De Anima (On the Soul)
23. Two Abilities and Two Acts: Knowing, Learning and the Senses (De Anima II.5, Part 2)
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[0:00] Now Aristotle does something very unusual, as far as the order proceeding here is concerned. In what follows now, he's going to talk about a distinction of two abilities and two acts in our reason. First, right, and then he's going to compare the senses to reason. In other words, he's going to manifest this double way of being an ability in the senses, this double way of being an act by the way in which reason, right.

[0:47] Is an ability in two different ways, and enact in two other different ways. Okay. Now, what's unusual about that? See, what's unusual about that is that generally speaking, the sensible is more what known to us than the understandable, right? The senses and the understanding. And generally speaking, we you know you can see the words that we use, huh? We carry words over from the senses and apply them to the what?

[1:25] Understanding. Yeah, yeah. So sometimes we use the word to see to mean to understand, right? I'm always quoting my mother, you know. she used to say when I was a little child, I see through the blind man, but he couldn't see at all. But always stuck in my head head, and everybody can see that the word to see there is being used, and for the act of the eye, and then for the understanding, right?

[1:51] Huh? And we speak of the beatific vision, right? That's the vision in the sense of the vision of reason, of understanding. Um. We take the word like I was using before, the word "grasp, " right? You know, the first act of reason, Thomas says, is simple grasping. Okay, but obviously the word "grasp" first names the act of the what? Hand, right?

[2:24] And then we apply it to an act of the mind, right? And even the word to understand means what? Comes from the word to stand under, right? You know. So generally speaking, we can say we we name things that we can sense,

[2:44] and those are the only things we can point out in the beginning. But then we carry over some of those words, right? With a somewhat different meaning, giving them a somewhat different meaning, but connected with the first meaning, and apply them to what things we can't sense.

[3:03] Um. I've explained, I think, a little bit the word to understand, for example, haven't I? You know, someone asked me, you know, to what does it mean to understand?

[3:23] I wanted to lead them by the hand from the etymology of the word, right? I'd say that to understand means to know something that is said to stand under something, right? It's to know something.

[3:52] That is said to stand under another, or it's to know something by or through what is said to stand under it. Now, some of you said, "Well, that's kind of strange."

[4:30] Well, what does it mean to understand a word? Yeah, to know the meaning or the thing, right? That is said to stand under that word, huh? Now, see, we we speak of putting a name upon something, putting a label upon something, right? In Latin, you you'll see the phrase impositio nominis. Impositio means the placing upon. So the Greeks, before the Latin, spoke of placing a name upon something.

[5:12] Okay. And so we commonly speak of the name as being placed upon the thing, right? So the thing is under the name. Okay. So to understand a word means to know what is said to stand under that word, namely to know the meaning, right? Or the thing that stands under that word. Is how clear that is.

[5:52] And the kind of the contrast between that and senses because when I see or hear a word, right, that's my senses. But if I understand that language and so on, right, then I know what stands under the man's what. Words, huh?

[6:17] It's a little hard to understand the Pope now sometimes when he speaks, right? He slurs his words a bit, right? Or else he's very often speaking in the language of the people he's there, right? So maybe speaking in some language you don't know, right? So you hear the sounds, right? You know, if he's speaking in Spanish or you know Polish or something, right? But you don't understand what he's saying because you don't know what stands under those sounds in Spanish or under those sounds in Polish or whatever the language is that he's using, right?

[6:52] You see that? Okay. And to misunderstand the word, right? You know, is to miss what really stands under that word and to get something else, huh? And you know, as a professor, then you know, and students there, you're always seeing them, you know, on papers, you know, misunderstanding some word, right? And sometimes it's very funny when they misunderstand the word, right? Sometimes you do that for the fun of it, right?

[7:27] When you misunderstand somebody's words, huh? What does it mean to understand an effect? What does it mean? To know its cause. Yeah. Now, do we speak of the cause as standing under the effect?

[7:53] Well, we often speak of the what underlying cause, okay? And as I mentioned before, I think the native English word for cause is what ground, ground, yeah, yeah. I mentioned how Shakespeare has a good sense of language; is he's a master of language. He sometimes puns upon the original meaning of ground, right? You always joke about Shakespeare to kind of avoid a pun even at very serious moments.

