De Anima (On the Soul)
19. Touch, thinking vs. understanding, and studying the soul through its objects, acts and powers
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[0:00] So we have a little excursion here to understand that one sentence there in one forty, for appetite or desire is epithumia, epithumia kai boulesis, right, in the Greek,

[0:13] or in the Latin they say concupiscible and irascible and voluntary, right, the voluntas. But now in the last sentence of one forty, as we said here, he's giving a reason, right, why those who have the sensing powers also have the desiring powers, and the middle term there is what pleasure and pain, right, the pleasant and the painful.

[0:58] Now in somewhat similar way, he wants to point out how among the senses, touch and perhaps taste, which is a kind of touch, are common to all animals. Okay. Moreover, all animals have the sense of food. Okay. For touch is a sense of food.

[1:24] For all animals are fed by the dry and the moist and the hot and the cold. While touch is a sense of these, but they are fed by the other sensibles. Accidentally.

[1:37] For sound and color and odor, contribute nothing to food, but flavor is some one of the tangibles. Is that exaggerated or not? It obviously doesn't mean that the food smells bad. Okay.

[1:56] But notice, hunger and thirst are desires. Hunger is for what is dry and hot. Thirst for what is moist and what cold, right? And those are the objects of the sense of what. Touch, more, right.

[2:13] Flavor is like some seasoning of these, right? One must be more certain about these things. I'm going to make it more clear later on. But now let so much be said about them, that in the living thing,

[2:29] then living things, having touch, desire also is what present, right? Because once you have touch, you have pleasure and what, pain, right? And therefore desire.

[2:43] Now another thing you'd say about touch, of course, too, is that touch seems to involve the very what, life of the body, right? Your body is being destroyed, right? By being cut up, right? By touch that you know this primarily, right? And something is too hot, it's by touch, right? Something is too cold, right? By touch, right?

[3:12] Now he sets aside the imagination, which you'll investigate in the third book. But you got to realize too that the word imagination has got some equivocation in it too. We'll see.

[3:28] But in addition to these, now in addition to having, what, the sensing powers at least touch and desiring powers, right, which go together. In addition to these, in the higher animals, you could say the power of what, moving from one place to another, is also present, right? And finding in some. You have the what.

[3:57] Thinking power and mind, in men, huh? And should it be the case, and some other such thing, he's hinting right? at the angels and God, or something more honorable, right? Than man, okay. Now again, let's look at the Greek word there.

[4:23] Sometimes you look at the Greek word, you make certain connections of the texts, Aristotle that you don't otherwise. Now again, thinking power there. The Greek is dianoetikon, okay. And mind is what nous. huh

[5:06] And we mentioned how the word dianoetikon right? it's like the word what discursive power, right? The power of moving from one thing to another, the power to know one thing to another. But nous is the word they translate in Latin by what intellectus, right? And in what English by understanding, yeah. Now

[5:39] sometimes we use understanding as a synonym for reason, but it's being named from a little different act than reason, because reason is tied up with reasoning, which is discourse, right? dianoetikon right? and nous is tied up with what understanding. So we could have nous. I'll kind of emphasize it here. In Latin, that's translated usually intellectus in English, understanding. Now, in English, of course, the word understanding can name the act, right?

[6:20] Or it can name the ability for that act, right? Intellectus usually names the power, not the act. But he also uses intellectus and nous to name one of the virtues of reason, what you understand naturally or come to understand naturally without having to reason it out. Aristotle used nous in the Nicomachean Ethics for the name of a virtue of nous

[6:53] in this sense here, right? Thomas in Latin we use the word intellectus for this power that we have of understanding, but he also used the word intellectus for the name of that virtue corresponding to Aristotle's nous here, right? Now in English

[7:18] we could call that virtue understanding, right? I sometimes call it natural understanding, right? Because I translate, as I mentioned before, episteme by reasoned out understanding, right? But it's not bad just to call it understanding, period, because it's not understanding that you don't have to reason out. Those kind of just understanding, period, right? So you can call it understanding or natural understanding. I call it natural understanding usually.

[7:57] In the Greek and Latin, they don't use the word "natural" they understand what they're talking about. But then they have another name here for what when you reason something out on the basis of nus and other things, right? Then you have in Greek what they call episteme, another virtue.

