Summa I, Q.88–89 a.1: God Is Not the First Thing We Know; Why the Soul Is Joined to the Body (Brevity, the Square, and Teaching Weaker Minds)

Orientation #

He refers back to “the previous article” (q. 88 a. 2) on why we cannot understand created immaterial substances in this life, and to “our discussion of how the soul knows” earlier in the course. He stops to “start question eighty-nine when I come back”, says he will be gone next week, then (after a prayer) begins q. 89 in the same recording. The previous class treated q. 88 on knowing immaterial substances and opened the question whether God is first known; the next continues q. 89 aa. 1-4 on the separated soul’s knowledge.

The class, in order #

1. Finishing q. 88 a. 3: God is not “first and most of all known by us” (“not by knowing God that we are knowing other things”) #

Point: the objector’s phrase “that through which other things are known” puts God in the wrong order.

• Objection 3 (image/exemplar): what is first known in an image is the exemplar; our mind is the image of God (Augustine); so God is first known in our mind.
• Sed contra: John 1:18, “No one has seen God.”
• Body: since in this life we cannot understand created immaterial substances (previous article), much less the essence of the uncreated one. So God is not first known; through creatures we come to knowledge of God, Romans “the invisible things of God are understood through the things made” — the text he says the Church takes over at Vatican I. What is first known is the what it is of a material thing, the object of our understanding.
• Reply 1: we understand and judge all things “in the light of the first truth” because our light, natural or the gratuitous light of faith, is an impression of the first truth. But that light is not what is understood but that by which; so even less is God what is first understood. Example: the light of my mind is that by which I separate what a triangle is from an image of a triangle, what a dog is from an image of a dog; what I first understand is the what-it-is of something sensed or imagined.
• Illustration: a little child thinks first only about what it can sense; that is why the early philosophers thought whatever is must be somewhere — they had thoughts only about bodies.
• Reply 2: propter quod unumquodque tale, et illud magis holds only within one order. Premises and conclusion are one order: you must know the premises first and through them the conclusion. God is not in that order: not first known, but first cause of our soul and of our power of knowing. He restates it as a dilemma: if “known to us” were said of God and creatures with creatures known because we know God, God would be more known — false; rather we know God through creatures, and creatures are more known to us.
• Reply 3: if our soul bore a perfect image of God, as the Son is the perfect image of the Father, our mind would at once understand God; it is an imperfect image, so the argument does not follow.

2. Question 89 opened: the eight articles (“what’s going to be like after you die”) #

Point: the question concerns the knowledge of the separated soul. He lists eight: (1) whether it can understand; (2) whether it understands the separated substances, the angels; (3) whether it understands all natural things; (4) whether it knows singulars; (5) whether habits of knowledge acquired here remain (“I still have geometry?”); (6) whether it can use the habit of science acquired here; (7) whether local distance impedes its knowledge; (8) whether separated souls know what is done here — do you know what goes on at the monastery, do your parents know what is happening to their children.

3. Article 1, objections and sed contra (“it’s able to understand nothing”) #

Point: three objections that the separated soul understands nothing, and Aristotle’s counter.

• Obj. 1: Aristotle, De Anima I: understanding is corrupted when something within is corrupted; all the interior things of man are corrupted by death.
• Obj. 2: the soul is impeded from understanding by the binding of the senses and the disturbance of imagination (a blow on the head); death corrupts sense and imagination entirely.
• Obj. 3: if it understands, it is through some forms. Not inborn (the mind is in the beginning like a tablet with nothing written on it); not abstracted (no organs of sense and imagination); not forms previously abstracted and conserved (then a boy’s soul would understand nothing after death); not forms divinely poured in (that would be grace, not the natural knowledge treated here).
• Sed contra: De Anima I: if the soul has no operation proper to it, it cannot be separated; but it can be separated; so it has an operation of its own, most of all understanding, and understands without the body.
• His note: Aristotle actually reasons the reverse way — the soul has an operation not in the body, therefore its existence is not altogether in the body; the sed contra takes separability as said or probable and uses Aristotle’s condition.
• Translation aside: “understand nothing altogether” sounds better as “able to understand nothing”.

