De Anima (On the Soul)
21. Purity and Temperance: Shame and Honestas, Catharsis, and Aristotle's Rules for Acquiring Virtue
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[0:00] Now, starting at one fifty-four, where he refers back to Empedocles, he's going to clear up some mistakes about the soul, right? And you find similar mistakes in a more sophisticated form, perhaps in modern times, huh? But those who might try to reduce what takes place in the living body merely to what you have in what the physical sciences, huh? And it's interesting, though, although you have some biologists who might try to do that, they're getting more suspicious of that attempt now.

[0:33] But Heisenberg, huh? Heisenberg, when he talks about these things a little bit in the Gifford lectures, there, he says that the stability of the living organism, right, doesn't make much sense from the point of view of physical principles alone, right? There's a stability in the living organism that hundreds of chemicals working on their own, independently of each other, doesn't fit very well, huh? And it's kind of interesting because Heisenberg, you know, was of course a student of the great Niels Bohr, right?

[1:11] And what led Niels Bohr to introduce the quantum into the atom was that they were first trying to imagine the atom as a kind of miniature solar system.

[1:25] And you know, if our solar system was coming into what, bumping into other solar systems all the time, our planets would be all what, wacky in their movements, huh? In fact, they say they discovered. I've read that the the last planets, right, because the last planets were influencing the what paths of the known planets, and the known planets were not moving exactly in the in the way they should be according to Newtonian physics.

[1:56] But Newtonian physics had been so successful, they said rather than doubt the Newtonian physics, let's let's guess that there are other planets we don't know about, and their mathematics was so perfect that they could actually predict what other planets would be, and they found them, right? It shows you how delicate, in a sense, the solar system is. That another one or two extra planets affect the orbits of all the planets.

[2:24] We can imagine it. Boom, boom. The solar systems were in collision. There, there'd be. There'd be none, you see, and so you're trying to understand with Rutherford, you know, kind of the nucleus as being like the sun and the electrons going around it. They should have no definite paths, no definite orbits, and so on. And so Bohr realized that there was a stability in the atom that could not be explained in the light of what of mechanical principles, right?

[2:55] But even for Schrödinger, Heisenberg coming to think about the living organism, even in terms of what we know from quantum theory about the atom and so on, that the stability of the living organism doesn't make much sense. You have all these chemicals operating on their own, right? Yeah.

[3:17] But now in a more simplified form, you find this Empedocles here, see, because the the planet, I mean, not the planet, but the, the plant grows what up into the sky and down into the air, right? Well, he says, well, it goes down to the earth. Because of the the element earth among the four elements, you know, being heavy, going down to the soil, right? It goes up because of fire, the lighter element.

[3:41] You know, fire actually tends to rise, right? See, well, what would would give you any unity to the what? plant just do the full part, right? You see, it's a little bit like what Heisenberg is saying, right, in terms of our more sophisticated chemistry. So he says, "Empedocles does not speak properly, adding this that growth happens in plants by sending roots down, because earth is born thus naturally down, right?

[4:10] Actually, you go, a cloud of dirt falls to ground, right? So up it goes up in the air because fire is born upwards, similar to air. okay? The first question he gives is that you know when you speak of up and down in the plant, it's not the same thing as in the what universe, huh? And he says, "For he does not grasp up and down fittingly, for up and down are not the same in everything and in the all.

[4:44] " You know, he makes a comparison. But as the heads of animals, so are the roots of plants, huh? So through one's head, through one's mouth, particular one takes in what nourishment, right? The raw materials you need, huh? The plant takes them in through its what roots, right? So they're down rather than up, right? See, now the animals are kind of what um in between the plants and man, right?

[5:12] Because man has his what mouth and his head up looking to the sky, right? Because he's interested in divine things, right? He's an astronomer, like deities, right? Watching falling into the wells, huh? And the animals kind of what? No, turned downward his head, right, towards the earth, huh? And but the plant is complete upside down in that sense, huh? So man is again a macrocosm, right? That what's up for man in man is up the universe, down in man is down in the universe, as it seems.

[5:52] But then the more serious thing here is one fifty-six. In addition to these, what is that keeps together things born to contrary places, the fire and the earth? For they will be torn asunder if there will not be something preventing this, huh? But if there is, this is the soul, and that's the cause of both growth and what feeding, huh? Aristotle sometimes contrasts nature in the more narrow sense as separate from soul.

[6:26] You know, I've talked about that way of naming haven't I. Now sometimes we say the soul is a nature, and sometimes we distinguish nature and the soul.

[6:38] But the soul, unlike nature, nature seems to be limited to one of two opposites, right? So in the ancient science, there the earth goes down, right, and the fire goes up, but they don't go in both directions. But the plant kind of overcomes that, right? But as you go up in the soul, you see this even more so until you get to man, and you have the same knowledge of what opposites, right?

[7:11] And therefore, the human arts, like the medical art or art of grammar, they can do what contrary things, right? The fifth book of Aristotle's Politics is about how to corrupt the government and how to what preserve. Same knowledge, right?

[7:31] Can't really know one without the other. So as Shakespeare says, there nature not be able to be more than one thing. In Coriolanus, nature is more limited to one. Why, as you go into the soul, even a little bit in the plant soul, has the ability to grow in opposite directions. But the further the soul goes up, towards the understanding soul the soul, towards the understanding soul, you start to see this transcending contrariety.

[8:05] And that's one way too that they come to understand how the understanding soul is immortal, Because corruption is changed from one contrary to another.

[8:17] And contraries are not contrary in the soul. That's why you have the same knowledge of contraries. You see, they're not contrary in the soul. The way we know is not the way things are. Things that are contrary to each other, when understood, are not contrary in the soul, but they're understood to be contrary themselves, like virtue and vice, and health and sickness, and so on.

[8:47] Now some attribute life to what fire, right? Okay, So at 157, he takes up the second mistake. It seems to some authors that the nature of fire is the cause of feeding and growth simply, and these would be analogous to the modern scientists who want to try to explain feeding and growth simply by what physical principles.

[9:19] Now it's interesting among the four elements. If you remember the four elements, the Greeks came to individually, and then Epedocles. Took the four together, huh?

[9:36] And the poets spoke of Mother Earth, right? And then Thales spoke of water as beginning of things. And Anaximenes, if you remember, spoke of air. And then finally Heraclitus of what fire?

[9:56] Now it's interesting that in these more crude, you might say, opinions about what the soul is, hardly anybody would say that Mother Earth is a soul, or even that water is a soul, right?

[10:15] But the poets like Homer speak of the soul as if it were a what air-like substance, huh? And sometimes you know people today, I think, when they think about the soul, they imagine some air-like substance, right? Okay. But sometimes they compare the soul to what fire, right? Metaphorically speaking right? So the famous scene there in Othello, you know, where Othello comes in, he's going to kill Desdemona, right?

[10:55] And he's got a candle, you know. He speaks of putting out the light of the candle, and if he does that, he can again illuminate. But if he snuffs out her light, he can't. What? He doesn't know where that Promethean fire is that he can in her life again. But notice the sort of light is there between what putting out the candle light and snuffing out. even the words snuffing out in the life of somebody, right?

[11:21] That's what he's going to do. he's going to choke her, right? But notice, something about these: air and fire seem less material than what earth and water. Okay. Just like in modern science, sometimes they speak of what matter and energy. Although energy is still something kind of material, but the use of language is interesting, right?

[11:50] Louis de Broglie's got a very interesting book called Matter and What Light. right? A bunch of different papers here. La matière, la lumière. you see? But notice that contrast, right? I suppose if you've been down to a modern scientist, he'd still say light is something material. But notice the use of the words there. This kind of distinction made that light seems less something material than than atoms and things of that sort.

[12:21] And likewise, when they speak of matter and what energy, right? Although we've got E and equals M C squared and so on, energy and matter. They use the words, right? The more gross matter, you might say, keeps the name matter, and the more subtle and fine and thin gets the what name of light or energy or something. That's right. The same way here in ancient times and down all the way through history, the soul is more like air or fire than like earth or water, especially like fire because fire seems to move and transform things, and so kind of you know kind of anticipation of the soul as being something kind of immaterial, right?

