De Anima (On the Soul)
17. Councils on the soul as form of the body; the five kinds of powers, four grades of life and three souls
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[0:03] Well, in some sense, they speak of interior sacrifice, right? You know, you give yourself to God, you're directing your will to God, through faith and charity. In The name of the Father, and of the Son, and of, the Holy Spirit, Amen. God our enlightenment, guardian angels strengthen the lights of our minds, or to illumine our images and rouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor.

[0:37] Help us to understand all that you're written. Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Couldn't help but think of this chorus this morning when the the reading was from I think the eighth chapter of the prophet Hosea, and he's talking about the idolatry and so on, and how the statues, you know, that they're worshiping, they have eyes but they see not, they have ears but they hear not, they have nose but don't smell.

[1:08] Of course, I don't know how many parts of the body you know, but they, you know, exactly what Aristotle's talking about huh? An eye that doesn't see, an ear that doesn't hear, is an eye or an ear equivocally. Remember, I was speaking about that, right?

[1:29] But if the, you know, the eye was, you know, a natural body of an eye in potency its soul would be its power of seeing, right?

[1:41] So if it lacks that power of seeing, it's not really an eye, right? Except equivocally, just like you speak of a dead man. Well, a dead man is a man. No, dead man is going to call a dead man a man, but kind of a man. He's a dead man. Using the word man equivocally, it's not like saying a white man or black man, you know, where you're still a man in the same sense in the word, right?

[2:09] But a living man and a dead man are not a man in the sense of the word. Okay. So, before we go on now to chapter three here, just look very briefly at the church's two texts there from the consuls I mentioned. Yeah. Now, you probably have some ones of course in Denzinger's Enchiridion Symbolorum arm, but this is kind of an interesting little volume that they put out, I think, during the Second Vatican Council.

[2:41] It was sort of like a little handbook in case someone wanted to refer to the official documents of the previous twenty ecumenical councils. So you got all Latin text there, right? One of the English editions, you know, they don't follow that order. They follow kind of the order of doctrine, and this is one that actually Rahner was involved in, but Neuner-Roos, you know, was kind of an interesting thing there.

[3:10] So I'll give you the English text here a little bit here. This was the first one. Is from the General Council of Vienna or Vienna, I guess it is. Thirteen, eleven, thirteen, twelve. And this particular part is against the errors of Peter John Olivi. Now a lot of this is not relevant to what we're going to say here, but Olivi was one of the leading figures of the Spirituals in the great struggle over poverty in the Franciscan Order.

[3:50] They favored the evangelical idea of poverty and strictness, as opposed to the opposite tendency among the Conventuals. In his lifetime, he was called before the General Chapter of his order in Paris. After his death, his teaching was once more indicted by the Conventuals in order to hit up the Spirituals by condemnation of the other party. The question came before the Council of Vienna, where, among other things, his doctrine of the relation of body and soul was dealt with.

[4:17] That's probably dressed in. His doctrine of what? Relation of body and soul. They dealt with, yeah. How do you spell his name? Ah, last name is O L I E U. Yeah, like in Olivi Now famous figure Peter John Olivi. So this is the text, the relevant part here. Further, with the approval of the said Holy Council, we reject as erroneous and contrary to the truth of the Catholic Faith any doctrine or position which rashly asserts or calls into doubt that the substance of the rational or intellectual soul is not truly and of itself the form of the human body.

[5:11] Okay. So it's both erroneous, a mistake, an error, and contrary also to the truth of the Catholic Faith. To deny that the substance of the rational, intellectual soul, is not what the form of the human body.

[5:30] So that the truth of the pure faith shall be known to all, and that the entry of all errors and mights of the pinch shall be barred, we define that from now on, whoever shall presume to assert, defend, or obstinately hold—you got to be obstinate to be a heretic, you know—we define that from now on, whoever shall presume to assert, defend, or obstinately hold that the rational intellectual soul is not in itself and essentially the form of the human body is to be censured as a what heretic, right?

[6:07] So it's actually considered, since the Council of Vienna, they're heretical not to accept, right? Okay. And this again comes up in the the Fifth Lateran General Council, eighth session in fifteen thirteen. So this is about what two hundred years later, right?

[6:30] This involved Pietro Pomponazzi, huh? Okay, and who was teaching kind of a false doctrine about the soul, influenced by the Averroists and so on, huh?

