Prima Pars
24. Summa I, Q.5: Is Good Prior to Being, and Is Every Being Good? (Arts. 2–3): Per Se vs. Per Accidens, Evil as Privation, First Matter and Mathematics
Class of 2006-03-16
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/024-summa-i-q-5-is-good-prior-to-being-and-is-every-being-good/

[0:00] Okay, let's go on to the second objection. I guess. Yes. Once is clear the solution to the second objection, and the second objection is saying that good is more universal, right? And he says, well, that's just the the tiny way of speaking, right? But other places you might distinguish more. Or he says it should be said that good extends to existing things and non-existing things, not by predication, but by what causality?

[0:33] Yeah. That to non-existing things we understand not those things which simply are wholly not at all, but those things which are what an ability and not an act, right? But strictly speaking, should they be called non-non existentia Not strictly. Yeah, because strictly speaking, they're being and potency, right? Okay, but you could say the non-existing in sense of not existing an act. In a certain way. Yeah. Because good has the notion of an end, in which not only rest those things which are an act, but it also removes those things which are not an act but in potency only.

[1:15] While being does not seem to imply the relation of a cause, except that of a what formal cause only, either one inhering or the exemplar that you model something after. Whose causality does not extend except to those things which are what inact? That's a kind of subtle way of explaining it, huh? To say that good has more the notion of end, right? And end is not only what things rest in that have reached their perfection, right?

[1:46] But it's also that to which things that are seeking their perfection are still an ability and not an act. Unmoved, right? While being refers more to what the form of a thing to which it has been, and therefore it seems to be more tied to the actual, right? Okay.

[2:05] That's the way of looking at it, but you could still say, you know, that that matter is more being an ability than it's non-being. Okay, it's then being an act, but it's also being an ability.

[2:20] So, but the causality of form, whether it be one inhering or an exemplar that you model things after, does not extend itself except to those things which are an act.

[2:32] Okay, now the third objection is a different kind of objection, right? And says, well, is only to be desirable because the good is the desirable, right? Well, it's desirable for what Judas not to have been born, right? Okay. And of course, you know these tragedies is always someone at the end taking his life or something, right? Huh? So. It seems desirable to Romeo, let us say, to take his own life, right?

[2:59] When he thinks that Juliet has what, died, right? Because he thinks he can only have happiness with Juliet, therefore, right? Now, in this particular objection, Thomas is going to be touching what, what, what distinction?

[3:18] What kind of distinction? Secundum, or simply speaking, in a certain no, no. What? Different forms of the will. No, he's going to be distinguishing between the as such and the by happening. Okay, now this is something we do, and I we did before when we developed the definition of the good, that is what what everybody wants, right? Okay, and someone says, well, some don't people sometimes want what is bad, right?

[3:50] Remember that? Okay, you say, well, do they want the bad as such? No, say. I say, well, if you want to drink the delicious poison, right? Huh?

[4:06] What you want to drink the delicious poison, not because it's poisonous, right? You don't know, but because it's what delicious, right? So it's desired not as poisonous, but as what? Good tasting. As delicious, right? Which is good in some way, right? Um, so the good as such is what is being desired. The bad only by what happening, right? Okay, so when we say the good is what all want, everybody wants what is good for them, as Socrates says in the Meno, right?

[4:42] We mean the good as such is what is wanted, right? Okay. Now take my example there. You want another drink, huh? Okay, and this is the drink that makes you sick, and the students also have some awareness of this possibility, right? In fact, it was your last drink for the evening, because that's the one put you over the the edge.

[5:11] But why did you want the last drink to get sick to your stomach and have to excuse yourself and so on, right? No, no, it's because the last drink seemed to be a way of continuing the good time or even increasing it, right? It was actually the way to end the good time, right? You see, so did you desire it insofar as it was bad, huh? No, say.

