De Anima (On the Soul)
50. De Anima III.8: The Soul Is in Some Way All Things – the Hand as Tool of Tools, and Locke's General Triangle
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/4-de-anima/050-de-anima-iii-8-the-soul-is-in-some-way-all-things-the-hand/

[0:01] So when Saint Paul was caught up to the third heaven, right, he didn't know he was in his body anymore, right? He was withdrawn from his senses. So take a break before we look at chapter 8. Here we go. We never said our prayer today, did we? huh? God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order to illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly.

[0:30] Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Pray for us. Help us to understand all the truth. of it in the old age. It's Alzheimer's, right? Forgetting. the

[0:47] year or so of God's at a mass there, and the priest started to consecrate the blood before the bread. Everybody's kind of shocked. So they realize, what's the awful though to be up there, you know, and and not to be sure, you know, this what you've done, right? I mean, to a point where you can't.

[1:10] Now, chapter eight here is concluding the consideration of both the senses and reason, and he's going to draw some things about the soul as a result of this. Now, however, summing up the things said about soul, let us say again that the soul is somehow all beings. It's all what? All things, huh? In Greek it just says, in some way it's, panta, all things, right? Okay, all beings.

[1:51] In Greek it just says all. For beings, yeah, okay. I told you there's a Greek panta there. For beings are either sensibles or what? Understandables, huh? Okay.

[2:14] And in some way, science is the what? Understandable, huh? Okay, the knowable. And sense the what? Sensible, right? Okay. Now, in a way, the earlier philosophers had said this too, huh? Because to take Empedocles, the one that he emphasizes a lot in this regard, Empedocles says that we know earth by earth, right? And water by water, and air by air, and fire by fire, and love by love, and hate by hate, because we have all these things in us, right?

[3:04] Because in a sense we are all these things, right? Then we what? Know them all, right? Well, Aristotle is seeing an element of truth in that, right?

[3:17] That the soul is in some way all things, but not in the way that Empedocles thought, right? Okay. And to begin with, you can say that all things are not in the soul in a material way, right? Huh? But they're also not actually in the soul to begin with. They're only in the soul in what ability, right? In potency, huh? So, but one must ask how this is so, right?

[3:54] Okay, is it so in the way that Empedocles and the other thought, right? Does the soul know all things because it what actually is composed of all things, right? See.

[4:12] So he says, science and sense therefore are divided to correspond to things. Now, what way do they correspond to things? Well, when you go to the ninth book of wisdom, you'll see that things are divided according to act and ability. And this is something like that with the senses, huh? Because they're all things in ability first. So the eye is able to receive all colors, right? In the ear to receive all sounds, huh?

[4:45] And the tongue all flavors and so on, right? And reason is able to receive what the natures of all material things, huh? But then later they all what receive actually these things, right? Okay. So in a way, it is divided like things are into ability and act.

[5:10] What is in potency or ability? To what is in potency? What is in act? To what is in act? The sensing part and the scientific part of the soul are in potency these things, right? So that's in contrast to what Empedocles had said, huh? That they are actually composed of what they know, huh? And the other problem with Empedocles is that he saw them as being what in there in a material way, right?

[5:37] Well, then the wooden chair because it has wood in it, you know what wood is, right? And my favorite example is that of what Goliath, right, huh? That when he cut him in the forehead with the stone, right, he should have understood more what a stone is. But actually, he was through knowing, right, at that point, huh? Okay.

[6:04] And then the second difference, as I say, is the one we're talking about here that goes on to 356, right? That's in there in a what immaterial way, right? Formal ways, he says here. It is necessary for the soul to be either the things themselves in this material way, or the what species, the form of them, huh? But it is certainly not the things themselves, for the stone is not in the soul, right?

[6:29] So I think Aristotle would like my example of Goliath, right? But it's species, it's form, right? Okay. Now it makes a beautiful comparison. Whence the soul is like the hand, huh? Now, what weighs the soul like the hand?

[6:56] Well, if you compare the hand with the claw of the animal, let's say, right? The claw of the animal, the paw, is it like a definite what? Tool, right? While the hand is kind of like the what? Tool of tools, right? With the hand, you can make all kinds of tools—a hammer, a saw, a knife—you name it, right? But you can also, with your hand, what? Use the knife, use the fork, use the ballpoint pen, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right?

