THE LEGEND OF FRIAR’S ROCK.
The thing long hoped for had come to pass (though, alas! by what a way of grief) and I was visiting my school friend, Anne d’Estaing, in Bretagne. It was six years since we had met, but we had kept up a constant correspondence; and by letter when absent, as well as by word when together, I had become so familiar with her home and her family that I did not go there as a stranger.
They lived in an old castle partly fallen into picturesque decay. In the eastern tower was a small chapel, which they had put into complete repair, and there daily they had service, and Anne found her great delight in decking the altar with flowers, and keeping everything in exquisite order and neatness with her own hands. They had had great sorrows in the six years of our separation. Only Anne and her parents were left of the loving family that once numbered eleven. Two of the sons fell in battle, a contagious disease swept off the three youngest children in one week; Anne’s favorite brother Bertrand became a missionary priest, and went to China under a vow never to return; and her twin sister faded away in consumption.
It had seemed to me, in my Irish home, as if such sorrows could scarcely be borne; but I had never been able to come to my friend with visible, face-to-face, heart-to-heart consolation, for my daily duty was beside a couch where my precious mother lay, suffering from an incurable disease. When her long trouble was at last over my strength and spirits were much shattered, and I longed to accept Anne’s pressing invitation. My father was very unwilling that I should go—he thought it would be so sad and dreary there; but Anne’s letters had revealed to me such a life of peace and prayer and happy service that it seemed to me that Château d’Estaing must be a very haven of rest.
And so I found it. From the moment that I looked on Anne’s pale but placid face; from the time that her mother’s arms held me as those other arms, which I had missed so sorely, used to do; from the first words of fatherly welcome that the old count gave me, I was at home and at peace. And when at sunset I went to Vespers, and the dying light shone in through the lancet windows, along the aisle, and on the richly-decorated altar, and Anne’s voice and fingers led the soothing Nunc Dimittis, it was as if the dews of healing fell on my bruised heart.
They made no stranger of me; they knew too well what sorrow was, and how its sting for them had been withdrawn. So together, in the early dawn, we knelt for the holiest service, beginning the day in close intercourse with Him whose “compassions fail not,” and finding that they are indeed “new every morning.” Together we kept the Hours, and did plain household duties, and visited in the village, dispensing medicines, reading to old women, caring for the sick. Two afternoons in the week classes came to the castle for instruction; every Wednesday evening the children came to practise the church music—and, oh! how sweet that music was; and on one afternoon we used to mount our shaggy ponies and ride to a distant hamlet, to teach the children there. Together we took care of the garden, where grew the flowers for the altar and for weddings and funerals; and of the trellis of rare grapes, from which came the sacramental wine. Every pleasant day we went out upon the bay in Anne’s boat, rowed by two strong-armed Breton girls, visiting the rocky coves and inlets, startling the sea-fowl from their nests, and enjoying the sea-breeze and crisp waves.
Where the bay and the sea join is a headland, which commands the finest view for miles around; yet, much as we loved that view, we were oftenest to be found at the base, where we sat idly, while the boat rocked on the water, which lapped with lulling sound against the rock. It was a pretty sight, the face of that cliff, where wild vines crept and delicate wild flowers bloomed, and an aromatic odor rose from the herbs that grew there, and some small, weather-beaten firs found footing in the crevices. On the summit were a few ruins. But the chief natural point of interest, and that from which the Head derived its name, was a curious rock which stood at its base. It was called the Friar. At first I saw little about it which could lay claim to such a name; but the more I watched it, the more the likeness grew upon me, till it became at times quite startling. It was a massive stone, some thirty feet above the water at low tide, like a human figure wrapped in a monk’s robe, always facing the east, and always like one absorbed in prayer and meditation, yet ever keeping guard. One day I asked Anne if there was not some legend about it, and she replied that the country people had one which was very interesting, and partly founded on fact. Of course I begged for it, and she was ready to tell me.
As I write, I seem to see and hear it all again—the rocking boat; the two girls resting on their oars and talking in their broad patois; the twittering, darting birds; the butterfly that fluttered round us; the solemn rock casting its long shadow on the water, that glittered in the light of a summer afternoon; Anne’s pale, thin, sparkling face, and earnest voice. I see even the children at play upon the shore, acting out the old Breton superstition of the washerwomen of the night, who wash the shrouds of the dead; and their quaint song mingles with Anne’s story:
“Si chrétien ne vient nous sauver,
Jusqu’au jugement faut laver;
Au clair de la lune, au bruit du vent,
Sous la neige, le linceul blanc;”
and the little bare feet are dancing through the water, and the little brown hands wash and wring the sea-kale for the shrouds, and it all seems as yesterday to me. But it was years and years ago.
“You know that this is a very dangerous coast,” Anne said. “The tide runs fast here, and the rocks are jagged and dangerous. Row out a few strokes, Tiphaine and Alix, and let Mlle. Darcy see what happens.”
A dozen strokes of the oars, and we were in an eddy where it took all the strength of our rowers to keep back the boat; and beyond Friar’s Rock the tide-race was like a whirlpool, one eddy fighting with another.
“We would not dare go further,” Anne said. “No row-boats venture there, and large sailing-vessels need a cautious helmsman. In a storm it is frightful, and the men and the boats are not few that have gone down there. But never a board or a corpse has been found afterwards. There is a swift under-current that sweeps them out to sea. Now, Tiphaine, row back again.”
A white, modern lighthouse stands on a rock on the outer shore; its lantern was visible above the Head. Anne pointed to it.
“That has been there only a century,” she said. “Before it we had another and a better light, we Bretons. Where those ruins are, Joanne dear, there was a small chapel once, and on the plain below the Head was a monastery. It was founded hundreds of years ago, by S. Sampson some say, and others by the Saxon S. Dunstan himself, or, as they call him here, S. Gonstan, the patron of mariners. I do not know how long it had been in existence at the time of the legend, but long enough to have become famous, quite large in numbers, and a blessing to the country round about. The monks were the physicians of the place; they knew every herb, and distilled potions from them, which they administered to the sick, so that they came to the beds of poverty and pain with healing for soul and body both. They taught the children; they settled quarrels and disputes; on Rogation days they led the devout procession from field to field, marking boundary lines, and praying or chanting praises at every wayside cross.
“But that which was their special work was the guarding of this coast. Instead of that staring white lighthouse, there was on the top of the chapel’s square tower a large lantern surmounted by a cross, and all through the night the monks kept it burning, and many a ship was saved and many a life preserved by this means. At Vespers the lamp was lighted, and one monk tended it from then till Nocturns, giving his unoccupied time to prayer for all at sea, both as to their bodily and spiritual wants, and to every one in any need or temptation that night. At Nocturns he was relieved by another monk, who kept watch till Prime. Such for three centuries had been the custom, and never had the light been known to fail.
“It must have been a strange sight—that band of men in gown and cowl engaged in the never-omitted devotions before the altar, then departing silently, leaving one alone to wrestle in prayer for the tried souls that knew little of the hours thus spent for them. O Joanne! what would I not give to have it here again; to know that this was once more the Holy Cape, as it used to be called; and that here no hour went by, however it might be elsewhere, that prayers and praises were not being offered to our dear Lord, who ever intercedes for us!”
Anne was silent for a while, and I felt sure that she was praying. When she roused herself, it was to bid the rowers pull home fast, as it was almost time for Vespers.
“You shall hear the rest, dear,” she said, “when we go up-stairs to-night.” So after Compline, and after Anne and I had played and sung to her parents, as we were wont to do, she came into my room and lighted the fire and the tall candles, and we settled ourselves for a real school-girl talk. Anne showed me a sketch which her brother Bertrand had made, partly from fancy, and partly from the ruins, of the monastery and chapel.
