De Anima (On the Soul)
48. Understanding the One and the Indivisible: Line, Point, Good and Evil, and Reason vs. Sense
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/4-de-anima/048-understanding-the-one-and-the-indivisible-line-point-good/

[0:00] Now the the most interesting part comes down 344 when it comes down to the the point, right? Okay, because the point is in no way divisible, right? Unlike the line, right? The line can be undivided, but it's able to be divided, right? Okay, when you understand the whole line, you take it as undivided in act, right? Even though it's able to be divided, huh? Okay, and when you understand, let's say, what a square is, right?

[0:35] It's an equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral. You're understanding all that together, right, huh? Okay, but nevertheless, you could understand quadrilateral by itself, right? Or equilateral by itself, or right-angled by itself, right? But with the case of the point, it doesn't have any parts to begin with, right? Okay,

[0:58] but he points out that the point is understood by what negation, right? And sometimes by comparison to what can be divided, huh? So the point in Euclid is defined as what? That which has no parts, it's defined negatively, right? And of course, Thomas at this point

[1:28] alludes to the fact that when we start to know God or even the angels, who are very simple, right? Not in the same way the point is, but they're very simple. We also know them negatively, right? So when when Thomas is in the Summa Theologiae, when he's proceeding in the natural light of reason, there he shows that there is a unmoved mover, right? You see, and that involves negation, doesn't it?

[2:00] Unmoved mover. And then when he asks, "What is the unmoved mover? " He begins by showing that he's altogether what simple, right? Question three of the Summa. But when you go through the the question on the simplicity of God, God, it's all via negativa. There's no composition of quantitative parts in God, right? There's no composition of matter and form, right? There's no composition of genus and difference in God, right?

[2:31] No composition of substance and accident, right? No composition of what a thing is and the thing, right? It's individual in the thing. No, no distinction there in God. There's no distinction between what God is in His existence, right? But it's all via negationis huh, okay?

[2:57] As opposed to the beatific vision, where you'll see God as He is, right? You know, in Saint John, there that famous text that the Church uses all the time is from the first epistle Saint John, I think, chapter what three, verse two, something like that. That when He appears, we shall be like Him, right? You know, it's the one where he's talking about where the sons of God, the tekna, children of God, and and when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is, right?

[3:29] Okay. So the Church has two ways. The Scripture has two ways of talking about that vision. One is to see Him as He is. The other is to see Him what face to face, right? The more metaphorical way of saying it, but you're talking about that direct knowledge of God, right? But in this life, we know more what God is what not, right? And what He is, right?

[3:54] And like Dionysius says, and Thomas following him, kind of the the the last thing in our knowledge of God in this life is that everything we said about Him falls short, right? You know, everything is is not adequate to understanding Him, right? You see.

[4:15] But that's the, anticipation of this via negative in theology, even in geometry, when we define the point as that which has no what parts, huh? As if what is the proper object of our reason, as we learned back in the previous reading last week, is the what it is of a thing sensed or imagined, right? And you can't really sense or imagine the point. You have to sense or imagine something that has some what extension, right?

[4:46] So that what is indivisible, we tend to know negatively. We know the composed before the what simple, right? And he says something like that is the way the soul knows evil or black, huh? It knows them by the what, in part by the negation of the good, right? Okay. So the evil always involves some kind of what lack of something you should have, huh? And therefore, your understanding of blindness, let's say, which is something bad, is sight, right?

[5:30] Okay. So he compares that way of knowing the the bad and the thing that is lacking a little bit to the way we know the what the point, huh? By negation of having what parts, huh? I got to be careful now. You know the difference between a privation and a what? Negation, different senses. The words there.

[6:04] For some what knows these by their contraries, and now something that puzzles people a lot, but it's got a very subtle explanation of it. For what knows must be in potency, and one contrary must be in it. Now he's hitting at the fact that our mind

[6:23] understands in a way, in part at least, potency or ability, because our mind is in what? Potency for contraries or opposites. So, and in a way you can say it's in ability for the affirmative and the negative too. Let's take contraries to strict sense.

[6:53] Reason is able to know and to be mistaken. Like the slave boy in the dialogue, right? He's first mistaken as to how to double a square, right? He thinks

[7:14] you double the side, right? Later on, he comes to know. That's mistaken, right? And he comes to know that the diagonal would be the side of a square twice as big. So our reason, in a way, is a little bit like matter, as we were saying before, the proportion. Okay. And so our reason, to some extent, understands potency by the fact that it itself is in potency, right?

