects in the realm of
abstraction. But there are fundamental types of such relationships in
terms of which the whole complex variety can find its description.
A preliminary for the understanding of these types of entry (of one
occasion into the essence of another) is to note that they are involved
in the modes of realisation of abstractive hierarchies, discussed in the
previous chapter. The spatio-temporal relationships, involved in those
hierarchies as realised in α, have all a definition in terms of α and of
the occasions entrant in α. Thus the entrant occasions lend their
aspects to the hierarchies, and thereby convert spatio-temporal
modalities into categorical determinations; and the hierarchies lend
their forms to the occasions and thereby limit the entrant occasions to
being entrant only under those forms. Thus in the same way (as seen in
the previous chapter) that every occasion is a synthesis of all eternal
objects under the limitation of gradations of actuality, so every
occasion is a synthesis of all occasions under the limitation of
gradations of types of entry. Each occasion synthesises the totality of
content under its own limitations of mode.
In respect to these types of internal relationship between α and other
occasions, these other occasions (as constitutive of α) can be
classified in many alternative ways. These are all concerned with
different definitions of past, present, and future. It has been usual in
philosophy to assume that these various definitions must necessarily be
equivalent. The present state of opinion in physical science
conclusively shows that this assumption is without metaphysical
justification, even though any such discrimination may be found to be
unnecessary for physical science. This question has already been dealt
with in the chapter on Relativity. But the physical theory of relativity
touches only the fringe of the various theories which are metaphysically
tenable. It is important for my argument to insist upon the unbounded
freedom within which the actual is a unique categorical determination.
Every actual occasion exhibits itself as a process: it is a
becomingness. In so disclosing itself, it places itself as one among a
multiplicity of other occasions, without which it could not be itself.
It also defines itself as a particular individual achievement, focussing
in its limited way an unbounded realm of eternal objects.
Any one occasion α issues from other occasions which collectively form
its _past_. It displays for itself other occasions which collectively
form its _present_. It is in respect to its associated hierarchy, as
displayed in this immediate present, that an occasion finds its own
originality. It is that display which is its own contribution to the
output of actuality. It may be conditioned, and even completely
determined by the past from which it issues. But its display in the
present under those conditions is what directly emerges from its
prehensive activity. The occasion α also holds within itself an
indetermination in the form of a future, which has partial determination
by reason of its inclusion in α and also has determinate spatio-temporal
relatedness to α and to actual occasions of the past from α and of the
present for α.
This future is a synthesis in α of eternal objects as not-being and as
requiring the passage from α to other individualisations (with
determinate spatio-temporal relations to α) in which not-being becomes
being.
There is also in α what, in the previous chapter, I have termed the
‘abrupt’ realisation of finite eternal objects. This abrupt realisation
requires _either_ a reference of the basic objects of the finite
hierarchy to determinate occasions other than α (as their situations),
in past, present, future; _or_ requires a realisation of these eternal
objects in determinate relationships, but under the aspect of exemption
from inclusion in the spatio-temporal scheme of relatedness between
actual occasions. This abrupt synthesis of eternal objects in each
occasion is the inclusion in actuality of the analytical character of
the realm of eternality. This inclusion has those limited gradations of
actuality which characterise every occasion by reason of its essential
limitation. It is this realised extension of eternal relatedness beyond
the mutual relatedness of the actual occasions, which prehends into each
occasion the full sweep of eternal relatedness. I term this abrupt
realisation the ‘graded envisagement’ which each occasion prehends into
its synthesis. This graded envisagement is how the actual includes what
(in one sense) is not-being as a positive factor in its own achievement.
It is the source of error, of truth, of art, of ethics, and of religion.
By it, fact is confronted with alternatives.
