Prima Secundae
121. Summa I-II Q50 a3: Habits in the Sensing Powers, with Asides on Imagination, Homer and Euclid, and Memory
Class of 2013-05-02
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/11-prima-secundae/121-summa-i-ii-q50-a3-habits-in-the-sensing-powers-with-asides/

[0:03] Let's say our little prayer. In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. Thank you, God. Thank you, Guardian Angels. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas, Deo Gracias.

[0:17] God, our enlightenment. Guardian Angels, kindle the lights of our minds, pour down luminar images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Pray for us. Helps us to understand all that you've written. Saint Athanasius, pray for us. Thanks, brother. You suffered. We've had these. Oh yeah. You know, now in college, I'd get some religion courses. I had to take some church father, you know, and read some little.

[0:49] Yes, I chose Saint Athanasius. Now I've always been really attached to him. Ever since, I really impressed with the with Athanasius. He's he's he's solid, right? Yeah. Quite interesting, Dr. Carroll. He had red hair and blue eyes. He was described as someone who had red hair and blue eyes. He was Irish. I think he was Irish. Irish. Oh, Athanasius.

[1:17] He was one of the forebears of Saint Patrick. Yeah. So it was Irish. Came to Quebec, he married a girl from Paris, and all but he just to meet her, you know. She's Irish, you know. I think he's Irish. I don't know. I'm years more. What I know. Red hair, freckles, and so we can ask you. No,

[1:46] there's a distinction between potencies or powers and what habits, right? It comes up when Thomas is in the fourth part of the Summa Contra Gentiles, where he's talking about the sacraments, right? And he gets down to orders and so on. And there's one chapter dealing with the fact that a bad man can what? Nevertheless, give you the sacrament, right? So a sinner can baptize you, and you get all the benefit of baptism, right?

[2:18] And Thomas gives as many reasons why this is possible, right? But one reason is based on the distinction between power and what habit, yeah. So he gets the power to to baptize, the power to consecrate, and so on from Christ. And by his his habits, he's either well or ill disposed towards using this power, right? But even if he's ill disposed by by vice, right? He still has the power, right?

[2:49] Huh? So kind of interesting using that distinction between potency and or power and and virtue, right? Huh? To see what you could do it, right? Because there's other reasons too, you know, like if you were had to be certain the sacrament is holy holy, right? Yeah. You'd be putting your hope in man rather than in Christ, right? Yeah. Another thing that strikes me, you know, Thomas speaks of the confession.

[3:21] I mean, the the passion and death of Christ, right, as being the cause of the what sacraments, right? Yeah. You can kind of see that, like you know, the two principal sacraments are baptism and the Eucharist, you know, and the tap of the water and the wine. I mean, the blood, yeah, flowing. And you know how they always say, I guess Saint Paul said, you know, that you're buried with Christ when you are baptized, right?

[3:48] And obviously the the Eucharist, right, you know, the separate consecration of bread and wine represents the death of the cross, right? So he talks about very much with the death of the cross, right? But then he looks at Christ's resurrection as the cause of what our resurrection, right?

[4:08] Even though, as soon as I suppose, sanctifying us too, but it just kind of makes division there between the two, huh? Okay, back to Article Three here in Question Fifty. Whether in the powers of the sensing part, right, there can be somewhat habit, right?

[4:32] On to the third one goes forward. Thus, it seems that in the potencies or powers, right, of the sensitive part, there cannot be somewhat habit, right? I'm using the sensitive part that includes what the emotions as well as the sense powers, right? Just like Aristotle says sometimes, you know, that the will is in reason, right? Or meaning in the rational part, but it doesn't mean that it's in the reason, like being the same thing, you know?

[5:05] Okay. For just as the nutritive power is what irrational, right, without reason, so also the sensitive part, huh? But in the powers of the nourishing part, the feeding part, huh? There is not laid down any what habit, huh? Therefore, neither in the powers of the sensing part should some habit be laid down, right?

[5:43] Fun Latin word orders, you see. You know how they capture these spies, you know, because they use some verbal thing, you know, that is not characteristic language, you know. You always tell a guy who's been studying Thomas a lot, you know, a lot of this is he picks up and he speaks in a certain way, you know, See, giving himself away, you know.

