p Whitehead does not analyse symbolism as a specifically linguistic problem, he approaches it from philosophical, epistemological and sociological positions. He gives the following formal definition of symbolism: “The human mind is functioning symbolically when some components of its experience elicit consciousness, beliefs, emotions, and usages, respecting other components of its experience. The former set of components are the ’symbols’, and the latter set constitute the ’meaning’ of the symbols. The organic functioning whereby there is transition from the symbol to the meaning will be called ’symbolic reference’" (3, 7-8). As examples of symbolism we can take heraldry, church rites, and ecclesiastical architecture. A deeper form of symbolism, which people cannot dispense with, is language, spoken or written, conversational or scientific. In describing the characteristics of the symbolism of language Whitehead points out that between the natures of symbol and meaning there should be “some community”, but, despite this, the connection between a symbol and a meaning does not have a determined character. The relation between them is reversible, they can change places. “There are no components of experience which are only symbols or only meanings" (3, 10). Symbols point to meanings, but taken in isolation, symbols and meanings do not require a symbolic relationship, this is introduced by the percipient. Connected with the concept of symbolism is the possibility of error, the incorrect transition from the symbol to the meaning. The latter thesis, which is given energetic formulation by Whitehead, is most characteristic of the semantic direction as a whole.

p In Whitehead’s writings there are statements from which it is possible to ascertain how he interprets art from the point 99 of view of his conception of symbolism. Thus, for example, he remarks, when explaining the principle of the reversibility of the symbol and the meaning, that there is a dual symbolic reference in language: from things to words on the side of the speaker, and from words back to things on the side of the listener. As an illustration he takes the use of symbols in poetic art. A forest, a certain combination of trees, suggests words to the poet. For the poet sights, sounds and emotional experiences are symbols which refer to words, functioning here as meanings. These same words refer the reader in his turn symbolically to the sights, sounds and emotions which the poet wishes to evoke in him. For some purposes, in particular to evoke aesthetic emotion, it is easier to reproduce aesthetic experience not through words but through some other symbols such as the symbolism of painting (2, 20-23; 8, 278).

p In the symbolic interpretation of art Whitehead accords particular importance to the question of the symbolic transfer of emotion, a question which, in his opinion, “lies at the base of any theory of the aesthetics of art" (3, 85). In this he distinguishes between feelings and emotions, evoked by the contemplation of the meaning of symbols and words and those directly exited by symbols, and regards emotions of the second type as intensifying feelings of the first. This property is peculiar to language, while a comparable process operates in religious symbolism, and constitutes “the whole basis of the art and literature" (3, 83-84). Music, in Whitehead’s opinion, is particularly well-adapted to the transfer of emotions by the method described above. On its own it generates strong emotions which at once suppress any meaning, such as, for example, information about the positioning of the orchestra, etc. Thus, in these contexts by the “symbolic transfer of emotion" we understand the indisputable fact that in art the very symbols (and not only their meanings) directly arouse emotions, which have an aesthetic character. Whitehead discusses this in clear terms, pointing out that “certain aesthetic features" are inherent in the effect of symbolism described above (3, 83). As we shall see below, the “ symbolic transfer of emotion" in other contexts is taken to mean 100 something completely different. From the ensuing discussion it will also become manifest that his emphasis on the symbolic transfer of emotion as “the basis" of art is evidence not only of the recognition of the importance of this aspect of art, but also of the underestimation of content emotions, caused by the “meanings” of symbols, and of the subjectivist tendency of Whitehead’s aesthetics (23).

p For Whitehead the field of symbolism is not confined merely to the sphere of material expression. The main example of the principles which govern all symbolism in the sphere of perception, .should, in Whitehead’s opinion, be sought in symbolic reference between the two perceptive modes (8, 274): the mode of causal efficacy and of presentational immediacy. The first mode is characteristic of an experience felt by ’the body and emerging from a past experience, an unconscious, indeterminate, vague, complex and forced experience. The second mode is formed or inferred on the basis of the sense^datum of the first and is a property only of highly organized beings. This datum is clearly segmented sense-datum precisely localized, lacking any relation to past or future, and is simpler and emotionally more neutral. Consciousness is possible at this stage of experience. Perception is the symbolic relationship of the two modes indicated, each of which can be both symbol and meaning.