[7:43] To contraries, right? Okay. The whole thing. She loves me. She loves me not, right? She has a flower and you pluck the petals, right? You know, she loves me. She loves me not, right? The guy's not sure, right? His mind is capable of thinking that she loves him, and all of a sudden, I don't think she does love me. No, she doesn't. Going back, right? You see.

[8:11] But that's a mind that's like our mind, that's like matter, that's like what potency or ability, right? Okay. And now he hints at the divine mind again, right?

[8:25] But if in something there is not a contrary among the causes, if there's a mind that is not in potency, right? Huh? This knows itself, huh? And it is in act, and it is entirely separate from matter, right? The divine mind is pure act, huh? It's never in any kind of potency, right? And because it's completely immaterial, it's completely understandable, and it knows itself, right? And when we finally, you know, understand so far as we can, even in this life, God's understanding, what you find out is that God understands Himself, right?

[9:12] And understands Himself as much as He's understandable, and in understanding Himself, He understands everything else because He's the cause of everything else, huh? Okay.

[9:28] So He's hinting at God, right? Huh? See. But our mind is like matter in a sense, right? It's capable of what opposites, right? Huh? And so we kind of know potency from our mind, and that's why I teach even about matter. I sometimes, you know, that comparison I make, you know, when Aristotle is making the critique of of Plato confusing matter and lack of form, and I say that's a little bit like confusing the mind and its ignorance, the ability to know with ignorance, right?

[10:07] You know, the mind knows in a way potency through the fact that itself is in potency, and recognize that sometimes it is this, and sometimes it's that, right? Sometimes I think she loves me, sometimes I think she doesn't love me, right? You know, like that terrible determination in a fellow, right? She thinks she's faithful, thinks she's not faithful, right? You know, you know, people have this doubt about people sometimes, right?

[10:38] Or the rich girl, does he love me or does he love me from my money, you know? You know, you can have this kind of a thing, you know, huh? You know, and spouses are often looking for this assurance that that this other spouse really loves them, right? You know, and

[10:56] so the mind realizes it's what it's potency for opposites, for contraries, huh? That's part part of you know helps it to understand potency a little bit better, right? So I found always that that comparison between the mind and matter very useful. Of course, Aristotle used it earlier in the fifth chapter, huh?

[11:32] Okay. I just kind of stop here now after five, okay? Sure. We'll come back and just tie up the end of chapter six, but wait, it's good. That's good, yeah. So if you don't get up and go to mass, son. Sunday morning, because it interferes with your sleeping. So, in some ways, bad. What is good is in some way bad, right? And I say, you know, if somebody annoys you, you know, murder'em, right?

[12:00] Gets rid of gets rid of an annoyance, right? So, even even horrible things like murdering somebody are in some very diminished sense of good, right? Right. You see, the man who robs the bank, right? You know, he's doing something unjust, so something bad to rob the bank, right? But in some way, it's good, right? He increased the money in your pocket if you don't get caught, anyway.

[12:23] You see, so we're always doing something bad because, in some diminished way, right, it's good. Or we're not doing something good because, in some qualified way, it's bad, right? There is nothing so good in this world that doesn't prevent you from doing something else. That's some little bit of goodness involved, right? So, everything good can be seen as what preventing you from doing something else that's good, and therefore, in some ways, bad.

[12:57] See, and all kinds of bad things, you know. Get rid of you, I can get a promotion or something. Take over your position, you know.

[13:13] Two businessmen went out there hunting there when I was a young boy, and they tripped, and the gun went off, and one guy got killed, and the other guy came back and assumed his position. Could have been accident. Who knows? I don't know what happened down the woods. You know, not the last judgment, I guess, but but there was lots of suspicions about this, right? See,

[13:40] so so even you know, what's that famous movie that Alec Guinness plays in, where he bumps off everybody to inherit the money? Finally, you know, finally gets caught at the end, but it's kind of ironic that he gets caught. But kind of clever the way he keeps on knocking them off, right?

[14:05] One of them is a woman suffragette, you know, and she's going up in the balloon, you know, and spreading her feminist. You know, across. So I shot my arrow into the sky. Worry what? I do not get rid of her. Another guy is in love with a girl, and they go out in the in the boat there, you know, and they kind of put the anchor down, right, and they're making out there, and so and he cuts it, and they drift down and go over to the.

[14:30] mill. So it's all these clever things, you know, and then. We have to be to see the movie sometime, but it's good. So, I mean, even things like like murder, you know, I mean, can be seen as what. You know, it's a way of getting power or getting something like that, huh? So, so we're always making that mistake, huh? Of choosing what is bad because, in some diminished way, it's good.

