De Anima (On the Soul)
47. Intellect, Imagination, and the Two Acts of Reason: Nature vs. Reason and Will
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[0:03] And the angels are to some extent like that too. The angels are created actually understanding themselves and many other things, right? But maybe not actually understanding everything. Like God, by nature, actually understands everything. So.

[0:23] And of course, the light of our mind, in a way, is derived from what the light the light who enlightens every man who comes into this world, right? And when we pray before we we study here and ask to have the light of our mind strengthened by the light of our own angel, right? You know, we're seeing in a sense sort of priority, right? The light of the divine mind and even the light of the angels is is prior, right?

[0:52] In time, you might say, if you could say God is in time, right? Prior in existence to to our mind, right? But in our mind, we're able to understand before we actually understand.

[1:06] So that's why learning is good, right? Your mind is going from ability to act. And that's what he means here. He means that when the mind is what when actualized, then it's not sometimes understanding, sometimes not understanding. That could be misunderstood. Some people thought he was referring to the divine mind there, right? But Thomas is saying he's talking about the mind and act now, right? So as opposed to the mind and potency, so the mind and act as such is always understanding.

[1:48] And then the last thing he says about it is in three thirty nine. When separated, this alone truly is. This alone can what? This alone is what separable from matter, right? And this alone is immortal and what

[2:12] eternal, right? Okay. So it's this whole part of the soul that involves the what undergoing understanding and the acting upon understanding. This whole part is the part of the soul that is what or the kind of soul, right? That can exist in separation from what matter. Now,

[2:35] incidentally, there is a third power in the same part of the soul, which he's going to be touching upon in the next section of the De Anima. After he gets through with the senses and reason, and that's the will, right? Okay. It's interesting, you know. Someone was telling me about

[2:58] you know these science one scientist who did a lot of work on the brain, you know, and trying to locate the the regions of the brain, and what they do is stimulate different parts of the person's brain, and so oh yeah, I'm remembering something now, or or I'm smelling, you know, I'm tasting licorice now or something, you know.

[3:20] And but. But kind of you know we have no control over this, right? You just go to say, you know, oh, I'm tasting licorice, I'm chocolate now, or something, right? I'm hearing Mozart now, or something, right? But they couldn't find any part of the brain where the man experienced choosing something. And so, reflecting upon it, this this scientist said, "Well, there's no part of the brain where by we choose, right?

[3:51] " So I mean, that was kind of a what kind of experimental, right? Sign that that the will is something what immaterial. That the ability to choose, like the ability to understand, is what immaterial. That's why you know in God and the angels you can have what will and understanding a little more actual than ours, but you can't have senses, right? Okay.

[4:32] So now, what's this last little part for? Well, this is hinting now to something that I mentioned already, but it will be brought out later on in the chapter seven here, huh? Okay, we'll get that far today. But he's hinting at the fact that there's

[5:01] another part of man. Whereby he imagines, right, and whereby he knows the singular directly, huh? And that part is what destructive, huh? Destructible. That's the part might be in the brain, right?

[5:21] What Thomas sometimes calls or Augustine calls the cogitative power, right? Okay. And he hints that, and without this, it understands nothing, huh? Okay. As I say, this is what gets people confused about understanding because

[5:39] Aristotle is going to go on to show in that later chapter that so long as the soul is in the body, right, it doesn't understand without an image, okay? Right. And the image is in the brain, someplace, some part of the body, in the brain probably, okay? And that's why, as I say to the students, sometimes this question comes up. Like I mentioned, how I had one time a student you know was convinced that the the brain is the organ of thought, right?

[6:17] And so I was stating his objection a little bit better than he could state it. I say, well, you mean like a, you know, a blow in the eye interferes with with seeing, right? Therefore, the eye is the organ of sight. And a blow in the brain interferes with thinking. Therefore, the brain is the organ of thought. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I say alcohol going to the brain interferes with thinking, right?

[6:40] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So the brain must be the organ of what? Thought, right? Okay. I think I told you this before, but you know, let's say it again here. I said, okay, you thought that was kind of definitive, right? Okay. I said, well, now suppose you and I were in a room that had no windows and so on, and the only source of light was a light bulb here in the center of the room.

[7:08] And I can see you, and you can see me, right? But now if I hit the light bulb, smashing it, we'll no longer be able to see each other, right? Okay. Therefore, the light bulb must be the organ of what? Sight. Yeah. Oh, he knows that's not true, right? Okay. So,

[7:36] or take another example here. I can see you now, but if you get up leave this room and go out somewhere else, that's going to interfere with my seeing you, right? If we blow you up, that's going to interfere with my seeing you, right? Therefore, you are the organ of my sight.