4. The difficulty, and the Platonist way out rejected (“matter is for the sake of form”) #

Point: the soul in the body cannot understand except by turning to images, so how can it understand separated?

• Now, to understand what a triangle is, I must form an image of a triangle. This does not put understanding in the imagination: Aristotle’s proportion, images are to the understanding as the exterior colour (the black of your robes) is to my eye — I cannot see the blackness without the robes. Not only do we get thoughts from images; even to use them we turn back to images.
• If turning to images were not from the soul’s nature but merely from being joined to the body, as the Platonists laid down, the question would be easily solved: remove the impediment and the soul returns to its nature and understands intelligibles simply, like the other separated substances. Platonists, and to some extent Origen: the body as prison or punishment, like putting you in a dark room.
• Reply: the soul is the first act of a natural body composed of tools, so the union is natural. On the Platonist view the soul would not be united for its own good (it would understand worse united than separated) but only for the good of the body — unreasonable, since matter is for the sake of form, not the reverse.
• How Aristotle shows matter is for form, from the practical arts: three connected arts — the one that prepares raw materials, the one that forms the product, the one that uses it. The using art commands the forming art because use is the purpose of the product (defects on the highway lead to a recall); the forming art commands the preparing art in the same relation; so as use is the end of the product, the product is the end of the raw materials. His father’s company: engineers make it, test it on the farm, go back to the forge; the company tells the steel and lumber people what kind and shape they want. Cooking: the connoisseur judges the cook and sends the dish back; the cook tells the market and the potato peeler how to prepare; raw materials for the dinner, the dinner for the eating. So the lower cannot be the end of the higher; the union could not be natural if it were a punishment.

5. Way of operating follows way of being (“outside its nature, not opposed to its nature”) #

Point: if turning to images is natural to the soul and its nature is not changed by death, it seems it can naturally understand nothing separated, having no images; Thomas removes this.

1. Nothing acts except insofar as it is in act (“I think, therefore I am” — I must be before I can do).
2. So the way of doing of each thing follows its way of being.
3. The soul has one way of being united to the body and another separated, the same nature remaining — not that union is accidental to it, but by its very nature it is united to a body (the definition of the soul).

• Analogy: a body whose nature is to be light is not changed in nature whether in its own place or outside it, though outside it is beside its nature.
• So united, and its existence shared by the body, its way of understanding is turning to images in bodily organs; separated, its way is turning to what is understandable simply, i.e. actually understandable, like the other separated substances — as opposed to material things, understandable only in ability and made actual by the agent intellect.
• Distinction: turning to images is natural, as union is natural; separation is outside the definition of its nature and so is understanding without images — not opposed to its nature, but outside its nature. Hence it is united to the body to operate according to its nature.

6. The second doubt: why not the nobler way by nature? (“the more that light is divided and diversified”) #

Point: nature is ordered to the better, and understanding by turning to what is understandable simply is better; so God ought to have made the soul’s nature such that the nobler way was natural and it needed no body. He calls this the more serious objection than the Platonist one.

