De Anima (On the Soul)
6. Pius X on the Causes of Error: Pride, Curiosity, Likeness, False Imagination, and the Road of Inquiry
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/4-de-anima/006-pius-x-on-the-causes-of-error-pride-curiosity-likeness-false/

[0:00] Got a little text here that I leave with you. Just printed out this morning. I was thinking about this a little bit. It's entitled here "Pius the Tenth on the Causes of Error," okay? And it's taken from Pius the Tenth, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, and the Modernism. And I've given the Latin text here, and then English translation of it, which I didn't make but I mean it's a translation that I found To penetrate, I should be to the English text here.

[0:44] To penetrate still deeper into the meaning of Modernism, and to find a suitable remedy for so deep a sore, it behooves us, venerable brethren, to investigate the causes, the the deity which, which have engendered it, right? And which foster its growth.

[1:08] That the proximate and immediate cause consists in an error of the mind cannot be open to doubt. Now he's going to make a distinction here, which is similar to the one that Thomas makes in the discourse on error there in the Epistles to Timothy. Have I given you those texts? I can maybe give them to you sometime. It's in his commentary on Timothy, huh? But in that text in the commentary on Timothy, Thomas says that he divides the causes of error: ex ex parte appetitus on the side of the desire, and then ex parte intellectus on the side of the knowing powers.

[1:48] He's using a similar division here. And he says we recognize that the remote causes may be reduced to two: curiosity and what? Pride. That's interesting, he calls those remote causes, right? Because they're in the what? Will rather than the reason itself. So they're called remote as opposed to proximate.

[2:15] Curiosity, by itself, if not prudently regulated, suffices to account for all errors. Such is the opinion of our predecessor Gregory the Sixteenth. He refers back to the encyclical of 1834, Singulari Nos, who wrote, and he quotes Gregory the Sixteenth: "A lamentable spectacle is that presented by the aberrations of human reason when it yields to the spirit of novelty." I see curiosity is always seeking something what? New, right?

[2:52] Read Shakespeare on fashion there, and of course the Trojan dynasty, what he means. One touch of nature, he says, makes the whole world kin; that all with one consent praise new-born gods. G A W D. Though they are made and molded of things past, right? And give to dusted as a little guilt, more loved than guilt are dusted. So he says, a lamentable spectacle is that presented by the aberrations of human reason.

[3:22] Because the word aberration has got that root in there, here. When it yields to the spirit of novelty, when against the warning of the apostle it seeks to know beyond what it is meant to know, and when relying too much on itself it thinks it can find the truth outside the Catholic Church, where in truth is found without the slightest shadow of what?

[3:48] Then he goes on to pride, right? But it is pride which exercises an incomparably greatest way of the soul. First Thomas always referred to pride, you know. He calls the mater erroris in the Summa Contra Gentiles, right? The mother error. And he talks about the cause of error is ex parte appetitus It pride is that pride place. But it is pride which exercises an incomparably greater sway of the soul to blind it and lead it into error.

[4:20] And pride sits in modernism as in its own house, finding sustenance everywhere in its doctrines and lurking in its very aspect. It is pride which fills modernists with that self-assurance by which they consider themselves and pose as the rule for all. It is pride which puffs them up with that vain glory which allows them to regard themselves as the sole possessors of knowledge, and makes them say, elated and inflated with presumption, "We are not as the rest of men."

[5:00] And which, lest they should seem as other men, leads them to embrace and to devise novelties, even the most absurd kind. It is pride which rouses in them the spirit of disobedience, and causes them to demand a compromise between authority and liberty. It is owing to their pride that they seek to be reformers of others, while they forget to reform themselves, and that they are found to be utterly wanting in respect of authority, even for the supreme authority.

[5:32] Truly, there is no road which leads so directly and so quickly to modernism as pride. And those are the causes of deception. The two main ones, not the only ones, but the main ones. Ex parte appetitus, Thomas says, right on the side of the desiring, power. The side of the desiring power. Now he says, if we pass on from the moral to the intellectual causes of modernism, so he uses the term moral causes for that, right?

[6:04] The moral virtues are in the appetite, right? So it's really the same thing. I see, Thomas is saying. if we pass on from the moral to the intellectual causes of modernism,

[6:17] the first and the chief which presents itself is ignorance. Yeah, is ignorance. Yeah, see. It's like what Christ is doing in that passage, here right?

[6:32] You are planasthe you are dia tuta, through or because of this, right? Not knowing what the scriptures and not knowing the power of God, right? Okay. So he's saying the first and the chief which presents itself is ignorance. Yes, he says. These very modernists who seek to be esteemed as doctors of the church, who speak so loftily of modern philosophy. And show such contempt for scholasticism, have embraced the one with, uh, with all its false glamour.