[6:08] Moreover, the sensitive parts are common to us and to the what brutes. But in the brutes, there are not any what habits, huh? Because there is not in them will that is in the definition of habit, huh? So Aristotle puts in the definition of habit; that's was choice, right,

[6:31] huh? Therefore, in the sensitive powers, there are not some what habits, huh? Moreover, the habits of the soul are the sciences and the what virtues. In just a science refers to the grasping power, right? Again, they use no. Thomas doesn't say the knowing power, but the grasping power, right? So virtue also, right?

[7:06] Oh, so just a science refers to the grasping power. So virtue to the desiring power, right? But in the sensitive powers, there are not any what sciences, since sciences of the what universal, which the sense powers are not able to grasp. huh? They can grasp the singular. Therefore, also neither are there habits of the virtues in the sensitive part. Cannot be placed in them, right? Cannot able to be.

[7:47] But against this is what the philosopher says in the third book of the Ethics that some virtues, to wit, temperance and fortitude, and those are the two virtues he takes up in particular in the third book of the Nicomachean Ethics.

[8:04] They are what virtues of the irrational parts, right? Parts without reason. Well, Thomas says, "I answer it should be said that the sensing powers are in two ways able to be considered. In one way, according as they act or operate from the instinct of what nature. In another way, according as they act or operate from the command of what reason, right?

[8:45] According as they act from the instinctive nature, in this way they are ordered to one thing, just as nature is ordered to one thing. Therefore,

[8:59] you don't have that what ambiguity, right? That requires a habit. And therefore, just as in natural powers there are not some habits, so also neither in the what sense powers, according as they act or operate from the instinct of what nature, nature not being able to be more than one thing, as Shakespeare says. But according as they operate or act from the command of reason, then they are able to be ordered to what diverse things, right?

[9:37] And thus they are able to be in them some habits by which we are disposed well or badly towards something. So you say the emotions can arise something from the instinct of nature, right? Like I suppose they do in the newborn what baby, right? Now they're going to be a little bit angry into a newborn baby. Right, and other emotions, right? And there's no what habit there, right?

[10:07] But they're acting from what instinctive nature, right? But as you get older, right? Then what first the reason of your parents can act a bit upon your emotions, and then if your emotions are habituated to listen to reason a bit, then they may be able to listen to your own reason, right? That's a long, long process, right?

[10:40] Now, what about the difference in the way that these are irrational and nutritive powers? are? Well, to the first, therefore, it should be said that the nutritive parts, or the powers of the nutritive part, are not apt to obey the what command of reason, and therefore there are not in them some habits, right? But the sensitive powers are apt to obey the what command of reason, and therefore there can be in them some habits, huh?

[11:20] For according as they obey reason, in some way they are called what rational, right? As is said in the first book of the Ethics, right? But they're rational by what partaking of reason, right? Without having reason in them, right? Having reason itself in them, but they can partake of reason,

[11:49] Yeah. and Plato kind of compares it, you know, to a man taming a horse or something like that, right? And uh, Washington Irving when he came back, you know, from his 17 years in Europe, right? Second time, he went off on a tour of the far west, right? His beautiful descriptions of them taming these wild horses, you know, how quickly they can tame them, right? But they're really wild horses in the beginning, right?

[12:16] And they tame them to become docile. Pretty soon they're carrying loads and they're carrying men around and so on. And we we know this difference just from our experience. Yeah. I mean, that that our emotions do obey reason. Yeah. Yeah. I had a new car and I was driving to Quebec, you know, and I thought I'd take a different route, you know, so I'd take the one up through Maine, you know, and take the route the President Kennedy is called, right?

[12:46] Well, it must be an honor, supposed the President Kennedy to have the route the President Kennedy, but the road was, you know, a lot of potholes, and I'm boop, I mean, just playing the brakes all the time, and I had this crazy Frenchman behind me, you know, and he couldn't stand my, you know, going slowly because I was afraid to. End up in a puddle, so he zooms by and kicks up a stone.

[13:07] I could hear it hit the side of the car, you know. So I put the next day, I looked down and there's different, different remarks of this, and I said, "But I'm a philosopher. Why am I

[13:21] getting this?" Or I was driving around the summits one time, you know, and this is the old road there. It used to be on the off route nine there and so on. And I came down. There's a car in front of me, so I was about to stop. And I could see through the rear view this young lady coming down the car, going too fast. I faced myself, hit my car, nothing in the car in front, right?