[13:10] We haven't quite understood the immateriality of the soul yet, but fire especially seems to be like living things because it seems to what grow and digest things, consume them, right? I consume my food. Fire consumes things, and fire seems to kind of grow, right? Okay, but strictly. Speaking is the fire growing, or is it generating another fire? Right? What fire jumps across the road? Is I was saying, you read about these fires in Colorado, the places they're in where the fire is spreading through the the forest.

[13:45] You know, is it the same fire growing, or is a new fire being generated by the old fire, and the old fire is dying out? You know, when it's consumed all the material there, right? But there's some similarity there, right? So Aristotle's taking up this opinion here that fire is the cause of what digestion and growth, right? Well, he's going to admit it could be as a what, as a tool of the soul, right?

[14:14] But fire just grows with whatever what consumes whatever's there, right? It goes on forever. I mean, if the forest went on over the whole earth, that fire down Colorado, right? As long as you got dry forest, it's going to go burning forever, right? Okay.

[14:33] Until you get to the Pacific Ocean, it stops, right? But this is not the way living things grow, right? They grow to a certain height and then they stop, right? And they grow in a certain what shape, right? It's kind of marvelous when you think of you know you take one of the one of these trees out here, and there's what thousands of leaves on there, right?

[14:54] And every leaf is more or less the same shape for that type of tree, right? It's kind of amazing thing to think, isn't it? See, if you have something like fire raging here, you know, and you end up with something different in shape, no? Wherever the trees or the burning material happen to be, that's where the fire went. See, so fire might be something, you know, to digest things, but it's not the main cause because it would not lead to this ordered finite whole.

[15:31] It seems to some author that the nature of fire is the cause of feeding and growth simply, for this alone of the bodies and the elements of those four elements appears to be feeding and growing, due to which someone might assume this to be what is at work in both plants and animals. It may, however, be somehow a joint cause, right? Huh? Like an instrument, yet not the cause simply, huh?

[15:54] But rather the soul is the cause, and he gives us a reason for that. For the growth of fire is unlimited, so long as there is fuel, so long as there is dry forest, right? It's going to keep on going, right? While of all things framed by nature, and especially of living things, there is a what a limit, right? And a ratio both of magnitude and growth.

[16:20] So these are from the soul, but not from the fire, and rather from the account or the definition. That's what the form is, right? Form is what gives you defines things, rather than from what the material out which is made.

[16:38] Up to this point, which occupies seven eight two lectios in Thomas, right? That's kind of setting the stage here for discussion of the living soul, the first soul, right? But now starting one fifty nine, and going down to the end of this chapter, right? He's going to determine now about the living soul, the first soul, the plant soul, if you wish. Okay. He's going to follow the order we've seen before, which is

[17:15] talk a little bit about the object first, right, and then about the powers, and finally about the what soul that has those powers. However, since the same power of the soul is feeding and generating, and he says same power, he means in general, right? But there are particular powers: the power of feeding yourself, and the power of growing, and the power of reproducing are separate powers under this same general kind of power.

[17:50] It is necessary to determine about food first, for by this work or this object, it is separated from the other powers of the what soul, right? So food is the object of what this power, right? Okay, so we got to talk about the object before the act, right? Right. Okay. Now it's kind of interesting how metaphorically we use the name of the object, right? Um, of this power, and even the names of the desires for this object, huh?

[18:31] And talking about emotions, right? And talking about even about reason. Let's give some example here from Shakespeare. You know the play there, much ado about nothing, huh? In the play, much ado about nothing, there's among other characters, Beatrice and Benedict, right? they're always kind of making fun of making fun of each other, right? And eventually they're tricked into to marriage in a way. I'm going to read the whole play, but anyway, um, they have a copy of from Charles the first, of, the King of England.

[19:18] There, he used to call the play Beatrice and Benedict because he liked those characters. But just read a little bit here. See, Benedict has been saying something, and Beatrice says, "I wonder that you will still be talking, Signor Benedict. Nobody marks you. "

[19:36] And Benedict turns to her and says, "What, my dear lady, disdain? Are you yet living? " And she says, "Is it possible, disdain, should die? " While she has such meat food to feed it, Signor Benedict. And that's what she's saying, right? He's the object of her disdain, right? But he says, "What, disdain? Is it possible disdain should die while she has such meat food to feed it, Signor Benedict?

[20:07] " See. So sometimes you find people even in daily life speaking of feeding a passion, right? If I keep on telling you reasons why you should be angry with somebody, right? I might be said to be feeding your what? Anger, right? See.

[20:31] And then we carry the over and we apply it even to the mind. Sometimes we say something is what food for thought, right? Okay. And Socrates says he speaks of a feast of reason and so on. Okay. When you say food for thought, how is what is food for thought related to to thought or thinking? What do you mean? You say food for thought. As the object of the.

[20:58] Yeah, it's something to think about, right? So it's the object, right? So I mean, we're very much aware of the fact that food is the object of these powers of feeding and so on. So much so that we metaphorically apply it to the what? To the emotions. It's very common, right? See.

[21:21] You know, Thomas will speak of the beatific vision as that, you know, convivium in a fabula, that inexpressible banquet, right? And Christ speaks somewhat that way, you know, not. taste as until I taste the humor Or you'll sit at my father's table, right? You know. And that's interesting, right? If you sit at my father's table, we're going to eat the same food that my father's eating. I'm eating, right?

[21:48] Which means that you'll have the same what? Object, right? In the beatific vision that God has in his natural understanding of Himself. What an amazing thing, huh?

[22:02] And then we also apply sometimes the hunger, thirst, right? O God, you are my God, whom I seek for you, my flesh, minds, and my soul thirsts, right? Okay. Or Thomas the Adorator Devotee says, "Huh? You know, Seicho, he's thirsting for God, huh? "

[22:27] As if that's kind of to the soul, like like water or something, right? Source of life. So it's very much the idea of an object there.

[22:44] But just that way, by by way of showing that, in fact, we all do think of food as the object of these as power, right? So much so, it's clear to us that we carry it over and apply it to the other ones. When the gospels there were, the apostles kind of go in search of food, I guess, and Christ is left there at the well or something, and and he comes back and says, "Yes, food."

[23:06] And they thought someone brought him food, and he says, "My food is to what? Do the will of my Father." Yeah, that's that's an awfully awfully interesting way of speaking, isn't it? You know, but why does he speak that way? See, what is the reason of that metaphor?

[23:28] Well, one reason perhaps is to bring out the what intensity. Of his desire to do the will of the Father, right? You know, all these guys are hungry, you know, looking for food, right? You know, and his food is to do the will of his Father, right? So he has an intense desire, right? You know, hunger and thirst; these are very intense desires, and you know, if you haven't had food for some time, you know, you realize how how intense these desires become, right?

[23:55] We're very much aware of them. So metaphorically, we use them in talking about desire for God, right? When it's intense, so there's three Psalms of thirst, right? You know, one in each of the three fifties.

[24:14] The hind longs for the running waters, right? Okay, there's one in the last fifties too. So, notice importance then huh speaking metaphorically of understanding, you know, that food is the object here, huh? Okay.

[24:41] So we got to talk about food first. Now, one sixty, he talks about what it seems at first sight. It seems that the contrary is food Food for the contrary. Now, why does he say that? Well, because food is going to be changed, right? And in natural philosophy, we learn that change is between what contraries, right? And also, to digest your food, and one contrary acts on the what other?

[25:11] It's like the hard acts on the soft, right? And the hot and the cold, and the wet and the dry, and so on, right? So contrary acts upon contrary and changes the one contrary to the other. So food's got to be something contrary, right? To the to the Fed, okay? That's what it seems at first sight, anyway, from what we know of natural philosophy. And not every contrary, but things that have a mutual generation, as he says.

[25:38] Can he compares it to fire, right? Okay. Well, water is more the food for fire, as you can see in the candle, right? Liquefies, turns into fire. But then he raises a difficulty in one sixty-one here. But there is a difficulty, for some say that like is fed, just as it grows by like.

[26:06] So if I grow and have more flesh and more human bone and so on, I'm not a cannibal. Am I have to grow by the addition of like to like? Add more of the same. Okay. Whereas I was going to solve this by saying there's an element to what. Yeah.

