Page:Science and the Modern World.djvu/245

 have, each of them, the requisite status to play their respective parts in that multiple relationship. This principle depends on the fact that the relational essence of an eternal object is not unique to that object. The mere relational essence of each eternal object determines the complete uniform scheme of relational essences, since each object stands internally in all its possible relationships. Thus the realm of possibility provides a uniform scheme of relationships among finite sets of eternal objects; and all eternal objects stand in all such relationships, so far as the status of each permits.

Accordingly the relationships (as in possibility) do not involve the individual essences of the eternal objects; they involve any eternal objects as relata, subject to the proviso that these relata have the requisite relational essences. [It is this proviso which, automatically and by the nature of the case, limits the ‘any’ of the phrase ‘any eternal objects.’] This principle is the principle of the Isolation of Eternal Objects in the realm of possibility. The eternal objects are isolated, because their relationships as possibilities are expressible without reference to their respective individual essences. In contrast to the realm of possibility, the inclusion of eternal objects within an actual occasion means that in respect to some of their possible relationships there is a togetherness of their individual essences. This realised togetherness is the achievement of an emergent value defined — or, shaped — by the definite eternal relatedness in respect to which the real togetherness is achieved. Thus the eternal relatedness is the form — the —; the emergent actual occasion is the superject of informed value;