[13:43] We got two cars now. And actually, my car's the only one to move, you know. And their cars weren't, so I gave them, you know, I drove down to the filling station. So I said, "I'm a philosopher. I teach class."

[13:59] And I'm just wondering because whether it might be possible for us to influence our, you know, nutritive power in a in a way to. How do we know that we our minds don't you know our rational part doesn't have a certain power over these subrational elements? I suppose if you eat too fast, you get indigestion, right, or gas or something, you know. No, but I'm talking about you know I'm thinking in terms of you know these Hindus or whatever who concentrate on and they slow their heartbeat, yeah, they concentrate on their heartbeat, they concentrate on their digestion, and they seem to be able to influence it, you know.

[14:36] And I mean, if they did that repeatedly, it would it would kind of cause they kind of. In other words, how do we know that there's not habits in those lower? Maybe they're influenced by the sense powers there too, though. In this case, huh? You know. Influence their sense, like the medium of sense. Yeah. If you didn't locate some, well, we'll give you another article to stick right in here.

[15:12] I can't teach my stomach, you know, to not digest poison, right, or something like that, right? Doesn't help me in that respect. Can't teach yourself. Or even things that make me fat or something, right? You can't say, you know, but just just don't don't absorb that, you know. Let it go through. It doesn't doesn't work. It's like my brother when he was a teenager, he ate a lot of ice cream, and my mom said, "You're going to get fat if you keep doing that."

[15:38] He says, "I don't get it. It just it melts. It goes right through." So somebody could kind of think that way: just melt, goes through it.

[15:48] Different. They see, you know, in the essay by Austin, right? Huh? And he's talking about the superiority of music of Mozart and the Baroque period and so on. But it represents the emotions in a state. Something to reason. Yeah, yeah, and. Mozart's music, you know, especially is clear in its imitation, right? So you can Mozart's music is probably the best example, you know, of how the emotions can pertain to what reason, reason, yeah.

[16:22] Harmonizes with reason, now music, sorry. You heard the story of Father Boulay there. Didn't I tell you about that? Sent the money up to. To shut up To stop playing, right? Wish more people would do stuff like that. Okay, so they're said to be rational with by what partaking, right? So Aristotle makes that distinction there, right? Huh? There's a part of the soul that has reason, right?

[17:01] Another part doesn't, but then he subdivides the part that doesn't have reason, and one part is able to what listen to reason, right? Huh? And partake of reason. To a

[17:17] second should be said that the sense powers in the brute animals do not operate from the command of reason, right? But if the brute, if they are left to themselves, right, the brute animals operate from the what instinct of nature.

[17:36] And thus, in the brute animals, there are not some habits ordered to operations, huh? There are, however, in them some dispositions in order to what nature as health and what beauty, right? But because brute animals are what disposed by the reason of man to a certain what custom, huh? They're accustomed to doing something, right? Thus, or another way, in this way, in brute animals, habits can, in some way, what?

[18:13] So it's because the dog training, huh? Getting these dogs up the blind man. So Augustine says in the book on eighty-three questions, we see the what most fierce beasts, right, from the greatest pleasures to be disturbed by the fear of what pain, right? Which turns into them what custom, right? And they are domesticated, right? They call them mild, I guess. Yeah.

[18:48] But there's lacking the ratio of habit as far as the use of the will, because they do not have the power of using or not using, right? Which seems to pertain to the notion of what habit, huh? ferocity, something you use when you want to, right? And therefore, properly speaking, in them habits cannot what be made. I mean that in some imperfect way, right?

[19:24] So man is a creature of habit now. To the third point, right? To the third, it should be said that the sense-desiring power. Now,

[19:42] usually, in English, they translate that as sense appetite, right? But the word appetite? is being used for the power, right? It's not. It's apt to be moved by the rational what-desiring power, by the will. But the rational powers, the

[20:07] apprehensive rational powers, right? Okay. Because he uses the word various rationalities to include the will there, right? And he subdivided the apprehensive ones, right? I have to receive from the sense powers, right? So in some ways they're contrary, right? So the reason receives from the senses, right? And the will kind of moves the sense appetite.

