when a person reflects on the things here, it becomes evident to him that the things called living and knowing are those that move of themselves with determinate motions, with determinate substances and activities from which determinate effects arise. Hence the theologians said that every action proceeds only from a living, knowing being.

Once he has established this principle—that whatever moves with determinate motions from which determinate, orderly effects necessarily follow is a living, knowing being—and adds to it what is observed through the senses, namely that the heavens move of themselves with determinate motions, giving rise to determinate effects in the beings below them, and to an order and arrangement upon which those beings depend for their subsistence, a third, indubitable principle follows: the heavens are living, perceiving bodies.

As for their motion necessarily giving rise to determinate effects upon which the subsistence and preservation of the things here—animals, plants, and inanimate things—depend, this is self-evident upon reflection. Were it not for the Sun’s nearness to and distance from its inclined orbit, there would be no four seasons here; and were there no four seasons here, there would be neither plants nor