Prima Secundae
81. Summa I-II q.31 a.5: Are Spiritual Pleasures Greater Than Bodily Pleasures? (Understanding, Curiosity, and the Natural Starting Point)
Class of 2012-10-04
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/11-prima-secundae/081-summa-i-ii-q-31-a-5-are-spiritual-pleasures-greater-than/

[0:00] In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of, the Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you, God. Thank you, guardian angels. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas. Deo gratias.

[0:12] God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order the illuminar images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Pray for us. Help us to understand all that you've written. Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

[0:34] Article five here, in question thirty-one, on the pleasure, the emotion, pleasure. I just mentioned something. I was reading the rereading the prima pars there, right? And the question on the will of God, right? Huh? And of course, one of the objections is, well, the will is a appetitive power, right? Huh? But appetitive comes from the word for desire or want, right? Well, there's no desire or wanting in God, therefore there's no what?

[1:14] Will in God, Will in God, right? And it's interesting now because you know we talked before in here about how the appetitive powers are named from one act of the appetitive powers, the one which to us is most what known, hunger, thirst, right? Wanting, right? Of course, the English word want is beautiful because it has not only the sense of desire but the sense of of lacking, right?

[1:43] Huh? So we say, you know, about the salad dressing, you know, it wants something, right? Or the sauce, it wants something, you know, and you've got to figure out what but you've got to add to it, right? Huh? So there can't be any wanting in God, right? Because then he would what? Lacks. That'd be for something he lacks, right? Huh? And so, therefore, there's no appetitive power, and since the will is an appetitive power, there's no will, right?

[2:06] Well, Thomas admits, of course, in the reply, and you know, is named from that, right? But there are other acts, and two of them we've studied here: love or liking, and then what? Joy or pleasure, right? Huh? And so, just those acts are found in God, but not what? The middle one, right? Huh? So I'm thinking, well, if heaven is partaking the life of God, you won't want for anything there, right?

[2:33] Because no wanting in God, right? That's a life where there's no wanting. It's kind of strange for us, right? Because we all want something we don't have and want some more of this or that, right? So

[2:48] I like an objection like that because it brings you back to the to the way the thing is named, right? The Scripture says that God desires all men to be saved. He desires that all men be saved. He must have desired. Is that a metaphor? Yeah. Yeah. Well, not only that, but is that the bridge, is that the echo? Well, notice what he adds there, and comes to the knowledge of the truth, doesn't it?

[3:14] In that same passage, right? Yeah. Didn't say to love, but to come to the knowledge of the truth, right? Because you got to have love, you won't get there to the vision of love. So love is not what you're seeking, but the vision. But it'll be given only to those who who love God. Okay, up to Article Five.

[3:39] To the fifth. Oh, by the way, last night we were reading the physical refutations of Aristotle, my students there, and someone had the English text there, you know, and I had the Loeb too, you know, and so on. Some of the translations are really, yeah, yeah. But that's a common thing, you know. I think one one of the one of the Loeb editions managed to actually translate one of the texts of Aristotle, the exact opposite of the meaning.

[4:09] Really. Wow. I know. I once had a somebody give their doctoral dissertation on the book I was over. They'd already submitted it, been graded, they got their degree and everything. I was looking through it, and she was citing a passage at St. Thomas. I don't remember it now. In support of a certain position, but the translation was they put in a negative, the not. And I thought that's exactly opposite what she wanted to say.

[4:35] And then I went and looked in the Latin, and it didn't have the negative. Because at that time I didn't know enough Latin, I asked Father Mike. Could this ever be translated as the the opposite? So if there's something I don't understand, what's that? No, the translation was just wrong. They put in a negative, and it wasn't in it. I was reading the Navari text, and it had Ab and I said, that shouldn't be Ab; it should be Ad, you know.

[4:56] So I went to Mary Eddie, Mary Eddie had Ad, you know, something. Yeah, it's very common. But okay, that's an interesting question. Now, since you guys have given up here now, to the fifth one goes forward. Thus, it seems that bodily pleasures and sensible pleasures, right, are greater than understandable spiritual pleasures.

[5:23] For all seek some pleasure, according to the philosopher. That's being Aristotle in the tenth book of the Nicomachean Ethics. So the tenth book he considers pleasure, right? That's so earlier too for other reasons, but. But more people follow sensible pleasures, right, than the understandable spiritual pleasures. Therefore, the bodily pleasures are greater, right?