[7:58] Are you? No, no. Now, what you see here is that there's two ways to interfere with seeing. One is to interfere with the organ of sight, like poking the eye and maybe cutting the optic nerve or something, right? The other way is to interfere with the object.

[8:25] Now, you're leaving the room interferes with my seeing you, just as much as a blow on my eye interferes with my seeing you, right? But the one is because you're interfering with the organ, the other with the what? Object in some way, right? Now, a blow on the light bulb in that example I gave is interfering with what? Seeing on the side of the organ or on the side of the object?

[8:57] The object, yeah. Not interfering with the organ, is it? Okay. So when you say that a blow on the brain interferes with thinking, or alcohol going to the brain interferes with thinking, that's a true statement.

[9:13] But that doesn't show whether the brain is related to thinking as organ or on the side of the object, does it? In other words, you're going to be syllogizing incorrectly there, right?

[9:37] So if by a separate argument, like I already saw in the previous meeting, last class, if by separate argument you can show that reason is not a body, right?

[9:57] Because it receives in an immaterial way and so on, right? Then you're forced to say that a blow on the brain, or alcohol going to the brain, or drugs going to the brain, or something of this sort, right, or a lesion in the brain, is interfering with thinking on the side of the object, right? Okay.

[10:19] Now, what's the connection between the image and the object of reason, right? Well, the object of reason is the what it is of something sensed or imagined, huh?

[10:41] Just as the object of my eye is the color of something outside of me, okay? Or the object of my sense of taste is the flavor of something outside me, right? So I can't see the color of something outside of me.

[11:04] If you remove that object, right? Because the object of my eye is the color of something outside of me. Does that mean that seeing is taking place in that object outside of me and not inside my eye or inside my brain?

[11:25] No, no. See. Well, just as the object of the eye is the color of the exterior thing, so the object of reason is of what it is of something imagined, right? So the images are to reason like the exterior object is to the what? Sense. Yeah, in a way, right? So we don't think about what a triangle is without imagining a triangle, right? Because we're understanding now not a form existing in a world of forms by itself that's whose very nature is to be out there by itself, right?

[12:07] What you're understanding is the what it is of this thing sensed or imagined. So you don't think about the what it is of something imagined without imagining such a thing. Okay. That's Aristotle's hinting at here in this last thing here. That so long as the soul is in the body, right? Being, as you know from the definition, soul the form of a body, right? It's naturally turned towards the body. But when the soul is separated from the body, right, then the soul is going to understand in a way more like the way the angels understand.

[12:46] It's going to understand itself then, not by this long drawn out discourse. It's going to understand itself through itself, right? Because once the soul is separated from the body, then the soul is actually what understandable. And therefore, the soul will understand in a way a bit like the way the angels understand, But they naturally understand themselves first, right? But the soul is one of the last things that the soul understands in this life.

[13:14] It's very difficult to understand what the soul is, huh? And we'll come back to that. I'm just kind of anticipating it, right? In Thomas says, you know, that last thing there, 340, that little paragraph there. He start when he talks about the the passive mind, pathetikos in Greek the the translator is concerned about getting across the idea. He's talking about the one that is what

[13:41] receiving in a material organ, right? He's talking about what sometimes Thomas will call a particular reason, right, or the cogitative power, right. But this is part of the brain, right? The part that knows the singular under the universal, and he wants to to touch upon the fact that so long as the soul is in the body, it doesn't what understand without turning to the images. And so even after you know the definition of square, when you think about what a square is, you imagine a square, right?

[14:18] But you understand the what it is of the square, right? Okay. Why is it that when when you've already actualized the understanding, why isn't that enough? Well, it's because what the object itself is. See, that the object of our reason is the what it is of something sensed or imagined. The object is not a form in a separate world by itself, right? If there was this world of forms that Plato spoke about, right, then you could understand them without turning to the images.

[15:04] But given that this is not something existing by itself, but the what it is of a thing sensed or imagined, you have to imagine such a thing, right, in order to understand the what it is of it.

[15:23] And that's, as I say, you know, a matter of experience too, right? Okay. So let's take a little break now before we go into the next chapter here. Get a little bit of chapter six now. We can. Go through this a little bit, where he's talking now more in detail about the operations now of the undergoing understanding, right? And if you've seen Aristotle, not Aristotle, but Thomas's proemium to logic at the beginning of the Posterior Analytics, I don't remember you looked at that before.

[15:56] We did logic, but you know, if you recall what he does there, he distinguishes three acts of reason that logic is directing, right? And he goes back to this text here for the first two of those three, right? Okay.

[16:16] Now, myself, I like to call these acts understanding what a thing is, understanding what something is. Sometimes Thomas calls it simple grasping, right? And then the second act is understanding the true or the false, okay? So this is like the first act of reason, and this like the second act.