“It looks like a place of peace and holiness, where one might be safe from sin for ever,” I said; but Anne shook her head.
“The old delusion,” she sighed. “As if Satan would not spread sore temptations just in such abodes as these. Don’t you remember how often we have spoken of it—the terrible strength and subtlety of spiritual temptations, simply because they are less obvious than others? The legend of the Friar witnesses to that, whether you take the story as true or false. I am going to give myself a treat to-night, and I am sure it will be one to you. Bertrand wrote out the legend after he made the sketch. Will you care to hear it?”
“Indeed I would,” I answered; and Anne unfolded her precious paper.
“It is only a fragment,” she said, “beginning abruptly where I left off this afternoon; but perhaps it will show you more of what Bertrand is.”
“Anne,” I asked suddenly, “don’t you miss him—more than any of the others?”
“No—yes,” she answered, then paused thoughtfully. “Yes,” she said at last, “I suppose I do. Because, so long as I know he is living somewhere on this earth, it seems possible for my feet to go to him and my eyes to see his face. But, after all, none of them seem far away. We are brought so near in the great Communion, in prayers—in everything. In fact, Joanne—does it seem very cold-hearted?—oftenest I do not miss them at all; God so makes up for every loss.”
I was crying by this time, for my heartache was constant; and Anne came and kissed me, and looked distressed. “I ought not to trouble you,” she said. “Did I? I did not mean to hurt you.”
“Oh! no,” I answered. “Only why should I not be as resigned as you?”
“Joanne darling!” she exclaimed, “you are that much more than I am. Can’t you see? You feel—God causes you to feel it—keenly. That is your great cross; and so, when you do not murmur, but say, ‘God’s will be done,’ you are resigned. But that is not the cross he gives to me. Instead, he makes bereavement light to me by choosing to reveal his mercies; and I must take great care to correspond to his grace. Bertrand warned me solemnly of that. And yet this is not all I mean. Perhaps you will understand better when you have heard the legend.”
She sat on the floor close beside me, and held my hand. I thanked God for her, she comforted me so. I was always hungry then for visible love; but by degrees, and partly through her, he taught me to be content with a love that is invisible.
“There was once a monk,” she read, “the youngest of the brotherhood, who was left to keep the watch from midnight until dawn. Through the windows the moonbeams fell, mingling with the light that burned before the tabernacle, and with the gleam of the monk’s small taper. Outside, the sea was smooth like glass, and the stars shone brightly, and a long line of glory stretched from shore to shore. Lost in supplication, the monk lay prostrate before the altar. His thoughts and prayers were wandering far away—to the sick upon their beds of pain, to travellers on land and sea, to mourners sunk in loneliness or in despair, to the poor who had no helper, to little children, to the dying; most of all, to the tempted, wherever they might be.
“He was intensely earnest, and he had a loving temperament and a strong imagination which had found fitting curb and training in the devout practice of meditation. The prayers he used were no mere form to him; he seemed actually to behold those for whom he interceded, actually to feel their needs and sore distress. This was nothing new, but to-night the power of realization came upon him as never before. He saw the dying in their final anguish; he suffered with the suffering, and felt keen temptations to many a deed of evil, and marked Satan’s messengers going up and down upon the earth, seeking to capture souls. Sharper than all else was the conflict he underwent with doubts quite new to him—doubts of the use or power of his prayers. Still he prayed on, in spite of the keen sense of unworthiness to pray. He would not give place for a moment to the suggestion that his prayers were powerless. Again and again he fortified himself with the Name of all-prevailing might. And then it seemed to him, in the dim candle-light and among the pale moonbeams, that the Form upon the crucifix opened its eyes and smiled at him, and that from the lips came a voice saying, ‘Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do.’
“The hour came to tend the light; he knew it. But he knew, too, that the sea without was calm, even like the crystal sea before the Throne, save where the wild currents that never rested were surging white with foam and uttering hoarse murmurs. He knew that the night was marvellously still; that there was no wind, not even enough to stir the lightest leaf. What mariner could err, even though for once the light of the monks grew dim—nay, even if it failed? Could he leave that glorious vision, in order to trim a lantern of which there was no need; or cease his prayers for perishing souls, in order to give needless help to bodies able to protect themselves? These thoughts swept through his mind, and his choice was hastily made to remain before the altar; and even as he made it the vision faded, yet with it, or with his decision, all temptation to doubt vanished too. If devils had been working upon him to cause him to cease from intercession, they left him quite free now to pray—with words, too, of such seeming power as he had never used before.
“Suddenly a sound smote upon his ear—such a sound as might well ring on in one’s brain for a lifetime, and which he was to hear above all earthly clamor until all earthly clamor should cease. It was the cry of strong men who meet death on a sudden, utterly unprepared; the crash of timbers against a rock; the groan of a ship splitting from side to side. He sprang to his feet and rushed to the door. Already the great bell of the monastery was tolling, and dark, cowled figures were hastening to the shore. He looked up. In the cross-topped tower, for the first time in man’s knowledge, the lamp of the monks was out. Just then the prior hurried by him and up the stairs, and soon, but all too late, the beacon blazed again.
“With an awful dread upon his heart he made his way to the coast. The water foamed unbroken by aught save rocks; but pallid lips told the story of the vessel that had sailed thither, manned by a merry crew made merrier by drink, careless of their course, depending on the steadfast light, and sure, because they did not see it, that they had not neared the dangerous whirlpool and hidden rocks. Only one man escaped, and, trembling, told the story. He had been the only sober man on board; and when he warned the captain of their danger, he was laughed and mocked at for his pains, and told that all true mariners would stake the monks’ light against the eyes of any man on earth. It was not the Holy Cape that they were nearing, but Cape Brie, they said, and every one knew it was safe sailing there. With jests and oaths instead of prayers upon their lips, with sin-stained souls, they had gone down into that whirling tide, which had swept them off in its strong under-tow to sea. There were homes that would be desolate and hearts broken; there were bodies drowned, and souls launched into eternity—perhaps for ever lost—for lack of one little light, for the fault of a single half-hour. And still the stars shone brightly, and the long line of glory stretched from shore to shore, and the night was marvellously still; but upon one soul there had fallen a darkness that might be felt—almost the darkness of despair.
“Monk Felix they had called him, and had been wont to say that he did not belie his name, with his sweet young face and happy smile, and his clear voice in the choir. He was Monk Infelix now and while time lasted.
“In the monastery none saw an empty place; for the man whose life had been the only one preserved in that swift death-struggle had begged, awed and repentant, to be received into the number of these brethren vowed to God’s peculiar service. But in village and in choir they missed him who had gone in and out among them since his boyhood, and under their breath the people asked, ‘Where is he?’ No definite answer was given, but a rumor crept about, and at length prevailed, that Monk Felix had despaired of pardon; that day and night the awful death-cry rang in his ears; and day and night he besought God to punish here and spare there, imploring that he might also bear some of the punishment of those souls that had passed away through his neglect. And a year from that night, and in the very hour, the last rites having been given to him as to the dying, the rock now called the Friar’s had opened mysteriously. Around it stood the brotherhood, chanting the funeral psalms very solemnly; and as the words, “De profundis clamavi ad Te, Domine,” were intoned, one left their number, and, with steady step and a face full of awe and yet of thankfulness, entered the cleft, and the rock closed.