[5:59] Moreover, the magnitude of the cause is known from the effect. But bodily pleasures have more potent effects, huh? For they what change the what body, right? Huh? And some they make insane, right? Huh?

[6:20] As is said in the seventh book of the ethics, huh? Therefore, bodily pleasures are what stronger, huh? Moreover, it is necessary to temper and refrain bodily pleasures, huh? On account of their what Vehemence huh?

[6:47] My brother Mark used to be standing and joking between us you know about these wonderful theorems, in Euclid, you know, The pleasure is so great to understand these things, we've got to, you know, restrain the vehemence of pleasure, you know, just such such delightfulness, huh? But it's not necessary to refrain what spiritual pleasures, huh? Therefore, bodily pleasures are greater, right? They need to be.

[7:20] But against this is what is said in Psalm one eighteen. How sweet to what our throats, I guess, are your words, huh? Super above what honey to my what mouth, that's a bodily pleasure, right? Okay.

[7:45] Kind of kind of fun to see the stories in the paper there about the bears breaking into these little cabins, you know, and eating all the honey and all the jam and stuff, you know. Got a real sweet tooth, you know.

[8:01] Even even our dog, when the berries are out in the bushes, he'll just get a whole bunch of blackberries, raspberries, whatever. they're heads and sweet. And the philosopher says in the tenth book of the ethics that the greatest pleasure is that which is according to the operation of what wisdom, huh?

[8:24] What's Thomas going to say about this, huh? I answer: It should be said. This has been said. Pleasure arises from the joining of something what suitable, which is sensed or what known, huh?

[8:45] In the works, however, of the soul, and especially of the what sensing soul and the understanding soul, this ought to be considered. That since they do not go forth. Into exterior matter, right? Like making a what chair or something, right? Like dinner.

[9:06] But they are acts or perfections of the one what acting, right? As to understand, to sense, and to will, and other things of this sort. So, is it more perfection of me to listen to the music of Mozart than to make a chair?

[9:29] Because making a chair is a perfecting of the what chair. Why the operation that remains within me doesn't go into exterior matter, like hearing the music of Mozart? That's a perfection of me.

[9:46] So I should sit around listening to Mozart and not do anything. Well, at least don't make any chair. I want to make dinner, but you don't have to make a chair.

[9:59] For the actions. Which go forth into outside matter are more the what actions and perfections of the matter that has been changed, right? For motion, as Aristotle says, is the act of the movable thing from the what mover, right? So motion is in the moved, not in the mover, except per actionem. Thus, therefore, the foresaid actions of the sensing and understanding soul; these are a certain good of the one what acting, huh?

[10:38] And they are also known by the sense or by the what understanding, right? Whence also from them, from the acting, yes, right, there arises pleasure, and not only from their what objects.

[11:03] If therefore we compare understandable pleasures to the sensible pleasures, according as we delight in the actions themselves, I adopted my word there, rather than operatio. That is to say, in the knowledge of the sense or in the knowledge of the understanding, there is no doubt that much greater are the understandable pleasures than the what sensible pleasures, huh?

[11:40] For much more does a man delight about this that he knows something and understanding it, right? Than about this that he knows something by what sense again, huh?

[11:57] I'd come to Kosserich, you know, listening to Mozart I'd be babbling about what Mozart's music is representing. and Kosserich would say, "you'd think it has more meaning than it does." But I was thinking, you know, some understanding, right?

[12:17] Because the intellectual knowledge is what More perfect. more perfect, huh? And it's also more known because the understanding more reflects upon its own act than the sense. So in Shakespeare's education to use reason, huh? You learn what reason is and what it is to use reason, huh? In the way the senses don't know what it is to use the senses.

[12:48] There's also what you can say intellectual knowledge is more what loved, huh? For there's no one who would not rather lose his bodily sight than his intellectual sight, huh? In that way in which beasts are the stupid lack it, right? Huh? Just as Augustine himself says, the great Augustine, here in the book on the City of God, huh? So would you rather go blind or go mad?

[13:21] Would you rather go blind or go mad, right? Shakespeare kind of touches upon that in King Lear, right? Huh? Where the man's eyes are put out, right, You know, the scene there, and he was blind and didn't know what the situation was before. Now he's trying to understand, right? But would you more fear going mad, huh? Alzheimer or something like that coming up, you know? Than to go blind, and he's talking about go blind, but

[13:50] yeah, so Lear's afraid he's going mad; he's going to lose his mind, right? It's kind of like the comparison, comparing the two. Like you might remember something twenty or forty years ago when you learned it in the joy, and you still can enjoy having learned something. I doubt you have. You might have a recollection of a really, really special meal you had twenty or thirty years ago, but probably you are not rejoicing over it anymore.