p Giving examples to illustrate the symbolic reference in perception the philosopher once again turns to art. When we enter a room at first we see a coloured shape (causal efficacy), which symbolically refers us /to perception in the other mode (presentational immediacy) and we see a chair. The artist, however, is a person who is able to train himself to perceive ranges of colour only and can limit himself to the perception of colour, but this requires effort and special training. When we listen to music, Whitehead goes on, it seems as though our emotions are entirely due to the musical sounds perceived in the mode of presentational immediacy. But this is only how it seems. For example, the sound waves at first produce in the body, in the mode of causal efficacy, a state of pleasurable aesthetic emotion, which is then symbolically transferred to the sense-perception of the sounds in the mode 101 of presentational immediacy. In exactly the same manner sounds just below or just above the limit of audibility seems to add an emotional tinge to a volume of audible sound (3, 85).   [101•1 

p Some western aestheticians have tried to “develop” Whitehead’s theory of the symbolic reference of the two modes of perception with application to aesthetics, and, in particular, music. The author of one such attempt, the American semantic aesthetieian Eva Schaper, expresses the traditional admiration of Whitehead’s philosophy, but in actual fact reaches extremely modest conclusions about the value of this theory for aesthetics. Whitehead’s distinction between the two perceptual modes, she states, does not provide a ready explanation of aesthetic experience. Moreover, an interpretation of aesthetic experience on the basis of this theory would be “detrimental to aesthetic thought" (28, 274). Such a negative opinion, even on the part of an author who admires Whitehead’s philosophy, should not surprise us. In his theory of the two modes of perception and the symbolic reference between them the English philosopher tried to explain the fact that in the sphere of our knowledge, and in particular in the sphere of perception, certain components express ( represent) others. However, this explanation is quite unsatisfactory. For a start, from the point of view of psychological science the characteristics of perception and its structural layers are set out unclearly and in a completely lax way even for his time. But its main shortcoming consists in the fact that Whitehead, without any justification, transferred the characteristics of linguistic symbolism and primarily the conventional and indeterminate nature of the connection between signs and meanings to the sphere of the relations of expression and the expressed, the latter being peculiar to perceptive knowledge. In consequence the description of perception as a symbolic reference acquired an explicitly 102 expressed subjective idealistic epistemological interpretation. The connection between the modes of perception was made by such an interpretation to seem conventional and indeterminate, conditioned by the activity of the cognizing subject. Hence it is quite understandable why he should so insistently repeat his idea that the main source of “fallibility” is the “symbolic reference”, and in particular the complex symbolic analysis of causal efficacy. Whitehead’s critique of symbolism in cognition as the source of error is accompanied by the conclusion, highly characteristic of his philosophy with its tendency towards irrationalism and mysticism, that only “direct cognition" is unerring, free as it is from the “ symbolic reference”, forming an act of intuition based not on inference but on self-evidence (1; 4; 5).  [102•1 

p If symbolism is the main source of error and delusion, how is the problem of cognitive possibilities, of truth in art, to be resolved in Whitehead’s philosophy? An answer to this question is largely provided by the work Adventures ot Ideas (1933). The category of truth, according to Whitehead, is applicable only to Appearance, which is primarily sensory perception. Truth is the correspondence of Appearance and Reality. Amongst the different types of “truth-relation” we have ”symbolic truth”. This is the relation we have between Appearance and Reality (not connected by a causal relation) when the prehension of the Appearance leads to the prehension of the Reality and sheds light on the Reality. The subjective form of these perceptions is how the subject perceives what is objectively given. We can find examples of symbolic truth in language and in art. Thus literature and music, as well as conveying an objective meaning, also include a conveyance of subjective form. In this process we may observe both symbolic truth and symbolic falsehood. In the latter case a minimum of objective meaning is conveyed, 103 and the conveyance of subjective form is at its height. In music, for example, there is a vague truth-relation, owing to the fact that music and the Appearance which emerges in its perception have common subjective form. In their turn Appearance and Reality (the Reality of National Life, etc.) are connected by a truth-relation. This complex fusion of truthrelations with falsehoods constitutes the indirect interpretative power of Art to express the truth about the nature of things. Beauty is an integral feature of art. Art, argues Whitehead, has a dual goal: truth and beauty, while perfect art has only one goal: “true beauty”. Thus the problem of truth in art is seen to be closely connected with the problem of beauty. In Whitehead’s opinion truth is of enormous general significance for the achievement of beauty. But truth is only an auxiliary means towards the production of beauty. Furtheremore, for beauty the type of truth is connected with revelation, and not with repetition, and in distinction to the truth of words it is “truth of feeling”. Art is that area of Appearance intentionally adapted to Reality. The beauty of Apperance is not necessarily connected with truth, since beauty can be regarded independently of the correspondence between Appearance and Reality, and this correspondence constitutes, in Whitehead’s view, its own area of truth-relations. Art can even make use of false statements for its own purposes. Thus Whitehead appears to provide a positive resolution of the question of the possibilities of art expressing the truth about the nature of things. At the same time, in accordance with his semantic orientation to the critique of symbolism, he opposes to the symbolic truth of language and art a higher, more direct truth, which is grasped by direct intuition, namely, a “correspondence of clear and distinct Appearance to Reality" (4, 318-22).