[17:04] So to some extent, I understand what a man is, right? To some extent, I understand what an animal is. To some extent, I understand what a stone is, right? Those are three examples of the first act.

[17:23] But I also understand the statement that man is a what animal, right? Or man is not a stone, right? And there I'm understanding something true, right? But Thomas usually calls that you know kind of a a kind of speaking putting together there right two things, okay? Or I understand what it means at least to say that man is is is stone or man is not an animal.

[17:49] I understand something what false, right? Okay. But true and false there is found really in the what statements, right? So it's these two acts that Aristotle is going to be talking about here, okay? And when Thomas is talking about logic, he he distinguishes these two acts, referring back to this particular chapter, and then he adds a third act called what reasoning, right? Okay.

[18:27] And so in logic, you study. Especially definition, which helps you understand what a thing is, if you don't know what it is, right? And statement, which is necessary to understand the true or the false. That's only in statements that you find the true or the false, huh? And then reasoning, where you start to put together at least two statements and what reason out a third statement because of them, huh?

[19:01] Aristotle doesn't talk about reasoning here, right? Because he's concerned more with the acts that are more what natural, right? Okay. But this act here is more an act of reason, as reason, right?

[19:20] One and two, um, the same as grasping and judging. One and two. We got to be careful about that, um, um, because in logic, the logic of the second act, so-called, it doesn't go beyond understanding the true or the false, right? And when it comes to a question of now, how do you judge whether the statement is true or false, right? Well, in some cases, you judge it by your senses, huh?

[19:52] Yeah. Okay. So, Socrates is standing. Socrates is not standing is not standing. The logic of the second act would tell you one of those statements is true and the other is false. It can't both be true. It can't both be false. But the logic of the second act would tell you that the statement Socrates is standing and the statement Socrates is not standing. if you mean the same thing by Socrates and both and by standing, that they are contradictory statements, right?

[20:19] They can't both be true. And they can't both be false. But one must be true and the other must be false, right? That's all the logic of the second act would tell you, right? In order to know which is true, purpose is standing. Purpose is not standing. I'd have to use my senses, huh, to look at them, right? Okay. Now, some statements, huh? Like say the statement, no odd number is even, right?

[20:53] The logic of the second act would tell you the contradictory of that is some odd number is even. Okay. The logic of the second act would tell you the universal negative and particular affirmative with the same subject and predicate cannot both be true. They cannot both be false. One must be true. Then it must be false. Now, in this case, how do you know that no odd number is is even is a true one of the two?

[21:29] You know, by the definition. Yeah, yeah. That presupposes the first act, right? Okay. Yeah. Now, it comes to this one that let's say that the interior angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, right? Okay. And the interior angles of a triangle are not equal to right angles, right? Okay. Again, you can get contradictory statements, right? Mhm. And the logic of the second act tells you these two statements cannot both be true; they cannot both be false.

[22:11] Yeah. But one must be true and the other is false. But how would you know which is what? You have to reason it out. Yeah, you wouldn't know it by sense. You wouldn't know it simply by understanding the terms, right? Um, but you'd have to reason it out, right? Mm. So there's three ways you might judge, right? Yeah. And you know we need logic, you know, to use your senses.

[22:43] You should do that without logic, right? But you might need logic sometimes to define something, right? So, for example, I know, because I'm a wise man, as Boethius would say, I'm wise in geometry. I know that every every perfect number is a composite number, right? But I couldn't know that before I had learned the definition of composite number and the definition of what perfect number, right? Okay.

[23:17] So that's obvious, Boethius says to the wise, right? I mean, the man that has some knowledge of that science of definitions and so on. But most of these things you have to judge by reasoning, right? So it's really in reasoning that a logic comes up, judgment most of all, huh? Yeah. Okay.

[23:40] So, but there are some things you see that we naturally come to understand what they are. Like we naturally come to understand what a whole is and what a part is, and we naturally come to understand and know, right? Judge might say that a whole is more than a part, huh?

[24:04] As I always joke, there, if anybody says he doesn't know that, we'll give him a part of his salary this week, right? And a part of the meal he ordered, a part of the car he bought, because he doesn't see the difference. He's the part of the whole. He'll scream and rave and rant. It shows that he's, you know, saying things he doesn't really think. Okay. And in saying it, you want to the words, right?

[24:30] There's a certain freedom of expression. If I can express things that I don't think, that's all right, you know. I don't exist, you know. No, I don't really think that. I can't really think that. I can say it.

