Creation and Change

The celestial bodies, as the sun, moon, and stars, are ordained to have no other use than that of service to the earth.

• They need nothing more than motion and light to achieve their end.

So nature produced and directed all these invariant, eternal, and divine celestial bodies just to serve the changeable, transitory, and mortal earth?

Yet you call the Earth:

• the dregs of the universe
• the sink of all uncleanness

Why would the celestial bodies be made eternal, etc. in order to serve something transitory, etc.?

Take away this purpose of serving the earth, and the innumerable host of celestial bodies is left useless and superfluous, since they have not and cannot have any reciprocal activities among themselves, all of them being inalterable, immutable, and invariant.

For instance, if the moon were invariant, how would the sun or other stars act on it?

The action would have no more effect than an attempt to melt a large mass of gold by looking at it or by thinking about it.

The celestial bodies are contributing to the generations and alterations on the earth, so they too must be alterable.

Otherwise I do not see how the influence of the moon or sun in causing generations on the earth would differ from placing a marble statue beside a woman and expecting children from such a union.

Corruptibility, alteration, mutation, etc. do not pertain to the whole terrestrial globe, which as to its entirety is no less eternal than the sun or moon.

Generations and corruptions are perpetual in its external parts.

• This makes them require celestial and eternal operations.

Therefore it is necessary that celestial bodies be eternal.

You say:

• there is nothing prejudicial to the immortality of the entire terrestrial globe in the corruptibility of its superficial pans
• this generability, corruptibility, alterability, etc. give perfection to it

Then why can you not allow changes, generations, etc. in the external parts of the celestial globes?

Why cannot you add these as an ornament without reducing their perfection or depriving them of actions?

This could even increase them by making them operative on the earth and reciprocally among themselves, and the earth also on them?

This cannot be, because the generations, mutations, etc. which would occur, say, on the moon, would be vain and useless.

• Nature makes nothing in vain.

Why should they be vain and useless?

Because we plainly see and feel that all generations, changes, etc. that occur on earth are either directly or indirectly designed for the use, comfort, and benefit of man.

Horses are born to accommodate men.

The nutriment of horses, the earth produces hay and the clouds water it.

For the comfort and nourishment of men are created herbs, cereals, fruits, beasts, birds, and fishes.

If we proceed to examine and weigh carefully all these things, we shall find that the goal toward which all are directed is the need, the use, the comfort and the delight of men.

Of what use could generations on the moon or other planets ever be to the human race?

Do you mean that there are men on the moon who enjoy the fruits of the moon?

• This idea is impious if not mythical.

Things generated on earth might not be generated on the moon.

But it does not mean that no alterations (generation and dissolution) at all happen on the moon.

take place, or that there cannot be things there that do change or are generated and dissolve; things not only different from ours, but so far from our conceptions as to be entirely unimaginable by us.

A person born and raised in a huge forest among wild beasts and birds would know nothing of civilized life.

• He could never picture to himself ships, fleets, and armadas.

Thus, and more so, might it happen that in the moon, separated from us by so much greater an interval and made of materials perhaps much different from those on earth, substances exist and actions occur which are not merely remote from but completely beyond all our imaginings, lacking any resemblance to ours and therefore being entirely unthinkable.

For that which we imagine must be either something already seen or a composite of things and parts of things seen at different times; such are sphinxes, sirens, chimeras, centaurs, etc.