[7:14] Precisely because their ignorance of the other has left them without the means of being able to recognize confusion of thought and to refute sophistry. Their whole system, containing as it does errors so many and so great, has been born of the union between faith and false philosophy. The Latin is even more interesting. that last phrase, this union between faith and false philosophy.

[7:44] The Latin says, "Ex connubio I give the Latin here, is it? Ex connubio that means marriage, right? In Latin, ex connubio autem falsae philosophiae cum fide horum systema tot tantisque erroribus so many and such great errors abundans ortum habuit, right?

[8:17] I know Thomas's theology, in a way, is what you know marriage of Greek philosophy at its best, right, with the faith, But from this marriage of a false philosophy with the faith, you get what you know errors, right? So I'll give you that text in a minute. A couple tables up.

[8:39] But just for the you know comparing the text from from the gospel, right? That ignorance is the first cause of what error. But, have to

[8:54] be careful about that, right? Because ignorance is not the same as error, right? And in what way is ignorance the cause of error? What kind of a cause is it? huh?

[9:22] When you study the bad, and the kind of cause the bad can have, right? You find out that the bad can have only what is called in philosophy an accidental cause.

[9:39] Because everyone desires the good as such, right? Tends towards the good. Now, in the fifth book of wisdom, Aristotle takes up cause. Of course, he takes up accidental causes, and there are many senses of accidental cause.

[9:59] And one kind of accidental cause is not really caused at all, except in the estimation of men. So if I walk into this house and all of a sudden there's an earthquake, I'd say Berquist, you caused the earthquake. But but really, in no way am I thinking of the earthquake in that sense, right? Just coincidence, right? Okay. I was mentioning my relative, you know, he he came down to visit us in the Twin Cities and one of the relatives died.

[10:27] So I met at the funeral home, and then another time, a month or few, you know, came down again and someone else died. And I remember him saying to me at the funeral home, you know, he don't come down anymore. so he seems to die. But yeah, that's, that's, you know, okay. Now,

[10:46] sometimes we say what happens to the cause is said to be a cause. What happens to the cause as such? We sometimes say as a cause of the effect, right? Okay. But again, it doesn't really exert any causality. Suppose you know the pianist happens to be a cook, right? Well, then we could say the cook played the piano, right? We could say the pianist cooked dinner. But it's not through being a cook that he played the piano.

[11:19] It's not through being a pianist that he knew how to make dinner, right? Okay. So those two are not very important. The first one I mentioned and the one on the side, right? You were taught by a white man. You're taught by someone white. So what? You know. You know. And being white has nothing to do with what I teach. I assume.

[11:44] Oh, somebody, excuse me. Yeah, that's crazy. Where is this? Okay. Then you come to the kind of accidental cause that is called luck or chance, right?

[11:58] And that's where something other than what you intended happens, right? But somehow, as we saw, what you did, right? Maybe you got to be bad, right? So suppose I'm digging the ground to plant a tree, and I strike the treasure down there, right? You could say my digging in the ground led to my discovery of the treasure, right? But digging the ground to plant the tree as such going to lead to finding a treasure.

[12:29] No, but you see, in this case, I would not have found the treasure if I hadn't dug in the ground to plant that, right? Okay.

[12:42] So that's a very common thing, right? Suppose I'm aiming at the target. I let go the arrow and I miss the target. I hit the tree next to the target. Could you say my aiming at the target was the cause of my hitting the tree?

[13:05] Well, I'm not very good aim, maybe, but. The point is, if I hadn't been shooting at the target, I wouldn't hit the tree, would I? See? But that was unintended, right? Okay. Maybe I missed the target and it goes through the wood and hits you, and that's you. You know, bad luck. Wasn't trying to kill you, right? If I hit the target, it'd be on your back, there, right?

[13:29] But in fact, I would not have killed you unless I didn't even hit the target, right? Okay. But that, you know, especially if it's that may be in case of luck or chance, it's something that happens rarely, right? Okay.

[13:48] But sometimes there's something not intended that happens frequently, right? Okay. So Thomas gives the example of the man who drinks wine because he got a sweet tooth. Apparently, in in, in the Middle Ages, we used to have candy around, or how are you going to satisfy that sweet tooth you got, right? Well, it's a sweet wine, right? So you drink the sweet wine to get the sweetness, right?

