Prima Secundae
119. Aquinas on Habit (ST I-II Q49 aa.2-3): Why Habit Is the First Species of Quality, and Its Order to Action
Class of 2013-04-25
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/11-prima-secundae/119-aquinas-on-habit-st-i-ii-q49-aa-2-3-why-habit-is-the-first/

[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. God, our enlightenment, Guardian Angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, or and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor, help us to understand all that you've written. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen.

[0:34] It's kind of struck you know as we're reading Thomas's consideration there of the Eucharist, right, in the fourth book of the Summa Contra Gentiles,

[0:44] and he begins that consideration of the Eucharist, and he says, "Why is the Eucharist necessary?" Right. And I was kind of struck by the answer he gave, huh? He said, "To preserve us in the virtues and to increase them." Kind of stuck me, you know. If I've been thinking about the connection between the greatest virtues—faith, hope, and charity—right—and the Eucharist, right, like St Thomas in the Adoro te devote Devote, right, which is one of those prayers that the Church selected as a Vatican II to be of special mention in the tradition of the Church, right, and to be included in the new edition of the Enchiridion of Indulgences, but the middle quatrain is about faith, hope, and charity, huh?

[1:32] And then, you know, our Lord himself says there at the end of the words that they use in the consecration, you know, "Do this in memory of me," right? And so this prayer, you know, that used to say after communion that I learned as a boy, right, prayer before Jesus and the crucifix, and so on. Well, there again, you ask for faith, hope, and what charity, right?

[1:52] So it's kind of struck by his, you know, saying it's necessary to preserve the sacraments. I mean, to preserve the virtues and to what increase them. Of course, Thomas in his prayer after communion asks for the increase of all the virtues, right? But there's a special connection with faith, hope, and charity. I was struck by that. Every time I go through there, you know, I'm kind of struck by something that didn't strike you so much before.

[2:17] You know, and say, "Gee whiz, what a what a interesting thing," you know. Like De Koninck used to say, you know, every time I go through the physics, right, he sees something new in them. Huh? He's been teaching since the 30s ago, and I had him in the late 50s, 50s, 60s, there, you know. Oh, he sees something.

[2:37] So let's look again at the body of the article here that we is about halfway through there in Article Two, right, in Question 49,

[2:52] and the scandal here of there being four species of quality, right. I answer. It should be said that the philosopher, meaning no more nor less than Aristotle himself, right, in the Predicamentis, huh? That's the Latin word for in the book called the Categories, huh? He lays down among four species of quality as the what first, right? Now we'll see the reason why this is the first of the four species of quality, He isn't until the later part of the body.

[3:30] You're going to explain why it's the first one, right? But notice he already says he lays it down first among the four species of quality. What does he lay down as first? Disposition and habit, huh? These are two words, huh?

[3:48] Okay, that's the beginning of the body, right? The second part here takes up the famous commentator Simplicius, trying to understand this, right? Of which species Somplicius assigns thus the differences in his commento predicamentorum, his commentary on the Categories of Aristotle, saying that of qualities some are what natural, which are in according to nature and always, and some are adventitious, right? They come to you, right? Because adventitious means come to, huh?

[4:27] They come to you as the word being made from the outside, right? From the extrinsic, and they are also able to be what lost, huh? And these which are adventitious are habits and what dispositions, huh?

[4:47] Which differ according to easily and were difficultly able to be lost, right? So disposition sometimes names something easily lost, and the habit something difficult to be lost, but it can be lost, right?

[5:06] Now of natural qualities some are according to that something is in potency, and this is the second species of quality. Some are according to as something is an act, and this either in the depths, right, or according to the surface, right, and thus in the depths or profound depths is the third species of quality, which is sometimes called sense qualities, huh? According to the surface is the four species of quality figure and what form, huh?

[5:43] Which is the figure of the form being the figure of the animated thing, right? But Thomas says this distinction of the species of quality seems unsuitable, right? That negative thinking all this time. Okay. For there are many figures and undergoing qualities that are not natural, but are what adventitious, right? Huh? And many dispositions are not adventitious but natural, as health and beauty, right? And things of this sort.

