Prima Secundae
19. Shakespeare's Definition of Reason and the Trinity; Is Beatitude Chiefly Vision or Pleasure? (Summa I-II, Q.4, A.2)
Class of 2011-04-07
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/11-prima-secundae/019-shakespeares-definition-of-reason-and-the-trinity-is-beatitude/

[0:00] In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the, Holy Spirit. Amen. God, their enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Amen. And help us to understand all that you have written. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.

[0:27] I forget now sometimes what I said to you guys, what I said to other people together. So forgive me if I beat myself sometimes, but as Peter Kreeft says, what is worth saying can be said more than once.

[0:43] Now I was thinking the other day of the connection between Shakespeare's definition of reason, right, his exhortation to use reason, and the greatest object of human mind.

[0:59] Now what is the greatest object of human mind? God. What? Yeah, it's close. But maybe you can say even more precisely the Holy Trinity, right? Okay, that's kind of the greatest object of the human reason, right? Now, how do you get from Shakespeare's exhortation to use reason and the definition of reason? How do you get to the what?

[1:35] Yeah, to get some understanding, you might say the Trinity. Not Shakespeare doesn't reveal it, obviously. It's revealed by God, right? But how do you get, in the sense, from Shakespeare's definition, an exhortation, to some understanding of the what Trinity, right?

[2:01] Well, three ways, right? Okay. One way of trying to understand the Trinity is to begin from the what footprint, huh, of the Trinity in creatures. A second way of trying to understand the Trinity is to begin from the image, right, of the Trinity, right.

[2:32] And then the third way is to go right to the Trinity and try to understand it, right? Okay. Now, how of these three ways does Shakespeare's exhortation begin, right? Well, as you know, he completes the definition of reason by before and after, right? Looking before and after.

[3:03] Now, Thomas explains the footprint of the Trinity. He says every footprint of the Trinity is a footprint of the Trinity in so far as it has a beginning, middle, and what? End. Right. Okay. So there's obviously a connection between looking before and after and beginning, middle, and end.

[3:43] And the connection is that beginning, middle, and end are defined by what? Before and after. Yeah, by the affirmation and negation of before and after. Right. Okay. Now we explained before how you define these, right? So you can say before something

[4:12] and not before something, right? After something and not after something. Yeah. And then you draw your boxes, right? Now, what is before something and after something? The middle. The middle, right?

[4:44] What is not before something but after something? The end. Now, what is before something but not after something? The beginning. The beginning, right? And what is neither before something nor after anything? Yeah. That's not going to be a part at all, right? So, okay. So this is the way you arrive, right, at understanding of beginning, middle, and end. But in arriving at that, which it's only by looking before and after, because one of these is before and after the other, right?

[5:33] But the very definition of beginning and end is by before and after, right? By the affirmation and negation of these. So this very much leads to this, and then as Thomas says, every what footprint of the Trinity is a footprint of the Trinity in so far as it has the aspect of the beginning, middle, and end, right? Now you say, well, but as Thomas shows when he takes up the Trinity, there's no before and after, right, in the Trinity, huh?

[6:05] What ways is like that, right? Okay. But of course, the footprint is a very distant likeness, huh? Even greater than that of the image, huh? Okay.

[6:20] A sign of that is we never say that what the Son of God is a footprint of God. Well, you say He's the image of God, right? A perfect image, right? But chosen image is much closer, but it is okay. But the Trinity is distinguished by affirming and denying what two things? Generation, relation. Affirm generation of one person, deny generation of

[6:58] another. Yeah, but something broader than that. You say you proceed from someone, right? From. Or you do not proceed from someone, right? From. So this is the way Thomas Thomas will say. Proceed from someone

[7:16] and do not proceed from someone, right? And then what's the other two? Someone proceeds from him, right? Yeah. Someone proceeds from him, and no one proceeds from

[7:43] him. Now, who proceeds from someone and someone proceeds from him? The Son. Who proceeds from someone but no one proceeds from them? The Spirit. The Spirit.

[8:09] Who does not proceed from someone but someone proceeds from them? Father. Father. Now who's the fourth member of the Trinity? That's the Virgin. of the Trinity. No. Muhammad.

[8:28] Now Thomas would say there cannot be anyone in the Trinity, right? Who neither proceeds from anyone nor does anyone proceed from him, right? So that's again a not a real what possibility, right? Okay. You see the similarity between these two, right?