[26:37] So he's saying food in the beginning is what contrary or unlike the fed, right? But after it's been digested, right, broken down, now, has way to be assimilated, then it is now what like the fed, right?

[26:57] But all things change, but for all things changes to an opposite or middle. Moreover, food suffers somewhat something by what is feeding, but not the latter by food. This is a power that acts upon a subject, right? So he's transforming it, huh? So in one sixty two, then he sees the solution: whether the food is what is finally added or what is first makes a difference. If both the one undigested, the other digested, in both ways it might be called food.

[27:28] For as undigested, contrary is fed by contrary. while as digested, like by like. Once it appears that in some way both parties speak rightly, and what not rightly, right? I think it's interesting thing Aristotle sees that those before him some have said that food is is like the fed, and some say it's unlike the fed, huh? He says, well, there could be an element of truth in the thinking they both seem so far the truth.

[27:59] I kind of imitate that, you know. I ask people, you know, is philosophy a reasoned out knowledge or is it a search? Most people want to say, well, it's a search, right? But it could be a search in the beginning, right? And a reasoned out knowledge in the what end, huh? So Aristotle sometimes calls philosophy, zetesis, " which means a search, or "historia, " an investigation. Other times he calls it an episteme, right, which means a reasoned out knowledge, reasoned out understanding.

[28:35] It might be that both answers are true, but not same way, right? Now, when they talk about the mind, sometimes they say something like this, huh? Because when you hear something unusual and difficult from Thomas Aquinas or Aristotle or some other teacher like that, it's first like something that is what not yours, unlike your thinking, unlike your thoughts, right? But if you can digest what Aristotle or Thomas is saying, then it becomes what like your other thoughts, huh?

[29:20] And you can assimilate it, huh? Father Boulay used to say that the Greek word "krino" you know it's tied up the Greek word for judging. It's first, tied up with digestion, right? And people can't judge, you know. He says they have constipated minds. He says,

[29:40] but very concrete way of speaking, though. Judgment is what? What is judgment? You speak of judgment as an act of the mind, an act of reason. We should come back and pick up the mind later on. What is judgment?

[30:05] Well, the genus of judgment is separation. Judgment is the separation of the true from the false by some beginning. So, I'll take a simple example of this. huh? When you put us taking up the, let's say, the sixth theorem there, book one, right? The sixth theorem in book one says that if these two angles are equal, then what? These two sides must be what equal, right? Okay.

[31:03] Now that's the true, true. Falsity would be that those two sides what might not be equal, right? Okay. Now, how does he separate? How does he judge this matter? How does he separate the true from the false?

[31:22] Well, he says, if one of these lines was longer than the other, it doesn't make any difference to me which one is longer. But let's say the one here on the left is longer. Well, then I can cut off on the longer one a line equal to the what shorter one, right? Okay, and then I can draw a line from where that shorter one is cut off down to the opposite corner, right?

[31:52] I can do that, right? And now I have two triangles here, right? One of which is obviously smaller than and a part of the other, right?

[32:03] Which have an equal what angle, right? This angle is equal to that angle, and this side is equal to that side, and this side is common, right? So you have two equal triangles there, right? According to your admissions, right? But obviously the lesser, is equal to the greater. or the part to the whole. So you go back to the beginning in our knowledge, which is that the whole is more than the part, right?

[32:40] That the part is not equal to the whole. The lesser he says is not equal to the what greater, right? I separate the true from the false now by that beginning, which is an axiom in our mind, right? Of course, the very first beginning in our knowledge is is is the senses, right? So is Berkus standing or sitting? Berkus is standing. Berkus is not standing. One's true, one's false, right?

[33:10] Can you separate the true from the false now? How do you separate the true statement, Berkus is standing, from the false one, Berkus is not standing? You go back to the beginning, which in this case, is your senses, right?

[33:32] So. Go back to the beginning, maybe ultimately to the senses in some ways, but go back to the axioms, something of that sort. Now you may change a little bit for practical matters. You say separation of the good from the bad, right?

[33:53] Well, I guess I don't say the word, but Boulay used to say that the Greek word. The same word was used for judgment and for digestion, right? Because what you do when you digest your food, your body is going to reject some things and eliminate them, right? As not being, you know, useful for the body, right? And other things it will take in and try to assimilate them, right?

[34:21] So you can't separate what you can use, what you can't use, the good from the bad, and so on. Then you're constipated. You got problems. And he says most minds like this, right? That they read all these things and they can't do it. But separate the truth from the false, and they get more and more constipated and finally they can't think anymore. He's very clear-speaking, right? It makes it very clear, right?

[34:47] But the other thing that's interesting about that, you know, being like and unlike, they say, when you first hear something, you know, well that's Aristotle's idea, or that's Thomas's idea, or somebody else's idea. But if it's really a good idea, true idea, you think about long enough, you can, as we say, what make it your own, right? See, and I mean my first teacher, Eric Osterrieth used to say, you know, you have to read even Aristotle and Thomas with a grain of salt, right?

[35:18] You know, you see, because you're going to try to make this your own, right? And then you what? Yeah, my first, you know, when it's something kind of really far from your understanding, that seems to be so and so's thought, right? It's not my thought, you know. If I really succeed in understanding it, you know, you understand these theorems and now they become yours, huh? Like Augustine says there in the Confessions, huh?

[35:48] You know, it's not my truth or your truth, you know, but it's common to us both, though. So a lot of nice analogies here, and he's speaking. You're going back to food.

[36:06] Now he starts to talk about the acts a bit here. huh? Now, up to this point here, he's talked in 160, 161, 162, about the object here, which is food, right? Now he's going to talk about the the acts in comparison to food, right?

[36:26] Since no thing that does not share in life feeds. No, sometimes we speak of feeding the fire, right? You know, you give another thing, but you are really not feeding it in the strict sense. There is a sort of likeness there, but it's really you are what generating more fire.

[36:48] But the ensouled would be a feeding body, as ensouled, huh? the living body. Whence also food is relative to the ensouled, and not accidentally.

[37:01] Now, he's distinguishing now kind of the way food is related to the fundamental power of feeding yourself and how it's needed to grow. And what's the difference there? However, to be food and to be able to cause growth, are different. For insofar as the ensouled is an amount of food, is able to cause growth as this something in substance, it is food. It means it's more the what object of the feeding power, for it conserves a substance, and exists so long as it, and the substance exists so long as it can feed.

[37:37] What is he saying there, right? He's saying that we can consider food as this something which is Aristotle's way of speaking of an individual substance, right? Okay, so this something is a substance,

[37:54] and that's why I feed by substance, you might say, right? Preserved by substance, right? Okay, but in so far as it's what so much, in so far as it's quantity, right?

[38:09] Then it's tied up with not feeding so much, but with what growing, right? Okay. So there is just two things going on here. One is the preservation of my substance, the preservation of Dwayne Berquist, right?

[38:32] And I have to do it all my life. I have to eat in order to preserve Dwayne Berquist I'm a this something, an individual substance. Okay. But when I was growing, and I stopped growing now, maybe I am shrinking, but I stopped growing,

[38:48] and I suddenly lost weight. It's in so far as it's what so much, right? In so far as it's what quantitative, right? Okay, a little different relation to that, right?

[39:04] So as they say, the sons of immigrants might be bigger and taller than their father, right? You know, each time when you see, you know, they don't have the same same dad we have, right? Okay. The old Big Ten there, you know, Big Ten had a contract for the Rose Bowl all the time because all these corn-fed farm boys in the Midwest, you know, were really going to the state universities and making good football players, right?

[39:34] So but they're getting lots of food, right? So as quantitative, right? It refers to what growing, right? Aristotle and Thomas had the idea that reproduction is kind of the what the excessive food, right? That goes into that, right? In other words, charity begins at home. You got to take your own body first, right? Use food to to to grow and to what preserve yourself, right? See, but then there is something in addition, then you can what get into business of reproduction, which makes some sense in terms of fasting and other you know ascetic practices as cutting down people's concupiscence right?

[40:21] I think it's a little more complicated, maybe than Aristotle and Thomas saw to be, okay? But food is is related to the to these three acts, huh? To preserving yourself, you know, feeding yourself, and that's preserving yourself and growing and reproducing in a somewhat what different way, right?