[6:24] And moreover, this is not suitable to the order of the species, right? The before and after in the enumeration of the species, huh? For simpliciter always that which is more natural is before. Okay. Can he's hinting upon the basis why habit disposition are going to be later on understood to be the first species of quality, huh?

[6:52] And then Thomas says, and therefore in another way one ought to take the distinction of dispositions and habits from the other what qualities, huh? For properly quality implies a certain what mode of substance, huh? That's what you would say in Latin, right? Huh? Okay.

[7:20] Now a mode, as Augustine says upon Genesis to the letter, is what measure prefixes, right? That's kind of unusually uses this because he says, and this related to quantity, right? But it's in terms of something more general. Quiddam implies a certain determination according to some what measure. And therefore, just as that by which the potency of matter is determined according to substantial being is called quality, which is a difference of what substance, Substance, huh?

[8:01] So that according to which is determined the potency of the subject according to accidental being is called what accidental quality, huh? Which is also a certain difference, huh? Okay. The first is marked with species making difference, right? Essential difference, huh? I know it's not in when Plato or say no, in Latin they define difference, huh? Species making difference, they'll say it's qualiquid it signifies qualiquid. You got the word for quality there, right?

[8:35] Quali right? And Boethius translates it in this way. It says, difference is a name said with one meaning of many things other than kind, signifying how they are what they are, right? See. And so you got the word how in there, which is closest thing we have to. poios in Greek or qualis in Latin, right? As if you were to call quality howness, right? Although we're not accustomed to do that, but you can see quality and qualities are related, right?

[9:08] Or poios the adjective with poiotes right, For the quality. And so Aristotle talks about these these two kinds of differences in the fifth book of Wisdom,

[9:24] which is the book of about the names equivocal by reason, right, that are used especially in wisdom and in the axioms, but to some extent everywhere, right.

[9:42] Now he says the mode, however, or determination, right, because mode simply would be more quantity, right, or the determination of the subject according to accidental being. You're in the categories now of accident, right? Can be taken. Either in order to the very nature itself of the subject, or according to acting upon and undergoing, which follow upon the principles of nature, which are matter and what form, matter being the principle of what undergoing, right, and form of acting upon, right.

[10:27] Or according to quantity, right. Okay. Now, as Thomas follows the rule of two or three. Yeah. Because there is a way to distinguish four following the rule of two or three, right? And let's pause. I'm just see this a bit.

[10:56] Sometimes you get four by dividing into what two twos, right? Or sometimes, as I say, by crisscrossing, right? Two divisions into two, right? And one famous example that is in the anti predicaments, right, Where Aristotle distinguishes universal substance, particular substance, right, or individual substance, universal accident, right, and particular or individual accident, right. Okay. And he says something can what exist in something as in the subject, or not exist in something as in the subject.

[11:36] It can be said of another, right, or not said of another, right. So you have two divisions into two, and you crisscross them, and you get four, right? So what exists in another was not said of another is individual accident, right? What is said of another, but what doesn't exist in another is universal substance. What exists in another, but is not said of it, but is what.

[12:04] Individual accident. Yeah. And then you have individual substance, which is neither said of another nor exists in another, right? Okay. Now, kind of an aside to this, right? I mentioned how sometimes you use a crisscross of two and two, right, to arrive not at four, but to arrive at what three, right? And you first arrive at four, but then you see one of the four is not a real what possibility, right?

[12:39] I gave two examples there. One from the book on poetic art by Aristotle, right, where he divides the plot into three parts: beginning, middle, and end, right. He divides them by whether something is before something or not before something, after something or not after something, right. So if it's before something but not after something, you have the beginning. If it's after something but not before something, you have the end.

[13:09] If it's both before something and after something, you have the middle. Yeah. Now the fourth box, you might say, is what is neither before anything nor after anything, right? Say, well, could that maybe be a part of the plot? No, no. So dividing, crisscrossing two divisions of two, right, you end up with three rather than four, brings that to a see, right? Now it's kind of using Thomas's thing there, talking about Trinity, right?

[13:40] Either a person in the Trinity proceeds from someone, or he does not proceed from someone. Either he has someone proceeding from him, or he does not have someone proceeding from him. So if he proceeds from someone, but no one proceeds from him, he's the Holy Spirit. If someone proceeds from him, but he doesn't proceed from anybody, he's the Father. If he both proceeds from someone and someone proceeds from him, then he's the Son.

