De Anima (On the Soul)
57. De Anima: The Order Among the Soul's Powers, and the Senses of 'Before' (Why Breathing Isn't Better Than Philosophizing)
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/4-de-anima/057-de-anima-the-order-among-the-souls-powers-and-the-senses/

[0:01] but this one colleague of mine there used to remark how his father, you know, thought so little of our ordinary American bread, you know. Okay, so everybody here. Yes. Let's say our little prayer. Name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. God our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor.

[0:36] Pray for us. And help us to understand all that you've written. Name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. So in these last two chapters, Thomas informs us that Aristotle is going to talk about the order, right, among the powers, huh? Now, order, as you know, means what? Before and after, right? And what sense of before and after is Aristotle bringing out the order among these powers?

[1:28] Is before in time or before in being? Or before in goodness. Discourse of reason or before in goodness. In goodness or being. Okay, which is it? Where's

[1:50] the nutritive soul, or to put in English, the feeding soul? Right. Is that before the other in goodness or in being? It seems like both. In being? Yeah, yeah. I notice he's going to say he's going to say that the feeding soul, right, or the feeding powers, if you wish, right? Nutritive. These are feeding is more concrete though. The nutritive, right? But it's referred to that. You could say the feeding soul

[2:37] is before the sensing soul. Okay. Or the feeding powers. Be more precise there. The feeding powers are before the sense powers. What does that mean, huh? It means that you can have the feeding powers, huh? How is the feeding and growing and reproduction right without having the sense powers in bodies, right? And that's obvious in the case of the fact that the plants, right, have the power to grow and reproduce themselves, nourish themselves, but they don't have the sense powers, right?

[3:30] But the animals have what the sense powers in addition, right? But they couldn't be without being able to what nourish themselves, huh? And if they couldn't reproduce themselves, right, they would what cease to be too, right? But notice the sensing soul has what the feeding soul has and something more in addition. So the feeding soul has only a part of what the sensing soul has. But which is better, the part or the whole?

[4:11] The whole. The whole, yeah. Yeah. So the sensing soul is better than the feeding soul, right? Okay. And the sense powers are higher powers than the what powers of feeding, right? The more material and so on. Um, but Aristotle here is talking about the order and being, right? Yeah. He's saying how the feeding soul or the feeding powers can be without the sensing powers, but not vice versa.

[4:41] Okay. And then you can say also that the sensing soul or the sensing powers, right, is before the understanding soul, right? The thinking soul. Okay.

[5:09] Again, the understanding soul is better than the sensing soul, right? But you can have in bodies, huh? You can have the sensing powers without having the ability to understand. And the other animals have the sensing powers without the ability to understand the universal. But the understanding soul, as we saw before, its object is that what it is is something sensed or imagined. So this understanding soul is not without the sensing soul, but the reverse is possible, right?

[5:43] Again, the understanding soul is to the sensing soul like the whole is to what parts, huh? Sometimes, you know, Thomas will speak of the soul as a potestative whole, right? Meaning what? Um.

[6:04] It's got all these powers, right? But you have the fullness of the power in the understanding soul. You have a part of that, right, in the sensing soul, and a part of that in the what? Feeding soul, right? Okay, in the vegetative soul. if you want to call it that, right? Okay.

[6:25] Now, in addition to that, he's going to point out one more thing, right? That among the sense powers, the sense of touch is before the senses that know things at a distance, right? Okay. Now, the sense of of taste is sort of in between, but to some extent, the sense of taste is a touching power. It involves contact. He's saying the touching powers, therefore, right, are before the eyes and the ears and the smell, the senses that know things at a distance through a medium like air or water or things like that.

[7:09] So the sense of touch is before the senses that know things at a distance through an exterior medium. Again, what you're saying there is that the sense of touch can be without those other sense, those higher senses they call sometimes. So in these

[7:56] lowly forms of life that don't move from one place to another, these lowly forms of animal life, huh, that are attached to the floor of the ocean, huh, and their food comes to them, right, with the movement of the waters, huh? Well, they seem to have the sense of touch. If you stick a pen in them, they react as if it were in pain, right? And if something edible comes in contact, they will take it in and so on, right?

