De Anima (On the Soul)
13. The Soul as First Act of a Natural Body Made of Tools: Explaining the Definition by Comparisons (Axe and Eye)
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/4-de-anima/013-the-soul-as-first-act-of-a-natural-body-made-of-tools-explaining/

[0:00] The soul is defined as something of a what? Another, huh? Just like time is defined as something of another, right? Page six, right? Um, and therefore Aristotle made three divisions, right? On the side of the soul itself to find out what it is, right? And three divisions on the side of that which the soul is something to complete the definition, right? On the side of the soul itself, he gave what?

[0:43] What three divisions? Being and substance, quantity, quality, relation, and so on. And since the soul in which of those genera belongs? Substance. Substance, yeah. And the second division he gave was what? Substance into the matter, the form, or the composite. Yeah, yeah. And that's not really a division of substance into species, is it? No. That's a division of material substance, right? Into what? Composing parts and part, right?

[1:26] And the the composite itself, right? So it's more like the division, almost of the meaning of the word substance, huh? Okay. And is the soul the composite, or is it the matter, or is it the form? Yeah. So it's form in the genus of what? Substance, right? Then form is to matter, as we saw earlier when we studied matter and form, as act is to what? Ability or potency.

[1:57] So he made a third distinction, which is on two kinds of what? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What was that distinction? First and second. Yeah. This is first and second, in which sense of before? The first.

[2:17] Yeah, first of all, in the first sense, at least, right? In the order of time or generation, huh? Yeah. So I must acquire, he says, the science of geometry before I can think according to that science, right? Yeah. Okay. Um, before I can think in the way the geometre thinks, right? Ease of the order, the order, and so on. Um.

[2:46] Right. Second act is the what? Operation, the activity, right? Okay. First act is the form. So the soul is a first act or a second act? Yeah. Yeah. Now we're going to see in the page six here he's going to manifest the definition right. He's going to manifest it by proportions right in the sense of Euclid, the likeness of ratios right. He's going to be comparing the soul to things in which there's also a first and a second act right.

[3:24] He's going to compare the soul proportionally to the first act these other things, not to the what second act. So the soul is a substantial form you could say right, or it's a first act.

[3:45] But it's a substantial form or the first act of something right. And what is it the substantial form or the first act of? The body. Yeah, this is very much something in the genus of substance right. And then it's of a what? Natural body. Yeah, the distinction between a natural body and an artificial body right. Okay.

[4:16] And you'll notice here in this second part here of the first chapter that he almost recalls the definition of nature right. He talks about it being a natural body. We'll see that in the text here right.

[4:33] And then finally he divided natural body right into those that what? Have life. Yeah. And those who don't right. But then later he kind of modified right.

[4:56] Instead of saying a body having the operations of life and potency right, he spoke of a body as being what? Composed of tools. Yeah. Okay. So it's better to make that explicit. Say it's a it's a tool body right.

[5:17] That means a body that is what composed of tools. And the higher the soul, the greater the what diversity of tools because of the multiplicity of operations that that soul is what capable of right.

[5:36] And that suggests, as I mentioned last time, a comparison between the soul and the bodies in and the different arts and the tools they use. And Aristotle point out that just as one art cannot go and use the tools of a what? Another art right. So the tailor, whose tools, let's say, are the needle and thread and scissors, he can't use the hammer and saw of the carpenter, right, for his work.

[6:13] And vice versa, the carpenter can't use the needle and thread and the scissors to work with wood, huh? And so Aristotle says, just as one art cannot use the tools of another art, so one soul that's adapted to this body with its tools, right, can't enter into another body and be the soul of that body. That'd be like the art of carpentry entering into the tools of the tailor, right, and becoming the art that sews and cuts with the scissors, right?

[6:51] Okay. Well, then, having completed these, he gathers up the definition, right? The soul is the substantial form, or he says the first act, right, of a what natural body composed of tools.

[7:15] I mentioned how the grammatical order there in the Greek corresponds to the logical order, right? Which isn't necessary grammar and logic are different sciences, right? But you'll say in the Greek, I guess, entelecheia," which means act, right? "prote, right? Well, in English, we're kind of got to put first first, right? Okay, you have to put the adjective first, right? Okay, then you can say of a body that's natural, organic.