[14:09] Now, if he neither proceeds from anyone nor no one proceeds from him, then this couldn't be another person in the Trinity, because the Trinity, the members of the Trinity, are distinguished by relations of origin, right? Origins of procession, right? Okay, that's a kind of interesting thing, right? That sometimes you get what only three by crisscrossing two, right? But here, in the case of individual substance, universal substance, individual accident, right, and universal accident, in the categories and the predicaments, you get four, but it's by dividing and crisscrossing two what divisions, right?

[14:52] Okay. Now, what about this here, one and three, right? Well, now it's at the ball, right? And you had a professor of logic, right? And a professor in what ethics, right? I don't know if he would have heard it, but they wanted to briefly distinguish their subject, right, from the other parts of what philosophy, right? And so they used the same text, right, from the beginning of Thomas' exposition of the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, right?

[15:33] And Thomas says that what Aristotle says in metaphysics that belongs to the wise man to order things, and he does so because wisdom is the highest perfection of reason, and it's proper to reason to consider order, right, or to look before and after, as the godlike Shakespeare says, right. Okay. So then Thomas says we're going to distinguish the knowledge of reason by the order that it considers, right?

[16:08] But it's the knowledge of reason you want to distinguish, right? So we have to distinguish the knowledge of reason by a distinction of order in comparison to reason, right? He says now this is fourfold, right? Oh, he's shocking, right? He says and there is an order which reason does not make but it considers, and this is the order of natural things. So natural philosophy is about order, but order not made by reason, right?

[16:47] Then there's another part of philosophy which is about an order that reason makes in its own thoughts and its own acts, and that's logic.

[16:59] Then there's a part of philosophy which is about the order that reason makes in the acts of the will, right? Then the actions proceeding from the acts of the will, and that belongs to practical philosophy, ethics, domestics, political philosophy. And then there's the order which reason makes in exterior matter, right? Like in the wood, right? Okay, the metal, the plaster, the cloth, and so on.

[17:31] Ah. Now that's really a complete kind of division, right? And he divides it into four, right? But if you examine it, you can see that one of the orders is about the order not made by reason, and the other three the order made by reason. So you try to understand that, right? You see a distinction into two, right? And then he divides the order made by reason, starting with reason itself, in itself, and then the will, which is right next door, and then exterior matter, right?

[18:08] It's perfectly ordered, right? It puts, of course, the natural order first, right? Prima, prima. So notice, although he divides there, you know, seeking brevity as Thomas says sometimes, right? Right away into four, right? Not to be so pedantic for purposes and so on. But you can see that to understand what he's doing, we have to see maybe he should divide it into two, right? And divide the order not made by reason against the order made by reason, which is the opposites, right?

[18:41] And then the order made by reason can be divided into three, right? Now the Third and lastly, divide four into what? Was into three now instead of into what? Two, right? And there you have to have at least one in each of these cases, right? But since it's four, you've got to have two and one, right? And what is Thomas going to do now? He's dividing it into what?

[19:15] One, two, one, right? Now, if I can be so vain as to take an example of myself, right? If you look at Shakespeare's plays, right? There's about thirty-seven plays attributed to Shakespeare, right?

[19:36] And if you set aside the ten history plays that involve special problems of classification, you take the remaining twenty-seven plays. I distinguish four kinds of plays, right?

[19:52] But it's kind of natural to go back to Aristotle, where we divide the plays into what tragedy and comedy. But then, in the later people, like even in Plautus, you know, Plautus makes a word out of tragedy and comedy, tragic comedy. And in the writers on fiction there in the Renaissance, right, they said there seems to be some kind of a play that's sort of in between tragedy and comedy, right?

[20:22] You see, basically tragedy and comedy were distinguished by happiness and misery, right? Because that's the most interesting thing. That's what life is all about: happiness and misery, trying to escape misery and get the happiness. So if the play goes from happiness to misery for the main characters, that's tragedy, right? If it goes from misery to happiness, it's what comedy, right? But there seems to be plays that are what serious and not comic in the sense of being light and salable, but nevertheless unhappy for their characters, right?