[8:20] And so, you know, geometry would be called episteme. Natural philosophy would be called episteme, right? This would be called episteme. they're engaging right now. Wisdom is an episteme, right? And in Latin, they translate that by scientia. Now in English, you could translate that by science, but the word science has been kind of taken over by what we call experimental science, which is not the same thing as this at all.

[8:50] So sometimes I imitate the etymology episteme, which means coming to a halt or a stop. And then I explain it by the proportion of Boethius. It gives us in the De Caelo. You can just repeat that. Boethius says that reasoning is to understanding as motion in a way is to what rest, right? Okay.

[9:28] So when the mind is reasoning, it's going from one thing to another, right? And therefore, it has an act like motion. When it's understanding, as the word stand indicates, the etymology there, it's what it's penetrated something. It understands it, right? But it's not moving from one thing to another.

[9:48] Well, then I point out that motion can come before or after rest. And I'm in class. I say, now I'm at rest, right? This is before motion, but now you see now. You can see.

[10:11] And I'm at rest again, right? So you can speak of a rest before motion, and a rest after motion, right? Well, can you speak of understanding both before and after reasoning, or is that pushing the analogy too far? Well, some things we understand after we reason them out.

[10:37] But if you understood nothing, then you would what? If you understood nothing before reasoning, you'd have nothing at all to what reason from, right? So maybe there's an understanding that is before reasoning, an understanding that's after reasoning, right? Episteme in Greek means coming to a halt or a stop. So episteme in Greek names the understanding, right? That's after reasoning.

[11:18] It names, therefore, a reasoned out, a thought out understanding, right? But the reasoning, the understanding before reasoning, what are you going to call that? I could call it natural understanding to contrast it with this reasoned out understanding, but the Greeks would simply call it nous and this episteme, Thomas intellectus and scientia, right? Okay.

[11:46] So anyway, he uses the word nous there and the word dianoetikon, which a lot of times he translates the word nous by what mind, okay? But intellect or understanding would be maybe more precise because mind is sometimes used for anything that goes on inside of us, you know. So mind includes sometimes they include imagination, memory, sometimes even emotions, right? Used to be a column in the newspaper called "Mirror of Your Mind, " which was dealing with people's psychological problems.

[12:22] Okay. So again, he's kind of consistent in his translation here, right? Where he says thinking power in mind, right? So thinking power is dianoetikon right? And nous, right? Dianoetikon is a word we mentioned before, right? At the beginning of your thinking power, which he translated thinking power, the discursive power, to use Shakespeare's word. right You have another question? Yeah, I was just wondering about episteme and scientia Would the gifts of the Holy Spirit, you know, distinguish understanding and knowledge.

[13:09] Yeah. Well, again, that's another. That's another use of the word. Okay. Better not get into that. Okay. But there is some connection, you know, between the way those words are used there, right? And what they mean.

[13:29] Okay. As in men, he says, and if there is something such other or more what honorable, right? Now, what's he talking about in his next paragraph, one forty-two?

[14:09] He's showing how the definition of the soul that he's come up with is to all his particular souls, and instead of making the mathematical or arithmetical example that I gave, right, he gives it with what? shape. Yeah. Yeah. It is clear, therefore, that the account of the soul and of shape would be one in the same way. For in the one case there is no shape beyond the triangle and the quadrilateral and the pentagon, right, and the consequent shapes, right.

[14:46] Nor in the other cases are soul beyond the sorts mentioned. But there can be a common account regard to shapes, which will then befit all shapes, will be proper to no shape. I think he's speaking a little more precisely there. He's talking about what Euclid calls a rectilineal plane figure, right? Okay. So the definition of rectilineal plane figure is common to what? Triangle, quadrilateral, pentagon, hexagon, and each other ones, right?

[15:16] Okay. And likewise, the definition of soul, right, that we gave, it's the first act of a natural body composed of tools. That's common to the plant soul and the animal soul and to the understanding soul, right? Okay.

[15:34] But there's no soul apart from those three souls, right? Okay. And likewise, there's no shape. There's no rectilineal plane figure that is not either, in fact, a triangle or quadrilateral or pentagon or some other numbered side, huh? Okay.

