Our next proposition will afford a fifth proof of this conclusion. Meanwhile, we beg of our reader not to forget the restriction by which we have limited our present question. We have spoken of space absolutely considered as it is in itself—that is, of absolute space. Our conclusion, if applied to relative space, would not be entirely true; for relative space implies the existence of at least two contingent terms, and therefore involves something created. We make this remark because men are apt to confound relative with absolute space, owing to the sensible representations which always accompany our intellectual operations, and also because we think that the philosophical difficulties encountered by many writers in their investigation of the nature of space originated in the latent and unconscious assumption that their imagination of relative space was an intellectual concept of absolute space. It is thus that they were led to consider all space void of matter as imaginary and chimerical.

Quiddity of Absolute Space.—It now remains for us to ascertain the true nature of absolute space, and to point out its essential definition. Our task will not be difficult after the preceding conclusions. If absolute space is an uncreated, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable reality, it must be implied in some of the attributes of Godhead. Now, the divine attribute in which the reason of all possible ubications is contained, is immensity. Hence, absolute space is implied in God’s immensity, and we shall see that it is nothing else than the virtuality or the extrinsic terminability of immensity itself.

Before we prove this proposition, we must define the terms virtuality and terminability. “Virtuality” comes from virtus as formality from forma. Things that are actual owe their being to their form; hence, whatever expresses some actual degree of entity is styled “a formality.” Thus, personality, animality, rationality, etc., are formalities exhibiting the actual being of man under different aspects. Things, on the contrary, that have no formal existence, but which may be made to exist, owe the possibility of their existence to the power (virtus) of the efficient cause of which they can be the effect, or to the nature of the sufficient reason from which they may formally result. In both cases, the things in question are said to exist virtually, inasmuch as they are virtually contained in their efficient cause or in their sufficient reason. Hence, every efficient cause or sufficient reason, as compared with the effects which it can produce or with the results of which it may be the foundation, is said to have “virtuality”; for, the virtuality of all producible effects, as of all resultable relations, is to be found nowhere but in their efficient cause and in their formal reason. Thus all active power has a virtuality extending to all the acts of which it may be the causality, and all formal reason has a virtuality extending to all the results of which it may be the foundation. God’s omnipotence, for instance, virtually contains in itself the reality of all possible creatures, and therefore possesses an infinite virtuality. In a similar manner, God’s immensity has an infinite virtuality, as it virtually contains all possible ubications, and is the reason of their formal resultability. Omnipotence has an infinite virtuality as an efficient principle; immensity has an infinite virtuality as a formal source only.

These remarks about virtuality go far to explain the word “terminability.” Whenever an efficient cause produces an effect, its action is terminated to an actuable term; hence, so long as the effect is not produced, the power of the efficient cause is merely terminable. In the same manner, whenever a formal reason gives rise to an actual result, and whenever a formal principle gives being to a potential term, there is a formal termination; and therefore, so long as the result, or the actual being, has no existence, its formal reason is merely terminable. Hence, terminability has the same range as virtuality; for nothing that is virtually contained in an efficient or in a formal principle can pass from the virtual to the actual state except by the termination of an efficient or a formal act to a potential term.

We have said that absolute space is nothing else than the virtuality, or extrinsic terminability, of God’s immensity. The first proof of this conclusion is as follows. Absolute space is the possibility of all real ubications. But such a possibility is nothing else than the infinite virtuality of God’s immensity. Hence our conclusion. The major of our syllogism is obviously true, and is admitted by all, either in the same or in equivalent terms. The minor needs but little explanation; for we have already seen that absolute space is an uncreated reality, and therefore is something connected with some divine attribute; but the only attribute in which the possibility of all real ubications is contained, is God’s immensity. Hence, the possibility of real ubications is evidently nothing else than the extrinsic terminability of divine immensity. In other terms, God’s immensity, like other divine attributes, is not only an immanent perfection of the divine nature, by which God has his infinite ubication in himself, but also the source and the eminent reason of all possible ubications, because it contains them all virtually in its boundless expanse. Hence, the infinite virtuality of God’s immensity is one and the same thing with the possibility of infinite ubications. And, therefore, absolute space is nothing but the virtuality of divine immensity.