p As we have already noted, the irrationalist element in the philosophy of the English neo-realist is connected with this latter thesis. Evidence of this, as the Marxist scholars H. K. Wells and H. Frankel correctly point out, is the accent on “feeling”, “emotion”, “satisfaction”, etc. (29, 151), which we can see in Whitehead’s aesthetics too. The theory of “ feelings”, incidentally, like everything written by him, is set out 104 very unclearly and interpreted in different ways by different commentators.  [104•1 

p Aesthetic emotion, according to Whitehead, is apparently “co-extensive” (having the same duration in space and in time) with the subjective form of the “shaping” of objective data by the subject and is one of the components of the subject (5, 288). We have already stated that art conveys both objective meaning and subjective form, i.e. including aesthetic emotion. Moreover, according to Whitehead, aesthetic emotion only emerges directly in the mode of causal efficacy. At the level of presentational immediacy, however, it is transferred through the mediation of the first level of perception, i.e., symbolically. In this approach Whitehead completely fails to take account of such an important factor, which determines aesthetic emotion in the perception of art, as the intellectual aspect of a work of art. Since the consciousness, according to Whitehead, may only appear in the second mode ( presentational immediacy),  [104•2  aesthetic emotion, which is also connected with the intellectual factor, cannot in any way be mediated by the first mode, in which the consciousness is absent, and in this sense it is conveyed directly and not symbolically. In Whitehead’s aesthetics aesthetic emotion at the level of presentational immediacy, i.e. at the level where the conscious, content factors of art become operative, acquires a secondary, voluntary character.  [104•3  By linking aesthetic emotion 105 to the first mode of perception Whitehead is showing a marked proclivity to accentuate the subconscious bases of art. “That art,” he writes, “which arises within clear consciousness is only a specialization of the more widely distributed art within dim consciousness or within the unconscious activities of experience. These dim elements provide for art that final background of tone apart from which its effects fade" (4, 347-48). By critically analysing these statements of Whitehead’s we do not in any way mean to call into question the important role of subconscious elements in art. What we are getting at is that in the general context of Whitehead’s idealist philosophy these views are evidence of the irrationalist tendencies of his aesthetics, which in the given aspect is not unlike the theories of art of Bergson and Freud (20).

p Essential for an interpretation of Whitehead’s conception of art is the analysis of “proposition”, one of the categories of his philosophical system. Proposition is the objective data in an act of cognition, but not the actual things: it is an ideal principle, pure form, or structure (12). As an example of proposition we can take the structure of a judgment. Proposition should be distinguished from the psychological equivalent or subjective form of prepositional cognition. As the subjective form of this act we can take judgments, true or false. It is precisely this restricted aspect of the role of proposition in experience which expresses the logical knowledge of propositions, and thereby obscuring the fact that in actuality propositions serve other purposes too. In the real world what matters is not whether propositions are true or false, but whether they are of interest. Thus literature and art can use false propositions as a means of persuasion or as “norms” to which reality may be compared. In this case subjective form no longer functions as judgments, but as the emotions of horror, repulsion, or pleasure. It is true, admits Whitehead, that true propositions are more able (for particular purposes) to arouse interest than false ones. It should also be noted that the form of the words from which the proposition is 106 constructed also generates judgments. In figurative literature this sort of generation is checked by the general context or even the verbal structures (for example, “once upon a time”).