[15:56] Similar in the case of the souls mentioned, whence it is laughable to seek in these cases and others a common account which will be the proper account of no beings and will not be of the proper indivisible species, while omitting such a proper account. In this consideration about shapes, about the soul, similar. For among shapes and in soul, the prior is always in the consequent in potency, as the triangle and the square, the nutritive and sensitive.

[16:24] So he's thinking of the fact that any square, or that matter, in a parallelogram, you've got what? Two triangles, right? So the triangle is included in the what? Quadrilateral, right? And so this is the way the souls are, right? What the plant soul has is in a way included in the animal soul, right? But something more. What the animal soul has is included in the understanding soul, but something what?

[16:55] More, right? Okay. By the same way you do with numbers, right? Aristotle sometimes compares the numbers, right? Two includes one, but something more than one, right? In a way, there's a two and three, isn't it? But something more, right? And four there's a what? Three, but something what? More, right? Sometimes they call this in Latin the potestative whole, right? As if the human soul. Is a whole that has the whole power of the soul, right?

[17:31] As you go down the grades of life to the plant soul, you get less and less of the whole power which the soul can have, right? So sometimes they say the soul, the plant is a soul. Sometimes they say it's part of a soul.

[17:50] Okay, it's a part of the full power. Whence one must ask. He goes on to one forty-three now. Whence one must ask about each of them? What is the soul of each? Right. Is what is the soul of the plant, and what is the soul of man, and what is the soul of the what beast? Right. Okay.

[18:19] So we're not going to be satisfied just with knowing what the definition of the soul that we saw in the first part of this book, right? That the soul is the first act of a natural body composed of tools. Right. We want to know. Now, what is the plant soul, right? And therefore, you have to study each of these powers in particular to see, right, what the plant soul, the living soul, the living and the what is called the threptikon here, right?

[18:47] The living soul and the sensing soul and the what understanding soul, right? And as you'll see, these souls can be understood by the power that what completes them, right? Okay.

[19:04] This is four, differs from three, really, by but it has in addition to three, right? That completes four. That fourth one, huh? So we're going to be distinguishing each of those particular kinds of soul, and then, as you know, distinction leads on to a consideration of order, right? One must inquire due to what cause they are thus in sequence. Why is the sensing power not without the what feeding power, right?

[19:42] While the feeding power is separated from the sensing power in plants, right? Again, not one of the other senses is present without touch, but touch is present without the others, at least without smell or sight or hearing, right?

[20:05] For many of the animals have neither sight nor hearing nor the sense of smell, but why is that so, right? You see. And of sensing things, some have the power of moving from one place to another, while some do not. Lastly, the fewest things have reason and what thinking, right? Okay. Now, what are the words that he translates there by reason and thinking, huh?

[20:49] Thinking would be dianoia again. Yeah. Probably reason. I don't know what logos or something. What? Something logos. Yeah, yeah. The Greek word is logismos man, huh? Logismos in the in the Greek here I guess. Logismos kai dianoia. Okay. Have you put this in any place? Now the logismos if you look up in a Greek dictionary, probably give us the first meaning, calculating, right? And then reasoning, right?

[21:50] Then maybe it means also the faculty, the ability to calculate and to reason. Again, that's very close to what Shakespeare is saying, because when Shakespeare says that reason is the ability for discourse. The two chief discourses of our mind are

[22:13] counting and calculating, right? And then, you know, defining and reasoning, right? So the logismos has that sense of calculating and reasoning. You can see in English, you know, how we tend to borrow the words from counting or calculating and apply them to reasoning. So the teacher says, "Put two and two together. " He means not add, but he means what? Put two premises together and draw a conclusion, right?

[22:46] And the hillbilly says, "I reckon that so, or I figure that so, right? " But I reckon, I figure. Originally, you know, probably applied to what counting or calculating. Let's start. But again, as I say, it's close to the word discourse, meaning a discourse. And we always hear about the word dianoia right See We didn't have the word dianoia huh See Dianoia. But it's almost like you know to understand through something, right?

[23:18] The intelligence brings out what it is. So again, Aristotle uses those words when he's first distinguishing this from the others, more than the words say knowing, right? Which would be like to understand, huh? You know, and knowing, we do a noetic division. That'd be hard to understand, right? It's using more these words, right, that indicate the movement of reason, the discourse of reason, because things and motions and it keeps the eye and whatnot.