[15:04] Or not doing what is good because, in some diminished way, right? So, studying good, I tell the students, yeah, that's how you come to know. That's good to know, isn't it? It prevents you from going to the pizza party. Prevents you from sleeping. It prevents you from. So, no matter how good the thing is, right? You can see in some ways bad, huh?

[15:36] You see in that great dialogue, the Meno huh Meno makes that mistake of simply in some way, right? Because he says, Socrates, Socrates wants the two of them to put their heads together and try to investigate what they don't know, namely what virtue is, right? And he says, Well, how can you aim at what you don't know?

[16:04] You're going to the filling station. You say, "How do you get there? " What's he going to say? Where? How do you get there, buddy? I can't tell you how to get there. You tell me where you're trying to go, right? So, how can you? How can there be an art, like logic or logistike too? How can there be these two arts that direct us to knowing what we don't know?

[16:32] That problem. And Socrates, in trying to reply to the problem, makes the same kind of mistake, but in a little different manner. Socrates is claiming that the what, in the way he in the conversation with the slave boy, that this conversation is revealing that the slave boy knew already, right, how to what, double a square, when actually he was mistaken to begin with, right? He didn't know, but he was able to know.

[17:09] But is that to know, simply? See. So, all these things the student is in school to learn, you know, does he know them already? No, but in some way you can say, right? But a lot of times when you ask the student, you say, if you know the length and the width of a rectangle, you know how to multiply. Do you know the area? And they'll say, yeah.

[17:43] But before you multiply them, you don't know the area, do you? See. But because you're able to know it, they want to say that you know it, right? And a practical man would like these distinctions, right? You know the length, you know the area. That's it. That's insane, right? You know, I bet he would say that. You know, you're able to know you know, or claim the words, right?

[18:10] But no, if you know the length and the width, you're able to know the area, right? And that's not to know the area, is it? Right. That's not. I mean right?

[18:26] But it's hard for people to see that, right? You know. I was telling the students, take an example. Say, if you have a man, and woman, if, you have a baby.

[18:45] You're able to have a baby, right? But if you tell the priest who's going to marry you that that you have a baby, you mean to me that the man's potent, woman's fertile, right? You're going to be misunderstood, right?

[19:04] I say some people do have a baby when they get married, but but actually have one. It's not to be up there, but. So I mean, I said I think people have a hard time understanding this kind of distinction that's that's being overlooked in this fallacy, right? And let alone, you know, that can be taken up, right?

[19:34] See, in a way, when when Descartes said that the the clear and the distinct is more what. Known, right? He was confusing what is more known, haplos simply, and what what is more known to us, right? So he's mixing the two up, right? Aristotle, you know, he has a number of ways of speaking of it, but he'll speak of what is more known by nature, not being the same as what is more known to us, right?

[20:05] And then he'll call what's more known to nature more known haplos, right? Okay, or some pros hemas in Latin, right? It's a secundum quid to us quid to us, right?

[20:23] So it's interesting now that Descartes is being deceived that kind of mistake about the natural road, right? And and in the Mino there, Mino and Socrates are deceived by that same kind of mistake about the road of reason That's reason, right? We study it in logic,

[20:47] and then Descartes gets down to the the private roads, he, makes the same mistake again. Because the the road of geometry is the best haplos, right? But it's not the best very science.

[21:17] Aristotle, you know, sees the same distinction in political philosophy, right? You know, he speaks of the what the best government haplos, right? Then the best government for most men, and the best government for this these people, and those three may not be the same at all, right?

[21:40] So the best government haplos would require most unusual circumstances that one would Aristotle says kat' euchen according to a prayer or wish. What is the haplos? Simply without qualification.

[21:59] And and then he talks. He says you have to talk about the government that's that's best for most men, considering the for example, most men are capable, right. But even that you can't always do because people might be very you know primitive, right? Are very very very disordered and so on, right? And you might have to have some kind of strong government or something, right? You know, be the best for them, right?

[22:32] So. Aristotle talks there about about the democracy and autograph and so on, and how the men are in some way equal. Then haplos they're equal, right? See, or in some way they're unequal. then haplos, they're unequal. It's the same kind. so. it's amazing how much that's only one of the thirteen kinds of mistakes. Common, commonly made Aristotle speaks of in the physical refutations and those are all the kinds of mistakes that are made.

