Note 60 — III

So far as I catch his state of mind, it is somewhat like this: ‘Book,’ ‘table,’ ‘on’—how does the existence of these three abstract elements result in this book being livingly on this table. Why isn’t the table on the book? Or why doesn’t the ‘on’ connect itself with another book, or something that is not a table? Mustn’t something in each of the three elements already determine the two others to it, so that they do not settle elsewhere or float vaguely? Mustn’t the whole fact be pre-figured in each part, and exist de jure before it can exist de facto? But, if so, in what can the jural existence consist, if not in a spiritual miniature of the whole fact’s constitution actuating every partial factor as its purpose? But is this anything but the old metaphysical fallacy of looking behind a fact in esse for the ground of the fact, and finding it in the shape of the very same fact in posse? Somewhere we must leave off with a constitution behind which there is nothing.