p In Whitehead’s philosophical system the theory of propositions rests and is developed on the basis of objective idealism. Propositions are a synthesis of actual phenomena, taken in abstraction, and “eternal objects”. By eternal objects Whitehead understands what are usually called “typal concepts" and which he treats in the idealistic spirit of Platonic ideas. Anti^scientific in its essence, the concept of “eternal objects" leads to, as H. Frankel shows circumstantially and convincingly, a proliferation of incongruities in all Whitehead’s speculations connected with “eternal objects" (17).

p Whitehead himself did not make any explicit attempts to apply the theory of the proposition to the analysis of art, although there are some suggestions of this, which led a number of bourgeois aestheticians to “develop” these into definite aesthetic conceptions. One of these conceptions is substantiated in a book A Whiteheadian Aesthetic. Some Implications of Whitehead’s Metaphysical Speculation, by D. W. Sherburne, professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. The arguments of Whitehead’s that we quoted above, to the effect that there are such things as propositions whose subjective form is not judgments but emotions of pleasure etc., served as the point of departure for those ideas which then expanded into the theory expounded in Sherburne’s book, as he himself acknowledges. The annotations to Sherburne’s book correctly state that the success of the author’s aesthetic theory will be proof of the truth of Whitehead’s metaphysical system. To this we should only add that the insubstantiality of this theory is equal proof of the unsuitability of Whitehead’s metaphysical system for the scientific resolution of aesthetic problems. Sherburne’s book demonstrates precisely this point. The author’s main thesis consists in the following: “art objects have the ontological status of Whiteheadian propositions" (25, 98). Inasmuch as propositions are potential and not actual a distinction should be made between the work of art and its execution, corresponding to the distinction between propositions and their objectivization. 107 There are strict rules covering this in some arts, for example, musical notes. We should not confuse the work of art ( proposition), execution (objectivization of the proposition) and the rules of objectivization. A work of art is not merely a proposition, but such a proposition which attracts attention in a unique fashion, thanks to the fact that its execution possesses the property of beauty.

p Sherburne’s conception contains the true notion that in art there is a spiritual, ideal aspect, and points in particular to the ideal logical structure in a work of art, which in the form of thought or ideal image in the artist’s consciousness can precede the act of material embodiment of this structure in the work of art. However, this thought receives inadequate idealistic explanation in Sherburne’s book. “The aesthetic theory I am developing has strong affinities with that of Benedetto Croce,” he writes. “Like Croce I argue that the art object is not an actual entity, but a thing of the spirit. But ... I am running them through the categories of Whitehead’s system in such a way that they emerge with fresh value for aesthetic insight and firm metaphysical grounding...” (25, 110). The idealism and insubstantiality of this conception consist in its interpretation of the spirituality of art not as a “secondary” factor with respect to objective reality, of which it is a reflection, but as the primariness of eternal objects. As far as the material aspect of art (the means of execution) is concerned this is arbitrarily removed from within the bounds of the aesthetic object. The untenability of this Crocean viewpoint is generally accepted, and we can only marvel at Sherburne’s attempt to revive it, relying on Whitehead’s ideas.

By way of concluding our analysis of the epistemologioal conception of symbolism in Whitehead’s philosophy as applied to aesthetics and art it is essential to emphasize another important factor. In his epistemology Whitehead, as we have already pointed out, is a realist. Correspondingly his theory of the “meaning” of -symbols has a realistic character. “The symbols do not create their meaning. The meaning, in the form of actual effective beings reacting upon us, exists for us in its own right. But the symbols merely discover this meaning for us" (3, 57). Realistic statements of this sort 108 make it impossible to claim that Whitehead “in general tended towards materialism".  [108•1  V. I. Lenin, in criticizing the claims of idealists to “realism”, pointed out that in actual fact objective reality, nature, is not perceived as immediately given, it is reached as the result of a long transition, through abstractions of the “psychical”. Such an abstraction of the “psychical” can be seen in Whitehead’s system in the modes of immediate experience (advanced as “neutral elements”), from which both spiritual and physical nature are composed. Whitehead’s endeavour to depict the world as an unbroken chain of elements of perceptual experience characterizes his epistemology “as a modification of the BerkeleyHume ’philosophy of experience’ " (18, 125). It is hardly surprising that the symbolic philosophy both of Whitehead himself and of his followers bears, alongside features of objective idealism, the stamp of subjective idealism.