[8:30] So when the the night watchmen find the bodies there at the tomb of Juliet, right? They find you know the County Paris, right? He's laying dead on the ground there, right? Romeo, who's apparently an exile, her husband, exile, he's there, dead there, and Juliet is supposed to have been dead and buried, is freshly bleeding, you know, and so on. And so he says, "What we see the ground whereon these woes do lie, but the true ground, obviously, cannot without further circumstance decay.

[9:08] " So he's punning upon them, right? But the word ground there fits very much the English word understanding. That's kind of the main meaning of understanding: is to know the cause of something, right?

[9:24] But also to know what the substance of a thing. Now, substance has many word meanings in right and philosophy, but two main meanings the word substance.

[9:43] One meaning of substance is what a thing is, and the other part is a thing that exists, not in another, right? Okay. Well, substance has the same etymology as understand, right?

[10:19] So it's reason that knows what a thing is. It's reason that knows substance. The senses know only what quantity and quality, but they don't know the substance of the thing.

[10:41] So what a thing is seems to underlie everything else in that thing, fundamental of the thing, right? What it is, fundamental. What a thing is, huh? Aristotle said, if being was a house, substance would be its foundation. Right, it stands under everything else, right? So this is a little side here, but it's good to understand the word understanding, right? Before you try to understand anything else, you have to understand what understanding is.

[11:24] What road do we always follow in philosophy? Again, but in addition now to the natural road, what's the second road we always follow? The senses into reason Oh yeah. reasonable guesses towards now understanding. Yeah. One way I state the second road is it's the road from reasonable guesses, right, towards reason out to a knowledge, right. Okay.

[12:02] We saw that a little bit, you know, back in the first book of Natural Hearing, went through all these reasonable guesses of the first philosophers, and then we saw Aristotle went from those reasonable guesses towards the beginning of a reasoned out knowledge of change. Remember he did that? Go back there. Yeah. And way he's doing the same thing here, right? We didn't go through the whole book one there, but in book one after the proemium he goes through the opinions of his predecessors about the soul, right?

[12:36] And there's some reason what they say, but they're they haven't really thought out, thoughtfully And he's going from that reasonable guesses about the soul to a what reason out knowledge here about the soul and its powers, right? Okay. Now, another way, perhaps, to state the second road is to say it's the road from thinking about things, right, to understanding them, right.

[13:12] Of course, that means what? Understanding what these things are, right, and why they are, and so on, right? Okay. Now, as I say, in general, as Aristotle follows the road from the senses into reason, as you can see in the word understanding here.

[13:36] The very way it's named, named from the senses, things you can sense, right? Okay. So we either name the act of reason, we take a name like you know to see and apply it, right, or to grasp, or if we have its own name like understanding. The word itself is derived from stand under, right? You have to, in some way, come to know the meanings of these words to what makes sense.

[14:03] So, in general, it seems that what is pertains to the understanding is going to be manifested to the senses, and not vice versa. And so, when I was explaining, say, in logic, when I teach logic, and the first act of reason is grasping what something is, and I'll tell students, you know, can I grasp the center of this desk? See, I can grasp this glass, but can I grasp the center of this desk?

[14:33] No. If I wanted to grasp this part right here, I'd have to what? Cut it out, right? Okay. In order to grasp something with your hand, you have to separate it from other things. Now, there might be water around this that gives way, and I can separate, it right? And so, likewise, if I want to grasp something with my reason. I've got to what? From everything else, yeah.

[15:00] So you can kind of be led by the hand there, right? Literally, they call manuductio in Latin. Monsignor Dionne was always lecturing on what Thomas means by manuductio and what the manuductio is, for this or that. So you're being led by the hand to understand something about what the mind's grasping something.

[15:23] Yeah. Um. But here he does the reverse, right? Here he's got to manifest something about the senses, namely the two ways in which we can speak of ability, and the two ways we can speak of act here, by something like that in reason. Okay. I think that's interesting, right?

[15:52] That sometimes, right, in some very particular way, the understanding might be what. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now we'll see what he does here, and then we'll come back upon seeing that he, or can ask why. You know, why is this in some way more known in the case of the what of reason than of the senses, huh?

[16:32] Let's see what he says about reason here first. Okay. Okay. Now the word "knowing" here that he's got translated 176 by "knowing" is knowing in the strict sense, kind of scientific knowing, right? Is the word "episteme" there, Greek?