“Years came and went, other hands tended the lantern, till in the Revolution the light of the monks and the Order itself were swept away, and the monastery was laid in ruins. But the legend is even now held for truth by simple folk, that in Friar’s Rock the monk lives still, hearing always the eddying flood about him, that beats in upon his memory the story of his sin; and they say that with it mingles ever the cry of men in their last agony, and the cry is his name, thus kept continually before the Judge. There, in perpetual fast and vigil, he watches and prays for the coming of the Lord and the salvation of souls, and the rock that forms his prison has been made to take his shape by the action of those revengeful waves. What he knows of passing events—what added misery and mystery it is that now no longer the holy bell and chant echo above him—none can tell. But there, they say, whatever chance or change shall come to Bretagne, he must live and pray and wait till the Lord comes. Then, when the mountains fall and the rocks are rent, his long penance shall be over, and he shall enter into peace.”
Anne looked at me. “Was it very hard—too hard?” she asked.
“O Anne!” I cried, “it is not true?”
She smiled. “I have more to read,” she said; “more of fact, perhaps.” So she went on.
“There is, in the archives of this domain, an account of a settlement some twenty miles from here, where a horde of outlaws dwell in huts and caves, their hand against every man, and every man’s hand against them. It was as much as one’s life was worth to go among them, unless one was ready to live as they lived, and sin as they sinned. But it is recorded that in the same year in which is also recorded the loss of a Dutch vessel by reason of the failure of the light of the monks—an event never known before, and never again till the Revolution in its great guilt quenched it and shattered the sacred walls—there came to these men a missionary priest, seeking to save their souls. They say he was a man who never smiled, yet his very presence brought comfort. Little children loved him; and poor, down-trodden women learned hope and patience from him; and men consented to have him there, and not to slay him.
“Yet what he underwent was fearful. He lived in a hovel so mean that the storms drove through it, and the floor was soaked with rain or white with frost or snow. No being in that place poorer, more hungry, more destitute of earthly comfort. Yet his crusts he shared with the beggar, his pallet of straw far oftener held the child turned out from shelter, the sick, the dying, than him. There the leper found a home, and tendance, not only of pity but of love—hands that washed, lips that kissed, prayers that upbore him in the final struggle.
“We read of temptations from devils which the saints have undergone; there are those who presume to doubt them. This man wrestled with temptations from his brother men, who seemed like very fiends, and often, often, the anguish of despair came upon him, and he thought he was already lost, and a wild desire almost overwhelmed him to join them in their evil ways. For, by some horrible instinct, they seemed to divine that pain to the body would be slight to him compared to the tortures which they could invent for his soul. They came to his ministrations, and mimicked him when he spoke, and set their ribald songs to sacred tunes. Before his door they parodied the holiest rites. They taught the children to do the same things at their sports.
“And he—it is said that in the pauses of midnight or noontide rout and wild temptation they heard him praying for them, and praying for himself, like one who had bound up his own life in the bundle of their lives, and believed that he would be lost or saved with them. It is said that at times he rushed out among them like S. Michael, and his voice was as a trumpet, and he spoke of the wrath of God; and, again, he would open his door, and his face would be like death, and he would tremble sorely, as he begged them, like some tortured creature, to cease from sin. What they did was to him as if he did it. He was so of them that their temptations were his also, till he often seemed to himself as sunk in sin as any of them.
“Yet, one by one, souls went to God from that fiend-beleaguered place; babes with the cross hardly dry upon their foreheads; children taught to love the God whom once they had only known to curse; some of those sick made for ever well, some of those lepers made for ever clean. The priest set up crosses on their graves, and sacrilegious hands broke them down; but no hands could stop his prayers and praises for the souls that by God’s blessing he had won. He tried to build a little chapel, and they rent it stone from stone; but none could destroy the temple of living stones built up to God out of that mournful spot.
“A Lent came when as never before he strove with and for these people. It was as if an angel spoke to them. An angel? Nay, a very man like themselves, as tempted as any of them, a sinner suffering from his sin; yet a man and a sinner who loved God, believed in God, knew that he would come to judge, yet knew he was mighty to save. That Lent, Satan himself held sway there; new and more vile and awful blasphemies surged through the place; it was his last carnival, and it was a mad one. Men held women back from church if they wished to worship, but followed them there and elsewhere to darker deeds of sacrilege and revelry than even they had known before. Yet in the gray dawn, when sleep overpowered the revellers, a few people crept to that holy hut round which the sinners had danced their dance of defiance and death and sin, and there sought for pardon and blessing, and knelt before the Lord, who shunned not the poor earth-altar where a priest pleaded daily for souls, as for so long he had done, except on the rare occasions when he would be gone for a night and a day, they knew not where, and return with fresh vigor and courage.
“Thursday in Holy Week he kept his watch with the Master in his agony. Round him the storm of evil deeds and words rose high. In the midst of it the rioters thought they saw a vision. It was a moonlight night, and marvellously still; no wind moved the trees, and the water was like glass. But all the silence of earth was broken by hideous shout and song, and all its brightness turned to darkness by such deeds of evil as Christians may not name. Before those creatures steeped in sin, wallowing in it, one stood suddenly, haggard, spent as beneath some great burden, wan as with awful suffering. The moonbeams wrapped him in unearthly light, he seemed of heaven, and yet a sufferer. He did not speak; how could he speak, who had pleaded with them again and again by day, and spent his nights in prayer, for such return as this? He lifted up his eyes, and spread his arms. He looked to them like one upon a cross. ‘The Christ! The Christ!’ they murmured, awestruck. And then, ‘Slay him!’ some one shouted frantically. There came a crash of stones, of wood, of jagged iron, and in the midst a distinct, intense voice, ‘O Lord Jesus, forgive us.’ They had heard the last of the prayers that vexed them.
“On Good Friday morning, as the brotherhood came from Prime, a strange being, more like a beast than a man,, approached them. ‘Come to us,’ he said in a scarcely intelligible dialect—‘come to the Dol des Fées: The abbot asked no questions, and made no delay. He bade one of the older monks accompany him, and together they sought the place. Before they reached it, sounds of loud, hoarse wailing were borne to them upon the breeze; and their guide, on hearing them, broke forth into groans like the groans of a beast, and beat his breast, and cried, ‘My father, my father! My sin, my sin!’
“They saw hovels and caves, deserted; among the poorest, one still poorer; about it, men, women, and children wrung their hands or sobbed and tore their hair, or lay despairing on the ground. Entering, four bare walls met their view; then a pallet, where an idiot grinned and pointed. Following his pointing finger, they saw an earth-altar where the light still burned. Before it one lay at rest. Wrapped in his tattered robe; his hands clasped, as though he prayed yet, above the crucifix upon his heart; hands, neck, and face bruised and battered and red with blood; his face was of one at peace. The contest was ended. He who lay there dead lay there a victor, by the grace of God. Around him his people, for whom he gave his life, begged for the very help they had so long refused. And soon, where so long he labored, sowing good seed in tears, the reapers went with shouting, bringing their sheaves with them. That which had been the abode of sinners has become years since the abode of saints.
“Thanks be to God!”
“But it was such a little sin,” I said, as Anne put the paper by.
“How great a sin lost Eden?” she asked gravely. “Besides, we cannot tell what spiritual pride or carelessness, unknown or hidden, may have led to such a fall. But, dear, it was not anything of that sort I wanted to talk about, but the mercy, and how it explains what we were speaking of.”
“The mercy?” I repeated.
“Yes,” she said fervently. “To be punished, and yet the very punishment to contain the power to pray on still—to speak to God—to plead with him for souls, the souls he died for on the cross. What though one were shut for all time in Friar’s Rock, if one trusted that at the end the Vision of God would be his for ever, and till then could and must ask him continually to have mercy on immortal souls? Or who would not live that living death in Dol des Fées to live it in prayer at the altar, and to die a martyr’s death?