[14:15] But you so much love the sweetness that you get drunk. Say, but that's not by chance that you get drunk because of the wine. But your intention drinking it was to enjoy the sweetness of the wine, not to get drunk. Drug, right? Okay. That's a kind of accidental cause, there, right? Something other than what you intended, right, happens as a result of what you intended, right? Even though it was intended as such by you.

[14:44] Okay. But sometimes it's just you know, rarely, right? Other times it's it's common, right? Now the last kind and very important kind of cause is what they call the Latin the causa removens prohibens. Causa removens prohibens The cause, removing, right? what prevents? Okay. Now the stock example of that is suppose um I knocked over this pillar, right? And the roof came down on top of us. Well, why does the roof come down?

[15:45] Because it's heavier than air, right? Okay. So am I responsible for the roof coming down, or was it gravity or heaviness or something like that? Who's responsible for it?

[15:59] Yeah. But what I did was this poster maybe is preventing the roof from coming down, right? Holding the roof up, right? So I remove what prevented the roof from coming down. So in that way, I'm the cause of the roof coming down, right? Although the roof, as such, comes down because it's weight. So Samson, he pushes the pillars there, right? He's a causa removens prohibens of the destruction of the, you know, the stones or whatever they are.

[16:30] Okay, you see that, right? Okay. So, in which of those four ways is ignorance a cause of deception? As our great Pius X there shows us in that encyclical,

[16:50] and with even more authority, our Lord, right, speaks of their ignorance of Scripture and ignorance of the power of God as being causes of their. uh. plaseo their their burring

[17:09] What kind of cause is that? Seems like perhaps the last one, because if they had known. the scripture of the power of God. See, if I saw the distinction of the two meanings of the word "in in that apparent syllogism, right? that would prevent me from being what deceived by that argument, right? Okay. If my students knew the different senses of the word "part" and "whole," they would not be deceived by that sophistical argument I give them sometimes.

[17:49] Okay. So ignorance is a causa removens prohibens, a cause removing what prevents you, right? Okay. Now, when Thomas talks about that remote cause that he emphasizes, their pride, which Thomas also emphasizes, right? He says that pride is a cause of error in two ways,

[18:23] and one way it causes error is by taking away learning from others, right, and from those greater than us, right. Okay. So it removes the humility necessary to be the student of the master, right? Okay. Um. When you put yourself under a teacher, when you another human being, or even putting yourself under the church as a teacher, or the pope or the magisterium, right? You're putting yourself under somebody, right?

[18:57] Okay. And pride resists being put under somebody else, right? Okay. So pride makes one not listen to those who are wiser than oneself, right? And therefore, it removes what would prevent you from what making errors, right? Or what would you know call you back from an error, right? That you've already made them. Okay.

[19:31] So you can think, you know, maybe many teachers that have called you back from an error that you're making, or you know, to explain something, they said, "Now watch out for this, right? You know, it's a danger, right? " Um. So in a remote way, pride can be a causa removens prohibens also, right? Okay.

[19:55] Um. Can you see that? Okay. But now the other way that pride is a cause of error, Thomas says, is that pride leads us to apply our mind to something above our powers, right? He talks about that too. I said, yeah. And so, I apply my mind to something I am not really able to judge, then I easily what deceive, right? That's a different way. It seems to me that causes remove and prohibit huh?

[20:30] Okay. And we talked about curiosity, right? You know, you know where a person might apply his mind, let's say, to what's new and fashionable in the intellectual world, right? What's new and fashionable is often erroneous. Okay. So people apply themselves to what's new and fashionable, and they end up in what air, right?

[21:03] Or out of pride, they try to judge something they're unable to judge, right? And it easily falls there, right? Okay. Now, in what way then is is pride in that case, or curiosity, a cause of deception? As a mover. Well, yeah, but is it something like, like getting drunk when I drink the wine, right? So I can enjoy the sweetness of wine. I got sweet tooth. I got sweetness.

[21:52] I do not buy sweetness. You know, there is no candy, so I got to drink the sweet wine to get the sweet tooth, right? So I am drinking the wine not for the sake of being getting drunk, right? But for the sake of enjoying the sweetness, right? But it's not strange I get drunk if I pursue the satisfaction of my sweetness because the two are joined together, right?

[22:13] What's a little like that seems to me in this case because when you apply your mind to something you can't really what judge or judge yet, and you try to do so, you easily deceive, right? But you don't apply yourself to that because you want to be deceived, right? You apply yourself to that because it seems interesting or because it's something that will give dignity, you know, that you are talking about these high things, right?

[22:44] So I consider these things are too high for me out of pride, right? Seeking excellence, there, right? But it's almost necessarily attached to considering something above you if you make some mistake about it. Do you see that? So it's it's a cause of deception in another what way?

