That, in fact, implies that events would occur without any newly arising cause. And when they claim that the motions of the celestial spheres set the elements in motion until the latter mingle in combinations prepared to receive the emanation, their claim is invalid for several reasons.

First, all contingencies that result from the spheres’ motions—and from whatever those motions produce—must have a producer. Yet the producer of contingencies cannot be an eternally complete cause, for an eternally complete cause necessarily entails its effect; its effect, therefore, would have to accompany it from eternity. Hence it is impossible for any of these contingent events to proceed from the Necessary Being, whether directly or through an intermediary; and that would leave the events without any producer at all.

Moreover, the movement of the highest sphere is a single, uniform, simple motion. By itself it does not yield diverse effects except insofar as the recipients differ—just as the sun whitens one body, blackens another, softens a third, and hardens a fourth, according to the varying capacities of what it shines upon. If the sphere’s motion is simple and the Intellect is simple, diverse phenomena cannot issue from them.

The lower spheres likewise possess only a limited, finite number of motions, and each of those motions is simple. Nothing in these motions or their movers can account for the myriad distinct substances and events whose differences in qualities, quantities, and movements are beyond reckoning. Add to this their own maxim that “from the One, simple being only one can proceed,” and it becomes self-evident that these numerous, varied occurrences cannot be issuing from any limited number of simple entities.

It may further be said: those motions, movers, and the known intellects are multiple and diverse realities. If they have proceeded from a single entity, their principle that “only one proceeds from the One” collapses. And if they have proceeded from something characterized