[8:52] So in a way, and this of course is stretching the likeness because it's a very inferior likeness. You can say the Son seems to be a little bit like what the middle, right? Because he proceeds from someone and has something proceeding from him, right? Just as the middle has something before it and something what after it, right? There's not before and after. You got to be careful, right?

[9:15] If you don't, You see, Dionne always quotes this little passage from I think it was the Sophist, the dialogue of Plato, where Plato says likeness is a slippery thing. Okay, and people are always, you know, seeing similarities and extending them beyond what the likeness is, huh? That's why Aristotle, you know, when he gives a tool of difference and a tool of likeness, right? You know, the way he describes it, remember, right?

[9:48] You know, the tool of difference is to see the difference between things, right? And the tool of likeness is to consider the likeness of things, right?

[9:58] You see the danger. there right now likeness is a source of error, right? Very often, and so the most dangerous errors are the ones where the falsehood is most like the true, right, and then it deceives people. okay but nevertheless there's a likeness, kind of, between the son proceeding from someone, right, and someone else proceeding from him, right, and the what I do in the middle, right, and the likeness between the father and the beginning.

[10:35] And one reason why they appropriate, as Thomas explains, power to the father, because power is defined as the beginning, huh? And he seems to be, you know, the beginning. Okay. So you see how beautiful that is, right? You see how that comes about, right? If you look before and after, one of the first before and after you see is obviously that the beginning of them, because they're defined by the affirmation and negation of before and after, right?

[11:09] And that is to see the what the footprint of the Trinity, huh? That's one way of seeing that. Now, what strikes me with wonder is how close it is to Shakespeare's definition of reason to consider the footprint of the Trinity, right? And therefore, to think about the greatest object of the human mind, which is in fact the what Trinity, right? It's amazing, huh? That you can go from the definition of reason to the footprint of the Trinity, and then to the Trinity in a sense, right?

[11:47] And you can see this likeness here, right? Both in the way you affirm and deny these things, right, and get one of the four members that is not a real one, right? And the way in which the son, you said, was in some way the middle, and the father the beginning, right? And the Holy Spirit ties it up, you know. Okay. Hey, that's beautiful, you know. One thing.

[12:13] This is the first thing that you do when you look before and after. It's amazing you can go all this way, right? Okay. Now,

[12:23] the second way you go from creatures to God, the Trinity, is the image, huh, of the Trinity, huh? Now, go back to Shakespeare's education.

[12:46] From reason, meaning by reason, they're now the ability. From reason goes forward a thought of what reason is. From reason goes forward a thought

[13:15] about or a thought of what reason is. Where's that thought that goes forward from our reason that is a thought of what reason is? Well, I suppose there's some kind of confused, indistinct thought of what reason is, right? But the thought here is a kind of a perfect thought, a distinct thought, that is to say, right, of what reason is, and that's the what definition of reason itself.

[13:55] Okay. So from reason goes forward a thought about or a thought of what reason is, and this is the definition of reason. Now the definition of reason is not reason, is it? No. The definition of reason is a distinct thought of what reason is.

[14:26] And then taking meditation as a whole, or your urge to use your reason, right? You could say that from reason and the definition of reason

[14:48] goes forward the love of reason. That's all meditation, isn't it? Because from your reason it goes forward a thought of what reason is. It's marvelous, isn't it? Definition of what reason is. So you began to start to dawn how profound this thing was that Shakespeare written you know. and then you're urged to use your reason because you see how good reason is, what a wonderful thing it is, right?

[15:27] So from reason now the definition of reason goes forward this love of reason, right? Now you've got here the what image of the Trinity, right? Because from God, God the Father, right, there goes forward a thought, a verb, right, which is called the logos in the Greek, right, which is a thought of what God is. Not more than that is God, but but it is a thought about what God is.

[16:03] It's a thought of God, right? In both senses, huh? The thought that the Father has, what's the thought of what God is? And then from the Father and the thought, the Word goes forward. What? The love of God, the Holy Spirit. Isn't that marvelous, huh?

[16:34] Now, what's the third way? Or you go directly to study the Trinity, right? Like Thomas does, huh? Gets a a reasoned out, huh? Knowledge so far as possible, the Trinity, huh? Great influence by the great Augustine. Remember seeing this this line from Augustine? I can't, you know, locate now the text, you know, but it said it was quoted by maybe by Thomas. But intellectum valde ama Well the intellect, right?