[5:35] And so, um, you have to see the distinction between the as such and the by happening to answer this what objection, right? And even the most extreme cases, there, you know, if I understand the example there in Crime and Punishment, right, with the young man, you know, just. Picks out someone who he has no dislike, of or anything like that. He's going to kill a woman, right?

[6:00] And he's going to do it to show that he is what above the law, right? Okay. You see, here is somebody who wants to do what is bad, kill somebody, right? Huh? Okay. But he's got kind of a false imagination that this puts him what above the law, right? And so, if I am above the law, the rest of you fools are below the law. That puts me above all of you, doesn't it?

[6:23] Huh? You are under the law, and I am above it. Huh? So there is a false appearance here of something what of an excellence, right? And it's obviously false, but you see, but this is false appearance of something good, some excellence that he is what seeking, right? Okay. And I beat the heck out of you, you know. Well, that may not a good thing to do, but in some way it makes me appear to be superior to you, right?

[6:54] That I can beat the heck out of you. You see, so I am not desiring the bad as bad, right? I am desiring the bad because of the real good that's in it, maybe in some cases, or because it resembles good in some way, right? Or I have a false imagination, see? So he's going to solve this by using the distinction there between the per se and the per accidens So the third just talking about does somebody want to commit suicide, right?

[7:25] Don't they want, therefore, not to be, right? To the third, it should be said that not to be secundum se as such is not desirable, right? But by what happening, right?

[7:43] In so far as the removal of something bad is what desirable, right? Which bad thing is taken away through what non-being, right? Okay. But the taking away of the bad is not desirable, except in so far as through the bad one is deprived of some being. Therefore, that which per se is desirable is to be, but not to be by happening only. In so far as some being is desired, which man will not sustain to be deprived of, right?

[8:30] Huh? Okay. So Romeo wants to be happy with Juliet, right? But Juliet has to be alive in order for him to be happy with her, right? And so when he's can't stand to be deprived of the happiness of being with Juliet, he wants to what escape this evil, right?

[8:51] And thus, also by happening, not to be is said to be what good, huh? Okay. So you can say to be as such is good,

[9:05] not to be as such is what. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But one can want not to be right by happening right, not as such, but to escape some other evil, right? Okay, and not to be to die is a way to what escape the torture. Let's say if they're torturing us like that, right? Okay.

[9:35] So you see, there you have the other distinction I was talking about, right? And the other distinction corresponds to the actually the first kind of mistake in the analysis here on this physical mutation. The first kind of mistake outside words, right? Mistake of mixing up as simply not so. I mean the the as such and the by happening, huh? That comes up again in the other thing about the matter and privation, right?

[10:05] Because Aristotle will say that matter as such is not non-being. Lack of form as such is a non-being, huh? Okay, but matter by happening is not. See, so that distinction could be put, if you wanted to speak more like Aristotle does. So, so you meet these distinctions again and again and again. So, the sooner you begin to understand that kind of distinction, the more you can understand the particular example of that kind of distinction, huh?

[10:40] And you are going to start to avoid the most common kinds of mistakes, right? From speech or outside of speech. The fourth objection was saying, well, not only being is desirable, but life and knowledge and so on, right? Okay, I'm not a lover of being; I'm a lover of wisdom. Okay.

[11:04] But says to the fourth, it should be said that life and science and other things of this sort are thus desired that they might be enact, Whence in all of them is desired a certain being? So when I love wisdom, I want to be wise, right? So what I want is to be in some way, right? And thus nothing is desirable except being, right? And consequently, nothing is good except what being, huh?

[11:37] Okay. So in a way, you are seeing both sides here that being and good are what convertible, right? Okay, but this will come up more now in the third article here. Whether every being is good, huh? Okay, This always strikes the non-philosopher, as kind of strange. How can you say everything is good, right? What kind of an optimist are you, you know.

[12:23] Most, you know, a fragment of Empedocles or there, you know, he mentions you know men having lived only a short time in life and experiencing bad things and good things, and I say, Why does he mention bad things first?" Okay.

