Summa I-II Q38 a2–5: Remedies for Sadness: Weeping, the Sympathy of Friends, Contemplating Truth, Sleep and Baths

Orientation #

He begins directly at the second article (“whether… mitigated through… the second one goes for thus”) and, on reaching the fourth, says “we just finished that” of the first-article principle that every pleasure mitigates sadness. He does not announce what comes next. Verified sources place the class in Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 38, aa. 2–5. The previous class ended mid-way through Augustine’s grief over his dead friend, the remedy of pleasure having just been read.

The class, in order #

1. Article 2: the objections against weeping (“no effect diminishes its cause”) #

The point: three arguments that weeping does not mitigate sadness, which he rates “pretty good.”

1. No effect diminishes its cause; weeping and moaning are effects of sadness; so they do not diminish it — “a nice argument.”
2. By proportion: as weeping is to sadness, laughter is to joy; but laughter does not lessen joy — “from the proportion there, some probability.”
3. In weeping the bad thing that saddens us is represented; imagining what saddens increases sadness, as imagining what delights increases joy. Sed contra, Augustine, Confessions IV: over the death of his friend there was “some requiem, some rest” in sighs and tears.

• Aside: growing up, the saying was that women weep more readily and it was good for them, while men held it in — “men don’t cry” — and were not purged.

2. The body of article 2: two reasons (“everything harmful inwardly… more afflicts one”) #

The point: tears and moanings naturally mitigate sadness — he takes this as one example of purgation, catharsis — for two reasons.

1. What is harmful and shut inside afflicts more, because the intention of the soul is multiplied about it, dwelling on it over and over; diffused outward, the intention is broken up among exterior things and the interior sadness diminished. Example: the funeral home, where the bereaved is constantly distracted by friends coming in.
2. “Now the second is a very subtle thing”: an operation suited to a man according to the disposition he is in is pleasant to him; weeping is suited to the sad man; so it becomes pleasant; and since every pleasure mitigates sadness (as said), weeping mitigates it. “Have a good cry — that’s what they need.”

• Aside: Thomas has “a good knowledge of the soul… much better than the modern psychologists” sent into the high schools “to mess up the kids.”

3. Replies of article 2 (“relation of cause to effect… is contrary”) #

Reply to 1: the relation of cause to effect is contrary to the relation of the saddening thing to the one saddened. The thing causing sadness is opposed to you; but every effect is fitting to its cause, hence pleasurable (the reason from the body of the article). So sadness is mitigated by its own effect “by reason of the contrariety.” — “You’ve written well, Thomas.” Reply to 2: the relation of effect to cause is like that of the delighting thing to the delighted — in both an agreement; the similar increases its similar; so laughter increases joy, “except perhaps in the case of excess.” He notes the reply explains not why weeping diminishes sadness but why laughter does not diminish joy. Reply to 3: imagining a saddening thing as such increases sadness; but from the man’s doing what suits his state arises pleasure. Conversely, one who bursts into laughter in a state that calls for sorrow thereby sorrows, doing what is unsuitable — “as Tully says in the Tusculan.” He: “It’s not appropriate to laugh.”

• Student’s example: a stand-up comic from the show Taxi whose last appearance voiced his real grievances; the audience laughed, thinking it irony; he then killed himself, and the laughers regretted the inappropriate response. He: sometimes something sudden and bad happens, you think it is a joke and laugh, then realise.
• Aside (placed at reply 1): Achilles wounded by the loss of his friend Patroclus, for whose death he is in a way responsible by staying out of the battle — “that’s kind of the tragedy.”

4. Article 3: objections against the compassion of friends (“the sadness of the friend condoling”) #

The point: does a friend “suffering with you” help you “carry the weight”? Three objections say no.

