The Metaphysical Foundation of Buddhism and Modern Science

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include as part of its own essence, any other entity, whether another
occasion of experience or an entity of another type. This term is devoid
of suggestion either of consciousness or of representative perception.
Feelings are the positive type of prehension. In positive prehensions the
'datum' is preserved as part of the final complex object which 'satisfies'
the process of self-formation and thereby completes the occasion.
This nomenclatura has been made up to conform to the condition, that, as
a theory develops, its technical phraseology should grow out of the
usages of the great masters who laid its foundations. The immediate
verbal usages at any moment prevalent in any school of philosophy are but
a small selection from the total vocabulary of the philosophic tradition.
This is rightly the case having regard to the variations of doctrine.
The current usage can express the doctrine of the reigning school of
thought and of certain accredited variations from it. The demand that an
alternative doctrine with other roots in the historic tradition should
confine itself to this selection of terms amounts to the dogmatic claim
that certain preliminary assumptions should never be revised. Only those
schools of thought are to be allowed which can be expressed in the
sacred terms. What can reasonably be asked, is that each doctrine
should ground its vocabulary on its own proper tradition. If this
precaution has been taken, an outcry as to neologisms is a measure of
unconscious dogmatism.
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