[12:42] To the third, one proceeds thus: It seems that not every being is what good, huh? For good adds something above being, as is clear from what has been said before. But those which add something above being contracted, right? And he takes the what distinction of being according to the figures of predication, substance, quantity, quality, and so on, right? So they're what less universal. So if good adds to being, just like substance, quantity, quality do, then it's going to contract it, right?

[13:23] Okay. Now, as he's going to point out here, a little bit in the reply to this objection, that that's not the way in which good adds to being in the way in which substance, quantity, quality do. But if I remember right, in the De Veritate there, comes a beautiful distinction of three ways that this can add to that. Okay, and maybe I'll give you that when I get to reply to the first objection, right?

[13:53] It doesn't make it explicitly here, right? Okay. So sometimes I think the De Veritate is probably earlier than the Summa, I think. But sometimes in earlier work he's more explicit than a later work. Sometimes it's reverse, right? But you have to get used to that that phenomenon in the writing, right? I tell myself my own experience that sometimes I'm what more brief, and sometimes I unfold myself more.

[14:20] You know, it's an old Shakespearean phrase: unfold yourself. But Shakespeare, I mean, becomes a class sometimes. You know, unfold yourself. You know, but sometimes you unfold yourself more, and sometimes less, right? But not necessarily in any what precise order, right? Okay. Um. So maybe I'll

[14:46] do that when you get to the reply to the objection, huh? Moreover, nothing bad is good. For Isaiah says, fifth chapter, verse twenty. Woe to you who call bad what good and good bad. That reminds me of the beginning of what of the witches at the beginning of Macbeth. Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Good is bad, bad is good, right? Hover through the fog and filthy air.

[15:22] I gave a lecture at Saint Anselm's one time on those two lines, right? Because in the moral order, fair is foul and foul is fair, is the two mistakes you can make. Think that what is good is bad and what is bad is good, and then hover through the fog and filthy air. The two causes of that, huh? The fog of the mind, right? And then the filthy air of your your morals, right?

[15:46] Okay. And I had other texts where Shakespeare, you know, elaborates those things. But absolutely beautiful text in Shakespeare. The two mistakes you can make, the two causes of mistakes.

[16:07] Okay, that's a nice text from Isaiah. Moreover, good has the notion of what, the definition of desirable, the meaning desirable. But the first matter does not have the ratio of something desirable, but of one desiring only. Matter desires form. Therefore, first matter does not have the ratio good. Therefore, not every being is good, right?

[16:36] Moreover, the philosopher says in the third book of metaphysics that in mathematics there is not the good, but the mathematics are some beings; otherwise, there would not be about them any knowledge. Therefore, not every being is good. You can see kind of why in the mathematical science of nature it kind of dominates modern science, why they should have difficulty in understanding the good, right? In the end, in the end, the good being in nature, right?

[17:07] When you only see nature mathematically in a way, you are seeing it without the good. It's kind of the moderns see the see the world as being without sense qualities, without substance, and without purpose. And all those things are missing in math. There is no substance there. There is no sense qualities. There is no purpose. And so, you know, custom is what the major force in our thinking.

[17:39] So, if you are accustomed to thinking mathematically, you are accustomed to thinking things rigorously without sense qualities, without substance, without purpose. And so, all those things seem unscientific.

[17:56] But against this, every being that is not God is a creature of God. But every creature of God is good, as is said in the first epistle to Timothy, chapter four, verse four. And God Himself, of course, is most of all good, right? Therefore, every being is good.

[18:19] And it should be said that every being, in quantum est ens? That's saying as such, right? No, we're saying it is good, right? For every being, insofar as it is a being, is an act, and therefore, in some way, perfect, right? Because every act is a certain what perfection. But the perfect has the notion of the desirable and the good, as is clear from the things said before.