[17:12] Well the reason very much huh Intellectum the reason, very much, huh? Intellectum valde ama. That's Augustine. Now we've said before how distinction comes before what order, right? Nothing at the axiom of before and after.

[17:41] Nothing is before or after itself, right? So there's always some distinction between what is before and what is after, right? Now, one interesting distinction is that reason looks before and after, not only in what it's thinking about, right?

[18:09] But it looks before and after its own thinking. Now, which of these before and after should reason think about first? The before and after in its own thinking, or the before and after the things it wants to think about.

[18:40] The things wants to think about. What probably thinks about the before and after in things, right? But if reason is ability for large discourses, you know, right? And discourses implies a what before and after, right? To bring one thing to another. To know. Adequately or perfectly or fully, before and after in things, you have to consider the what discourse whereby you're going to know them, right? You have to consider the what before and after in your what thinking, yeah.

[19:19] That's why Thomas says in a way that logic is the first science, okay? Because it teaches the road you have to follow in all reasoned-out knowledge, huh?

[19:34] Okay. So, remember what Thomas called the order of learning. There, when he began to treat us of the Trinity, he says the persons are distinguished by what relations of what origin, right? Okay. So what we're going to do? We've got to think about. The processions, right? Relations of origin or procession of one from another, right? You've got to think of the processions first, right? Then the relations that are, in our thinking, based upon those processions, right?

[20:16] So because the Father, for example, generates this other one, he's called the Son, right? And the Father's called the Father, right? And because they breathe this other one, he's called the Spirit, right? And so on, love. So we're going to study the proceedings first, which there are two, and then the what? Relations, right? And then the persons, right? So you're seeing it before and after in your reasons thinking about the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit.

[20:54] Beautiful. So how did Shakespeare figure this out, right? You know, sometimes I'm playfully about the fact that you know these are lines of blank verse, right? In the fourth, I think it's the fourth act of the fourth scene of the fourth act, right? Where he says these, right? So I think a lot of the later tragedies of Shakespeare have this blank verse, which is unrhymed. Iambic, what?

[21:28] Pentameter, right? Okay. Now you say, why why should Shakespeare put his exhortation in in meter, right? Just happened in a play or something? Well, I'm rather fond of this prayer, of Thomas, the Adoro Te Devote, right? Which is one of the prayers. After the Second Vatican Council, there was a revision of the grants of indulgences, and they kind of cut down on the number of prayers that are got special indulgences attached to them, but they kept them for some prayers which are special what?

[22:12] Excellence or special place in the tradition of the Church, right? And among those, of course, is the Adoro Te Devote, right? I mentioned how when my home parish of Nativity there in Saint Paul, Minnesota, that they were refurbishing the church, you know, and the rookman got up over the the baldachino of the wooden one, and he said, "There's something up here, you know, that's faded, and and so we you know we knew it, huh?

[22:39] " And of course, if we knew it. it was Adorote Devote. That's beautiful, you know. That's what's attached. But the Adorote Devote has got kind of a meter, right? And and it's actually rhymed and so on, right? So why should Thomas compose a prayer? In rhyme, right, and and in meter, right. Some of the Latin texts they call it the rhythmus, huh? He called that huh, called that, huh?

[23:06] Why should do that? It's not poem, you know. something that's got meter, people call poem. but that's really kind of a misuse of the word poem, right? Why should Thomas compose this magnificent prayer? This tradition of the church, I call this, you know, the traditional prayer book, you know, of the church, right? The ingredient of indulgences, huh? And yet the scriptural one, the the psalms, right? But what why should Thomas compose this prayer, in metering and rhyme, and so forth?

[23:37] I think three reasons. One would be just for to help memorization. Yeah. Two for beauty, and three to glorify God with the music. Yeah, yeah. Maybe the first one is is is a fundamental one, right? Yeah. You know, it's easy to do that. Now I heard this. Maybe you you gentlemen know more than I about this, but they said that, and I don't know how they know exactly, but the Our Father in in the Aramaic, you know, or what the original language was, had a what?

[24:06] Yeah, have you heard that? I'd be I'd be interesting, right? If he had done that, right? Or do the psalms have some kind of, you know? So sometimes I look at what Shakespeare has done there, right? And he's

[24:25] he's put it on what seven lines, right? But he begins the first line in the seventh syllable. So you have two sevens there, right? Well, seven. You know, I was reading the seventh chapter there of the third book of of Summa Contra Gentiles I say seven is a symbol of what wisdom, right? Seven wise men in Greece, right? Seven angels that stand before God. So and so maybe there's a little meaning there, right?

