D. To the Principal Arguments

250. To the arguments [nn.190-194].

All the authorities that deny an angel is in place [nn.190-192] one must expound to be stating the truth by saying that they mean an angel is not in place circumscriptively. Now circumscription involves being in place ‘actually’ and ‘in a place equal to it’ and ‘commensurately’ (namely, according to the second, third, and fourth conditions of place [nn.237, 243, 245]), and these do not belong to an angel.

251. To the quote from the Philosopher [n.193] one can concede that some surface of a body contains an angel, but from this does not follow that the surface acts or has influence on or contains the angel, because the containing of place is of a different idea from the containing of form or the containing of species. For the containing of place means nothing other than that what is contained in place is under the containing surface and that nothing is outside the surface - and this is true in the case of anything definitively contained in place, because nothing of it is outside the surrounding place.

252. As to the point about location or position [n.194], whether it is taken for a difference of quantity or for a category - if the category presupposes quantity then in neither way is the major [sc. ‘everything in place has a location’] true, because there is no need for ‘every being that is in place’ to have a location in one or other of the ways mentioned, unless it is in place circumscriptively.