[18:52] Whence it follows that every being, in as such, is good, right? Okay, but you could also go on and add that. Being is said to some extent to what ability too right? But ability desires act right because for the sake of act is ordered to act. Therefore, in a more remote way, it partakes of the good too right. Which just as its being in a lesser sense right.

[19:17] So it's not good as fully as that which is an acton. Okay. So to know something actually is good. Do you know that? Yeah. But if to know is good, then to be able to know is good, right? But it's not as good as knowing. Okay. So ability as well as act is good.

[19:44] Now, Thomas says to the first. Therefore, it should be said that substance, quantity, and quality. These are some of the what highest genera there, and the things that are contained under them. They contract being. By applying being to some what, what it is, or some nature, right? See however, that's however. Good does not add something over what being, right? So, but

[20:20] it adds only what the thought of being desirable in a perfection, right? Which belongs to to be itself in whatever nature it might be, right? Therefore, the good does not contract being, huh? Okay, now this other text, I think it's in the De Veritate there, where he says something can add to something else in three ways, right? Okay, and he says in the first way, can add to something something entirely outside the nature of the other thing, huh?

[20:58] So you have a triangle, let's say, and you add to triangle green, right? Well, green is entirely outside the nature of triangle, okay? Or you add to a man's geometry, right, huh? Okay, well, geometry is not part of the nature of man, right? Some connection I think between the two, okay? But you're adding another thing. Now, a second way something can add to something, and that's in this example of substance, quantity, and quality, is the way in which what is added determines, right?

[21:38] Contracts in some way what is added to, huh? And that's the way in which man adds to what animal, right? Or square adds to quadrilateral, right? Now, does square add to quadrilateral in the same way that green adds to triangle, let's say? No, see, because green is not determination, right? Of what it is to be a triangle, right? But does equilateral triangle, let's say, we don't have a name for it, so particular phrase, does equilateral triangle add to triangle

[22:22] in the way that green adds to triangle? So he distinguishes those two ways, right, huh? Okay. Now, what's the third way? Like he says here. Yeah, yeah.

[22:40] We're adding something not real there, right? But something of reason, right? And Thomas will sometimes point out that a being of reason is of only two kinds: negation or privation. That kind of thing. Edition. We're not anything real, okay.

[23:09] And then some kinds of relations, which are only relations of reason. That's a very involved subject to get into, right? Okay. And when Thomas will contrast, as we'll see later on here, when we get to the one, right? The one adds to being nothing real, but a what?

[23:33] Being a reason, It adds a negation, right? Undivided being, okay. So the meaning of one, you say God is one. You mean he say what? Undivided being, right? Indivisible being, right? Okay. Now sometimes they say they'll say indistinct others too, okay. But even that's negation too, huh? Okay. You're not divided, right?

[24:01] Um, but you're but you're not anything else either. But that's is that anything anything real? Okay. I am a man whose body and soul are not separated. Now, If I add something real to me. You're just a man, right? But I'm a man whose body and soul are not separated. If I add anything real to me? Are that no? Say. Now, if I say I'm a healthy man, then I'm adding something real to me, right?

[24:43] Healthy, right? But a man whose body and soul are not separated. But I'm adding there is negation, right? But is negation something in the real world? Say. Okay.

[25:03] I am a blind. If I was a blind man, right? Huh? Is blindness adding something? No. So if you do the De Veritate sometime we'll make this distinction of the three ways something can add to something. What is persuasion? Well, you're adding something of another nature, right? Another nature. And Thomas will say nothing can add to being in that way, huh? Because then wouldn't be be anything, right?

[25:35] There can't be something wholly outside the nature of being, like green is wholly outside the nature of triangle, right? Because being is completely universal, right? Okay. Um, and I could say the same thing about the word thing or something, right? Huh? Um, can you add something to something?

