The possibility of finite truths depends on the fact that the satisfaction of an actual entity is divisible into a variety of determinate operations. The operations are 'prehensions/ But the negative prehensions which consist of exclusions from contribution to the concrescence can be treated in their subordination to the positive prehensions. These positive prehensions are termed 'feelings/ The process of concrescence is divisible into an initial stage of many feelings, and a succession of subsequent phases of more complex feelings integrating the earlier simpler feelings, up to the satisfaction which is one complex unity of feeling. This is the genetic' analysis of the satisfaction. Its 'coordinate' analysis will be given later, in Part IV.
Thus a component feeling in the satisfaction is to be assigned, for its origination, to an earlier phase of the concrescence.
This is the general description of the divisible character of the satisfaction, from the genetic standpoint. The extensiveness which underlies the spatio-temporal relations of the universe is another outcome of this divisible character. Also the abstraction from its own full formal constitution involved in objectifications of one actual entity in the constitutions of other actual entities equally depends upon this same divisible character, whereby the actual entity is conveyed in the particularity of some one of its feelings. A feeling— i.e., a positive prehension — is essentially a transition effecting a concrescence. Its complex constitution is analysable into five factors which express what that transition consists of, and effects. The factors are: (i) the 'subject' which feels, (ii) the 'initial [338] data' which are to be felt, (iii) the 'elimination' in virtue of negative prehensions, (iv) the 'objective datum 7 which is felt, (v) the 'subjective form* which is how that subject feels that objective datum.
A feeling is in all respects determinate, with a determinate subject, determinate initial data, determinate negative prehensions, a determinate objective datum, and a determinate subjective form. There is a transition from the initial data to the objective datum effected by the elimination. The initial data constitute a 'multiplicity/ or merely one 'proper' entity, while the objective datum is a 'nexus/ a proposition, or a 'proper' entity of some categoreal type. There is a concrescence of the initial data into the objective datum, made possible by the elimination, and effected by the subjective form. The objective datum is the perspective of the initial data.i The subjective form receives its determination from the negative prehensions, the objective datum, and the conceptual origination of the subject. The negative prehensions are determined by the categoreal conditions governing feelings, by the subjective form, and by the initial data. This mutual determination of the elements involved in a feeling is one expression of the truth that the subject of the feeling is causa sui. The partial nature of a feeling, other than the complete satisfaction, is manifest by the impossibility of understanding its generation without recourse to the whole subject. There is a mutual sensitivity of feelings in one subject, governed by categoreal conditions. This mutual sensitivity expresses the notion of final causation in the guise of a pre-established harmony.