[20:56] So there seems to be a what something in between these two. And so I might divide Shakespeare's plays into tragedies and comedies, and then the plays in between, right? And that's kind of understandable. But there seems to be two in between, right? And you could call them romances, right? In the technical sense, the word romance, right? And there's twelve plays. in the middle There's ten tragedies, on, five comedies, and twelve plays in the middle.

[21:27] The twelve plays in the middle fall into two groups of six. One is the love and friendship plays, which are closer to the comedies, and the other six are the mercy and forgiveness plays, right? And so I would divide right Shakespeare's maybe four kinds of plays into three, and then subdivide the middle, right? And Thomas is doing something like that here, right? So to some extent, he's using this way of dividing into two or three to get four.

[22:13] There's a beautiful text there in how is it the sentences, you know? I think it's in the Summa, but where Thomas says you can signify a person in the manner of something what absolute, or the absolute in the form of a relative, or relative in the way of relative, or absolute in the way of absolute. He's got a division to four, right, by crisscrossing. Two two is right.

[22:38] Okay. So notice in this text here, now he says the modus or determination of the subject according to accidental being can be taken. Now he gives a division to three, right? Either in order to the nature itself of the subject, right? He gives that first because the nature is what's first in the thing.

[23:04] Or according to what, acting upon undergoing, which follow the principles of nature, which are matter and form. That's the middle, right? Or according to what, quantity, right?

[23:22] If one takes the mode or determination of the subject according to quantity, thus it is the fourth species of quality that Aristotle gives. Just called figure or form, right?

[23:38] And because quantity, according to its definition, is without motion, right? And without the what notion of good and bad. Therefore, to the fourth species of quality, it does not pertain that something be well or bad, or quick or slowly passing away, right? Now that may seem strange. I thought you talk about your shape or something, right?

[24:11] But you'll explain why it isn't right. It's interesting, huh? They criticize the geometres. The geometres are pretty proud of their science, right? Because the rigor of it, the certitude of it, right? And it excels all other human knowledge or all the sciences in being certain, right? But you don't talk about the good or the bad.

[24:34] That's a good proposition. No, it's a bad proposition. Now the mode or determination of the subject according to action and passion is attended in what the second and the third species of quality, huh? And therefore, in both of these, is considered that something comes about what easily or difficulty, or that is easily right or quickly passing or lasting, right? Huh? Okay. Now notice the second species of quality is ability or inability, right?

[25:22] Okay. And the third one is the what sensible qualities we usually call it, right? Okay. The undergoing qualities Aristotle calls them. But there is not considered in these something pertaining to the notion of good or bad, because motion and passions do not have the notion of a what end. But good and bad are said with respect to the what end.

[25:51] But the mode and determination of the subject in order to the nature of the thing pertains to the first species of quality, which is habit and disposition. For the philosopher says in the seventh book of the physics, speaking about the habits, both of the soul and of the what, body, right? That there are dispositions of the perfect to the best, right? I call perfect what is disposed according to nature.

[26:28] And because the form and the nature of the thing is the end, and that for the sake of which is something, as is said in the second book of the physics. Therefore, in the first species, it's considered both good and bad, right?

[26:47] And also easily and difficultly what, movable, according as what some nature is the end of generation and of what motion. Whence, in the fifth book of wisdom, of the books after the physics books, the philosopher defines habit that is a disposition according to which someone is disposed well or badly, right? And in the second book of the ethics, talking about the moral virtues, right, that they are habits by which we have ourselves to our passions well or badly, right?

[27:26] So if I am a coward, I am disposed badly towards this emotion of fear, right? But if I have what the virtue of courage, I am disposed well towards this passion of what? Yeah. If I have temperance, I am disposed well to concupiscence, right? If I have intemperance, I am disposed badly towards that emotion.

[27:52] For what is a mode suitable to the nature of a thing? When it is a mode suitable to the nature of the thing, then it has the notion of something good, right? When it is not suitable, then it has the notion of something bad, right? I remember what I was doing when I was quoting the the the poet. He says, "Friar Lawrence, right? In Romeo and Juliet, for not so vile that on the earth doth live, he says, but to the earth some special good doth give.

[28:25] There aught so good but strained from that fair use revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse. That's well said, right? That's what he's saying there. Revolts from true birth, and that's the last meaning of nature, what the thing is. So you revolt from your true nature, right? And you stumble on what abuse, right? So he sees that nature is the what measure of what is good or bad.