[6:47] So it says, since the sower of cockle, ancient enemy of the human race, has dared to over-sow and to cause to grow in the field of the Lord certain most pernicious pernicious errors, always rejected by the faithful, in particular concerning the nature of the rational soul, that it is mortal, huh? Or that one and the same soul is found in all men. And since some people rash in their philosophical thinking assert this to be, at least philosophically speaking, true, we therefore, desirous of applying the appropriate remedy to such mischief, and with the approval of the Sacred Council, condemn and reject all those who assert that intellectual soul is mortal, or one soul common to all men, or who call in doubt that the soul is

[7:39] not only truly and of itself and essentially the form of the human body, as stated in the Canon of Clement the Fifth. That's what I quoted earlier, our predecessor Blessed Memory, issued by the Council of Vienna. But is also mortal and can be multiplied in accordance with multiple bodies, like we're talking about that other point there, into which it has been infused, has been and will be so multiplied, huh?

[8:06] So I just those are two main texts there, you know. I believe those are repeated also in reference to me to this in the catechism of the Catholic Church, huh? Just make it a text, the one Vienna, this one here. So that's in the Fifth Lateran Council, fifteen thirteen, huh? If you want the Latin, I can do the Latin there too, but

[8:30] maybe English will suffice for today, okay? So there are some things that can be known both by what natural reason alone and by what faith, right? And this business about the soul being the form of the body is something that both the natural light of reason and the light of faith they illuminate.

[9:04] So let us turn now to Chapter Three here. Which is the fifth lesson in Thomas, huh? So let's look on page ten of our text, number one thirty nine. There, of the aforesaid powers of the soul.

[9:42] Yeah, of the aforesaid powers of the soul, all are present in some, namely in man. Some of them are in some, and one alone in some. Now he gives the distinction of five what genera of powers. Now we call them genera because each is a genus having under it more than one kind, right? Okay. And the first one in your text there is called what? The translation nutritive, huh?

[10:21] Okay. The Greek word is threptikon Okay. And threptikon in Greek can refer to feeding or to growing, growing. Okay. So perhaps the English words are more clear than to say nutritive, huh? Though we sometimes tend to use that word. But the feeding or growing power. Okay. And this is one genus, huh? Okay. So when you take up that power, we have to talk about food. Now that won't make you hungry when you read about food, huh?

[11:06] I can remember getting in trouble in grade school. There, we were doing a geography lesson, and we're talking about some country where peanuts are growing. And I'm there, kind of pretending to eat true peanuts. and sister says, "You know, what are you eating, Dwayne? " Yep. I said, "I'm just pretending to eat peanuts. " Well, stop pretending. to eat peanuts I wasn't eating peanuts pretending to eat peanuts That's a geography lesson on this peanut country, whatever it was.

[11:36] So that's the first power he mentions. And we'll see eventually that you'll distinguish under the that first power, the power to obviously feed yourself, right? The power to what grow, right? And last but not least, but actually greatest, the power to what reproduce yourself, right? Okay. And that genus of powers that the plants alone that that's the only one that they have. Okay. But the animals and man have that genus of powers plus some other ones that man will have some that the other animals don't have, and some animals will have some the others don't have.

[12:24] That's the first one he mentions. The second one he mentions here is the sensitive, in Greek there aisthetikon aisthesis They could call that, you know, the the sensing power, right? The power of sensing.

[12:47] And that will include, yeah. That's I guess that's obviously from where the word aesthetic comes from. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of a terrible word, you know. It kind of puts the emphasis upon the senses of the man knowing rather than the object, right? Kind of a modern invention, right? Yeah.

[13:12] Now the sensing power is a genus again, and as we'll find out later on, it includes not only what we call later on the outward senses, the sense of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, but also certain inward senses, which I'll talk about at the beginning of the third book.

[13:41] Now the third genus he mentions of powers is the in Greek orektikon, and this is translated in Latin by appetitive. He takes over the Latin word there, but the basic idea is the desiring powers. Okay, Appetitus is a word for desire, and orektikon has that idea in Greek of the desiring powers.

[14:12] And as we'll find out, there are certain desiring powers that all animals have because they have sensation. So acts like hunger and thirst, sexual desire, desire to reproduce, and so on. These desires, right, will be common to not only man but the other animals, right? But then there'll be certain desiring powers that are what follow upon reason, or one desiring power. Okay.

