Chapter IV.
On corporeal nature with respect to its operation and influence.
With respect to operation, this must be held concerning corporeal nature, namely that the heavenly bodies influence terrestrial and elemental things as regards the distinctive signification of times, namely of days, months, and years. For thus Scripture says that they are for signs and times and days and years. - They also influence as regards the effective production of things generable and corruptible, namely minerals, plants, sensible creatures, and human bodies.
Yet they are signs of times and the governance of operations in such a way that they are not certain signs of future contingent events, nor do they influence free will through the force of constellations, which certain philosophers called fate.
Now the reason for understanding the aforesaid is this: since in the heavenly bodies, on account of their proximity to the first principle, there is light, motion, heat, and power -- light by reason of their form and species, motion in relation to a higher influencing agent, heat in relation to the lower nature that receives it, and power in all the aforesaid ways — since, I say, this is so, the heavenly bodies through light and motion serve for the distinctions of times, namely of the day, according to the light of the sun and the motion of the firmament; of the month, according to the motion of the moon in its oblique circle; of the year, according to the motion of the sun in the same circle; and of the seasons, according to the varied motion, distance and conjunction, ascent and descent, retrogradation and station of the planets, from which arises diversity in the seasons.
Through power, however, and heat, they influence the production of those things which are generated from the elements, by exciting, promoting, and harmonizing: so that according to a harmonization of contraries far removed from equality, they influence minerals; according to a harmonization less far from equality, plants; according to a harmonization approaching equality, sensible creatures; and according to an equal harmonization, human bodies, which are disposed toward the noblest form, which is the rational soul; toward which the appetite of every sensible and corporeal nature is ordered and directed, so that through this soul, which is form, being, living, sensing, and understanding, it may be led back as in the manner of an intelligible circle to its principle, in which it is perfected and made blessed.
And since it tends toward that principle through free will, therefore with respect to the freedom of the will it surpasses every corporeal power; and on this account all things are born to serve it, but nothing has dominion over it except God alone, not fate or the force of the position of the stars.
And therefore it is indubitably true that we are the end of all things that exist, and all corporeal things were made for human service, so that from all of them man might be kindled to love and praise the Maker of all things, by whose providence all things are disposed. This sensible framework of corporeal things is therefore like a certain house fashioned for man by the supreme Artificer, until he should come to the house not made with hands in the heavens ; so that, just as the soul, by reason of the body and the state of merit, is now on earth, so at some time the body, by reason of the soul and the state of reward, may be in the heavens.