[23:08] So think about that a little bit. You know, when you read over that text, you know maybe father can reproduce that for you, okay?

[23:18] Now, when Aristotle begins his Sophistical refutations, the book on Sophistic refutations, and this is a book now about error in sense, he's going to talk about the causes of error in the side of language and not the side of language, and so on. He's going to get thirteen different causes, right? Where the mind is deceived. One which is a fallacy of equivocation, or of exemplifying, right? Okay.

[23:48] When Aristotle begins that consideration, he's talking kind of in general about what the cause of deception is, and there he says something different, right? Sometimes Aristotle, and Thomas following him, they'll attribute somebody's error to certain ignorance, right? Just like Christ does, right? But in the Sophistical Refutations, Aristotle says that following Plato in the his observation in the

[24:19] Sophist, that likeness is the cause of deception. Okay. Likeness is the cause of deception. And Aristotle says he gives the examples from things that look like gold or silver, but not gold or silver, right? There's something they call fool's gold. You heard about that, right? Well, fool's gold deceives the fool, right? Because it resembles gold, right? You think he's rich now, right? He comes down, it's not, right?

[24:53] Okay. Or it's like you know a zircon. You see these zircons that look like a diamond to me. I mean, it's my eyes, right? These great big zircons, you know, and say, "Wow! " I joke with my wife. They went down these things, you know, and they don't cost very much, you know, your honor. Oh boy, it's the diamond I've been giving you, you know. And and sometimes he'll, as a joke, you know, sometimes we make stanger.

[25:15] What's a beautiful zircon you got? Oh, ooh! You know, the point is the average person couldn't tell apart them zircon, right? And so there's all kinds of examples like that where you could be deceived. People have eaten poisonous mushrooms because they can't tell them apart from the good ones, right? And so if you take the good for the bad sometimes, or the bad for the good, or the true for the false, the false for the true, it's because sometimes the good in some way resembles the bad, or the bad resembles the good, right?

[25:49] Or the true resembles the false sometimes, right? And the false resembles the true, and so you mix up the two, right? So they, you know, they deceived the Germans there. They got an actor who looked like Montgomery, and he could act, could you know, imitate, you know, the mannerisms and so on, the Montgomery. And so the Germans thought that Montgomery's down in Africa, and he's up in England there, signing the Normandy landing, right?

[26:15] So you're deceived by likeness, right? And if they put me there, they wouldn't be deceived because I don't look like Montgomery, right? I don't talk like him, or you know, his mannerisms, son. You see? So likeness is a cause of deception, a very common cause of deception. See? And the reason why that, you know, syllogism I gave you, it seems to be a syllogism, doesn't it? Happiness is the end of life.

[26:44] The end of life is death. Happiness, you know. So it resembles, you know, true syllogism, right? But it differs from it because it doesn't really have the same middle term there, right? You can't see middle term in both. Okay. So now, in what way is likeness the cause of deception? See,

[27:10] But notice the likeness, or seeing the likeness of two things, would not deceive us unless we were ignorant of their what difference, right? If the poisonous mushroom resembles the the good mushroom, right? Seeing their resemblance is not going to deceive me unless I fail to see their what difference, yeah. There's got to be that ignorance behind this, right? Huh? See, but you can see the likeness there is involved too, huh?

[27:49] Okay. So those who thought that the soul was the fire, right? They were deceived by the likeness, huh? Because fire seems to what to grow, right?

[28:04] Spread, just like an animal, right? You know, takes in things and grows in size. Fire digests things, right? The living body digests things and so on, right? Okay. Or those who thought of the air as being, you know, the soul, right? They're kind of being deceived by by likeness there, huh? Now, come back to the word error right? Huh? You say error the. Etymology of the word error seems to suggest that error is a result of the wandering of the mind, right?

[28:49] Okay. We wander into error, huh? But the word error comes from wander. But now, what kind of ignorance is the cause of the mind wandering? Why does the mind wander? Sorry. Can you do something? Parkly. Parkly. Parkly.

[29:23] But doesn't the mind wander because it doesn't know the road to follow? If it knew the road to follow, right? Then presumably it would follow that road, right? So knowledge over a road, huh? Is knowledge that follows a road, huh? And all of our knowledge, to some extent, is over a road. It's somewhere along the road, say from the senses into reason, right? It's um somewhere if it's if it's the knowledge of reason as reason, it's over the road from reasonable guesses towards reason-valued knowledge, right?

