Page:The Function of Reason.pdf/36

 with their inherent qualities does not give the slightest reason for the double aspect. But there is another obvious duality in the world which it is the first business of every cosmology to consider — Body and Mind. If we follow Descartes and express this duality in terms of the concept of substance, we obtain the notion of bodily substances and of mental substances. The bodily substances have, on this theory, a vacuous existence. They are sheer facts, devoid of all intrinsic values. It is intrinsically impossible to give any reason why they should come into existence, or should endure, or should cease to exist. Descartes tells us that they are sustained by God, but fails to give any reason why God should care to do so. This conception of vacuous substantial existence lacks all explanatory insight. The movement to exclude final causation has thus ended by making the doctrine of efficient causation equally inexplicable. Descartes had to call in God, in order to push his bodies around. The two tendencies upward and downward cannot be torn apart. They exist together. Also Descartes’ clean cut between bodies and minds is a misreading of the empirical facts.

We shall never elaborate an explanatory metaphysics unless we abolish this notion of valueless, vacuous existence. Vacuity is the character of an abstraction, and is wrongly introduced into the notion of a finally real thing, an actuality. Universals and propositions are vacuous, but are not actualities. But if we discard the notion of vacuous existence,