[24:48] I'm a mouse. I'm a chair. I can say these things, right? There's a certain freedom. I can. And not everything I can say can I think? As Aristotle pointed out in the fourth book of wisdom, huh? Okay. So Aristotle is concerned with these two acts because, to some extent, they can be natural. these are natural philosophy, right? Okay. But where you have to maybe think out a definition and think out a conclusion, this is more appropriate for logic to go into those details, huh?

[25:24] So he's not concerned so much with reasoning, huh? Reasoning is more an act of reason as reason, huh? Why these can be an act of reason as a kind of nature.

[25:38] The moderns are very confused about that. I think I mentioned that before, right? They don't see this distinction between. They don't understand. They misunderstand the distinction between nature and reason, and nature and the will.

[25:58] They think the distinction between nature and reason, or nature and the will, is like the distinction between, say, a dog and a cat, right? Two different animals, right? But it's more like the distinction between two and three.

[26:21] Three has what two has, but something more. Three. What is three? Is three a third one? Or is three two plus one? Yeah, choosing those two, right?

[26:39] Well, Aristotle and Thomas think that three is two plus one. The moderns think that three is a third one. So it doesn't have any two in it. It's a third one. That's not even what three is. Is it? No, three is two plus one. So it has two in it in a way, right? But it's not just a two, right?

[27:09] So it's like distinguishing between man and animal, right? Man is an animal too, though. See, but he's not just an animal. And I always quote my my my mother there, right? Huh? She was disturbed when I would say man is an animal. It seemed to bother her by saying that. And I said, "Well, mother, I don't mean that he's just an animal." Well, okay, she says, right?

[27:36] Okay. You see that? So what you have to understand is that man is an animal with reason. He's not just an animal. And so when you distinguish the beast and the man, the beast is just an animal. Nothing substantially more than that, right? But man is something very much more than just an animal, right? But he has the animal right. The same way, reason and will are in nature, but something more than just a nature.

[28:08] But they are in nature too. And that's why they understand some things naturally, the reason does, and the will naturally wills some things. So the will naturally wills to be happy, huh?

[28:29] The will naturally wills the good, although we can often be mistaken as to what is good or what is bad, right? But we naturally will the good, huh?

[28:42] And there's some things you naturally understand, you see. And and what happened with the moderns is that that they made a misunderstood the distinction, right? So they didn't see that that the reason of the will could what know anything naturally or will anything naturally.

[29:04] And therefore, reason can never really know anything. Everything has to be what reasoned to right, but there's nothing to reason to from it because that's gonna be reasoned to too. You see, so it's just arbitrary whatever you take as your premises, huh?

[29:25] And same way, you know, you know, you can will anything even as an end. There are some things that you naturally will. That's that's one of one of the greatest misunderstandings that you find in the moderns. So so what is it that reason and will are or violence? Well, see, what? Reason and will are violent acts in the sense of violent persons. No, no, not not violence, but but there's something in addition to nature, right?

[30:07] Nature is determined to one, right? Why reason? In many things, can reason to opposites, right? Yeah, but for the moderns, you're saying it. Well, they would they would make an absolute distinction between reason and nature. Oh, okay, yes. They would see the distinction between reason and nature as like the distinction between a dog and a cat. Two different animals, right? Mm-hmm. And so you'd not say that a cat is what a dog plus something else in addition, right?

[30:45] Would you? No, see, but you would say, is that the kind of distinction there is between two and three? Is three in no way got two in it? Yeah, it does. Yeah, it's got two plus one, right? Mm-hmm. You see, three is not just a third one, is it?

[31:12] That's what that's where their understanding reason and will see that they're nothing but what they have in addition to nature. You see? As if, would you be like saying that three is nothing more than what? It's nothing but that third one, right? Rather than that, it's two plus one. Yeah, it's a very, it's a, it's a difficult thing to understand, right? But you realize that it's a immense mistake that the moderns made when they did that.

[32:03] So you can see in in Sartre, right? Huh? That the will, right, it naturally wills nothing. See. I see. What's good in Sartre and existentialists is that they defend the freedom of our will, right?

[32:22] But part of their defense is to deny, right, that the will is determined in any way. As if you're you're uh. Being dishonest, right? To say that the will did not freely, right, will whatever it wills.

[32:49] Of course, we're always trying to deny our more responsibility for the bad acts we did, right? And and and all the bad things that I've done, right? I'd like to deny that I freely did them. It's like a see, but but then they go to the opposite extreme of saying that there's nothing that we what are determined to will, right? That we naturally will, huh? You see, the big difference there is that nature is determined to one of two opposites,

[33:26] but in choosing, you're not limited to one of two opposites, are you? I can choose to drink this water or not to drink this water, right? And I'm not determined to do one or the other, right?

[33:47] Now, if I get kind of dry in the mouth, I'm going to be more inclined to to choose to drink it than not, right? But if I were to modify myself, I might. You see? You see the idea? But is my will?