[26:07] I'm thinking of something, right? Well, am I thinking of a substance or a quantity, or am I thinking of a quality or a relation? Right? You know, they would add to something, right? But in the way that substance, quantity, and quality add to being, right? Okay. But now suppose I say I'm thinking of something undivided,

[26:40] something undivided. Does that add something to something? No, no reason here. You're denying something, right? Any reason? Yeah, reason only. Yeah. And is it contracting something? See, like when I say I'm thinking of something substantial, or I'm thinking of some relation, right? Then I'm contracting it, right? Okay. But can you add something to something that's entirely outside of something?

[27:12] Then you'd be adding to something something that isn't something. Hey. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So it's kind of interesting, you know, Thomas. Again, a distinction of three, right? There seems to be three ways that something can add to something else. You said there, saying, "Set an example." The first one is adding green to triangle. Yeah, we're adding something that is that is entirely outside the nature of the other thing, right?

[27:40] I see. Okay. But when I when I go say from quadrilateral to square, right? It's a different thing there, right? Because in a way, that's what square is—a quadrilateral, right? Okay. Green is not a triangle, right? But square is a quadrilateral. But what quadrilateral is saying in a kind of general and indistinct and undetermined way, right? Square is saying more distinctly, and determinedly, right? Determine that, right?

[28:11] Okay. But when I speak of a a straight line and a undivided line, right? It's undivided, adding something that contracts line. An undivided something, huh? Something distinct for everything else.

[28:39] And thinking of something that's distinct for everything else. But something a reason Thomas will say that anything absolute is opposed to relative, right? Any positio absoluta is what the Latin will say, right? Well positio is opposed to negatio, right? And absoluta to what relative, right? Anything that posits something absolute in the thing is is going to be what something in the thing, right? But it's only a negation, and certain canyulation that gets very tricky in terms of relations that can be something only in reason, right?

[29:26] Only a being of reason, huh? It's the ens rationis Okay. Now the second objection was from Isaiah, there about woe to those who call bad good. So I say everything's good, and a lot of bad things out there, right? Everything's good in the world, right? I think he's saying some bad things are good, right? Oh, I'm under the condemnation here of Isaiah, and the one he speaks in the name of, right? To a second, it should be said that no being is said to be bad in so far as it is what being, huh?

[30:09] But in so far as it what lacks a certain being, huh? Okay. You kind of learned that even the first book of Natural hearing huh? Where Aristotle distinguishes between matter and form, and lack of form, right? And form seems to be something godlike, right? Good and desirable, right? Because God is pure act, as we know, and form is a kind of act, so it's something godlike, huh?

[30:36] And then he distinguishes between matter and lack of form. Lack of form, being opposed to form, seems to be something bad, right? But matter, being capable of form in order to form, seems to, in a secondary way, partake of goodness, right? So he sees the bad as rooted fundamentally in what the non-being as something you are able to have, and especially something you should have, right? Okay, that's the fundamental meaning of bad, right?

[31:06] Huh? So again, the distinction of the as such, you see, in quantum essence, right? Just as a man is said to be bad, right, in so far as he what lacks the being of virtue, right? And the eye is said to be bad in so far as it lacks the what. Clearness. Yeah, yeah. So I I I say sometimes, you know, at least as far as this is concerned.

[31:37] you're more distinct with my left eye than my right eye, right? So I say that's my bad eye, right? But this is my bad eye as far as distance and reading is concerned. The bad eye is what its badness is. It's lacking something, right? It's able to have and should have, right?

[32:11] Okay. Again, that becomes clear in the ninth book of wisdom, huh? There, again you you see that there is nothing but that neither act nor ability as such is bad, right? But it's when you are able to have something and should have and don't have it that there is something bad. That's kind of the key to understanding the bad, huh?

[32:42] So sometimes we speak of bad in another sense, not the lack itself, but what has the lack, right? You could be said to have a lack. Okay. So, what is a bad human act?

