Page:The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican Theory of the Universe.djvu/124



Section 1: On the definition and the number of the spheres.

… Now to prove that the heavens have a nature endowed with intelligence I need no other argument than that by which Theophrastus and Alexander prove they are living, for, they say, if the heavens did not have intelligence, they would be greatly inferior in dignity and excellence to men. That is why Aben-Ezra, having interpreted the Hebrew of these two words of the Psalm: "The heavens declare," has written that the phrase Sapperim (declare) in the judgment of all Hebrews is appropriate to such great intelligence. Also he who said "When the morning stars sang together and shouted for joy," indicated a power endowed with intelligence, as did the Master of Wisdom also when he said that God created the heavens with intelligence.

I have learned in the schools that the spheres are not moved of themselves but that they have separate intelligences who incite them to movement.

That is the doctrine of Aristotle. But Theophrastus and Alexander, (when they teach that the spheres are animated bodies) explain adequately that the spheres are agitated by their own coëssential soul. For if the sky were turned by an intelligence external to it, its movement would be accidental with the result that it, and the stars with it, would not be moved otherwise, than as a body without soul. But accidental motion is violent. And nothing violent in nature can be of long duration. On the contrary there is nothing of longer duration, nor more constant, than the movement of the heavens.

What do you call fixed stars?

Celestial beings who are gifted with intelligence and with light, and who are in continual motion. This is sufficiently indicated by the words of Daniel when he wrote, that the souls of those who have walked justly in this life, and who have brought men back to the path of virtue, all have their seat and

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