[16:57] For there is something knowing thus, as if we said, "Man is knowing, " because man is among the things which are knowers and which have knowledge. While there is something knowing thus, as we call the one already having the science of grammar a knower.

[17:15] Each of these is not in the same way potential or able, but the one is potential able because it's a kind of thing, right? And the matter are such, and the ability is such. While the other is because it's able to consider when he wishes, should nothing outside prevent him. But the one already considering is being in actuality and is properly knowing this, huh? That's what he's saying here, right?

[17:49] Before the man has learned the science of grammar, right? You can say that he's inability, right? He's able to learn grammar, right? Okay. So you have here the ability to learn grammar,

[18:20] or the ability to learn geometry, right? You don't have the ability to learn geometry. See, even the slave boy is able to learn geometry, right? Okay. The slave boy is able to learn how to double a square, right? You know the diagonal of the square right? You know that, at all.

[18:51] But now, after I have acquired some geometry, or I've acquired some grammar, am I always thinking about these things? But I'm able to think about them, right? Now, is that ability that I have

[19:20] this ability to think about the things of which I have acquired? Let's call it the science here, or just knowledge, right? Okay. Aren't there two different kinds of ability there, right?

[19:56] And aren't there corresponding to those two abilities two different acts? One, which you might say, is to actually have the art of science, whatever that may be. Okay.

[20:18] And the other is to be what? Using it. Yeah. To be actually thinking, right? Thinking of the things pertaining to that art of science.

[20:44] So notice what he's doing here, huh? He's saying that there's two abilities to be distinguished here, right? And there's two acts to be distinguished here, right?

[21:00] So the slave boy, right? When he first is asked by Socrates, Socrates says, "If you have a square, you know, if you have a square, you want to get a square twice as big.

[21:22] What would be the side of a square twice as big? " The slave boy says, "well, five places long. Seems to be sensible, right? It's a reasonable, sort of. business. Yeah, yeah. See? Now, does the slave boy actually know how to double a square? No, no. In fact, he's mistaken as to how to do this, all right?

[21:50] Well, Socrates has really two conversations with the slave boy. In the first conversation, he shows the slave boy that he does not, in fact, know how to double a square. If you double the side, he shows him that you get a square four times as big. We want a square twice as big, right? But then there's a second conversation with the slave boy, and there he shows the slave boy that if you take the diagonal of the original square, you get a square twice as big, right?

[22:21] Remember how he does that? He says, "With this original square, he says, that's another square exactly like it there, another one exactly like it here, and fill up the square here, right? And now we've got a square that's four times as big. And then he takes the diagonal here, right? He shows that you got another square here, and this is exactly half of the four squares, so it's exactly twice as big.

[22:45] It's a beautiful thing. He could also go to the diagonal there, but You can also know it's a Pythagorean theorem but that'd be too difficult for the slave boy. But so he's taught the slave boy how to, in fact, double a square, right? So was the slave boy able to have this knowledge? Is he part of the science of geometry? Yeah. He didn't actually have it when he was saying that the way to double the square is to double the side, right?

[23:12] Okay. So, but he was able to know that, right? But now, after he's acquired this knowledge, this part of geometry, something of the science of geometry, will every day of his life and all day long be thinking about this? No. If he goes out and another slave boy or someone, it's another conversation. He may recall what he's learned, right? And then he's actually thinking about it, right?

[23:44] So he has two kinds of ability here, right? Ability to acquire the science of geometry, or part of the science of geometry, right? And ability to think about that theorem after he's acquired that part of the science that deals with that theorem, right? Two different kinds of ability, right? And of course, finally, we can speak of two different acts, right?

[24:17] The first act, corresponding to the ability to learn this part of geometry, and this part of geometry he's acquired, is an actuality of that ability. And the second act, which is really a complete and full and perfect act, is when he's actually thinking about that way of doubling a square, right?

[24:39] Okay, that corresponds to the second ability that he has after he's acquired the art of science, but he's not actually thinking according to it. Okay. So he wants you to see the fact that there are two kinds of ability there to be pointed out, and two kinds of act, right? And that there's a difference in the way you acquire those two acts.

[25:11] And all of that is not because at this point of the text he's really concerned with understanding understanding or understanding reason, right? But he's concerned now with manifesting something about the sensing, right? In the light of this distinction, okay? I notice the difference there at the bottom of page 16. There, each of these is not in the same way potential, but the one is potential and ability because he's what the kind of thing, right?