[24:03] When you're reasoning, you seem to be doing something with your reason. Just understanding, you don't seem to be doing anything. And they said, going back to the the proportion of Boethius, huh? That reasoning is to understanding like motion is to rest. For rest, you don't seem to be doing anything, do you?

[24:27] But God, what he understands everything and doesn't do any reasoning at all. Never reasons. He understands reasoning, but he doesn't reason. He never thinks anything out. God hasn't thought out anything.

[24:44] Yet he understands more than we understand by thinking out things. A very, very, very weak mind, you know. Very weak. Of mortal things, right? In whatever reason is present, in these all the rest of the powers are too.

[25:30] While reason is not in all those in which each of these other powers is. But in some there is not even imagination. While some live by this alone. Talking about the animals, and by imagining, right, rather than by thinking.

[25:51] But there is a different account in the case of the speculative mind. He's going to distinguish between that and imagination in Book Three. It is clear, therefore, that the most proper account of the soul is the account which is about each of these sorts of souls. okay

[26:09] incidentally, when Thomas talks about man and the angels, right? And you have these two words in Latin. You have intellectus and ratio. Well, sometimes he says the intellectus of the angel will call intellectus, and intellectus of a man will call ratio or reason. Right. I mentioned this before. How this is a example, you know, of one kind of what

[26:50] name equivocal by reason. Let me just review that for a second. Just to see the word. There is two ways in which a name becomes equivocal by reason. Remember that.

[27:09] One is when it adds. The second name adds. One is when a name is said of. Let's take the simplest case: it has two things. In one case, when the name is said of two things, right, and it's kept by one of those two things, right, as its own name, and the other one gets a new name.

[27:35] And then the other is where the name of one thing is what. Carried over to another thing, right? The reason is some connection between the two, right?

[27:46] Now, this is an example where a name becomes equivocal by reason, because in one sense, reason is a intellectus. Other case, we're distinguishing between intellectus and ratio, right? Okay. Now, there's two ways that that is done. Okay, here are the two ways in which, which a name becomes equivocal by reason of being kept by one of the two things which you just said, or the other is getting a name.

[28:22] The one is when something is added, so it gets a name. That's one way, right? Yeah. Okay. And the other is when one of the two has Fully or perfectly or completely, right? What's understood by the common name, right? Okay. Let me give you two simple examples of that, right? Um. Let's take cat. Set of cat and kitten. Okay. Now, someone asks you, you know, a daddy, what's the difference between a kitten and a puppy?

[29:00] Well, kitten is a little cat, right? So, a kitten, in some sense, is a cat, and a puppy is a what? A dog, right? Okay. But then, sometimes we distinguish between a cat and a what? Kitten, right?

[29:19] So, why does cat keep the name cat and kitten? Kitten new name. That's because the kitten is imperfect, right? Doesn't have the full right development of the cat. Okay. But now, if we said animal, let's say, sometimes we say man is an animal without insulting you. Other times, insult you by calling an animal, right? Because sometimes we divide animal against man. Another time, we what say man is an animal with reason, right?

[30:07] Now, is this the same reason why that got a new name is kitten got a new name? Does man is is not fully animal? No, no. But it's because man is something very noteworthy, right? In addition to what is meant by animal, an animal is a living body having sensation. Okay. Well, the man and the dog both are living bodies having sensation, right? But man is something very noteworthy in addition to that that he has reason.

[30:46] But the animal, the beast, right, has nothing noteworthy like reason in addition to being a living body sensation. So he keeps the common name, and man is given a what? New name. Okay. Um.

[31:05] You see that those are two ways, right? Yeah. Now, when you divide understanding here, we need now the power of understanding, right? Which is common to man and the what? Angels, right? But sometimes that part of understanding in the angels called an understanding, and that part of understanding in man is called a what? Reason. So man has reason and not understanding. Well, which which case is that?

[31:40] Those two. The first case. Yeah, yeah. Because the imperfection of understanding, right? We don't understand very much, and what we understand, we basically have to use. Most of we have to think it out, right? Reason it out, right? So it's kind of a defective understanding here, right? In the sentences, Thomas often quotes the, it's the Greek origin that intellectus, obumbratus, the overshadowed intellect like that, kind of dark understanding, huh?

