ABSTRACT
The above analysis of Locke's conceptions of space, time and place may help us to grasp their role for him with respect to particulars and our ideas of particulars. For the Essay followed one piece of Gassendist and 'Cambridge' doctrine unswervingly: every finite thing exists in space and time, as God exists throughout them. If there are finite immaterial substances, the principle emphatically applies to them too, whatever difficulties we may find in conceiving of their place-occupancy. A spirit must be where it acts. The identity of a spirit over time, as well as that of body, is determined by its continuous relationship to 'its determinate time and place of beginning to exist', i.e. by its spatiotemporal continuity."