[25:57] Okay. That is what he's a man, right? He's able to. He has reason, right? The kind of thing that is able to what learn geometry, right? I use the word matter, not that the mind is material, right? But he hasn't yet shown yet that the mind is not material. But it's like matter insofar as matter is able to be what formed, so likewise the mind is able to be formed by some science, huh?

[26:32] While the other, this means now why after he's acquired this this science, he is able to consider when he wishes, okay? Should nothing outside prevent him, right? Okay. So once I've acquired some geometry, whenever I want to, I can think about that, right? You know, see, so and I could go right now to the board and say, you know, a triangle, right? If these two angles are equal, these two sides are equal, right?

[27:04] And I can go right away and want, right? If nothing exterior prevents, right? If you're making a lot of noise and jumping around, I might not be able to do it. Or I had too much wine to drink or something, I'm not able to do it, you know. Or if I'm very tired or something like that, see. But you see, But I want to, I can think about why that is so, right?

[27:20] By the way, right before I learned it, I can't just think about these things that I want to. And the student, a real struggle there, right? Well, it's kind of pleasant, you know, to think about something you already know in a certain way because there's no difficulty whenever you want to think about it, right? Okay.

[27:51] But the other, but top next page. But the one already considering is being an act and is properly knowing this a. Taking the example from grammar, right? I had to go to higher science, than grammar, Well, let's think. Now, in one seventy-seven, he's going to

[28:16] talk about the going from ability to act, right? It's not the same. Both the first ones, therefore, are knowing are knowers in the potential ability. But the one is altered through learning. Again, he wants to be careful about altered, right? Because eventually he's going to say that we maybe shouldn't call this altering or alteration. Or if you do, you're using the word in a different sense, right?

[28:47] The ordinary sense. But it appears to be like it, especially because often you're changing from the contrary state. Okay. Now, that's a good example of the slave boy, right? Because the slave boy, in fact, was in the contrary state. He was in fact mistaken about how to double square. He wasn't simply ignorant, not knowing how to double square. But he thought that you should double a square by doubling the side.

[29:26] And therefore, he's going from a a false thinking, right, to true thinking, right. And that seems to be like alteration, like when something goes from being hard to being what soft, right? You go back to natural philosophy. Now, before this, we saw the change was between what contraries, right? So it's a hard that is softened, right? And it's a soft that is what hardened, right? Okay.

[30:03] And it's the hot that is what cooled, right? And it's the cool that is heated, right? So, if you are going from being mistaken, right, to knowing, right, from thinking falsely, thinking truly, that seems to be a bit like alteration. Although as Thomas points out, it's really what accidental that a man be mistaken before he knows. He could come to know something without being mistaken about it first.

[30:47] But something could hardly become hard without being first what. Soft, or become soft without being at first hard. You see that? But it resembles alteration more, right? And especially when you are in the contrary state, he says, right? Okay.

[31:15] And there, I would use more the the word change, because usually we say change, we're thinking of these contraries. If I thought one thing at one time, and now I think the opposite, I have changed my opinion on that subject. You say, right?

[31:39] When we use the word change, I think in English, more when you've what gone from the contrary state. Say, well, if you teach me a theorem of geometry about which I had no opinion whatsoever beforehand, right? Did I change my thinking about this matter? Huh? No. Of course, you find it very difficult sometimes to change people's thinking, right?

[32:08] But once in a while, you succeed, you know. You know, by something you more pray for or wish for, than expect to happen. You say, okay.

[32:27] And that's what my colleagues was saying to me the other day in the hall. You know, we can do much more with the students' minds than we can with the other professors' minds.

[32:38] Because there are some things about which the students have no opinion whatsoever, and therefore you can more teach them something true about these things. While your colleagues have many false opinions, and really have to change their thinking, right? Okay.

[33:00] But hardly ever would I say, you know, that when I already know something, like I know this theorem in geometry, right? And when I go to the board now and I'm going to show my students this theorem, right? And so I'm actually thinking about these things in a way I was not five minutes ago, right? No one would say that I changed my thinking at this point, would you?

[33:24] I am kind of what becoming more actual in what I already possess. It's like an increase in the same thing, he says. Epidosis is the Greek word huh Okay, And a perfecting of your nature rather than a what altering of your nature, changing of your nature.