[33:00] Well, bad human act is not simply a non-being because it's an act, right? But it's a secondary meaning now, bad, right? A bad human act is a human act that lacks something it should have, right? It doesn't have. It's an act that lacks the the order or the measure, right? Of reason, huh? Okay.

[33:26] So that's what the badness is a lack there, right? And then the third meaning of bad sometimes is what produces a lack, right? Okay. So because blindness is bad, then to be blind is bad, right? And because to be blind is bad, then for me to poke your eye out is bad, right? Huh? I think it causes you to be blind, huh? But the fundamental meaning of bad is is blindness, right?

[33:56] And what is the blindness? Well, it's a non-being, right? Of something you're able to have and should have, right? So my mug here is not blind, huh?

[34:08] So it's not that the bad is is a negation, simply, right? Um, it's not bad that the the mug doesn't see, right? But it's a non-being of something in a subject able to have it and should have it and when it should have it, right? Okay. So when Augustine says, you know, sin is nothing, and the man who sins becomes nothing, right? He's not speaking with quite the precision that you could maybe speak, right?

[34:43] Okay. Because nothing is really almost the same as what non-beings, right? But we distinguish between non-being and lack, right? Because lack is a non-being in a subject

[35:03] that is able to have something should have it, huh? But doesn't have it, huh? So not seeing is not bad, but being blind is bad, right? See that? So there's Aristotle, you know, is the man who distinguished between the opposition of contradiction and having and lack, and the opposition of contrariety, right? And when when you have, let's say, virtue and vice are opposed in one way, sight and blindness another way, and seeing and not seeing in a third way, right?

[35:46] And seeing and not seeing, there's no alternative, right? You either see or you don't see. This doesn't see. I see. Okay. But are you there? Have sight or you're blind? No. You and I either has sight or are blind, and the dog or the cat, but the but the mug here neither has sight nor is it blind. Okay, so

[36:15] the thing that has sight and the thing that is blind has something in common, namely that they are a subject, right? It's able to have sight and should have sight, right? Okay, but see and not see doesn't require even a subject, right? Nothing in common. But then you get to virtue and vice. You have not only the the subject, but you also have what the same genus, right?

[36:39] Because both virtue and vice are a habit. Right. While sight and blindness are not both a quality, but one is the non being of a quality. huh

[36:53] So Aristotle distinguished those three kinds of opposites, and then the relative opposites, right? You know, this then the categories, and in the fifth book of wisdom, that'd be important when you get to talk about the Trinity, yeah? Because how is the Father and the Son distinguished secundum rem Yes, They're really distinct, the Father and the Son, huh? But by what kind of opposition are they distinguished? Huh?

[37:23] Well, it's not the opposition of being and non-being. I am who I am is there. And certainly not the lack, right? The contrariety. Well Thomas eliminated all of them. it must be by relatives relatives, right? And that's what Augustine had shown before him, right? Okay.

[37:43] That's what Saint John says. Huh? Beginning was the word, and the word was what towards God, huh? Post the word for relatives. Okay, the third

[37:58] objection was the good has the notion of the desirable, but the first matter, huh? People always call it prime matter. I call it the first matter. Right? I can speak English, but the first matter it sounds more abstruse. when you say prime matter, right? Huh? Okay.

[38:21] But the first matter does not have the notion of desirable, but of desiring only. Therefore, the first matter does not have the notion of the good. Therefore, not every being is what good, right? Huh?

[38:35] To third should be said that the first matter, just as it is not being except in what ability, right? So neither is it good except in what ability, right?

[38:51] Although according to Platonists, right, it is able to be said that first matter is non-being on account of the what privation adiunctum, right? It's not. Because it is the privation, but it's what? Because that's it happens to it, right? Okay. But nevertheless, it partakes something of the good, insofar as what? Namely, the order or the aptitude that it has for the good. It's capable of the good, right?