[7:56] We'd have to put natural and having tools or composed of tools maybe before, right? You know, sometimes we want to do it. You can make a phrase out of it and say a body that is natural composed of tools, right?

[8:16] It's an act, which is the first one of a body that is natural, having tools, right, or composed of tools, right? But it'd be simpler to say it's the first act of a natural body composed of tools,

[8:36] a natural tooled body, right? In the Greek, it has one word there, "tooled, right? We get our word "organic," but "organic" is lost its concreteness in English, right? Now that, you said the word "tooled" again. Is that?

[8:59] That's just another way of describing living, right? It's not a species of living. Not another way of describing living, but it's a way of of describing the specifying what the body is, on which the soul is the first act, right? It's the first act of a body composed of tools. Oh, yeah. And you can kind of see that Aristotle goes on to explain that even the plants, which are lower form of life than the animal, but even the plant, there's some diversity of what tools, right?

[9:32] Yeah. When you get into the non-living world, right? I mean, is a stone or or the dirt out there, you know, or is this water composed of tools, right? Even if the water is composed in some way of hydrogen, oxygen, like tools.

[9:54] So it's kind of interesting that he sees that as characteristic of the living body. The body is capable of the operations of life, right? That it's a body composed of tools.

[10:09] As I said, you get a higher soul, you have more diversity of tools, because there is more operations which the soul is capable. And so it needs a body that has more tools.

[10:26] Of course, when you get to man, of course you run into another problem that man, man's soul is capable of doing so many things that you can't have all the tools that he needs, like knife and fork and ballpoint pin and so on. Um it's part of his body, otherwise you'd be other weighed down. You know, I need a hammer today, I need a saw tomorrow, I need a, you know, I'd be walking around playing with all these tools, you know.

[10:55] You see, the carpenter sometimes have this kind of leather belt thing, you know, and he got his, you know, hammer here and tools here, and it's very handy. Jump in the ladder or something, you know, pull one out and so on. But even they can't have all the tools that they use in their life, you know, attached to themselves.

[11:14] You know the all the tools they give a soldier, you know, and he's got to carry on his back, and he's got tools to fight with, and tools to dig a trench with, and maybe tools to to eat with, and so on, huh?

[11:33] So this is the first definition then of the soul, right? Now, starting here on page six and one nineteen, he's going to, as we say,

[11:47] illustrate in a way to manifest this definition of soul by a likeness, right, or a couple of likenesses. And it's a likeness of what? Ratios, right? The likeness of proportions. Now, when you have that kind of a likeness, huh? What does that mean?

[12:14] Well, you have to consider in what way the ratios are alike, right? And not make them more alike than they are, right? That simple example I always give of four is to six as two is to three, right? And someone says, "Well, two is an even number and three is an odd number, so the ratio of two to three is a ratio of an even number to an odd number.

[12:40] That's true, but is that the way in which four is to six that also is like that? It's a ratio of a. Even number to an odd number? No, no. Clearly, I have misunderstood it. You misunderstood what the likeness consisted, right? Okay. So, in what way is four to six, which are two even numbers, like two to three, which aren't two even numbers? In what way is four to six like two to three?

[13:10] What is likeness consists? Very simple example I'm trying to make, right? Or you could say with with Euclid that four is the same parts of six that two is of three.

[13:28] So, if you think or imagine the six to be composed of three twos, four is two of those three twos, right? So, four is the same parts of six that two is of three.

[13:47] Okay. Or if I say two is to four as three is to what? Six, right? Well, there I might say that two is the same part of four that three is of six. As three is one half of six, so two is one half of four, right? But two is not a three, and four is not a six. And two and four are two even numbers, and three and six are not two even numbers, right?

[14:25] Okay. So you've got to understand in what way they are alike, right? And at the same time, see their what? They're different, so you don't exaggerate the likeness. That's the way in which

[14:48] was in the Middle Ages. There, first Vatican Council, fourth Lateran Council. Joachim of Fiore, I guess it was. Yeah, he took the words of Scripture. You know, Christ says, "You know, praying for unity there in the Gospel of Saint John, that we would be one, as the Father and I are one. " You see, you can't exaggerate the likeness between our unity and the unity of the Father and the Son.