[32:13] Now sometimes we use the word "logistikon you know, and Thomas is explaining the definition of "Boethius," right? Of person, right? Individual person of a what? Rational nature, right? We're using rational, you know, almost a synonym for this, right? Otherwise, you couldn't speak of what an angel being a person. You couldn't speak of three persons in God, right? Okay. Aristotle's using the word "logismos" here at the end in that way that Boethius does in the definition, right?

[32:43] Because in the strict sense, he wouldn't say there's logismos in these more honorable things, right? Because there's no what calculating or reasoning, right? We understand everything. We understand by calculating, reasoning, a lot more, a lot better too, you know.

[33:04] My old teacher Kasurik used to say, you know, your guardian angel watching you try to make a reach a decision, right? It's like you're watching a, angel or me trying to figure out where to go.

[33:26] It's amazing how much you know Aristotle or Thomas understand in comparison to us, huh? But you know, in comparison to an angel, right? Thomas says, you know, the distance between the greatest human mind and the angelic mind, you know, is much greater than between the greatest philosopher and the most ignorant peasant, you know, out there in the field.

[33:54] My teacher Kasurik would say, you know, when you first encounter your, you know, your guardian angel after your soul separates from your body, huh? This is God, you know. This is God. I mean, how can you go so innocent? That's it. That's it, son. You know, just after this, this is creatures these angels, son. Innocent. You say no, no, no. It's like. Don't do that. It's a bit like in the Acts of Apostles, there you know, is an Ephesus there where they want to they want to priests to come out, you know, the pagan priests come out and they want to, you know, worship him as being one of the gods descended to the earth.

[34:32] St. Paul and St. Paul's ripping his clothes and oh, I'm not a. God, that's what your guardian angel would be. You can't rip his clothes off, obviously, but I'm not. You've eaten your rounds.

[34:49] You've been stupid all your life, and you still, still. Now let's look at just the first paragraph in the next reading, because Thomas says that at the end of his the sixth lexia. These divisions of the chapters aren't in Aristotle. You know, just editorial division, right? And this

[35:21] 145-146. He's answering now that question we raised in the problems in the premium, and that is, you know, should one consider the ability or power first, or the act of that ability or power, right? And should one consider the act first, or the object of that act, right? Okay.

[35:50] So should you talk about the ability to feed yourself first, or feeding? Should you talk about feeding first, or food? So it is necessary, however, for one intending to make an inquiry about these sorts of souls to grasp what each of these is, and then to look into the things following, and into the other questions linked with them. He's very brief. There, Aristotle Thomas says he's talking about we have to look at these.

[36:26] somehow, what they are, but then we have to look into the what bodily structure later on, and that's in the later books after the three books on the soul.

[36:44] Yet one needs to say what each of these is, as what the intellectual power is, or the sensitive power, right? Now let's look. Can we get

[37:00] what the Greek says here? Now here he does use the word noetikon right? The noetikon power, right? Okay, instead of dia noetikon. So he's gradually introducing you to that word. Okay. Or the sensitive power, and you're going to use the same word he used before, aisthetikon, or the what feeding power, right? Okay.

[37:29] Now he determines the truth about the order in which we consider those things. Moreover, one must first say what understanding is, and what sensing is. For the works and the deeds are prior to the powers in what? Account, okay.

[37:50] Same as acts. Yeah, yeah. So he says "proteron" in Greek, which means "before," right? Not to say what it is to understand, right? To know, right? And what it is to sense. For the acts and the what operations

[38:15] are before the what powers or abilities? The Greek says "kata ton logon." They're before in what definition, right? Okay. Now notice now the ability. How do you? know? you have any ability? How do you know you have the ability to see? Through the fact that you do see, right? And the ability to walk, right? Walking. And how do you know the ability to see and the ability to walk are not the same ability?

[38:50] Through the fact that seeing and walking are not the same, right? So, if you want to define these two abilities, you have to know that one is the ability to see, and the other is the ability to walk. So, you have to know what seeing and walking is before you can know you even have these abilities, let alone what they are ability for, right? So, seeing and walking are before in what

[39:14] definition, right? Okay. If ever one must first have considered the things corresponding to these, the works and deeds, due to the same cause, not determined first about these. Now he's saying what that for the same reason the objects, right?

