common to them. Reason conclusively establishes that every body occupies a spatial location and lies in a direction, without knowing every body individually. Indeed, reason cannot conceive the reality of a body except as occupying a spatial location and lying in a direction. This is therefore inseparable from the common element and cannot be attributed to distinguishing characteristics.

His statement, “It is not necessary that each thing’s possession of a particular attribute be due to another attribute,” would serve as an argument only if it were claimed that this attribute belongs to it because of another attribute. That, however, is not the claim. Rather, the claim is that this is inseparable from the common element, whether it is said to be caused by that element or to be neither a necessary consequence of it nor caused by it.

Accordingly, we need not say that it belongs to it because of another attribute. Rather, it may be inseparable from the very essence. Yet it is also inseparable from everything else resembling it in occupying a spatial location and lying in a direction. Its inseparability from it is therefore not due to what distinguishes it from other things, but to the element it shares with other bodies.

It is thus clear that a body’s occupying a spatial location and lying in a direction is inseparable from it simply because it is a body, not because of the distinctive characteristics of particular bodies. That is, the common element entails this property.

If, by its particular essence, you mean the element common to bodies, then the term “body” is ambiguous. If you mean by it everything that can be pointed to, some of those who affirm the divine attributes would dispute your calling such a thing a body. The discussion concerns rational meanings, not rational disputes.

Someone who holds this view may deny that everything that can be pointed to is composed of substances