[14:51] So you could translate, as he does a petitive, but if you use the English word may be more clear. The desiring powers. Okay. Then the fourth one he mentions is the kinetikon kata topon katatopana.

[15:10] What is a mover according to what place, right? And by this he means we go from one place to another, right? Of course, the higher animals like the dog and the cat and the horse and so on, and the insects even they go from one place to another, right? But there are some forms of animal life that are hard to distinguish sometimes from plants. But they seem to have at least a sense of touch, maybe, maybe taste.

[15:39] But they are fixed to the floor of the ocean or something like that, and they don't go from one place to another, right? But the higher animals will have this, and along with that, to have senses that enable them to know things at a distance, like the sense of sight or smell, hearing, and so on, right? Okay. And that would belong to this fourth genus of powers.

[16:07] Well, the fourth. Actually, he's going to point out later on in the fourth or third book, the sensing or knowing powers in general, and the desiring powers move this fourth kind of power. Okay. Yeah. But this fourth kind of power is found not in all the animals, right? Yeah. But only in the higher animals, right? Right. And the higher animals that have, if you want to move from place to place, will have those higher senses that know things at a distance, like sense of sight, hearing, and and smell, right?

[16:42] Okay. And then the fourth kind of power, which he translates here as the what? Thinking power, right? Okay. Now the Greek word is, I think I mentioned it before here.

[17:03] Is this word? dianoetikon. And this is the word, a little different verb form, the grammatical form, but this is the form that, or the adjective Aristotle uses in the beginning of the Posterior Analytics, when he says that all knowledge that is dianoetikē is from preexistent knowledge. And if you look at the beginning of the Posterior Analytics, he has an induction there, right? So he shows how you know the sciences like geometry they proceed from pre-existent knowledge.

[17:47] You reason from the axioms, the postulates, the definitions, right? And from one theorem to another theorem, right? And then he points out how in dialectic you reason from opinion, right? You reason by induction from things that you sense and so on. And even rhetoric, huh? You reason by example. You take a similar thing from the past and reason from that to some likely event in the future, or even the enthymeme, right?

[18:17] You reason from likelihood and from signs. So he makes a kind of induction there, huh? That all knowledge that is dianoetikē is what? From pre-existent knowledge. So notice that word is similar to the word discourse in Shakespeare, because discourse means what? Running. Yeah, means running and means coming to know, right? Coming to know the unknown through the known, right? So it implies a a running from one thing to another, right?

[18:55] The mind is knowing one thing to another. Now that's not all the mind does, because if the mind had to know everything it knows to something else, it couldn't begin to know anything, would it? What's interesting to be names at this point, what we sometimes, or he sometimes in the text calls nous, right? Understanding, intellectus He

[19:21] uses this word here. Which is like the word Shakespeare uses in defining what reason. Okay. Now, if you look at at Plato in the sixth book of the Republic, he's distinguishing four kinds of knowing, using knowing in the loose sense. And at the top, he has something that is close to nous, or natural understanding, right? And dialectic which leads to that, and then he has geometry. He uses that same word, dianoia.

[19:54] Okay. So you could translate the thinking power, but maybe even using Shakespeare's word, you could call it the discursive power, right? Although the word discursive is not so, you know, familiar now in English, right? But the Greek word has that sense, and it's used by Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle in that sense usually. Okay. And you know, I compare it sometimes to the fact that he names the

[20:35] third power there. He called them the what? orekticon or the appetitive, or the desiring powers, right? And notice, desiring is a bit like what reasoning. In what sense is desiring like reasoning? It has what kind of an object? Yeah, and it's more like emotion too, right? It's more like emotion, and it's in order to get something you don't have, right? Okay. But it's interesting that we tend to name the desiring power from desire rather than from liking or what loving.

[21:27] Okay. Although liking or loving is really more basic than desire. As I mentioned before, I think when I like something or love it, if I don't have it, then I want it or desire it, and if I get it, I'm pleased or joyful, right? So really, desire, he supposes, liking. I wouldn't want a beer, or I wouldn't want the wine, I wouldn't want candy, I wouldn't want dinner, I wouldn't want steak or chicken or whatever it is, unless I like those things, right?

[22:17] Okay. What's interesting, huh? That's named from what the act that's more like motion. Things in motion sooner catch the eye. Shakespeare says, "What not stirs." And it's interesting that the act of reason that grabs our attention is the act of reason that's more like emotion, rather than understanding.