[7:31] So it seems to be what? The tool of tools, right? And that's why you could say that the hand and reason are made for each other, huh? And there's a famous remark of Aristotle in the biological works where he he refers to Anaxagoras, right? And Anaxagoras says, "Man is the most intelligent of the animals because he has a what? Hand."

[8:04] Aristotle says, "No, it's the reverse. He he has a hand because he's the most intelligent of the animals because reason is able to know what an infinity of things, right? And therefore, to do an infinity of things, huh?

[8:26] It wouldn't be appropriate for it to have a what? A hammer or a knife or a ballpoint pen here at the end of my what? Arm here, right? Because then it'd be because I'm made to what? Do just one thing, more or less, huh? So the cat can have the claws there because he's gonna you know grab his victim and hold it and so on and or defend itself scratching, right?

[8:53] But because he's a limited things, he has to do with his paw. Um, you can have a paw with with claws retractable what claws, right? And that's sufficient for defending itself from the dog, right? You know, if a dog is gonna get a cat, he's got to get him by what? The the neck, huh? You know, but forward the cat can scratch the dog, you know, and his nose is enough to discourage the dog from doing, huh?

[9:22] So usually a cat wins the fight between the self and the dog, you know. So it can use that for defense, and they can use it for for capturing the mouse or the bird or something else, right? And that's all it needs, but it's a limited number of things going to do, right? But man with his hands, he might be doing what? His infinity of things he might be doing with his hands, huh?

[9:43] Might be painting a painting, right? Now he's got to put a little paintbrush in his hand, right? He might be painting the house. Paintbrushes, you may know, and he may be writing notes, right? This is kind of a thing, right? But now he may be eating soup. Well, this is no good for you to eat soup with, right? Now he's got to have a what? Spoon, right?

[10:03] You know, this is the way. Now, pray to order this way, I guess. You see, so now he's going to be sawing wood, right? Now he's got to have a saw, right? So this is the tool of all tools, so to speak, huh?

[10:20] So the hand is given to man because of the universality of his reason, enables him to do things. So he says, just as the hand is the tool of all tools, so the soul, in a way, is the form of all what? Of all forms, huh? Okay, it's able to receive all forms, right? Okay, in a sense, make all forms, huh? Understandable. Just as a hand is able to make all things and to use them, right?

[10:53] That's a marvelous comparison he makes there. For the hand is the tool of tools, and the mind is the species of species. The sense, the species of sensibles, huh? The form of forms.

[11:14] So there is evidence there, you might say, even in the the body, right? That man is not really determined to some part of the world or some activity in particular.

[11:35] I remember a biologist saying to me one time, "You could just say from examining the body of man that he doesn't have a niche in nature. " When you examine the body of a fish, obviously, you know, it fits the water; doesn't fit the land, huh? But even the ape, which is closest to man, you know, their hands are more like for swinging trees and doing things of that sort, huh?

[12:01] So they have a niche, so to speak, in nature, huh? But man doesn't really have a niche in that sense. But sometimes they compare what, not only the hand, but they compare words to what? Reason too, huh? Because in words we can signify just about anything, right? And the cat doesn't have words, does he? He has a meow, and maybe he has some variety of meows, but it's limited what he can what express by his meow.

[12:40] He can signify by his meow. He has a purr and so on. So, remember how in the beginning of the book there, in the proemium Aristotle said that a knowledge of the soul, like all knowledge, is good, right? But one knowledge is better than another because it's about better things, right, or because it's more certain. And then he spoke of the soul being what? Very high in that way, huh?

[13:21] A knowledge of the soul being very high. Well, part of the reason for that is because the soul, especially the animal soul and most of all the human soul, is in some way what? All things, right? And the whole is better than the part, isn't it?

[13:40] Yeah. So man can receive the natures of all things in the material world, and in the form of a definition, where you know kind distinctly the natures of things. It's kind

[13:57] of you don't stop it and wonder about that, but it's kind of wonderful, eh? That man is not in a sense limited. And if you go back to that fragment that we had on the mind there from Anaxagoras, the first thing he says about the mind is that it's what unlimited, right? But there's something unlimited about the hand, as you were saying before, right? And a fortiori about the the reason.

[14:24] huh Can you see that being unlimited, especially when you talk about the what the universal, right? Because universal in a way covers an infinity of things.

[14:41] When I say no odd number is even, I'm covering how many things? How many things does odd number cover? We go through them all, right? The rest of your life. Three, five, seven, nine, right? So you can see the universal to the mind is open to knowing all things. That's not true so much about the senses, right? But maybe the eye is opened receiving all colors, right?

