…and when it is said that the motions of the elements and of generated things differ only because the motions of the celestial spheres differ—so that knowledge of the cause, they claim, guarantees knowledge of the effect—we answer: those motions vary with the receptacles just as they vary with the agents. The elements themselves are in existence prior to the spheres’ motions; therefore, to know those motions does not of itself confer knowledge of the very elements and their quantities, nor can knowledge of celestial motions yield knowledge of terrestrial events. The maxim “knowledge of the cause entails knowledge of the effect” holds true only when the cause is complete and inseparable from its effect, whereas the motions of the spheres amount, at most, to but a minor part of the causes of events.
It does not follow that the celestial soul must know everything that occurs.
Sixth: Even granting that the sphere possesses a soul which moves it just as the human soul moves the body, that soul would conceive only the act it intends, just as a human being conceives the deed he means to perform. As for the things produced through causes external to its own action, there is no need for it to be aware of them. How, then, can it be obligatory for the celestial soul to know every event brought about by its motion, let alone other events besides? They themselves say that when the sphere moves it sets the elements in motion, whereupon the elements mingle in a certain fashion; yet the motion and mingling of the elements are not identical with the sphere’s motion, nor is that motion a complete cause of them. After they have mingled, something overflows upon them from the Active Intellect. Now, even supposing a human soul becomes prepared so that an overflow from the Active Intellect reaches it, this in no way obliges the celestial soul to be aware of the overflow. Besides, what they say on this point is already acknowledged to be self-contradictory and corrupt: if the Intellect were to overflow what is not contained within it, the effect would contain what is absent from the cause; and if it overflows only what it does contain, then it contains nothing but universals—it holds no bodily forms, no knowledge of particulars, no mixtures, nor any of the other things they claim emanate from the Intellect.
Clarification that past events are not inscribed in the celestial soul.
Seventh: The celestial soul is continually setting the sphere in motion; hence at every moment it must know the motion it intends. Even if one concedes that it knows what proceeds from itself and from other causes, it remains beyond doubt that what has passed, before that specific motion, of particular events is not known to the soul in a manner…