[15:22] That's where the fourth Lateran Council there, the one that's right before Thomas was born, right? But he has a little work on that, the first two decrees. But I first was called my attention to it by Paul the Sixth right? For he's referring to the text there, where it says you can never point out a likeness between the creature and God. Without the same time noting a greater what dissimilitude, right, or this unlikeness, huh?

[15:53] You see, it always remains a kind of infinite distance, not between the creature and God, right, huh? And so he was exaggerating the likeness between the two. So as Plato says in the dialogue, the Sophist, appropriately,

[16:13] likeness is a slippery thing, right? It easily misleads us, right? And that's one of the reasons why we point out the what imagination as a source of error, right?

[16:34] Shelley there in the art, in the art of poetry, you know, is kind of a contrast between the imagination, which he worships as a poet, and the reason of the philosopher. And he says, you know, that the imagination delights in the likenesses of things, and reason is always after the what differences of things, huh? Okay, and that's not the whole truth because reason does take a certain interest in the likeness of things, right?

[17:03] But the point is that imagination, the very word itself, comes from what image, which means likeness. So the imagination is taking up the likeness of things, and therefore the imagination, without reason, seeing the differences, right, is very apt to what deceive us, like it did Job before. So it's interesting when Aristotle talks about the fourth tool of dialectic, which is the tool of likeness. He puts it after the tool of difference, and perhaps part of the reason for that is that the tool of difference is necessary to guard you from what being deceived in seeing the likeness.

[17:49] But it's also he calls that tool the I think use the Greek word skepsis, right? We get? The word skeptic, but it means you've got to what think about the likeness, and especially the crowning likeness there, which is the likeness of ratios, the proportions. You've got to consider that and see exactly what way they are alike, right? Because in other ways they will be what unlike, right?

[18:20] Is that fan too close? No, no. Blow my hair around a little bit. I'm my wild looking professor, you know. I'd rather be cool. I'd rather be cool than. Okay.

[18:38] Um. Okay. So all that, but way of. Preparing for these likenesses, right? He's going to use here to manifest the definition of the soul. So let's look at one nineteen there on page six. Universally, therefore, it has been said what the soul is. What the soul is, in a way, common to the what human soul, but even the animal soul, right? Even the plant soul, right?

[19:13] That definition could be said of all what three, right? Even though he might say the fullness of the soul is found only in the human soul.

[19:31] For the substance, according to account, okay. Sorry, is the way how you translate these. Well, I think he says what he's trying to say there. What he's saying in the Greek is that it's substance in the sense. Of what, in the sense of form. In the Greek word would be logos there, which he translates as we do sometimes by account, right?

[20:02] So he's saying it's ousia gar he kata ton logon, right? So it's substance according to the what, form, right? Okay. Aristotle defines form, if you recall back in the definition of the four kinds of cause, he says it's what completes the definition.

[20:30] So he just Yeah, yeah. He refers to the form rather than the matter. And this is the way he defines. Remember form before the what was to be, right? Okay.

[20:58] For but this is the what it was to be for this sort of body, the natural body composed of tools, right? Now he's making a comparison right now.

[21:15] Just as if some tool was a natural body, like an axe, right? For being an axe would be its what substance, its form, and this latter its soul.

[21:36] But this being separated, it would no longer be an axe, except equivocally. But now it is an axe. Now, what is he saying there, right?

[21:51] He's saying that making the portion of if the axe were a natural body, and start describing it, right? What would be its soul? Would be chopping down the tree.

[22:16] That would be its operation. That would be its second act, right? Yeah. That's not proportional with the soul, isn't it? Because the soul is a what? First act, right? Okay.

[22:30] So it'd be what makes the what axe actually able to what chop, right? That would be its what soul. You see that? Its ability to chop, you might say, right?

[22:56] Maybe it's first act. What makes the axe actually able to chop, but not as chopping, right? Its chopping would be proportional to the living axe that the body does to having a soul, right? The soul is the first act.

[23:28] And it's no longer able to chop. It does not any longer be a what, an axe, right? Except equivocally, but now it is an axe, just like a an axe that isn't able to what chop anything is like a dead body, right? Analogously,

[24:00] but he points out the difference now, right? But the soul is not what it was to be, in the form, definition of such a body, right? But the axe, but of such a natural body, right? And then he recalls kind of the definition of what natural means, right?

