Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
55. Beginning the Study of Time: Puzzles About the Now
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[0:00] Okay. Okay. Just stop. Stop. Stop. Okay. We'll get some step back. So let's look at the beginning of this fifteenth reading here. There's three of the two. Everybody has these readings.

[0:24] After the things just said about place and about the empty, there remains to go toward time, right? And Thomas kind of stops in those words to go toward time, as if Aristotle is insinuating the difficulty of what understanding time, huh? And as in the Confessions of Augustine, where he says, "If no one asks me what time is, I know what it is. But someone asks me what time is, I don't know what it is.

[1:02] " First, it is well to dispute about it, he says. through external reasons, huh? Now I don't know what he means by external there, unless he means dialectical reasons, right? Okay, or ones that are in some common circulation, right? Even outside the school.

[1:25] Whether it is among the things that are, he says, or the things that are not, huh? That there's a question even about to what extent time really exists, huh? That's a rather strange thing. Then what is the nature of it? What it is, huh? And you know, from the order of the questions in the in the Posterior Analytics, huh? That if it's not clear that something exists, you ask, "Does it exist?"

[1:54] and try to answer that question before you try to answer the question, "What is it?" Okay. So question two of the Summa is about the existence of God, right? And then he starts to talk about what God is, so far as we can know, or what he isn't, anyway. Okay.

[2:15] So he gives two arguments. They're very similar. One might suppose from these things that it either wholly is not, or that it barely exists, right, and darkly, right. Okay. Aristotle, of course, is not going to be denied that time exists in some way, right? But he's going to take that second alternative that it's just barely exists, hardly exists, right?

[2:48] And therefore, it's hard to know, right? It's dark because it's hardly, it's hardly anything there to be known. Okay. So he says one part of it has come to be and is not, and that's the what, past, right? And the other is going to be and is not yet, and that's the future.

[3:18] And the unlimited and always to be met with time, I don't see that time always is, is put together from these, huh? And what is put together from non-existing things would seem unable to partake of existence. Now,

[3:35] Aristotle is kind of assuming what he says explicitly in the third paragraph that the now, which is the present in the strict sense, is no what, no part of time, right? No time, would be there in the now, huh? Because if there's any time in the now in the strict sense, when I say strict sense, I mean sometimes you use the word now to include a little bit of the past, a little bit of the future, right?

[4:03] Just like we use the word present sometimes, the present year. Mm-hmm. Of course, the present year is partly in the past and partly in the future, right? Well, then the present month. Well, part of the month has gone by, and parts in the future. I guess we still are today in February. Okay. Well, then the present day, right? But part of the day has gone by, and part is still to come, right?

[4:29] Well, then the present hour, right? Part of the hour has gone by, parts to come. Well, then the present minute, right? Well, can you have any amount of time that's present though in the strict sense that involves none of the past and none of the future? If you had any amount of time, you'd have what, the before and after, right? In time, not being before and after, but being what, together, right?

[4:56] Yeah. So that now there's really no need to be any time in the now, huh? So you only have time in the past and in the future, and.

[5:14] They don't exist. The past no longer exists, right? And the future doesn't exist yet. So, how can time really be? when, there is no time. But it is, huh? It hardly is.

[5:38] You know, the second argument there is very similar. Okay. But now he's using the word "part" explicitly, and he's going to point out that the now is not a part. Moreover, if what has parts be, all or some of its parts must be when it is. But if time, which has parts, some have come to be, and that's the past. Some are going to be, and that's the future.

[6:03] But none are, unless you were to say the now. But the now is not really a part, right? For the part measures, and the whole ought to be put together from the parts. Time, however, does not seem to be put together from nows. He says it does not seem to be because this is going to be shown more fully in book what six, right? In book six, he'll show that a line is not put together from points, right?

[6:31] And the now is to time, like the point is to the what line, right? And in general, nothing continuous is put together from the what indivisible, right? Okay. Now sometimes you know you hear the mathematician saying the line is composed of an infinity of points, huh? And is that really possible to compose means put together? Can you put together a line from points?