[30:05] So on. So if one is ignorant of the road to follow, then one's reason will what wander, and therefore wander into error, right? So this is a particular kind of ignorance, right? That seems to be especially tied to the mind wandering.

[30:34] Do you see that? So philosophers didn't invent the word wander, did they? And that comes from common experience, from ordinary human beings, huh? And so, but the word itself is suggestive of there being a connection between this disordered movement of the reason and it's getting into error. huh. But now, taking what we learned from our Lord there and from Pius the tenth there, and what we saw by manuductio from the opposite, right?

[31:07] God cannot be deceived because he's all knowing, right? There seems to be a particular connection between what wandering and a particular ignorance, namely ignorance of the road to what. All right. Okay.

[31:27] This may seem like a great excursion, as it is to some extent, on this proemium of Aristotle or from this proemium of Aristotle, right? But now, when you come back to the proemium, what do you see in Aristotle, right? Well, you see, first of all, in the text before us, that he begins with the difficulty about what road should we take, what methodos should we have to arrive at a definition of the soul, right?

[31:59] Is there one road to follow to defining all things, or must there be each thing its own road, or right? That's one place where he talks about knowing the road, right? That's where he begins, doesn't he? So even before he gets into the question of what the genus is, right? Okay. And then when Aristotle goes on,

[32:22] take a second thing here. When he gets to talk about the soul and its parts, which means the parts of its what power or ability, they call the powers of the soul, the abilities of the soul. Then he he raises the question there. He says, in

[32:52] number five, there, right? Moreover, if there be not many souls but parts, right? Now Plato spoke as if you know the plant soul is one thing in us and the animal soul is something else. We have different souls in us. So, moreover, there be not many souls but parts. One must consider whether to seek first the whole soul or the parts, right? Okay.

[33:20] But it's difficult to determine how these parts are by nature different from each other, and whether one needs to inquire about the parts first or the works of these, understanding of the mind, sensing of the sensitive.

[33:35] But if one seeks first the works, then someone will be at a loss. One must seek first the things corresponding to these, what we sometimes call the objects, right? Okay. What's he saying here? Right. He's raising three or four questions there. Should we consider the soul first or the abilities of the soul?

[33:59] Right. Should we consider the soul first or the ability to understand first? The soul first, or the ability to sense, or the soul first, or the ability to grow, or something, right? Okay. It's a question of before and after, right? Which comes before? And if we should consider the abilities, he says, before the soul, should we consider the ability to understand or the ability to sense or the ability to grow first, or should we consider first understanding and sensing and growing?

[34:33] Because growing is not the same thing as the ability to grow, is it? Sensing is not the same thing as the ability to sense, right? So should we consider the ability to sense first, or sensing, the eye or seeing first, the ear or hearing first, right? He's kind of hinting maybe that we have to know what understanding is or sensing is or growing is before we can understand what the ability to understand is, the ability, right?

[35:00] And then he says, and again, if you should know understanding or sensing before the ability of these things, right? Should you know first understanding or the understandable,

[35:17] seeing or color first, right? Hearing or sound first, eating and growing or food first, right? You see. Okay. So you're asking here about the soul, its powers or abilities,

[35:44] the acts of these powers or abilities, and the objects of these acts, right? And He's asking about the before and after, right? To go from here to here to here, from here to here to here, or how, right? See, that's a question of what the road you have to follow, right? The road in our knowledge is nothing other than a before and after in our knowledge, right?

[36:17] You know, so does the knowledge of the objects come before our knowledge of the acts, or our knowledge of the acts before our knowledge of the objects? In other words, is seeing, sensing color, in which case you have to know color is first, right? Or is color what is seen?

[36:42] Is hearing sensing sound? And if you don't know what sound is, we don't know what sensing sound is. Or is sound what you hear? So you know what hearing is, we know what sound is, right? You see me? Okay. And is understanding what the ability to understand does, the mind does, got understand You to what the mind is before you understand what understanding is, or you have to know what understanding is before you know what the mind is.

[37:14] And it's the soul, you know, what is able, or that to which the body is able to understand, or sense, or grow, and so on. And they've got to understand the soul first, the powers, huh?

[37:28] Now notice the more fundamental order in our knowledge is you should go from what is more known to us towards what is less known to us, right? So which is more known to us, digesting or food? Food.

[37:46] Okay. If that's so, then we have to begin with the object and go to the act, right? Which is more known to us? We have the ability to see, or do we see?

[37:59] Yeah. If that's so, then we have to investigate the act before the what? Power, right? Huh? Okay. Again, which is more known to us, soul? What the soul is able to do, what the body is able to do through the soul, is more known to us.