“Joanne, my darling, what, after all, are sorrow and death and separation and loneliness to us who can speak to God? In him we are all brought near. His blood makes each of his children dear to those who love him. Day by day to forget self in them, in him; day by day to let grief or pleasure grow less and less in one absorbing prayer that his kingdom come; day by day to lose one’s self in him—that is living, and that is loving. I cannot mourn much for my precious ones that are only absent from my sight, but safe and present with him; my tears are for souls that are not safe, the wide world over; and I cannot miss much what I have never really lost. A thousand times Friar’s Rock speaks to me, and this is what it says:
“‘If thou, Lord, wilt mark iniquities, Lord, who shall stand it?
“‘For with thee there is merciful forgiveness; and by reason of thy law I have waited—for thee, O Lord.
“‘From the morning watch even until night, let Israel hope in the Lord.
“‘Because with the Lord there is mercy, and with him plentiful redemption.
“‘And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.’”
It was years ago, as I have said, that Anne d’Estaing told me this legend. Since then, her parents have died, the château has passed into other hands, she is head of a convent in Bretagne, and I—I lie here, the last of my name, a hopeless invalid, with not a penny to call my own. Rich once, and young, and fair, and proud; sad once, and doubting how to bear a lonely future, I know the meaning of Anne’s story now. “I have waited for thee, O Lord! And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.”
While I wait for him, I pray. It does not grieve me that I do not hear from Anne. La Mère Angélique is more to me, and nearer to me, than when, in days long past, we spoke face to face. For I know we meet in the sure refuge of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and that, with saints on earth and saints in glory, and the souls beneath the altar, we pray together the same prayer—“Thy kingdom come.”
DUNLUCE CASTLE.
(COUNTY ANTRIM.)
Oh! of the fallen most fallen, yet of the proud
Proudest; sole-seated on thy tower-girt rock;
Breasting for ever circling ocean’s shock;
With blind sea-caves for ever dinned and loud;
Now sunset-gilt; now wrapt in vapor-shroud;
Till distant ships—so well thy bastions mock
Primeval nature’s work in joint and block—
Misdeem her ramparts, round thee bent and bowed,
For thine, and on her walls, men say, have hurled
The red artillery store designed for thee:—
Thy wars are done! Henceforth perpetually
Thou restest, like some judged, impassive world
Whose sons, their probatory period past,
Have left that planet, void amid the vast.
Aubrey de Vere.
SPACE.
III.
Bodies have bulk or volume, whereby they are said to occupy a certain place, and to fill it with their dimensions. Hence, to complete our task, we have now to consider space in relation with the volumes and places of bodies. To proceed orderly, we must first determine the proper definition of “place,” and its division; then we shall examine a few questions concerning the relation of each body to its place, and particularly the difficult and interesting one whether bodies can be really bilocated and multilocated.
Place.—Aristotle, in the fourth book of his Physics, defines the place of a body as “the surface by which the body is immediately surrounded and enveloped”—“Locus est extrema superficies corporis continentis immobilis.” This definition was accepted by nearly all the ancients. The best of their representatives, S. Thomas, says: “Locus est terminus corporis continentis”—viz., The place of a body is the surface of the body which contains it; and the Schoolmen very generally define place to be “the concave surface of the surrounding body: Superficies concava corporis ambientis.” Thus, according to the followers of Aristotle, no body can have place unless it is surrounded by some other body. Immobility was also believed to be necessarily included in the notion of place: Superficies immobilis. Cardinal de Lugo says: “the word place seems to be understood as meaning the real surface of a surrounding body, not, however, as simply having its extension all around, but as immovable—that is, as attached to a determinate imaginary space.”[179] We do not see what can be the meaning of this last phrase. For De Lugo holds that “real space” is the equivalent of “place,” and that space, as distinguished from place, is nothing real: Non est aliquid reale.[180] His imaginary space is, therefore, a mere nothing. How are we, then, to understand that a real surface can be “attached to a determinate imaginary space”? Can a real being be attached to a determinate nothing? Are there many nothings? or nothings possessing distinct determinations? We think that these questions must all be answered in the negative, and that neither Cardinal de Lugo, nor any one else who considers imaginary space as a mere nothing, can account for the immobility thus attributed to place.
The reason why Aristotle’s definition of place came to be generally adopted by the old Schoolmen is very plain. For, in the place occupied by any given body, two things can be considered, viz., the limiting surface, and the dimensive quantity which extends within the limiting surface. Now, as the ancients believed the matter of which bodies are composed to be endowed with continuity, it was natural that they should look upon the dimensive quantity included within the limiting surface as an appurtenance of the matter itself, and that they should consider it, not as an intrinsic constituent of the place occupied, but as a distinct reality through which the body could occupy a certain place. According to this notion of dimensive quantity, the limiting surface was retained as the sole constituent of the place occupied; and the dimensions within the surface being thus excluded from the notion of place, were attached to the matter of the body itself, as a special accident inhering in it.
This manner of conceiving things is still looked upon as unobjectionable by those philosophers who think that the old metaphysics has been carried to such a degree of perfection by the peripatetics as to have nothing or little to learn from the modern positive sciences. But whoever has once realized the fact that the dimensions of bodies are not continuous lines of matter, but intervals, or relations, in space, will agree that such dimensions do not inhere in the matter, but are extrinsic relations between material terms distinctly ubicated. What is called the volume of a body is nothing but the resultant of a system of relations in space. The matter of the body supplies nothing to its constitution except the extrinsic terms of the relations. The foundation of those relations is not to be found in the body, but in space alone, as we have proved in our last article; and the relations themselves do not inhere in the terms, but only intervene between them. Hence the dimensive quantity of the volume is intrinsically connected with the place it occupies, and must enter into the definition of place as its material constituent, as we are going to show.
As to the Aristotelic definition of place, we have the following objections: First, a good definition always consists of two notions, the one generic and determinable, as its material element, the other differential and determinant, as its formal element. Now, Aristotle’s definition of place exhibits at best only the formal or determinant, and omits entirely the material or determinable. It is evident, in fact, that the surface of any given body determines the limits and the figure of something involved in the notion of place. But what is this something? It cannot be a mere nothing; for nothing does not receive limits and figure, as real limits and real figure must be settled upon something real. This something must therefore be either the quantity of the matter, or the quantity of the volume enclosed within the limiting surface. And as we cannot admit that the quantity of the place occupied by a body is the quantity of matter contained in the body (because bodies which have different quantities of matter can occupy equal places), we are bound to conclude that the quantity of the place occupied by a body is the quantity of the volume comprised within the limiting surface. This is the determinable or material constituent of place; for this, and this alone, is determined by the concave surface of the surrounding body. In the same manner as a cubic body contains dimensions within its cubic form, so also a cubic place contains dimensions under its cubic surface; hence the place of a body has volume, the same volume as the body; and therefore it cannot be defined as a mere limiting surface.
Secondly, the definition of a thing should express what every one understands the thing to be. But no one understands the word “place” as meaning the exterior limit of the body which occupies it, therefore the exterior limit of the body is not the true definition of place. The minor of this syllogism is manifest. For we predicate of place many things which cannot be predicated of the exterior limit of the body. We say, for instance, that a place is full, half-full, or empty; that it is capable of so many objects, persons, etc.; and it is plain that these predicates cannot appertain to the exterior limit of the body, but they exclusively belong to the capacity within the limiting boundary. Hence a definition of place which overlooks such a capacity is defective.