[7:05] Well, if you're going to put together a line from points, points, the points would have to what come together and touch, right? And since they have no parts, a point, the only way they can touch is to what coincide. Coincide. And if they coincide, you have no more length than one point, which is no length at all, right? So you can't get length, a line, by putting together points.

[7:34] And proportional to that is, you can't get a what a square, let's say, by putting together straight lines, because although they have length when you put them together, they have no width. So if you put two lines together,

[7:53] can they touch and one be outside the other, or are they going to coincide? Coincide. coincide, yeah. And can you make a a let's say a cylinder by packing circles one on top of another, like pancakes one on top of the other? Well, pancakes have some thickness, right? Some depth, so you can make a pile here of pancakes. But circles have what? No depth today. So if you made a stack of circles, did you get any height?

[8:32] No. Just the circle. I think I mentioned before one time. Was it this fragment we have with Democritus, where he's refuting this idea, you know, in a way, raising a problem about this idea that, you know, that you can compose a body from what surfaces like that. You know that fragment we talked about before. It's the one where

[9:00] it's preserved in Heath's the Loeb Heath, you know, the Greek mathematical fragments, right? there's two volumes of Greek. Mathematics it's called They give you the Greek text in there

[9:21] You know how in geometry we imagine a what? A cone, right? You take a triangle triangle and you rotate it around the diameter, and then you get a what? A cone, right? Okay. Now, if you imagine this cone from the bottom up to be what? Layers of what? Circles, right? Okay. So you got this cone here. Now he says, suppose you cut the cone parallel to the base, right?

[9:56] Okay. Now you've got opened up, and you got two in circles, right? Now are those two circles equal or not? Equal. If they're equal, if any place where you cut this, the circle above and circle below in this presumed stack of circles are equal, then would you have a cone? No, a cylinder. Then you'd have a cylinder, right? Right. A cylinder by what? Rotating a rectangle right around one of its sides, right?

[10:33] Okay. And that's the cone is not a cylinder, right? So they can't be equal, right? Therefore, they've got to be what? Unequal, right? But then would the edge here be straight?

[10:51] So you got kind of an insoluble problem, right? Because they have to be either equal or unequal. But the problem arises because you're falsely imagining it to be a stack of what? Circles, right? And since you know if if you lay one circle on top of another, right? Since they have no depth, they have to coincide in the direction of what? Of depth, right? Which means they have as much depth as one circle.

[11:21] Which is no depth at all, right? No. So the now is is to time, like the what? Point is to the line. The now can't have any length of time, because then you'd have the before and after together, right? Okay. So the now seems to be the only thing that's fully actual there. And that's no time at all. And the so, but but the parts of the time then, the past and the future don't exist.

[11:56] So how can something exist whose parts don't exist? You know? How can the chair you're sitting on exist if the legs and the seat and the back and so on don't exist?

[12:08] How can the word cat exist if the letter c and the letter a and the letter t don't exist? See the word cat on the board there, right? How could the word cat exist if the letters C, A, and T don't exist? So how can time exist? Now,

[12:30] in some confused way, but at the same time, because of what we saw in the beginning of the book, one is very sure that time exists, right?

[12:41] But what these arguments then are kind of forcing the mind to see: I am sure it exists, but it hardly what? It's very hard to see how it exists, right? See, it's going to exist as you said above, what?

[12:58] Barely, Darkly, right? What quomodocumque is? It's in the Latin, huh? It's very, very tenuous. Now you think about it, you know, you could say, what about my walking from here over to my hat over there, right? Does that really

[13:24] exist much? Well, when I am walking from here to my hat, part of my motion from here to there is what gone by, right? And part of it is to come, right? So the motion that's gone by already doesn't exist anymore, right? The further, the additional remainder of the motion doesn't exist yet, right? How much of my motion is ever actual? See,

[13:59] how much motion is there in the now, right? How much? If there is any motion in the now, I'd be at the same time. We'd say simultaneously in two different what? Places, yeah,

[14:22] yeah. So we stop and think about it in retrospect. Motion hardly seems to exist either, right? Matter barely is, right? You see, you know the various ways when Augustine talks about matter, right? Aristotle, he's not trained by Aristotle the way Thomas is, you know, and he doesn't know what to say about matter, right? " You know, if I could say it's a something that is nothing, I would say it, or nothing that is something, you know.