[28:54] In that sense, you can defend the words of Polonius, right? That this above all to thine own self be true, right? As they be true to your what nature, yeah.

[29:08] And then Thomas adds the thing that he started off the reading with, and because nature is that which is first to be considered in a thing, right? Therefore, habit is laid down as the first species of quality. Whatever, you know, it took a Thomas to understand Aristotle, right? To really explain him, right? Unfortunately, we don't have a commentary of Thomas on the what categories, right? The only book of logic that Thomas comments on is what, posterior analytics, yeah?

[29:42] So you have to go to Albert or somebody else, right? But Thomas does say, you know, like right here, you know, he does illuminate, right, things that nobody else does, huh you know. I remember when I when I was at Laval there, and I was reading my favorite book, *Summa Contra Gentiles*, and Thomas was showing in a chapter there in the first book that no name is said univocally of God and creatures, right?

[30:18] He gives a whole number of reasons for it, right? But among the reasons he gives is a either-or syllogism, right? That every name said of two things univocally is either their genus, or their species, or their difference, or their property, or their accident. And then he goes and eliminates each one of those five, right? Worth God and creature, right? And then he concludes, right? Well, I got the bright idea, right?

[30:49] Well, then the Isagoge, right? Of the great Porphyry, right? Which is isagoge in Greek is the word for introduction, right? And this is an Isagoge to what? The categories, right? If you go to the beginning of the work, right? A friend of of Porphyry, right, was having a hard time understanding categories, right? And of course these words that appear in their genus, species, difference, and so on.

[31:15] And so Porphyry is going to what? Reply to his what? Yeah, yeah, and he says what I'm going to say is useful not only for the categories, but for understanding also division and definition and demonstration, right? So this is really the beginning of logical sense, right? Now Porphyry gets the definitions of genus and difference and so on from Aristotle, but he kind of brings them together, right?

[31:44] Which is something we can do, you know, without being too original, but we do something for this, right? But Porphyry doesn't say that this is a distinction of names said univocally of many things, right? But you get that from that argument that Thomas has, and it was. So I runs off and said, "Monsignor Dion," I said, "Monsignor, shouldn't Porphyry have, you know, said that?" He says, "Yes."

[32:08] So you know, but you get little things like that you pick up, you know, little gems, you know, illuminate something, you know, in logic. And you have to kind of you know gather those together, you know, and and they help you a lot, right? Because he doesn't have a commentary on any book in the logic of Aristotle except the Posterior Analytics, just that.

[32:36] We're doing the Sophistical Refutations, right? I wish I had Thomas there, you don't? He wouldn't be stumbling over the text all the time. But Thomas knows always making use of those fallacies, huh? And pointing them out, this is that author that he's dealing with, right? And so he knows his stuff, right? So this is the first what species, right? Of quality, you see how it's distinguished from the other ones, huh?

[33:09] It's a one to one, right, rather than a one to three, two and a two, right? Okay, let's look at the reply to objections here.

[33:30] To the first, therefore, it should be said that disposition implies a certain what order, right? Whence something is not said to be disposed by quality except in order to something. And if one adds bene vel male, right, well or badly, right, that pertains to the notion of habit. It is necessary that one note in order to nature, which is the what end,

[34:02] whence according to figure, which is the what fourth species of quality, or according to hot or cold, right, huh? One is not said to be disposed well or badly except according to the what order to the nature of the thing, according as it is suitable or not suitable. Now, notice the subtle thing Aristotle's going to say here: Whence those figures and those undergoing qualities, as Aristotle calls the sense qualities, according as they are considered as suitable or as not suitable to the nature of the thing, then they pertain to the first species, right, to habit or what dispositions, right?

[34:45] For figure, in so far as it fits the nature of the thing, and color pertain to beauty, huh? So beauty, where is where is the? This is a virtue of the body, right, huh? Okay, and health, which goes on to, is another virtue of the body, right, huh? Okay. And then he says, color, hot, heat, and cold, according as they belong or are suitable to the nature of the thing, they pertain to what health.