Thirdly, to equal quantities of limiting surfaces do not necessarily correspond equal quantities of place. Therefore, the limiting surface is not synonymous with place, and cannot be its definition. The antecedent is well known. Take two cylinders having equal surfaces, but whose bases and altitudes are to one another in different ratios. It is evident by geometry that such cylinders will have different capacities—that is, there will be more occupable or occupied room in the one than in the other. The consequence, too, is plain; for, if the room, or place, can be greater or less while the limiting surface does not become greater or less, it is clear that the place is not the limiting surface.
Fourthly, what Aristotle and his school called “the surface of the surrounding body,” is now admitted to be formed by an assemblage of unextended material points, perfectly isolated; and therefore such a surface does not constitute a continuous material envelope, as it was believed in earlier times. Now, since those isolated points have no dimensions, but are simply terms of the dimensions in space, the so-called “surface” owes its own dimensions to the free intervals between those points, just as the dimensions also of the volume enclosed owe their existence to similar intervals between the same points. Therefore the same terms which mark in space the limit of place, mark also its volume; and thus the volume under the surface belongs to the place itself no less than does the limiting surface.
Fifthly, a body in vacuum would have its absolute place; and yet in vacuum there is no surface of surrounding bodies. Therefore an exterior surrounding body is not needed to constitute place. In fact, the body itself determines its own place by the extreme terms of its own bodily dimensions. This the philosophers of the peripatetic school could not admit, because they thought that the place of the body could not move with the body, but ought to remain “attached to a determinate imaginary space.” But, in so reasoning, they confounded the absolute place with the relative, as will be shown hereafter. Yet they conceded that a body in vacuum would have its place; and, when asked to point out there the surface of a surrounding body, they could not answer, except by abandoning the Aristotelic definition and by resorting to the centre and the poles of the world, thus exchanging the absolute place (locus) for the relative (situs), without reflecting that they had no right to admit a relative place where, according to their definition, the absolute was wanting.
Sixthly, the true definition of place must be so general as to be applicable to all possible places. But the Aristotelic definition does not apply to all places. Therefore such a definition is not true. The major of our argument needs no proof. The minor is proved thus: There are places not only within surfaces, but also within lines, and on the lines themselves; for, if on the surface of a body we describe a circle or a triangle, it is evident that a place will be marked and determined on that surface. Its limiting boundary, however, will be, not the surface of a surrounding body, but simply the circumference of the circle, or the perimeter of the triangle.
For these reasons we maintain that place cannot properly be defined as “the surface of the surrounding body.” As to the additional limitation, that such a surface should be considered as “immovable”—that is, affixed to a determinate space (imaginary, of course, according to the peripatetic theory, and therefore wholly fictitious)—we need only say that even if it were possible to attach the surface of a body to a determinate space, which is not the case, yet this condition could not be admitted in the definition of place, because the absolute place of a body is invariably the same, wherever it be, in absolute space, and does not change except as compared with other places. Absolute place, just as absolute ubication, has but one manner of existing in absolute space; for all places, considered in themselves, are extrinsic terminations of the same infinite virtuality, and are all equally in the centre, so to say, of its infinite expanse, whatever be their mutual relations.
True Notion of Place.—What is, then, the true definition of place? Webster describes it in his Dictionary as “a particular portion of space of indefinite extent, occupied, or intended to be occupied, by any person or thing, and considered as the space where a person or thing does or may rest, or has rested, as distinct from space in general.” This is in fact the meaning of the word “place” in the popular language. The philosophical definition of place, as gathered from this description, would be: “Place is a particular portion of space.” This is the very definition which all philosophers, before Aristotle, admitted, and which Aristotle endeavored to refute, on the ground that, when a body moves through space, its place remains intrinsically the same.
We have shown in our last article that space considered in itself has no parts; but those who admit portion of space, consider space as a reality dependent on the dimensions of the bodies by which it is occupied—that is, they call “space” those resultant relative intervals which have their foundation in space itself. If we were to take the word “space” in this popular sense, we might well say that “place is a portion of space,” because any given place is but one out of the many places determined by the presence of bodies in the whole world. On the other hand, since space, properly so called, is itself virtually extended—that is, equivalent in its absolute simplicity to infinite extension, and since virtual extension suggests the thought of virtual parts, we might admit that there are virtual portions of space in this sense, that space as the foundation of all local relations corresponds by its virtuality to all the dimensions and intervals mensurable between all terms ubicated, and receives from them distinct extrinsic denominations. Thus, space as occupied by the sun is virtually distinguished from itself as occupied by the moon, not because it has a distinct entity in the sun and another in the moon, but because it has two distinct extrinsic terminations. We might therefore admit that place is “a virtual portion of space determined by material limits”; and we might even omit the epithet “virtual” if it were understood that the word “space” was taken as synonymous with the dimensions of bodies, as is taken by those who deny the reality of vacuum. But, though this manner of speaking is and will always remain popular, owing to its agreement with our imagination and to its conciseness, which makes it preferable for our ordinary intercourse, we think that the place of a body, in proper philosophical language, should be defined as “a system of correlations between the terms which mark out the limits of the body in space”; and therefore place in general, whether really occupied or not, should be defined as “a system of correlations between ubications marking out the limits of dimensive quantity.”
This definition expresses all that we imply and that Webster includes in the description of place; but it changes the somewhat objectionable phrase “portion of space” into what people mean by it, viz., “a system of correlations between distinct ubications,” thereby showing that it is not the absolute entity of fundamental space, but only the resultant relations in space, that enter into the intrinsic constitution of place.
By “a system of correlations” we mean the adequate result of the combination of all the intervals from every single term to every other within the limits assumed, in every direction. Such a result will therefore represent either a volume, or a surface, or a line, according as the terms considered within the given limits are differently disposed in space. Thus a spherical place results from the mutual relations intervening between all the terms of its geometric surface; and therefore it implies all the intervals which can be measured, and all the lines that can be traced, in all directions, from any of those terms to any other within the given limits. In like manner, a triangular place results from the mutual relations intervening between all the terms forming its perimeter; and therefore it implies all the intervals and lines of movement which can be traced, in all directions, from any of those terms to any other within the given limits.
In the definition we have given, the material or determinable element is the system of correlations or intervals which are mensurable within the limiting terms; the formal or determinant is the disposition of the limiting terms themselves—that is, the definite boundary which determines the extent of those intervals, and gives to the place a definite shape.
Thus it appears that, although there is no place without space, nevertheless the entity of space does not enter into the constitution of place as an intrinsic constituent, but only as the extrinsic foundation. This is what we have endeavored to express as clearly as we could in our definition of place. As, however, in our ordinary intercourse we cannot well speak of place with such nice circumlocutions as are needed in philosophical treatises, we do not much object to the common notion that place is “space intercepted by a limiting boundary,” and we ourselves have no difficulty in using this expression, out of philosophy, owing to the loose meaning attached to the word “space” in common language; for all distances and intervals in space are called “spaces,” even in mechanics; and thus, when we hear of “space intercepted,” we know that the speakers do not refer to the absolute entity of space (which they have been taught to identify with nothingness), but merely to the intervals resulting from the extrinsic terminations of that entity.
Most of the Schoolmen (viz., all those who considered void space as imaginary and unreal) agreed, as we have intimated, with Aristotle, that the notion of place involves nothing but the surface of a surrounding body, and contended that within the limits of that surface there was no such chimerical thing as mere space, but only the quantity of the body itself. Suarez, in his Metaphysics (Disp. 51, sect. 1, n. 9), mentions the opinion of those who maintained that place is the space occupied by a body, and argues against it on the ground that no one can say what kind of being such a space is. Some have affirmed, says he, that such a space is a body indivisible and immaterial—which leads to an open contradiction—though they perhaps considered this body to be “indivisible,” not because it had no parts, but because its parts could not be separated. They also called it “immaterial,” on account of its permeability to all bodies. But this opinion, he justly adds, is against reason and even against faith; for, on the one hand this space should be eternal, uncreated, and infinite, whilst on the other no body can be admitted to have these attributes.