[14:49] You know, he's really puzzled by matter, right? But it's because ability hardly what? Exists, yeah. Okay. Now, as you said, the now is not really a part of time. But it's like the division of time, right? Division between the past and the future. But now he raises some problems about the now.

[15:23] Further, it is not easy to see whether the now, which seems to separate the past and the future, does it remain always one and the same, or is it other and other? Is it the same now throughout all time?

[15:42] For if it is always other and other, while no part of time is together with another, the one does not contain the other is contained is the lesser by the greater. In that sense. But you couldn't have the same time, right? With any other time, the now not existing but before existing necessarily has ceased to be some time, and there would not be nows together with each other.

[16:08] If you always have a new now, right? Even as I talk, it always seems to be a new now, right? Okay. Well, then the present now must go out of existence, right, and be replaced with a new now. Okay. He's going to go on to raise a problem now. When does the present now go out of existence?

[16:38] Well, it can't go out of existence when it is, right? Okay. So it's got to go out of existence after it is, right? Okay. Now, does it go out of existence in the next now, or when does it go out of existence? Just before the next now.

[17:01] Well, if you realize that the now is the time away, like the what? Point is the line. If you have two points that don't coincide, you always have a what? A line between them, right? Okay. So you had two nows that weren't the same now. You'd have between them not a line, but what? Time, right? Okay.

[17:34] So between the present now and a later now, there's always some time, unless you could have two nows next to each other with no time in between, right? But then they'd have to touch, right? Right. And then they coincide, right? Right. Okay. So just like you can't have what? Two points next to each other without a line in between them. Right. Because then the two points would touch.

[18:05] If they touch, they coincide and they're one point. So if you have two nows. The present now and the later now. There's always a time in between, right? So any later now, when you say that it ceases to be, there's going to be a time in between when it was, right?

[18:30] And therefore, it's going to coexist with all those nows in that intermediary time, right? That seems absurd, right? That you have what two nows existing together, right? The earlier one and the later one, right? Okay. But it goes back to the fact that there's no next what Next now. Okay? I mean, we'll, go back to the example of the line there and say these things will be more fully manifest when you get to the sixth book.

[19:02] But if you take a straight line, right, you've got an end point here, an end point there, right? Okay. Ah. There's a later now, right? I mean, a later point, right? Like the other end, or this point here, or this point here, this point here, and so on, right? One comes before and after, but is there a next point on that line after the end point?

[19:35] No. That's what next means, right? You know, there's Augustine, right? Okay, so you're the next, you're next to Anthony. Anthony, right? You see, that means that there's nothing, there's no student between the two of you, right? Okay. So, is there a next point on the line?

[20:08] Well, between two points, you always have a line. If two points cannot touch, you mean two, right? Then between this point and any later point, there's a line, and therefore potentially an infinity of what? points, huh? So there is no such thing as a next line and a next point. Right. And the same thing is true about lines. You say

[20:36] this line here is longer than that, right? Okay. What's the line that's next in length to the given line? But you say, well, this one here is closer, right, to that than this one is, right? But is there a line that is the next longer line? As opposed to ordinary numbers, right? In ordinary numbers, you can say there's a next number, right? Eight.

[21:09] Okay. But there's not a next what? That's again a reason why we say that thoughts are like numbers rather than like something continuous. Because is there a next thought? See? Like in the syllogism, right? You say every mother is a woman, and no man is a woman. What's the next thought? Every mother is a woman. No man is a woman. No man is a mother. Yeah. So there's a next thought, right?

[21:54] See? No man is a mother. Is there any thought in between these two thoughts and that thought? Some other thought to stop on between these two and the conclusion? No. Nothing. So there's the next thought, like there's the next what number. So thoughts, Aristotle says, are like numbers. I'll see that in the first book about the soul. I mean, continuous. So though we we speak sometimes of a line of thought, right?

[22:33] You got to be careful because it's not a line of thought. It's something continuous, right? The same way, if you start off with a thought quadrilateral, and then you add to that the thought equilateral,

[23:01] and then you add to that the thought right angle. Now, just that is back into what thought? Square. Square. Yeah. Is there any thought between these thoughts and square?