1. Contraries have contrary effects; Augustine, Confessions VIII: rejoicing among many, each is more happy, “inflamed from each other” (a room telling jokes; “the whole world laughs with you”); so with many sad, greater sadness.
2. Friendship requires paying back; the friend’s sorrowing is a new evil for the one already sorrowing; the pain duplicated, sadness increases. (He remarks on the alliteration.)
3. Every evil of a friend saddens as one’s own, “for a friend is another self”; sadness is an evil; so the condoling friend’s sadness increases the other’s.

• Aside raised here and returned to later: Christ on the cross and his mother — “was his pain lessened by her sorrowing or increased?” A student: increased. Sed contra: the Philosopher, Ethics IX — in sadness a friend sorrowing with one consoles.

5. The body of article 3: the burden shared and the love perceived (“Parting is such sweet sorrow”) #

The point: a condoling friend naturally consoles, for two reasons from Ethics IX.

1. Sadness weighs one down (aggravare), has the notion of a burden (onus), from which one seeks relief; seeing others saddened with him, there arises an imaginatio that the burden is borne with another, as in carrying heavy bodies; so he bears it more lightly. “You almost have to go through the metaphor.”
2. “The second reason and the better one”: through the friends’ sorrow he perceives himself loved, which is delectable; every pleasure mitigates sadness. “That’s beautiful, those two reasons.” Example: Romeo’s “parting is such sweet sorrow” — sorrow is not sweet, sweetness is pleasant; how sweet? because it shows the love underlying. His own: leaving to give a talk, the boy says “bye, Dad,” his little daughter Maria holds back tears, his wife says “that’s a hard act to follow” — “they love you.”

6. Discussion: was Christ consoled by his mother’s sorrow? (“her sorrowing or increased”) #

The point: the class tests the article against the Passion, and he leaves both effects standing.

• Students: the usual writers (Alphonsus) say his mother’s presence increased his passion; but his knowledge that she was there willingly, suffering with him, would be some consolation; the stations seem to flow one into the other (his mother, then Simon helping with the cross); saints like Faustina are said to console him in his sufferings, and she would do so most perfectly. One student: since she was innocent and deserved no suffering, her suffering more than any of us caused him sorrow; Alphonsus may also write to persuade people to sorrow for their sins.
• He: if a father dies, the wife is more saddened by seeing her daughter saddened — “if you love somebody, you’re going to be saddened by seeing that they’re sad.” So two things happen: perhaps an increase of sadness, and consolation because of that wonderful love. Romeo and Juliet cause sorrow to each other by realising how they hate to part, “but yet there’s sweetness there too. It’s very, very subtle.”

7. Replies of article 3 (“in both things, friendship is manifested”) #

Reply to 1: in both, friendship is shown — one rejoices with the rejoicing and sorrows with the sorrowing (St Paul says to do both); so both are rendered pleasant by reason of the cause, the person loves you. Reply to 2 (and 3): the friend’s sadness secundum se saddens — “he’s admitting that,” which is what they emphasise about Christ — but consideration of the cause, love, delights more.

8. Article 4: objections against the contemplation of truth (“who adds a science adds another pain”) #

The point: “this is something for us guys here.”

1. Ecclesiasticus: who adds knowledge adds pain; knowledge pertains to contemplation of truth. Joke: more knowledge, more tests, more pain.
2. Contemplation belongs to the speculative — “the looking” — understanding, which does not move (On the Soul III); joy and sorrow are motions of the soul. He: “doesn’t move” presumably means to action; “we’ll see what he says.”
3. A remedy should be laid where the sickness is; contemplation is in the intellect, bodily sorrow in the sense. Sed contra, Augustine, Soliloquies I: if the lightning of truth opens for our minds, either I did not sense the pain or it is tolerated as nothing. Example: when the meal is late and the little kids are sad, distract them with something they get interested in — “may not be the contemplation of any great truth” — and they forget the pain of hunger. Student’s counter-memory: starving after football practice, his mother tipped the whole spaghetti down the drain — “bottom fell out of my whole world” — and he got no rest.