Others, Suarez continues, thought that the space which can be occupied by bodies is mere quantity extending all around without end. This opinion was refuted by Aristotle, and is inadmissible, because there cannot be quantitative dimensions without a substance, and because the bodies which would occupy such a space have already their own dimensions, which cannot be compenetrated with the dimensions of space. And moreover, such a quantity would be either eternal and uncreated—which is against faith—or created with all other things, and therefore created in space; which shows that space itself is not such a quantity.
Others finally opine, with greater probability, says he, that space, as distinct from the bodies that fill it, is nothing real and positive, but a mere emptiness, implying both the absence of bodies and the aptitude to be filled by bodies. Of this opinion Toletus says (4 Phys. q. 3) that it is probable, and that it cannot be demonstratively refuted. Yet, adds Suarez, it can be shown that such a space, as distinct from bodies, is in fact nothing; for it is neither a substance nor an accident, nor anything created or temporal, but eternal.
Such is the substance of the reasons adduced by Suarez to prove that the space occupied by bodies is nothing real. Had he, like Lessius, turned his thought to the extrinsic terminability of God’s immensity, he would have easily discovered that, to establish the reality of space, none of those old hypotheses which he refuted were needed. As we have already settled this point in a preceding article, we will not return to it. It may, however, be remarked that what Suarez says regarding the incompenetrability of the quantity of space with the quantity of the body is based entirely on the assumption that bodies have their own volume independently of space—an assumption which, though plausibly maintained by the ancients, can by no means be reconciled with the true notion of the volume of bodies as now established by physical science and accepted by all philosophers. As all dimensive quantity arises from relations in space, so it is owing to space itself that bodies have volume; and therefore there are not, as the ancients imagined, two volumes compenetrated, the one of space, and the other of matter; but there is one volume alone determined by the material terms related through space. And thus there is no ground left for the compenetration of two quantities.
S. Thomas also, in his Commentary to the Physics of Aristotle (4 Phys. lect. 6), and in the opuscule, De Natura Loci, argues that there is no space within the limiting surface of the body, for two reasons. The first is, that such a quantity of space would be an accident without a subject: Sequitur quod esset aliquod accidens absque subjecto; quod est impossibile. The second is, that if there is space within the surface of the body, as all the parts of the body are in the volume of the same, so will the places of all the parts be in the place of the whole; and consequently, there will be as many places compenetrated with one another as there can be divisions in the dimensions of the body. But these dimensions admit of an infinite division. Therefore, infinite places will be compenetrated together: Sequitur quod sint infinita loca simul; quod est impossibile.
These two reasons could not but have considerable weight in a time when material continuity formed the base of the physical theory of quantity, and when space without matter was considered a chimera; but in our time the case is quite different. To the first reason we answer, that the space within the surface of the body will not be “an accident without a subject.” In fact, such a space can be understood in two manners, viz., either as the foundation of the intervals, or as the intervals themselves; and in neither case will there be an accident without a subject. For, the space which is the foundation of the intervals is no accident; it is the virtuality of God’s immensity, as we have proved; and, therefore, there can be no question about its subject. Moreover, such a space is indeed within the limits of the body, but it is also without, as it is not limited by them. These limits, as compared with space, are extrinsic terms; and therefore they do not belong to space, but to the body alone. Lastly, although without space there can be no place, yet space is neither the material nor the formal constituent of place, but only the extrinsic ground of local relations, just as eternity is not an intrinsic constituent of time, but only the extrinsic ground of successive duration. Whence it is manifest that the entity of space is not the dimensive quantity of the body, but the eminent reason of its dimensions.
If, on the other hand, space is understood in the popular sense as meaning the accidental intervals between the limits of the body, then it is evident that such intervals will not be without their proportionate subject. Relations have a subject of predication, not of inhesion; for relation is a thing whose entity, according to the scholastic definition, consists entirely of a mere connotation; cuius totum esse est ad aliud se habere. Hence all relation is merely ad aliud, and cannot be in alio. Accordingly, the intervals between the terms of the body are between them, but do not inhere in them; and they have a sufficient subject—the only subject, indeed, which they require, for the very reason that they exist between real terms, with a real foundation. Thus the first reason objected is radically solved.
To the second reason we answer, that it is impossible to conceive an infinite multitude of places in one total place, unless we admit the existence of an infinite multitude of limiting terms—that is, unless we assume that matter is mathematically continuous. But, since material continuity is now justly considered as a baseless and irrational hypothesis, as our readers know, the compenetration of infinite places with one another becomes an impossibility.
Yet, as all bodies contain a very great number of material terms, it may be asked: Would the existence of space within the limits of place prove the compenetration of a finite number of places? Would it prove, for instance, that the places of different bodies existing in a given room compenetrate the place of the room? The answer depends wholly on the meaning attached to the word “space.” If we take “space” as the foundation of the relations between the terms of a place, then different places will certainly be compenetrated, inasmuch as the entity of space is the same, though differently terminated, in every one of them. But, if we take “space” as meaning the system of relative intervals between the terms of a body, then the place of a room will not be compenetrated with the places of the bodies it contains; because neither the intervals nor the terms of one place are the intervals or the terms of another, nor have they anything common except the absolute entity of their extrinsic foundation. Now, since place is not space properly, but only a system of correlations between ubications marking out the limits of the body in space, it follows that no compenetration of one place with another is possible so long as the terms of the one do not coincide with the terms of the other.
S. Thomas remarks also, in the same place, that if a recipient full of water contains space, then, besides the dimensions of the water, there would be in the same recipient the dimensions of space, and these latter would therefore be compenetrated with the former. Quum aqua est in vase, præter dimensiones aquæ sunt ibi aliæ dimensiones spatii penetrantes dimensiones aquæ. This would certainly be the case were it true that the dimensions of the body are materially continuous, as S. Thomas with all his contemporaries believed. But the truth is that the dimensions of bodies do not consist in the extension of continuous matter, but in the extension of the intervals between the limits of the bodies, which is greater or less according as it requires a greater or less extension of movement to be measured. The volume of a body—that is, the quantity of the place it occupies—is exactly the same whether it be full or empty, provided the limiting terms remain the same and in the same relation to one another. It is not the matter, therefore, that constitutes its dimensions. And then there are, and can be, no distinct dimensions of matter compenetrating the dimensions of place. But enough about the nature of place. Let us proceed to its division.
Division of Place.—Place in general may be divided into real and imaginary, according as its limiting terms exist in nature or are only imagined by us. This division is so clear that it needs no explanation. It might be asked whether there are not also ideal places. We answer, that strictly ideal places there are none; for the ideal is the object of our intellect, whilst place is the object of our senses and imagination. Hence the so-called “ideal” places are nothing but “imaginary” places.
Place, whether real or imaginary, is again divided by geometers into linear, superficial, and cubic or solid, according to the nature of their limiting boundaries. A place limited by surfaces is the place of a volume or geometric solid. A place limited by lines is the place of a surface. A place limited by mere points is the place of a line.