[40:45] Now it gets down to generation. He makes a distinction that you don't generate yourself, but you generate another like yourself, right? But you feed yourself, right? In a sense, you what grow yourself, right? Okay, that's different between you know, you know. We go back to philosophy of nature there, and I contrast the the growing of a tree and the the brick wall getting higher, right? The brick wall is not really making itself get taller, is it?

[41:16] If you put the cement and the brick, spider won't soak them in and build itself up like that. But the tree will soak things in and and build itself up, right? So in a way, you feed and grow yourself, right? But you don't generate yourself. You generate what another, right? Okay, like yourself, huh?

[41:40] That's because in one sixty-five, there, right? Whence this is one sixty-six. Whence such a principle of the soul is a power such as to conserve the one having it as such, while food helps it to be at work. Whence deprived of food is not able to exist. huh? That's kind of a corollary of what we've seen before.

[42:15] Since there are three things: what is fed, that by which it is fed, and the one feeding. The one feeding is the first soul. What is fed is the body, and that which it is fed is the what food, right?

[42:36] What's the expression we use sometimes? I'm fed up with that. I hear people using this catchphrase all the time. I got too much on my plate. Hear that? You know, too busy. Get too much on my plate, and all the time, you know, people. One of these phrases, you know, gets popular. You know, it goes all around. You know, I hear it where I go. I read a newspaper, magazine, somebody saying it.

[42:59] You know, then I go to school and somebody's using that. While the end here is to generate one like oneself, the first soul would be what one that is generative of one like itself.

[43:16] Now he's taking the ultimate thing that this kind of soul can do, right? This soul, in a sense, feeds itself, right? Causes itself to grow, right? But ultimately, it what reproduces itself, right? So he's going to define the soul by the ultimate thing that it what does. Remember back when we were defining reason there with Shakespeare, right? And reason is the ability for large discourse, looking before and after, right?

[43:54] And I say, why is it defined by large discourse? Because the soul is even more, or reason is even more capable than small discourse. So why does he leave that out, right? Well, if you say small, you wouldn't see the full extent of what the soul, the reason can do, right? But large discourse, right, tells you that it can have a discourse not only about unimportant things but about great things, not just about the singular but about the what universal, right, and so on.

[44:27] See? So you define it by its what ultimate, right? You're going to define my weight-lifting capacity, right? If I can lift 200 pounds, but the 201st pound would be the straw that broke the camel's back, right? You define me as like 200 pounds, not by 100 pounds, even though I could lift 100 pounds easier. See? We define something by its ultimate, right? So he's going to define this therefore not as the feeding soul or the growing soul, right?

[45:04] But the reproducing soul, right? See? Important it is, right? Just as our soul will be called the what? Even Shakespeare calls it in the plays sometimes the understanding soul, the understanding soul. Yeah, that understanding soul, you have a sensing soul, right? You have a a growing soul, a feeding soul, a reproducing soul, right? But that's not the ultimate thing, the highest thing, you know. But that's included, right, in mortal things, right?

[45:42] Now, if we're talking about the animal soul, that's going to be the sensing soul, now, not the reproducing soul. Although we understand that it can do that, right? But there's something beyond that, right?

[45:58] Okay. Okay. Now, in 169 he's merely kind of summarizing some things he said already, I think. But he says later on we'll take up food in a more what particular way, right? And there was a treatise attributed Aristotle on food. You know, reading into more into what you might expect a modern nutritionist to be talking about, right? But entering into, you know, material constituents of food, right?

[46:42] He hasn't really defined food. Hasn't just saying it's the object. Wait. No, he said some things about food, right? You know that it's in the beginning it's unlike the Fed, right? In the end, it's like the Fed. It's that by which it what preserves itself and so on, ages and so on, right? He hasn't got into the material constituents of the food.

[47:08] Okay. But he sees the food as the object of this first thing. But say, so familiar is that idea to us that we tend to speak of, you know, he's always metaphors, right? Food for thought, you know, food for disdain, right? Food for anger, food for laughter.

[47:34] It's very clear that it's kind of the prime example, right, for us. Now, where is this used in theology? This distinction of the three powers of the living soul or the first soul.

[47:56] This is where by our our material life is is what preserved, right? Huh? And post this kind of immaterial existence we have even in sensing and a fortiori in understanding, huh? Where is it used in theology? On the distinction of those three powers. The sacraments. Yeah. Yeah. See. And now when Thomas takes up the sacraments, huh? And the sacraments are always something that is sensible, right? See, and this is kind of in harmony with the nature of man, right?

[48:55] It also fits the fact that sacraments are tools of Christ, who's the Word made flesh, right? Okay. And how man has to be led, you know, to spiritual things, through these sensible things, you know. This is a common saying, right? Then he starts to explain the sacraments. The first sacraments we talk about are baptism,

[49:19] confirmation, and Eucharist, right? And even in the in the catechism, there, right? Those three are what grouped together, right? And of course, it's very clear in in the way the the Orthodox do it, right? Where you receive all three at once, I guess. I mean, right together almost. When you're baptized first, I mean, then you see confirmation. But Thomas assimilates those three; they have to be kind of approached through their sensible likeness, right?

[49:51] And he compares them to what? These three powers, right? So the Eucharist is like what? Food for the soul, feeding the soul, right? Confirmation is like what?

[50:10] No growth, right? See growth of the soul, right? See. You know, you kind of said, you know, that when they do confirmation, they that's why they think it's kind of appropriate in the Western Church at least to give it to a person who has sort of maturity, right? Is supposed to be now a soldier for Christ and so on, right? And I don't know if they do it still now.

[50:38] You just, you know, when they confirm you, they give a slap on the cheek, you know, that you're you know ready to suffer for Christ, right? And then they they would give you the what

[50:51] crosser, you're not ashamed to confess Christ before the world and so on, right? So that you're kind of an adult, so to speak, in the church now, right? So that's like growth, right? And then baptism is like what? Generation. Yeah, see, now Christ is very concrete when he talks to Nicodemus there in the Gospel of Saint John, right? Unless a man be born again, right? Of course, Nicodemus says, "Well, how can a man get into his mother's womb?

[51:24] You know, now these will be for a mother. " And I mean, but notice how concrete our Lord is being that way when he when he expresses this thing, right? See. And you know these miracles of the multiplication, you know, the you know loaves kind of anticipate they prepare the way for Eucharist, right? And the changing of what water into wine, huh? Kind of prepares our mind to believe that he can change wine into his own what blood, right, huh?

[52:00] And so on. So why are there those three sacraments concerned with with life? Right? Saint Thomas will manifest by the likeness to these three powers. There, it's very concrete, huh? That's kind of marvelous, you know, use of this, huh? All the way to these two sacraments.

[52:31] In fact, when Thomas takes up sometimes the that Christ is in the Eucharist, he's really what present Eucharist, right? See, in a way, his power is found in all the sacraments, right? But Christ Himself is really under the appearance of bread and wine there, flesh and blood, huh? But he compares that to the fact that it's what being given in the likeness of food, and therefore the very substance of the thing you're being fed by, right?

[53:11] See, it's not just by the power of the thing, but by its very substance, as Aristotle said, you're being fed, right? Huh? See, the very substance of Christ has to be in there. Well, he gives other reasons why Christ is present in there, but that's straight from the very

[53:57] symbolism, right? So, I'd make you hungry there, reading about this kind of soul. Well, there's a kind of interesting comparison though between you know those three sacraments, right? and these two powers. It's kind of interesting that you're going down to the first soul, but the lowest soul in a sense, right? You know, to manifest those three, right?

[54:58] And you get to the the Trinity. You try and explain, you know, the beginning was the Word, and the Word was towards God, and the Word was God, right? Then Thomas goes to what soul to manifest that?

[55:12] The rational. Yeah, yeah. Because you have to see, I mean, the likeness there, the sort of likeness, right? That if my reason, right, thinks about itself, like when you have Shakespeare's definition of reason, right? When reason thinks about itself, and reason has a what, a thought about itself, right? That's a little bit like what God having a thought of himself, right? Now, there are all kinds of differences, but I mean, the likeness is there, right?

