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Fourteenth Distinction
Question One. Whether a Celestial Body is a Simple Essence
1. About the fourteenth distinction I ask whether a celestial body is a simple essence.a
a. a[Interpolation] About this fourteenth distinction, where the Master deals with the work of the second day (namely celestial nature) there are three questions: first whether a celestial body is a simple essence; second whether any heaven is movable by the starry heaven; third, whether the stars act on things here below. As to the firsts
2. The answers that should be given seem different according to the theologians on the one hand and the philosophers on the other.
I. According to the Philosophers
3. According to Aristotle’s meaning, since every passive power of matter is a power for contradictories, from Metaphysics 9.8.1050b6-27, and since, ibid., any eternal thing is necessary and so not potential in any way to contradictories, and since the heaven according to him is eternal, the consequence, according to him, is that there is nothing in the heaven that is in potency to contradictories; and as a result the heaven does not have matter, because if it did have matter it would be formally corruptible, as fire is; for given that there was no agent outside it that could corrupt it (‘because it does not have a contrary’ [Averroes Metaphysics 12 com.41]), this would not take from it its having within itself a principle of corruption, namely matter (whereby a thing is able to be and not to be), as fire does. And on this point Averroes in his treatise the Substance of the World seems to grasp Aristotle’s intention better than others who posit matter in the heavens.
4. However to demonstrate the incorruptibility in themselves of the heavens (which is the supposition here) one must proceed along the way of Aristotle in On the Heaven 1.2.268b13-269a32, 3.270a12-b25, and herein show that the heaven is not composed of any elementary nature. When this incorruptibility has been shown, the absence of matter will be shown, unless an incorruptible form could necessarily actuate a matter able of itself to lack the form, so that the disposition of incorruptibility would not be necessary on the part of both but only on the part of matter and, conversely, the heaven would be contingent as far as concerns the part of its matter; accordingly, where the necessity is not on the part of both extremes, it is not similar to the necessary inherence of some accident in a subject.
5. But if you say [e.g. Henry of Ghent] that celestial matter does not have the same idea as matters do that are susceptive of diverse forms, and for this reason it cannot of itself be changed from one form to another - this seems unacceptable:a
First, it seems indeed difficult to assign why there is this difference of idea in this matter and in that, because then there would beb two first matters of different ideas; the consequent is false, therefore the antecedent is too. Proof of the falsity of the consequent: there are not two first ends nor two first efficient causes of different idea; therefore likewise there are not two first matters of different idea.
a. a[Interpolation] Against the statement that ‘there is no matter of the same idea here and there’.
b. b[Interpolation] I prove by reason that positing that there is a matter of a different idea here and there is impossible, because if there were then it would follow that there will be...
6. Second, given this difference, the matter in the heavens is at least in potency to this form and to privation of this form, so that this matter is of itself in potency to contradictories although what potency to form it is in is not set down; but, as things are, matter is not the per se reason for corruptibility insofar as it is in potency to a form other than the one it has, but insofar as it is in potency to the privation of the form it has.
7. Likewise, the Philosopher only posits matter because of potentiality for change; in the heavens there is no potentiality for change save in ‘where’.
8. If it be said [e.g. Richard of Middleton] that the matter in the heaven is not in potency to contradictories, because the form of heaven completes the whole appetite of the matter, on the contrary: no form completes the whole appetite of its matter in respect of some other form save because it gives the matter an act opposed to privation of the form; but the form of heaven does not give an act opposed to privation of the form of fire; 
therefore a privation of the form of fire remains there. Proof of the minor: no form gives an act opposed to privation of any form whatever unless it contains in itself all forms, at least virtually; but the form of heaven does not thus contain all forms, because it does not contain the intellective soul; therefore etc 
.
9. From this follows further that, according to the philosophers, the heaven would not be formally alive, because then either the heaven would essentially be only a soul, and that an intellective one (because the philosophers only posited an intellective soul there), and thus the intellect would by itself be a quantity (which is unintelligible, for the heaven, as is plain, is formally a quantum), or there will be there, besides the soul that is of the essence of the heaven, something else that is per se perfectible by a soul, and thus there would be a passive potency there and a potency for contradictories, and so the heaven would not be eternal and necessary; hence, whether the Philosopher [On the Heaven 2.2.285a29-30] or the Commentator [Averroes On the Heaven 2 com.61, Metaphysics 8 com.12, com.41, Substance of the World ch.2] posits that the heaven is alive formally with a soul that is per se of the essence of the heaven, he seems at once to abandon the first position initially held [n.3].