[23:15] But is that does that have more than one sense? Simply in some respect. Well, many ways it can be in some in in some way, you know. Um, uh,

[23:37] Aristotle gives gives, in the rhetoric. I think I've mentioned that before. In the rhetoric, he gives he gives a very interesting example of this: that the likely man to commit a crime is unlikely to have committed it.

[23:58] And the argument is that it's likely that a man who commits a crime, like murder or robbery, is unlikely he wants to be caught, right? But the likely man to have committed a crime is the one that everybody would suspect, right? And therefore, the likely man to have committed a crime is the one that would probably get caught, right? It happens all the time, right? So it's unlikely that the likely man to have done it had done it.

[24:28] Well, you know, if that argument was good, then all of these detectives, you know, who right away, you know, look for leads as to who might have done it, right? Someone who, you know, had the the uh antagonist towards this person, or you know, disaffinity from his, you know, had the opportunity, etc. , etc. , you know, they do, right? They don't, you know, when a murder has been committed, they don't go looking at every citizen in the city, do they?

[24:58] But the ones who are likely to have done it, right? You know, and so the likely man to have done the crime is the likely one to have done it. But it's only, in some way, it's unlikely he would do it. It's a very limited way, right?

[25:24] So if I take out a huge, you know, insurance on my wife, and then she suddenly dies, I'm likely to have done it, right? You know, you see, right?

[25:42] So there's a certain number of ways that are in a certain way. Aristotle speaks there of you know maybe audible in some kind of a way, teach your parents or something right that's audible very much secundum quid right yeah yeah but it's it's amazing how common this kind of mistake is right most people don't even recognize that kind of mistake though when this when this is being done

[26:59] seems to me what we learned today was one key word but in Greek here I was like they do have a word for thought too noema in the Greek text there noema so Aristotle is saying you know that the truth the true and the false is is in a what what place it says synthesis a putting together of noematon of thoughts right and the other place it says symploke noematon intertwining of thoughts

[27:35] but it's interesting that Saint John of course uses the word logos rather than the word what noema right thought and so he moves us from the what sensible to what is only understandable kind of beautiful way he does that it's interesting you know when Thomas is talking about the the incarnation and how it was appropriate that the second person of the Blessed Trinity became man rather than the Father say or the what Holy Spirit right and he speaks a certain likeness between man who's an animal with reason and the Word was made flesh right became man well logos in Greek there that Saint John uses for the the second person for the Son of God is also the word for what reason right okay so

[28:42] the Word of God and also reason so he kind of seeing in the Word there kind of a link between the two and appropriateness of the Word becoming what man okay it kind of reminds me of a little thing I sometimes do when I'm comparing Empedocles and Anaxagoras and I say whose guess is better that this mindless love and hate are the movers or a greater mind is the mover right And I say, well, which is more able to separate things, hate or mind?

[29:25] I stated the students. Was it hate that split the atom? Say, it's really reason who figures out how to separate things, huh? And you know how reason, even in mathematics, come back in these readings today. In mathematics, it separates extension and number and things of this sort, shape from sensible matter, something that hate can't do. But the mind is a better separator than what than hate is, huh?

[29:58] Now, you might be able to argue that love unites things more than the mind does, right? Okay. But, Empedocles says that earth, air, fire, and water—the four elements—are brought together to form flesh and blood and bones in different what ratios, huh? Okay. Of course, the Greek word for ratio is what logos. The Latin word is ratio. We've taken over the Latin word ratio. But logos and ratio are also the word for reason in both languages.

[30:48] So to put things together in a ratio seems to be more what mind does than what love does, huh? And sometimes I think you see this hyperfoody word, you know, for a bartender's manual.

[31:10] His science, his knowledge, right? They call it mixology, right? But notice it's named from what you know, biology, you know, from from logos to from reason there. And you know, if a bartender is going to make a Manhattan, he's got to know that the ratio is what two to one, right? To make a make a Stinger, the ratio is two to one. He doesn't have to love a Manhattan or love a Stinger, but his reason has to know what that I got to combine the brandy, let's say, in the white rum, the ratio two to one, right, or the whiskey and the sweet vermouth in the ratio two to one.

[31:57] And so, combining things in some ratio would seem to what make mind a better cause than than love, right? But suggested by the fact that you had the same word, and it's not by chance that you had the same word for ratio and for reason in both Greek and Latin. As if it's reason that most of all knows the ratio of one thing to another, or the order of one thing to another, Shakespeare says, huh? So I could just see this connection with the word logos there between the word of God and the word of God becoming man as an animal with reason.

