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Updated: June 10, 2025
To Maimonides Aristotle was the indisputable authority for all matters pertaining to sublunar existence, but he reserved the right to differ with the Stagirite when the question concerned the heavenly spheres and the influences derived from them. Hence he denied the eternity of motion and the fundamental principle at the basis of this Aristotelian idea, that necessity rules all natural phenomena.
As all sublunar nature shows a unity of purpose, this intellect must be one. And as it cannot be like one of its products, it must be eternal and not subject to generation and decay. But these are the attributes which, on grounds taken from the consideration of the intellectual activity in man, we ascribed to the Active Intellect. Hence it is the Active Intellect.
Then follows a description of the constitution of the sublunar world, the terrestrial sphere consisting of part earth, part water, and being surrounded by the successive spheres of air and fire.
Its actual essence is due to its form. A thing free from matter would be all that it is at once. It would not be liable to change of any kind, whether progress or retrogression. All the objects of our experience in the sublunar world are not of this kind. They realize themselves gradually, and are never at any given moment all that they are capable of becoming. This is due to their matter.
Judging from the position of man among the other creatures of the sublunar world, we come to the conclusion, he tells us, that that which distinguishes him above his surroundings, namely, his rational soul, is the aim of all the rest; and they are means and preparations for it. The rational soul has two forms of activity.
And we have thus shown that it has two functions. One is to endow sublunar nature with the intelligence and purpose visible in its processes and evolutions; the other is to enable the rational power in man to rise from a tabula rasa to an actual intellect with a content. From both these activities it is evident that the Active Intellect has a knowledge of sublunar creation as a systematic unity.
Thus the first emanation was the first Intelligence. From this emanated the sphere of the fixed stars moved by it and the second Intelligence. From this emanated in turn the sphere of Saturn and the third Intelligence, and so on through the seven planets to the moon. From the Intelligence of the lunar sphere emanated the Active Intellect and the sublunar spheres of the four elements.
She who was to reign in this ethereal paradise, this happy home, far as the poles away from Norfolk Street, was a living being in the sublunar globe, present sometimes to Charley's eyes, and now so often present to his thoughts; and yet she was but a child, and as ignorant that she had ever touched a lover's heart by her childish charms as though she had been a baby.
According to some it is all knowledge, whether of sublunar things or of the separate substances. According to others it is only the knowledge of God and the angels that confers immortality. All these views are wrong from the Scriptural as well as the philosophical point of view.
They are all permanent and the only change visible in them is change of place. But even their motions are different from those of the four elements. The latter are in a straight line toward the centre or away from it, whereas the heavenly bodies move in a circle eternally around the centre. This is another proof that they are not composed of the same material as sublunar bodies.
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