What can be clearer, relatively to the intuition of space, than that when any thing is in a place it cannot be out of that place? But the holy Doctor, rising above sensible representations, boldly maintains that God may be whole in the whole, and in every part of the whole, as the soul is whole in every part of the body. And why? Because what is called totality in corporeal things relates to quantity, but the totality of incorporeal things relates to essence, and cannot be measured by quantity, and is not confined to any place.
In the Treatise on the Angels,[55] he says that the expression to be in place is used equivocally (œquivoce),[56] when applied to angels and bodies. Bodies are in place by the contact of measurable quantity, but angels by virtual quantity, that is to say, by the action which they may exercise upon a body. We cannot, therefore, say that an angel has a position in the continued (quod habeat situm in continuo). In the Treatise on the Soul[57] he maintains that the soul is whole in every part of the body. He distinguishes the totality of essence from the totality of quantity, and makes use of an argument similar to that which he used with respect to the angels. The more we reflect on this doctrine the more profound it appears; those who have made light of it, have shown that they never penetrated beyond the surface in all that concerns the relations of spiritual to corporeal things. It is generally dangerous to laugh at opinions held by great men; for if they are not certain, they have, at least, powerful arguments in their favor. Nothing is more contrary to sensible representations than the possibility of any thing being in different places at the same time, but we shall find nothing more in conformity with the principles of sound philosophy than this possibility, after we have profoundly analyzed the relations of extension with unextended things, and discovered the difference between the position of quantity and the position of causality.
198. From these doctrines it may be concluded, that to be in space is not a general condition of all existences, even according to the manner of existences; for we can conceive existences without relation to any place. Many have confounded imagination with understanding on this point, and believed that what is impossible for the former is equally so for the latter. It is certain that we can imagine nothing without referring it to points of space, and even in purely intellectual objects there is always a sensible representation, but the understanding regards these representations as false and does not conform to them. As imagination is a sort of continuation of sensibility, or an internal sense, and the basis of sensations is extension; it is impossible for us to exercise this internal sense, without the presence of space, which, as we have shown, is only the idea of extension in general. Position in space is consequently a general condition of all things, as perceived by the senses, but not as perceived by the intellect.
[CHAPTER XXVIII.]
CONTINGENCY OF CORPOREAL RELATIONS.
199. Position in place is the relation of a body to other bodies. Is this relation necessary? I distinguish: conditionally, yes; essentially, no. God has established this relation, and therefore it is necessary; but God might have ordered it otherwise, and can even now change it, without varying the essence of things.
If we admit, as we must, a correspondence between the subjective and the objective, or between the appearance and the reality, we cannot deny that the relations of bodies are constant, and this constancy must proceed from some necessity. But that the existing order is subject to fixed laws, does not prove that these laws have their root in the essence of things, in such a manner that, supposing the existence of objects, their relations could not have been very different from what they actually are.
200. In order to assert that the existing order of the universe is intrinsically necessary, we must know the essence of things; but this is not possible for us, because objects are not immediately present to our understanding, and we see them only under one aspect, that which places them in relation with our sensitive faculties. The best proof of our ignorance of the essence of bodies is the great division of opinion on this subject. Some maintain that the essence of bodies is extension or dimensions; and others that extension is merely an accident, not only distinct, but even separable from corporeal substance.
The great obscurity in which the investigation of the constitutive elements of bodies is involved, proves that their essence is unknown to us, and that we know nothing of them except their relation to our sensibility.