[32:44] See some connection there. I mean, apart from that, the word logos is much more concrete because its first meaning is what something sensible, the spoken word, and by the word noema seems to be kind of what more abstract. I was looking at Partridge this morning to see what he says about the word thought, right? And does the word thought really have any sensible origin? But it doesn't seem to have much.

[33:16] But I guess the old phrase was methinks, methinks, and it had sort of the meaning of it seems to me, methinks, methinks that's okay. But there you see kind of the likeness between what the origin of the word thought there and the word what image or phantasm, what seems or appears, and therefore as he'll do here again in chapter eight, he'll distinguish between the image and the what thought, right?

[33:51] Okay. As I mentioned before, in English too, we'll often say, you know, I think that's so, I imagine that's so, as if they were almost the same thing, right? And they're not the same thing to imagine and to think or an image and a thought, but they're very much alike. So much people confuse the two. I mentioned John Locke. He used the word idea. He's not too sure whether he's talking about a thought or an image.

[34:19] He's kind of running the two together. I get an idea may just be an image you've got. And we say to the students, huh, if the philosopher has an idea, it should be a thought. But if the girl says to the boy, "Don't get ideas," it's probably images, right? He's not doing too much thinking. See, so I mean, the word idea there, I think, captures that thing.

[34:44] But if the word thought there or think, meant you know, methinks it seems so to me, right? It appears to me it's almost the same thing etymologically as as the Greek word there for the image, phantasm, it appears. Okay, we're in chapter seven here in the second paragraph there, three forty-seven, which is corresponds from then on to the rest of chapter seven to Thomas's thirteenth reading,

[35:16] and in this twelfth reading, rather, and the next chapter will be the thirteenth reading. Now, in this chapter seven or this twelfth reading, Aristotle is going to compare reason with the what senses, huh? And he also touched to some extent upon the

[35:42] the difference between them, but also the dependence of reason upon the senses. And he's thinking of it too primarily in terms of the what a likeness to them in regard to the practical, in regard to the good. Okay. But first of all, he he recalls some things said about the sense and the sensible. So he says the beginning of three forty-seven there, the sensible appears to make the sensitive enact from being in potency.

[36:19] Now the senses, as we saw before, are abilities that are acted upon by their object. Okay. So color acts upon the eye, or sound upon the ear, or flavor upon the tongue, and so on. And so, as a result of their acting upon the senses, the senses which are able to know come to what actually know as a result of being acted upon.

[36:55] Now, again, he wants to point out that the senses are not being moved by their objects in the way that bodies or matter are altered. huh? And that's why he repeats here, For the sense does not what suffer in the original meaning of the word suffer, nor is it altered in the original meaning of the word altered. Huh? Now, if you remember, in natural philosophy, back in the first book of Natural Hearing, when Aristotle was looking for a common thought shared by all his predecessors, and they all seemed to have this common thought about change, that change is by contraries.

[37:42] Changes from one contrary to the other. And Heraclitus, if you recall, began that thought with the induction. Right. It's the dry that what is moistened. It's the wet that dries out. Huh? It's the hard that is softened, and the soft that is hardened. So you have a change between contraries, and they call it an alteration. You lose the form or quality that you had to acquire the what opposite one, right?

[38:14] But this is not really what the senses being moved is. They're simply being what actualized. Huh? They're not going from one contrary to what another contrary. Huh? But they're going from ability to act. Huh? They're able to receive the colors of things, the eye, right? And now it actually sees the colors of things, and therefore it sees the colors of things, huh?

[38:42] Whence he says this is another species of what? Motion, huh? Kind of interesting the way Aristotle speaks here, because strictly speaking, he wouldn't consider sensing to be a form of what? Motion, huh? But when you get to the twelfth book, or excuse me, the twelfth book, the ninth book of wisdom,

[39:07] which is a book where Aristotle talks about ability and act, it's the ninth book of wisdom, and he'll point out in that book that the word act seems to be first said of motion,

[39:33] and then later on, it's carried over to form, and it's not purely by chance that the word act is carried over from motion to form, huh? In fact, there's a kind of what likeness there of ratios, huh?

[40:00] So just as the body, right, that is able to be in motion, right, is sometimes put into motion and moves, right? So likewise, the matter is able to be formed in some way, is sometimes what actually formed in that way, huh? So as the eyes are to seeing, not the eyes, are, but as the body is to motion before it moves, so the matter is to what form before it's been what formed, huh?