[55:43] You know, he doesn't really try to manifest the Trinity by plant soul, living soul, does he? By I mean, you make yourself a likeness there that I'm aware of, right?

[55:55] Okay. You doesn't even use a sensing, because the sensing, in a sense, you're you're being acted upon by something outside of you, you know. In the case of God and the Trinity, it's all what within, right? Okay. So it's it's more like imagining or thinking, right? Where the image or the thought produced, right, is what remains within the one imagining the one thinking, right? But you can't really imagine your imagination.

[56:31] But you can, in some sense, understand your understanding. You can have a thought about your own reason or mind, and then when you realize what reason is, then you love it, right? And then you got you know the Holy Spirit there, right?

[57:02] But for the sacraments we go to this soul right here. Okay. So maybe next time we'll go on to the what we talked about sensing here, right? We're in chapter five here, in page sixteen.

[57:33] Kind of interesting here, you know, because when I grew up, you know, one always thought of the sacrament of reconciliation, right? As they call it now, confession, penance, and Eucharist, right? Because they're always associated with our minds, it's kind of the two very common one, right? But when you get go back to Thomas there, he will if what's yours, I suppose, when you go to the Orthodox, right?

[58:01] You tend to put those three sacraments of baptism, confirmation, Eucharist, right, right, right together, right now, and the. But when you're, again, the subject is very good. It was shoved into us the need of

[58:28] you know penance before you go to Eucharist, right? You know, I mean, kind of disorderliness crept into some parishes, you know, where they receive communion before penance, right?

[58:41] But anyway, in terms of explaining, see, this is in part two, celebration of Christian mysteries, part two of the Catechism, and down here into section two, which is called the seven sacraments of the Church, right? How's that divided? Well, chapter one is the sacraments of Christian initiation. It calls it. Then you go to that article one, the sacrament of baptism. Article two, sacrament of confirmation. Article three, the sacrament of Eucharist.

[59:14] Then you have chapter two, the sacraments of healing. Which are the sacrament of penance and then the anointing of the sick, and then chapter three, they call it the sacraments of the service of communion, sacrament of holy orders, and sacrament of what? Matrimony, right? Okay.

[59:37] I notice the order there: baptism, confirmation, Eucharist. You mean putting those three together, huh? So Thomas, you know, that's what he does when he explains the seven sacraments. He always puts those three together. That's kind of the old tradition, I guess, in the church.

[1:00:07] But then he expands it in terms of the. Let me just going back to this here. Okay, can I ask you this question on a different topic? I was thinking about that. You know, we use the term purity, especially in relation to chastity. So we could really use the word purity for any virtue. But anyhow, I was trying to thinking about that, trying to figure. Do you have any examples of why we why we do that particularly for chastity?

[1:00:53] Well, what are the integral parts of chastity, or of temperance in general? If you look at, if you go to the Summa, and you take it to the virtue of temperance in general.

[1:01:24] Thomas will say the two parts are verecundia And honestas These integral parts here, temperance, verecundia right, and honestas Now verecundia could be translated, I suppose, as what shame. Honestas is a little harder to translate, huh? Okay.

[1:02:00] Thomas will speak of honestas there as a kind of what spiritual beauty, right? Okay. It's a kind of light, huh? Okay. No. Here, no. As you like it, I guess, though. As you like it, there were the word "honest" is being used, right, in the sense of chaste, right? Okay. That reflects the word. Although I have to use it. Now,

[1:02:59] Shakespeare often, you know, refers to those two, huh? But, but usually, you know, in a less obvious way, right? Stopping sandlight, right? No. Why would shame be a part of of temperance, huh? Would it be because it

[1:03:31] it fosters it? It acts as a. Okay, I mean, is is is intemperance more shameful than, say, robbing or something like that? Stealing, huh?

[1:04:00] Maybe in some way, it is. Okay. It's... seems more, more of a kind of. a... drawing of man's reason into something. Yeah. Why is why is lust, let's say, more shameful than, than anger, right? Why is that so?

[1:04:46] You know, it's interesting line there in in Lear, you know, when he's maltreated by his daughters and so on, right? Because he's given the kingdom, you know, and so on. He doesn't want to cry and break down and cry like a woman, you know. And he says, "Fill me with what? " What's noble anger? Okay. Interesting phrase, huh? Noble anger, right? See, and these great you know characters in the tragedies and the, um, or go back to to the beginning of civilization, which is Iliad, right?

[1:05:22] You know, the Iliad is kind of what is about the tragedy of Achilles, right? But Achilles, what? His wrath. Yeah, the wrath of Achilles, right? You know, it's the very opening words of the Iliad, and you know what happens in the thing, right? But then he comes back into battle, right? after his friend Patroclus is killed, you know, Polydamas says, "let's get back in the city, you know, behind the walls, before he comes out, And uh, Zeus had taken away their minds, right?

[1:05:55] He alone looked before and behind, him, he says, you know. And Hector, they're all kind of bullies, him you know. and they're not afraid of him anymore. And Polydamas says the only guy who looked before and after, right? But Homer's phrase is look before and behind him, you know. And of course, next day Achilles mows him down, right? You know, but this is seen as noble, you know.

[1:06:16] You know, avenging the death of this thing, you know. I look at from maybe a, maybe a strictly you know. Christian, you know, narrows the road to salvation, right? Anger is, makes you do a lot of horrible things, right? But so much is just not seen as shameful. The anger of Achilles is seen as what justified, right? You know. See, now Shakespeare has a great play called "What".

[1:06:48] It's one about the angry man. Well, yeah, several of them, but Coriolanus is the most famous one, right? Okay. Yeah, and of course Coriolanus uh, is kind of driven out of Rome, you know. And then he turns against his native city, right? And he's invincible, you know. And the whole of Rome is can't they can't stop him, right? He's gone over to the enemy, right? And they keep on sending his friends out to beg, you know, and just brushing them off.

[1:07:16] Finally, send his his wife and his his mother. Maybe a very interesting scene, huh? But but I think it's interesting, huh? To show that anger seems to be less what shameful, right?

[1:07:35] When someone is caught caught in a passion, as they say, right? Why is that? Why is that? Well, because anger seems to what hear reason more than what lust does, huh? Or

[1:08:10] reason is more what extinguished in the sensible. Here than it is in the what anger, right? The angry man, in other words, is he's what he's in a sense trying to punish, right? Right. He's punishing you for having done this, right? Not because he exaggerates maybe what you've done, or how much you should be punished, right? But he he he sees this as what. Just, just, yeah, yeah, reasonable, right?

[1:08:41] See, he has a reason for what he's doing, right? See, While the man is moved just by sensible delight, uh, he's moved like an animal, right? So reason seems to be more extinguished there, and therefore it seems more what. More animal shameful. Yeah, more shameful. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of interesting in the apology there when Socrates has been found guilty, you know, of the charges, but he's not really guilty of anything.

[1:09:12] And you have the the third part of the apology where Socrates speaks to those who voted for his condemnation, and he speaks to those who voted for his acquittal, and he speaks to both of them together. See, now when he speaks to those who voted for his condemnation, they've done something wicked and what unjust. But it's very interesting what Socrates does. He begins and ends his remarks to them by saying you've done something really stupid.

[1:09:42] It's only in the middle he touches upon the fact that it's something wicked. see, See. And I often, remark to students. who say, "now, if you want to start a fight in a bar room, right? You know, you want to start a fight by calling somebody wicked or by calling them stupid.

[1:10:01] Stupid, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. See, and because that seems to be a direct attack upon their what nature, reason. See, see. And I always tell a couple of true stories here that I picked up from newspapers years ago, different times. One in my hometown of Saint Paul, and the other in my home in the

[1:10:26] Worcester, Massachusetts. In my hometown there, they have the hamburger chain known as White Castle, right? So one night late at night, you see, it's closing time. Just a girl behind the counter that's the only girl person working there, right? And the guy comes in, you know, with his jacket, you know, you know, he put the money in the bag, right? What's the poor girl going to do, right?

[1:10:51] Obviously, puts money in the bag, right? But as she hands the money to him, he takes his hand out. You see the idea? In other words, he's got it's in there in his jacket like that, and for all she knows, he's got a gun in there, right? See, can't see that. See, but once she hands it to him, he's being right-handed without thinking, you know. And she realizes he doesn't have a gun, right?