[8:28] But the higher animals, their food doesn't come to them. The cat has to go what? Hunting its food, right? And therefore, it needs those senses whereby it can know something at a distance. The sense of smell, right? Where it's amazing how insects and vultures and even dogs and so on have a sense of smell that directs them to something that is dead or something that's edible, right?

[8:58] And of course, the eyes and the ears are important, right? So those that have eyes and ears or sense of smell, they have those senses that know things at a medium. They also have the sense of touch, but not everything has a sense of touch as what the other senses, huh? So again, the sense of touch is before in being, and you can lose your other senses.

[9:21] I can go blind and deaf and be like Helen Keller or somebody, you know. And yet you need the sense of what touch. If that goes, then really the animal is what dead, right? Huh? So you have one, two, three, four—at least four here, huh? Befores, right? That not going to be made explicit in these last two chapters, huh? But as we said before, before and after is what is meant by order, right?

[9:53] So Thomas says he's talking now about the order among these powers, right? But order in the second sense of before. If you wanted to say order in the sense of better, well then you can say reverse, maybe, huh? Those that have the higher senses. Are better than those that just have the sense of touch, and the understanding soul is better than the sensing soul, and the sensing soul is better than the feeding soul or the plant soul, right?

[10:20] Okay. So in the first paragraph, he's talking about the beforeness, the priority. Yeah. People are always talking about getting your priorities straight. Now you know, but it means you're before us, right? But things you put before others, right?

[10:52] What they don't realize, though, is what that getting priorities straight involves more than one sense of of prior or before, right? Sure. Right. I mean, if I say, you know, I've got so much money, you know, that I earn, I'm going to buy Shakespeare before I buy, let's say, comic books, right? Mm-hmm. Well, that sense of before is what it's better to have an edition of Shakespeare than to have some comic books, right?

[11:32] Okay. But if I say I'm going to feed my family before I buy Shakespeare, right? That's before now in the sense of what being, right? Huh? I mean, I got to have this first. I got to, you know, have something to live on, right? Before I can use my money for the higher things and the better things, right? You see. So it's better to what read Shakespeare than to eat,

[12:03] but it's more necessary to what eat than to read Shakespeare, right? So if you can't eat the Shakespeare volume, you better buy the food before you buy the Shakespeare. See? So people don't stop and realize when they say priorities, they're using of course a obscure Latin word, right? Or origin, Latin origin, for the common everyday word of before, right? And they don't realize that there's more than one sense of what before, right?

[12:38] My children are going to go to grade school before they go to college, right? Mm-hmm. Does that mean that a grade school education is better than a college education? Hmm.

[12:49] No, but you have to have that before, and maybe the first sense, and maybe in the second sense, right? Even the third sense, right? But not in the fourth sense, right? So they'll realize how many things are involved.

[13:04] So he says it is necessary, therefore, for everything that lives and has a soul. To have the what feeding soul right the nutritive soul right from generation to their what destruction for it's necessary for what comes to be to have growth right and then maturity and then finally what shrinking huh diminution right while these are impossible without what food right huh but you could also say that without food you can't stay in being right so this kind of soul or this kind of powers that are involved in that kind of soul are before in being the other kinds of soul and other kinds of power it is necessary therefore that the feeding power is in all things being born and diminishing huh but it is

[14:01] not necessary that sense be in all living things huh I notice again that word necessary usually is tied up with that second sense of before right

[14:17] you may recall the contrast between necessary and before in the proemium to wisdom Aristotle is showing that wisdom is the most divine knowledge and ends up by saying every other knowledge is more necessary than wisdom but none is better

[14:36] yeah I sometimes I tell you what I say to the students there huh I say which is better to breathe or to philosophize I've touched this before right of course I know what they're going to answer to breathe right okay and then I say to them now why do you say that it's better to breathe than to philosophize huh and usually the reason they'll give is that if you're not breathing you won't be doing anything else right yeah yeah I say you just shown me that breathing is more necessary than philosophizing you've

[15:15] shown that you can breathe without philosophizing but you can't philosophize without breathing breathing right so you've shown me that breathing is before philosophizing in the second sense of before yeah it can be without the other but not vice versa you haven't shown me it's before in the fourth sense of before that is better you committed the most common mistake the father of logic says that we make mistake for mixing up senses of the same word right isn't that correct to say that no no it's not correct to say that breathing is before philosophizing in the second sense it is sure but isn't that correct that's correct yeah but they're concluding the question wasn't Which is more necessary?