[15:12] And the ear all sounds, but the eye doesn't receive everything, right? Just color, right? And the ear is sound and so on. But the common sense is more like reason, receiving all these sensibles.

[15:32] Okay, now in 357, though he comes back to the dependence here of reason upon the what senses again, and maybe more explicit even here.

[15:49] But since there is nothing separated beyond sensible magnitudes that the soul knows directly, as it seems, the sensibles being separated, the understandables are in the sensible species, both those said in abstraction, the mathematical things, and whatever are states and passions of the sensibles.

[16:16] So just as I see the color in the object over there, right? I see the red in this little thing here. So I consider what a triangle is in what the image, right? That I imagine of a triangle.

[16:37] And because of this, he says no one not sensing can learn or understand. But it's not only that you originally acquire these through that. And whenever one considers right, even after I've learned what a triangle is, I want to think about what a triangle is or understand what a triangle is actually. Again, I have to do what? Imagine a triangle,

[17:01] okay? The phantasms are like the sensibles in this respect, huh? They are to reason something like the exterior sensible is to the what? Sensus, huh? Except the exterior sensible is something material, right? And the image is already something kind of what? Immaterial, okay?

[17:32] Now, in the last two paragraphs here, three fifty-eight and three fifty-nine, he's going to be distinguishing again between imagination here, which is so closely related to thinking, and to thought. As I mentioned there, the great John Locke himself, right? The philosopher of the Glorious Revolution, as it's called, right? When the Catholics finally lost out of England, right? You know, you know what the Glorious Revolution is, right?

[18:03] No, I don't understand. Well, when when James the Second was about to what become king, right? Huh? And they were afraid that he had what? He's too Catholic, right? When was this? Maybe about sixteen eighty eight is about the time of the Glorious Revolution, yeah. What you have, you know, is what you have. What James the first, James the sixth of Scotland, who becomes James the first of England, right after the death of Queen Elizabeth, right?

[18:31] And he's he's a Protestant or Lutheran or whatever he's called now. He's a you know, Englishman. And then comes what Charles the first, right? Who's a Episcopalian too, we'd say, not Catholic, but there's still some connection there. And he's the one that loses his head, right? And that's the civil war there, right? And it's where Cromwell takes over, right? And he's really violently anti-Catholic, you know, and he goes into Ireland and chops people up and so on.

[18:58] And but finally, get tired of him and he dies or whatever, and then they what decide they need a king again, right? So they bring back the Playboy, right? Charles the second, right, who's been over in France, huh? And then you have finally what he dies. You have James the second, right? But he's got real what Catholic ties, right? And they're not even sure about Charles the second.

[19:25] I mean, they they think the priest came out the back back entrance, right, for the last rites and so on, right? So the kind of deathbed repentance there for the Playboy King, but so they're they were afraid of a Catholic restoration of James the second, huh?

[19:44] So then. You know, they plotted against him and brought over what's his name, William of Orange, right? He had William and Mary as king, huh? So if you go, if you go in the in the St. Peter's there, right, in the front there, you know, that these kind of freestanding things they have, and there's a there's a what monument to the Stuarts there. I always say when I go in, that I see it.

[20:10] I always like to go and look at it, you know, and say, I wonder what the English think when they come in here, you know. You just wandering around the there in the, you know, St. Peter's like even a, you know, Anglican might do, right, just to see the church and so on, right? And

[20:28] it's monument to the what Stuarts, huh? Okay. So John Locke tried to then what, you know, justify you know these political arrangements, right? And so he's called the philosopher, of the glorious revolution, right? And he's um uh writes a famous letter on toleration, right? Except for Catholics, of course. Except Catholic for their intolerance, so. But but Locke is along with Montesquieu, the famous philosophers who influenced our what forefathers a lot.

[21:14] So Locke, you know, influenced James Madison, people like that a lot. But anyway, we're not concerned with his political philosophy right now or his moral philosophy, but his what natural philosophy, right? And so saying, he confuses the image with the what thought, huh? Okay. And

[21:39] notice, huh? Let's go back example of Locke there. See, Locke is trying to kind of attack the idea that the general is more known to us than the particular, and

[22:00] he wants to show this by showing that the general ideas are really rather difficult ideas. And he takes as example then the general idea of triangle. Okay. Now, if you say, what is the general idea of triangle? Well, the general idea of triangle is this.