[14:16] Yeah, yeah, it's gone, but you can still enjoy that. Yeah, because you learned something. Now, but if we compare understandable pleasures, spiritual understandable pleasures, to the bodily sensible pleasures, right? Huh? Thus, as such, secundum se, right? And speaking what simply, right? Those are almost synonyms. secundum se and simpliciter right? But secundum se is more synonym with per se, right? To itself as such, and simply speaking, spiritual pleasures are what greater, right?

[15:07] And this appears by three things which are required for pleasure, to wit, the good that is what joined to or joined with, and that to which it is joined, right? And then the what the joining itself, right?

[15:32] Now the spiritual good is both what greater than the bodily good, and is more what loved, huh? A sign of which is that men, even from the what greatest bodily pleasures, abstain that they might not lose honor, which is a understandable good. Curiously, it's an example, right? Because something you know less than the highest. understandable, goods, huh? Likewise, the part to which it is joined, right? The intellectual part, the understanding part, is much what more noble, right?

[16:16] And knows more than the sensitive part. What's the object of the understanding part? Truth. What's the fundamental object, though? Being. Hmm. Being. What what it is is something, right? Okay. And the senses don't know what a thing is.

[16:41] Even the eye might recognize a square, but doesn't even know what a square is. Yeah. So it's magis cognoscitiva, the main thing to know about a thing is what it is.

[16:57] They were talking about the debate. I said, "What was that people saying? " Because their candidate did so poorly, right? What was that? And then the very joining itself is more what intimate, right? More intimate, huh? More inward, right? And more perfect, and more what firm, huh? Yeah. Okay.

[17:29] It's more intimate because the sense stops, right, around the exterior accidents of the thing, right? So it's because our knowledge starts with the senses that we have a kind of outward knowledge of things at first, huh? So you know another person in an outward way first, right? And then you talk to them, and and in the moment of truth, you see what they really are, right? Um.

[18:00] What's it? All's well that ends well, huh? There's a character called Parolles, which I guess comes from the French for words, right? And he's always talking about how brave he is and this sort of stuff, and so the moment of truth comes up for him, you know, later on, right? Where he's completely disgraced, right?

[18:20] So we know things in an outward way first, huh? And that's why we think about something before we understand it. Now, of course, in Latin, huh? What's the etymology of the word intellectus or intelligere? To read within, To read within, right? Okay.

[18:42] We use the word sometimes in English, the word insight, right? To see within, right? So it's more intimate, huh? The way in which you are what knowing the object when you have insight, huh? And therefore, the the union is going to be greater, right? So as such, the pleasure is going to be greater.

[19:06] Um. More intimate, he says, because the sense stops around the exterior accidents of the thing. We use that word "outward" is is in English almost a synonym for what sensible. When I was studying the definition of sacrament in the Baltimore Baltimore Catechism Catechism, which they still used in my day,

[19:33] the definition was an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace. What did outward mean? Sensible, yeah. It's interesting how the outward is kind of like is a synonym there for sensible, right?

[19:56] But the understanding, as the name itself indicates in etymology. inset it penetrates right as far as the very nature or essence of the thing, what it is. For the object of the understanding is the what it is.

[20:18] So the first act of reason is called grasping what something is. First thing you do in geometry is grasp what a point is and what a line is and what a square is, what a circle is, and so on.

[20:34] It is more perfect because to the joining of the sensible to the sense is joined what motion, which is an imperfect act, right? Even listening to Mozart, right? It involves a motion, right? And that's an imperfect act.

[20:56] Whence, as you said earlier, sensible pleasures are not what all at once, right? Tota simul right? But in them something passes and something yet to come Yeah is expected for consummation, right? As is clear in the pleasures of what food and venereal. But the understandable pleasures are without what motion. Whence such pleasures are tota simul all at once, huh? So you see the Greek word there that they translate by "scientia" in Latin, but the word "scientia" in Latin doesn't have the etymology of the Greek word "episteme," right?

[21:47] Episteme means what? Coming to a halt or stop, right? So when you come to understand something, right, your mind comes to rest. Boethius says reasoning, right, is to understanding, like motion is to what rest. And if you look at the word in English, understanding, right, It comes from the word "stand. By reasoning names a kind of movement of reason, like the word "discourse" in Shakespeare's definition, right?