[23:26] No. And even in dividing, you divide, let's say, a number into odd and even. They can divide number in other ways, but is there some division that comes between number and odd and even? And see. you could divide, let's say, a, plane figure into the circular ones and the rectilinear plane figure, right? And then you divide directly into triangle and quadrilateral, I guess he calls it, quadrilateral and so on.

[24:12] One division comes before another one, right? But there's the next division, isn't there? Yeah. So that's interesting. isn't it? There is a next thought. And sometimes you have a good student. He can kind of anticipate the way the thinking is going, right? He kind of knows the next thought will be.

[24:45] And professors, we're seeing in an orderly way, right? They know what the next thought's going to be. Okay. But in the continuous, there is no next thing, right? Okay. There's no next point on a line, and there's no next longer, right?

[25:05] The next shorter line. There isn't one. Say. Is that? Is that just be called a property that continues, or that actually fall into the definition? Well, no, since it follows from the fact that it continues is divisible forever, right? Yeah. Yeah, but you don't have the next one, right? But this is something, you know, additional to be seen, right? But it's also an additional thing to see how thought and thinking is not really continuous, and even the thoughts that we have about continuous things are not continuous.

[25:41] See, and that's one of the ways, most important ways, in fact, that we see that that the reason is not a body, right? That it thinks about continuous things in thoughts that are not continuous. See, and that can't be explained by reason of what it's thinking about, because it's thinking about a continuous thing. So it thinks about continuous things in an uncontinuous way. It thinks about bodily things in an unbodily way, and that's because it's not a body.

[26:37] So when does the now cease to be? What can't cease to be when it is, right? So it's got to cease to be in some later now. But there's no what next now, right? Okay. So in whatever later now you say it ceases to exist, it coexists with all the nows between that later now and the present now, right? Which is absurd, right? Okay.

[27:17] So he says in the middle of that paragraph, third from the bottom, it can it it cannot cease to be in itself because then it is, and the now before cannot cease to be in another now, for it is impossible that nows be next to each other, right? As a point to a point, huh? Okay. When you get to the to the book of the sixth book of natural hearing, Aristotle will distinguish and define

[27:52] continuous touching next, right? And when two things are continuous, they they share a common what limit, right? Okay. When two things touch, they don't share a common limit, but their limits are together, right? When two things are next to each other, they don't have to even be touching, right? But there's nothing of the same kind in between, right? Okay. So we can speak, you know, of the next house in my neighborhood, right?

[28:27] In a block, right? Even though there's bushes and air and so on in between, right? But the next house and my house, there's no house in between. If there were, that would be the next house, right? Okay. So next is is

[28:49] is different in meaning, right, than touching, right, and being continuous, right? If it continues as something, then that's going to be the next thing too, right? If you're touching it, it's going to be the next thing, right? But you can have next without things being continuous or touching, right? But all those things will be. Defined there, right, in the beginning of the sixth sixth book. You can see that again.

[29:14] Continuously, have a common limit. Yeah. And touch. Touch the the limits are not. You don't have a common limit, but they are together, right? And this is the way what you have in the case of place, right? Huh? You see the the inner surface of the glass and the outer surface of the water, wherever the liquid in that glass is. Those are together, right? But the they're not the same surface, though.

[29:39] See, otherwise this would be in here as a part and whole. Okay. And then next is just nothing in between. Next means between. Yeah, there's nothing of the same kind between, right? Say, but there could be something, right? Oh. Oh yeah. In between, but not of the same kind, right? Mm-hmm. So the next student, well, there's something between you two students, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Say, but not of the same kind.

[30:08] There's no other student between you and the next student, huh? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. So he's pointing out here that there's no next now. After the present now, right? Just like there's no next point after the present point, huh? Yeah. So he said, when does if you if you maintain that the now is not the same now throughout time, right? Then you say the present now is corrupted in some later now.