[22:29] I use the word idea here because that's going to lend itself to the confusion here, thought insight. The general idea of triangle is a what a plane figure

[22:42] contained. By three straight lines, okay, something like that would be general idea of triangle, right? Huh? Okay. So, in the idea of triangle in general, is three straight lines.

[23:03] And as you know, straight lines have got to be either equal or unequal, right? So, are the three straight lines in the definition of triangle are they equal or unequal? Or they're equal or unequal. Not necessarily. either. Well, you see, but if you're imagining straight lines, they've got to be either equal or unequal, don't they? See. Now, imagine these three straight lines in the definition of triangle general to be equal.

[23:47] Then the general idea of triangle doesn't fit. Do you say scaling triangle? Does it not? Okay. If you imagine those lines to be unequal, say all of them, it doesn't fit the equilateral triangle, right? Okay. So it's got to, in some sense, be both of these, right? And neither of these, right? If you take all three possibilities, right? It's got to be all of these and what?

[24:19] None of these, right? And, of course, it applies to the same thing. You know, it's got to be either right-angled or acute-angled or obtuse angled right? In other words, these two sides here have got to meet at a right angle or an obtuse angle right?

[24:39] Um Or a acute angle, right? Okay. And of course, if you imagine those those lines meeting, you've got to imagine them meeting at a right angle or an obtuse angle or an acute angle, right? Okay. So which are these two lines meeting at? If you say at a right angle, it doesn't fit these. If you say at this, it doesn't fit these two. If you meet an acute angle, it doesn't fit these, right?

[25:08] So somehow it's it seems to be all of these, right? You can get a catch between them. Okay. So he ends up by saying it's all and what? None of these, right?

[25:23] Well, I think I mentioned how Berkeley quotes that exact paragraph where he says it. In his work on the principles of human understanding, and he said, "What's it making sense, right? " So Berkeley concludes we have no general ideas. Okay. And that's that's his mistake. But Locke's mistake is that this general idea of triangle is all none of these things, right? It's like you have the equilateral triangle and the isosceles triangle, the scalene triangle, which you have a clear idea each of these, right?

[25:58] And then you ram them together, and you get the general idea of triangle. You see. And that's really a false understanding of what it is, huh?

[26:11] Because you don't get the general idea of triangle by ramming together equilateral, isosceles, and scalene That'd be like saying you get? A general understanding of what a man is by taking a white man and a black man, a yellow man, and wrapping them together, right, and getting kind of, you know,

[26:33] is man in general white or yellow or or black? Would you say? Well, it's all and none of these, right? What's the mistake there, right? I mean, there's more than one mistake that he's making here, but

[26:55] in regard to his his thing, there, three straight lines must be either equal or unequal. They must be either the right angle or an acute and obtuse angle, right? So the three straight line definition triangle must be doing one of those things. Well, what's the answer to that?

[27:13] Are these three straight lines equal or aren't equal? What would you say? We can say it's both equal and unequal in ability, but neither in what? Yeah, yeah, yeah. These three lines are equilateral isosceles scalene in ability all in ability, but none of those three in what? Act. Okay. So part of Locke's—I use this example sometimes to show that Locke doesn't understand what ability, right? Right. Okay.

[28:11] And what is in something in ability, he's imagining falsely to be actually in there. Okay. Now, I think I quoted a very interesting statement by Weizsäcker Weizsäcker is the physicist. He was a pupil of Heisenberg for a while, so that was where he was pretty good. at Heisenberg's tutelage But he's the guy who explained, I guess, why the sun can go on so long without burning out.

[28:43] But Weizsäcker made an interesting statement. He says that when we imagine something, we make it actual in our imagination. We can't really imagine ability any more than you can what sensibility, any kind of ability. So when you see a ball player on the field, there, do you actually see his ability, or do you see what he does because of his ability?

[29:15] When the great pianist sits down to play the piano, right? Do you see his ability? He sits down. You don't see his ability in him. You see what he does because of his ability, right? And that's how reason comes to understand ability, huh? Relation to act, huh? But the senses and the imagination don't know one thing in comparison to another. They don't know one thing in order or ratio to another.

