4. Rejection of the Aforesaid Objections

84. To the first [n.80] reply is stated as follows, that time is not in the motion of the heaven as one quantity in another quantity, because there is no need to posit two such quantities in the same permanent quantum, one of which is as it were the subject and the other as it were the property. Therefore, time adds over and above motion (as motion includes its own succession) only the idea formally of measure, and adds only those ideas that are fundamentally required for measurement, which ideas are uniformity or regularity and velocity; because measure is what is most certain as to the first idea, namely regularity or uniformity, and least as to the second idea, namely velocity. But there will not then [sc. at the judgment] remain any quickest motion, or at any rate not a uniform or regular one; and then in no motion will there be based the idea of a measure for all other motion. And therefore time will not exist in the way in which it is now posited to be a property of the first motion.

85. If you argue that a thing measured cannot be without a measure, I say that this is true of the measure of a thing in its quidditative essence. And the reason is that ‘this sort of measured thing depends on this sort of measure’ (Metaphysics 5.15.1020b30-31, on ‘relation’); for the measured thing is referred to the measure and not conversely, just as the knowable is the measure of knowledge because knowledge depends on the knowable. Now this assumption is true of an accidental measure, which measures a thing by application to it or by co-existence with it, the way an arm measures cloth; for it is plain that the amount of cloth does not depend on the size of the arm; and in this second way, the first motion, taken according to its own successive extension along with its relation of measurement to other motions, is the measure of them by application or coexistence, and not by being the term of dependence. In favor of this response, Joshua 1012-13 is brought forward, because Joshua fought while sun and moon stood still, and consequently while the whole heaven stood still, so that, with sun and moon standing still and all the other bodies moving, there would not be too much irregularity in the motion of the other celestial bodies. For this view there is also Augustine, Confessions 11 ch.23 n.29, where he maintains that if the heaven stood still the potter’s wheel would still move. (Look for argument contrary to this.)

86. To the second [n.81]: this reasoning should not move us to posit, for the sake of avoiding such excessive action in the elements, that the heaven stands still; because there will then too be the same idea for acting as there is now (though not equally uniformly); and there is now the same idea for not acting excessively on things below as there will also be then.

87. Proof of the first part [sc. there will then too be the same idea for acting as there is now]: because there is then an idea for acting on the part of a particular cause only because the particular cause has a sufficiently active form and a passive object close to it; or if you say ‘along with this I want another universal agent, namely the heaven’, not insofar as it is moved locally, because local motion is not the reason for its acting in its order (“for local motion does nothing,” according to the Philosopher On Generation 2.10.336a16-18, “save that it brings the generator forward,” that is, through local motion the agent, possessing its proper virtue, comes close to the passive object). But all these things, namely the particular agent (having its own active virtue), and nearness to the passive subject, and relation or aspect toward the celestial body (possessing the determinate virtue of the higher cause), can then be posited, because the celestial body at rest has the same virtue of the higher cause with respect to the lower cause placed beneath it as if it would have if it were moved; therefore the things required for action exist then as now.

88. Proof of the second part [n.86, “there is the same idea now for not acting excessively on things below as there will also be then”]: for the reason that there is not excessive action now is either on the part of the proximate causes mutually resisting it in their actions (even for the time now when each is sufficiently close to the passive object, as the sun from here and Saturn from there on a fistful of earth) - and this resistance could be found in both, whether at rest or in motion; or the non-destruction is on the part of the whole heaven, because such harmony exists in all the celestial bodies when related to any part of things active and passive that they do not permit an excessive consumption repugnant to the perfect existence of the elements in their spheres, and this cause will exist then as now; or if a cause of this prevention could not be found in the heaven itself, or in the elements themselves, it could be posited in the conserving divine will.

89. To the third [n.82]. The priority of celestial motion to the other motions is not the priority of cause, or of anything on which other things essentially depend, but only the priority of something more perfect in certain of the conditions of motion, which conditions are regularity and velocity. For it is plain that the action of the celestial body on something below does not depend on the motion of the body, because according to the Philosopher On Generation [n.87], “transfer in place does nothing for generation save by bringing the generator closer;” therefore if the generator were as equally close without that motion, it would act as equally.

90. To the fourth [n.83]. The point about the cone of shadow is not held to be unacceptable; and hence is derided the authority of Isidore [n.52] adduced for the claim that ‘the sun and moon will stand still so that the damned under the earth may not have any light’. For the damned are not under the earth in the way some imagine the antipodes to be, being as it were on the surface opposite our habitation; but they are under the earth, that is, in the center of the earth or within the concavity of the earth, and so they would no more have light if the sun were carried round that if the sun always stood still in one part. Likewise too the other part of the authority, that ‘sun and moon will stand in the order in which they were created’ [n.52], seems irrational enough. However, since from when they have once left that [original] place, they do not return again before the space of 36,000 years [d.43 nn.164-165], therefore the judgment would have to be put off for that long after the creation of the world - which is not probable. Likewise, they were created in a place most fitting for the production of new things. And they will stand in a place most fitting for the conservation of things without new production.     Therefore the latter place cannot be the former.