9. The body of article 4: the greatest delight (“he’s walking on what? flowers”) #

The point: in contemplation of truth consists maxima delectatio; all pleasure mitigates pain; so contemplation mitigates sadness, and the more, the more perfectly one is a lover of wisdom.

• Hence from divine contemplation and of future beatitude men rejoice in tribulations (James 1: count it all joy when you fall into temptations — you are tested and perfected), and this joy is found even among bodily tortures: the martyr Tiburtius walking on burning coals (ardentes prunas) said it seemed to him he walked on rosy flowers, in the name of Jesus Christ.
• Students: an English martyr kept in an underground box of vermin and filth came out saying he had enjoyed the most wonderful contemplation; John of the Cross in prison likewise.
• Aside: Thomas elsewhere says error is a great part of misery — “most people don’t think that”; “he’s an unusual man, that Thomas.”

10. Replies of article 4 (“moves the soul on the side of the looking”) #

Reply to 1: knowledge adds pain either from the difficulty and defect in discovering truth (you cannot understand something, “pain”), or because through knowledge a man knows many things contrary to his will (“I don’t want to know the divine law” given my lifestyle); so on the part of the things known it causes pain, on the part of the contemplation, pleasure. Student: knowing the ways of men, seeing people you love going the wrong way, causes sadness. Reply to 2: the speculative intellect does not move on the side of the thing looked at, but on the side of the looking itself, a good of man and naturally pleasant. Shakespeare’s definition of reason uses the English word for it: “looking before and after.” Reply to 3: in the powers of the soul there is an overflowing from higher to lower; the pleasure of contemplation in the superior part overflows to mitigate the sorrow in the sense. Student: he feels physically better after good thinking — “my mind overflowing into my body.”

• Digression: college professors are “the dumbest voters” — at Princeton 155 gave to Obama, two to Romney (a visiting engineer and a janitor); more professors than women voted for Obama; Buckley preferred the first hundred names in the Cambridge phone book to the Harvard faculty; Chesterton: “you don’t have to be intelligent to be an intellectual.”

11. Article 5: objections against sleep and bath (“sleep and bath pertain to the body”) #

The point: “you didn’t expect Thomas to get this concrete” — “one’s for the mind, one’s for the body.”

1. Sadness is in the soul; sleep and bath pertain to the body.
2. The same effect does not come from contrary causes; bodily things are repugnant to contemplation of truth, which mitigates sadness.
3. Sadness as bodily is a transmutation of the body; these remedies pertain to the exterior senses and members, not the interior disposition of the heart. Sed contra, Augustine, Confessions IX: he had heard the bath’s name said to drive anxiety from the soul; “I slept and woke,” and found his sorrow not a little mitigated; and Ambrose’s hymn Deus Creator Omnium: rest restores the tired limbs (artus) to labour and dissolves anxious minds — “sounds like Shakespeare,” “knits up the ravelled sleeve of care.”

• Aside: Thomas elsewhere says exterior acts like genuflecting help the soul in devotion, and those who deny it “forget they are men”; likewise hugging your children increases the love in the soul.
• Asides: Ambrose’s feast recently (December 7); Augustine went to hear Ambrose’s Ciceronian style and the thoughts came in with the words; Jerome’s dream, reading Cicero for the Latin, told by Christ “you’re a Ciceronian, not a Christian.”

12. The body and replies of article 5 (“repugnant to the living motion of the body”) #

The point: sadness by its species is repugnant to the vital motion of the body; so what restores bodily nature to its suitable state of vital motion is repugnant to sadness and mitigates it; and nature reduced to its suitable state causes pleasure — Plato said pleasure was settling back into your natural condition — and all pleasure mitigates sadness. “Nice way to compare this with the contemplation of truth.” Example: as a student in Quebec, ten cents for trunks and towel, hot shower, half an hour’s swim, then walking up the hills in the cold feeling good after a day of sitting in class — “that’s a vital motion it gives you.” Reply to 1: the suitable disposition of the body, insofar as it is sensed, causes pleasure and so mitigates sadness. (“I’m gonna take more showers… my singing will improve.”) Reply to 2: one pleasure impedes another, but all pleasure mitigates sadness; so it is not inconvenient that causes impeding each other both mitigate it — “I’m doing too much thinking when I’m doing my singing.” Reply to 3: every good disposition of the body redounds to the heart as the beginning and end of bodily motions, as Aristotle says in the book on the cause of the motion of animals.