[20:35] And therefore it's more suitable, right, that there be habits in the desiring appetitive powers, right, or sensitive powers, right. And then in the grasping sensitive powers, sensitive powers is used for both the senses and.

[20:59] Since in the desiring sensitive powers there are not habits except according as they act from the what command of what reason now. Although also in the interior sense powers, grasping powers, there can be some habits according as a man comes to be bene memorativus, right, a good memory or what? It's a cogitative power, or the imaginative, right? Once also the philosopher says in the chapter on memory that custom does much for remembering well.

[21:46] So he gets certain tricks, right? Just ask how old am I? Say, well, I know I was born in thirty six, so sixty four years in the last century, right, and thirteen in here. But soon I use sixty four plus ten is seventy four, plus three is seventy seven. I don't, I don't add thirteen to sixty four, but I had ten sixty four and then three, and then three.

[22:21] Yeah, these guys are much quicker, you know. All little tricks, you know. I was working the package store there, you know. I got pulled with three or four bottles, you know, and came up with my head, you know. How'd you do that? We get some tricks, you know. You know, you know, you don't, you don't. If one is is is three dollars and fifteen cents, you say three dollars and fifteen cents.

[22:45] Kind of. Let's do that. Tricks like that, huh? I was talking a little bit last night about the imagination there in the the. I always admired the Greeks. You know, they produced both Homer and Euclid, and the guys didn't have to do it. Of course, like Pythagoras, right? But both of them are tied up with the imagination. So Shakespeare says, you know, the the poet, the lover, the lunatic, right?

[23:18] They're all compact of imagination. But geometry, what resolves to the imagination. It doesn't go down to the senses, right? So the flat surface that you have in geometry, plain geometry, is not the surface of a desk in the sensible world. This is really not flat enough. And if you examine this under a microscope, you see it's not that. And if it's a beehive of abs and molecules, as some people think, they're never gonna have a flat surface out there.

[23:49] So it's reduced to the what imagination, right? Remember the marquis? They talk about how the postulate is not about what parallel lines, because nobody can imagine parallel lines, because you have to imagine something infinite, right? They never meet. But he has lines where when a straight line falls across them and makes angles less than two right angles, they'll meet. But you can imagine two lines meeting, right?

[24:14] So you have to go back to something you can what imagine, right? And then from that, you'll show something that would never meet, right? If they were equal to right angles. So then geometry, I mean,

[24:31] the epics of Homer, right, are in the imagination too, right? They're quite different in a way, and closer to the madman in a sense. But I was reading this guidebook which I picked up in the Shrewsbury Library sale of England and Wales and so on. There is a mountain in Wales, you know, and the legend is that if you sleep on the mountain a night, you'll wake up either mad or a poet, one of the two.

[24:59] But that that far apart, right? I was talking to an actor who played Shylock. He was a Catholic, you know, but he played Shylock in the play, and really hated the Christians when he's playing the role, right? So he's really out of his mind in a sense, right? You know, there is something like that. I should mention Marcia Davenport there. The novelist says, "Quite simply, you are mad.

[25:31] when you are writing, you know." They have they have this from Charles Dickens as one of his little daughters, right? Described as a child again, she was a little bit under the weather, you know, and it's kind of a treat to let her kind of rest on a little couch in room where he's working on some of his novels, right? Because he's so absorbed, he doesn't pay attention, right?

[25:53] He'd jump up from the desk and he'd go to the mirror, and all his whole face would turn, you know, you know. And he's he's some character, right? And he go back and raise another. And

[26:03] she's just a young, really, you know. But that's a madness there, right now. Yeah. It's like the Hollywood actors and actresses, you know, they play lovers in the movie, and before you know it, they're even their spouses, you know, getting married. You know who they are. Yeah. That's what they call role playing. Yeah. That'll do it. Doctor Lewis,

[26:31] you you have mentioned that the Greeks have been one of the many things, remarkable things that they had done is they produced Homer and yeah.

[26:40] Yeah, in terms of you know two different uses of imagination, right? But both marvelous, right, in their own ways, and necessary for the life of the mind and human life. Would you say that as Euclid sort of structured imagination in one way, that that the poet also did so in another way? Yeah. Yeah. Because there seems to be a structure in literature, the finest literature. Yeah. And whereas a lot of contemporary literature tries to abandon those structures and often fails because.