[25:01] Starts in the seventh syllable and he stretches it out in seven lines, right? The seventh line ends on the sixth syllable, right? So that since the first line begins on the seventh syllable and the last one ends on the sixth syllable, there's only in quantity six lines of iambic pentameter, right? And it ends in the sixth syllable, and six is the what first perfect number, symbol of the completeness of it, right, huh?

[25:33] Okay. And then how many words in the exhortation? And Thomas says that when you take the square of a number, it has the same what symbolism as the original number. So seven is a symbol of wisdom. Forty-nine is what? Yeah. So it's marvelous. It's just just. By chance, he did this, you know. Now, the text itself, apart from all this, you know, meter and what syllables they begin and end on, how many lines are, and so on.

[26:10] The content is so what profound, right? huh? We couldn't put it beyond you. And of course, my teacher Aristotle said that the human reason is best at the age of forty-nine.

[26:28] And Thomas Aquinas died at age of forty-nine, right? God took him. But you know, I kind of mention those things kind of playfully, but I think it kind of concentrates yourself on the on the words, right? And then I allow anybody in fifty words or more to give as good an exhortation right, as Shakespeare has.

[26:52] So am I exaggerating the excellence of this? That's why I got thinking about that before and after in Mary, right? So she's the mother of the Church, I think, because she's the mother of all grace, huh? And she's the mother of all grace because she's the mother of what God, huh? It's not the reverse, huh? There's a cause and effect there, it seems to me. No, I got thinking again

[27:30] about those puzzling words, you know. Was who are you? And she says, I am the Immaculate Conceptionite. You say, why did she say that? Wouldn't she speak more radically correct?

[27:52] Is that she doesn't know grammar, or that she there's some meaning in those words, right? Well, if she's the mother of the Church, in a way, she's giving what birth to all of us, right? Okay. And we're kind of immaculately conceived when we're baptized, huh? Not when we're born, but in Mary, when she was conceived, she was immaculate, and yeah, yeah. And so she's kind of a universal what cause of our baptism, right?

[28:28] Because she's the mother of all grace, right? And that's why you symbolize that by saying, "I am the Immaculate Conception," right? Just like Christ said, "I am truth itself." Well, many reasons why maybe he says that, huh? But it's because he's the source of all truth, right? So.

[28:51] But that's after I had thought a little bit more about the order of these things, huh? Mother of God, it seems has always seemed to me to be her greatest title, right? Huh? What's it? Cusanus? Who was the one who said, you know, infinite is the distance between the servants of God and the Mother of God?

[29:26] Let's look now at the second article. And if you remember rightly, how the first article in question four was whether pleasure is required for what? Beatitude, right? Huh?

[29:44] Okay. He had said yes. Pleasure is caused from this that the what appetite. Rests in the good obtained, right? When, since beatitude is nothing other than the attaining of the summum bonum, right? The highest good, huh? It is not possible that there be beatitude without pleasure concomitans, huh? Coming together with it, huh? Okay.

[30:25] I mean, if I have this delight in seeing this theorem of Euclid, I mean, imagine I see God. I'll be, you know, you know, like the Psalm says, right? You know, the torrent, you know, this delight, huh?

[30:45] We read Socrates' thing about that, and higher love matters, right? You see the beautiful itself, right? Oh my goodness, that is something, huh? Okay.

[30:58] But now he's asking in the second article a more precise question: Huh? Whether beatitude is chiefly division or the what pleasure, right? Huh? Now you modern hedonists might think it's chiefly the pleasure, huh? Or the delight.

[31:16] The second one proceeds thus: It seems that delectatio is more plain in beatitude than vision, right? For, as the philosopher says in the tenth book of Nicomachean Ethics, delectatio, right, is the perfection of operation, huh? Okay. The operation is not perfect until you what enjoy it, right?

[31:48] But perfection is more potent than the perfectible. Therefore, pleasure is more potent than the operation of the understanding, which is vision. In some ways, perfecting that, right? Just like when I hear the music of Mozart, huh? I'm pleased, right? Huh? The beautiful is that which pleases when seen or heard, right? So, seems to be a perfection of my hearing, delight I take in it.