[1:11:11] Well, she still has a good hold on the bag, better than he does, right? And so the struggle results, and she gets the bag, right? Well, that time he's rattled, and he what? He he runs out. So he goes home. He's going to be what? You know, kicking himself. He's mad at himself, right? But he's mad at himself for trying to rob the White Castle. See, no, no,

[1:11:35] but because he was did something stupid, right? And uh, so uh, uh, another incident which happened in Worcester, I guess, the guy came in to rob the bank or was, and you know. You might expect a little nervous under these circumstances, robbing a bank, right? And he handed the girl the note, you know, in a note saying, "You know, put the money in the bag, right? " And she played dumb.

[1:12:06] See, she said, "Oh, I've never seen a withdrawal notice like this. I'll have to check on this, you know. " And she walked away. Because he got all mad and he ran out and caught the police out there, you know. The point is, she was very clever, right? You know, just playing kind of dumb like she doesn't know what it's all about, you know.

[1:12:27] Well, he's going to be really mad at her, right? Because she was kind of outsmarting him, right? And made a fool of him. So, people are what you know, a defect of reason. there is shameful, right? Mm-hmm. So, reason is especially extinguished in these matters, right? Therefore, they're naturally what more shameful, right? Than things where reason is being used more. Yeah Now, you talk of anestas Thomas has kind of. A key thing there is an objection to this, right?

[1:13:05] To say honestas is an integral part of temperance, because he says the spiritual beauty is found in all the virtues, right? So why is honestas taken as being integral part of temperance in particular, right? Thomas says, well,

[1:13:27] in these matters, reason is most often extinguished, right? So when the light of reason shines through, right, in these matters, it's more striking, It's all the brighter, yeah. Yeah. Uh, And therefore, that spiritual beauty seems to be particular.

[1:13:52] I compare thee to a summer's day, Shakespeare says, right? Thou art more lovely and more what temperate, right? So one time we were trying to, when I was in graduate school one time. we started talking about some lines in Shakespeare. and when Othello comes in to kill his wife, who he thinks has been unfaithful, right? He doesn't want to name what he thinks she's done, right? " Adultery, right?

[1:14:23] He says, "Let me not name it to you. You chaste stars. " Okay. Now, why does he call the stars chaste, right? Well, part of it is because a metaphor here, right?

[1:14:46] The stars at night are very beautiful. Why? Because the sky around them is black, right? See, if everything was illuminated up there, it would be garish and not beautiful at all, right? My mother used to say, you know, that a diamond doesn't look so good under light like this. My mother said that a diamond looks best under candlelight. In a diamond, kind of what sparkles, right? Yeah.

[1:15:13] But it's because of the darkness around it. If they show you a diamond let's say something like that in a jewelry store, they'll put maybe a piece of black velvet, right?

[1:15:26] Rather than a piece of white paper, we wouldn't stand out. See, so it's the idea that opposites alongside each other stand out more, right? Like Heraclitus says, "One of the fragments from opposites comes the most beautiful harmony. " Remember that fragment we had, Heraclitus? So when the light of reason most of all seems to be extinguished, then what? When it shines forth, it is especially what beautiful and striking, eh?

[1:16:01] And it is something related to what you're saying there about the word purity, you know, a little bit for a somewhat similar reason there, because reason and the higher nature of man especially gets contaminated, you might say, right? Soiled, right?

[1:16:23] In those matters, right? So the purity is more striking there, right? Just as the light of reason is more striking in those matters. I can't remember the exact words of Shakespeare, but there's one place I know where, at least in in Hamlet there. You know, I don't have Hamlet here, but when he speaks, when he's upbraiding, I think his mother there, right? I don't have the exact words there, but he says

[1:16:55] the blush and grace of modesty, something like that. Well, the blush, of course, is a metonym for verecundia They put the the effect there, the sign for the thing, right? And grace is what, nothing but the spiritual beauty, right? You know, like we say, gracious, you know, grace, graceful, you know, graceful, not, but it's not graceful, you know, it's not graceful, graceful, right? You know, the graceful movements of somebody or or something, you know, gracious host, you know, they.

[1:17:30] I saw on TV the other day there they were talking about the state dinners at the White House, and of course Bushes had just two, you know, one for the president of Mexico, and then one for the president of Poland and his wife, Kymor. And so they were interviewing the the social one for the Clinton administration, and she was very nice lady, but just you know talk about all the things they do, right?

[1:17:56] And then they interviewed the you know the Bushes' social secretary, the one who's in charge, you know. And what a gracious woman! Just just you know, just really a, you know, just a wonderful woman, you know. You just tell it the way she, but in this kind of a business, you have to be very, you know. Of course, the the flowers, you know, for the president of Poland were to represent the flag of Poland, you know, the red and white, and they made these red flowers and the white, and so on.

[1:18:21] And I guess it takes two months to plan on this state dinner, and they, they have to find out you know there's any dietary needs of that person, you know, that they're going to be honoring, right? And apparently the president of Poland is especially fond of American beef. That was a big American beef there, you know. And and the dessert and other things appropriate for the season, that sort of stuff.

[1:18:45] But you know, very graceful, you know, gracious. This woman was just like this. Just and. You know, Laura Bush, they were talking about the dinner and bringing in the chef, you know, and he's talking about it. you know, So notice that the blush and grace of modesty, something like that. Yes, he touches upon the two integral parts, and I see some of the. Places where he does that, huh?

[1:19:14] He understands it It's so clear, really really striking. it's been Shakespeare, it just comes out so naturally, you know. And but Thomas has this question there on the integral parts of temperance.

[1:19:36] See, you see something like that with the word chaste Chaste means, you know go back to the verb there, chastise, right? It means in a way to moderate these things and so on, but these emotions, especially, need to be chastised, right? It's easy to get out of get out of hand.

[1:20:03] So you know, Thomas, you know, he talks about about temperance. There, you know, he says it's very important for the not just for the for the spiritual life, but for the life of the what the mind. You know, you know, this other kind of

[1:20:21] lowers the mind, right? As Augustine would tell you from experience. So the purity of the mind, right, in a sense, is done by that. But Proclus is an interesting statement there. He's talking about the study of geometry of all things, right? And he says geometry.

[1:21:06] In the Latin, it's quoted. Purificat ocula mentis, it purifies the eye of the mind, right? And it's because, in a way, the mind is kind of what

[1:21:25] tied to material things in the beginning, right? And it has a hard time rising above the immaterial. But in geometry, in a way, you kind of what.

[1:21:37] Yeah, yeah. You see, you know, Plato. Plato has kind of thought. Just the soul is turned, you know, towards material things, right? That's got to be turned around to turn towards immaterial things.

[1:21:57] You go from sensible things in a way to the to geometry, and you're getting something a little less sensible, a little less material, and then you can finally turn around to these immaterial things, right? Now Monsignor Dionne said the logic purificato Clementi is even more, because that's even more immaterial science. In some sense,

[1:22:22] logic enables you to begin thinking about the immaterial. Logic is even more immaterial. So, um, well, that's related to this, right? And then that's not talking about moral vice and anything like that. But nevertheless, the mind is kind of tied to material there, you know. And of course, you know, you read about the dark night of the soul and this sort of thing. You know, these higher things where the soul is turning away from sensible things, right?

[1:22:56] And it's being purified, right? It's just not mixed with these things. You see, when when what's his name, Saint Paul, there, right? He speaks about I know a man, himself, came up to the third heaven, right? You know, all things. And I don't know if the church has ever fully, you know, pronounced upon this vision, you know, but the two greatest minds, of the Church, Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas, there, they both say that he saw God face to face in a passing way.

[1:23:36] Um, it is the privilege accorded to to him and to Moses, I guess, right? Those two. But you know, he says, whether in the body or not, I don't know. He didn't know whether it's out of the body or soul at the time. He's got to the third heaven, right? But that's obviously, you know, great what purification, right? Now, if you go to the Thomas's commendatio and partitio you know, Sacred Scripture, and

[1:24:12] probably you know the best explanation of the occasion for these is the one given by Weisheipl you know, in the biography of Thomas. But apparently, when you begin your lectures on Sacred Scripture, you would make these inaugural things, and there's it was done in two days, you know, and and these correspond to the two days when Thomas is going to begin his formal lectures on Sacred Scripture.