[27:11] Yeah. I was remarking too how just happened to look at these theorems again in the seventh book, right? I'm just delighted with this theorem. You know that, you know, the first number is to the second as the third is to the fourth. The number produced by the first and the fourth will always be equal to the number produced by the second and third, right? And you know the fact that if the first is to the second as the third is to the fourth, and the first will be to the third as the second is to the fourth, right?

[27:38] We kind of caught up with these proportions, right now. But the most beautiful metaphors as Aristotle says in the Poetics are ones that are based upon a likeness of what ratios, right? Analogies, and I always you know take the simile there and words or the simile in Shakespeare there, the one where Juliet is found dead, you know, apparently dead, right, on her wedding day, right. Well, this is what's really the happiest day in the world for a girl, right now.

[28:09] I remember as an altar boy, you know, I served weddings, you know, and there'd always be a little roll, little girls in the neighborhood who came in just to watch the wedding. They sit the kind of last pew off the church. It's like it's kind of cutest thing to see you know those little girls, and then they're all kind of you know. Dreaming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

[28:26] Yeah. But you know the the father finally says, you know, death lies under like an untimely frost upon the sweetest flower of all the field. I said you can't improve upon that, right? But it's based upon proportion, right? Death is to this young girl at this young age, right now, like the frost is to the what untimely frost is to prettiest, the sweetest flower in the field, right?

[28:53] It's just perfect, right? So some similarity between that and what I was enjoying Euclid, right? Because it's tied up with these what proportions, yeah. Did the Greeks come up with this themselves, or did they build upon advances by other cultures? Well, I mean, Western civilization begins with the Greeks. You know that. That's historical, right? And you know, as a great, Albert the Great says, "The

[29:27] poetry modum admirandi says, "Poetry gives the way of admiring or wondering." I remember seeing a book there. I don't know if I have it anymore or not, but it was talking about the emotional effect of Shakespearean tragedy, right? And the title of the book was taken from the end of Hamlet: "War, or wonder." You know, Of course Hamlet, where, Horatius, is the end. If you would see something of war, wonder, right?

[29:57] There's all these dead bodies up there, right? when Fortinbras. comes. in right, huh and uh so that wonder of the philomuthas is a what? Stepping stone to the wonder of the philosopher, right? And the, this is the wonder of the philosopher is a wonder about something what? Universal, right? While the wonder of the historian is about what? Something singular, right? But the wonder of fiction is more a wonder about the universal than it is about the singular, right?

[30:32] So when you see Romeo and Juliet, you don't think of them being an historical pair of lovers in the 14th century or whatever it is, but that's young lovers, right? You know, and you know, is it this terrible tragic thing happens? You know, in the play, you know, O you men, you know, There's something about the human situation in general, right? So you're kind of wondering, you know, they say it's a universal singularized and the singular universalized.

[31:04] So it's a stepping stone to what? Universality of the what? Philosopher, right? I know. I was teaching the love and the friendship course, right? I had the the passages from Shakespeare, right now, which I designed to go between your experience of love, which is singular, right? And Thomas's discussion of love, which is very universal, right? And Shakespeare's representation of love and its effects and so on causes is what?

[31:36] Right in the middle, right? It's a stepping stone, right? But it's kind of amazing that you can have the perfection in Homer of the imagination in one way, right? And in Euclid and before him, developed this geometry, the perfection of the imagination and the science about things, right? That are imagined. Just a tremendous perfection, right? I bet you were not even to. I bet you were not to mathematicians about this, right?

[32:16] I'm not sure if they could give you the reason why, you know, prove right off the bat, you know, why the first is to the second, the third is to the fourth, why the first and the fourth should be what? Equal to the product of the second and the third, right now. So most people never do that. You kind of think yourself, you know. See, I always kind of, I guess, kind of assume that, you know, but I don't know.

[32:39] But did I really know it, right now, until I saw the demonstration there and my teacher Euclid there? So it's it's absolutely amazing they can do both of these, right? And

[32:56] other ages, you know, might have some excellence in one or the other of these, but not in what? Both, you know. Homer, Homer and you know, there's only one rival, Shakespeare, right? But Homer is the poet, as Aristotle says, huh? You know. But in modern times, as the Federalist papers say, the poet that's Shakespeare. A long farewell to all my greatness. That's the poet says, you know, you gotta know who the poet is, huh?