10. Whatever may be true about Averroes, let us not say that Aristotle abandoned the first position; nor do his words compel us to impute this to him, because wherever he speaks of ‘soul’ he may be expounded as to the condition whereby the soul is a mover, not whereby it is a form, because the soul is the properly moving intelligence of this sphere, joined to it as the proper mover of it (there is only one such for one thing; this was proved by Avicenna, who openly distinguishes between the first produced intelligence and the soul of the first sphere, but there is no necessity for so much plurality).
11. In favor of this conclusion there is the Philosopher in Physics 8.5.257b12-13 who distinguishes what is ‘moved of itself’ into two parts, one of which is a moved only and the other is a mover only. This distinguishable thing is composed of two units, namely the mover and the movable, and the former truly moves and the latter truly is moved; but in us the soul does not move but is only the reason of moving, therefore it is moved per accidens since it is the form of the moved - the mover in the heaven is moved neither per se nor per accidens.
II. According to the Theologians
12. According to the theologians matter must be posited in the heavens, because the ‘chaos’ which they posit [Genesis 1.2: ‘the earth was without form and void’] reached up to the empyrean heaven, and the matter of all corporeal things was contained under the empyrean heaven; and let the matter be posited to be - in itself and as concerns itself - of the same nature.
13. And thus the theologians have to disagree with the Philosopher in the proposition ‘the heaven is necessary and incorruptible’ [n.3]; for as far as its matter is concerned it would be simply corruptible, because the potency for contraries would be in it; but because the form of the heaven does not have a contrary able to overcome its form, therefore it cannot be corrupted by the natural agent from which it receives the form, nor corrupted into fire or water.
14. But in that case it seems that the heaven could at least corrupt fire and turn it into heaven, because the active power of the heaven surpasses the form of fire (the power comes from the form of the heaven), and the matter of fire is also capable of receiving the from of the heaven; therefore fire can be changed by such an agent into being heaven. Or perhaps the heaven cannot change an element into the qualities fit for such a heavenly body, and yet the heavenly form so much dominates the matter that the matter cannot be changed by anything else (by receiving passing impressions), and so cannot be corrupted either.
15. But as concerns the animation of the heaven, there is doubt, because Augustine Enchiridion ch.15 n.58 says hesitantly, “Nor do I hold for certain whether the sun and moon and all the stars belong to the city above, since it seems to some that the shining bodies do not possess intelligence.”
16. Similarly Literal Commentary on Genesis 2.18 n.38 [“A question is wont to be raised whether the luminaries evident in the heavens are only bodies or whether certain spirits of theirs direct them; and whether, if there are such spirits, the heavenly bodies are given life by them, the way flesh is animated by the souls of animals^ Although this cannot easily be understood, yet I think places more opportune for the purpose may arise in the course of our treating of the Scriptures^ For the present, however, while always preserving a pious moderation and gravity, we should believe nothing rashly about a matter obscure.”]
17. And in Retractions 1.11 n.4 when he makes mention of what he said in ibid. Genesis ch.5, he seems to say that the heavens do not have a soul; and to his remark in ibid. ch.10, “it is not retracted as false” he says, “Whether this world is a living thing I have not been able to track down either by authority or reason,” though he does not for this reason deny it.
18. Hence it seems manifest that in no book written prior to the Retractions does he say in the Retractions that he has retracted it. Therefore the authority is of no weight that is adduced from Augustine’s book On Recognizing True Life [really a book by one Honorius], namely “Now those who say that the heavens are rational beings are rightly themselves irrational.” It is agreed too that that book is not Augustine’s (or that he wrote it after the Retractions), because Augustine nowhere seems to have asserted what is denied in the Retractions.
19. Likewise Jerome on Isaiah 1.2 ‘Hear, O heavens’ says that the words are addressed to non-living things.
20. Likewise the Greek Augustine, namely Damascene Orthodox Faith ch.20, asserts that the heavens are not alive.
21. A reason given for this is that it would be pointless to unite a soul with such a body, because such a body has no senses and consequently the soul gets no perfection from it [d.11 n.7].
22. But to say that form is united to matter so that it may receive a perfection from matter does not seem fitting, but rather so that form may communicate a perfection to matter; nay more principally, so that the whole composed of these may be perfect.