This general concept, of an event as a process whose outcome is a unit
of experience, points to the analysis of an event into (i) substantial
activity, (ii) conditioned potentialities which are there for synthesis,
and (iii) the achieved outcome of the synthesis. The unity of all actual
occasions forbids the analysis of substantial activities into
independent entities. Each individual activity is nothing but the mode
in which the general activity is individualised by the imposed
conditions. The envisagement which enters into the synthesis is also a
character which conditions the synthesising activity. The general
activity is not an entity in the sense in which occasions or eternal
objects are entities. It is a general metaphysical character which
underlies all occasions, in a particular mode for each occasion. There
is nothing with which to compare it: it is Spinoza’s one infinite
substance. Its attributes are its character of individualisation into a
multiplicity of modes, and the realm of eternal objects which are
variously synthesised in these modes. Thus eternal possibility and modal
differentiation into individual multiplicity are the attributes of the
one substance. In fact each general element of the metaphysical
situation is an attribute of the substantial activity.
Yet another element in the metaphysical situation is disclosed by the
consideration that the general attribute of modality is limited. This
element must rank as an attribute of the substantial activity. In its
nature each mode is limited, so as not to be other modes. But, beyond
these limitations of particulars, the general modal individualisation is
limited in two ways: In the first place it is an actual course of
events, which might be otherwise so far as concerns eternal possibility,
but _is_ that course. This limitation takes three forms, (i) the special
logical relations which all events must conform to, (ii) the selection
of relationships to which the events do conform, and (iii) the
particularity which infects the course even within those general
relationships of logic and causation. Thus this first limitation is a
limitation of antecedent selection. So far as the general metaphysical
situation is concerned, there might have been an indiscriminate modal
pluralism apart from logical or other limitation. But there could not
then have been these modes, for each mode represents a synthesis of
actualities which are limited to conform to a standard. We here come to
the second way of limitation. Restriction is the price of value. There
cannot be value without antecedent standards of value, to discriminate
the acceptance or rejection of what is before the envisaging mode of
activity. Thus there is an antecedent limitation among values,
introducing contraries, grades, and oppositions.
According to this argument the fact that there is a process of actual
occasions, and the fact that the occasions are the emergence of values
which require such limitation, both require that the course of events
should have developed amid an antecedent limitation composed of
conditions, particularisation, and standards of value.
Thus as a further element in the metaphysical situation, there is
required a principle of limitation. Some particular _how_ is necessary,
and some particularisation in the _what_ of matter of fact is necessary.
The only alternative to this admission, is to deny the reality of actual
occasions. Their apparent irrational limitation must be taken as a proof
of illusion and we must look for reality behind the scene. If we reject
this alternative behind the scene, we must provide a ground for
limitation which stands among the attributes of the substantial
activity. This attribute provides the limitation for which no reason can
be given: for all reason flows from it. God is the ultimate limitation,
and His existence is the ultimate irrationality. For no reason can be
given for just that limitation which it stands in His nature to impose.
God is not concrete, but He is the ground for concrete actuality. No
reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the
ground of rationality.
In this argument the point to notice is, that what is metaphysically
indeterminate has nevertheless to be categorically determinate. We have
come to the limit of rationality. For there is a categorical limitation
which does not spring from any metaphysical reason. There is a
metaphysical need for a principle of determination, but there can be no
metaphysical reason for what is determined. If there were such a reason,
there would be no need for any further principle: for metaphysics would
already have provided the determination. The general principle of
empiricism depends upon the doctrine that there is a principle of
concretion which is not discoverable by abstract reason. What further
can be known about God must be sought in the region of particular
experiences, and therefore rests on an empirical basis. In respect to
the interpretation of these experiences, mankind have differed
profoundly. He has been named respectively, Jehovah, Allah, Brahma,
Father in Heaven, Order of Heaven, First Cause, Supreme Being, Chance.
Each name corresponds to a system of thought derived from the
experiences of those who have used it.
Among medieval and modern philosophers, anxious to establish the
religious significance of God, an unfortunate habit has prevailed of
paying to Him metaphysical compliments. He has been conceived as the
foundation of the metaphysical situation with its ultimate activity. If
this conception be adhered to, there can be no alternative except to
discern in Him the origin of all evil as well as of all good. He is then
the supreme author of the play, and to Him must therefore be ascribed
its shortcomings as well as its success. If He be conceived as the
supreme ground for limitation, it stands in His very nature to divide
the Good from the Evil, and to establish Reason ‘within her dominions
supreme.’