[22:44] And the act of the desiring power that grabs our what attention more is the one that's more like emotion, namely desire or wanting. It's that simple, then. Of course, I suppose when you don't have what you like, you are more aware of that, right?

[23:12] That struggle involved, maybe, pursuit, right? The same way when you are thinking or reasoning, don't know yet, right? Your mind's kind of motion. It's not bad to translate thinking there either, because thinking in a way, as opposed to understanding, right? Thinking is more like what emotion. When thinking about something, my mind seems to be in motion. And understanding, you know, Eureka I found it that the Greek is supposed to jump out of the bathtub.

[23:42] He saw the solution to some geometric question. Eureka I found it It was right down the street. I thought it was a towel, I guess. And

[23:53] the point was, he was still thinking at that point, right? Is that to observe because he's so excited, right? But so long as I am thinking, I am still kind of what in motion, my mind.

[24:07] That's one of the senses of discursus there that Thomas explains. ratio a ratiocinari when the mind continues in motion doesn't come to rest, as opposed to episteme, which means, as we said before, coming to a halt or a stop.

[24:27] So, as regards the names that the translator here gives, as I say, nutritive could be translated more familiarly in English with what the feeding or growing power, right? Both senses, Greek word. Sensitive is okay, but I I tend to say sensing more, right? You know, sensing powers. Appetitive, maybe more familiar in English with the desiring powers, right? The wanting powers, right?

[25:01] Motive, according to places, I won't change that much. The thinking part, if you understand thinking, there is having the idea of, you know, motion, right? Knowing one thing from another, okay, that's okay. If you want to have a Shakespeare's definition you could call it the discursive power, right?

[25:24] And we'll make that point again when he comes back when he starts to distinguish between this last power here, the dia noetikon as he calls it in the Greek, and

[25:38] the imagination, right? You'll do so not in terms at first of the imagination knowing the singular and reason understanding, universal, but you'll use it in the terms of what the freedom of imagination to imagine whatever he wants to imagine almost, and reason's lack of freedom to think just anything, and it's need to have some reason to think this or that. Okay, another example I gave you. You know, I can imagine a terrorist out there with machine guns that'll come in here and illuminate us, right?

[26:11] Okay. I don't have any reason to think there's a terrorist out there. I can imagine it though, nevertheless, right? Imagine John Paul II walking in the door now, can't you? See, okay. But I don't think that there are terrorists out there, right? I'm not free to think that John Paul is going to walk in here, another minute, right? See, I have to have some reason to think there is a terrorist out there, some reason to think John Paul II is is making visitation here to holy Trinity.

[26:44] Do you see that? See, and I have no such reason. See, but notice to have a reason for thinking something is to go from one thing to another, right? You see that? So when he first distinguishes that fifth power from imagination, which is still a sense power, a sensing power, he does so by its discursive act, right? Now later on you see what Boethius says. You know, a thing is singular and sensed and universal and understood, but that's a harder thing to see.

[27:20] Okay. So I just note then the importance of the way Aristotle names these, right? Now Thomas, in his commentary, if you had a chance to look at it, he gives a kind of reason there why there are five genera of powers, right? Okay, that's kind of unusual the way he shows these five genera of powers, huh? And he begins by pointing out how

[27:57] what's most fundamental thing is its being or its existence, right? When you get to the case of the soul, and especially look at the higher souls like the animal soul or especially the human soul. You see two kinds of being that we have. We have a kind of material being,

[28:21] because we are a body, right? And our body is material, and we need certain things to keep our body living, right, and so on. We need water, just like the plants do, right? But then, with man's mind, his understanding, you have a kind of what? Immaterial being, okay?

[28:50] This is something unique, huh? To living bodies, huh? You don't have this immaterial being at all in the what? Non-living things, huh? They have merely material being, right?

[29:07] Okay. So corresponding to the material being, the preservation of that is that first group of powers, right? I can eat. The feeding powers, right? We call them. the feeding powers. feeding and growing powers. The corresponding to this immaterial being, if you take it in the full sense of immaterial being, which would be that last power, right? Last one Aristotle mentions. Let's call it the thinking power. Okay.

[29:53] Of course, we get to the third book. Of course, we'll see the reasons for thinking that the understanding the reason of man is not a body, right? The reason for not being the brain, as we will sometimes think, right? Okay.

