p. 409

no individual survival of death, even to the extent that Buddhist thought seems to allow it in the reincarnation idea.

　　 In spite of its affinity to Buddhism, it should be clear from the points just made that Whitehead's view is also profoundly Western. He does not even seem to deny the positive value of ordinary experience, whether human or subhuman. Peace is for him the highest, but in no sense the only value. Yet, in abstraction from his theistic faith, he would, if anything, be more negative about ordinary experience, and indeed any experience, than the Buddhists, apart from nirvaa.na, would be.

　　 Of course there are many aspects of Whitehead's detailed cosmology, making use as it does of modern science, which one would not find in the Buddhist suutras. And I believe that Whitehead's great experience in mathematics and formal logic has given his concepts a clarity that one learns not to expect from the older Asian writers. But nevertheless, in Whitehead, far more, I believe, than in Hume, Kant, or Schopenhauer, some of the best elements in the Western and Eastern traditions are combined. I would grant, however, that the subtle antirationalism (a term which some scholars would reject in this connection) of the Buddhists is closer to Hume or Kant than to Whitehead. Yet in the positive spiritual content of the doctrines, I think it is the great Anglo-American who comes nearest to giving us what ancient Greece, Judea, and India (Nepal) together have to offer the modern world.

　　 It may surprise some that I have not mentioned the Whiteheadian doctrine of "eternal objects." In one phase there was, I gather, something of the sort in early Buddhism. It dropped out, and I personally think that this doctrine is a dispensable element of Whitehead's system. If he needs it, then so and for the same reasons does Buddhism. But I fail to see the necessity on either side. Creativity, momentary actual creatures, and a form of creativity (and corresponding actuality) able to prehend all actuality adequately and cosmically, are the essentials. Creativity itself (the determining of the antecedently indeterminate) simply as such, is merely a concept of productive becoming general enough to span the differences between the various levels of nondivine and also divine productive becoming. It is said not to be an actual entity. The actual entities (including God) are all creatures, in thinking about which we may abstract various aspects. They are also all "self-creative" and influential in the becoming of others. God is in a unique sense Creator, since the divine form of creativity is cosmically relevant, has always had and must always have instantiation in actuality, and by its ordering influence gives the cosmic process a coherence or order (allowing for quite real but limited aspects of disorder arising from the self-determinations of the creatures) which could not otherwise be explained.

　　 The simplest way that I have found to compare Whitehead with Buddhism is to make use of Alexandra David-Neel's admirably clear little book. [1] Here the

p. 410

main points to be found in many far longer works are presented, together with one point I have not discovered elsewhere. This is that at least the Tibetan Buddhists held, as did Whitehead, that in perception only past, not simultaneous or contemporary, events are given. The Tibetans, the author explains, noticed that in the distant firing of a gun the smoke of the explosion is seen before the sound is heard. This of course directly proves only that the explosion precedes the auditory perception, but might seem to leave open the question of whether it also precedes the visual perception. Yet I admire the generalization exhibited in the Tibetan reasoning; for after all, once we open our minds to the possibility of perceiving past events, there are good reasons for supposing that this is what perception essentially is.

　　 The perceived is cause of the perceiving, we perceive the explosion because it happened, it did not happen because we perceive it. Thus there is a causal asymmetry. And it is the past on which the present asymmetrically depends. If the perceived were simultaneous with the perceiving, the causal relation, if any, should be mutual. Nor does this argument exhaust the grounds for agreeing with the Tibetans and Whitehead (against nearly all others who have expressed an opinion) that the absolute present can no more be given in perception than it can be remembered. It can indeed be "known" in the present, in the sense that the causal stability of the world is such that what has just occurred outside or inside our bodies is not likely to be very different from what is still occurring there. If the table was just previously there, it doubtless is still there without changes that we need to take into account in ordinary cases. If the prey was just previously running in a certain direction at a certain speed, it probably is still running at a point suitably farther along in the same direction. If my tooth was aching a fraction of a second ago, it presumably is still in need of attention. There is no necessity, whether practical or theoretical, for an absolute simultaneity of the given and the experience in or for which it is given. True enough, if it is really given at time t, it cannot be unreal at time t', but the doctrine that to be past is to be unreal makes nonsense not only of memory but also of causation. If the past is real enough to cause present effects, it is real enough to form data for present experience. The ability to miss this point is rather widespread. A past event has sufficient reality to be as past, and the Whiteheadian view is that this is the same as to be as objectified. (Since nondivine objectification is inadequate, deficient in concreteness, it would indeed follow that past events must -- assuming atheism -- have lost much of their reality and value. This is precisely one of Whitehead's reasons for not being an atheist.)