[40:33] Okay. So there's a certain likeness there, huh, in these things too, ability in the thing that can be in motion with respect to the matter, huh? That's kind of fun. The distinction he makes, huh? But then he comes back and

[40:53] he's going to distinguish between motion in the strict sense and what they sometimes call an operation, okay? Like the difference between walking home, take my stand example, and seeing, huh, or understanding or loving, right? What is the difference between the two? See? Well, he'll call this an imperfect act, and this down here a perfect act. What does that mean? Well, when I'm walking home, have I walked home yet?

[41:39] No. As long as I'm walking home, the activity of walking home is incomplete, huh? And when I have walked home, am I walking home anymore? No. So so long as I'm walking home, so long as I have that kind of activity. There's something incomplete about it, and grammar reflects that kind of activity. So we say, you know, I am walking home. I have walked home, and they call it perfect.

[42:11] Maybe, Marina, I have walked home. But notice, when I have walked home, the activity of walking home doesn't even exist anymore. So long as the activity of walking home exists, it's something incomplete, right? And when it's complete, it doesn't exist. So it's by its very nature imperfect or incomplete act. In the same way, building a house, right? When I'm building a house, the house has not been built yet.

[42:41] has it? And when the house has been built, I'm no longer building it. So that kind of activity, which is most known to us, as Shakespeare says, "things in motion sooner catch the eye, and what not stirs, and you know, we wave to people and so on."

[43:02] Since our knowledge starts with our senses, that's the act most known to us. We first call act. But now, when you take an activity like seeing something, right? Well, when I am seeing you now, I'm seeing you now. Have I seen you yet? Yeah. See. So that's a perfect act. Yeah. When I'm seeing you, I have seen you.

[43:30] And when I understand what a triangle is, have I understood what a triangle is? Yeah. Yeah. And when I love you, have I loved you yet? See. Okay. So he's making that distinction, or he's alluding to that distinction here, but it's made most formally in the ninth book of the Metaphysics, in the ninth book here of wisdom. How about distinguishing an operation from form, or? Well, he does that too.

[44:01] That's first thing he does, right? See. He kind of distinguishes motion from form, but motion, you know, is going to include any kind of activity, you might say. Okay. You can see that with words like action, activity, right? Even the word "act" itself. You don't usually think of form as being an act, do we? When you think of an act, you think of some kind of activity, some kind of action.

[44:29] So that's a sign that "act" is first said as this sort of act, right? Okay. But instead of this, where he explains it in the ninth book, by reason of a certain what likeness of ratios, huh? Like he compares, for example, he says, "As the eye is, right, huh?" But it's closed, but it's not blind, right? Is to actually seeing, right? You open your eyes, right? So something like that is the wood before it's been shaped into a statue, let's say, right?

[45:07] And then after it's been shaped, right? So you have the ability to be moved, or the ability to do something, right? And the ability to be what formed, right? Okay. Corresponding to those two, you have two acts, right?

[45:28] So the ability to be formed is to what actually being formed, right? Something like the ability to do something is to what actually doing it, then? Or vice versa, take the reverse, vice day, right? So walking in a way is the ability to walk. Something like being the Pietà is the marble before Michelangelo works on it, huh? So if I sit in lifeless there, that's one way of seeing that the word is not being used act and ability purely equivocally here, okay?

[46:05] But when he first makes that distinction, he's not concerned really with distinguishing between motion in the strict sense and operation, right? And that's why he speaks here, in, kind of in a loose way, right, to say that seeing and hearing and smelling and tasting, they're another kind of motion, another, right? In the strict sense, if by motion you mean the imperfect act, they're not motion at all, right?

[46:31] Okay. But they're more like motion than they're like what form, right? Okay. Now Thomas in the De Potentia has another way of connecting form with motion, and that is that form is the end result of some motion, right? Like my what shaping the wood, right? Results in a certain form in the wood, right? Okay. My stamping the metal results in a certain form. Or form is the what source of some kind of activity.

[47:13] So after your mind has been formed, it can do things, huh? Okay. And after you receive the form, it completes your nature. You're able to do the activities of that nature. So form is the end or the beginning of some kind of motion or operation, some kind of activity. So again, it's not purely what equivocal, right?

[47:42] But in an operation in a strict sense, use that term. Thomas does for a perfect act, perfect activity. Within the, in that case, would it like seeing?

[48:03] See the contrast he makes is that when I'm, when I'm walking home, I haven't walked home yet. And when I have walked home, when that activity has been, is complete. In a sense, it doesn't exist anymore. So, so long as I'm walking home, I haven't walked home yet. And once you can say I have walked home, I have arrived. I'm no longer arriving, am I?