[30:13] Now, where do you put the Simpson powers? Are they? A material power or an immaterial power? material that it's dependent on that. yeah, But there's something immaterial about it too, right? See, because my eye, for example, receives the shape of everything in this what room, right? And goes to eventually my memory, right? So if I go home tonight. I can remember you people by your shape and your color and so on.

[30:46] I remember the shape of the room, maybe the windows and the fan and the chairs and the table and so on, right? Okay. But did I receive all these shapes and the things in this room in a material way?

[31:03] When I look at the fan, you know, does my eye become round? You know, in the way that a piece of clay or a piece of wood would receive the shape, right? What is the difference in the way that a piece of wood or marble, let's say, under the guidance of Michelangelo or some other artist, would receive your shape, right? And the way that I receive your shape through my eye, store your shape in my memory.

[31:35] If you cut open my head, right, would you find inside my head a little piece of bone with your shape on, or a piece of flesh or something like that, right?

[31:48] I seem to be able to receive the shapes of other things and their colors, ah, without losing the color or shape I have myself, right? And without what? Take on the shape. And receiving in a way, not as my own shape, but as a shape for something else, right? Okay. So, but nevertheless, with the case of senses, you're receiving in a bodily organ, right? So, sort of in between these two of them, and that's why we can speak of the.

[32:23] Sensing powers, huh? Okay. So he distinguishes three of those five, right? By the fact that the being of the thing is fundamental in it, but you have in the higher souls at least, right, a kind of material being and a kind of immaterial being, plus one sort of what in between, right? Okay.

[32:52] But then he points out that in the sort of immaterial reception of other things, what's received is like a form, right? He says, "Falling upon every form is some kind of inclination. So following upon these powers here, you have the desiring powers.

[33:24] That's why he gets in the fourth one, right? And then if you know something and you desire it, then you go for it, right? And then you get the Last one we haven't mentioned here, namely the kinetikon kata topon now, what is moving according to what? Place, right? The move according to place.

[33:51] So now sometimes they will distinguish only five kinds of powers here, five genera powers, but they'll distinguish four grades of life as he goes on to talk a little bit about the orders in these, and sometimes three what? Souls, right? Okay. And if you look at his notes on the the Pythagorean theorem, right? Interesting things about that, right? But what interesting thing about that is that what is the first

[34:47] right-angle triangle on whole numbers? Is it one, two, three. Or is it two, three, four? Or is it three, four, five? What's the first Pythagorean theorem in whole numbers?

[35:05] Three, four, five. Yeah. Because one, two, three. Three is nine squared, right? Two is four. One is one. Four and one don't add to nine, do they? So it's not a right-angled triangle. Two, three, four. Two squared is four. Three squared is nine. Four and nine are thirteen, right? Four squared is what? Sixteen. The first one is three. What? Four, five. Apparently, the Egyptians had discovered that in particular, right?

[35:38] Three, four, five is the first right angle triangle with whole numbers. So, I like to make use of three, four, five, right? And as I say, sometimes we distinguish five powers

[35:58] of life, living things, living bodies, four grades of life, and three souls, or three kinds of souls. And why this reduction from five to four to three?

[36:21] I've just been going through in a way the reason why there are five genera powers. huh? Okay, Following Thomas's brief explanation of that. But now, as he's going to go on, and you see that in the text there, he's going to say the feeding powers can be found without all the rest, right?

[36:45] The feeding powers and the sensing powers can be found without what? The locomotive powers and without the thinking powers, not vice versa. The feeding powers, the sensing powers, and the what move according to place powers. Moving according to place powers can be found without the thinking powers, not vice versa. And then, but the thinking powers in mortals, he says, right? are not found without these other four.

[37:25] So he's going to distinguish four grades of life, right? Those that have only the what feeding powers, right? Including in the feeding, growing, and reducing, right? Okay. And then above that, those that have in addition the sensing powers,

[37:52] but not the what moving powers, right? Those that have in addition the higher senses and the moving powers, and finding those on top that have the power of understanding, power of reasoning, and so on.

[38:19] And as I say, the order here in mortals. Is that the lowest one can be without all the rest, but not vice versa. The first two can be without the last two, but not vice versa. The first three can be without the power of understanding, but not vice versa. Okay. But the desiring powers don't give you a separate grade of life. Why not?