[39:40] Now, the Greek word for object is what? Antikeimena is if what the opposites. What's an object? What's object? That's the word we usually use from Latin. What does object mean? Get the same root there in objection.

[40:04] Yeah. Yeah, something gets in your way, right? Going down the road, there's an object there. Your mind is going down. It's an objection, right? Actually, use the word antikeimena. It's a Greek word for opposites, right?

[40:26] This kind of a relative opposition, there, right? He says, due to the same what cause, huh? dia ten, auten aitian. Why? Because they're before in definition, right? So, let's just exemplify that with one.

[41:07] So, in the definition of the ability to see is to see, right? Okay. And in the definition of the ability to hear is to hear, right? Okay. Now, if to see is to sense color. And do here is to sense sound, then color is in the definition of the see, and sound in the definition of what here. Okay. So the objects are before the acts in definition, and the acts are before the powers in definition.

[42:00] And through the powers, we know what the soul. The soul, yeah. Now, sometimes you know people get them mixed up because he's defining soul in general, right, before he goes into the powers in particular. But he's he's coming to know the soul in general through its what powers and through its acts, right? Okay. Sometimes when I talk, you know, years ago the De Anima or this material, sometimes, sometimes I even begin with the powers just to avoid people getting misunderstanding this, right?

[42:34] And then come to definition of soul at the end, right? Okay. Because in a way, through a less distinct knowledge of the powers, right, he's arrived at the general definition of soul, and now through a more distinct knowledge of the powers, he's going to arrive at the definition that the particular souls, like you should never lose sight of the fact that basically the order is from the objects to the acts to the powers or abilities

[43:13] to the so soul, yeah. Now, when your soul is separated from your body, it's going to be reversed. Your soul is going to know itself, not discursively like this, because the soul is going to know itself directly through itself. Okay. And be like the way the angel knows itself, because your soul will now be completely separated from matter, and therefore to be fully understandable to itself itself.

[43:47] On this life, we proceed in this way here. So you can see why the seven wise men of Greece put up the words "Know thyself," right? Because man is capable of knowing himself, and the soul in particular is capable of knowing itself, but only through a long what discourse, right? And so it needs to be urged to try to know itself.

[44:20] Now that's a very you know fundamental thing. Yeah. And there is something similar to that in in ethics, say when you are defining the virtues, right.

[44:38] Is the virtue or the acts of the virtues known first, right? Yeah, and is the acts of the virtues known first, or the objects of those acts?

[45:05] The objects Yeah. Yeah In other words Remember, you have to know. Just take the first two virtues you deal with in ethics, which are courage and moderation or temperance, right? Well, courage is about something which is what something too precise, huh? Something that is destructive the body, right? Okay. Um, something painful, destructive to the body. But temperance or moderation is about something that is what pleasing to your body, right?

[45:38] Huh? Something that preserves your body or preserves your kind of body, right? Okay. Okay. So once you understand that difference, then you see the act is going to be somewhat different, right? Because something that is pleasing to your body is something you have to go for, right? And that's why the virtue has to, in a way, what moderate or temper, you know, restore it, you know, or back the thing, right?

[46:11] Um, but because the object of of courage is something which is painful and destructive the body, right? Something that you have to be kind of what strengthened in order to go towards, right? Because naturally, you want to withdraw from such a thing, huh?

[46:34] You see. So, yeah, in a way, you know, you could apply it also to the even to the highest virtues, like the theological virtues, right?

[46:46] Remember, you have to know what it is to to love God before you can know what charity really is, right? Okay, to love God, love your neighbor, right? But you have to know what God is in some way before you can know it is to love God, right? Huh? Right.

[47:12] You talk about the theological virtues. What do they have in common? The theological virtues that separates them from from the human virtues that Aristotle talks about.

[47:25] Yeah, their object is God, right? God in himself, right? So, in some sense, you have to know the object of those, right? And then the act, right?

[47:41] And then, in that way, you come to know the virtue, right? So that's similar to the order that he has here. It's very important to see that.