[35:16] So beauty and health will be put in the first species, right? Okay, of disposition, right, because they're easily lost, huh? Okay. And therefore, in that way, Aristotle puts hot and cold in the first species of quality, right? In so far as you have a comparison to what to nature, right, huh? Okay. Whence is clear the solution to the second one, although it's solved otherwise by some, as Simplicius says huh?

[35:49] his commentary in the Predicaments. So Thomas refers to Simplicius again, right, kind of toning down a little bit, is knocking him around too much, right? Simplicius is a pretty important, one. Now, in the plight of the third one, he's going to bring out some other distinctions between the distinction of disposition habit, right? Apart from the fact that sometimes habit is called a disposition too, right?

[36:20] This difference, difficile mobile, does not diversify habit from the other species of quality, right? But from what disposition, right? But now you got to be careful about the word disposition. Disposition, however, is taken in two ways. In one way, according as it is the genus of habit, right? For in the fifth book of wisdom, the fifth book after the book of natural philosophy, disposition is laid down or placed in the definition of habit.

[37:00] In another way, it is taken according as is something divided against habit, right? But now he gives another distinction about this dividing it against habit, right? Two ways it's taken, and it is possible for disposition, properly said, to be understood as divided against habit in two ways. In one way, as the perfect and the imperfect in the same what species?

[37:36] To wit, the disposition is said retain the common name when something imperfectly is in, right? So that it's still easily lost, right? So you just begin a new science, right? You don't have the habit; you have in a very imperfect way something of the science, right? That may easily be lost, huh? Like my average student, they're teaching in college, right? When he gets out of college, he's probably forgot what I said In freshman, right?

[38:08] It's interesting you know in teaching college. You know you have somebody in one class, and they may even get a very good grade, and then you want to use that thing that they learned in that other class, you know, and two or three years later, and it's not there anymore, right? So they didn't acquire the habitus, they acquired the what a disposition. Imperfectly had this, and they could lose it, right?

[38:32] Okay. So he says, "This is one way you can divide it against habit, huh? As the perfect and the imperfect in the same species, right? That the disposition is called what retains a common name when it imperfectly is in something, so it could be easily what lost, huh? Okay. And that could be said too, I suppose, about the moral virtues, right? Huh? Okay. You're trying to bring up your children, you know, to have this or that virtue, right?

[39:05] Huh? But maybe it's not too perfectly in them, right? Huh? Okay. And if they're going to go too soon, maybe they're going to lose that, right? Huh? Okay. They're disposed to be just or disposed to be chaste, or disposed to be courageous, right? But a habit, when it is perfectly within something, is not easily what lost, huh?

[39:33] And thus the disposition becomes a habit as the boy becomes a man. Okay. That's interesting. huh? Virtus. Forget the word from here. In another way, they're able to be distinguished as diverse species of one what subalternate genus, right?

[39:56] That those are called dispositions, qualities of the first species. To which it belongs, according to their proper definition, that they be something can be easily lost, right? Because they have easily changeable causes, right? As sickness and what else? You can one day or you know suddenly get sick or something. Why habits are those qualities which, according to their ratio, have that they cannot be easily changed, right? Because they have immobile causes, as sciences and what virtues.

[40:36] And according to this, the disposition doesn't become habit. You see that? Two distinctions. And this seems to be what sound with the intention of Aristotle, right? Whence, for the proof of this distinction, he induces the common custom of saying, right? According as qualities which, according to their ratio, are easily movable. If from somewhat accident, right? They are rendered difficult to change. They are said to be what habits, right?

[41:16] Okay. In a converso, about those qualities which, by their ratio, are difficult to be changed. For if someone imperfectly has science, that easily he might lose it, right? He is more disposed to science than to have science, right? Which I find that my knowledge of the French language is what passing away, right? If I didn't be having the perfect way, right? Okay.

[41:48] From this it is clear that the name of habit signifies a certain what? Indwelling I mean, continued, persisting quality. Not however the name what disposition, right?

[42:06] Now someone might say, well, but aren't these accidental differences? Well, Thomas says we often use accidents for the nature of the thing that's not too well known to us.

[42:18] Nor is it impeded that easily and difficulty to be changed are specific differences, on account of the fact that these pertain to passion, motion, and not to the genus of quality, right? For these differences, although per accidens, seem to have themselves the quality, they designate proper and per se differences of qualities, just as in the genus of substance, frequently we take what accidental differences in place of substantial ones, in so far as they are designated essential principles, right?