[24:23] Nature is what a principle or cause, the beginning or cause of motion and of rest, right? It's intrinsic to the thing, right? Okay, so he's looking back to the definition of nature that we met in the second book of Natural Hearing, second book of the so-called physics, right? Okay.

[24:55] So if you're a ballpoint pen there in your hand, if that was a natural body having life and potency, what would be its soul? Would writing be its soul? Why not? Be its second act. Because the soul is not a second act. The soul is the first act, right? So, who would be the the soul of the ballpoint pen? Ability to

[25:30] write. No, whatever makes it actually right, able to what to write or to be written with. You see, why the actual writing would be its second act and therefore not its soul, right? But the soul is not the first act of a ballpoint pen, right? But rather the first act of a natural body composed of tools, right?

[26:01] It's interesting. Aristotle is drawing his proportions here, his likenesses from tools, right? But one nineteen, the tool is a what? Artificial tool, like an axe, or like the ballpoint pen that I took as my example, right?

[26:25] In one twenty, he's going to take as an example one of the tools of a living body, like the eye itself, right? Now you see a certain order in those two kinds of

[26:42] likenesses there. It begins with the artificial tool, and probably the word "tool" in Greek "organon," just like the word "tool" in English. You hear the word "tool," you first of all think of a what? Artificial tool. Yeah, of an artificial tool, right? You don't first think of your body and your eye as being a tool, do you? Okay. But a tool is something you use to do something with, right?

[27:13] You use the knife to cut, right? Use the ballpoint pen to write. Use the axe to chop, right? And likewise, use your eyes to see, and you use your ears to hear. Use your teeth in front to bite, and your teeth in back to chew. And you use your heart to pump blood, et cetera, et cetera, right? Okay. So he's going from the tools that are more known to us, right?

[27:38] In a way, which are probably called tools first of all, right? To what is later on called a tool, and not thought first of all as being a tool. At the same time, which of these two tools is closer to the soul? Second. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[28:04] Okay. Now, when this last sentence, I don't know if I quite understand the first part, but when he talks about what it was to be, he mentions that that's his definition of form. But is it more the sense of second act? No, what it was to be, what is an axe, right? If you ask what is an axe, huh? What makes something intrinsically to be an axe?

[28:33] Is it chopping? Or is chopping something that it can do because it is an axe? Yeah. Okay. But then why does it say here the soul is not the what it was to be? If the what it was to be is the first act. Well, he's saying, you're taking only a part of the sentence? For the soul is not the what it was to be, is not the form right, and the account right, the logos of such a body, right, as is the axe, but of such a natural body as has a principle of moving and of standing.

[29:13] Oh, I get it. Okay, Getting the whole sentence. Yeah. So, Aristotle is careful to point out the difference, obviously, between the soul and its body and the axe, right? Okay. So he's making a comparison, right, to something more known to us. Okay.

[29:38] So when a man is going to make an axe, right, he takes you know wood and metal and so on, right? These are an axe, only inability, aren't they? But after they've been shaped in a certain way and put together, then you actually have an axe, right?

[30:00] And then you can go out and chop down the tree in your backyard, cherry tree, right over here. There it is. You see? What is the soul, right?

[30:12] What's analogous to soul is not what you have, and you have the raw materials there of wood and metal, right? The soul is not there yet. What's analogous to the soul, right?

[30:26] Nor is chopping what is analogous to soul, right? That's after having what is analogous or proportional to the soul, right? But something in between those two, right? Okay. It's the act that enables you to call this an axe, right?

[30:48] What is this? So if you just looked at the raw wood there, they hasn't cut it yet or shaped it, and the metal is going to have to shape and so on, right? Is what is this? An axe? I wouldn't call that an axe, would you?

[31:04] Except an ability, right? Okay. But you wouldn't say simply that's an axe, right? What is this, right? When it gets its form, enables it to be used to chop down trees, right? Then it actually is an axe, right?

[31:23] But the chopping down is a further act, right? That you do after the axe has been formed, right? You see? So what is the soul proportional to, right?