[16:11] The question was, which is better, right? Breathing or philosophizing, right? See, and they are showing me. They're claiming that breathing is better, right? But the reason they gave me is that being that breathing is before philosophizing in the second sense. That's not to show it's before in the fourth sense. See, it's like if someone said, you know, well Chaucer came before Shakespeare, therefore he's better than Shakespeare, right?

[16:41] Well, he's before in the first sense of before. He's before in time, right? That means before in the sense of better. No, see, you can't conclude because he's before in one sense that he's therefore before in another sense, can you? That's like saying, you know, Chianti is is a dry wine. What is dry is not wet. Therefore, Chianti is not wet, right? Or Roger Maris hit sixty-one home runs with the bat.

[17:13] The bat is a flying rodent, huh? Therefore, he had sixty-one home runs as a flying rodent, flying mouse, as the Germans call them. That's obviously a bad argument, right? Now,

[17:33] now I say you can come back and say, well, if it's worse to stop breathing than to stop philosophizing, isn't the opposite of the worse better? That'd be a stronger way to state your argument, huh? Okay, but

[17:55] come back again, right? Usually, the opposite of the worse is the better, right? And the opposite of the worst is the best, right? But there's an exception to that, right? And that is when the what?

[18:16] Opposite of the what? Worse is before in being. Okay. Then it's what? The worse is not the opposite of the what? Better. You see? Now, can you illustrate that somehow, or okay, which is is better, huh?

[18:54] Letters or words? Words. Yeah, yeah. Of course, the reason for saying that is that letters are for the sake of words, right? Yes. And the end is always better, yeah. And the whole is always better than the part, yeah. Okay. But which is worse, to have no words or to have no letters? No letters. That's why. Yeah. Why? Because if you had no letters, you wouldn't have any words either.

[19:26] Yeah. Okay. You see? Sure. So letters are before words, right? Yeah. In the sense of being right, letters can be without words, but words cannot be without what letters, right? Right. Okay.

[19:46] So to not have letters is worse than not to have words. Right. But words are still better than letters. See? So the exception, you see, if I say to somebody, which is worse, to go blind or to go deaf, right? And most people will say that it's worse to go blind. Than to go deaf, right? Well, then seeing must be better than hearing, right? Because the privation of seeing, namely blindness, is worse than the privation of hearing, deaf.

[20:23] Okay. But notice, there's no order of being there between seeing and hearing, right? I can see without hearing, and vice versa, right? Okay. But when when the lesser,

[20:42] well, it's not so good, right? Is before the greater in being, right? Then the loss of the lesser is greater. It's like with the three theological virtues, right? Which one is the greatest? Love. Yeah, love or charity is the greatest, right? And and actually, hope is greater than what? Faith. Okay. But which is worse, to lose charity or to lose hope? It's worse, to lose hope. Yeah, and to lose faith is the worst of all, because if you lose faith, you lose hope and charity, right?

[21:25] If you lose charity, you still could have hope, right? And maybe regain your charity, right? See? But if you lose faith, you've lost everything.

[21:36] You see the idea? Yeah. Which is better, I say, bricks or a brick house, a brick patio, or something like that? You're going to pay more for a brick house than for a pile of bricks, right? Sure. See? So a brick house is better, or brick patio is better than bricks. Bricks are for the sake of brick houses and patios and so on, right? But what should be worse, to not have a brick patio or not have bricks?

[22:05] See? Well, because bricks are before brick patio and being, to lose bricks would be to lose brick houses and brick patios too. So when the lesser good is before the greater good in being, then the loss of the lesser good is worse than the loss of the greater good. See? So it's kind of a double whammy there to see the different senses of before, right? When they first argue, right, that breathing is better than philosophizing, they do so because if you're not breathing, you won't be doing anything else, right?

[22:44] In which case, they're showing that breathing is before philosophizing in the second sense of before. It can be without philosophizing, but not vice versa. But it's obviously a mistake and way of thinking to say that because it's before in the second sense, therefore it's before in the fourth sense. Any more than to say because Chaucer is before Shakespeare in the first sense of before, therefore he's before him in the fourth sense, right?

