Nature, however, is but an accident inhering in a body. Consequently, whoever claims that the agent responsible for bringing the human being into existence within his mother’s womb—with all his varied organs, their powers, and their benefits—is “nature” has advanced a view that is patently more unsound than the doctrines which ascribe happenings either to the mere will of the Eternal without affirming a cause or wisdom, or to the power of a voluntary agent, whether eternal or created. Both of those positions are preferable to attributing such marvels to a “nature” that is nothing more than an accident of some body, devoid of will and volition, while the fetus fashioned in the womb is in fact more perfect than the womb and its faculties.

Moreover, when these philosophers contend that such events occur through the motions of the celestial spheres, which allegedly prepare the sublunar world to receive an effusion from the Active Intellect, they are required in every assertion to furnish proof that this is truly the cause. Likewise, all that they put forward concerning the existence of an Active Intellect demands evidence that it is a genuine cause, and their discourse on this so-called Active Intellect is false, as has been demonstrated elsewhere.

What can indeed be proven is that events proceed from the motions of living, willing beings—that is, the angels of whom the prophets have informed us. These angels are not the “intellects” posited by the philosophers, for in their scheme the First Intellect creates everything other than God, and the Active Intellect produces all that lies beneath the lunar sphere.

Those who follow the revealed religions know by necessity, through the message of the prophets, that no one besides God creates all existents. They have never affirmed an angel who brought into being everything beneath the heavens. Rather, in their understanding the angels are servants of God; among them there is none who independently brings about all events, let alone one who creates everything apart from God, exalted be He.