[33:35] Where was I, where was I reading there about the? Oh yeah, I think it's the thing. Talking about the development of Yellowstone there, right? And so these pretty tough guys going there, you know, living in log cabins, right? And eating bear meat all the time. So I and reading Shakespeare. Kind of amazing, right? And it's like when when uh, Alexis de Tocqueville came to the United States, right?

[34:09] And he he read the Henry the Fourth plays first of all in a log cabin, right? All they had in the log cabin was was a few plays of Shakespeare and the Bible, that was it. So they're much better read than we are. you know, Mm-hmm. People nowadays don't know the Bible, they don't know Shakespeare's plays, they don't know nothing. And when moderns abandon these uh, treasures of the past, these structures, Mm-hmm.

[34:30] you say Mm-hmm. to try to, uh, I guess, lose the bonds of slavery, so that we can open up a new era of creativity and advancement. Then you see the modern physicists, like you say in your natural hearing class, going back to to the Greeks and saying, you know, they were onto something. And I wonder if there are any real advances that have come from the abandonment of these structures in literature and science and math and things like that.

[35:01] Has this freed us at all? Turning, is trying to go beyond what the Greeks began and and established. Well, it might be something, but you know, we've lost an awful lot there. You know, fundamental things. huh? Yeah, there's nothing very profound in literature. Yeah. Nothing back upon my geometry class in sophomore high school. You know, was nothing compared to Euclid. I didn't pick up Euclid until I was out of college, and our teacher, Kasurik, says, "Go get Euclid."

[35:31] I said, "Why? Go get it." He never argued with me; he; just said, "You go get it." He knew you would draw some. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I should read. Yeah.

[35:47] But it's really delightful to read him, you know, Keeps the mind you know stable. Even Summa Theologiae's escape of Shakespeare, you know, gets the mind, keeps you in kind of a stable. state of mind.

[36:03] And the music I would say too. Okay, so we're down in the tertium, was it? I think so. Okay. Let's start again from the beginning. To the third, it should be said, and that the sense-desiring power is apt to be moved by the rational-desiring power, as is said in the third book about the what? Soul. But the apprehensive, the grasping rational powers are apt to receive, to take from the sense powers.

[36:45] and therefore, magis, more does it belong, right? Was it convenient, suitable, that there are habits in the desiring sense powers than in the grasping sense powers? I also have to change the word order in English. In some sense, the Latin gives the the grammatic order is more the logical order, right? verbo sensitivi apprehensivi. You're contracting with each, right? Sensitive, contrahitur verbo, but it could be applied to the knowing powers, the apprehensive powers, or to the desiring powers.

[37:32] Since in the sense in the desiring sense powers there are not habits except according as they act from the command of reason. Although in the grasping sense powers, the interior ones, that is to say, right, as opposed to the exterior ones—seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching—there can be laid down some habits, right, according to which a man becomes bene memorativus, I guess, a good memory, right, Or quidditativus, that's the.

[38:08] uh... Rational. power. Yeah, it compares individual intentions in the way that the universal reason, universal intentions, or the imagination, right? Whence also the Philosopher says in the book on memory that custom does much for remembering well, right? I suppose that you know back in Thomas's time, and so you know all the printing press and all this computer junk, and so you had to memorize much more, right?

[38:40] Yeah. There's different chocolate assumption there. You know, you go down to the printing office, you know, to have something printed up, and you want to distribute to the students, right? And so you've got to get a briefcase down there, or something down there, you know, and say, "It's wrecking my memory, right? This this place, right? " So,

[39:02] but you know, you didn't have all these books running around and things, you know, that you could look up. Remember a teacher saying in high school, you know, what's important is to know where to find it. You know, so now here, is it some book? The cloud, as you say, got all through the cloud. That's that's what's. I was. I've encountered this more than once now. People with their phones, their cell phones, they got everybody's phone number and email and all that stuff on there.

[39:34] They don't remember anybody's phone number anymore because they just look it up by name and they touch the screen and it calls them. Yeah. They don't know any phone numbers anymore.

