"Every living substance stands
higher in the order of nature than one that has not life." The lights
of heaven, therefore, are living beings.

Obj. 3: Further, a cause is nobler than its effect. But the sun,
moon, and stars are a cause of life, as is especially evidenced in
the case of animals generated from putrefaction, which receive life
from the power of the sun and stars. Much more, therefore, have the
heavenly bodies a living soul.

Obj. 4: Further, the movement of the heaven and the heavenly bodies
are natural (De Coel. i, text. 7, 8): and natural movement is from an
intrinsic principle. Now the principle of movement in the heavenly
bodies is a substance capable of apprehension, and is moved as the
desirer is moved by the object desired (Metaph. xii, text. 36).
Therefore, seemingly, the apprehending principle is intrinsic to the
heavenly bodies: and consequently they are living beings.

Obj. 5: Further, the first of movables is the heaven. Now, of all
things that are endowed with movement the first moves itself, as is
proved in _Phys._ viii, text. 34, because, what is such of itself
precedes that which is by another. But only beings that are living
move themselves, as is shown in the same book (text. 27). Therefore
the heavenly bodies are living beings.

_On the contrary,_ Damascene says (De Fide Orth. ii), "Let no one
esteem the heavens or the heavenly bodies to be living things, for
they have neither life nor sense."

_I answer that,_ Philosophers have differed on this question.
Anaxagoras, for instance, as Augustine mentions (De Civ. Dei xviii,
41), "was condemned by the Athenians for teaching that the sun was a
fiery mass of stone, and neither a god nor even a living being." On
the other hand, the Platonists held that the heavenly bodies have
life. Nor was there less diversity of opinion among the Doctors of the
Church. It was the belief of Origen (Peri Archon i) and Jerome that
these bodies were alive, and the latter seems to explain in that sense
the words (Eccles. 1:6), "The spirit goeth forward, surveying all
places round about." But Basil (Hom. iii, vi in Hexaem.) and Damascene
(De Fide Orth. ii) maintain that the heavenly bodies are inanimate.
Augustine leaves the matter in doubt, without committing himself to
either theory, though he goes so far as to say that if the heavenly
bodies are really living beings, their souls must be akin to the
angelic nature (Gen. ad lit. ii, 18; Enchiridion lviii).