Friday, May 19, 2006

Q18 A1: Whether to live belongs to all natural things?

No. We can gather to what things life belongs, and to what it does not, from such things as manifestly possess life because things are said to be alive that determine themselves to movement or operation of any kind (whereas those things that cannot by their nature do so, cannot be called living, unless by a similitude).

Every natural movement in respect to natural things has a certain similitude to the operations of life. Hence, if the whole corporeal universe were one animal, so that its movement came from an "intrinsic moving force" (as some in fact have mistakenly held), in that case movement would really be the life of all natural bodies.