The ancients, when defining place as “the surface of the surrounding body,” connected the notion of place with the quantity of volume, without taking notice of the other two kinds just mentioned. This, too, was a necessary consequence of their assumption of continuous matter. For, if matter is intrinsically extended in length, breadth, and depth, all places must be extended in a similar manner. But it is a known fact that the word “place” (locus) is used now, and was used in all times, in connection not only with geometric volumes, but also with geometric surfaces and with geometric lines; and as the geometric quantities have their counterpart in the physical order, it is manifest that such geometric places cannot be excluded from the division of place. Can we not on any surface draw a line circumscribing a circle or any other close figure? And can we not point out the “place” where the circle or figure is marked out? There are therefore places of which the boundaries are lines, not surfaces. And again, can we not fix two points on a given line, and consider the interval between them as one of the many places which can be designated along the line? The word “place” in its generality applies to any kind of dimensive quantity in space. Those who pretend to limit it to “the surface of a volume” should tell us what other term is to be used when we have to mention the place of a plane figure on a wall, or of a linear length on the intersection of two surfaces. It will be said that the ancients in this case used the word Ubi. But we reply that Ubi and Locus were taken by them as synonymous. The quantities bounded by lines, or terminated by points, were therefore equivalently admitted to have their own “places”; which proves that the definition of place which philosophers left us in their books, did not express all that they themselves meant when using the word, and therefore it was not practically insisted upon. With us the case is different. The Ubi, as defined by us, designates a single point in space, and is distinct from locus; hence we do not admit that our ubi is a place; for there is no place within a point. But the philosophers of the old school could not limit the real ubication of matter to a mere point, owing to their opinion that matter was continuous.
Thus we have three supreme kinds of place—the linear, with one dimension, length; the superficial, with two dimensions, length and breadth; the cubic or solid, with three dimensions, length, breadth, and depth. The true characteristic difference between these kinds of place is drawn from their formal constituents, viz., from their boundaries. The cubic place is a place terminated by surfaces. The superficial place is a place terminated by lines. The linear place is a place terminated by two points.
These supreme species admit of further subdivision, owing to the different geometrical figures affected by their respective boundaries. Thus the place of a body may be tetrahedric, hexahedric, spherical, etc., and the place of a surface may be triangular, polygonal, circular, etc.
Place is also divided into absolute and relative. It is called absolute when it is considered secundum se—that is, as to its entity, or as consisting of a system of correlation within a definite limit. It is called relative when it is considered in connection with some other place or places, as more or less distant from them, or as having with respect to them this or that position or situation.
The absolute place of a body, whatever our imagination may suggest to the contrary, is always the same as long as the body remains under the same dimensions, be it at rest or in movement. In fact, whenever we speak of a change of place, we mean that the place of a body acquires a new relation to the place of some other body—that is, we mean the mere change of its relativity. When the world was believed to be a sphere of continuous matter with no real space outside of it, the absolute place of a body could be considered as corresponding to one or another definite portion of that sphere, and therefore as changeable; but since the reality of infinite space independent of matter has been established, it is manifest that absolute place has no relation to the limits of the material world, but only to the infinity of space, with respect to which bodies cannot change their place any more than a point can change its ubication. Hence, when a body moves, its relative place, or, better, the relativity of its place to the places of other bodies, is changed; but its absolute place remains the same. Thus the earth, in describing its orbit, takes different positions round the sun, and, while preserving its absolute place unchanged, it undergoes a continuous change of its relativity.
Lastly, place is also divided into intrinsic and extrinsic. Omitting the old explanations of this division, we may briefly state that the intrinsic place is that which is determined by the dimensions and boundary of the body, and therefore is coextensive with it. The extrinsic place of a body is a place greater than the body which is placed in it. Thus Rome is the extrinsic place of the Vatican Palace, and the Vatican Palace is the extrinsic place of the Pope; because the Vatican Palace is in Rome, and the Pope in the Vatican Palace.
Occupation of Place.—We have now to answer a few questions about the occupation of place. The first is, whether bodies fill the space they occupy. The second is, whether the same place can be simultaneously occupied by two bodies. The third is, whether the place limits and conserves the body it contains. The fourth is, whether the same body can be miraculously in two places or more at the same time.
That bodies fill place is a very common notion, because people do not make any marked distinction between filling and occupying. But to fill and to occupy are not synonymous. To fill a place is to leave no vacuum within it; and this is evidently impossible without continuous matter. As we have proved that continuous matter does not exist, we cannot admit that any part of place, however small, can be filled. Place, however, is occupied. In fact, the material elements of which bodies are ultimately composed, by their presence in space occupy distinct points in space—that is, take possession of them, maintain themselves in them, and from them direct their action all around, by which they manifest to us their existence, ubication, and other properties. This is the meaning of occupation. Hence the formal reason of occupation is the presence of material elements in space. Therefore, the place of a body is occupied by the presence in it of discrete material points, none of which fill space—that is to say, the place is occupied, not filled. The common expression, “a place filled with matter,” may, however, be admitted in this sense, that when the place is occupied by a body, it does not naturally allow the intrusion of another body. This amounts to saying, not that the place is really filled, but that the resistance offered by the body to the intrusion of another body prevents its passage as effectually as if there were left no occupable room. So much for the first question.
The second question may be answered thus: Since space is not filled by the occupying bodies, the reason why bodies exclude one another from their respective places must be traced not to a want of room in them, but only to their mutual opposite actions. These actions God can neutralize and overcome by an action of His own; and if this be done, nothing will remain that can prevent the compenetration of two bodies and of their respective places. It is therefore possible, at least supernaturally, for two bodies to occupy the same place. Nevertheless, we must bear in mind that, as the elements of the one body are not the elements of the other, so the ubications of the first set of elements are not the ubications of the second, and consequently the correlations of the first set are not identically the correlations of the second. Hence, if one body penetrates into the place of another body, their places will be intertwined, but distinct from each other.
The third question must be answered in the negative, notwithstanding the contrary opinion of all the Peripatetics. The place does not limit and conserve the body by which it is occupied; it is the body itself that limits and conserves its own place. For what is it that gives to a place its formal determination, and its specific and numeric distinction from all other places, but its extreme boundary? Now, this boundary is marked out by the very elements which constitute the limits of the body. It is, therefore, the body itself that by its own limits defines the limits of its own place, and constitutes the place formally such or such. There is the same connection between a body and its place as between movement and its duration. There is no movement without time, nor time without movement; but movement does not result from time, for it is time itself that results from movement. Hence, the duration of the movement is limited by the movement itself. In like manner, there is no body without place, and no place without a body; but the body does not result from the place, for it is the place itself that results from the presence of the body in space. Hence, the place of the body is formally determined by the body itself. Therefore, it is the body that limits and conserves its place, not the place that limits and conserves the body.
This conclusion is confirmed by the manner in which our knowledge of place is acquired. Our perception of the place of a body is caused, not by the place, but by the body, which acts upon our senses from different points of its surface, and depicts in our organs the figure of its limits. This figure, therefore, is the figure of the place only inasmuch as it is the figure of the body; or, in other terms, it is the body itself that by its limits determines the limits of its place.
From this it follows that, when a body is said to be in a place circumscriptively, we ought to interpret the phrase, not in the sense that the body is circumscribed by its place, as Aristotle and his followers believed, but in this sense, that the body circumscribes its place by its own limits. And for the same reason, those beings which do not exist circumscriptively in place (and which are said to be in place only definitively, as is the case with created spirits) are substances which do not circumscribe any place, because they have no material terms by which to mark dimensions in space.
The fourth and last question is a very difficult one. A great number of eminent authors maintain with S. Thomas that real bilocation is intrinsically impossible; others, on the contrary, hold, with Suarez and Bellarmine, that it is possible. Without pretending to decide the question, we will simply offer to our reader a few remarks on the arguments adduced against the possibility of real bilocation.