[33:57] Now again, he translates it in there, again, I guess there, though not being at work, it changes to being at work in another way. But I don't know if you want to so much use the word change there, you know, because change would imply too much the idea of the contrary. So,

[34:18] but you could say that. Okay, now he's going to distinguish the different meanings there again of the word in Greek of paschein. I mentioned before, right? Okay, which he translates suffering, right?

[34:42] As I mentioned before, the English word suffering seems to be stuck more on its. First meaning, huh? Okay. So he says neither is suffering simple. How maybe translate that? Neither is undergoing simple, right? Take away this more, maybe extended. But one sort is a certain destruction, due to the contrary, like my being under the weather, as I said before, right? See, or undergoing a lot, right?

[35:21] Another rather is rather the saving of a being in potency by a being in act. It's really a what? Perfecting of that, and by something similar in the way that potency is in relation to actuality.

[35:41] I'm going from an ability to know something to actually knowing it, right? It's like more the same, right? Okay, all the way up. And now he's saying, you know, one should really maybe not call it alteration at all. For the one having knowledge comes to be considering, which change is either not altering, for the progress is into itself, right? Into actuality, huh? See. No, when I have learned this theorem of geometry, and now I come in and want to teach the students, and so I start thinking about this thing actually, I'm thinking about what I already have, in kind of a middle state between potency and act, right?

[36:30] My habitual knowledge, you might say, right? And I'm just in a sense having this even more so, right? Okay. I have knowledge of geometry. I have some geometry in my mind in a firm way, right? And what I have there is increased, so to speak, when I actually think about it. It's more the same. So it seems strange to call it alteration, right? And to say, you know, I'm changed from not thinking about it actually to actually thinking about it, right?

[37:11] But that's really just what? Kind of a flowering of my habit, you might say. Okay. Whence it is not proper to say that the one judging when he judges is altered, as neither is a housebuilder when he builds, right? So would you say that the cook, when he starts to cook dinner, he's altered, changed? See? No, it seems kind of strange to speak that way, wouldn't it?

[37:52] Therefore, it is just of what leads into actuality from being in potency, according to understanding and judging, not as teaching, but a different name. So, when I go from what

[38:10] being mistaken or being ignorant, and Socrates or somebody teaches me something, like Socrates teaches a slave what it is, right? That's called teaching, right? So, going from that ability to this possessing something of the art of geometry or the science of geometry is a result of being taught, of learning. But. When I possess this in an habitual way, and I actually think about it for the time being, right?

[38:39] Am I being taught? Am I learning? No. That's the thing about teaching, you know. Does the teacher learn what he teaches? Well, Pythagoras, you could say so, right? Same.

[39:07] But if a man is learning the thing he's teaching, to that extent, he's not yet fully a what teacher, right? Because one does not teach in so far as he's ignorant of what he teaches; he teaches what he knows.

[39:25] So it doesn't belong to a teacher such to not know what he's teaching. Now it may be, and you know, professors often say, you know, that they learn something teaching a course, but that means that they were not fully a what teacher, yet subject, right? Actually, If I taught, let's say, Book One of Euclid, and if I taught that, you know, five classes, let's say, in grade school or something, high school, and year in year out, you know, I probably would not be seeing much more of those that book that I've already seen.

[40:09] In which case, I would not be learning at all. But every time I take up a new theorem in class with the students, I am what becoming actual in my knowing in a way that I'm not when teaching some other theorem, right? As I go through the book, right? I'm not really learning anything to go through the book, but I'm becoming actual. Am I thinking about theorem one, and then next day becoming actual, am I thinking about theorem two, right?

[40:40] Okay. So on day one, I wasn't actually thinking about theorem two. And on day two, I'm not actually thinking about theorem three. But when I go

[41:01] the next day to actually thinking about the next theorem, I know what you want to call this, but don't call learning Aristotle. So learning is going from what ability to act in a different way, right? Than thinking again about something you already know. Yeah, right. Is going from ability to act. So is it altogether clear now that there's two kinds of ability to be seen here, regard to geometry, right?

[41:41] And two kinds of what act, right? Corresponding to these two kinds of ability. Okay. Now 180, before he applies it now to sensing. One must either say that the one who, from being in potency, learns and grasps knowledge by means of one who is in actuality and capable of teaching, does not suffer as was said, or that there are two modes of alteration, right? The one a change to the privative disposition to the opposite, and the other, really to what your fulfillment, right?