[42:54] So I define the dog as a four-footed animal that barks, and the cat as a four-footed animal that meows, right? Because I don't know the essential difference between the dog and the cat, right? But these are kind of what signs of their essential differences huh? Now you've got a whole,

[43:18] introduction toward the logic of the categories here, right? Just from this here. But Thomas is taking me up here as a preliminary to considering the virtues and the vices, right? Yeah.

[43:36] So. To the third, then, one goes forward thus. It seems that habit does not imply an order to act, for each thing acts according as it is an act. But the philosopher says in the third book about the soul that when someone becomes knowing according to habit, he is also then in potency, but other than when before he learned, right? So Aristotle distinguishes the man who has what?

[44:15] But Not yet learned geometry, right? Huh? He's in potency, right? He's able to be geometrical, but he's in potency to this, right? After he acquires the science of geometry, right? He's not always thinking about geometrical things, right? And he's in that sense an ability towards actually thinking about them, but in a different way than he was before he learned the science, right? That distinction he makes, right?

[44:48] And he compares it to what to what you have in nature, you know, where you know when the baby is developing in the womb, you know, and eventually the baby gets eyes or something, you know. But when even when it has eyes, the one's not always actually seeing, like when you're asleep, right? But that's like the first act to have the eye, right? The ability to see, and then further acting actually what seeing, right?

[45:13] Huh? Therefore, habit does not imply a habitus of a beginning to an act. Moreover, that which is placed in the definition of something belongs to it per se. But to be a beginning of action is placed in the definition of potency or power, right? That's the second species, right? As is clear in the fifth book after the books of natural philosophy, right? Therefore, to be a principle per se of act per se belongs to what?

[45:52] Power, right? Okay. Or English, English word is ability, right? So Shakespeare, when he defines reason, he defines it as a what? Capability, right? Huh? Which I take the liberty of shorting to ability, but capability or ability would be the second what? Species. And this is a beginning of some kind of act, discourse and looking before and after and so on, huh? Okay.

[46:20] So it's not habit, he says, but but potency or ability, right? Capability that is a principle of an act. Moreover, health sometimes is a habit, and likewise what beauty and what's macies leanness, yeah, lean, meager, poverty, emaciated, right?

[46:48] But these are not said with reference to act, right? Therefore, it's not of the notion of habit that it be a beginning of what, actum.

[46:58] But against this is what Augustine says in the book on the good of the conjugation of marriage. That habitus est, quo aliquid agitur cum opus est, right? Habit is that by which something is done when there is need to do it, right? And the commentator, that's who, who's called the commentator in the Middle ages. Yeah, yeah. We always say Thomas shouldn't really have the title of the commentator, but Thomas, in his humility, right, still follows the custom.

[47:31] Because Averroes had commented on what almost all of Aristotle's works, right, in some way. So he's he most the commentator, right, because he had commented on all of them. while other people had commented just on some, right? But habit is that by which someone acts when he wants to, right? I guess very common. So we've got these opposites here, right?

[48:04] Now, what does Thomas say? I answer: It should be said that to have an order to act is able to belong to habit, both according to the definition of habit, right, and according to the what definition of the subject in which is the habitus. According to the ratio habitus, it belongs to every habit in some way to have some order to act. For is of the notion of habit that it implies a certain what.

[48:43] Relation. In order to the what nature of the thing, according as it is suitable or not suitable to that nature, right? But the nature of the thing, which is the end of what generation, is further ordered to a what another end. which is either operation or something done or made to which one arrives at through the operation. Okay, so if you're listening to music of Mozart, the end is to hear the music of Mozart, right?

[49:17] If you're making a table, the end is not the making a table, but the table itself. If you're making dinner, right, it's the dinner itself. It's not the making of the dinner, right? But the habit not only implies order to the nature of the thing, but also consequently to what operation, in so far as this is the end of the nature or is leading to the end.

[49:47] Whence, in the fifth book of wisdom, it is said in the definition of habit that it is a disposition by which one is disposed well or badly. Either secundum say that is according to one's nature, or to another that is in order to the what end.

[50:08] So, by faith, hope, and charity, you are well disposed towards towards God. Those are the theological virtues, and he's the what are in right.