Let the reader take notice that divine immensity is, with regard to absolute space, the remote principle, or, as the Schoolmen would say, the principium quod, whilst the virtuality or extrinsic terminability of divine immensity is the proximate principle, or the principium quo. Hence, it would not be altogether correct to say that absolute space is nothing but God’s immensity; for, as we call “space” that in which contingent beings can be ubicated, it is evident that the formal notion of space essentially involves the connotation of something exterior to God; and such a connotation is not included in divine immensity as such, but only inasmuch as it virtually pre-contains all possible ubications. And for this reason the infinite virtuality of God’s immensity constitutes the formal ratio of absolute space. It is in this sense that we should understand Lessius when he says: “The immensity of the divine substance is to itself and to the world a sufficient space: it is an expanse capable of all producible nature, whether corporeal or spiritual. For, as the divine essence is the first essence, the origin of all essences and of all conceivable beings, so is the divine immensity the first and self-supporting expanse or space, the origin of all expanse, and the space of all spaces, the place of all places, and the primordial seat and basis of all place and space.”[123]

The second proof of our conclusion may be the following. Let us imagine that all created things be annihilated. In such a case, there will remain nothing in space, and there will be an end of all contingent occupation, presence, or ubication. Yet, since God will remain in his immensity, there will remain that infinite reality which contains in its expanse the possibility of infinite contingent ubications; for there will remain God’s immensity with all its extrinsic terminability. In fact, God would not cease to be in those places where the creatures were located; the only change would be this, that those places, by the annihilation of creatures, would lose the contingent denominations which they borrowed from the actual presence of creatures in them, and thus all those ubications would cease to be formal, and would become virtual. It is plain, therefore, that the reality of void space must be accounted for by the fact that, after the annihilation of all creatures, there remains God’s immensity, whose infinite virtuality is equivalent to infinite virtual ubications. Hence, space void of matter, but filled with God’s substance, can be nothing else than the infinite virtuality of divine immensity.

A third proof of our conclusion, and a very plain one, can be drawn from God’s creative power. Wherever God is, he can create a material point; and wherever a material point can be placed, there is space; for space is the region where material things can be ubicated. Now, God is everywhere by his immensity; and therefore, everywhere there is the possibility of ubicating a material point—that is, absolute space has the same range as God’s immensity. On the other hand, there is no doubt that a material point, by being ubicated in absolute space, is constituted in God’s presence, and is thus related to God’s immensity; and this relation implies the extrinsic termination of God’s immensity. Therefore, the ubication of a material point in space is the extrinsic termination of divine immensity; whence it follows that the possibility of ubications is nothing but the extrinsic terminability of the same immensity.

The fourth proof of our conclusion consists in showing that none of the other known opinions about space can be admitted. First, as to the subjective form imagined by Kant, we cannot believe that it has any philosophical claim to adoption, as it evidently defies common sense, and is supported by no reasons. “Kant,” says Balmes, “seems to have overlooked all distinction between the imagination of space and the notion of space; and much as he labored in analyzing the subject, he did not succeed in framing a theory worthy of the name. While he considers space as a receptacle of natural phenomena, he at the same time despoils it of its objectivity, and says that space is nothing but a merely subjective condition, … an imaginary capacity in which we can scatter and arrange the phenomena.”[124] “To say that space is a thing merely subjective,” continues Balmes, “is either not to solve the problems of the outward world, or to deny them, inasmuch as their reality is thereby denied. What have we gained in philosophy by affirming that space is a merely subjective condition? Did we not know, even before this German philosopher uttered a word, that we had the perception of exterior phenomena? Does not consciousness itself bear witness to the existence of such a perception? It was not this, therefore, that we wished to know, but this only: whether such a perception be a sufficient ground for affirming the existence of the outward world, and what are the relations by which our perception is connected with the same outward world. This is the whole question. He who answers that in our perception there is nothing but a merely subjective condition, Alexander-like, cuts the knot, and denies, instead of explaining, the possibility of experimental knowledge.”[125]

As to Descartes’ and Leibnitz’ opinion, which makes the reality of space dependent on material occupation, we need only observe that such an opinion, even as modified by Balmes, leads to numerous absurdities, presupposes the material continuity of bodies, which we have shown to be intrinsically repugnant,[126] and assumes, by an evident petitio principii, that space void of matter is nothing. The same opinion is beset by another very great difficulty, inasmuch as it assumes that the reality of space lies in something relative, whilst it recognizes nothing absolute which may be pointed out as the foundation of the relativity. This difficulty will never be answered. In all kind and degree of reality, before anything relative can be conceived, something absolute is to be found from which the relative borrows its relativity. On the other hand, it is obvious that real space, as understood by Descartes, and by Balmes too, is something purely relative; for “space,” says Balmes, “is nothing but the extension of bodies themselves”; to which Descartes adds, that such a space “constitutes the essence of bodies.” But the extension of bodies is evidently relative, since it arises from the relations intervening between the material terms of bodies. The three dimensions of bodies—length, breadth, and depth—are nothing but distances, and distances are relations in space. Hence, no dimension is conceivable but through relations in space; and therefore, before we can have real dimensions in bodies, we must have, as their foundation, real space independent of bodies. Finally, since the opinion of which we are speaking affirms that relative space is a reality, while it denies that space without bodies is real, the same opinion lays down the foundation of real and of ideal Pantheism, as we have already remarked. This suffices to show that such an opinion must be absolutely rejected.