[32:24] Moreover, that in account of which something is desirable is more potent, huh? But operations are desired in account of the pleasure of them, right? Huh? Pericles wouldn't be studying those geometrical theorems if he didn't take great delight in them, right? And people who don't take delight in those things are not going to go around studying the theorems of Euclid, right?

[32:48] But likewise, if I didn't enjoy the music of Mozart, would I listen to it? So, but operations are desired, are wanted in account of the pleasure them, whence nature has right to operations necessary for the conservation of the individual, like eating right, or the species, huh, like reproduction. It has added what pleasure to them, huh? So that these kind of operations would not be neglected by what animals, huh?

[33:27] Therefore, pleasure is more potent in beatitude than the operation of the understanding, which is the seeing, seeing of God as He is, face to face. Moreover, vision corresponds to what faith, huh? But pleasure or enjoyment to charity.

[33:50] But charity is greater than faith, as the apostle says, one Corinthians thirteen, huh? Therefore, pleasure or enjoyment is more potent than vision, huh? I was thinking a little bit about this

[34:17] figure of speech, which is called what? What do you call Saint Paul here instead of saying Paul? What? antonomasia yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is very common in scripture, right? Okay. But you find Thomas was often referred to Saint Paul as the apostle, and Aristotle as the philosopher, right? I was thinking about it again, and you know the the Latin language is imperfect, huh? Because it doesn't have all the parts of speech, and one part of speech that that the Latin language lacks is the what article, okay?

[35:00] I was thinking how in English, we're using a word as an antonomasia? We tend to use more the article the than the article a, right? So if I say that Aristotle is a philosopher, that's true, but I'm not speaking by antonomasia, am I? If I wanted to, I'm not saying when I say Aristotle is a philosopher that he's any more eminent than the other philosopher, right? Just just another philosopher, right?

[35:40] I remember at at some kind of a conference there, and they had a dinner or a lunch or whatever it was, and got talking about science there and so on, and I quoted what Einstein had said, right? And so the cat crossed. He said, "Well, that's just what Einstein says, you know. " So what? That's one more opinion among. Well, I wasn't laying doubt as being you know necessarily true, but I mean, so the probable you know Einstein would say this about no science, I don't know what the nature of science was.

[36:14] Okay. So, or if you want to say that Homer is the poet, right? Antonomasia. You wouldn't say Homer is a poet, but you seem like you got to say the poet, right? Okay.

[36:35] Now, I don't mean to say that somebody will just quote me, obviously, that you're always speaking by antonomasia when you say the. Okay. If you say I am the teacher of so and so, is that saying I am the teacher?

[37:01] Huh? No, no. So, I'm not saying that every time we use the word "the," we're using the figure of speech called antonomasia, but the reverse seems to be true, right? That when you want to use the figure of speech called antonomasia, we will use the article "that" rather than "a," right?

[37:29] I am a grandfather, huh? Would you say I am the grandfather? No. You might say I'm the grandfather of of this of Lady Wisdom, Sophia, right? Okay. Um, but that's not antonomasia. You say that, right?

[37:55] Um, I'm the father of Paul, right? Not saying that I am the father, right? Okay. You get that point, right? Okay. So, now poor Thomas, right? Poor Thomas is

[38:18] thinking mainly in the Latin language, right? That's the language of the schools, right? And reading texts in in Latin, right? And there's no articles. So he might be slightly less aware than he could be, right? Of the what antonomasia in some passages, right? Of Scripture. Okay. I

[38:47] take an example of this. In the beginning, we say was the word, right? And of course, Greek, which is a superior language and has all the parts of speech, you'd say I guess ho logos, right? So you have a a particle, right? I mean, a particle. Yeah.

[39:08] Yeah. Why Thomas and the Latin say you know wouldn't have any one there, right? So thinking back upon Thomas's explanation of the Gospel of John, right? If I remember correctly, he doesn't emphasize or say at all that in the first sentence, in the beginning, was the word, right? There's no the there in the Latin, right? That this is perhaps being said by what? Yeah. That among all thoughts that there ever been or will be, this is the thought, right?

[39:53] And so I've tried in my own thinking sometimes to think about that as being said by. one of Messiah, and then why among all thoughts is this the thought, right? And even before you get to the next line, you know, or a couple lines, we found that the thought is God Himself, right? Well, that's. But even before that, right? This is a thought of what God is, right?