[47:56] But in in the ninth book of wisdom, there you see in a very general way that act is before ability, right? In definition, right? That's the first thing almost he says about them when he compares them in order.

[48:12] So when he talks about the feeding power, we got to talk about what food first, right? So let's stop. there. Right, okay, that's where Thomas ends his Lectio, right? now, he's going to start to talk about the living powers, huh? The powers of feeding and growing and reproducing itself, right? And eventually to understanding of the what plant soul, right? What defines it huh? Okay.

[48:57] And then he'll go on to talk about the sense powers in particular, right? Later on in the third book about the understanding power. Okay, that will be here next week. Understand, right? Okay, they're seeing some. He was a postmaster, right? And he mailed delivery twice a week, you know. And he worked as, of course, a lawyer. So he did a lot of. In fact, they say he appeared before the Illinois Supreme Court about 300 times.

[49:26] He, he argued cases before it, you know, before 1861. Wow. And he was a you know clerk in a store, right? He started his own store with another guy, you know. it didn't work out too well, you know. Reminds me of Truman, you know. He was too successful in the store business, for Truman, you know. And because, he had this interest in politics and so on. And then, of course, it's following his his his matrimonial interests too, you know.

[49:56] And one of the ones he was just about betrothed when she died, and when they're always dying of illnesses in those days. But finally, you know, he he broke off one time with Mary Todd, and then finally married her, right? But he was, you know, like some women are rather nervous on the day of their wedding. You know, he was very nervous on the day, and somebody saw him polishing his boots or whatever it was, and he said, "Where are you going?"

[50:21] He says, "to hell, I suppose." He says. He's so nervous. So, and he was involved almost in a duel. He actually was involved, just about.

[50:38] He was, you know, in in one of the newspapers there, right? So he was very much in the Whig Party, as opposed to the Democratic Party at the time. The Whig Party, and he wrote these under pseudonym, right? This mockery of the Democratic candidate, and he infuriated the Democratic candidate, and he demanded the newspaper who had written this, right? And actually, about that time, he was getting engaged to this Mary Todd, right?

[51:07] And and she actually helped to write a little bit of some of the satire. She and a lady friend of hers, and of course, he was demanding, you know, we should the newspaper and get the. So Lincoln took on himself the whole responsibility for the articles. He didn't want Mary to get involved and so. And so the guy had a military background, seeing the Democratic candidate. So choose your weapons, you know.

[51:32] And he sent General so-and-so around with his challenge and so on. Well, Lincoln, of course, is a big man. I mean, he's a tall man, six feet four, right? But the other guy is, you know, probably much better shot. So Lincoln had some experience. He had been a soldier for a while too, right? And one of the Indian Wars there. And so he chose, you know, the sword, right?

[51:52] And so there's a law against, I guess, sword dueling in Illinois. So they're all set to meet across the border, right? And down there, and then some, I guess, mutual friends or like that, you know, came down there, and because Lincoln was not going to withdraw his attack on this other guy, he went to Nashville to reply, withdrew his, right? So finally, prevailed upon the the offended Democrat to to withdraw the remarks he had made in the letter he had written in, you know, attacking the attacker.

[52:26] And then, then Lincoln said, "Nothing personal intended, it was, just a political. " So I mean, they're all ready to fight you know until you know Mary Todd, I guess, got some people down that knew both of them or something, you know. stop the thing. So so he may end up like even like uh, Alexander Hamilton, you know. So bring all these these little little details about this kind of kind of funny, you know.

[52:50] Uh-huh. But uh, it's kind of given. I yeah, I know the depression and bouts of you know kind of depression. I remember reading how, um, I was curious to read about the White House. So it wasn't really a practicing thing, you know. But you know, when he was very depressed, you know, the woman gave him the Bible and some of these things. I think a little bit of advice, you know, so on, you know.

[53:17] So it's uh to some extent. he he he for a while, at least, he was a believer in what he called the doctrine of necessity, you know, which would kind of go against. You know, freedom of the will. Oh, you understand that?

[53:31] It's not, It's not really clear that he was a believing Christian, you know, or he was a believer God. I mean, I mean, there's a lot of statements that indicate a belief in God too, but you know, not altogether clear.

[53:48] Just for you.