the commander,” meaning motion, as Aristotle stated. At other times, he presents them as having no need of motion, but as being charged with it for the sake of the things below them. Their condition is thus like that of those wholly occupied with actions from which they do not desist for even the blink of an eye, although those actions are not necessary to their existence and they have no need of them.

[The second respect]

The most this establishes is that He commands them to move. Merely commanding an act does not entail that the act inhering in its agent is originated and created by the commander, nor that the agent needs the commander to bring the act about. This is so in the examples he mentioned: a king commanding his deputies, a commander commanding his army, and a master commanding his slaves.

[The third respect]

He has offered no proof that they cannot subsist without the motion they have been commanded to perform. How, then, can it be known that their very subsistence depends on that motion?

[The fourth respect]

Even supposing that He originated the motion inhering in them, and that they cannot subsist without motion, this would establish, at most, that motion is a condition of their subsistence, and that He produces one of the conditions of their existence. Nothing in this entails that He originated all their other accidents, or that He originated the heavenly bodies themselves.

[The fifth respect]

This rests on affirming separate intellects beyond the celestial spheres, and that among them is an intellect superior in rank. Yet the proof cited by this man, Ibn Sīnā, and other philosophers to establish these intellects only establishes intellects