[22:26] But you know Shakespeare goes on to say that reason is the ability for a large discourse, but it's looking, right? It's trying to see, trying to understand, right? And when it comes to understand, then it comes to kind of rest, huh? And just contemplates the thing, right?

[22:47] Why the the sensible pleasure is tied up with emotion, right? And it is more what firm, right, huh? Because the bodily pleasures are corruptible, right, and they quickly what? Pass away. Yeah. But the spiritual ones are what incorruptible.

[23:15] Somebody, brother Mark, says you know the first beer tastes better than the second beer, and actually he says only we taste good the first sip of beer, the rest of it. Yeah, yeah. Well,

[23:31] you understand these things more, you have more what wonder, more pleasure, right, huh? I mentioned how you know we were doing the it was the fourth book of the physics of Aristotle, you know, De Koninck he had taught that since the 1930s, right, and so I'm up there in the late 50s, and he comes down the hall, you know, he stops in front of me, you know, he says, "Isn't this wonderful?"

[23:53] He said, you know, he got more wonder and delight, you know, than anybody else, you know, in the class, you know. And see how I said the friend of my brother Mark that you know he used to remark, you know, Monsignor Diana is so intense and classy that kind of you know he would say, you know, fuck you, fuck you, you know, do you see, you know, but you're the dirty hair, you know, you take that, huh?

[24:22] Firmness, okay. But now he's making a little secundum quid, right? He said quoad nos regards us, right, huh? Bodily pleasures are more what vehement, on account of three reasons. First, because sensible things are more known to us than understandable things, right?

[24:51] Thomas says one reason why we scripture speaks metaphors is because that's as far as some people can go. The Lord is my rock. Second, because the bodily or sensible pleasures, since they are passions or emotions of the sense desiring power, are with some bodily what change, right? Aristotle talks about this in the the first book there, in the proemium there rather to the first book on the soul,

[25:32] which does not happen in the spiritual pleasures, except sometimes through certain overflowing from the higher desire to the what lower one. And third, because the bodily pleasures are desired as what medicines against bodily defects. Or aggravation, yeah. From which sadnesses and sadnesses follow, right? Huh.

[26:06] And this is interesting now. Whence bodily pleasures, huh, coming upon, right? These sadness, right? Are more what sensed, right? Huh. And consequently more accepted than spiritual pleasures, which do not have contrary what sadnesses, huh? Huh. Now Socrates talks about this in the Phaedo, right? Huh. You know the idea that you know always seems tied with what bodily pleasures, some kind of pain, right? Huh. Or some kind of discomfort, right?

[26:40] Huh. So hunger makes good sauces, he said, huh? So I got to have the discomfort of of what hunger, you know, to really enjoy my food, right? Huh. You know, but if I eat too much, you know, then then I get pain, right? Huh. Same way with drinking or something, right? Okay. Is ignorance painful? Yeah, but but kind of the opposition between the two, right? Huh. Your hunger alongside the pleasure of eating, right?

[27:10] Huh. You know, the pleasure seems greater because of the what? It's kind of an optical illusion, there. You know, it seems greater, right, because of that opposition, huh?

[27:28] Is he saying that there are not spiritual pains? What's interesting now, because you say opposed to the pleasure of eating is the you know the pain or discomfort of hunger, right? Huh. You know, but is there really a opposite to the pleasure of understanding the Pythagorean theorem?

[27:53] Ignorance of the Pythagorean theorem. That's not really a pain, though, is it? Yeah, we don't. People, well, it's kind of like what they say about scripture, especially or any scripture. Yeah. If you don't know it, you don't miss it. Instead of the spiritual, when you don't have some bodily good that you're lacking and you want, yeah, then you experience pain of it. Whereas if somebody doesn't have a spiritual life, they don't necessarily miss it.

[28:17] Yeah. They're not pain. If there's total, if there's total ignorance, but if there's if you know that you don't know something that you should know or that you'd like to know, it seems to me there's kind of when you're aware that there's knowledge out there, and doesn't have it, but then again, there's a reason why you're avoiding it too. Well, maybe because you don't have a chance to learn.

[28:46] But doesn't it seem? I mean, is it is it directly opposed to it in the way that the the hunger is directly opposed to the pleasure of food and so on? More like a privation than a.

[29:01] Yeah, yeah, or thirst and and water or something. Yeah, I guess it's going to be in comparison with the pleasure of the thing. The ignorance doesn't necessarily enhance your pleasure during it.

