The view that the soul is attached to the whole body is already found in St Augustine’s works: “in each body the whole soul is in the whole body, and whole in each part of it” (On the Trinity, book 6, ch. 6). St Thomas Aquinas accepted this view and explained it by saying that the soul is completely present in each part of the body just as whiteness is, in a certain sense, completely present in each part of the surface of a blank sheet of paper. In deference to Aristotle, he added that this does not exclude that some organs (the heart, for example) are more important with respect to some of the faculties of the soul than others are (Summa theologica, part 1, question 76, art. 8; Quaestiones disputatae de anima, art. 10; Summa contra gentiles, book 2, ch. 72).