Actual entities are the final real things; each is a process of prehension that appropriates the past into a novel unity. Relatedness is prior to quality. The creative advance of the universe consists in the becoming, the perishing and the objective immortality of occasions. Vacuous actuality is rejected; nothing exists in isolation from its relations. Speculative philosophy frames a coherent scheme adequate to the entire texture of experience. The categoreal scheme—actual entity, prehension, nexus, ontological principle—replaces substance with process. Consciousness and sense-perception appear late and unessential. The cosmos is a society of societies whose order is the mutual sensitivity of occasions.