[23:13] Or because you are before your parents in what my knowledge, right? I know you before your parents, therefore you're before your parents in in time, right? Right? Obviously that's that's that's the most common mistake that the human mind makes, and the students make it all the time in that matter, right? See?

[23:40] But then I say I say, but you could state your argument more strongly. I tell them, right? By saying that the opposite, that the worse is the opposite of the what? Better, right?

[23:54] Okay, and that's probable, right? And that's true for the most part, but it's not always true, right? See? See? When the lesser good is before the greater good in being, right? Then the loss of the lesser good is worse than the loss of the what? Greater good, huh?

[24:30] I used to tell them, and I say, when I was a little boy, they used to ask us, you know, if eating too much candy or something, do you eat to live, or do you live to eat, right? See? And of course the answer was supposed to be, you're supposed to eat to live, right? Huh? So if eating is for the sake of living, then living is better than what?

[24:53] Eating, yeah. Now some people might be mis, you know, might be confused about which is better, living or eating, right? By saying, I don't know anybody who thinks that they live for the sake of breathing.

[25:07] Do you live for the sake of breathing, or do you breathe for the sake of living? Well, he was going to say that they live for the sake of breathing, right? So they might say they live for the sake of eating, but not of breathing, right? So breathing is for the sake of living, and the end is always better, right? Then living is better than breathing, right?

[25:27] So whether your end in life is to eat or to philosophize, your end is something other than breathing, right? So breathing is a means to something else, and the end is always better than the means.

[25:48] See, see how fundamental is that text and the categories of the senses of before? Yeah. And the students are mixing up. The second and the fourth sense when they first argue, right? That breathing is better because if you're not breathing, you won't be doing anything else. That's true,

[26:16] but that's the reason to say it's before in the second sense, not that it's before in the fourth sense. And so they they're making what they call the fallacy of equivocation, right? But it's a it's a mistake from not distinguishing two different senses of a word and thinking that where there's one word, there's one what meaning, yeah, yeah. But then, as I say, when you try to strengthen their argument and say, "Hey, but the opposite of the worse is is better, right?

[26:45] " Because that's a probability, right? And for the most part, you know, we can argue, right? If if if blindness is worse than deafness, right?

[26:58] Then to see is better than to hear, right? Okay. If to murder a man is worse than to kill a cat around here, right? Well, then a man must be better than a cat, right? But notice between the man the cat, there's no order of being, is there? Okay. Now it's the same way here. If someone said to you, "Which is better, plants or animals? "

[27:27] or animals for the sake of plants, or plants for the sake of animals? Plants for the sake of animals. Yeah, It says in the Bible there, right? Yeah. You know, he's appointed the plants, not only for us but for the other animals, right? Yeah. So the animal is better than the plant, right? Yeah. And we saw that the animal is what more of a whole, right? And the whole is better than the part.

[27:51] But which would be worse? To have no animals or to have no plants? Yeah, you have no plants, you don't have any animals either, right? See, so because plants are before animals in what being, right?

[28:12] If all animal life, in some sense, depends upon plants, either immediately or, you know, the animals eventually do eat plants, right? Ah, then the plants can be without the animals, but not vice versa. Therefore, the loss of plants would be worse, right? We'd still be vegetarians, you and I. Um, we'd have our steak, but we could be vegetarians. We could survive, right? Huh? See. You see that?

[28:42] Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yes. We're also before time. Yeah. So it's kind of striking as they say in the metaphysics there. I mean, Aristotle's so much aware of this, you know Ends up you know the proemium there to wisdom, and he says, you know, every other knowledge then is more necessary than wisdom, but none is better. It's better than all the rest. But you know, hunting, the art of hunting, and the art of farming are more necessary than, than wisdom.

[29:20] Okay. In terms of necessities, before eating. Yeah. Yeah, eating is before philosophizing, in the second sense, right? But philosophizing is better, right? Yeah. So when people talk about their priorities, they got taken into account, reading more than one sense of before, right? In other words, if I have so much money that I make a month or my salary or whatever it is, right, I'm going to buy the necessities of life for myself and my family, right, before I buy those things that are not necessary to live with, right? Mm hmm? If My children are starving and freezing.

