WHETHER EVERY THING MUST BE IN SOME PLACE.
190. Is it necessary that whatever exists should be in some place? This question may seem strange, but it is profoundly philosophical.To beis not the same asto be in a place. To be, whether taken substantively as signifying to exist, or copulatively, as expressing the relation of the predicate to the subject, does not involve the idea of being in a place. The relation of an object to place is not necessary to it; for it is not contained in the notion of object. It is something added to the object, whether it is given to the object with more or less foundation by ourselves, or the object has it in reality by communication from some other.
The imagination can represent nothing which does not occupy a place, but the understanding may conceive things that are not situated in any place. When we reflect on the essence of objects, what position does our mind give them? The intellectual act is always accompanied by sensible representations, which sometimes assist it, and sometimes embarrass and confuse it; but in either case the act of the understanding is always distinct from these representations.
191. There is no reason for saying that every thing must occupy a place. The imagination cannot see how any thing can exist otherwise, but the understanding finds no absurdity in it, and it is in accordance with the principles of philosophy. If place considered in itself is only a part of space terminated by a surface, and space abstracted from bodies is nothing, the relation to place or to points in space must be nothing. We must have bodies in order to have a term of the relation; therefore, if we suppose a being which has no relation to bodies, it is not necessary that it should be in any place.
192. The relation of a being to bodies may be of three kinds: that of commensuration, as is the relation of lines, surfaces, and solids to each other; that of generation, as we conceive the line generated by the point; and that of action in general, as we conceive the relation of pure spirits to matter. The first cannot exist if the object has no dimensions; for then it cannot be measured; the second can exist only in unextended or infinitesimal points, from which extension is generated; therefore these two relations can only exist between bodies, or their generative elements. Therefore, nothing which is not a body or an element of body, can occupyplaceunder either of these aspects. As to the third relation, that of action of a cause upon a body, it may be found in all agents capable of acting upon matter; but it is evident that the position which results from this, is something very different from that which we conceive in bodies or their elements; it is something of a wholly distinct order, and belongs rather to the pure idea of causality than to the intuition of space.
193. We can conceive a being which is not a body, nor an element of body, and which does not exercise any action on bodies; in this case, this being has none of the three relations of which we have spoken, consequently it is not inany place, and to say that it is here, or that it is there, that it is near or distant, would be using words without meaning.
194. Viewed from the point of this doctrine, the following questions are easy to answer:
Where must a pure spirit be which has no relation of causality nor influence of any kind upon the corporeal world? Nowhere. The answer will not seem strange to one who understands that the question is absurd. In the case supposed, there is nowhere, for this involves a relation and there are no relations here.
Where would the pure spirits be if the world did not exist? Nowhere, unless we have a mind to say they would be in themselves. But, the wordto bedoes not mean the position of which we are speaking here, but only the existence of the spirit, or its identity with itself.
Where was God before the world was created?He was, but he was not inany place; for he has no parts.
195. I wish here to expose an error of Kant. This philosopher believed that space was conceived by us as a condition of all existence in general, and on this he founded one of his arguments that space was a purely subjective form. In the second edition of hisCritic of pure Reason, explaining the subjectiveness of space, he seems to hold, that we do not even conceive things in the pure intellectual order, without referring them to space. He observes that in natural theology, when treating of things which cannot be the object of intuition either for us or for themselves, we are very careful not to attribute to this intuition or manner of perception time and space, which are the conditions of human intuition. "But," he adds, "by what right do we proceed thus, when time and space have already been established as the forms of things in themselves, and conditions of their existencea prior, subsisting still after all else hasbeen annihilated by thought? As conditions of all existence in general, they must be the conditions of the existence of God. If we do not make space and time the objective forms ofallthings, itonly remainsfor us to make them the subjective forms of our mode of intuition, as well internal as external." Kant is right in saying that space and time ought not to be considered as real forms, not susceptible of annihilation, and therefore necessary and eternal; but I do not see the necessity of the disjunctive by which he asserts that if we do not make space and time the objective forms ofallthings, we must make them the subjective forms, and that, otherwise, we should make space and time conditions of the existence of God.
196. We regard space as an actual condition of things, which occupy place, but not of all things. We conceive existence in pure spirits without the necessity of any relation to place, and, consequently, independent of all position in space.
On this point, as on all relating to the pure intellectual order, we find in the theologians doctrines which are highly important, and deserve to be consulted by all who wish to go deeply into philosophical questions. The author of theCritic of Pure Reasonwould have found there some observations which would have cleared up the difficulties which embarrassed him. He would have found how incorrect it is to say that space is a condition of the existence of all things, in the beautiful as well as profound theory by which many of the scholastics explain the presence of God in the corporeal world, and the presence of the angels in different places, their motion from one point to another without passing through the intermediate points, and the manner in which the soul is wholly in the whole body and in every part of the body. In these works, unfortunately so little consulted, the German philosopher would havelearned that the presence of a spirit in a place is something different from the presence of a body, and has no relation to the intuition of space, whether regarded as the basis of sensible representations or as a geometrical idea.
197. St. Thomas[54]asks if God is in all things, and answers that he is. In proving this assertion he does not consider the necessity of every thing being in some place, but on the contrary seems rather to forget the idea of space, and regards only causality.
"As God," he says, "is being itself by his essence, created being must be his effect, as to burn is the effect of fire. But God causes this effect in things not only when they begin to be, but as long as they are preserved in being; thus the light is caused in the air by the sun as long as air remains illuminated. As long therefore as things retain their being, God is necessarily present to them, according to the manner in which they have their being. But being is that which is most internal, and most closely inherent in every thing because it is the form of all that is in it, God therefore is in all things internally."
To be situated in space is to be contained in it; so, at least, we conceive whatever we consider situated in space. St. Thomas rejects this meaning as applied to spiritual beings, and says, that although corporeal beings are contained in things, spiritual beings on the contrary contain the things in which they are.
In the second article he asks whether God is in all places (ubique); and, he says, that as God is in all things, giving them being and the power of acting, so he is in all places giving them being and capacity (virtutem locativam). He states as an objection that incorporeal things are not in any place, and answers in the following philosophicalwords: "Incorporeal things are not in place by the contact of measurable quantity, like bodies; but by the contact of activity (virtutis)." Then explaining how the indivisible can be in different places, he says: "The indivisible is of two kinds; first, it is the limit of the continued, as a point in permanent things, and a moment in successive things. The indivisible in permanent things, cannot be in different parts of place or in different places, because it has a determinate position; and in the same manner the indivisible in action or in motion cannot be in different parts of time, because it has a determinate order in action or motion. But there is another indivisible which isbeyond all kind of continuation, and in this sense incorporeal substances, as God, the angels, and the soul, are called indivisible. The indivisible in this manner, is not applied to the continued asany thing which belongs to it, but only as reaching it by its activity; therefore as its activity may extend to one or many, to the small or to the great, it may be in one place or in many places, in a small place or in a great place."
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 theTreatise on the Angels,[55]he says that the expression to be in place is used equivocally (œquivoce),[56]whenapplied 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 theTreatise 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, andbelieved that what is impossible for the former is equally so for the latter. It is certain that we canimaginenothing 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.