[1:24:33] But anyway, he gets down to dividing the all the books of Sacred Scripture. He gets down to dividing those books. There, three books in particular: the Proverbs, yeah, and

[1:24:51] Ecclesiastes, and then the Song of Songs, I guess the way they go. And they're all dealing with different virtues, right? And the Proverbs is dealing more with what human virtue, right? The virtues whereby a man lives in this world, and uses the things of this world, material things, in a reasonable way, right? And then the Ecclesiastes is ordered to kind of a contempt of material world, you know, like Saint Paul says, you know, it's all trash, using rougher words than trash,

[1:25:24] you know, compared to Christ, right? Cora, and and that's where the soul is in a way is turning away from material world, right? Not because material world is bad as such, but because you know it prevents us from seeing better things. And and then finally, you get the Song of Songs, right? They use the term, you know, you know the purgative virtues, you know, and eventually get the purified soul, right?

[1:25:50] Huh? So it's kind of you know in Scripture something like you know the order that you have in you know St. St. John the Cross and people of that sort. Saint Teresa, of Avila, you know, the different stages of the soul, right? It's got to be kind of be purified from the what, material world, right? Turn away from material world in order to have a purely intellectual contact with God.

[1:26:21] So again, going back to temperance, they say you can say this: these things, most of all, immerse us or attach us to material things in our affections in our desires. huh? Like like the advertisements for, I remember these advertisements for a woman's perfume. like, one time on TV or something somewhere in a magazine. You know, if you use this perfume, he won't be able to get you out of his mind.

[1:26:47] That was kind of funny, you know. This is the advertisement. But but in a sense, it's what it is. You are going to have these material things all the time in your mind, right?

[1:27:01] A friend of mine was in some kind of a gourmet club. You know, just you know, went to the annual dinner, right? And the guy happened to get sitting down next to me, got talking about you know some of the complications that had arisen and getting all the ingredients for this grand meal, right? And how I almost didn't get this ingredient, you know? What a tragedy it would have been!

[1:27:23] You quit the club after that. It's like good food, but didn't like it that much, you know. This guy was, you know, almost like you know, nervous breakdown. You know that some ingredient, you know, that's hard to get. You know, almost wasn't gotten or something. You know, you know, you can see that the genuine worry about it. being like, you know, what a, close call that was.

[1:27:39] I mean, I mean, you get kind of completely absorbed in your food, right? And you're really attached to the material world. right You can't get the food out of your mind because the perfume is. I mean, you know, purity in a broader sense, right, includes you know even kind of turning away from the sensible world, right? In the higher higher stages, you know, of the kind of contemplative life and so.

[1:28:21] on. You know, when they talk about how man is is easily deceived, it's because this mixture of the the senses and especially imagination with his thinking, false imagination,

[1:28:42] easily deceives us. So, it's sort of as the vice is opposed, to this that most of all attaches to material things, right? Um. Then the virtues, right, that

[1:29:14] purify us from that attachment to material things, right? It would be very natural to speak of them as a kind of purity, right? Anger doesn't attach to material things in the way that concupiscence does, right? So, concupiscence of various sorts attaches to material things, huh?

[1:29:53] So, Don Giovanni of Mozart is not simply a comic opera, you know. What's in the title there, right? So, when the statue comes at the end, there, you know, Don Giovanni still can't repent, right?

[1:30:49] So, coming back to food, huh? What does uh, Dionysus say? You know, the higher angels are what food for the lower angels, huh? Cibus there, I remember in the Latin text it tells us it's called cibus food. I said that's awfully concrete way of speaking, right? huh? You know.

[1:31:20] Like the lower angels are like little birds back in the nest, right there, you know. You know, the other bird comes back and feeds them, right? You know, so that's talking, you know, about what you know, the illumination, right? Purification.

[1:31:44] Thomas is clear that they're not being purified from what errors, right? But from what? Ignorance. Yeah, yeah. see. But notice in English, how we say.

[1:32:00] it's a marvelous language. No, you're mixed up. You know, you're mixed up. If I say you're mixed up, what does that mean? Could be mixed up. No.

[1:32:21] What does that mean? So you're mixed up, out of order, confused. Yeah. Mistaken. Yeah. It means either mistaken or close to being mistaken, right? You're all mixed up, you know. You know, it's mistaken or very close to that. Okay.

[1:32:46] What's the opposite of mixed? Pure. Pure. Yeah. Okay. Now, scripture says and Aristotle. says the same thing that the man who who sins is always what mistaken right

[1:33:13] in some way he's thinking that what is bad is good or good is bad so he's need of a what a purification a what a catharsis right okay now I think purus is what Latin word I guess pure Latin derived word purus purus yeah puritas now sometimes

[1:33:45] we translate the Greek word catharsis right by purification right sometimes it's translated by purgation right okay the kind of purgation and purification are two sides of the same what

[1:34:08] coin right in other words when you purify something you purge it of whatever is bad in it right so purgation emphasizes more the elimination of the bad right but that renders what's left pure right uncontaminated right now

[1:34:31] catharsis the Greek word was apparently used first in in a medical sense huh so if I swallow poison I'm in need of a what catharsis right and the catharsis is going to eliminate something what bad or harmful right infected my body see well then

[1:35:01] Aristotle uses it in the in the book on poetic art right he speaks of a catharsis of the what emotions huh and he says that tragedy produces a what catharsis of pity and fear huh

[1:35:22] and in my article on comedy right you know I was talking about what is the catharsis of comedy right okay and part of it is is a catharsis of what elimination of melancholy okay and if you go through the English comic poets which is my source for what I'm saying or my experience I should say all the English comic poets right starting with Shakespeare going back beyond that before that they all see that as as part of the catharsis of comedy okay

[1:36:00] this I wasn't going to talk about this here, but you know the taping of the shrew, huh? and it's kind of a play, sort of in a play, right? Because they pick up this guy who's drunk, right? And they say let's put him in the master's bed and pretend that he's woken up from his his illness, right? He's really a lord, you know, and so on. And they're going to have him have a have comedy performed for him, right?

[1:36:37] See, and because so they call the induction into into a servant. The guy comes get in bed. Your honors, players, hearing your amendment, are come to play a pleasant comedy. For so your doctors hold it very neat, seeing too much sadness hath congealed your blood, and melancholy is a nurse of frenzy. Therefore, they thought it good you hear a play, and frame your mind to mirth and merriment, which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.

[1:37:23] Okay, so in in part, comedy is going to be a mitigation of melancholy, sadness, right? And even you know in this minor scale, a joke sometimes you know dispels a certain what melancholy or sadness, huh?

[1:37:46] On what remember that time DeConic was saying he was doing some reading with these guys who can't distinguish the computer and the human mind, right? You know, it gets kind of you know depressing after a while to see that they can't see any difference, right? And so he's a little bit, you might say, melancholy, right, reading all this stuff. And then there was a cartoon he saw in Punch, and there's two scientists in front of a computer, and there's a printout, right?

[1:38:16] One guy is very puzzled by it. He says, "What does it say? " It says, "I think, therefore I am. " No, my guy

[1:38:28] purges his melancholy, right? The cartoon guy got this thing started, you know. So that's a catharsis of the what emotions, right? Okay, a lot of I talked to you about that before, but I think that there's there's you know three kinds of catharsis of emotions. But notice,

[1:38:53] in general, what they're trying to do is to eliminate something that is what harmful in emotions, huh? Okay. So the simplest kind of catharsis, you know, is when somebody cries sometimes, right? And they're relieved, right? Because they had a good cry, as they say, right? How can a cry be a good cry? Well, you're kind of, you know, letting off some of that sadness, right? Okay, just like a person, you know, sometimes let out steam, you know.

[1:39:19] They say, you know, they release some of their anger or something like that. But that's not the most profound kind of catharsis, right? But notice, let's call it a purification there, right?

[1:39:32] Or purgation sometimes, you know. because that's the side of the coin, right? Now Plato speaks of catharsis of what? Of reason, right? Now you have catharsis of reason. This is what Socrates is doing when he examines somebody, right? Because the man has some thoughts that are good and true, and some thoughts that are bad and false, right? And what you're trying to do is to eliminate. You're trying to purge him of the what?