[30:45] It can't be corrupted when it is. Mm-hmm. See, well, if it's corrupted in some later now, there's always going to be what an infinity of nows between it and any later now because there's no next now. Mm-hmm. And so it's going to coexist with all these nows in between. It sounds crazy, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. If then it does not cease to be in the next, but in another, just one of the other ones, it will be together with the unlimited nows in between.

[31:17] Mm-hmm. But this is impossible. Okay. Incidentally, you know, when you get to the treatise, you know, the study of time, you're going to have a theological footnote there where we're going to look at the definition of what. Of eternity, right? Okay. It's like the De Koninck would give the course on time. He'd end up at the end and he'd talk a little bit about the definition of eternity, right?

[31:43] But you have to understand both time and the now to understand eternity, right? Mm-hmm. And like all the things we understand about God, it involves some kind of negation, right? Mm-hmm. And to understand the definition of eternity, you have to understand that some things about time are being negated, right? Mm-hmm. And about things that are in time, right? And some things about the now are being negated, right?

[32:08] Mm-hmm. So we have to understand both time and the now, right? But it's not just for the sake of eternity that we have to understand both, but because they're connected, right? Because the now is is in time, right? It divides the past and the future.

[32:32] Okay, so those are the problems that arise if you say it's not the same now, right? When does it cease to be, right? Okay. Now, the next paragraph. What if you say the reverse? It's always the same now, but neither is it possible for the same to remain always. For of no limited divisible thing is there one limit. Okay, what's he's saying there, right? It's like a no straight line, right?

[32:59] And you take this this length here, and you got the end points here. They can't be the same end point, right? Okay. So if you have a particular what length of time, right, to beginning the now you have at the beginning, the now you have at the end, can they be the same now?

[33:16] No, just like at this point and this point were the same. There's no there's no link there at all, right? There's no distance there, right? There's no line. So if the now now and the now ten minutes from now are the same now, there's no time at all, right?

[33:38] Okay. For of no limited divisible thing is there one limit? Neither continuous in one way nor if in many. You have continuous in one dimension, two dimensions, two dimensions. But the now is a limit of right. No limit of time can be taken, right? Okay. That's the same thing for anything continuous, right? You know, if I say that

[34:05] something continuous in one direction, well, these two end points can't be the same, right? The same if I have it in two dimensions. Can this line be that line? And this line is that line. Okay. In the same way, if you have a three-dimensional thing, right? You know, can this two ends of the cone, right, be the same? No, say right. So in any continuous thing, the limits that bind it, you might say, right, bound it, can't be the same, can they?

[34:42] Okay. So if you have a period of time, this now and that now, one which is at the beginning, one at the end, they can't be the same now, can they?

[34:58] And then you have the problem that if you have the same now always, you really have time anymore. Everything is simultaneous, right? And Aristotle's lecturing now, and Plato's lecturing now, and kind of give you a nice warm feeling, but I don't think it's true, right? Thomas Aquinas is lecturing now, right?

[35:19] A hypothetical question now that was posed to me: If I could go back in time and listen to a lecture by Aristotle or a lecture by Thomas Aquinas, but not both, which would you do? If I could go back to Thomas lecturing in Paris, or it was, or go back to the Lyceum there in Aristotle. Now, I mean, saying, I mean, saying, you know, language problems, right?

[35:45] Which would you choose? If you could choose both. My friend Warren Murray said I'd choose Aristotle because we kind of know in a way what the medieval schools are like, right? Oh, we have a very what? You have an inadequate idea what the Greek Lyceum would be like, or the the Academy, right? In terms of our Okay, well, it's accessible to us. knowledge, yeah.

[36:16] Further, to be simultaneous according to time, and neither before nor after, is to be in one and the same now, right? Incidentally, in the categories, when Aristotle, that chapter I give you sometimes, you know, when I talked about reason, chapter on before and after, right? The chapter right after that is about what? simul, together, right? That's kind of the negation of before and after.

[36:51] Further, to be together simultaneous according to time, and neither before nor after is to be in one and the same now. Then, if things before and things after in this same now, the things which have come to be a thousand years ago, Aristotle's lecture, right, would be simultaneous with Berkeley's lecture, right? They've come to be today, and nothing will come to be before, after, anything else. Is the same now, right?