The strongest of those arguments is, in our opinion, the following. The real bilocation of a body requires the real bilocation of all its parts, and therefore is impossible unless each primitive element of the body can have two distinct, real ubications at the same time the one natural and the other supernatural. But it is impossible for a simple and primitive element to have two distinct, real ubications at the same time, for two distinct, real ubications presuppose two distinct, real terminations of the virtuality of God’s immensity, and two distinct, real terminations are intrinsically impossible without two distinct, real terms. It is therefore evident that one point of matter cannot mark out two points in space, and that real bilocation is impossible.
To evade this argument, it might be said that it is not evident, after all, that the same real term cannot correspond to two terminations. For to duplicate the ubication of an element of matter means to cause the same element, which is here present to God, to be there also present to God. Now this requires only the correspondence of the material point to two distinct virtualities of divine immensity. Is this a contradiction? The correspondence to one virtuality is certainly not the negation of the correspondence to another; hence it is not necessary to concede that there is a contradiction between the two. It may be added that the supernatural possibility of bilocation seems to be established by many facts we read in ecclesiastical history and the lives of saints, as also by the dogma of the Real Presence of Our Lord’s Body in so many different places in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Lastly, although real bilocation is open to many objections on account of its supernatural character, yet these objections can be sufficiently answered, as may be seen in Suarez, in part. 3, disp. 48, sec. 4.
These reasons may have a certain degree of probability; nevertheless, before admitting that a point of matter can mark two points in space at the same time, it is necessary to ascertain whether a single real term can terminate two virtualities of God’s immensity. This is a thing which can scarcely be conceived; for two distinct ubications result from two distinct terminations; and it is quite evident, as we have already intimated, that there cannot be two distinct terminations if there be not two distinct terms. For the virtualities of divine immensity are not distinct from one another in their entity, but only by extrinsic denomination, inasmuch as they are distinctly terminated by distinct extrinsic terms. Therefore, a single extrinsic term cannot correspond to two distinct virtualities of divine immensity; whence it follows that a single material point cannot have two distinct ubications.
As to the facts of ecclesiastical history above alluded to, it might be answered that their nature is not sufficiently known to base an argument upon them. Did any saints ever really exist in two places? For aught we know, they may have existed really in one place, and only phenomenically in another. Angels occupy no place, and have no bodies; and yet they appeared in place, and showed themselves in bodily forms, which need not have been more than phenomenal. Disembodied souls have sometimes appeared with phenomenal bodies. Why should we be bound to admit that when saints showed themselves in two places, their body was not phenomenal in one and real only in the other?
The fact of the Real Presence of Christ’s body in the Blessed Sacrament, though much insisted upon by some authors, seems to have no bearing on the present question. For, our Lord’s body in the Eucharist has no immediate connection with place, but is simply denominated by the place of the sacramental species, as S. Thomas proves; for it is there ad modum substantiæ, as the holy doctor incessantly repeats, and not ad modum corporis locati.[181] Hence, S. Thomas himself, notwithstanding the real presence of Christ’s body on our altars, denies without fear the possibility of real bilocation properly so called.
Though not all the arguments brought against real bilocation are equally conclusive, some of them are very strong, and seem unanswerable. Suarez, who tried to answer them, did not directly solve them, but only showed that they would prove too much if they were applied to the mystery of the Real Presence. The inference is true; but S. Thomas and his followers would answer that their arguments do not apply to the Eucharistic mystery.
One of those arguments is the following: If a man were simultaneously in two places, say, in Rome and in London, his quantity would be separated from itself; for it would be really distant from itself, and relatively opposed to itself. But this is impossible. For how can there be real opposition without two real terms?
Some might answer, that a man bilocated is one term substantially, but equivalent to two locally, and that it is not his substance nor his quantity that is distant from itself, but only one of his locations as compared with the other. But we do not think that this answer is satisfactory. For, although distance requires only two local terms, we do not see how there can be local terms without two distinct beings. One and the same being cannot be actually in two places without having two contrary modes: and this is impossible; for two contraries cannot coexist in the same subject, as S. Thomas observes.[182]
Another of those arguments is based on the nature of quantity. One and the same quantity cannot occupy two distinct places. For quantity is the formal cause of the occupation of place, and no formal cause can have two adequate formal effects. Hence, as one body has but one quantity, so it can occupy but one place.
This argument cannot be evaded by saying that the quantity which is the formal cause of occupation is not the quantity of the mass, but the quantity of the volume. In fact, the duplication of the volume would duplicate the place; but the volume cannot be duplicated unless each material term at the surface of the body can acquire two ubications. Now, this is impossible, as a single term cannot correspond to two extrinsic terminations of divine immensity, as already remarked. Hence, the quantity of volume cannot be duplicated in distinct places without duplicating also the mass of the body—that is, there cannot be two places without two bodies.
A third argument is as follows: If a body were bilocated, it would be circumscribed and not circumscribed. Circumscribed, as is admitted, because its dimensions would coextend with its place; not circumscribed, because it would also exist entirely outside of its place.
This argument, in our opinion, is not valid; because it is not the place that circumscribes the body, but the body that circumscribes its own place. Hence, if a body were bilocated, it would circumscribe two places, and would be within both alike. It will be said that this, too, is impossible. We incline very strongly to the same opinion, but not on the strength of the present argument.
A fourth argument is, that if a thing can be bilocated, there is no reason why it could not be trilocated and multilocated. But, if so, then one man could be so replicated as to form by himself alone two battalions fighting together; and consequently such a man might in one battalion be victorious, and in the other cut to pieces; in one place suffer intense cold, and in another excessive heat; in one pray, and in another swear. The absurdity of these conclusions shows the absurdity of the assumption from which they follow.
This argument is by no means formidable. Bilocation and multilocation are a duplication and multiplication of the place, not of the substance. Now, the principle of operation in man is his substance, whilst his place is only a condition of the existence and of the movements of his body. Accordingly, those passions of heat and cold, and such like, which depend on local movement, can be multiplied and varied with the multiplication of the places, but the actions which proceed from the intrinsic faculties of man can not be thus varied and multiplied. Hence, from the multilocation of a man, it would not follow that he, as existing in one place, could slay himself as existing in another place, nor that he could pray in one and swear in another. After all, bilocation and multilocation would, by the hypothesis, be the effect of supernatural intervention, and, as such, they would be governed by divine wisdom. Hence it is unreasonable to assume the possibility of such ludicrous contingencies as are mentioned in the argument; for God does not lend his supernatural assistance to foster what is incongruous or absurd.
To conclude. It seems to us that those among the preceding arguments which have a decided weight against the possibility of real bilocation, are all radically contained in this, that one and the same element of matter cannot have at the same time two modes of being, of which the one entails the exclusion of the other. Now, the mode of being by which an element is constituted in a point, A, excludes the mode of being by which it would be constituted in another point, B. For, since the ubication in A is distant from the ubication in B, the two ubications are not only distinct, but relatively opposed, as S. Thomas has remarked: Distinguuntur ad invicem secundum aliquam loci contrarietatem; and therefore they cannot belong both together to the same subject. On the other hand, we have also proved that a single element cannot terminate two distinct virtualities of God’s immensity, because no distinct virtualities can be conceived except with reference to distinct extrinsic terms. Hence, while the element in question has its ubication in A, it is utterly incapable of any other ubication. To admit that one and the same material point can terminate two virtualities of divine immensity, seems to us as absurd as to admit that one and the same created being is the term of two distinct creations. For this reason we think, with S. Thomas, that bilocation, properly so called, is an impossibility.