[29:17] The way that hunger makes the food taste better, kind of thing. I remember that. I tell you, the best hamburger I ever had in my whole life. right before we got to your house. we had spent the whole day, you know, starving to death to see the Pope in Toronto, and we had just enough money to buy a cheeseburger. After that was the best cheeseburger I ever had my whole life because I was starving.

[29:39] I remember that very clearly. That's a memory of a sense experience that'll stick with me. But I don't necessarily have when when I learn these things. I don't necessarily have, of course, my my ignorance. It's something like that, you know, when when the person wonders about something and then finally understands it, right? The first time he understands it, the joy he has when they have maybe later on, right? He thinks about it, but it's because of that opposition that there is, right?

[30:04] That's more clearer, certainly, in the case of the senses, right? Get hungry every day, don't we, you know? You get, you know, tired, you know. And my wife warned me, you got to fall, you fall asleep in that chair out there, you know. You know, I said, bring it to bed where I can still get the bed of my own navigation, you know. Can I ask you something What Also the difference is that you're talking about deprivation of the senses, aren't you talking about something the senses have had before, and they yearn for something they've already experienced, perhaps?

[30:45] Yeah, it's more known to us, yeah. But yeah, whereas with the intellect if you don't know, what you're missing. that's what they get. the experience ignorance is bliss, That's where it comes from So both Aristotle and Thomas says that no man can live without pleasure, right? Huh? And so if they don't acquire a taste for these higher pleasures, right, then they tend to go to excess in the lower pleasures.

[31:09] Huh? You see a lot in our society, obviously going on there. You know, the expression "acquired taste." I don't know if I altogether like that, but there's some truth to that, right? That classical music is a kind of acquired taste, right? Or Shakespeare's acquired taste, you know. What he calls the non-natural pleasures. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of a funny way of speaking, but you know, you have to become accustomed to these things and concentrate on them a bit, you know.

[31:54] The old and the old seventy-eight records I first heard, the notes to figure out Mozart, huh? You know? the old Glyndebourne, of course, Trying to save space, they kind of leave out a lot of the talking in the opera, you know. I mean, the, they just give you the arias, really concentrate, you know, and put my ear up to the machine like that and listen to it, you know, and then you start to really appreciate it, right?

[32:17] And you sit into it, huh? So Thomas says a little distinction there doesn't he, huh? But someone who knows only the pleasures of the senses, you know, and he said, how could I enjoy myself in heaven, you know? Socrates, you know, in the dialogues there, apparently there must have been in Greece like we have, you know, stories of ghosts around graveyards and so on, huh? And Socrates.

[32:57] suggests that these are the souls of those who are lovers of the body, right, rather than lovers of the soul. And now they're cut off from the source of all their pleasure, and so they try to get back in the body so they can enjoy the pleasures of eating again and drinking, so on, because they have no pleasures, you know, of the soul. Mm. It's interesting. There could be some truth, to that.

[33:22] Yeah, yeah. You know, we'd sometimes, you know, speak of you know ghosts around where treasures have been hidden. You know where they deposited their, uh yeah. Story there of Washington Irving there, you know, Dolph Heyliger you know, it's very fun to read you know.

[33:43] Maybe you're attached to your your fortune, right? Huh. The you don't want to be separated. Like that wretched priest, and what was it, Will Canter? The priest that was dying. There's a there's the priest who was the lech, and the other one was the miser. Yeah. And the miser's dying, and the lecher priest comes in to give him the sacraments, and the miser says, "Ha ha ha!

[34:07] You can't enjoy your pleasure, but I got it all here. You got it all here. I can still enjoy my pleasure. You can't. You're too old. Mocking him. A wretched soul. Remember seeing a cartoon there, you know, where they're in the lawyer's office, they're ready to about to read the will. They're all you know, you know, waiting for what they get to know, and the lawyer says, "He took it with him.

[34:35] " That's that's the the corresponding one. and that was what everybody's waiting to hear. what the rich man left. Yeah. And uh, we said, "well, how much did he leave? " He left everything. Everything.

[35:01] Okay. So he gives three reasons there why, in some way, the body pleasures might seem more, right? huh? Because they're more known to us, right? We're tied to the senses because they involve this body change, right? And then they're sought as kind of a relief from the bodily what pain, and so on. huh?

[35:29] It's kind of interesting the way music is is done, though. sometimes huh, to relieve the bodily tiredness, right? Put the marches on or something, you know. His brother said, "Did we discuss that in here before? " His his brother has a thing about music. He talked about that. If you were to try to dance, yeah, and you didn't have any music, you'd get tired really fast. Yeah, yeah.