[37:22] Same now that he spoke and I speak. Let then these many things be in doubt about what belongs to the same. So, is there enough problems About the time in the now. Is part of this that we're just imagining wrong? What is part of it? This that we're imagining wrong, and so that these problems are just. Well, when I guess that would be a good And you get to the you get to the second book of wisdom, right?

[38:08] I like to to. Asked us this question, right? I said, if you went down, knocked on each professor's door at Assumption College, right? Professor X, you asked him this question: Is it difficult or easy to know the truth? What would Professor X and Professor Y and Professor Z answer? Do you think? Somebody say difficult. Yeah, and probably Professor X say it's difficult or impossible, right? But you know, then you come down to the last door and you knock, and Aristotle's in there, right?

[38:51] And is it difficult or easy to know the truth, Aristotle? And Aristotle answers: The knowledge of truth is in one way difficult and another easy. That's the way the second book begins. The wisdom, huh? Okay. Now. When he starts to unfold that, right?

[39:18] When he starts to unfold the way it's easy, he shows three ways in which a knowledge of truth is easy for man, because one might be very much in doubt that. truth could be in any way easy for a man. Aristotle shows three ways that it's easy.

[39:37] Then, when he turns to difficulty, he's not trying to show the ways that it's difficult so much, so he touches upon that. But he goes beyond us all by saying, "What? Why is it difficult? " Right? And he says the cause of difficulty can be either in us or in the what thing, right? And then he goes on to say the chief difficulty is in us. Okay.

[40:09] But notice the first distinction he makes, right? Okay. And he points out this could be said in other things, huh? Okay. And I sometimes point out to students, I say, "Now, some things are difficult to love, right? " And is the cause the difficulty in the thing or in your heart?

[40:37] Well, if you find it difficult to love the common good, right? It's much easier for us to love the private good, right? Is that difficulty you have in loving the common good? Is that in the common good or that in you?

[40:58] Yeah, because the something is lovable because it's good, right? And the common good, being the good of the whole, is much greater good than the private good, right? Okay. So if you love more what is less lovable than what is more lovable, the cause of difficulty is the defect of your heart, right?

[41:25] I said, if you love the girl for her outward appearance. appearance, right? More than for her inward virtue, right? You find it easier to to love the outside or the inside, right?

[41:44] Ah, is that difficulty in you or in the thing? In you, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and what's his name, Bassanio. you know, he's going to go courting Portia. Remember that in the Merchant of Venice, right? You know, and he says, "In Belmont is a lady richly left. She's been left a lot of money, my father. And she is fair,

[42:19] and fairer than that fair. A wondrous virtue. So he ascends, there, right? She's been richly left, huh? Rich heiress, you might say, right? And Belmont is a lady richly left, and she is fair, beautiful, and fairer than that fair, right? A wondrous virtue, right? You know, she's most lovable for her virtue, right? Less for her bodily beauty, right? And least for her what? Wealth. For her wealth, right?

[42:48] It's beautiful. He says it, huh? So you know, beauty, and the beast, in a sense—it's the idea, you know, that there are things more lovable than the outward appearance, you know. As Alcibiades says, Socrates is the ugliest man in Athens, right? But there's something lovable within the man, right? That was hidden, huh? Or if you have a difficulty in loving God, right? Is it difficulty in God or in you?

[43:22] Yeah. Defect your heart, He sees goodness itself, right? Okay. But if you find it difficult to love cancer, I said, is it cause the difficulty that we have in loving cancer? Is that in our heart or is it cancer? Cancer. Yeah, it's not very lovable, right? Right. You see. So that distinction he makes, you could make in other things besides knowing, right? Okay. Now, sometimes I

[43:59] take a simple example for them in understanding. They say, you know, sometimes it's hard to understand other people. Okay. And but is the cause of the difficulty in understanding other people in them or in you?

[44:24] It's you. It's the understanding. It's the problem. So it has feelings. It could be both. It could be both. Yeah. See, if someone else is much less reasonable than you are, then the cause of the difficulty in understanding them is in them, right? You read the newspaper every day. You know some senseless act that someone committed, right? Yeah. You know that seems a bit of a nobody, least of all themselves, right?