[38:22] Yeah. But notice he raises a question here now, right? See. But that's a question about the road to follow, right? Okay. So you know, you can say paragraph five definitely, right? And paragraph four in the in in number this way guys number here, the first part of it, right? He's asking about the road we should take to define, or how we should go about defining this, right?

[38:56] Yeah, explicitly asking questions of the order in our knowledge, right? The road in our knowledge, right? And otherwise your mind is just going to wander about these things, right? Okay.

[39:14] Now, as we kind of hinted before, if the soul is something of another, right? And you're going to investigate what the soul is by divisions, as he will start to do in the second book, huh? He's going to divide both on the part of the soul and the part of that of which it is the soul. Is it? Which one had to do if you weren't defining the soul as something of another, right?

[39:43] Is it? Those things are connected, right? Yeah. Um. Now, just say a few more things about here. I'm out of here. Okay. I was mentioning how when Thomas talks in the text in the commentary of Timothy and so on, he speaks of the causes of deception on the side of the desire and on the side of the knowing powers, which is like the division that Shakespeare did, but in slightly different language, right?

[40:28] And he usually gives pride or envy, you know, as examples of causes on the side of desire there. On the side of the knowing powers, he often gives something called false imagination, okay?

[40:54] Rather than ignorance, right? Like other texts where Thomas says talk about ignorance as a cause of deception, false imagination, huh? Now Shakespeare has another expression here for false imagination in King Lear.

[41:14] It's interesting, you know. Sometimes the same thing is stated in different ways, right? What it is is sometimes called nature, as we saw, and sometimes called substance.

[41:27] And I'm very familiar when I when I taught the love and friendship course with the Greek proverb. In fact, when I was studying Greek the first time, they had that Greek proverb in the Greek book. ho philos estin allos autos, a friend is another what? Self. Aristotle will talk about that proverb in the in Plato will talk about it. You know, what Shakespeare's

[41:52] phrase instead of calling your friend another self, huh? This is a very a very beautiful way, a very very good way of thinking about a friend, right? A friend is another self, right? You can see that in the commandment to love your neighbor, right? Love your neighbor what? As yourself. So you're loving your neighbor as what? Another self, right? Your neighbor is not yourself, but you have to really look at your neighbor as another self, right?

[42:28] Now, what what does Shakespeare have another phrase for this another self? Something with soul, another soul. No, you keep keeping the word self. self, instead of saying another self, he has another word.

[42:46] Second self. Yeah, yeah. Second self, yeah. That shows a certain what Order too among the two, right? Looking before and after, right? Searching that at home, right? No, else you have to regard your friend as a second self, right? That's interesting, right? There's another word for false imagination here in King Lear. Now Lear goes kind of mad, right? And to some extent, you know, Gloucester has similar cause for going mad.

[43:29] because his own son, he thinks, is a traitor, right? If a man goes mad, he's kind of out of his misery because he doesn't know where he is, right, or when he's undergone. right? So Closter says in this passage here, "The king is mad." you know, Lear is raging out there in the heat. The king is mad. How stiff is my vile sense that I stand up and have ingenious feeling of my huge sorrows?

[43:56] Right? He hasn't got mad? Right? So he's much more aware of what's happening, you know. That's why he's thinking, "Better I were to distract, right?

[44:06] So should my thoughts be severed from my griefs, and woes? That's his miseries, right? And woes by wrong imaginations lose the knowledge of themselves, huh?

[44:26] Now sometimes people do go mad, right, in sorrow or something like that, right? And it's like God's nature trying to take us away from something, you know. We can't face, right? So you imagine yourself to be somebody other than you are, right? But notice that, huh? And woes by wrong imaginations lose the knowledge of themselves, huh? So wrong imagination, right?

[44:56] You can imagine something correctly, or you can imagine it wrongly, right? You can imagine something truly as it is, right? And imagine something, you know, falsely as it is not, right? Now, how's that related to the other causes of error that we spoke about, right?

[45:21] Well, Aristotle spoke of likeness as it caused a deception, right? Of course, you look at Shakespeare's play, The Comedy of Errors. I don't know if you know the play, but The Comedy of Errors is a takeoff from a Latin comedy, which is a takeoff from a Greek comedy. It's a comedy about what twin brothers, right, who at an early age get separated, right, and then by chance end up in the same city, and one being what infused for the other, right?

[45:56] And all these, you know, things that tell you have to read the play. It's very funny, right? And but they're deceived because of their what? Likeness, yeah. You see, likeness is the cause of error. That's something that the poet knows as well as the philosopher, right? See, well, is there connection between imagination and likeness?