• How things become actually understandable: I see this cat, remember it, see another; I have an experience of cat, compare the images, separate out what they have in common — now something actually understandable. Boethius: a thing is singular when sensed or imagined, universal when understood. Angels and separate substances, above all God, are actually understandable.
• Thomas’s answer: though understanding by turning to higher things is simply more noble, for the soul that way would be more imperfect. In every understanding substance there is a power of understanding by influx of the divine light (John: the light that enlightens every man — and every angel; Thomas’s prayer after communion, lux vera), one and simple in the first beginning, but the more distant a creature is from God the more that light is divided and diversified, as lines going out from a centre. God understands all through his one essence; higher intellects through many forms but fewer, more universal and more powerful; lower ones through more forms, less universal and less efficacious, as they fall short of the higher power.
• His poem on the Father saying it all in one word and the Son speaking few words that said so much, “brevity and soul of wit”: God expresses everything in one thought; descending the angels takes more thoughts; at the bottom, our mind needs a separate thought for cat, dog, elephant, ant — one thought for dog and cat together is confused (“four-footed animal”). To know distinctly, not confusedly, we multiply thoughts.
• The student parallel: the weaker student needs more words and examples and still knows the principle less well; grade-school math sections with “extra help”.
• Euclid Book II, “theorem number five”, his favourite: of rectangles with the same perimeter the square, the simplest, contains most area, and the difference in area is the square of the difference in the sides. 5×5, 4×6, 3×7 all have perimeter 20, areas 25, 24, 21. And 2×10 has perimeter 24 but area only 20 — so with less perimeter one contains more area, and the simplest contains most.
• Max Planck (quantum hypothesis, December 1900; Einstein on light five years later, Bohr on the atom thirteen years later; the greatest change since Newton, Galileo, Kepler): the more universal the theory, the simpler its form. Compare the Summa: q. 2 shows God exists as first cause, q. 3 his simplicity — the most universal cause is simplest.
• Aristotle comparing tragedy and epic: similar effect, tragedy with fewer words and means, so the more perfect form. Mozart vs. Haydn: Haydn changes key for variety; Mozart’s changes always signify — simpler and far more powerful.
• Polonius, “brevity is the soul of wit”, wit in the old sense of wisdom: how can the wise man be marked by shortness? Because he says more with fewer words. The Pope: a year of Thomas teaches more than a lifetime of the Fathers. The Bible: the fool multiplies his words. “Oh what a complicated web we weave” — a lie needs ever more explaining.
• His proportion: as area is to perimeter, so is what you say to the words — with fewer words one can say more.
• Other instances: rereading a marvellous Shakespeare passage keeps yielding more; Thomas pausing on Aristotle’s word brevis in the Metaphysics — small in size, great in power; F = ma yields an infinity of masses or forces from one equation; Plutarch’s rhetorician pacing before a speech — not expanding it, shortening it; lecturing the same course to two sections and saying it better, more clearly, in less time the second time; De Koninck teaching the Physics at Laval since about 1935 and still full of wonder; modern philosophers yield less each reading — Locke apologises for the length of the Essay and is too lazy to cut it; the Greek fragments (Heraclitus: nature loves to hide; moderation the greatest virtue; wisdom is to speak the truth and act according to nature) — a whole lecture at TAC on one fragment.
• Applied: from the seraphim down through the angels to man, more and more thoughts to understand less well; this is part of why our soul is joined to the body — we are at the bottom and need the multiplication of thoughts got through sensible things.

7. Lower natures with universal forms would know confusedly (“in a kind of commonness and confusion”) #

Point: the text continued — if lower substances had forms of the universality of the higher, lacking their efficacy they would get only common, confused knowledge; this appears in men, since the weaker do not get perfect knowledge through the universal concepts of the more understanding unless things are broken down in particular. Students saying philosophy is “so abstract” mean it is very universal; they want the particular and concrete.

• Human souls are lowest among understanding substances by order of nature; the perfection of the universe requires diverse grades (difference in kind matters more to the universe than individual differences, being more formal). If God had made human souls understand as separate substances do, they would have very confused, general knowledge; so, for perfect and proper — particular — knowledge, they are naturally united to bodies to take particular knowledge from sensible things, as rude men are led to science only by sensible examples.

8. Digression to q. 117 a. 1: the teacher’s manuductio (“leading by the hand”) #

Point: the teacher leads the student from what he knows to the unknown in two ways: by proposing aids — less universal statements the student can judge from what he knows, or sensible examples, likenesses, opposites — by which the learner’s understanding is led by the hand (Msgr Dionne’s manuductio); and by strengthening the understanding through the order of principles to conclusions. Dionne gave a course on the manuductio proper to logic and to wisdom; one must study the particular sciences before wisdom, which is completely universal.