[1:40:06] Mistakes or errors. Okay. So those are two different kinds of catharsis, right? The catharsis of the body when they, so they induce vomiting, you know. They do different things to do with different poisons. Sometimes they induce vomiting, right? And then we purge the body or something, right? Okay. There's the catharsis of the emotions, right? Which create drama and other things do. And there's the catharsis of what?

[1:40:34] Of reason, right? Okay. Now there's one more kind of catharsis, son. And there's a place called purgatory, right? Okay. Now is purgatory a catharsis of the body? No. They don't have any body there in purgatory. Isn't it catharsis of the emotions? No. No. Because emotions are something bodily, right? As we saw in the premium here today. Yeah.

[1:41:05] Isn't it primarily catharsis of reason? No. No. It's very clear to you. You know, you went to hell, you know, what is, in the screw tape letters there at C S Lewis, you know, when the devil talks about that peculiar clarity, you know, of hell. You know. But what what what it is is basically, I think, catharsis of the will. See. So you have a catharsis then of the body, which is maybe the original use of the word.

[1:41:37] Then a catharsis of the what? Emotions. Which Aristotle talks about in the definition of tragedy, right? Then you have a catharsis of the what reason, which Plato talks about. Aristotle might talk about that too, but that is. Yeah. Then there's a catharsis of the what? Will, right? Okay.

[1:42:02] Purgatory is named from the purgation or catharsis of the will. You're purging the wills to submit attachment to sort of attachment to ever enough to go to hell, right? Okay.

[1:42:20] So there you got that word pure in all those, right? But now, if the man who sins is mixed up in some ways and stinking there, you know. Well, Aristotle, interestingly, in the second book of the Nicomachean Ethics, at the end, after he's defined moral virtue in general, the Aristotelian son, then he gives some rules for acquiring moral virtue, right? And he gives three rules. Okay, and he says. Sometimes a virtue is closer to one vice than the other, right?

[1:43:09] That's very often the case, huh? So if you have, let's say, courage, is courage closer to foolhardiness or to cowardice? Foolhardiness. Yeah, yeah. So the courageous man sometimes seems to people to be foolhardy. Like Coriolanus is very courageous, seems to appear to be foolhardy, I guess. Now, is it is temperance closer to drunkenness, let's say, or to not drinking at all, or something like that? But seems closer to the to the defect, huh?

[1:43:58] Yeah. So Aristotle's saying, you know, you have to kind of bend, you know, other things being equal, you have to bend in the direction, right? It's less opposed to the virtue, huh? Yeah. That's kind of interesting, I think, because if you take, say, temperance, huh?

[1:44:23] The defect is is usually called puritanical in our society, and the excess is called intemperance. Intemperance is more opposed to temperance than puritanism is, right? Mm-hmm. And an old Dominican told me one time, you know, that seminarians have to be a bit puritanical. see. But then, later on they kind of straighten out, you see. But the point is, you have to

[1:44:54] incline a little bit away from the extreme that people are apt, you know, apt to go to, right? Okay. Now the the second rule is similar, but it's taking into account you in particular, right? What are you as an individual more inclined to, right? So Saint Francis de Sales was inclined to irascibility, right? So he had to incline to the direction actually very mild. See, someone else might be kind of pusillanimous, and he has to be fortified, right?

[1:45:24] He has to bend in the other direction, huh? See. Those two rules are very similar, huh? But one is based upon the fact that the virtue is closer to one vice than the other, right? And Aristotle compares it to a piece of metal, right? That's bent out of shape. You want to bend it back to straight? You have to bend it a little bit in the opposite direction.

[1:45:47] Then it'll straighten out. You can't just bend it back to that. You see, a very interesting comparison he makes there, right? Yeah. So those are the those two rules, he gives, right? Which is the vice? Which is which vice is closer to right? When you bend in the opposite direction, right? I mean, it may not be, excuse me, in the reverse. Which way are you more inclined to, right?

[1:46:17] Okay. The third rule he gives is watch out for pleasure. You see? As if pleasure more easily corrupts the mind eh, in these matters than anything else, right? You see?

[1:46:36] Can you repeat those three? Yeah, Well, he's saying, in acquiring the virtue, right? You have to incline a bit, right? You have to bend a bit in the direction of the vice that is less opposed to the virtue, okay? You see, this in soldiers, right? Soldiers are sometimes a bit what? Foolhardy before they become courageous, right? They bend a little bit that direction, right? They always quote the example, you know, George Washington, right?

[1:47:10] You know, he's out there fighting and writing back, you know, you know that he got shot at, you know, the bullets were whizzing by him. What a wonderful thing it was, you know. Of course, he asked Washington later in life if he had actually said this. He says, "well, I might have," he said, but you know, you know, after a while he realizes, you know, that that it's not so wonderful a thing to be shot at, right?

[1:47:32] You know, like Winston Churchill said, you know, one of the most exhilarating things in the world is to be shot at and missed. You know, they got kind of this bravado, you know, you know, but you know, sometimes a man is a little foolhardy, right, and then he he settles down, right? huh? You know, Who's the, who's the guy that was under Washington? He's known to history as Mad Anthony.

[1:47:55] Okay, so you have to bend a little bit in the foolhardy direction to become courageous, you know, because you are kind of kind of you know if you bend a little bit towards cowardice, that's not the way to become courageous. Okay. The same way, you know, if you want to get to liberality, you bend a little bit towards extravagance rather than to stinginess, right? Okay. That's just given the nature of the virtue, right, and where it is.

[1:48:28] It's not it's not equidistant from the two extremes. The second one is to look at yourself because you yourself are inclined to what? Some things and and other people to other things, right? So I used to say about drinking, right? In my experience of drinking and and seeing other men drink, you know,

[1:48:52] they don't always incline to the same things once they had a tank in them, you know. Some people, when they drink, they get they want to chase a woman, right? Other men they want to get in a fight. with somebody. Uh. I had a friend who was an ex-ex-Golden Gloves boxer, right, When he got a lot of drinking to him, he'd be ready for a fight. Part that you know, he can see all by himself, you know, but you know some people are more inclined to what?

[1:49:21] Go to excessive concupiscence right? Others are in the irascible, right? And when you drink, you know, your reason is less in control of your emotions. So, a different side of you know, whatever side you're inclined to comes out.

[1:49:39] So you have to look at yourself and you say, if I'm inclined towards this vice, I have to bend a bit in the opposite direction, right? If I'm stingy by nature, right, then I have to try to be what? You know, kind of overly generous, you know, you know, and maybe kind of straighten out and become neither extravagant nor stingy, but generous.

[1:50:06] If I'm inclined in the opposite direction, right, I'm going to have to bend in the opposite direction. Some people talk too much. Some people too shy to speak up at all, you know, even though they should, you know. So some guy who's shy; has; got to push himself to speak up. The other guy has to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then after those two rules, they're somewhat similar, but a little different.

[1:50:47] Then he gives a third rule: watch out for pleasure, as if that especially, or most easily, or most commonly, right, corrupts the judgment of people.

[1:51:10] So, in that sense, purity might be what. In regard to temperance, you know you're not being led astray by by pleasure there, right? But if you're not temperate, then you're going to be especially led astray, right? Because pleasure is easily corrupts judgment. What's the one from the Old Testament? There's Susanna, or is it the old man? Right? You know, I mean, you know. examples all around our society, right?

[1:51:59] People are leading uh, disordered lives, huh? Scandals in the church, you know. this are... you know, So one, one, part of society is is drunk with these things, you know.

[1:52:44] Texas. Are those from St. Thomas's three rules, we just had? No, those are in Mexico, which is sort of like in the middle of the two Americas, and. yeah. interesting. Yeah, of course, you know, in the front row, they have all bishops of Texas lined up there, you know. Oh. I suppose there are other American bishops too, but I mean, the you know the priest that was on EWTN there from Corpus Christi, or wherever it is.

[1:53:17] he said you know, all the Texas bishops were down there, you know. I suppose they're especially close to the to Mexico. I think they were part of Mexico, weren't they? Texas was part of Mexico one time.

[1:53:34] Oh yeah.