[44:51] Yeah. You know, these people have practically no reason for what they do, and so they're not very reasonable. So the cause the difficulty in understanding them is that they don't have much reason for what they do, right? Um. Sometimes you know, used to argue this historian used to argue this historian who taught at St Mary's College all the time, you know, and his specialty was Arabic history, right?

[45:18] Remember him saying, you know, you didn't know you had to learn Arabic, you know, to do Arabic history. So you didn't know what motivated him to do Arabic history, right?

[45:27] You see, in other words, why is he doing this, right? You know, you know, why not learn Greek and read the Bible or read Aristotle or something, right? You know, but I mean, most people don't have much reason for what they do, right? I met another historian, and his specialty was what Restoration England, right? Now, why study Restoration England among all the periods of history at all?

[45:51] What's so important about that? Well, he happened to have a what teacher in college who gave a course on Restoration England, and he's very good teacher, and he got interested in, you know, well, it's kind of accidental; it just happened, right? Doesn't really have much reason why why this should be studied more than some other period of history, right? You see, so it's hard to understand why man devotes his life to this.

[46:13] You see me? Okay, but but pay for stories people who you know do these senseless crimes and you know, okay, but then you also have a difficulty understanding people who are what more reasonable than you are, right? You see, and so people have a hard time understanding the saints, right? Okay, but the saint would probably say to you, you know, hey, give me a twenty dollar bill for every dollar I give you.

[46:45] You think I'm crazy? See, but you know, the ratio of time to eternity is much greater, infinitely greater than the ratio of one to twenty dollars, huh? He's infinitely more reasonable than you are. He's so reasonable that you can't understand him, right? See, but he's perfectly understandable, huh? You know, so so the difficulty you have in understanding somebody more reasonable than you, right, is in you. He's more knowable.

[47:21] He has excellent reasons for what he's doing, and much better reasons for what he's doing than what you're doing. Yes, okay. So when you look at the three parts of looking philosophy, which are mathematical philosophy and natural philosophy, and then later on wisdom, right? Wisdom and natural philosophy are much more difficult than geometry, huh? But in the case of natural philosophy, the cause of its being more difficult than

[47:57] yeah is in the thing, because things like motion and time hardly even exist, right? Exist in a very dark way, right? Yeah. But in in wisdom, where you're approaching the angels and ultimately God, right? Then the chief cause of difficulty is in us, right? Right. That's why why the Bible says, you know, that God dwells in light, inaccessible, right? It's light that makes things what visible and knowable, right?

[48:27] And God is the light that is every man, right? So he's most knowable. So if he's not most known or knowable to us, that's a sign of the defect of our mind, huh? But these things here, as Aristotle said, notice that word. he said there, One might suppose of these things that it either wholly is not or barely and darkly, right, huh? That second paragraph, the first reading, fifteenth reading.

[48:57] Uh. So these things hardly exist, right? And same thing about matter with its potency, right? It's the cause of difficulty is in the thing, right? So people don't realize that. Natural philosophy and wisdom are both more difficult than geometry, but for different reasons, right? And uh uh there used to be a joke about about uh woman, you know, huh? They say this is kind of a good line with woman, you know, to say you can't understand her, you know, see, you know.

[49:32] But I say isn't necessarily a compliment if you know why we have a hard time understanding, right, woman, right? Is it caused a difficulty in us? Or is it we in the woman, right? You know, and there's something kind of irrational about there, right? So, so

[49:56] you know, it's not necessarily a compliment. But that's a secret we can't. They like to be told that you know I can't comprehend you, you know, you know. I mean.

[50:12] Yeah, they want to be mysterious, right? Okay, so will we stop now so you can go to mass and I can go through the snow?

[50:30] Okay. Now next week I'm I'm we're going away. My wife and I at the airport now, so we got on the airplane. My wife realized she left her sweater out in the or jacket was out in the part the place, so she runs off and runs out to get it. See, and she didn't take her purse there, of course because she always wanted to check your ID.

[50:49] But you have to show your, you know, a couple times, your your picture ID or something by the guy that's around. Anyway, please, the thing, so because every time I went through,