[34:07] Does my will choose, for example, between happiness and misery? Oh no, it's naturally inclined to answer that. Yeah, it's naturally determined to what will happiness, right? Yeah. Now, by the choices I make in life, they may lead may lead to happiness, they may lead to misery, right? But choice is always of the what the means, right?

[34:35] So Sartre is denying that man wills anything naturally. Everything he wills, he wills by choice. Now, now if you take Mill, John Stuart Mill, for example, in in the essay on liberty, right? When he talks about you know freedom of thought and that sort of stuff, right? For him, reason is never determined to any statement.

[35:07] Okay, it's always open to discussion, and you know we always got to keep an open mind, etc. Because someone else may come up with some reason not to think think the opposite of what we think today, right? See, so there's nothing that reason naturally what knows or understands.

[35:28] It doesn't seem like you can know anything. is it? And. In that case, every statement is in need of proof, right? In which case, no statement can really be known to be true, huh? Yeah.

[35:44] So these are very serious consequences, huh? Yeah. Now, when Aristotle distinguishes, you'll see that in the ninth book of Wisdom, he distinguishes between the rational ability, right, and the natural ability. He's distinguishing between what is is only a nature, right, and what is a reason or what is a will, huh? So which is not just a nature, right? But it has a nature too. And but but nature is determined to one of two opposites, huh?

[36:20] Shakespeare saw that too, actually. He understands nature so well, and and in Coriolanus you'll see that when Aufidius later on in the play when he's reflecting on the downfall of Coriolanus, right, and so on, and he says that he's considering a number of possibilities, right, and one of them is that nature not being able to be more than one thing, he says.

[36:54] So really, huh? This distinction is the most fundamental thing, almost the reason does, huh? And this distinction between nature and reason and nature and will, right? It's extremely what fundamental to all of our thinking. And a little mistake, even a little mistake, in the beginning is going to be a great one in the end, huh? And so the misunderstanding of that distinction by the modern philosophers had absolutely tremendous consequences.

[37:32] We never know anything, right? We never will anything naturally. Aristotle thought that the end of man is something natural, right? He has a natural end, and he's and in a confused way he naturally wills us, right? You know.

[37:58] Okay, now that's a little bit here, just kind of background here. Why he's emphasizing these first two acts, right? Which could be what more part of natural understanding, right? Why reasoning is something that belongs to reason as reason, huh? That definition that Shakespeare gives of reason in *Agitation* to use reason—that's a definition of reason as reason, okay?

[38:32] And I think to some extent, reason as reason is more known to us than reason as a what, as a nature. Just as the will as what, as will is more known to us than the will as a nature. And so, when I approach the will, I usually approach it as the ability to choose, right? And then later on, you discover that the ability to choose wills some things, though not by choice, but naturally, huh?

[39:08] Okay. The same way with reason. I mean, after all, reasoning is the act that is named from reason. It's the act most characteristic of reason, huh? And Shakespeare defines reason by discourse as well. Discourse in Latin was used sometimes as a synonym for reasoning. You see that in some of the Latin logicians, right? For? The third act of reason, which Thomas calls reasoning, they'll sometimes call it discursus, right?

[39:41] But more generally, discourse can mean what? Knowing one thing to another thing, and that's not the way we know something naturally, right? That's a more immediate thing, right? Okay. So Shakespeare is defining reason as reason, but that's more known to us, huh? So the ability to reason and the ability to choose—we could call these two abilities, right?

[40:06] But the ability to reason is not just an ability to reason. And the ability to what? Choose is not just an ability to choose, huh? It also involves naturally willing some things, and the ability to reason naturally knowing some things. That's a very, very subtle thing that Aristotle and and Thomas saw.

[40:41] And notice how a man, just to illustrate that again with numbers, there, somebody might say, "Well, three is not two because three, let's say, is half of six, and two is what?

[41:00] Half of four, right? So same thing can't be half of four and and and half of six, can it? Say. So three can't be two. Well, okay, okay. It can't be just two. Does that mean that there's there's there's no two in three?

[41:27] Say, the three is not two plus one. That's just that third one. Do you see that? That's what the great Shakespeare says in exhortation, right? About man and the beast, there, right? What is a man if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep? A beast, no more. See notice those words, a beast, no more. In the in the

[42:03] in the eighth book of wisdom, Aristotle says there's some truth in what Plato said that the natures of things are like numbers, huh? Now numbers you add, you subtract the one, you have a different number, right? So you take away reason from a man, and all you have is a beast. Take away sense from a beast, all you have is a plant. Take away life from a plant, all you have left is a body, right?

