Page:Nature and Life (1934).pdf/59

 But these are forward references to the issue of the argument. As a first approximation we have conceived life as implying absolute, individual self-enjoyment of a process of appropriation. The data appropriated are provided by the antecedent functioning of the universe. Thus, the occasion of experience is absolute in respect to its immediate self-enjoyment. How it deals with its data is to be understood without reference to any other concurrent occasions. Thus, the occasion, in reference to its internal process, requires no contemporary process in order to exist. ln fact this mutual independence in the internal process of self-adjustment is the definition of contemporaneousness.

This concept of self-enjoyment does not exhaust that aspect of process here termed “life”. Process for its intelligibility involves the notion of a cteative activity belonging to the very essence of each occasion. It is