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Objection 1: It would seem that the lights of heaven are living
beings. For the nobler a body is, the more nobly it should be
adorned. But a body less noble than the heaven, is adorned with
living beings, with fish, birds, and the beasts of the field.
Therefore the lights of heaven, as pertaining to its adornment,
should be living beings also.
Objection 2: Further, the nobler a body is, the nobler must be its
form. But the sun, moon, and stars are nobler bodies than plants or
animals, and must therefore have nobler forms. Now the noblest of all
forms is the soul, as being the first principle of life. Hence
Augustine (De Vera Relig. xxix) says: "Every living substance
stands higher in the order of nature than one that has not life." The
lights of heaven, therefore, are living beings.
Objection 3: Further, a cause is nobler than its effect. But the
sun, moon, and stars are a cause of life, as is especially evidenced
in the case of animals generated from putrefaction, which receive life
from the power of the sun and stars. Much more, therefore, have the
heavenly bodies a living soul.
Objection 4: Further, the movement of the heaven and the heavenly
bodies are natural (De Coel. i, text. 7,8): and natural
movement is from an intrinsic principle. Now the principle of movement
in the heavenly bodies is a substance capable of apprehension, and is
moved as the desirer is moved by the object desired (Metaph. xii,
text. 36). Therefore, seemingly, the apprehending principle is
intrinsic to the heavenly bodies: and consequently they are living
beings.
Objection 5: Further, the first of movables is the heaven. Now,
of all things that are endowed with movement the first moves itself, as
is proved in Phys. viii, text. 34, because, what is such of
itself precedes that which is by another. But only beings that are
living move themselves, as is shown in the same book (text. 27).
Therefore the heavenly bodies are living beings.
On the contrary, Damascene says (De Fide Orth. ii), "Let no
one esteem the heavens or the heavenly bodies to be living things, for
they have neither life nor sense."
I answer that, Philosophers have differed on this question.
Anaxagoras, for instance, as Augustine mentions (De Civ. Dei
xviii, 41), "was condemned by the Athenians for teaching that the
sun was a fiery mass of stone, and neither a god nor even a living
being." On the other hand, the Platonists held that the heavenly
bodies have life. Nor was there less diversity of opinion among the
Doctors of the Church. It was the belief of Origen (Peri Archon
i) and Jerome that these bodies were alive, and the latter seems to
explain in that sense the words (Eccles. 1:6), "The spirit
goeth forward, surveying all places round about." But Basil
(Hom. iii, vi in Hexaem.) and Damascene (De Fide Orth. ii)
maintain that the heavenly bodies are inanimate. Augustine leaves the
matter in doubt, without committing himself to either theory, though
he goes so far as to say that if the heavenly bodies are really living
beings, their souls must be akin to the angelic nature (Gen. ad
lit. ii, 18; Enchiridion lviii).
In examining the truth of this question, where such diversity of
opinion exists, we shall do well to bear in mind that the union of soul
and body exists for the sake of the soul and not of the body; for the
form does not exist for the matter, but the matter for the form. Now
the nature and power of the soul are apprehended through its operation,
which is to a certain extent its end. Yet for some of these
operations, as sensation and nutrition, our body is a necessary
instrument. Hence it is clear that the sensitive and nutritive souls
must be united to a body in order to exercise their functions. There
are, however, operations of the soul, which are not exercised through
the medium of the body, though the body ministers, as it were, to
their production. The intellect, for example, makes use of the
phantasms derived from the bodily senses, and thus far is dependent on
the body, although capable of existing apart from it. It is not,
however, possible that the functions of nutrition, growth, and
generation, through which the nutritive soul operates, can be
exercised by the heavenly bodies, for such operations are incompatible
with a body naturally incorruptible. Equally impossible is it that the
functions of the sensitive soul can appertain to the heavenly body,
since all the senses depend on the sense of touch, which perceives
elemental qualities, and all the organs of the senses require a certain
proportion in the admixture of elements, whereas the nature of the
heavenly bodies is not elemental. It follows, then, that of the
operations of the soul the only ones left to be attributed to the
heavenly bodies are those of understanding and moving; for appetite
follows both sensitive and intellectual perception, and is in
proportion thereto. But the operations of the intellect, which does
not act through the body, do not need a body as their instrument,
except to supply phantasms through the senses. Moreover, the
operations of the sensitive soul, as we have seen, cannot be
attributed to the heavenly bodies. Accordingly, the union of a soul
to a heavenly body cannot be for the purpose of the operations of the
intellect. It remains, then, only to consider whether the movement
of the heavenly bodies demands a soul as the motive power, not that the
soul, in order to move the heavenly body, need be united to the latter
as its form; but by contact of power, as a mover is united to that
which he moves. Wherefore Aristotle (Phys. viii, text.
42,43), after showing that the first mover is made up of two
parts, the moving and the moved, goes on to show the nature of the
union between these two parts. This, he says, is effected by contact
which is mutual if both are bodies; on the part of one only, if one is
a body and the other not. The Platonists explain the union of soul
and body in the same way, as a contact of a moving power with the
object moved, and since Plato holds the heavenly bodies to be living
beings, this means nothing else but that substances of spiritual nature
are united to them, and act as their moving power. A proof that the
heavenly bodies are moved by the direct influence and contact of some
spiritual substance, and not, like bodies of specific gravity, by
nature, lies in the fact that whereas nature moves to one fixed end
which having attained, it rests; this does not appear in the movement
of heavenly bodies. Hence it follows that they are moved by some
intellectual substances. Augustine appears to be of the same opinion
when he expresses his belief that all corporeal things are ruled by God
through the spirit of life (De Trin. iii, 4).
From what has been said, then, it is clear that the heavenly bodies
are not living beings in the same sense as plants and animals, and that
if they are called so, it can only be equivocally. It will also be
seen that the difference of opinion between those who affirm, and those
who deny, that these bodies have life, is not a difference of things
but of words.
Reply to Objection 1: Certain things belong to the adornment of the
universe by reason of their proper movement; and in this way the
heavenly luminaries agree with others that conduce to that adornment,
for they are moved by a living substance.
Reply to Objection 2: One being may be nobler than another
absolutely, but not in a particular respect. While, then, it is not
conceded that the souls of heavenly bodies are nobler than the souls of
animals absolutely it must be conceded that they are superior to them
with regard to their respective forms, since their form perfects their
matter entirely, which is not in potentiality to other forms; whereas
a soul does not do this. Also as regards movement the power that moves
the heavenly bodies is of a nobler kind.
Reply to Objection 3: Since the heavenly body is a mover moved, it
is of the nature of an instrument, which acts in virtue of the agent:
and therefore since this agent is a living substance the heavenly body
can impart life in virtue of that agent.
Reply to Objection 4: The movements of the heavenly bodies are
natural, not on account of their active principle, but on account of
their passive principle; that is to say, from a certain natural
aptitude for being moved by an intelligent power.
Reply to Objection 5: The heaven is said to move itself in as far
as it is compounded of mover and moved; not by the union of the mover,
as the form, with the moved, as the matter, but by contact with the
motive power, as we have said. So far, then, the principle that
moves it may be called intrinsic, and consequently its movement natural
with respect to that active principle; just as we say that voluntary
movement is natural to the animal as animal (Phys. viii, text.
27).
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