[38:43] It's always senseless. Yeah, because where you have sensing powers, you always have some kind of desiring powers, emotions, sense desire. And where you have the thinking power, you always have the will. Okay. So the desiring powers go along with the sensing, and thinking powers. So they don't constitute a what fifth grade of life. Okay. They always go with the second grade and also with that fourth grade.

[39:15] Do you see that? So though there are five powers of life, there's only four. Grades of what? Of life. See the reason for that? But now, why do we speak only of three souls?

[39:41] When they're thinking about the fact that the soul is something really what? Kind of unique in the material world, right? And that it rises above nature in the ordinary sense, even in the plant powers, right? The feeding powers, where the plant grows, right, in opposite directions, unlike nature that seems to be limited to one, right? But they're thinking especially the fact that the soul seems to rise above matter, especially the higher soul, right?

[40:15] The kind of immaterial being. So they distinguish three souls by three what? Degrees, you might say, of rising above mere matter, right? The feeding powers hardly rise above matter. Okay.

[40:36] But they do in some way rise above matter. They don't just act like blind chemicalism. These chemical changes in the living thing are ordered to growth and reproduction, so on. But the sensing powers are the kind of what? True materiality, but not so much as you do when you get to the understanding powers. So you have three souls, right? But at diverse immateriality. Four grades of life because one of the five powers falls upon the other, right?

[41:10] So from five you get four, and eventually what? Three, right? Why you eliminate one at each step? Step. Because the reason for that, right? Okay.

[41:23] The reason for why five powers of life give you only four grades of life is because one kind of power, the desiring power, automatically falls upon the sensing powers and the thinking powers.

[41:39] You see that? Okay. So it doesn't give you a separate level, right? Now, you don't have some animals that have sensation but don't have sense desire following upon sensation. Where there's sensation, he says, there's pleasure or pain, and there's going to be desire or aversion. The sense desire for what is agreeable to the senses and aversion for what is painful to the senses, and so on. Okay.

[42:05] So desire will go automatically, or follow upon automatically, the fact that you have sense powers. But it doesn't follow automatically if you have sense powers that you necessarily. Have the power to move from one place to another, because you might only have the lower senses like touch and taste a little bit, and not move from one place to another.

[42:31] But those who move from one place to another, he'll point out, they're going to have those lower senses too, like touch and taste, huh? But not everybody who has touch and taste will have sight and hearing and smell. Everyone who moves from one place to another will have senses, but everyone, everyone who has senses will move from one place to another, right? Okay. But those that have senses will always what feed and grow and reproduce, right?

[42:58] Well, not everything that feeds and grows and produces has sensation. And those who have sensation don't necessarily have understanding, because those who have understanding, immortal things, he says, right? He's always careful to point that out because he's aware of it. But we would call the angels right, and God is having understanding, huh? But all those who have understanding have senses, right? Okay. But all those who have understanding have will.

[43:25] You don't have some of understanding but no will. Might have not any willpower, but they got a will, and they're responsible for what they choose, right? Okay.

[43:40] Do you see that? Okay. So that's why you go from five down to four, right? And why do we speak of four grades of life, but only three souls? Well, because they're thinking of the soul as something that's rising to some extent above matter.

[43:58] And the plant soul barely rises above matter, right? And as to the ordering of matter, as Heisenberg, the great physicist, said, you know that a living organism, its order and its stability doesn't make much sense in the point of view of physical science alone, right? There is something there besides that.

[44:26] But the sensing powers, right, are moving much more above that's merely material than plants, and the thinking powers even more so. Right. So when I have that same leap, you go from those that move from one place to another to those who don't, right? It's not as intuitive. Now, if we ever get to the point of studying the Trinity, right, they have the same five, four, three,

[44:57] because they speak of what five notions, but four relations, but only three persons. And why do you go from five down to four, down to what three, right?

[45:17] What are the five notions in the Trinity? Well, you've got fatherhood, right? You know, and you got sonhood, right? Sonship. And you got common breathing.

[45:42] And then what? The proceeding of the son, right? But then they also speak of the father as having what? He's unborn, right? That's kind of negation, right? So one of the five notions is not really explicit relation.

[46:01] See, you have five notions, but four relations. You have the relation of the father to the son, and the son to the father, right? And then the common relation of the father and son to the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit to them, right? So you have five notions, four relations, but one of the relations, the common breathing, right, doesn't what? It distinguishes the father and son from the Holy Spirit, but it doesn't constitute a what?

