insensible movement which it makes from West to East by one degree in
a hundred years, it signifies things incorruptible, which received
from God the beginning of their creation, and will have no end; but of
these Metaphysics treats. Therefore I say that this movement signifies
those things, for it began this revolution which will have no end; the
end of the revolution being to return to one self-same point, to which
this Heaven will not return by this movement, which has revolved a
little more than the sixth part from the commencement of the world;
and we are now in the last age of the world, and verily we wait the
consummation of the celestial movement. Thus it is evident that the
Starry Heaven, on account of many properties, may be compared to the
Science of Physics and Metaphysics.

The Crystalline Heaven, which, as the Primum Mobile, has been
previously counted, has a sufficiently evident comparison to Moral
Philosophy; for Moral Philosophy, according to what Tommaso says upon
the second book of the Ethics, teaches us method in the other
Sciences.

For as the Philosopher says in the fifth book of the Ethics, legal
Justice requires the Sciences to be learnt, and commands, in order
that they may not be abandoned, that they be learnt and taught: thus,
the said Heaven rules with its movement the daily revolution of all
the others; from which revolution every day all those receive and send
below the virtues of their several parts. For, if the revolution of
this Heaven could not rule over that, but little of their power would
descend below, and little of their aspect. Wherefore we hold that, if
it could be possible for this ninth Heaven not to move, the third part
of the Heaven would not again be seen in any part from the Earth:
Saturn would be for fourteen years and a half concealed from any place
on the Earth, Jupiter would be hidden for six years, and Mars for
almost a whole year, and the Sun for one hundred and eighty-two days
and fourteen hours (I say days, meaning so much time as so many days
measure); and Venus and Mercury, almost like the Sun, would be hidden
and would reappear, and the Moon for the space of fourteen days and a
half would be hidden from all people. Verily, here below there would
be neither generation, nor the life of animals, nor of plants; there
would be no night, nor day, nor week, nor month, nor year; but the
whole Universe would be disordered, and the movement of the stars
would be in vain