[31:40] What's proportional there to what inwardly makes the axe to be an axe and to be called an axe, right? Okay. Which includes certain kinds

[31:59] of matter like wood and metal as as part of that. definition? Yeah. Ah, you might. Yeah. Verstall was thinking, you know, always that the form is what completes the definition. huh? Okay. So out of the same wood and metal, you can maybe make other tools, right? Okay.

[32:25] Now, you know, let's make a comparison there, but don't, you know, see in which way they're alike, right? You go back to the three kinds of examples that Aristotle used in the first reading in Natural Philosophy there. Where he's trying to manifest that we know things in a confused way before we know them distinctly, right? You're going to manifest this by the fact that we know the whole in a confused way before we know it distinctly.

[32:58] And he takes as his first example a sensible whole, like a salad dressing, right, or painting or symphony, right? Because that's the whole that's most known to us. This is a whole that is composed of parts, and that the senses, in some way, what, know, right? I mean, the senses taste the salad dressing, or they see the painting, or they hear the symphony. They don't distinguish all the parts or all the ingredients at once, huh?

[33:36] And only gradually do they go into more what distinct knowledge of the parts making up that painting or salad dressing or that symphony, huh? And then Aristotle goes to another composed whole, right? The definition, huh? Which is less known to us. And he points out how we tend to name a thing before we can define it. But the definition spells out distinctly, but the name says in only a confused way.

[34:15] So he's moving from the more known to the less known, right? And then finally, he goes back to the senses. They take something like what he wants to show eventually that the general is known before the particular. So he takes something like much more like the universal whole. In fact, they sometimes call it the more general sensible one. So, you know, when I'm looking up at the hill there, and I say, "Hey, there's something up there on the hill.

[34:45] Yeah, there's something up there. Yeah, I can't make out what it is, but I see something, right? " What's that? Knowing something in a very general way is it something? Yeah, I think it's moving. I think it's moving a little more distinct. Something moving. See? Yeah, it's like a dog. Yeah, it looks like. What's the name of this dog around here? Was here before class? Is it?

[35:08] Yeah. So we're going from what something, something moving, a dog, maybe a red dog. Is that huh? Mm-hmm. Rosie. Rosie, excuse me. Rosie, right? See, so it's like going from the general particular, right? Because Rosie's a red dog, but not every red dog is Rosie, right? And every dog is a moving something, but it's not a moving something. It's a dog, right? And so on. So it's it's closest to what he wants to manifest ultimately.

[35:42] The what general is known before the what particular. So, he's both going from what is more known to us, the composed whole is more known to us than especially the sensible composed whole than the universal whole. But he's also going towards what he's approaching, you might say, right? With examples that are closer to going from the general to particular.

[36:16] The same way here, right? He's starting with what is more known and going to what is less known. But at the same time, he's starting with what is less like the soul, right? And going to what is more like the soul.

[36:37] One must consider also what was said in the case of the parts, since the second is going to manifest it. For if the eye was an animal, its soul would be its what sight. Now, when he says sight here, he doesn't mean the act of seeing, right? Because the word sight is sometimes equivalent, right? But he means, in a sense, the what ability to see, right? Okay.

[37:02] For this is the substance, according to account, huh? This is the what it is, right? The form, you might say, the eye. But the eye is the matter of sight of the ability to see.

[37:17] Which, being left behind, the eye is no longer an eye, except equivocally, like the eye of a statue or a painting. So an eye, by definition, is something able to see, right? Okay. And if it lacks the ability to see, it's not really an eye, except in another meaning of the word, right? Like the eye of a dead man, right? Okay. But even more clearly, like the eye of a statue or a painting, it has something of the shape and color of an eye, right?

[37:53] But the eye doesn't see, and the painting doesn't. So the eye in the statue doesn't have the ability to see. And therefore, it lacks what would be proportional here, right, to the soul, right? So, what he's saying here, he's saying, if the eye were a natural body composed of tools, it was a natural body which is the subject of the soul, right? Then its sight, its ability to see, would be its what.

[38:24] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So, notice like in a way you have a proportion. where you're saying that the soul is to this natural body. Etc. Something like the ability to see is to the eye, right? Is it the eye? Okay. So that if the eye was that thing we call natural body, then its ability to see would be its what? Soul, right? Okay. Just like in the first comparison, the soul is the natural body.