[42:25] To your nature, right? Okay. The Greek says epitas hexe, son. So what you have for habit the having, right? Kai ten fusin and nature, right?

[43:02] Let's see. Trying to think about state and nature here. Oh yes, state. Okay, so state from ability to act. So. He's using these terms. Which one did you say was

[43:14] hexe? The first one. The state. State. The Greek translates state here. State as habit. Yeah, hexe, hexe, yeah. And then the hexe in Greek can can mean not only habit in the sense of the first species of quality, right? Yeah. But also, you know, the having of something, right? Okay. You know. And it's kind of contrasted with this privation, right, where you lose something, right? Yeah. Now later on, you see when we talk a little more about this at the end of the book,

[44:06] when he contrasts the way in which the the knower we see something in the way that the matter does, huh? If Michelangelo, somebody's going to make a statue of you, let's say, right? You might have a slab of marble here, right? And that slab of marble has got some kind of irregular shape to it. When he gets done putting your shape, Thomas, is that you, Thomas?

[44:37] That marble will lose the shape it had, that irregular shape, and now have the shape of Thomas as its own what shape, right? So you're deprived. Of the shape you have, right, and you get another shape and place them in them. Okay? you're going to make a wooden statue of you out of this table here, right? Just to carve a statue. and I have a guy you could do that.

[45:08] Well, then the wood here would lose the shape it has and acquire your shape as its own. But now, when I see you, right, then your shape comes into my eye, goes to my memory, right? Now, if your shape in my memory has some, has my eye lost the shape it had?

[45:33] Or, as I look at you, you see my eye gradually losing its shape and taking on the shape of Thomas, huh? Huh? Or if you open up my head, would you find a piece of bone or flesh there that is a little statue of a little piece of bone that is no longer the shape it had, but now it's been chiseled, you know, by you know Michelangelo there up there in my my head?

[46:00] See? No, I'm kind of what I'm having a shape that didn't have before, right? See? And we look around this room. I have the shapes of all these things in the room, right?

[46:17] So we're losing something, you know, not being altered in the strict sense, right? But I'm fulfilling my what nature by having the forms of other things. Okay. Now he's going to compare this, or rather, compare the sensing and what takes place in the senses to what we just saw about the mind.

[46:44] He says the first change, however, of the sensitive comes to be due to what generates. When a thing is generated, it already has, like knowledge, sensing. But sensing, according to act, is said similarly to considering. Now, what is he comparing to what there, right? See? Well, let's spell it out a little. There's a little problem I think in the translation here. to have a sense is compared to what in the mind for a reason.

[47:34] The habit of knowledge. Yeah, to have a sense, right? Let's make it more concrete. To have geometry, for example, right? To have a science, to have some.

[47:52] And to sense is compared to what? To be actually thinking about geometry. After you have the thing, right? To be thinking about what you have the science of, right?

[48:28] That's a very interesting comparison he makes there. Now, I have a sense by generation, right? So if you went into the into the womb, right? Okay. So you have the fertilized egg, and so on, and then you have you know cell division, multiplication, so on, and gradually, right, the sense is developed, right? But you're not aware of that at all, are you? It's hidden to you, right?

[49:08] So I have no recollection myself of of my coming to have the sense of sight. You know, a blind man who's cured by a word, I mean I have no recollection, right, of my acquiring the sense of what sight, the sense of hearing, the sense of smell, the sense of taste, to the sense of touch, right?

[49:44] But I am aware of what my acquiring the art of geometry or the art of grammar, right? I remember, you know, first thing when I studied Greek, you know, you got in the Greek alphabet, okay? And with the grandchildren, you know, a B C D E O, G, You know, you see the little reciting these things, singing them, right? Okay. And very often you're to pain in acquiring that art or science, right?

[50:23] So you're very much aware of your acquiring a science, right? The struggle that you had and so on, right? To learn that while you had the senses, kind of, right? By nature, right? Through generation,

[50:42] and so it's kind of hidden to us the way we acquired senses, and a way more known to us how we acquired the what. Sciences, right? You see why? Some way this is more known to us, right?

[50:59] Now it's interesting because it shows the thing. If I go into class, let's say, right, and I am going to try to teach the students something, I don't know. They're going to find this difficult. Maybe kind of resistless, you know, difficulty for them, and so on, right? I am going to come into class and say, "I am going to show you a movie today. " Oh yeah, is it?

