The Great Chain of Being

Descartes use of Scholastic terminology is one clue. Descartes

may well be thinking in terms of a doctrine called the Great
Chain of Being which was familiar to his age and earlier, though
not to ours. One assumpriion related to this doctrine is that to
exist is to be good. So existence is a perfection. The greater the
amout of being which something has, the better it is. Thus an
infinite substance has more being and is thus more perfect and
more real than a finite substance. Another principle re lated to
the chain is sometimes called the Principle of Plenitude. It
suggests that God, in his goodness, will create as much good as
possible. So, if something can be created, God will create it.
There is thus a chain of beings extending from God down
through the tiers of angels to man and down through the animals
to the lowest existence. Because of the Principle of Plenitude
there are no gaps in the chain. If there were, God would have
failed to create some good thing which he could have created.
But, because of his supreme goodness, God would not do this.
With the Great Chain of Being in mind, the doctrine that various
species of substances have more formal reality than other
species on the Chain of being makes considerable sense. And the
idea of objective reality means that the ideas of those species
represent the descending levels of formal reality of the Chain.
Thus one idea will be more objectively real than another insofar
as it represents a species of being higher on the Chain of Being
than that other idea.
It has been suggested that Descartes's dualism, his distinction
between mind and body, flatens the chain to just two links. But
this is clearly not the case. There is, at the least, the distinction

between ininite and finite substance; among finite s ubstances

souls are presumably higher on the Chain than bodies; and then
below bodies, one has modes and accidents. Even such an
abbreviated Chain of Being is sufficient for the purposes of
Descartes' proof for the existence of God.