[40:22] In some respects, even a thought of all things, because it's a perfect thought of what God is, right? It's a thought that expresses fully what God is. There's other. I got many thoughts about God, but none of them express very well what God is. None of them express fully what God is. And and any one of them, even less so. You know, but this is the thought.

[40:53] Now, one thought is better than another because it's about a better thing, right? And if it's of a better thing, in a better way, it's even better. So this is a thought of the best thing there is.

[41:15] And a thought that is what the only thought that fully expresses what the best of all things is, right? And in a way, it expresses everything else too, because when God is understood fully, when He's comprehended, everything else is known, right? Okay. So you could, you know, even before we're told that this thought is God Himself, right? We could see that among all thoughts, right? This is the thought, right?

[41:46] This is something, right? I don't think Thomas emphasized that, right? For me it's because of o of the defect of what Language, right? Huh? Monsignor Diane, you know, said, you know, sign of the excellence of Thomas's thinking is that he could think so well in an inferior language like Latin, right? Aristotle was doing his thinking in Greek, which is a much superior language to to Latin, right?

[42:14] And then he said, you know, English in the same way is superior to French, even though he was French speaking. So we put around saying, you know, a sign of the excellence, of Monsignor Dionne is that he can think so well in French. Kind of paraphrasing what he said about Thomas, you know. That's true. That's true. That's true. Mister Dry, the French dude, you know, out there.

[42:35] In respect to Monsignor, they want to challenge the authority of Monsignor, but both Monsignor and Boulay, whose native language, of course, was French, you know, they both said that English was superior to French for philosophy and for poetry, huh? So the the I think I mentioned Walter Hurdle, you know, the philologist up there. He's retired now, but for him, you know, the English language, huh? Is the greatest invention of the human mind, you know?

[43:04] I don't know all the business he has, you know. I mean, you know, interested in the philologist you know, he realizes the excellence of English language, and I realize it in other ways myself, you know. But it's absolutely marvelous language. But anyway, do you think it's possible that Saint Thomas was also limited by the translation of logos and the verbum, or could the verbum also mean thought?

[43:25] Well, it can. I mean, the Greek word logos means word first, too, right? Okay, but then you know it's a word that's equivocal by reason, right? And so what the word signifies, the thought inside and so on. So Thomas would make all those distinctions, right? So it's not that's not the problem, but but you don't have what an article with the verbum, right? And therefore you don't see it as, example, in antonomasia right?

[43:52] You know, I kind of stretch like like in the the Federalist Papers, you know, when they're talking about the what's going to happen to us if we don't unite, and and all these horrible things, and then he says, and in the words of the poet, a long farewell to all my greatness, and of course later on I read this in Shakespeare, right? But he's not called Shakespeare; he's called the poet.

[44:22] You know the poet capitalizes you might do to make it more accurate. But he doesn't say in the words of a poet, which he just said, "Me some poet said this," you know. But in the words of the poet, I like to say that you know, tribute this excellence to to the writers of the Federalist Paper, right? I don't know who's particular one wrote that one, but I think it's probably Hamilton, right?

[44:45] But the poet, huh? Same way Aristotle called Homer the poet. right? By the way, the guy that kind of blew off Einstein, I bet you can't remember that guy's name.

[45:02] He's a footnote in a history. book. Did he even mention another footnote? Okay, So I just kind of lost sight of that. I was just thinking about the article there, you know, how we do that. But against this, the cause is more potent than the effect. But division is the cause of the what pleasure. Therefore, division is more potent than the what pleasure.

[45:31] I answer: It should be said that this question, the philosopher, moves in the tenth book of the Ethics. He talks about pleasure and then man's beatitude, and he leaves it what unsolved.

[45:45] But if one diligently considers, from necessity, it is necessary that the operation, which is the understanding, which is the vision of God as He is face to face, is more potent than the what pleasure.

[46:05] For pleasure consists in a certain what, quieting of the will. That's why the police there would give candy to the kid, now when the, kid is lost, right, and trying to find the parents, huh? Quiets them down, right. And this time when we were traveling across country one time, we knew the kids were gonna give us some little, you know, so he, I made little bags, you know, with two little bars, some candy in them, and put them in a big bag, you know.

[46:35] Every time the noise got too too hard for Rosie and I, I'd open the bag and pass one back, you know, they'd be satisfied for a while. And they never caught on, did they?