[39:10] Something like what? Let's say the ability to chop is to the axe. What? But notice, huh? You know, if I was giving an exam, you know, how sometimes these IQ exams, the

[39:43] A is to B as X is to the. That's the right one, right? If I was going to give you gentlemen this kind of exam, right? I'd say to you, you know, the soul is to natural body as seeing is to the eye. The ability to see is to the eye, right? And you have a little spot, and you have to check off the right answer, right? And if you check the soul is to natural body as seeing is to the eye, then I'd mark that off minus two or whatever, taken off, right?

[40:29] If you say that, then you don't see the what? Likeness. Proportion, right? You don't see in what the way they are like, right? What would be to the natural body as seeing is to the eye? When in these operations, a living thing, right? Maybe.

[40:55] The same way down here, I might get two things. The soul is the natural body as chopping is to the axe, right? Why don't we have the experience, you know, at the end of my classes. So I was going to check that chopping is to the axe, right? But then I had to mark that incorrect, right? Because that is a what? Second act, right? And this here is the first act.

[41:20] The ability to chop is the first act. So the soul is not the second act of the natural body, but it's the first act, right?

[41:37] Now this ability to see a proportion is very important for understanding things and for what? Discovery, right? You see the little essay of Einstein he's trying to explain the fourth dimension, whatever the fourth dimension is, right? He's trying to explain the fact that we have a hard time understanding the fourth dimension because we're what? Three dimensional. And so he makes a comparison, you know, compares us to a what?

[42:09] Two dimensional creature, right? Living in a three dimensional world, how would it discover that it's living in a three dimensional world? So he's doing a kind of analogy, right? Huh? You know, because we can see in a way what a two dimensional creature would be like living in a three dimensional world, huh? And that's kind of a proportion, right? He's helping us to try to understand what is for a three dimensional creature living in the fourth fourth dimensional world, huh?

[42:45] But Pierre Duhem there, the famous scientist there, who. He's also a very great historian of science, right? He says, you know, the usual way that discoveries are made is by seeing a what proportion, yeah, yeah. And how was the inverse square law discovered? By Newton and his contemporaries, huh? You know what inverse square means, huh? It means one over x squared, right? So if you have some of the force of gravity between two bodies, and if you double the distance between the two bodies, the force of gravity between them is diminished, right?

[43:37] But if you cut it in half, now it's going to be one fourth of what it was before, right? So it's one over two, and it stays squared, right? If you triple the distance, and you diminish it by one third, no, by one what? Nine, yeah. Well,

[44:05] they had already discovered, they already knew that when light spreads out, it diminishes what Inversely as a square, right? And so since gravity seems to spread out evenly like light, right, And they reasonably guess, right, that it's going to diminish inversely as a square.

[44:33] Now they say when was a famous British scientist? They used to give lectures there at the British Museum. He was trying to explain the inverse square law. He would have the place kind of dimmed, and then you use a little square, right? You have a little light source, and the light source casts a what? A shadow on the wall, right? And if you double the distance, or let's say you cut it in half, what happens?

[45:05] If you double the distance, you are going to get a what? Smaller. Yeah, it's going to be half as big a square. Apparently, it's one fourth as big as the original one, right? So you can kind of see, in a way, that your imagination can grasp the inverse square law in regard to what light, huh? Actually, goes back at least to the sixth book of Euclid, right?

[45:30] Euclid had shown the way in geometry. You know, if you imagine a what a pyramid or something like that right, and you cut the distance in half, it's going to be the ratio of these two.

[45:54] Of what to the bases? Yeah. The base they would be as the one to two side, but the base itself would be one to what? Four. right? The problem is with the slave one, right? If you double the side, you get a square what? Four times as big, right? So actually, if it's based on some geometry, then they saw it in light, then they saw it in gravity, okay?

[46:32] As one example of a very famous theorem of something that is proportional, the same way I guess that with waves, if you if you drop something very gently into the water, are the waves going to have the waves going to be longer or short?

[46:59] Drop a marble, say, into a plastic water, right? Long. The more, the how you drop it from, the waves would be longer or short. If they

[47:14] go higher, the waves will be what? Shorter. Shorter, yeah. If you just very gently tap the water, you get a very long, long wavelength. Then when they started to talk about sound waves and light waves and so on, they kind of guessed that the shorter the wavelength, right, The greater, the what? Energy, right? So they're always being led by proportions, some of which are, you know, stronger than others, right?