• His own example of less universal statements: the central question of philosophy — does truth require that the way we know be the way things are? Answer: no. First met in Physics II, where mathematics considers sphere and number apart from sensible matter: geometry knows cube apart from ice cube, wooden blocks, the plastic paperweight, and is not false though cube exists only in such matter. Thomas’s example: knowing Berquist as philosopher apart from grandfather, or vice versa — incomplete, not mistaken. Then reverse order: I know you before your parents and grandparents, though in reality they came first; we know effect before cause (every “why”; Sherlock Holmes, “reason backwards”, from effect to cause); history moves backward and grows obscurer. The error would be to conclude that because the effect is first in our knowledge it is first in reality — identifying the order of knowing with the order of things. Each of these is a particular statement leading toward the universal one, which wisdom later sees completely.
• The weaker the mind, the more manuductio, and even so the weaker student understands less than the better one with a much shorter one — a likeness to the scale of angels.
• Senses give very particular ideas: contact with the cat, not animal in general. Butcher’s Poetics (Greek and English, Dover) with essays and modern prefaces on tragedy in general: to study, narrow down — Shakespearean tragedy is understood better than what is common to all tragedians.
• Closing: as a higher angel divides his thought for a lower one, the teacher divides the thing into less universal statements and sensible examples. Thus it is for the good of the soul to be united to the body and understand by turning to images, and nevertheless it can be separated and have another way: separated, it naturally turns to what is actually understandable; in the body, to what is understandable in ability, made actual when the agent intellect acts on images and separates out what they have in common.

His words #

• “that by which” vs. “what is understood”: the light of our mind is the former.
• propter quod unumquodque tale, et illud magis: valid only within one order (premises and conclusion).
• “first act of a natural body composed of tools”: his definition of the soul [ed.: organic body].
• “understandable simply” = “understandable in act” vs. “understandable only in ability” [ed.: potency].
• “acting upon understanding”: his rendering of agent intellect.
• “outside its nature, not opposed to its nature”: of the separated soul’s way of understanding.
• “brevity is the soul of wit”: wit in the old sense, wisdom; the wise say more with fewer words.
• brevis (Aristotle, per Thomas): small in size, great in power.
• manuductio: leading by the hand (Msgr Dionne).
• “the central question of philosophy”: must the way we know be the way things are? No.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 88, a. 3 (obj. 3, sed contra, body, replies 1-3)
• Thomas, ST I, q. 89 (prologue, eight articles); a. 1 objections, sed contra, body
• Thomas, ST I, q. 117, a. 1 (last paragraph of the body)

Mentioned

• John 1:18; John 1 (the light that enlightens every man); Romans on the invisible things of God (taken over at Vatican I)
• Aristotle, De Anima I (both as cited by Thomas); Physics II (mathematics vs. natural philosophy); Metaphysics (brevis); Aristotle on tragedy and epic
• Augustine on the mind as image of God; Boethius on singular/universal; Euclid, Elements II
• Thomas, ST I, qq. 2-3; Thomas’s prayer after communion (lux vera)
• Shakespeare (Polonius); Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding; Heraclitus fragments; Plutarch’s Lives; Butcher’s edition of the Poetics; Sherlock Holmes; Planck, Einstein, Bohr

His questions #

• Is God, or the light of our mind, the first thing we understand? No: the light is that by which we understand; what is first understood is the what-it-is of something sensed or imagined.
• If creatures are known to us because we know God, wouldn’t God be more known than creatures? It would follow, but it is false; we know God through creatures, which are more known to us.
• How can the soul understand once separated, if by nature it understands only by turning to images? Its way of operating follows its way of being; separated, it turns to what is actually understandable, a way outside but not against its nature.
• Why is it unreasonable that the soul be joined to the body only for the body’s good? Matter is for the sake of form, as the using art commands the forming art and the forming art the preparing art.
• Since nature is ordered to the better, why didn’t God make the nobler way of understanding natural to the soul? For the lowest intellectual nature that way would give only confused, general knowledge; union with the body gives particular knowledge.
• How can the wise man be characterised by shortness when he knows more than everyone? He says more with fewer words, as a square holds more area for the same, or less, perimeter.
• Does truth require that the way we know be the way things are? No; the mind truly knows in separation what does not exist in separation and in the reverse order of reality.
• Is the mind false in knowing the effect before the cause? No; the mistake is to conclude that the effect is therefore first in reality.