[51:33] Well, there is no difficulty once you have a sense in seeing something, right? If I just take the students, let's say, through the museum here and show them the pictures, right? Let's say, once you have the sense of sight, all you have to do is look at the painting, and you see it, right? Let's say.

[51:53] That's the way I am now with regard to at least the elementary theorems of geometry. You know, the greatest of these, I go to the board and show you that you know these two sides are equal; these two ones are equal, right?

[52:08] But because I have acquired the science of geometry, right, I can go into the second act whenever I want to, right? And it's very easy for me to do so, right? Very pleasant, huh? No struggle, see. But in acquiring the science of geometry, there is a great struggle, see. Okay. Um, acquiring a full degree, I know, it's struggle. Okay. Um, but here it's all done for me by the teaching by the generator, and then right away, in regard to these things here, the sense of something like the man has already acquired the science, and who can talk about these things out of the abundance of his knowledge, and kind of pleasant for the the teacher in a sense to think about these things.

[52:59] There is no struggle to think about them again, right? He's already acquired it; they have it. You see that? It's a beautiful comparison that he makes.

[53:11] So, before you have the senses, though, right? You know, your ability to have the senses. So when you have, let's say, what we call fertilized egg or something like that, even after the first divisions, you don't actually have the senses yet, do you? So the fertilized egg, to the best of my knowledge, is not seeing and hearing and smelling and tasting and touching, right? So you have an ability to having the senses, and then you actually have them, right?

[53:46] Well, after you actually have them, there is still an ability to what? You further act, which is to actually what sense? Okay. What does the fertilized egg, as we'd say, is the sort of thing that is what, by nature, able to have senses, right? And will have senses, right? And that's just some defect there, right? Here, of course, you have to apply yourself, right? But nevertheless, you are the kind of a thing that could have the science of geometry, than the slave might have something at least to the science of geometry.

[54:26] I think it's a little bit, of a thing. Socrates, huh? Okay. He's going to point out the differences between these two, but at this point, he's concerned with showing the what Lightness, right? Okay.

[54:45] So in 181, he's talking about this, huh? The first change over the sensitive. Comes to be due to what generates, right? When a thing is generated, it already has like knowledge. Now, maybe that should be translated by sense. There, see, you know, it makes more sense. Okay.

[55:10] But sensing according to act—that's the act now, right? It's said similarly to considering, huh? Okay. Translate as clear as it could be there. Now, in one eighty-two, though, he's going to point out some very interesting differences between the two.

[55:56] They differ now, sensing and understanding, right? However, because what is productive of the act of the one is outside, and that's the act of which. Sense. Yeah. The visible and the audible, right? And the tastable and the smellable, and so on, right? Okay.

[56:20] He says the cause is that sense according to act is of the singulars, huh? Which are outside us. While science is of the universals,

[56:34] but these are somehow in the soul itself. Now, Thomas, you know, we'll stop and talk about that, huh? You find all these things in the Sonnets of Shakespeare, you know, where the lover is separated from his loved, right? And he can't see his beloved, right? Okay. Maybe can remember her, but you know, even Romeo says, "You know, I can see her see her, you know."

[57:13] But he can't, right? His eyes are deprived, right, of the sight of Juliet, right? I can't see her so on. He's very bitter about this, huh? His exile, huh? But you know, I can think about what a triangle is any time I want to, right? I can think about what a man is, right? I can't see this man though, right? See. So my senses are the singulars, and these singulars exist outside of me, and so I can't see this man or that man without having this or that man present, right?

[57:49] But I can think about what a man is, right? You know, no man is present, right? And that's because man is something universal, and something universal only in the what, soul. Okay. Now, Thomas points out,

[58:14] according to this sophistical fallacy, right? I suppose you say that Socrates is a man, and man is a what, species. Therefore, Socrates is a species.

[58:40] Well, what's wrong with that? This is the fallacy of the accident, huh? Man inside of reason, right, is universal. And if you consider the existence of man in the mind, where it's universal, that way of existing doesn't belong to Socrates, the individual man of the world, right? Um. But you can say Socrates is a man truly, right? Because man signifies what, the nature of man, right? The nature of man is something found inside, right?