[46:31] Separate person. Okay. So you have father, son, Holy Spirit. We're getting ahead of ourselves, right? But it's kind of interesting that five, four, three, right? Five powers of the soul, right? That we're going to study. Give us only four grades of life. And four grades of life, we distinguish only three souls. So why that reduction? You go from five to four to three. The same when you study Trinity, five what?

[47:06] Notions. Four relations, but only three persons. By a reduction, right? The. The best way to kind of think about this is to imagine that triangle, right, with the five, four, and three, right? And you're going to relate those five, the four, and the three, but. Okay. Question. Yeah, I was just trying to figure out the four grades of

[47:40] life. We're going to explain that now, and what goes on now, right? Okay. Yeah. Because I say the reason for that is that one kind of power, the desiring powers, right? Sure. It always follows upon sense, right? Sure. As you're going to point out there, that if you have sensation, you have at least a sense of touch, huh? Yeah. And therefore, you sense what is agreeable or disagreeable to your body, huh?

[48:07] What is painful or pleasant, right? And so, if you sense that, then you're going to have desire for what is pleasant, right? And you're going to flee what is what painful and destructive to your body. So there'll always be that desireing power, those sense desireing powers, following upon sense, right? Could it be the case that

[48:30] one of the or two of the four grades of light would relate to one of the souls, or you'd say one of the souls cover two of the grades of light? Now, what they're thinking about is about the soul. Now, some interesting, you know, if you study even if you go through the first book, you know, but people in general, even you know, the common person never really thought deeply about the soul.

[48:55] They almost think of the soul as something kind of immaterial, don't they? Yeah. You see. That was the common opinion there that the soul was, you know, kind of an air-like substance, distinction of body, right? Well, air seems to be almost what? Nothing. Yeah, but almost an immaterial thing too, right? Yeah. See. Shakespeare says there's. a vision there in the tempest, now. And these are actors, as I have foretold you, were all spirits, and they melted into air, into thin air.

[49:32] Because the word spirit comes from the word air, right? And even scripture speaks that way, right? And God breathed into the clay, right? A living soul, right? Okay. So we tend to think of the soul as something, sort of, right?

[49:49] Immaterial, right? Okay. So it's natural then to distinguish the souls by their what? Immateriality, although the soul is something immaterial in a way, it's something of the body too, right? So looking at the soul as something that, in a way, is rising above the limitations of matter and body, right?

[50:15] And there is a distinction rising above matter when you go from the plant to the animal that senses, right? And you go from the animal that senses to man who understands.

[50:32] Okay. But moving from one place to another doesn't seem to be another kind of what? You know, immaterial. Even though there is a way in which sometimes the higher senses seem a little more immaterial, right? The eye and the ear, right, than the sense of touch, but it's not as great a difference there as it is when you go from the plant that doesn't sense at all to the animal that senses, right?

[51:01] And it's not as great as when you go from the animal that senses but doesn't understand to man who understands, right? Has a completely immaterial knowledge.

[51:15] So if you think of the soul in that way, it's something very fine, subtle, almost immaterial, right? And even you know when the Greeks thought of the soul in terms of the four elements—earth, air, fire, and water—well, they would tend to think of the soul as being either air or fire, which seem less material than water or what? Earth, right? Okay. Our body seems to be more water and earth, then.

[51:48] You know how when when, uh, Othello comes in, and he's going to what? Kill Desdemona, you know the tragedy, right? But he has a candle in his thing and put out the light, right? And then put out the light, right? He's going to kill her, right? So you think of of the flame as being what? Like the soul, like life, Okay. And so we tend to think of the soul as something sort of immaterial, right?

[52:19] Just like you know the modern scientists, you know, used to talk about matter and energy. Well, energy for them is really something kind of material, but yet they saw—it's less material, right? And so they contrast energy with what matter, right? Okay. Whereas for the Greeks they think of the soul as being more something like energy or fire or air, something sort of immaterial, right? They think of the soul somehow as something immaterial, right?

[52:53] And therefore, a, a true materialist is not the sort of man who's apt to believe much in the soul, right, or think much about the soul, right? The true materialist, right? I think that's all it is—is matter, you know. He doesn't. he has no pretense to talking about the soul, right? So if you think about the soul, then it's something in a way, immaterial or rising above matter, right, in some sense.

[53:24] Then there is really just three noteworthy souls, right? The plant soul hardly rises above matter, right? About organized matter in a way that the physical world can't do, right?