[35:49] But if you put the music, you can dance all night. Yeah, yeah. I could have danced all night. They keep going and going. So if you didn't have music, you'd get tired very fast. I remember one time when we were going to pick up Paul at West Point, you know, and he was getting out after some kind of a thing, but be late at night, right? So, time he was released finally by like 2 a.

[36:13] m. or something like that, you know. And of course, Daddy was, you know, responsible for driving everybody, you know, home. So I put the marches on to stay awake, you know. Yeah. You know, you're going to get your thing going. you know. Well, it's like the you know the French canoe drivers? You know, they would you know be exhausted, and they'd start their song, you know, and then they'd be all be zooming along.

[36:35] So, so it's kind of interesting, huh? How music can get you going again, huh? Now, what about the objection to the first? Therefore, it should be said that, therefore, more or many, yeah, more follow the what body pleasures, because the sensible goods are more what known to many, right?

[37:11] And also, this is another reason they gave. This is kind of going back towards in the body, and because men need what pleasures as medicines against the many what pains and sadness, yeah, of life, right? Okay.

[37:30] And so the working man stops off to get a beer after his work, right? Yeah I can't buy them No, I can't. No, no. I went to the Université Laval, right? Well, Cardinal Laval, you know, Archbishop Laval, he brought in the beer industry there to Canada, there, right? Probably could get away from the hard liquor because there was that was not the best thing, you know. So he wanted to have a thing that work man could relax after his day of labor, right?

[37:54] That was not going to harm him as much as whiskey, you know. Okay. So he brought that beer. It's a work of mercy. The Bottled

[38:05] Blue, yeah. Okay. And since what most men are not able to attain to the what spiritual pleasures, which are proper to those who are virtuous, right? That means virtues of reason as well as the moral virtues. Huh? Consequently, it is that they decline to the to the bodily ones, huh? So there's a lot of understanding of the human condition here in Thomas, huh?

[38:49] Now, why are there these bodily changes more with those pleasures, even though they're less than the other ones. Well, the transmutation of the body more happens than the bodily pleasures, insofar as they're emotions of the sensitive appetite, which is in the body, right? Okay.

[39:08] So when you get what angry, you know, you can feel the changes in your body, right? Huh? When you're fearful, you know, you know, I've got to go up and speak in front of a crowd or something. like that. It's a white point in my head. Yeah, yeah. Remember, you know, you're holding one of the cats there, you know, and there's a big dog coming in the neighborhood, and you can you can see that there.

[39:26] Yeah. You know, Or you put them on your shoulder and they're, holding on to very firmly. So it's a bodily thing, right? Huh? So Aristotle talks about that. He says if you're going to define really anger fully, you'd have to say what the bodily change is, what the bodily aspect of it is, as well as the formal aspect of it.

[39:49] To third now, why do these have to be? what Refrained. Yeah. Well, he said the bodily pleasures are according to the sensitive part, which is ruled by reason. They should be ruled by reason, right? And therefore, they need to be tempered and refrained by reason. So temperance gets its name from that, I guess. Some people speak of moderation as a name for it.

[40:25] But the spiritual pleasures are according to the mind, which is itself the rule, right? Hence, they are according to themselves sober and moderate. As John of the Cross talked about spiritual lust. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Kind of lusty spiritual pleasures. Mm. And curiosity, right? Kind of.

[40:55] Yeah, Thomas will talk about curiosity in the second part of the second. Yeah. Yeah. Curiosity, is a name for a vice, means a disordered desire to know, right? I know when I was working with Monsignor Dionne there, because he was talking about the the role of the will as well as the reason in the life of the mind, right? And then I found this this text in Thomas's commentary on the Epistles of Saint Paul, right, where Thomas talks about the causes of error, which is the opposite of, and but on the part of the appetite and on the part of the what?

[41:40] Reason, right? And he doesn't put down curiosity as the greatest cause of error. It's pride. And so he says pride is a cause of error. Thomas says in two ways. One by making you attempt something beyond your powers, where you easily fall into error, and the other is to not learn from the men who are wiser than you in these matters, and because a good teacher, right, keeps you from falling into error or calls you back from error, right?

[42:19] So you know when you read the modern philosophers, no one believes in the other modern philosopher, and they don't go back to the great men before them, right? Huh? And so they fall into all kinds of errors because of that. But curiosity is a cause of error too, because it's a disordered desire to know, and therefore you might want to know something about something that you're curious about or that's fashionable, right?

