in, or there would have to be a spatial region above it. This amounts to positing a place in which its existence could be supposed, although it did not exist there; rather, something else exists there. This is a valid parallel.

You stated in your response that clear reason does not reject dividing existing things into those that do not occupy a spatial region and those that do, but that it does reject a thing’s possessing neither eternity nor its absence. Yet being situated in a spatial region, or not being in it but in another—that is, being outside it—are, on his account, two alternatives for something that occupies space. This is therefore like saying that reason does not reject dividing existing things into those that exist within time and those that do not.

You should therefore have presented the very proposition that your opponent claimed to know necessarily, either in his own words or in different words, and then submitted it to reason to see whether reason accepts or rejects it. He had said, “Reason does not judge it self-evident that something existing alongside another thing must either be inside it or outside it, without being inside it. Yet it does judge that something existing alongside another must either have come into being along with it or precede it without having come into being.”

He does not cite this case as proof of the other, or claim that the judgment concerning it is stronger. Rather, the very proposition he mentioned is known through reason’s innate disposition and with necessary certainty, just as the second is. Knowledge of the first is not derived from knowledge of the second, nor vice versa. Rather, each is known