[53:42] It's kind of amazing that you go out to one of these trees out there and you see, you know, the oak tree or maple tree and all these leaves, you know, thousands. You know, if you rake in the fall, I remember when I was a kid there. We had all these oak trees, you know, and see like every day come home in the fall from school, and mother send you out there, you know, to rake the leaves, because there's always a new batch.

[54:07] But all these leaves have more or less the same what shape, yeah, you know, kind of seed, you know, this ordering and so on, something this control over matter, you might say, right, in a plant.

[54:21] You think of all the, you know, even cells that there are in a plant now, but they're all kind of coordinated, right? The way the thing grows in a certain way and its shape and so on.

[54:36] But then the animal soul—the animal that senses and is aware of surroundings—and to some extent, you know, retain the colors and the sounds and the shapes of other objects, right? That animal seems to be much more above matter, right? And you get to man, right, even more so. You get to understanding. So that's why you see there are just three souls, with four grades of life, powers.

[55:12] I suppose the thought is: is the second and the third grade of life would that be animals, calling their animal soul, ultimately? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But down here, you have the plant, right? That's the lowest, right? And everything above that has those same powers, right? Okay. Then you have the second grade here. The ones that don't yet have the moving powers, and they're very much like plants, right?

[55:43] Yeah, okay. And these things that don't move around on the floor of the ocean. Aristotle was a green biologist, right? Yeah. After he left Athens, on green biology, and these things, much like we plants, almost growing in the ground, they don't move from place to place. But if you stick them with a pin, you know they they contract. They're in pain in a way that a you know a tree doesn't behave that way.

[56:07] stick with a pin, right? Because, you know, unless you have these ends, was it? Yeah, yeah. But that's that's fiction, right? Okay. But then the animals we're more familiar with, like the dog and the cat, and even the insects, right? They have the moving powers, right? Sure. But the higher ones now include the lower ones plus something more, right? Sure. It's a little bit like you know one, two, three, four, right?

[56:36] Four includes three, but something more. Three includes two, but something more. Two includes one, something more. That's where Aristotle will will say that the natures of things are like numbers, right? There's some truth to what Plato said, right? They're not not numbers, but they're like numbers, right? And one has what the other has plus something more, right? Okay. And then you come into man, the highest grade of life among mortals.

[57:09] But one of the five general powers didn't give rise to a separate grade, and that was the desiring powers, right? Because, as you point out, there are desiring powers that follow upon even the lowest of sensation, like sense desire, right? And you know the word that he uses in the text of Latin,

[57:35] they'll call that in Latin, the appetitus sensitivus, right? But that shows us picture of the senses, and then the will they'll call sometimes the intellectual appetite, appetitus intellectivus or something, right? Okay.

[57:57] So you say, why doesn't the desiring power give you a separate grade of life? Was because it always goes with the sensing powers and with the power of understanding, but the moving power doesn't always go with sensation. I said, and the sensing doesn't always go with the what?

[58:20] Feeding powers. They don't always have the sensing powers. Those that feed, and those who sense, don't always have understanding. Right? That's why you go from five powers of life down to four grades of life. But you have to understand that there's an order among these powers, right? And it's an order, something like the second sense order, right? In mortals, in mortal bodies, right? The feeding powers can be without the sensing powers, but not vice versa.

[58:51] The sensing powers can be without the moving powers, but not vice versa. The moving powers without the power of understanding, but not vice versa, right?

[59:04] But you can't have the sensing powers without desireing power. You can't have understanding without some desireing power. So, in virtue of your linking then the desiring. Powers to um the sensing powers, you're automatically also linking it into the feeding power because whatever has the sensing power will also have the feeding power. Yeah, but also the order is different, Sure. In other words, in the second sense of before, right?

[59:44] Remember how Aristotle said one can be without two, but two cannot. The same way here, this can be without that, but vice versa. Why the order of sensing to desiring, it's not that one might be in some sense a cause of the other, because your sensation is going to have the sense desire. Because of understanding, that's why you have will, right? Even if you try to understand why God has will, even though God's will is understanding not to do things like that and us.

[1:00:24] But when you try to understand that, we first understand that God has understanding, and then we see you must have will that is understanding.

[1:00:35] So in a sense, this is more of cause and effect. But the other is that second sense of before. One can be without the other, but not vice versa.