[39:44] What are you going to do? I think Thomas probably knew the songs, right by heart, right? And they knew them better than. Any modern, scholar would know them with all their apparati I think that's what was we were told, even in recent recent history, in the last fifty or sixty years, that even the Franciscans you couldn't be ordained a priest unless you'd memorized one. Like well, in our our age, at the priest's time, you couldn't be ordained a priest unless you'd memorized one of the four gospels.

[40:22] In St. Francis' day, you had to memorize all the psalms. You just had to. I mean, that was of course they used to do the psalms every day, and then in the course of a week they would recite all 150 Psalms. So it was it wasn't as hard, you know, if you if you don't have these distractions like we do today. But still, I mean, that was that was common commonplace.

[40:40] I know from the few psalms I've memorized, or in the same way the few poems I've memorized, right, huh? You start to notice things you wouldn't notice otherwise, right? And even in the course of memorizing it, you know you notice things, right? Didn't notice. St. Thomas was well known for his. He was most famous for his memorizing. Yeah. That one book, Memorize the Faith. Tell us about that.

[41:16] That's how we did it. Just memorize it. But again, the thing you know, when Aristotle has the book on memory and reminiscence, right? You know, when we speak of brute memory, you know something like the brute animal thing, right? Huh? But recollection, there you kind of call it an orally way, right? And then it kind of sticks in you, right?

[41:41] I told you that story about my mom told me that some farmer out where she grew up in in Missouri, he had a mule. They were out plowing a field one day, and lightning came and struck the mule and knocked him flat. And the farmer thought he was dead, but he got up. And any time that mule went through that field, he'd get to that spot, go around it the rest of his life.

[42:04] I know. I'm not touching that spot. That is a bad day. He remembered. Smart mule. Yeah. Don't step on that. Obviously, didn't know that lightning never strikes

[42:21] twice in the same place. No, they say. Same thing. You know, right? Let me sit where we eat usually. We don't eat in the dining room. In the kind of living room there, I can see out the back way. There was with a pipe coming down from the roof, right? And, uh birds are attracted to that, right? So I saw this robin come in and you know land it, right?

[42:38] And robin, he's got the place, right? I said, "Hosey, I bet they're gonna put a nest, right? " Sure enough, they're watching the building of the nest, right? Flies in, you know, a little more, and Hosey doesn't know if it's secure enough, but I think it will be. I think they're on the other side when another one of those pipes in, don't they? They seem to like them for some reason, you know.

[43:03] I think they would pick a branch of the tree, but this is more secure from the squirrels. Then, because even those powers are moved to operating from the command of reason. Okay, you want to think about something you know. You command your, your senses to form an image of it.

[43:36] But the exterior grasping powers, right? Huh? Has sight and hearing and things of this sort, are not susceptible susceptible of some habits. But according to the disposition of their nature, they are ordered to some determined acts, just as the members of the body, which are not habits, but more in the powers commanding their what motion, right? Trying to

[44:10] know where the ability to dance comes from. Where does that come from? They're never very good dancers, but there is something in the body there. I don't know.

[44:22] Yeah. So from this article three, you are going to be looking later on for habits or virtues, especially in the desiring sense powers, right? Huh? Okay. With passing reference to the others.

[44:45] But you know when they talk about the great physicists of the twentieth century and so on, nineteenth century, they seem to get their new ideas in the what twenties or thirties, right? Huh? And then they get older, their imagination what burned out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Einstein, 1905, got three, three, yeah, three papers worth the Nobel Prize. At least two of them, not three. I think he got the Nobel Prize for the for the photoelectric effect, explaining that rather than the special activity, because it took a long time.

[45:19] to do the special activity Uh but he didn't do as good later on in life, right? Huh? Because the imagination is not as good, right? Heisenberg was fairly young when he got some of his ideas, right? Huh? When he talks about the theory, he understands it, right? And I see his works to get better and better, more and more clear. You know, it's older. He understands better, but his imagination is not as good, right?

[45:46] I know I review Euclid; my imagination not as good as it was twenty, thirty years ago, right? Yeah. Got a little more tired. You are not trying to follow something, and so on. But I understand these things, impressed with them more and more. You know,

[46:06] To the fourth day.