A. The Opinion of Many People for the Negative Conclusion

80. Here the negative conclusion is maintained by many people, but different ones prove it in different ways.

1. The Reasons of Henry of Ghent

81. [First reason] - One doctor [Henry, Quodlibet XIII q.4] argues as follows: When, as far as depends on the power of the agent, something could be done indifferently in various ways to the same thing, if the same thing were susceptible according to one way among them, it would be possible for it to be acted on similarly in any of the other ways. Now, on the part of the agent, since it is of infinite power, there is an equal possibility that a single body may come to be at the same time in several places according to any manner of plurality. But it is impossible that, with God as agent, the same body should be everywhere; therefore, it is impossible simply that the same body come to be at the same time in diverse places. The proof of the minor is that ‘being able to be everywhere at the same time’ is proper to God.

82. [Second reason] - Again, many contradictories would follow, for when a body is put in one place, either it has the same form as in another place or it does not.

If it has the same form, let ice be put in one place and heat in another place; it follows that in one place the body will have cold and in another place heat. Likewise if it not find anything to eat in one place it would be hungry there, in another place finding food it would not be hungry; and in one place it would incur sickness from the inclemency of the air, and in another place health from the air’s clemency, and so it would at the same time be healthy and not healthy but ill; and fourth, in one place it would be killed and in another not, so it would at the same die and not die

But if the second alternative is chosen [the thing has different forms in different places], the same results follow, because the same body will have at least contrary properties, save that according to the second member it will have contraries in each place, and according to the first member it will have one contrary in one place and another in another.

83. [Third reason] - Again, as a thing in place is commensurate with the dimensions of the place, namely as quantum and as continuum, it is thus commensurate to the place as [the place] is one and many; therefore, if the same placed thing is in diverse places, it will be one and many at the same time.Scotus’ expression here is obscure [see also n.144 infra]. He is referring to an argument in Henry’s Quodlibet IX q.32, where Henry argues that if the same body is present by its dimensions in several places, it is one because it is commensurate with the dimensions of one place (one both numerically and as an extension) and many because commensurate in the same way with the dimensions of many places. So the dimensions of the same body will have to be multiplied according as they are commensurate with the dimensions of several places, and hence the same body will be one (because it is the same body) and many (because it has as many sets of dimensions as the number of places it is in). ⁸

84. And if you object against the second reason [n.82], that its conclusion seems to apply in the same way to Christ’s body on the cross and in the pyx, because on the cross it was wounded but not in the pyx, Henry responds that when something belongs to something according to what naturally belongs to it, it belongs to it simply (as that if a man is curly as to his head he is curly simply, though he is not curly as to another part); but to be wounded, which includes division of what is continuous, belongs to something as it has being in place only; and therefore if it exists by location in one place and not by location in another place, if it is wounded where it is by location, it is simply wounded; and if it is not wounded in another place where it is not by location, not for this reason is it not wounded, but there is a fallacy according to simply and in a certain respect. But if the same body is by location in two places, and consequently in its dimensions in diverse places, one must say that whatever it naturally does or suffers in one place it does or suffers in the other; therefore in that case it follows that it will have opposites at the same time.

2. Other Doctors’ Reasons

85. Another doctor [Godfrey of Fontaines] argues as follows: the limits of place and of the placed thing are simultaneous; therefore if the placed thing is outside the limits of its proper place it is outside its own limits.

He also brings in about an angel that it cannot be in diverse places at the same time; therefore much less can a body be placed in diverse places.

86. Another doctor [Giles of Rome] argues as follows: as a thing is by its proper nature in only one species, so it is by one dimension in only one place at the same time.

87. Another [William of Ware] argues thus: if the same thing were at the same time in diverse places then either through one change or two. Not through one because one change is only to one term. Nor through two, because these two are either of the same kind or of a different kind. Not of the same kind, because the same thing cannot be moved at the same time by two motions of the same species, from Physics 3.3.202a34-36 [cf. Ord. II d.2 nn.259, 270-272] and Metaphysics 5.9.1018a5-9. Nor by two of different species, because the terms would be contraries and so the motions would be incompossible.

88. Again the terms of any motion are incompossible, from Physics 5.3.227a7-10 [sc. the beginning and end points of a motion are not simultaneous]; but any two ‘wheres’ can be the terms of any motion, because a body can move from one ‘where’ to the other; therefore any two ‘wheres’ are incompossible as to the same subject.

3. Further Reasons that can be Brought Forward

89. Now I put forward some other reasons.

The first is that a natural agent does not per se intend the corruption of the term ‘from which’ but only per accidens, because the term ‘from which’ is incompossible with the term ‘to which’ that it intends to introduce. Therefore if one ‘where’ be compossible with another ‘where’, a natural agent would not corrupt the first ‘where’ in order to introduce the second ‘where’; therefore it would be possible to put a body in the new ‘where’ without that body being moved from the ‘where’ it previously had.

90. Second thus: it is impossible for the same matter to be under two substantial forms at the same time; but if it be possible for the same body to be in diverse places at the same time, the opposite of this would follow.

Proof of the minor:

The first proof is: let the same nutriment be put in two or three places, and let it be eaten by different animals existing in those places; the nutritive power of each animal would convert that nutriment into its own substance and consequently the same matter of the nutriment will be informed by the form of each animal, and so the matter of the nutriment will be under diverse substantial forms at the same time, and will be animated by the sensitive souls in diverse brutes and by the intellective souls in diverse men.

The second proof of the same minor is: suppose that the same wood is in diverse places, and that in those places are two fires and that they act on the wood and destroy it (because the wood cannot resist the power of the agent) and introduce the form of fire into it - but not the same form, for the agents are diverse, therefore different forms of fire in the same matter, because the matter of the destroyed wood was the same just as the wood was the same.

91. Again third, it would follow that the fire, however small it be, could burn everything combustible. For let the fire have this combustible thing here proportioned to it, and that one there, and a third one in a third place - it could act on this one here and that one there and so on simultaneously in an infinite number of places. And thus any number of combustible things could be burned at the same time by however small a fire. But any power that can act on many small objects at the same time, can act on one great object put together from the small ones; therefore the smallest fire could at the same time burn what is to be put together from all those, and that burning from all the burnings.

92. Fourth as follows: it follows that some nourishable thing could be sustained in some place without receiving nutriment; for if it had suitable nutriment in one place it would be nourished there and consequently here too; or it would follow that it would be nourished and not nourished at the same time, and thus that it would be nourished here and would not take in nutriment here.a

a.a [Interpolation] an animal possessing suitable nutriment here would be nourished, but elsewhere, not having nutriment, it would not be nourished, and so it would be nourished and not nourished at the same time.

93. Fourth as follows, that if it had suitable nutriment in two places and were to ingest it in suitable amount in both places, the consequence would be that it would be nourished to double amount, or the nutriment ingested would be lost and not converted into nourishment.