Page:Science and the Modern World.djvu/262

 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 prebends into each occasion the full sweep of eternal relatedness. I term this abrupt realisation the ‘graded envisagement’ which each occasion prebends 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