23. Response: a form united to matter does receive some perfection from it, otherwise the blessed soul would in vain be united to the body, because it would not acquire perfection from it [d.11 n.8].
III. Scotus’ Opinion
24. Briefly: if the heavens are not alive, this is a matter of belief and not something proved by reason, because there is no condition in the heavens - thus perfect -that appears manifestly repugnant to their bodies being alive.
Question Two. Whether there is any Movable Heaven other than the Starry Heaven
25. Second, I ask about the motion of the heavens, whether there is any movable heaven other than the starry heaven.
26. That there is not:
In Genesis 1.17 it is said of the stars that ‘God placed them in the firmament of the heaven’; therefore all the stars are in one firmament.
27. Further, by reason:
“The continuous is that whose motion is one,” according to the Philosopher Metaphysics 5.6.1016a5-6; but the motion of any inferior heaven is one with the superior heaven, because every inferior heaven - if one be posited - is moved with a diurnal motion [sc. from East to West] and also with other motions proper to the superior heavens, if superior heavens are posited; therefore any inferior heaven, if it is posited, is continuous with the whole superior heaven.
28. Further, the whole heaven other than a star is of itself and in itself uniform; therefore no other motion should be posited because of it, because one part when present does perhaps the same as another; no motion therefore is necessary save the motion of the stars. But the proper motion of the stars seems it can be accounted for in one heaven, just as can the many proper motions in water or air; therefore etc .
29. To the opposite:
The stars are moved differently, so they have diverse heavens; because if not, a star would be moved with its own motion without the motion of the sphere, and so either there would be a vacuum in the heaven, or the sphere would be rent, or two bodies would be in the same place [n.31].
I. To the Question
30. To discern the number of the heavens we must first show what all the astronomers agree in, and secondly we must see what some of them disagree with others in.
A. All Astronomers Agree that there are at least Nine Heavens
31. Here the supposition must be made that no star [sc. planet] has a proper local motion, that is, that it is not moved with a motion other than with the motion of the sphere in which it is located; for if it left the part of the sphere where it is and moved to another part, either nothing would succeed to it (and so there would be a vacuum), or something else would succeed to it (and so the heavenly body would be made thinner or denser, or it could be rent and, when the rending body recedes, be again continuous), or if none of these is conceded, then the result is that a moved star is always in the same place as another moving body. - This is what Aristotle means in On the Heaven 2.8.290a29-35, “If nature had given a power of progress to the stars, etc.”
32. With this supposition it follows that all the stars that are not at the same distance from each other are not in the same heaven, for different distances at different times cannot be by a motion proper to the star but only by the motion of the heaven in which it is; and if one star is at different distances from another, then the heaven of the first is differently moved from the heaven of the second, and so the heaven of the first is other than that of the second.
33. Now seven stars [sc. the seven planets] are moved differently, so that they are not always at the same distance from the fixed stars, which are for this reason called fixed that they are always at the same distance from each other and keep the same place and local arrangement; and so there is no need to posit more than one heaven in respect of all the fixed stars. But the seven planets are not always at the same distance from each other.
34. These two points, about the varying distance of the planets from each other and from the other stars that are called fixed, are the supposition for the second consideration of the astronomers; for it is possible to be sure of the positions of the planets by means of instruments, one of which - namely armillary spheres - is dealt with by Ptolemy in the Almagest statement 5 ch.1.
35. And if it is objected that ‘the visual ray is refracted because of the diversity of the mediums, and so does not give certainty about the position of the stars’, then at least it will give certainly about the visible position of a star; and if the stars be at the same distance according to the visible position, then they are so also according to their true position, because their varying visible positions are disposed proportionally to their true positions (or at least they are not so disproportionally disposed that there could be so great a distance in their visible positions without some distance in their true positions), and this distance suffices for the matter at issue.
36. So, in addition to the sphere posited for all the fixed stars that are always at the same distance from each other, at least seven other spheres are posited proper to the seven planets that are moved differently both from the fixed stars and from each other; therefore there are eight heavens.
37. Further it is also commonly conceded that there is a ninth heaven higher than the starry heaven, because there is only one proper motion to one celestial body; but the diurnal motion is not proper to the motion of the starry heaven, since the starry heaven is moved by another motion, as has been proved by observations (for no fixed star is always at the same distance from the stationary poles, nor is it even at the same distance at the same times from the houses of Aries and Libra); therefore this diurnal motion will be proper to some other body - and only to a higher body, because the eighth heaven [sc. that of the fixed stars] is moved by this motion (but no heaven is moved by the motion proper to another unless that other is higher than it). There is therefore some movable body that is uniformly moved with a diurnal motion, higher than the starry heaven; Avicenna says this in his Metaphysics 9 ch.2 and Ptolemy in his Almagest statement 1 ch.8, statement 7 ch.3.