[46:23] Sure, yeah. Yeah. In fact, the word image is almost a synonym for the word what likeness, huh? Sure. And as the Scholium talks, yeah, because the Scholium, the one who says that you know the imagination delights in likenesses of things, right? My reason wants to see the difference between things. So the imagination, kind of being caught up with the likeness of things, will what be a source of deception, right?

[47:00] Because likeness is the cause of deception, right? Okay. But as we'll learn when we get to the third book on the soul, we never think without, at the same time, imagining in this life. And so there is an image always associated with our thinking. And if we judge by what we imagine, and imagine things other than they are, or if we're trying to imagine something like the soul, that you cannot be imagined, you are going to be necessarily false.

[47:34] Whatever you imagine the soul to be, and the common person, you know, like the poets, imagine the soul as being kind of a ghost-like thing in the shape of

[47:46] me, and that's the way you recognize the soul of somebody, but he's separated from his body, right? Because he has the same shape as you. You know, that's obviously false as to what the soul is, huh? But that's the way the poet, you know, represents this in the Odyssey, right? When the souls of the dead come up to see Odysseus, right? Or when to that comedy, right?

[48:11] When he meets the souls of those who died before him, he recognizes them he tries to hug them, you know, can't hug somebody who's all air. But he recognizes them by their shape, right? But that's false imagination, right? But goes back to likeness there. Take it up with that, but also the fact that we can't think without imagining, so we have to negate. But for imagining to understand what is not imaginable, so we say God is not a body, right?

[48:46] We say thoughts are not continuous, and so on. The soul is not continuous, right? So we're imagining a continuous thing, and we say the soul is not continuous. It's hard to not be deceived by imagination,

[49:05] especially about something like the soul, because you can't imagine the soul, can't sense it. So in actual philosophy, usually we go back to senses to judge things, right? What we can sense, and mathematics, we go back to imagination here. But the soul can be neither sensed nor imagined, huh? So how is that a cause? Is that okay? Now I am going to find another connection. One connection I was making between this and likeness, right?

[49:38] Okay. But now, what's the other word for error? Mistake. Yeah. Yeah. What's the etymology of mistake? Like not grasping. Yeah. Yeah, misapprehension instead, misunderstand. But it comes to the to miss in what taking.

[50:13] Now it's interesting. In Shakespeare, you'll see it's very common, and maybe another half of the time that the word aim is often used as a synonym for guess.

[50:30] So I can show many texts of Shakespeare where the word aim means guess. Okay, that's interesting, right? When I aim at the target, right, I'm trying to hit the target, right. But sometimes I what miss the target, right? Okay, and so when I guess, I'm aiming at the truth, right? But I often what miss, miss, yeah. And Plato speaks of that, you know, in one of the dialogues, you know, where they've got a cage of things you reach and then you get the wrong thing, right?

[51:00] You know, say to the dinner table or something. If you're not paying attention, you know, you're talking to someone, you reach and you might knock something over, right? I've seen sometimes they knock a wine glass over or something that's on top of you to begin with, right? But sometimes you take the wrong thing, don't you? Sometimes when you're when you're grabbing, to miss in taking, right? Okay.

[51:21] So is there connection between imagination and guessing? It's imagination and the good disposition of imagination, which enables people to to guess. That's why in experimental science, as the great Einstein said, one year 1905, right? If you do three papers, right, all which I regard as worth the Nobel Prize, most scientists never have a paper worth the Nobel Prize, right? Let alone three in one year, right? Never been a mind that way.

[52:04] But Einstein says that these hypotheses are what freely imagined, right? What's interesting is that these scientists they usually make their great discoveries when they're in their twenties or they're about thirties, maybe, right? And they think Einstein in his later age always finds something or something, but never any more. But the imagination declines after the twenties and the thirties, right?

[52:31] What reason you know gets better until the age of forty nine at least. You see, but the imagination declines. But the imagination what enables you to what to guess, right? Just like in the practical order, my brother Mark's joke, you know, he was in Quebec. There, he had two friends. One of them could think of all kinds of things to do. Very imaginative guy, but he no judgment.

[52:59] This one, you should do. And brother Mark was one who judged. This is the thing to do. But being like the philosopher a little lethargic, he did the third guy to get them going, right?

[53:10] But he used to joke about the three acts of prudence, right? Are divided amongst the three men, right? Command, the first guy gets them going, you know. But the judgment for the mark, the possibilities, right? Everybody's talking about possibility, you know. Wow, there are things to do, but he couldn't decide which one we should actually do. But it's imagination as Aquinas says, the good decision in imagination enables one to to guess well, right?