[48:29] So, whenever that kind of activity exists, is by its very nature what? Expecting something further. Okay. When I'm coming into the room, I haven't come into the room yet, have I? So, when I'm building the house, I haven't built it. yet. And learning is like that kind of an activity. When I'm learning something, I haven't learned it yet. And when I have learned it, I'm no longer learning it.

[48:59] Right. Say. But understanding, when I'm understanding something, I have understood it. When I'm hearing something, I have heard it. When I'm loving someone. Or something I have loved, them right.

[49:21] But as I say, grammar seems to reflect more the more known type of what? Activity, which is motion, huh? The imperfect act. So then, the term operation would then include not only the the form that you acquire, but. The acquisition itself is that how it's different. No, no. As I say, you have to see it as different from form, right? Form is going to be. A principle of that, right?

[49:52] See. That's why he speaks of the senses and the reason, huh? That when the, reason or the senses. Um, are active part, right? What they receive is as a what form. And, having received that form, then they can see or sense, right? Right, understand. So the form is a principle, right, of that.

[50:22] So the eye, you can say, sees through what it has received. Okay, as a as a formal principle, right? And the reason understands through what it has received, huh? Now, incidentally, there's a very subtle difference there. You see, you have to be very careful about the words, huh? Um.

[50:47] When you say, for example, talking about the first kind of activity. If I, let's say, kick you, I hit you. Right? In a way, my kicking and my hitting—that's between me and you, right? Okay. Comes between me and you, right? I kick you, I hit you. Okay. Now, grammatically, you might be deceived here, right? You say that I see you or I love you. you see? And.

[51:36] Grammatically, it seems the same, right? As I kicked you, I hit you, right? Okay. And I don't know. Grammar might call you the object there, right? Of seeing or loving, like you are the object of my kicking or my hitting, right? Okay. But actually,

[51:58] it's not to seeing or loving originally that we're what united, right? But to the fact that you have acted upon my senses or acted upon my heart. Oh yes.

[52:13] So before I see the color, the color has to have acted upon my eye. So the color in the sense has been already in some way united to my eye, right? Makes possible my what seeing it, right? And the same way with love, because the ability to love there is also an ability that's acted upon by its what object, right? You see. Of course, even even in mythology, you know the idea of Cupid having the arrow there, right?

[52:50] See. Or even you know Teresa of Avila or St. Teresa of Jesus, right? They receive an increase of love under the effect of being wounded, right? Huh? But they're being acted upon by the what object, right? Huh?

[53:04] In fact, interesting is one way you have speaking there, even of more maybe in romantic love. But I think it's the same thing basically. Um, you know, you made a big impression upon her. Something of that sense, right? Okay. Okay. In a sense, you you made an impression upon somebody's heart, right? And that's why they're starting to like you, because you've made an impression upon their heart.

[53:38] So the object, in a way, acts upon the power in the case of the loving and the what sensing, right? And the result of its acting upon it and being united with it is that you love or that you see.

[53:56] So in a sense, the love is not what's originally uniting me with you, but because you've made an impression on my heart that this activity called love proceeds, right? And because the color that I see hit the higher object, because the color is already acting upon my eye in some way, the result of the color acting upon my eye is that I see.

[54:25] So seeing proceeds from the union of my eye and the color in some way, and love from the union between the object and my heart. Okay. By the case of kicking, this is a transitive action, right? So I'm going out to you, and so my kicking is what's uniting me with you, huh? My hitting you, right? Okay. You see that? You have no contact, in other words, before I kick you, hit you, Right?

[55:08] But you and I already have some contact before I see you, because you've acted upon my eye or your color, your shape, your size, right? Private and common sensibles they've acted upon my eye.

[55:25] That's a very very subtle thing here. Now in 348 he's going to say some things about sensing in particular in regard to the good and the bad. He's going to compare

[55:44] reason with the senses, but you have to see also the the differences between the two, right? So he says sensing therefore is similar to saying or thinking alone, but when there is pleasure or pain, it pursues or avoids as if affirming or denying. Now he says as if, right? What does that mean?

[56:16] Well, he's saying that when the senses, right, perceives some object, right, that comes first, right, and if that object is agreeable. To the what senses, right? Then secondly, there comes a sensation of what pleasure, right? Okay. If that object that you sense is disagreeable, huh? Doesn't fit the senses, then there arises a sensation of what pain, right? And that feeling of pleasure or pain is in the sensible order something like reason, right?