[42:29] You see? But body plus life is a plant. Plus sense is a beast. Plus reason is a man. So a little bit like numbers, and that's why he uses the word no more.

[42:43] I I just want to make the comparison very explicit for the students. I say, if one reasoned the way Shakespeare does with numbers, you'd say, what is the three if it be half of four? A two, no more, right? Yes, sir. That's where his reasoning, huh? Very very clear the reasoning, huh?

[43:11] So he begins in three forty one here to distinguish these two acts, the first two acts there, in a similar way that he does. You might notice in the beginning of the what the categories there, right?

[43:28] The understanding of the undivided is in those about which there is no falsehood, huh? Okay, and you could also add in a way no truth in the strict sense, huh?

[43:48] In what there is both truth and falsity, there is right away some putting together of things understood. Okay, so if you say to somebody you know,

[44:07] I say to students, if I gave you a true false exam, which I don't usually give, but that's I did, right? Okay, man, true or false?

[44:19] Animal, true or false? Can understand what a man is, but it doesn't seem to be true or false, right? Stone, true or false? Okay. But when you put these together in the affirmative and negative statement, and you say that man is an animal, or if you say man is not an animal, right? Then you have something true or what? False. And you say man. You say. Man is not a stone.

[44:56] Maybe that's true, but if I put it together and said man is a stone, then it would be what? False, right? Okay. Now I say to students sometimes when we talk about truth and falsity, where do you find truth? Where do you find truth? In general, where do you find it?

[45:18] Statement. Yeah, yeah. But you got to be up to it. You say, well, if you dig down the ground, would you find some truth? You know, you might find gold. You might find iron, right? But which country in the world has more truth in its soil than? You know, sometimes you have more iron in your soil or more oil or something, right? Which country has the most truth in its soil?

[45:43] The thing about that. I say you go swimming in the ocean there, right, or in the lake. You know, you happen to, you know, sometimes a, you know, shark. Sometimes a bit of truth, a bit of falsity up there. You know, you say. I go flying through the sky. You know, I see a little bit of truth going by. But seems anywhere you look in the material world, right?

[46:05] You don't find any. You don't find any truth, right? Or falsity. And then sometimes I tell them, you know, you find truth in the same place, you find falsity in general in the same place, and it's in these what statements, right? And this is part of the reason, as Thomas mentions here, why Aristotle says in the sixth book of Wisdom, truth and falsity are more in the mind than in the things, right?

[46:33] Because the statement is more in the mind, right, than in the what things, right? Okay. And that's why you have to form a statement in a way to know the true or the false, huh? Now, in forming a statement, it doesn't tell you whether the statement is true or false, right? But in forming a statement, you are forming something that's either true or what? False, huh? Okay.

[47:02] So he's distinguishing then between understanding a thing like this, and understanding something that is true or what false, huh? Two different acts of reason, right?

[47:20] And he has a kind of a interesting comparison, uh, of that second act to the position of what Empedocles, right? Empedocles says, huh? Just as Empedocles says, and Empedocles has this idea, you know, that there's a mindless love bringing things together, right? And in the beginning, you had all these crazy things that were not united. In which way the heads of many without necks germinated and so on, right?

[47:53] Then you had teeth without jaws and jaws without teeth and so on, right? And then later on, Aphrodite or or love or friendship, as it's sometimes translated, brought these together, right? Huh? Okay. But in the case of this, it's the mind bringing together man and animal or man and stone in a what statement, right? Either from it or from he takes again the famous example from Greek geometry, one of the greatest discoveries in Greek geometry, that the diameter of a square is what,

[48:33] incommensurable with the side of the square, right? That no matter how small you take a line to measure the side of a square and the diagonal, you never find a line that measures both. I would say today maybe goes evenly into both, right? That's kind of amazing discovery, right? Huh? Okay.

[48:58] Now he points out that in what, in the statement, you also involve what time here, right? Either not just the present, like in these ones here, right? But you might put it in the past or the future, right? You might say "Berquist is standing" or "Berquist was standing" or "Berquist will be standing," right? Huh? Okay. Now, if you study that part of logic that's about the statement, Aristotle will distinguish, you know, first of all, the noun and the verb, right?

[49:35] And the verb always signifies with what time, right? Huh? So time is there, but here you're kind of what? That's past, present, or future. It's it's you can't say one or the other, right? It's kind of what timeless, huh? Eternal, right? Huh? That's why Thomas sometimes says God's knowledge is a little bit more like this act than this act here, right? Because his knowledge is what eternal, huh?

[50:05] Okay. So, so he talks a little about time there next, huh? But he goes on to say, "But the false is always in what is put together, right? For even if one says white is not white, not white is put together with white, huh? One can call these division as well. Now, when Thomas refers to the second act, he usually calls it composition or division, right? It always kind of bothers me because composition division has so many other meanings, even in logic, right?

