1. How Body is in a Place

216. To solve this question, then, we must first consider the place of body.

For any body, beside the ultimate one (which has nothing outside it containing it), possesses five features: to be in an actual place, to be in a determinate because equal place, to be in a place commensurately, to be determinately in this place or in that, and to be naturally or violently in a place.

217. The first four belong to body insofar as it is extended, a quantum, or a body; the last one belong to it insofar as it is a natural body. For although no extended thing exists unless it also has qualities, yet it is naturally an existent with extension before it is an existent with qualities - and in this regard it is an object of mathematics before it possesses quality, that is, it is first such as is considered per se and first by a mathematician.

218. This is what the Philosopher means in Physics 4.8.216a27-b8 ‘On the Vacuum’, because he maintains that “if a cube is put in air or water, even if it have no natural qualities, yet it causes as much displacement as an inserted body,” so that it causes a distance as great as the body; and this does not belong to it insofar as it is natural only, but insofar as it is precisely an extension, a quantum, and so a mathematical object.

a. On the First Article

219. Now I say, expounding each of these five points in turn [n.216], that every such body (other than the body of the first sphere) is first in place, that is, in that which precisely contains it and is immovable; for this is what is understood by the definition of the Philosopher Physics 4 ‘On Place’ [n.193], namely that “place is the ultimate, immovable, first limit of the containing body.”

220. For the divisible, according to the dimension by which it is divisible, cannot be immediately applied to anything nor can immediately contain it; and that which precisely contains something is an indivisible in the genus of quantity and is per se and extrinsic (for nothing indivisible in the genus of quantity exists per se but exists in something divisible); and so the consequence is that what precisely contains something is the ultimate limit of some divisible container. But this ultimacy does not belong to the idea of place, just as it does not belong to the idea precisely of quantity either - because if an indivisible could per se exist and not be the ultimate limit of anything divisible, it could be what precisely contains a thing.

221. Now place, over and above having this ultimate containing, has immobility in addition (whereby it is distinguished from a vessel, according to Aristotle Physics 4.4.212a14-16), which immobility diverse people have in diverse ways tried to save by reference to the poles and to the center.

222. But briefly I say that if the subject does not remain the same, no relative accident stays the same, according to the Philosopher [Categories 5.2b4-6]. And therefore, since it is manifest that every substance that precisely contains this body precisely can be moved locally and not remain numerically the same, it is plain that any accident (absolute and relative) that is in what contains the body is able not to remain numerically the same; and so neither will place remain numerically the same, whether place is posited to be something absolute in such containing body or something relative.

223. And if it be said [Aquinas, Giles of Rome] that place is the ultimate limit of the whole universe and that, although it varies as it is the ultimate limit of the container, yet it does not vary as it is the ultimate limit of the whole universe - this too is not a solution, because place is only the ultimate limit of the whole universe because it is the ultimate limit of part of it; and therefore, if it is different for one part and for another, it is not the same for the whole universe. For although there are many parts in some whole, yet what belongs to the whole through one part first and precisely and afterwards through another part precisely - this is not numerically the same.

224. I say therefore that place has an immobility opposed altogether to local motion, and an incorruptibility by equivalence when compared to local motion.

225. The first point is plain because, if a place were in some way locally movable, however much this is taken to be per accidens [e.g. as a sailor at rest on a ship is moved per accidens], one could say that it is in a place and a different place can be assigned to it one after another; in the same way that a likeness, although it is moved per accidens quasi-accidentally, namely at four or five degrees removed (because first the body moves, and thereby the surface of the body, and thereby the whiteness of the surface, and thereby the likeness [sc. of this whiteness with another whiteness]), yet likeness and surface are truly in different places one after the other.

226. In like manner, then, something at rest could be moved locally; for, because it has one place after another successively, it is locally moved; but something fixed could have different places containing it if the place were moved per accidens.

227. I prove the second point [n.224] by the fact that, although a place is corrupted by the local motion of its subject, such that, when air is moved locally, the same idea of place does not remain in it as before (as is plain from what has already been proved [n.222]), nor can the same idea of place remain in the water that succeeds to the air, because the same accident numerically cannot remain in two different subjects [n.222], yet the succeeding idea of place (which is different in idea from the preceding one) is truly the same as the preceding one by equivalence as to local motion, for that local motion should be from the preceding place to the succeeding one is as incompossible as if the place were altogether the same numerically. But no local motion can be from one ‘where’ to another ‘where’ unless these two ‘wheres’ correspond to two places different in species - relative to the whole universe; hereby these respects, which are only different numerically, seem to be numerically one, because they are as non-distinct with respect to local motion as if they were only one respect.

228. An example of this is in some way plain in the case of significant names, because this word ‘man’, however often it is spoken, is called numerically one word, and it differs numerically from this word ‘stone’; but since the same word numerically cannot be spoken twice (so that there are as many words distinct in number as there are speakings), and since this word ‘man’ and this word ‘stone’ are distinct not only numerically but also specifically - yet because with respect to expressing the goal of a word (namely the concept signified) the word ‘man’ and the word ‘stone’, however often each is spoken, are by equivalence numerically the same, therefore they are said to be numerically one word with respect to this goal.

229. So I say in the issue at hand that place is immovable locally per se and per accidens - yet it is corruptible when the subject is moved locally, because there does not then remain in it the same idea of place; and yet it is not corruptible in itself and by equivalence, because necessarily there succeeds to the body, in which that idea of place was, some other body, in which there is an idea of place numerically different from the preceding one yet the same as the preceding one equivalently by comparison with the local motion.

230. But is it not the case that any body - different from the first body or sphere -is necessarily in a place because it is an extension, a quantum?

Aristotle would say so, because he would say there cannot be ‘a body different from the celestial body’ in the sphere of the active and passive elements [sc. the sublunary sphere where are the elements of earth, air, fire, and water] unless he said it was necessarily contained under something precisely containing it.

231. But the opposite seems to be true according to Catholics, because God could make a stone without any other body existing that was the place of it - or he could make a stone existing apart from every other body, because he could make it outside the universe; and in both ways it would not be in place and yet it would be the same [sc. as other stones] with respect to everything absolute in itself. By nothing absolute in another thing, therefore, must it necessarily be in place, but it has only a passive potency whereby it can be in place; and this would be when a place has been posited in actual existence and when the presence of the stone with respect to some other body as its place has been posited.

b. On the Other Articles

232. About the second article [n.216] I say that - on the supposition of the first article - an extended body is actually in a place, because it is in what actually precisely contains it; for it cannot be in place without the ultimate limit (which is what proximately contains it) making it actual, because it makes the sides of the containing body to be spatially distant. But it is otherwise about a part in the whole, which does not make a surface potentially in the containing body to be actual; and so a part is not in a whole as a placed thing is in a place (Physics 4.5.212b3-6).

233. About the third article [n.216] I say - because of sameness of quantity - that a body necessarily requires a place equal to it.

And for this reason a body is in place commensurately, such that a part of the contained surface corresponds to a part of the containing surface, and the whole of it to the whole.

234. The fifth article [n.216] belongs to a body from the determinate place that places it.

235. The sixth article belongs to a body insofar as it is a natural body, namely from the fact that - insofar as it has a determinate substantial form and determinate qualities - it is of a nature to be preserved and saved by some place that contains it and to be corrupted by another; and when it is contained by the ultimate surface of that which is of a nature to save it, it is said to be in its natural place, even though that naturalness is in many respects accidental to the idea of place; therefore it is to this extent in its natural place because it is in what naturally places it, that is, in the ultimate of the thing containing it which is of a nature to save what is contained in it.