[42:46] But try to know it out of order, right? You know, in the introduction to philosophy volumes that they'd send me as a college professor, you know, because I teach Introduction to Philosophy. you know, you've got a section there on does God exist, you know, and so on. This is not where you start with a student, huh? You know, he might be interested in this, right? Might be a fashionable thing to discuss, you know.

[43:09] But maybe you are not ready to think about those things seriously. So you, out of curiosity, you consider these things out of order, and therefore you make what? Yeah, yeah. Someone comes to me and says, you know, I heard this Pythagorean theorem. Can you prove it to me? That sounds interesting. I said, well, the only proof I know is Proposition forty-seven in Book One of Euclid, and there is forty-six ones before Euclid.

[43:41] And well, I don't know how I did that, you know. And so they, so they, they jump, you know, to something. It's kind of interesting, you know, when when you go to college, you know.

[43:59] You go to Professor A's class, or you go to Professor B's class, or Professor C. You think about whatever he's talking about, right? And they all talk about different things. So you've got to find what is the natural beginning, right, for our thinking, huh? And it's kind of interesting, and as I say, I was reading the, reading the book on special refutations, right? And Aristotle explicitly there, and also explicitly in the book on the Poetic Art, he says you've got to start first from the natural beginning.

[44:36] And so he finds the natural beginning, in both books. But I think he does in other books too. But he's very explicit about the need to do this. What's interesting, if you go back to the Greeks, who are kind of the first philosophers, they have a tendency, you know, to start where it's natural to start, because there is nobody before them, right? To get to the modern philosophers, and they start from the thing that the guy before them was talking about, right?

[45:04] Huh? And so Hegel starts off from Spinoza, right? Or Spinoza starts off from Descartes, you know, or wherever you know Descartes left off, or he's you know, he was talking about that's where he begins, right? Huh? Well, that's not where you you begin, you know. Place

[45:25] to begin, even Thomas, you know, De Ente et Essentia. We have that place to begin, you know. Yeah. Well, out of fairness to them, if you are

[45:39] talking to other philosophers, if if Spinoza is talking to other philosophers, that's right. Wouldn't he be wasting a lot of time talking about going back and starting over and reviewing everything that everything that people should already know up to the point of? Well, the point is though that you have to go back to which is naturally known. In order to reason out the things that you have to think out, other pieces of that.

[46:05] So if you don't go back to the natural beginning, you don't have the beginning for all the rest of your thought. You already have the foundation. You got to build on that gradually, huh? And you know, it's interesting. You know, Socrates in the dialogue called the Meno, huh? He gives a certain appearance that the way to double a square is already in the knowledge of the slave boy, right?

[46:29] Because Socrates simply by asking the right questions, huh? Leads the slave boy's mind in the proper order, right? And so then the conclusion as to how you double a square—you take the diagonal, will be the side of the square twice as big—comes out naturally, right? From things the slave boy knew already. But Socrates is doing most of the work because he's asking the questions in the proper order, and therefore the the slave boy is seeing them in an orderly way.

[47:08] But the man who discovers something by himself has to put this in order himself, right? So Socrates is really doing most of the work, and he's not being quite fair. He says the slave boy already knew this, right? He didn't already know it, but it came out of things that the slave boy already what knew, huh? So you know the thing that always struck me with the modern philosophers.

[47:36] I never had the impression really when I read, say, Kant or I read Descartes or I read Locke or something, that I was really learning anything about things. You know, I was learning what Kant thought or what Kant said, and then I began to suspect it didn't make too much sense, and you know, why was it wrong? You know, so when you pick up a modern philosopher, my first, you know, attitude is, I wonder what this guy's mistake is.

[48:09] And they each have their own peculiar mistake, right? But you're not learning about things themselves, right? When you read Aristotle or even you know Plato and even the early Greeks, I have the impression that hey, they're talking about things and they're starting with those things that come what first. Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs. So the first thing we really think about is what motion, right?

[48:38] And you know, we go all the way from motion to the unmoved mover to God, right? But we got to start with with motion, huh?

[48:50] That's a natural place to begin. What's a natural place to begin if you're talking about? Drama and epic and symphonies and paintings and so on. What's the what's the natural beginning in thinking about these things?

[49:17] What does an epic and a tragedy and a comedy and an opera and a symphony and painting over there? What do you all have in common? Works of art. Yeah, but that art doesn't really, you know, say what it is. They're all a what? A likeness or something, right? Okay. And that's kind of the natural beginning, but they differ in what they make their likeness. So the the poet might make the likeness in words, and the painter might make the likeness in line and color, and they also differ by what they imitate, and then how they imitate, right?