B. Astronomers Disagree whether there are more than Nine Heavens
38. On the second point [n.30], about what not all those who treat of this matter agree in, there is doubt whether each planet’s heaven is sufficient for it, and so whether only positing nine heavens is enough.
39. A threefold difference indeed appears in the motions of the planets:
One is in latitude, because the planets do not always appear at the same distance from the stationary poles.
40. Another is in longitude, because the planets pass along the zodiac in different ways and not the same way.
41. A third is in departure and approach, because the same planet sometimes comes closer to the center of the earth and sometimes is further away, as Ptolemy proves in his Almagest, statements 3-12, because there is a circle whose visual diameter is longer in a longer longitude and shorter in a shorter longitude. It is clear too about Mars which, when at the aux,31 appears of a notably small size with respect to what it has when it is opposite the aux. It is also proved of the moon, because when it and the sun are equally near the tail and head of Draco, an eclipse of the moon does not last the same time but is sometimes longer and sometimes shorter; this is only possible because the moon sometimes enters more and sometimes less into the earth’s shadow, so that when the shadow passes across the diameter of the moon, it stays longer because of the fact the diameter of the shadow is longer there in the cone than it is elsewhere. Also, if this departure and approach of the sun and moon were universally denied, no difference in amount of shadow could be assigned either on the one part or on the other; for the shadow would always stretch to an equal depth and so would be of an equal quantity, and the moon, since it would always be at the same distance near the cone, would always be in equal proximity to the shadow. The supposition of departure and approach is based on these and other observations of Ptolemy.
42. One could perhaps, by attributing one heaven to a planet, save the first two differences (namely of longitude and latitude [nn.39-40]) with a displacement of the polls of the heaven, in the way that Alpetragius [al-Bitruji] tried to do in his book On the Quality of the Celestial Motions when, by positing that the polls of the starry heaven are displaced from the polls of the ninth heaven (and that, as a result, they describe small circles round those stationary polls), he posited that the eighth heaven revolves about its own polls (but not with a motion contrary to the motion of the ninth heaven, but in the same direction), and that the poll of the eighth heaven receives the influence less effectively than does the ninth heaven, and so its poll does not complete a circle when some point on the ninth heaven does complete a circle.
43. And the deficiency of the poll of the lower heaven in its completion of a circle he calls the first shortening which, according to him, supplies the lower heaven’s motion about the poll, and supplies it perfectly in the eighth heaven as far as longitude is concerned; but as far as latitude is concerned there is necessarily a difference, for poll is displaced from poll; for although the motion about the poll of the lower heaven completes that heaven’s motion about the poll of the higher heaven as to longitude, there cannot however truly be a circle to any star moved in the lower heaven but rather a spiral, because it does not return to the same point from which the motion began.
44. Thus by the diversity of the polls of some heavens from others, and by the first shortening and the supplying of it, and especially in the case of some stars because of their not being situated in the middle of their heaven, he tries to give bases for saving the differences of longitude and latitude in the motions of the planets, and this not by positing ad hoc that some lower heaven is moved contrary to the motion of a higher heaven, but by positing that a lower heaven is moved in the same direction as the higher one, but yet less efficaciously, because it is natural that a power received in things ordered relative to each other is more efficaciously received in the ones closer to it.
45. This tradition seems sufficiently to agree with natural principles, provided that through it all the appearances as to longitude and latitude can be saved; for perhaps through it the stoppings and retrogressions and processions of the planets can be saved in the way he in fact tries in his book to save them in the case of certain planets.
46. The third difference, however, namely of departure and approach [n.41], can only be saved by positing that all the heavens are eccentric, because if a planet does not in that case leave its heaven but only a part of its heaven, and that part of its heaven, however it is moved, is always equally distant from the center (because that whole heaven, being rotated in a circle, is concentric with the world), then, wherever the star is, its departure and approach will always be at the same distance with respect to its center. And though it would not be necessary to posit eccentric circles and epicycles (as Ptolemy and other astronomers do) because of the first two differences, yet it is necessary to do so because of the third difference.