[39:27] And thus, it does not belong to it that it be desirable, but that it what? Desires. Yeah. Yeah. When Thomas talks about the human mind, I said the human mind, human reason, is in the order of understandings, like prime matter is in the sensible world, huh? Which means that we got the lowest mind of all. You know, and Aristotle says it's like a tablet on which nothing's written at first huh?

[39:59] Or the angels, they're created you know. Already in act, huh? Not as an act as God is, but they're in act. We're just in inability at first, huh?

[40:12] What one priest said about potential vocations. He says we don't don't want prime matter. But at the end, he says, "Consequently, to be desirable is not his property, well to desire. " But if it's not desired, being desirable is not its property. Then, then what's the closest thing is good? What he says is, he's here. It is above there. He's saying that it's not good except in what ability, right?

[40:48] But again, you're not saying it's being yet, except in ability, either, right? Okay, so you're not having what being extending further than what good or being found. We don't find the good, right? Oh. Okay, just as you find being, you might say, in the lesser sense, so you could say you find good in the lesser sense here too, right? That's clearer from the from the. Remember how he showed it in the ninth book of wisdom, right?

[41:24] That act is better than what ability, right? Um. Better go back to ninth book right now. Okay, so the fourth objection from mathematics, right? To the fourth, it should be said that mathematical things do not subsist separated according to being, huh? And it goes back to the disagreement between Plato and Aristotle, right? Remember the central question of philosophy. Does truth require that the way we know be the way things are, right, huh?

[42:08] And Plato seems to be answering yes, as most philosophers do, right? Aristotle says no, right? Aristotle says it's possible to truly know things in separation that don't exist in separation, right?

[42:26] Now Plato's saying no, you can't truly know things in separation if they don't exist in separation. While they both agree that you're truly knowing in mathematics, right? But because of their different answer to the central question, then Plato says, "Well, then the mathematical things must truly exist in separation from what sensible things outside of our mind, right? " So there's a mathematical world between the world of forms and the sensible world, right?

[42:54] Aristotle says, "No, no, no. There's a separation in our knowing. But not in the thing, right? And Aristotle is saying you can know in separation things that what don't exist in separation. Not always, in some cases you can, right? So you can know I'm a grandfather without knowing I'm a philosopher. I know I'm a philosopher without knowing I might be a grandfather. Your knowledge may be incomplete, but it's not false.

[43:22] So he says, following Aristotle, that the mathematical things do not subsist separated, secundum esse, because if they subsisted right in themselves, right, there would be in them the good, right? Namely, their what their very being, right?

[43:40] But the mathematical things are separated according to reason only, insofar as they abstract from motion and matter. We saw that in the second book of Natural Hearing, right? In the definitions of geometry, there's no what matter in the ordinary sense, and no what no mo no reference to motion, right? So geometrical sphere has no melting point and no freezing point. It's neither heavy nor light, nor fragile, nor you know.

[44:10] So you can't speak of you know. Remember my example there. If you take a rubber ball, you throw it against the wall, it bounces back. Maybe take a glass ball, it probably what shatter. Take a steel ball, it probably stick in the wall, if you didn't go through it. But you can say these things about geometrical sphere, yeah? Which you did too. You throw geometrical sphere against the wall, would it shatter or would it bounce back?

[44:35] You know. Now, if you go over a lead balloon and go down, if you go over a helium balloon and go up, right? If you go over geometrical sphere, what's it do? But there's no reference to motion, all right? No reference to so it's separate from that, right? And thus they abstract from the notion of the what end, right? Which has the notion of something that moves things, right?

[45:03] Is not over inconvenient that in some being, according to reason, there is not the good or the ratio of good, since the ratio of being is before the ratio of good, right? Okay. But maybe you know he might say it some time else. Maybe that there's what something good there for reason, right? Okay.

[45:32] So halfway through, maybe we should stop here. It's almost four thirty. We're halfway through, and three is enough. Is Aristotle said and we've learned, huh? So we're learning about the good, right?