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.