[50:52] Okay. But he'll speak of this as what composition, and this as a what division, right? Huh? Okay. But making an affirmative statement where it's kind of putting together and saying one is the other, and then negative one would say one is not the other, kind of like dividing the two, right? Huh? Okay. But I usually call the second act understanding the true or the what? False, right?

[51:23] Okay. I notice you can understand that a statement, even that it's either true or false, without knowing which it is, right? President Bush is sitting now. I understand that, don't you? But I don't know whether it's true or false, right?

[52:00] But he goes on to point out, but there's not only true or false when you say that. To distinguish three fundamental meanings of the word "one" right in describing, in particular, this first act. But you're always understanding something that is one. Okay. That's kind of interesting thought that you can't understand many things. You only understand one thing, and if you understand many things, actually at the same time, they have to become in some way what.

[52:51] One thing Yeah. So when I understand a man, let's say, and I can't at the same time understand what stone. When I'm understanding what a man is, I'm not understanding what a stone is, and vice versa. But when I make a statement, I say, "Man is not a stone. " Then I made something one in a way out of man and stone, and I can understand that together, right?

[53:25] Of course, then when you syllogize later on. You reason from two premises. You have to understand the two premises, what together, right? So the mind has made something one out of the two premises. It's made a what syllogism, right?

[53:45] So I want to syllogize that no man is a mother, right? And I syllogize from the statement that every what every mother is a woman, let's say,

[54:04] and no man is a woman. Well, if I understood the first statement, every mother is a woman, and then I stopped understanding that, and I started to understand the statement, no man is a woman. Could I syllogize that no man is a mother? No. No. I'd have to, in a way, understand at the same time that every mother is a woman and no man is a woman, right?

[54:34] So the reason, right, is making something one out of those two statements. It's making one what syllogism, right? But seeing a certain order, a unity of order among those two what statements, huh?

[54:52] So reason has to what understand? Can only understand what is one. What is is before true. Yeah. Now, we didn't do all Book One of of Natural Hearing there, but there is a strange position there in Book One, which is position of Parmenides and of Melissus, right? And they're denying any multiplicity in the world, and they're saying that being or what is

[55:35] is what, okay? And Aristotle, of course, says, "Well, this is really absurd," but he says to them, "What do you mean by the word being? Right? Do you mean substance, or do you mean quantity, or do you mean quality? Right? " And they go on to say that being is what spherical, or something like Parmenides says, right? Or that it's what infinite, like Melissus says. So they seem to be admitting that it's what something like quantity, right?

[56:17] But quantity can't be without substance, so you got multiplicity there, right? Okay. What a thing is, and substance is not its size, right? There's some distinction there. He also attacks it by looking at the predicate. He says, "What do you mean by one? Do you mean, he says, the continuous?

[56:41] Like we speak the one line, right, or one circle? Well, if you mean the continuous, well, then you've got what some multiplicity there, because you have part outside of part and so on, right? So it's not altogether one, is it? Okay. And then he talks about well, another meaning of one is what what's wholly indivisible, like the point,

[57:08] okay? Do you mean it's a point? Well, then if it's a point, it's not what unlimited, is it? It can go on forever, like Melissus says, right? It's not spherical, like Parmenides says. So he argues against them, right? So they deserve to their position. And he gets the third meaning of of one, which is things that have the same what definition, right? One in definition.

[57:38] Well, it comes back to those same three senses of one here. It's kind of interesting that he does that, huh? So when the soul understands the continuous, huh?

[57:53] Is it taking the continuous as actually divided, or is actually what something one? Let's say I understand a straight line, right? Okay. Am I taking the straight line as something one when I understand it,

[58:24] or am I dividing it and understanding this half and understanding that half? How am I doing? Understanding as something one. Yeah, yeah. Well, if I divided it and understood this half and then understood that half, there'd be two understandings, right? Okay. So I'm not taking that middle one there as dividing into two, right? But if anything, as what unifying, right? Continuous is that whose what limit is one, right?

[59:03] Is a boundary as one, huh? Okay. The same way if I'm understanding a circle, right? If you had you know these two, if I'm understanding this this whole circle by one understanding, I'm taking it as what undivided, right? I'm not seeing that thing as dividing into two different parts. If I did divide into different parts, then I could understand this part, understand that part, right? But actually, I take it as one continuous thing when I understand it by one understanding, right?

[59:37] But if I divided it, then I could understand each part separately, right? And the same when I understand a man and his bodily nature there,

[59:54] am I dividing his his liver from his heart and his legs from his arms and so on, right? I could understand and think about his liver alone, right? And think about his heart, and think about his bones, and think about his arm, and think about his leg, right? And think about his nose, and right? But then I would be what have many understandings, right? Because I've divided the man, right?