• Asides: as a boy everyone seemed to die of heart attack; Father Maron, weakened by cancer treatment, died of pneumonia but the certificate said “cardiac arrest” — “a catch-all.” The Romans put baths in every city — Bath, England. Jokes: if you are sad, read the Summa in the bathtub with friends; a waterproof Kindle edition — “we’ll make millions, and then we’ll all be happy.”

His words #

• purgation, catharsis; weeping as one example of it
• intention of the soul “multiplied about” the harm; “broken up” when diffused outward
• aggravare; onus; sadness as a burden to be carried with another
• imaginatio that the burden is shared
• “suffering with you”, “condoling”, “Paraclete” — for the friend who sorrows with one
• speculative = “looking” understanding [ed.: speculative intellect]
• maxima delectatio in contemplation of truth
• ardentes prunas, burning coals
• overflowing from higher to lower powers [ed.: redundantia]
• secundum se: the friend’s sadness saddens of itself
• vital motion of the body; nature “reduced to its suitable status”
• artus, limbs, in Ambrose’s hymn

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 38, aa. 2, 3, 4, 5 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Augustine, Confessions IV (rest in sighs and tears); VIII (rejoicing with many); IX (bath and sleep)
• Augustine, Soliloquies I (the lightning of truth)
• Ambrose, hymn Deus Creator Omnium (as quoted in a. 5)
• James 1 (count it all joy)
• Ecclesiasticus, “who adds a science adds a pain” (inferred)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Ethics IX (a friend consoles; two reasons)
• Aristotle, On the Soul III (speculative intellect does not move)
• Aristotle, on the cause of the motion of animals (heart as beginning and end of bodily motion)
• Cicero (Tully), Tusculan Disputations (laughing when one should sorrow)
• Acts of the martyr Tiburtius (burning coals as flowers)
• Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (“parting is such sweet sorrow”); Hamlet (“looking before and after”); Macbeth (“ravelled sleeve of care”) (inferred for play names)
• St Paul, rejoice with the rejoicing, weep with the weeping
• St Alphonsus on the Passion; St Faustina; St Jerome’s dream; John of the Cross in prison
• Thomas on genuflecting and devotion; Thomas on error as part of misery (loci not given)
• Plato on pleasure as return to the natural state; Chesterton; William F. Buckley

His questions #

• Weeping is an effect of sadness — how can an effect diminish its cause? The effect fits its cause and is pleasant; the saddening thing is opposed to the saddened; the contrary relations make the effect mitigate.
• Why does laughter not lessen joy, if weeping lessens sadness? Effect and cause agree, as delighting thing and delighted; similar increases similar — the reply explains laughter, not weeping.
• Was Christ’s pain lessened by his mother’s sorrowing, or increased? Both: her sadness of itself saddens him, but the love it shows consoles; left with “two things happening.”
• How can sorrow be sweet, as Romeo says? Because it shows the love that underlies it.
• Who is this Augustine he’s quoting all the time? / Who is this philosopher? Augustine, cited from Confessions and Soliloquies; the Philosopher is Aristotle (Ethics IX).
• Does knowledge add pain? On the part of things known (difficulty, or truths contrary to one’s will), yes; on the part of the contemplating, pleasure.
• How can bodily remedies mitigate a sadness that is in the soul? The body’s suitable disposition, as sensed, gives pleasure; every good bodily disposition redounds to the heart.
• Can two mutually impeding causes both mitigate sadness? Yes: one pleasure impedes another, yet all pleasure mitigates sadness.