Pars 2, Cap. 4
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/5/d/2/q/bon-brev-p2-c4
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### Chapter IV. *On corporeal nature as regards its operating and influencing.*

Now as regards its *operating*, this is to be held concerning corporeal nature: namely, that the celestial bodies exert influence upon the terrestrial and elemental as regards the *distinguishing signification of times*, that is, of days, of months and of years. For thus Scripture says, that *they may be for signs and seasons and days and years*. — They exert influence also as regards the *effective production* of things generable and corruptible, namely of *minerals, vegetables, sentient things* and human bodies. — Yet they are for signs of times and for the governance of operations in such a way that they are not certain signs of future contingents, nor do they exert influence upon free choice by a force of the constellations, which some philosophers have called *fate*.

Now the reason for the understanding of the foresaid is this: that since in the celestial bodies, on account of their nearness to the first principle, there is *light, motion, heat* and *power* — *light* by reason of their own form and species, *motion* in respect of the higher influencing [cause], *heat* in respect of the lower nature receiving [it], but *power* in all the foresaid ways — since, I say, it is so, the celestial bodies are, through *light* and *motion*, 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 the 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 of the planets, their distance and conjunction, ascent and descent, retrogradation and station, from which arises the diversity in the seasons.

But through their *power* and *heat* they exert influence *toward the production* of those things which are generated out of the elements, by exciting, by furthering, by reconciling; in such a way that according to a reconciliation of contraries far removed from equality they influence *minerals*; according to a reconciliation less far from equality, *vegetables*; according to a reconciliation approaching equality, *sentient things*; but according to an equal reconciliation, *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 terminated, so that through it — which is *form, being, living, sentient* and *understanding* — the whole may, as it were after the manner of an intelligible circle, be led back to its own principle, in which it may be perfected and beatified.

And since it tends toward that [principle] through free choice, therefore as regards the freedom of choice it surpasses every corporeal power; and through this all things are born to serve it, but nothing has dominion over it save God alone — not fate, nor the force of the position of the stars.

And therefore it is beyond doubt true that *we are* the end of all those things which are; and all corporeal things were made for man's service, so that out of them all man might be kindled to love and to praise the Maker of all things, by whose providence all things are disposed. This sensible machinery of corporeal things, therefore, is as it were a certain *house* fashioned for man by the supreme Artificer, until he come to the *house not made by hands, in the heavens*; so that, just as the *soul* is now on earth by reason of the body and of the state of merit, so one day the *body* may be in heaven by reason of the soul and of the state of reward.