Tahafut_al-Tahafut-transl-Engl-van-den-Bergh

defined acts arise. For this reason the theologians say that any act can
only proceed from a living, knowing being. When one has found this first
premiss, that what moves in welldefined movements from which arise
well-defined and ordered actions is living and knowing, and one joins to
this a second premiss which can be verified by the senses, that the
heavens move on their own account in well-defined movements from
which there follow in the existents under them well-defined acts, order,
and rank through which these existents under them receive their
subsistence, one deduces from this, no doubt, a third principle, namely,
that the heavenly bodies are living beings endowed with perception. That
from their movements there follow well-defined acts from which this
sublunary world, its animals, vegetables, and minerals receive their
subsistence and conservation , is evident from observation, for, were it not
that the sun in its ecliptic approaches the sublunary world and recedes
from it, there would not be the four seasons, and without tile four seasons
there would be no plants and no animals, and the orderly origination of
elements out of each other necessary for the conservation of their
existence would not take place. For instance, when the sun recedes
towards tile south the air in the north becomes cold and rains occur and
tire production of the watery element increases, whereas in tile south tile
production of the airy element becomes greater; whereas in summer,
when the sun approaches our zenith, the opposite takes place. Those
actions which the sun exercises everlastingly through its varying distance
from the different existents which always occupy one and the same place
are also found in the moon and all the stars which have oblique spheres,
and they produce tile four seasons through their circular movements, and
the most important of all these movements, in its necessity for tire
existence and conservation of the creation, is tire highest circular
movement which produces day and night. The Venerable Book refers in
several verses to the providential care for man which arises out of God’s
subjection of all tile heavens to His bidding, as, for instance, in tile
Qur’anic verse ‘And the sun and the moon and the stars are subjected to
His bidding’, and wlrcn man observes these acts and this guidance which
proceed necessarily and permanently from tire movcnrcnts of tile stars,
and sees how these stars move in fixed movements, and drat they have
well-defined shapes and move in well-defined directions towards welldefined
actions in opposite motions, he understands that these well-
168