[47:48] So in discovery and just in trying to understand, the ability to see a proportion is extremely what important in philosophy and in science, right? And of course, you know, it's very important in theology, right?

[48:07] Christ's parables are usually kind of an extended proportion, right? The Lord is my shepherd. It's built on proportion, isn't it? Right. God is to us something like a shepherd is to his flock, right?

[48:40] So we're sheep. When it's a light mist, what I said, what we were like the sheep, right? But we do need to be directed. And so on.

[49:09] One must grasp then what is said in the case of the part about the whole living body, for there is a what proportion, right? Okay. I mentioned before how the word proportion has become somewhat equivocal, right?

[49:28] And sometimes, you know, the moderns, even Thomas, we use the word proportion to mean a what ratio, right? Okay. But Euclid, you know, in the translation of Euclid, we have. Proportion means what? Likeness of ratios, right? So, I mean, you can start with numbers. Say, two is to three, three is to four, four is to six. These are examples of what? Ratios, right? Okay.

[50:09] And in Greek, the singular there, the Greek word would be what? Logos, right? Okay. But then you come back and you see, well, these two ratios are what? Similar. You say four is to six as two is to three. Then you can call this say what? Proportion, right?

[50:38] But the Greek word would be what? Analogy. Analogy, yeah. So, in Euclid, you have logos and logoi or something like that. In English it could be translated I think, in this edition. It could be ratio and proportion, right? And ratio and logos are very similar, aren't they? Because they both can also mean reason, right? It's reason that knows the ratio of one thing to another. It's reason that knows logos in the sense of ratio.

[51:20] If I wanted to define ratio in the sense, you could say it's the order or relation of one thing to another, right? Okay. By proportion here is the likeness of what? Ratio. Okay. But then it gets confusing because people started calling ratio proportion. You find it very common in modern science. And you find it in Thomas today, right? Thomas will often use the word proportion in the sense of what?

[51:50] Ratio, right? So I think it's an unfortunate, you know, happening occurrence, you know. But they got to be aware of that fact, right? Okay.

[52:27] The Greek right here would be, is translated there. For there is a proportion, right? As the part is to the part, thus the whole sense to the whole sense to the body. The Greek says ana logon, right? The word analogy, right? Ana logon Ana logon gar hos to meros pros to meros houtos holē hē aisthēsis pros to holon sōma towards the whole body, sense of the body, as such.

[53:10] Okay. So it's a proportion, right, in the sense of a likeness of a ratio, so this is to that, right? Okay. As as what the ability to see is to this part called the eye, right? So the soul is to the whole, sensing body, right? Okay, the whole body, the we defined before.

[53:40] So now there you're using body. The eye is the composite of the ability to see, plus the eye. Well, here he calls you know the eye is the matter of sight, right? He's using it as not the composite, right, but the subject in which the sight is.

[54:12] Back there on line we're up on line 21, right? So the Greek being, the critical line, eye, couldn't even tell us. So, yeah. So in the Greek it says, "ho-op-thalmos, which is the Greek word for eye. Forget the word for what do you call a doctor? Eye doctor.

[54:48] Yeah, yeah. The big word for the eye. So he says, "ho ophthalmos is the hyle right? That's the Greek word for matter. The hyle of sight. It's the matter of sight, right? Which leaving is no longer an eye, except equivocally, a stone and the painted one.

[55:27] So it's not what has thrown off the soul that is what is potential in a manner that it might live. It's not what lacks a soul, right? That is living in potency or having the operations of life. What has a soul? But the seed and the fruit are such bodies, what? Potentially, right?

[55:50] As therefore, cutting and seeing are actualities, but now what second act, right? So also is waking, right? While the soul is as the sight. Okay, I know it's in English, you know. The word "sight" is equivocal. I think it can mean the act of seeing, right? But sometimes we use in English, I think, the word "sight" to mean what the power of seeing, right? Okay.

[56:20] Um. So we see the blind man, right? Lacks sight. What do we mean? We probably mean he what? Yeah, he lacks the power of seeing, right? Okay. So it's sight in that sense, the power of seeing, rather than seeing itself, right? It is proportional to the what soul, right? Okay. And the power of the organism, he says here, right? But the body is what is impotency, right?