[46:47] Time for a daddy tweet. Okay. That's why speaking of beautiful sight is is restful, right? You can kind of look out on a beautiful.

[47:05] Remember driving to Vermont there in the fall there one time, you know, just beautiful, you know, the colors, you know, and I was saying, you know, what a beautiful place to have a house, you know, to see that, you know, I drove, you know, it's also a house there, you know, look it out over this magnificent, you know, panorama, of color, and stuff that's very restful. Um.

[47:30] But the will is what rests in something. will not rest in something unless what? an account of the goodness of that in which it what rests. If therefore the will rests in some operation, from the very goodness of the operation proceeds the quiet of the what will.

[47:57] Nor does the will seek the good in order to be at rest. For then the act of the will would be the end, which is against the what. thing we showed before, that was the act of the reason rather than the will. And therefore it's it seeks what brings it to rest in operation because the operation is its what good. Once it is manifest that chiefly the good, the good is the operation in which the will rests, then the resting of the will in it.

[48:35] Now sometimes when Aristotle or Thomas talks about what Aristotle says in the tenth book, he doesn't say aristotle, he's just unsolved, because Aristotle ends up by saying that pleasure perfects happiness, right? As beauty perfects what youth, he says. And Thomas says there he seems to be saying that beauty, I mean, pleasure is not what makes it to be happiness, right? Just as beauty doesn't make youth to be youth, right?

[49:05] But something that seems to go with you, right? And as you get older, you lose your good looks, you get all wrinkled up, and so on. And so Aristotle seems to be saying that pleasure perfects happiness, like beauty perfects youth, right? It's not the essence of it, right? Not the essence. What's most essential in our attitude, now. But it goes with it, right? Because the perfection of the operation.

[49:32] And that's what he quotes there in the ad primum there, right? To the first, therefore, should be said that as the philosopher, right? Huh? Sometimes you you find you know in the medieval Latin there they try in some kind of invented article, right? I guess because of the the uh defect of the Latin language, huh?

[50:00] To. First, it should be said that, as the philosopher says, there, pleasure perfects operation as decor, beauty, youth, right? Which is what something fouling upon youth, right, rather than the very essence of it. Whence pleasure is a certain perfection going along with vision, right?

[50:26] Not as a what perfection making the vision to be in its own what kind perfect, huh? See, there he's saying Aristotle is in a sense expressing, right? But the answer is to this question, right?

[50:45] Beautiful. comparison, huh? There's two ratios there, right? Pleasure to operation and beauty to youth, right? And he's making he's arguing from one ratio, one using one ratio to manifest the other, right? Got to be careful there, you know. As I'm mentioning, sometimes you have a proportion. You actually reason from one what ratio to the what other, right? Like Shakespeare does in the Exhortation, right? But sometimes you just use one ratio to what illustrate, right?

[51:22] By kind of likeness the other what ratio. Okay. So you got to be careful what the guy's doing there, right? I mean Aristotle here, I don't think, is is reasoning from the way that what beauty perfects youth, right? To the way what the way pleasure perfects the operation of seeing, right? But he's using it

[51:59] for a kind of likeness to help you understand a little better, right? How the one is to the other. Okay. The second objection. He's

[52:29] talking now about the pleasure of the animals and so on. To the second, it should be said that the grasping by the senses does not attain to the common what thought of of the good, huh? But to some particular good, which is what pleasant, huh?

[52:51] And therefore, according to the sensitive appetite, which is in animals. Operations by them are sought for the sake of the what pleasure right, but nevertheless, you know, God has arranged that way so that they would do the operations that are necessary to preserve themselves as individuals right, or to preserve their what kind of animal.

[53:18] The plants preserve their kind; they reproduce too, right, without what pleasure, right? Yeah, interesting. But the understanding apprehends the universal notion of the good, upon attainment of which follows what pleasure, huh? Whence it more chiefly intends the good, then what pleasure?

[53:55] And hence it is that the divine intellect, huh, who is the instituter of nature, adds pleasures in account of the what operations. Now, some things should not be estimated simply according to the order of the sensitive appetite, right, but more according to the order of the intellectual appetite, the will.

[54:25] Now, what about charity? Well, charity does not seek the good loved for the sake of pleasure, right? But this is something what fouling upon it, right? That it delights in the attainment of the good, which it what loves, huh? And thus pleasure does not respond to it as an end, but more vision through which first the end becomes what present to it. Okay. Another article.