[59:20] But universality, the nature of of man, as it's considered in reason, that universality belongs to it only in the mind. So what pertains to universality cannot be said of what, a man. Only what pertains to nature of man can be said of man, huh? Okay. But nevertheless, huh? You can say that man is something universal, and as universal, it's in the mind, and therefore we can think about what a man is without having the actual man present.

[59:55] But I can't see Socrates as the individual man is present, right? Hence, he says, "To understand is in him when he wishes, right? But to sense is not in him. You see the difference, right?

[1:00:15] Once I've learned, let's say, the the definition of perfect number, right? Whenever I want to, I can think about what a perfect number is, no problem. Now, my students who may not have learned what a perfect number is, or even myself before I learned from my master, here in Euclid, what a perfect number is, I wasn't able to think about what a perfect number is whenever I wanted to.

[1:00:40] Could I? Didn't know what it was, right? But once I've acquired the science of geometry, or science of arithmetic, rather, and I've learned the definition of perfect number, then if nothing exterior prevents. Whenever I want to, I can think about it, right? But I can't see my friend or my grandchild whenever I want to, right? I got to have them present here in order to what? See them, huh?

[1:01:14] So there's a difference then in going from ability to act with the senses, right? And with the what? Reason at last, that second kind of ability we're talking about, right? To the ultimate act, right?

[1:01:33] If I want to see the the Mona Lisa, right, right now, I can't. It's not here. If I want to understand what a perfect number is, right now, I can do it. Why? Because Mona Lisa is a singular sensible thing existing outside of me, and I'm in potency to that, right? But the other is already in me, because it's something universal. Okay. A thing is singular when sensed, as Boethius says, and universal when understood, huh?

[1:02:18] As Albert the Great says, you know, the first thing to be considered in logic is the what? Universal. Yeah. But Boethius says the first thing to be considered in logic is his name said of many things, all of our sensible. Answer. But nevertheless, inspired by what Albert says, huh?

[1:02:46] For it is necessary for a sensible to be present. This is so too in the sciences concerned with the sensibles under the same cause, because the sensibles are among particulars and things outside. But the proper place to clarify these things will come in turn about them, understanding. Because it hasn't taken up the understanding at this point, you know, except to manifest something about the senses.

[1:03:13] Now the last paragraph in chapter five here is just as Thomas is kind of recalling what has been shown. For now, however, let this much be determined: that being in potency, right, or being an ability, is not spoken of simply; that is to say, with just one meaning, huh?

[1:03:35] But it's said in two ways. Exemplifies this. But in one case it is said, as we might say, the boy is able to command an army.

[1:03:45] In sense that he could what? Potentially be a leader. Go to West Point and learn how to be a commanding officer, right? In another, as the one who is in his prime, right? Like Douglas MacArthur, graduated now from West Point, right? Now he's ready to command. So too, the sensitive, right?

[1:04:09] But since the difference of these is unnamed, let it be determined about these that they are other and how they are other, right? It is necessary to use suffering and altering as proper names. But in these later, what senses or different senses, right?

[1:04:29] The sense of impotency, however, is like the sensible non-actuality, as, was said. Therefore, not being likened suffered, while having suffered, has been likened and is such as that. He wants to really emphasize that idea, right? That the one who's acted upon becomes like the one who acts upon him. That's why Sart doesn't want to be acted upon, right? Wants to be himself, right? And to be acted upon is always what imposition in the worst sense of the word, right?

[1:05:08] But there is a, you know, way of being acted upon that is not contrary to your nature, right? What's the name there of the French existentialist, Catholic one? Oh, Marcel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He is good when he criticizes Sartre about that matter, right? Because Sartre sees no way of being acted upon that is not harmful to you.

[1:05:40] Because that would make what teaching impossible. It would make friendship impossible, right? You know, I think you know with with good friends, you know, they act upon each other, you know, and you learn something from your friend, and your friend learns something from you, right? And but if you see all acted upon as suffering, you know,

[1:06:05] you know, that's that's Sartre's thing, all fair. I see these ultra hell is the others, right? You know, well, then it makes teaching and and and friendship and all the higher things impossible.

[1:06:24] Not to mention, you know, God acted upon us, you know, but imposition. Saint Paul compare us to the clay, you know, that can be shaped. Terrible, right? To Sartre, but Sartre in a sense is like Monsignor Dionne you know, one of those people stuck on the first meaning. You can't move the word, you know.

[1:06:52] Can't move the word. That's that's a problem with most modern philosophers. They can't move the word.