[29:42] So, in a way, he has the same problem that Anaxagoras has, right? Anaxagoras is saying you can't get something out of nothing. So, if all these things come to be out of matter, they must be what? Actually, in there, right? Right. Okay. And he doesn't distinguish between them. Them all being in there in ability, but only one of them in what? Act, right? So, if I have a piece of clay, for example, right, out of a piece of clay, I can get a sphere, a cube, a cylinder, a pyramid, an infinity of different things out of that one piece of clay, right?

[30:25] But are all those shapes actually in the clay? Only in ability. They're only there in ability, yeah. Only one of them is there in act, huh? But they're all there in ability, huh? So,

[30:41] people falsely imagine everything that is in the ability of matter to be what? Actually, in there, huh? And that's how Anaxagoras ends up in that strange position that everything is inside of everything. Right. But he runs into problems because there are limits to how small things can get. But when I teach that part, there sometimes I bring in Heisenberg's introduction of the unified field theory. And Heisenberg is talking about the students of elementary particles and how the well-known formula among them was that every elementary particle is composed of all the rest.

[31:23] And the reason why they spoke that way is because out of any elementary particle, you can eventually get all the rest. They must already be in there, right? But actually, had the same problem that is taken for what is actually being said in words there, right? That Anaxagoras has, is that the elementary particles are getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller, right? And that's contrary to our experience of the elementary particles, as each having a definite, you know, mass and so on, size.

[31:55] So, now in a way, Socrates is making that same mistake in the in the Meno, right? When he says that the slave boy already knew what how to double a square, because it comes out of what the slave boy does, in fact, know. But in fact, the slave boy was mistaken. He didn't know how to double a square to begin with. But he was able to know it.

[32:22] Is that the same thing as to actually know it? You know the length and width of a rectangle. Do you actually know the area? Well, if you never multiplied the length by the width, you don't actually know the area, do you? But you are able to know the area if you know the length and the width and know how to multiply.

[32:42] So people sometimes, with one or another kind of ability, falsely imagine, right, that what is in something in ability is actually what in there, right? You can't get blood out of a turnip. Why not? Because there's no blood in there, right? You can't get money out of my pocket. There's no money in my pocket, right?

[33:14] And yet, you know, you can get a chair out of the next room if there's a chair in the next room, right? And yet. In some way we get chairs out of the trees, so there's such a thing as what

[33:29] getting something out of something that's not actually in there. That sounds crazy at first, doesn't it? Right? Yeah. See. And that's not the same thing as getting something out of nothing, because ability is not what nothing, contrary to the Megarians, that we read in Book Nine, of Wisdom, who thought there's no such thing as ability. But so, in a sense, Locke, you know, I'll mention he's having a somewhat similar problem, right?

[33:57] Because he's not able to understand how these three lines, right, include equilateral, isosceles and scalene. It, includes all the particular kinds or obtuse and you know, right-angled, acute-angled triangles, includes all of those in ability, right? But none in act, right?

[34:25] So you can see the three straight lines are all these in ability, none in act, and therefore the the general is a little bit like matter, different kind of ability, but there's a similarity there.

[34:44] The same way you can say that man in general is he what white or is he yellow or is he black or brown or what is he?

[35:04] Well, man in general is able to be all these, right? But he's none of these, what, in act, right? We're talking about number in general, is it odd or even? Is both of these or either of these? What's able to be both, right? But it's actually neither.

[35:39] And because you find theorems about number in general, includes what a number is either a part or parts of another number, unless the lesser or the greater, right? So what's he talking about there? Odd number, even number?

[35:59] Is it odd number, even number, or a number in general? It is either a part or parts of another number, the lesser or the greater.

[36:09] It's neither, right? An ability, right? So, you can't understand ability, but part of the reason for not understanding ability, as they say, goes back to imagination. what Aristotle said, when you imagine something, you what? Make it actual, imagination. So when you try to imagine ability of any kind, you tend to be deceived by false imagination. You imagine something cannot be imagined. You're making actual something that's not actual, and therefore you're falsifying it.

[36:58] Another way you can explain the difficulty is that he's trying to what? He's confusing the image of a triangle with the thought of triangle. Any triangle you imagine, you can either imagine it as either equilateral or isosceles or scalene, right? Just like any triangle you draw on the board here, you must be either what equilateral or isosceles or scalene. It's got to be one or the other, right?

[37:29] It can't be all and none, right? See? But you can understand what's common to all of these, right? Leaving aside the differences, but you can't imagine what's common to all of them.

[37:54] The actual triangle you imagine will be one or the other, but when you're demonstrating in general, what you understand is not exactly imagination, is it?