[50:05] See, but the natural starting point is to see that imitation. I like this. If you don't start there, you're going to miss the whole thing, right?

[50:19] Shakespeare, you know, in Hamlet, he says that, right? He says it both properly and what metaphorically, right? To hold the mirror up to nature, show virtue in your own face, scorn her own image, in the very age and body of the times, form and pressure, right? Perfectly ordered, right? Magnificent.

[50:41] Shakespeare says best of anybody what he himself is doing. He teaches us that way, you know. It's an amazing thing, huh? Shakespeare, as I often said, is Shakespeare and Plato are kind of unusual in the history of of man, right? Because the Shakespeare is basically a poet, right? But with great philosophical gifts, right? As you can see in the imitation, he has reasonings, and Plato is primarily a philosopher, but with certain poetic gifts.

[51:16] Right? You see the dialogues, right? And so it's kind of unusual that a man can combine those what two, you know? You don't find Thomas writing plays, or we did write some poetry. Poetry through the day and writing. Yeah, but you got to be careful, you know, because certain people call poetry something that's in meter or something, and all, but it's not. We're just speaking. It's not mimesis, right?

[51:50] Say the Lord is my rock. You're not saying you're not making imitation a likeness of God, so much. Mr. Briscoe, did we finish that section? This article, yeah. We finished that Then. My question would be about Shakespeare.

[52:11] Since you know him so well, would you be able to give make a good educational guess what his what his what his educational background was? Well, we know he was probably educated in the school there, and his father was brought up to do, right? The study of Saint Thomas. No, we don't know that. No.

[52:35] I mean, the thing about Shakespeare is that there's something, some natural gifts there, right? So, so to some extent, he was self-taught, but but he's very well read, right? And so he knows Plutarch, right? And

[52:52] comes out. I mean, I used to have some of Plutarch's Moralia, you know, as well as his Lives of the illustrious Romans and Greeks, right? And you know, there's a famous essay, you know, how you can profit from your enemies. In Plutarch, and he's saying, well, your enemies are what? They're going to point out what's wrong with you, right? While your friends might kind of pass over your faults, right?

[53:19] So from your enemies, you learn what your faults are, and therefore you can profit from them in a way. Well, you know, you read Twelfth Night in Shakespeare, right? And the clown is there, right? And the Duke comes over, who's interested in the lady, and and so he says, you know, how are you? He says, he says the better for my enemies and the worse for my friends.

[53:43] And the Duke said, don't you mean just the reverse? You know the better. No, he says because you know my my enemies tell me that I'm an ass, you know, and and I am. So I profit and knowledge of myself, you know, from them, you know. But from my friends, you know, they they tell me that this that and and give me a false impression of myself.

[54:02] Well, you know, he's probably you know, had read Plutarch, right? And but he comes up in such a natural way. It's just as bad that I'm saying it now. But I mean, one thing and another after like that, huh? So he certainly knew Plutarch, right? And Plutarch, you know, kind of kind of kind of reconciling the way Plato and Aristotle, you know, and take what they have in common, you know, and he he knows both, right?

[54:26] Huh? So a lot of good things in Plutarch, right? You know, in in the Roman plays, right? You know, the you got all this Plutarch in there, right? And sometimes even plays a bit.

[54:44] Well, there were no laws in those days. There were no copyright laws. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But license agreements. So nothing wrong with that, though.

[54:59] I mean, my favorite piece by Brahms is a variation on a theme by Haydn. Imitation is the highest form of flattery. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My my my book on Mozart's piano concertos. He he gives twenty three piano concertos by Mozart, right? So you got a when you go out to buy a record, though, you got to realize that what he calls twenty three is really twenty seven.

[55:24] Call twenty seven. Well, the first four concertos by Mozart are what? Kind of taking Johann Christian Bach's pieces and orchestrating them and so on, right? Now, so he regards the fifth concerto as being the first one by Mozart, right? Well, so what

[55:41] Mozart, you know, learned. Look at this terrible bug right there. What? Oh, see, that's a marvelous creation by God. Yeah, I know. Interesting. He's got. You don't want to crush it Don't crush it. Whatever you do. Now, it'll make a stink. Yeah. Oh my goodness. So I think you're going to have to take them home with you. Bring him home and say, "What was your like to see him last year?"