[56:59] When it affirms this is good, this is bad, okay? And when reason says this is good, then you tend to pursue that object, right? When reason says this is bad, right? Then you tend to avoid that object or turn away from it, right? Well, he says in the case of senses, when the senses sense something, it's a little more complicated, right? They have to sense it, and then they don't say this is good or this is bad, but they what?

[57:35] Either sense it as as as suitable to the sense organ, or as what? Unsuitable and opposed to it in some way, right? And therefore, there arises secondarily pleasure or pain, and that's the way the senses know good and what bad, okay?

[58:00] While reason doesn't have to perceive what pleasure or pain to say this is good or this is bad, right? Okay, it sees you know pleasure and pain in reference to good or bad, but it understands good and bad universally, and it can see reasons why something is good or bad apart from pleasure or pain. But the senses don't know good or bad universally; they know it only as what agreeable or disagreeable to the senses, and therefore as pleasure or pain.

[58:34] Okay. I often come back to this text when I'm in ethics, huh? Sure. And in ethics, you know, usually we do Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics to get the truth, obviously, but we read John Stuart Mill because that's where the kids are coming from. That's kind of the dominant thinking, not just a Mill, but you know, the general of the English moral philosophers about good and bad, right? Well, basically, what Mill is saying is that the only criterion of good and bad is what pleasure and pain, and he may you know say the greater pleasure, the greater number of something, but basically, pleasure and pain are the criterion of good and bad.

[59:25] Well. The stock objection to Mill is, well, this is a philosophy for beasts, for animals, not for human beings, right? See. And Mill gives, I think, a good reply to this, but not altogether sufficient reply. See. He tries to turn the tables on those who accuse him of having a beastly ethics and a beastly philosophy, huh? See. Where there is no criterion of good and bad except pleasure and pain, which is all the beast has.

[1:00:07] Is it? That's the only criterion the beast has, because that's the only criterion the senses have. And the reply that Mill gives is this: he says, "You are the beast," he says, right? Because you are thinking that man has no pleasures or pains other than what the beast has, right? See. But there are these what higher human pleasures, right? Okay. And he says those who have experienced the the animal pleasures and then these these higher human pleasures, they all prefer the higher human pleasures.

[1:00:49] It's those who have only experienced the animal pleasures who think they're the greatest thing in the world. Okay. Now there is some truth in what he's saying, huh? And and usually I try to go a little bit further. I think I maybe mentioned this to you before, but say it again here. I say,

[1:01:09] Mill is right there in saying there are pleasures that man has that the the beast does not have, huh? Okay. So, but really, he should just distinguish between beastly pleasures and human pleasures. He should distinguish between beastly pleasures and human pleasures and angelic pleasures. Okay. Now, this is the distinction now. Now,

[1:02:06] the beastly pleasures are the pleasures that man shares with the beast, huh? So the pleasures of eating and drinking, huh? And reproduction and sleep and so on, right? Okay. Getting comfortable, right? We see a cat, you know, as a way of finding a comfortable place, rests itself in the house. Sometimes to the annoyance, of people at the house, okay. Now the angelic pleasures are the pleasures of what?

[1:02:39] Understanding, okay. Now, the difference between man and the angels, and man and the beast, in those two regards, is that man has the beastly pleasures in a more refined way than the beast has, huh? So we cook our food and sometimes season it to the French, you know, have these wine sauces and so on, right, huh? Okay. But basically, they're pleasures we share with the beast, huh?

[1:03:10] Although it's more refined, huh? The um, Tabitha had a great cat. We had it gone now. Anyway, Tabitha, you know, we're having steak tonight. I say, Tabitha, we're having steak tonight, and you're invited. To get a little handout, you know, with my hand there, she goes around the table or something like that, and it seems to me, you know, that Tabitha really, you know, understood what I was saying.

[1:03:36] You know, just gonna be a good night, you know, Hang around the table, you see. And but I put a little salt and pepper maybe on my steak or some, you know, sauce or something, right? That that that Tabitha just doesn't do without, right? But basically, we're we're sharing the same pleasure. We had some fun with Tabitha tonight, see. Now the angelic pleasures, as they say, are the pleasures of understanding, right?

[1:04:02] But as you know, man has an overshadowed understanding, and reason rather than understanding. So we partake of these pleasures of the angels, but imperfectly, right? Because we don't understand very much compared to what they understand. So they're have the pleasures of understanding much greater than we have, huh? Okay.