[1:00:28] Okay. So the Greek word is a little more ambiguous than English word. Since over the undivided, right, is twofold, either in potency or in act. Nothing prevents understanding the undivided whenever one understands a length, for it is undivided in act, right? And then one understands it in an undivided time. For the time is divided and undivided, similarly to the length.

[1:01:02] When it, what it considers then in each half is not to be said, for if it be not divided, it is not except in potency. However, if it understands and divides it actually into two halves, right? It divides also the time at the same time, right? Then is just as the links. Yet if is from both, but also the time of both. So that's what he's saying there, basically, huh?

[1:01:31] When I divide the continuous, right, and understand the parts individually, then I don't understand them at the same time, do I? Just like if I was talking about the human body, and I say, okay, now we're going to talk about the human organs. And the first we're going to talk about the heart, and I start to talk about the heart all by itself, right? And describe the heart, and then I talk about the liver, and I talk about the lungs, and right?

[1:01:56] Then I have many what? Understandings, right? Because I've actually divided the body, right? Okay. When I understand the the human body as a whole, then I understand it as something what? Organized and something one, right? Okay.

[1:02:23] Now he goes to one in definition next, huh? Rather than to the point, huh? What is not according to quantity undivided, but in species, it understands in an undivided time, and by an undivided part of the soul, huh?

[1:02:40] It understands them accidentally, however, and not as these things. That by which it understands, the time which it understands, is divided, but as the undivided. For even in these there is something undivided, but perhaps not separable. So he's kind of comparing it to the other thing there, huh? But let's take it a little bit different here, huh? When you talk about what a line is, let's stay fairly close to the first example, but more to the second kind, How long is what a line is?

[1:03:36] Doesn't matter. What doesn't matter? Does it have any length? Yes. What a line is? Yeah, but it's uh determined. What a line is? No. How long is what a line is? It has no

[1:04:14] length. Just this length. No, it's kind of strange, isn't it? Right? Yeah. Because if if what a line is, were a line, right? Then you could divide it, right? And then this part of what a line is would not be what a line is. Could be a line. Yeah, yeah. But yet, part of a line is just as much a line as the whole line, isn't it?

[1:04:49] Yeah. Okay. Yeah. If you know from the study we made, the continuous continues to be divisible forever, right? Right. But now this line here, of course, is longer than these lines here, right? But is this whole line more a line than this line here? Yeah. This line is longer than that line, right? But is this more a line than that? Yeah. It seems equally what a line is, right?

[1:05:23] Yeah. And there you see what a line is seems very much, but even more indivisible than a line, right? First I was saying, you understand a line. you think about this line in indivisible time, right? You think about the line as a whole, right? If you think about you know this half of the line, and then you think about that half of the line, you're not thinking about them at the same time, are you?

[1:05:50] It's different, right? Okay. And there's something that makes this line one, which is the fact that the end of one part is the beginning of this part, right? So it's continuous, right? But what a line is seems even more what one, right?

[1:06:11] Because what a line is is found equally in each what part of the line, huh? Okay. So if you understand this in indivisible time, when you take it as a whole, right? Before it's yours, you understand this in indivisible time, right? You understand what something is, huh? I think what's kind of interesting about this example is, you know, later on, you know, you get these more difficult questions about the soul, and Thomas will teach more explicitly how it works that that the whole soul is in each part of the body, right?

[1:06:57] Not its whole power, but but as far as the substance is concerned, it's each part, right? Well, of course, this is true in general about substance, right? The substance, when you first distinguish substance from quantity and quality, substance corresponds to the question what it is, and quantity to how big it is, huh? And quality to how it is, and what it is seems to be what the same in the whole and each of the parts.

[1:07:34] Is what a line is found in the whole line, yeah? Because the whole line wouldn't be a line without what a line is, right? But each part of the line is what a line is too, right? Right, that's what a line is, right?

[1:07:56] That's very important when you when you study the Eucharist, huh? In the Eucharist, right? When you break the host, right? The quantity which is left over from the bread, right? You have a part of that quantity, right? But the whole Christ is found in each fragment of the host, no matter how far you break it down, right? That's hard to understand a little bit, huh? See, but Christ is there, not according to what per modum substantiae we'd say, in a manner of what it is.

[1:08:31] And and you see a little bit anticipation of that because what a line is is found equally no matter how many times you divide the line. You see,

[1:08:42] it's not that the part has what a line is, only in part, right? Doesn't the whole line rather has what a line is, and then the parts don't really have what a line is. But each part has what a line is, huh? All the way down to How many times you you divide it, huh?