47. And, on this supposition, the conclusion for the issue at hand is that a single heaven does not suffice for any planet in respect of its motion.
So, for example’s sake, let the heaven of Saturn be taken. If it is posited as eccentric to the world, let the heaven of Saturn be moved while the eighth heaven is concentric with the world; the aux of that heaven therefore succeeds to the opposite of the aux. If the aux of it did not penetrate the starry heaven (so that two bodies would be together in the same place) but only reached it, then the opposite of the aux, which is less distant from the center of the earth than the aux is, will not reach the concave surface of the starry heaven, and thus there would be a vacuum there.
48. So it is only possible to avoid an unacceptable result about bodies being rent and existing in the same place or about a vacuum by attributing to each planet at least three heavens circling the earth,32 the two limits of which heavens (namely the lower and higher) would have concentric ultimate surfaces, namely the superior being convex and the lower concave; but those two would have another two surfaces, namely the higher being concave and the lower convex, being eccentric to the world; and between these two surfaces [sc. the concave of the superior and the convex of the inferior] let there be a third sphere (which may be called the deferent), eccentric to those two deferent surfaces, so that when the two revolving heavens are moved to any part a vacuum does not follow; for the thicker part of one is against the less thick part of the other, and conversely.
49. Likewise, in whatever way the deferent is moved within the two revolving spheres (the higher and lower), no vacuum or rending follows from its motion because its surfaces are both concentric to the surfaces within which it is contained and moved; and thus the star [planet], fixed at one part of the deferent will sometimes be at the aux -namely when the part of the deferent where it is is placed directly above the thicker part of the lower revolving sphere and directly placed beneath the less thick part of the superior revolving sphere, for then it will be at the greatest distance from the center of the earth; but the star [planet] will be in the opposite of the aux when the part of the deferent sphere - and the part where the planet is fixed - is placed above the thinnest part of the lower revolving sphere and placed beneath the thickest part of the higher revolving sphere, for then it will be at the shortest distance from the center of the earth. An image of this is more clearly evident in the figure below.33
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50. Further: since Mercury has a deferent, whose center moves (and not round the earth like the center of the moon but off to one side) by describing a small circle (as is clear in the Almagest statement 9 ch.6), the result is that the deferent sphere is not concentric with the revolving spheres, namely the highest and lowest; and so one must posit there at least five spheres, four revolving and one deferent.
51. Now in addition to these spheres one must posit epicycles (which are not spheres circling the earth but little spheres placed at a determinate point on the spheres that do circle the earth), and this because the departure of the star is greater at some times than at others, and this departure cannot come from the deferent alone. Procession too and stopping and retrograde motion are more easily saved by epicycles.
52. But however it may be with epicycles, there will be at least twenty five movable spheres circling the earth, namely twenty three for the planets [sc. five for Mercury and eighteen - six planets times three spheres - for the rest], and in addition the eighth and ninth heavens.
II. To the Principal Arguments
53. To the arguments.
To the first [n.26] I say that Scripture takes ‘firmament’ for the whole heaven, between the empyrean and the elements.
54. To the second [n.27] I say that the conformity of motions does not entail continuity.
55. To the third [n.28] I say that the heaven cannot yield to a moved star as water or air can yield to a body in motion placed in them, because a naturally incorruptible body is naturally indivisible, and this if it is incorruptible both in its parts and in the whole, as the heaven is posited to be; and thus there could not be a motion of anything in the heaven, unmoved as it is by any natural agent.
The Fifteenth to Twenty Fifth Distinctions are lacking in the Ordinatio
[Fifteenth Distinction: Whether in a mixed body the elements actually remain in substance
Sixteenth Distinction: Whether the image of the Trinity consists in three really distinct powers of the rational soul
Seventeenth Distinction: About the origin of Adam’s soul and the place where it was produced Eighteenth Distinction: About the production of woman and the seminal reasons
Nineteenth Distinction: Whether we had immortal bodies in the state of innocence
Twentieth Distinction: About the offspring of Adam had any been procreated in the state of innocence
Twenty First Distinction: About the venality or gravity of Adam’s sin
Twenty Second Distinction: Whether Adam’s sin came from ignorance
Twenty Third Distinction: Whether God could make a rational creature’s will impeccable by nature Twenty Fourth Distinction: Whether the superior part [sc. of the intellect] is a distinct power from the inferior part
Twenty Fifth Distinction: Whether anything other than the will causes efficaciously an act of willing in the will]