[53:42] You know, it's kind of you know these scientists the way they guess, you know, the DNA or what it was, you know, they're guesses, right? But kind of interesting things, huh? And Sherlock Holmes, you know, before he gets down, he's already knows where it happened, right? So,

[54:02] but that's the connection there between that use of the word aim there for guess. Very common Shakespeare. He's showing you the text where he does that. Place where he does that.

[54:13] Well, one reason is guessing that is apt to be what to guess wrongly, right? To be deceived, huh? This is especially true for wild guess, right? Okay, but even educated guesses are often wrong. The economist, you know, making educated guesses, but these often wrong. The weatherman is making guesses, educated guesses there, but he's often wrong, right? That's what actually happens, huh?

[54:46] So it's tied up with the word mistake, right? To misintending, huh? But that's a different way, which is a cause of error, because you are aiming at the truth, and you hit something other than the truth in so doing, right? It's like that guy who's drinking the wine to get to satisfy his sweet tooth, but he gets drunk. Well, I wouldn't do that. They shouldn't after a while, right?

[55:15] But if he has such an intense desire for what for the sweetness of the wine that he's, you know, when he's probably getting drunk, he never foresees that. That's why I can satisfy my sweet tooth is to drink enough wine to satisfy my sweet tooth. And then he's gonna do that, right?

[55:40] So he's aiming at one thing and something else. He's not aiming at happens, right? Not aiming to get drunk, but he's gonna get drunk because he's aiming to get satisfy sweet tooth on wine.

[55:57] So out of curiosity, or in some cases out of pride, he aims at something above his mental powers, right, and then easily fails, right. Not that it's intending to fail, but it's not unusual that you fail when you aim to know something beyond your capacity to know it.

[56:35] Notice how Socrates was deceived in the way in the Euthyphro, right? When he tries to help Euthyphro define piety, and piety seems to be a form of justice, right? And so he's trying to see a quid pro quo between man and God, right? And that's kind of what piety is. But piety is like justice, isn't it? Because in piety, you owe Somebody, something, right? But unlike justice, you can't be—you can't give them the equivalent of what you receive, right?

[57:15] So, what's his name? Cicero says that the son is always in debt to his father, right? So there's never justice in strict sense to your father.

[57:32] My mother tells me her father came to the side and said, "No, after I'm gone, you'll say you haven't done nothing." You know, I felt the same with my parents, right? And kind of, you know, that's that's the way things are, right?

[57:49] Okay. So maybe we'll get to the proemium next time, okay? That was a little bit excursion there, you know, thinking a little bit about mistakes and errors, right? And we'll come up again in the dialogue, in in the thing here when he gets to the second book, you know, he says this is very common. Kind of a frightening passage in a sense to see, you know. it's like a friend of my brother Richard, you know, he went, went, got a medical degree, then he went to, you know, psychological degree, got a degree in psychiatry, you know, and of course he's studying all these mental ailments and so on, and of course to him, it looked like everybody around him, you know, was just, you know,

[58:25] on the brink, you know, kind of scary to hear this guy talking, you know, we're all kind of, you know, very close to going over the deep end. and but when you read this passage on error, you know, you see how how common error is, right? And just the diversity of opinion is enough to show you that most philosophers are mistaken, right? Maybe all of them, you know, you get to realize how necessary to proceed wisely and slow.

[58:54] So, allegedly, this Shakespeare going to give me back another Shakespeare? So we still got them. We still looking them. I I couldn't give them back to you, but that's okay next time. This is an example of one of the what they call the Arden edition, you know, you know, and sometimes they'll touch upon religion, right? And the reason they usually give why they're not a Christian is, well, why should I be Christian just because I was born here?

[59:24] You know, if I was born in in India, I'd be Hindu, right? You know, so you know, I know there's a similar idea, right? If you were born in Ireland, you'd be a Catholic. If you were born in India, you'd be a Hindu, and maybe you'd be, you know, a Buddhist if you were born in Tibet or someplace, right? So there's some truth to that, right? You know, and so you kind of see if I was born down in Saudi Arabia, I'd be a Mohammedan or something, right?

[59:52] Probably I would be, you know, but it's just a likeness, right? You see? Well, I'm not going to be a Hindu since I'm born in India, am I? No, I'm not gonna be a Buddhist because I was born. you know why I should be a Christian then, right? You know, it's the same thing, right?

[1:00:12] Well, you're kind of really seeing a likeness there, but not seeing any difference between, you know, being a Christian or being Mohammedan. Do you know anything about the University of Dayton? I have three nieces and nephews attending.