[50:23] But there are some habits which are also on the side of the subject in which they are. First and chiefly imply in order to act, because as has been said, habit first and through itself implies relation to the nature of the thing. If, therefore, the nature of the thing in which is the habit consists in that order to act, it follows that habit chiefly implies an order to act.

[50:52] It is manifest, however, that nature and the what. Notion of power. Power is that it be a beginning of some act, right? Whence every habit which is of some ability or power as a subject chiefly implies order to some what act. Okay. So, in Shakespeare's defining reason, he's not defining a what habit. He's defining what power. Yeah. But when Thomas distinguishes, like I was saying, the one and three, he's distinguishing the what

[51:34] knowledge of reason, which is the habit, the habit in reason, right? He's doing so with respect to what order, right? Order is in comparison to reason, huh? And so then that knowledge has an order to that what act, right? Okay. So, by natural philosophy, I know well the order of natural things, right? By logic, I know well the order of premises to conclusions, right? Genus and differences to species and so on, right?

[52:12] Huh. Etc. And by ethics, I know well the order of what human acts to each other and to their end, right? And by art, right? Huh? Mechanical arts, telescopes, and there I know well, right? How to put a chair together, right? And so on. Okay.

[52:37] So he says at the end, then, what's every habit which is of some power as a subject principally implies in order to some what

[52:54] Now in regard to the first one there. Just going back to the distinction Aristotle was saying there, right? To the first, therefore, it should be said that habit is an act in so far as it is a quality, right? And by this, it is able to be a what? A beginning of some doing. But it is in potency with respect to the operation. Hence, the habit is called first act, and the operation second act.

[53:22] It is clear in the second book of the soul. So you should have studied the three books of the soul, right? Before we did a little bit of that, didn't we? Long time ago.

[53:41] the second, it should be said that it is not of the notion. Of habit that regards potency, but that it regards what nature. And because nature precedes action, which potency respects, right? Therefore, before is a species of quality placed habit. Habit is a species of quality is placed. Then what potency, right?

[54:16] No, he's explaining there something of the order of why is habit or disposition placed before ability or power, right? Why? Well, power has reference to what an act as such, right? The ability to see, the ability to hear, the ability to digest, right? The ability to grow, the ability to reproduce, right? The ability to understand, right? But habit always has a reference to nature, which is what first, right?

[54:57] Okay. So, my ability to understand is well disposed with respect to my nature when I have the virtues, right? A reason. I have the vices, it's ill disposed, right? Badly disposed.

[55:21] Okay. So he says, it is not in the notion of habit as such that it regards the power, right? But that it regards nature, right?

[55:41] So habit is that which you are well or badly disposed towards your nature. And because nature precedes action, which potency regards, right? Therefore, habit is laid down as a species of quality before what potency. yeah. Does Thomas look before and after? Quite a bit, right?

[56:23] To the third, therefore, it should be said that health is said to be a habit or habitual disposition in order to what nature. Insofar, nevertheless, as nature is a beginning of some act, right? Ex consequente, right? Consequently, it implies an order to act.

[56:48] Whence the philosopher says in the tenth book on the history of animals that a man then is said to be healthy or somewhat part of him right, some member, when he's able to do the operation of a healthy man. And this is similiter in all these, right? So if your tongue is diseased, right, you can't taste things properly. If your ear is off, right, can't hear things.

[57:14] How is beauty related to act Kinda hard to say but Well, he says it's not sometimes defined ex consequente, right? But a beautiful beauty in a woman makes her suitable for marriage, right?

[57:37] You know, Plato in the famous dialogue there on love, right? Huh? He says that we're attracted to the beautiful because we want to what perpetuate the beautiful, right? So Shakespeare begins, you know, the sonnet where he's arguing somebody trying to persuade someone to get married, right? From fairest creatures we desire increase, that thereby beauty's rose might never die. So from fairest, the most beautiful creatures, we desire increase also, right?

[58:14] That thereby beauty's rose might never what die, right? Huh? So beauty in a woman makes her what suitable for marriage, right? Suitable candidate for marriage, right? And that's ordered to reproduction, right?

[58:34] Yeah, the word matrimony has the word mother in it. Yeah. Take it all back down. We go on to the.