[56:54] But just as the eye, there you see another sense figure, right? The eye is the pupil and sight, the power of sight, right? Then the living thing is the soul, and the what body, right? Okay.

[57:14] So what Aristotle has done then, right? He's made two comparisons, right? He's proposed two, you might say, what proportions, two likenesses or ratios, right? To manifest what the soul is, right? To manifest the definition of the soul, right? But things are more known to us, huh?

[57:38] So the power of the axe to destroy the tree, right? To chop down the tree, huh? Um, is more known to us than the soul, right? The power of the eye to see, right? Is more known to us than the soul, right? But the soul is in some way what like the power to see. In what ways it like it? Proportionally, right? Okay. In some way, the soul is like the power of the axe to chop down a tree, right?

[58:16] And some way like the power of the ballpoint pin, right? To write. But it's not proportional to the writing. It's the first act, and then the second act, right?

[58:41] That therefore the soul. Kind of corollary of this now. That therefore the soul is not separable from the body, or some parts of it. If it is naturally divisible, the parts are not unclear. For some of the parts, it is the what act of those parts, right? Okay.

[59:04] But indeed, nothing prevents, he says, some parts being separated, if they are not what acts of the body, right? He's going to show later on in Book Three that the power to understand, right, and the power to choose, so on, are not what acts of any part of the body. Okay.

[59:28] But you have to show that, right? Okay. But you have to investigate the powers through their acts and the acts of the objects. So it's that way that you'll come to understand that the soul has some powers that are not in the body, right? And therefore, the soul's existence is not immersed, as Thomas says, in the body. Right?

[59:59] Interesting way of speaking, right? There. Now you put a a body in in the water, right? And sometimes it's completely submerged in the in the immersed in the water, right? Other times, part of it is above the water, part. By the way way, that's what. Borrow that word to talk about the soul's existence in the body, right? If the soul has no power that is not in the body, It has no power that doesn't operate through a bodily organ, then there'd be no reason to think that the soul has any what existence except in the body.

[1:00:38] But if the soul, as I said back then, the premium, if the soul has some power that's not in the body, it does something, but not in the body, then its existence is not only in the body, right? Okay. So we have to watch the thing, huh?

[1:00:59] Another way he adds this here because, to some extent, he's shown this already. Moreover, it is unclear whether the soul is the act of the body in the way of the sailors or the ship. Maybe he's going to talk about later on that the what the soul does in some way move the body, right? Huh? Okay. Because you already, in a way, shown that the soul is not simply in the body as a sailor in the boat.

[1:01:24] What what sense is the soul in the body? Go back to the senses again. So form and matter Form and matter. Yeah, form and matter, which is the fifth sense. Yeah. The soul is not in the body as water is in the glass. But you know, the pagan kind of you know spoken as if the soul is but imprisoned in the body. And a lot of you know writers have spoken that way about the soul.

[1:01:59] But strictly speaking, the soul is not in the body; it's in a prison. It could then, be in the body as in a what Place. a place, right? Huh? But I think most people think of the soul to think about it at all as being in the body is in a what place, right?

[1:02:19] So when someone dies, you say, "What? He's gone. She's gone, right? Soul has left the body, right? " And those words are taken from change of place, but.

[1:02:33] But does the soul leave the body as a sailor leaves his boat, or a man leaves his car when I come in here, my car?

[1:02:44] Then you have you know the the kind of skeptical. Biologist or skeptical doctor, the guy who's done a lot of what autopsies or dissected all kinds of things. I never found a soul among the parts of the liver and a lung and a heart and a you know, but you never found a soul, right? But is the soul in the body as a part is in the whole?

[1:03:09] See, see, I know. I mean, it's more like the way in which the what shape of this glass is in the glass, right? Although it's not an accidental form, right? But in some ways, like that, right? Proportionately, right? Or even like the the order in the letters of the word cat, right? If you cut up the word cat, the letter c, the letter a, the letter t.

[1:03:33] Well, use the order over here. You know, what's not in there? Like that kind of a part. Soul is in the body as a form is in matter. That's why it has a unity, right? That is so great.