Whether the Lights of Heaven Are Living Beings?
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.
Obj. 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.
Obj. 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.
Obj. 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.
Obj. 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 Obj. 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 Obj. 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 Obj. 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 Obj. 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 Obj. 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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