[30:11] I'm not going to buy them philosophy books or even Mother Goose rhyme books, right? I'm going to buy them food and and clothing, right? Huh? You see. But then there are other things, right? Where I have a certain amount of money, I'm apart from the necessities of life, right? And now I can buy what? I'm going to buy

[30:35] a novel or buy the Bible first, right? See, I'm going to buy, you know, a comic book or Shakespeare first, right? See, well, neither one is the necessities of life, right? So there, I'm going to buy what's before in the sense of what? Being, right? Huh? If I go into the record shop there, I'm going to buy some CDs, right? I'm going to buy Mozart before I buy Beethoven, right?

[31:07] I got all Mozart, then, I might start to buy some Beethoven, but buy the Mozart before, right? See, but there I'm just considering which is better, right? Huh? You see. But when I buy the food before the the Mozart or the food before the Shakespeare, then I'm looking at another sense of before there, right? I have to feed myself and my family before I can introduce them to Shakespeare and Mozart and and higher things, right?

[31:33] See. And and even the the missionary, right? Huh? You see, he might feed the people before he what? Instructs them, right? Huh? Mother Teresa there, she picks somebody up on the streets there, right? And she might feed the person before she talks to them about God, right? You know. You see.

[31:57] Okay. If somebody goes unconscious, you try to revive them. You don't start philosophizing with them, do you? You see. So it's kind of funny, you know. First, I think we're the naive one when we say that to philosophize is better than to breathe, right? As if we didn't know that you have to breathe or to philosophize, right? See. But they're actually making the most common mistake, huh?

[32:27] Aristotle calls it the most democratic mistake, demiositas, in the sophistical refutations, right? This one for mixing up the senses of word. I told you, you know how how they mix up the word the two senses of end, end in the sense of destruction, right? Did I tell you about this? I think I told you about the one before where a student was arguing, you know, that nature cannot be acting for an end because then all things would come to an end, and all things have not come to an end, therefore nature is not acting for an end, right?

[33:03] Well, on one of the recent exams, there the student had. We've been comparing the the goods of the soul, the goods of the body, and outside goods, and the disagreement between Socrates and the Athenians, and eventually we reason that the inside goods, the goods of the body, and the goods of the soul are better than the outside goods, because the outside goods are for the sake of the inside goods, and the end is better.

[33:33] And then we argue that the goods of the soul are better than the goods of the body because they're closer to the end of man, which is the act with reason, according to virtue, and so on. Well, this guy Chris is understanding end in the sense of what? End of time, right? Because at the end, so he's saying that the goods of soul are better because they come later in time, later in life.

[33:57] Then death would be the best thing in life because that comes at the end of life, right? You see, there's no reason to say it's better, right, that it comes it comes later in life, right? You see, that's not the end that is the reason we say something is better, right? It's end in the sense of that for the sake of which.

[34:21] But it's a common mistake. These dudes are making making it all the time. You see, about these fundamental things. Now, three eighty six, he says, but it is not necessary. That's what got me going there. The word necessary, right? But it is not necessary that sense be in all living things. But that's not to deny that to have sense in addition to feeding and growing and reproducing is better, right, than to just have what the plant has, right?

[34:55] But he's talking now about the order in what being, right? But it is not necessary that sense be in all living things. For that of which the body is simple cannot have touch. Aristotle will often point that out. In the case of touch, as opposed to eye, say, huh? or the tongue, huh? My tongue, for example, is not sugary or bitter or salty, right? If my tongue was sugary, would I be able to taste everything?

[35:42] I'll taste sugary, right? If my eye, you know, had a green fluid in there, like in the Wizard of Oz, everything would look green, right? But the eye, the fluid in there, can be lacking any color, right? The tongue can be lacking any taste feeling. But can the organ of touch? Excuse me. Can the body? Be without anything hot or cold or any warmth, no, or hardness and softness, right?

[36:15] So the sense of touch has to be kind of a what, a mean between hot and cold, right? Between hard and soft, and therefore you can sense things better that are what, not the same as your body, right? So when I get into the shower and I have the water on there, I feel the warmth of the water more when I first get in, right? After I've been in there for a while and my body's been changed itself, so my body's become warmer, I don't feel the warmth as much, do I?

[36:54] Then maybe turn the hot water on even more or something like that, right? You see that? You go into the ocean. Excuse me. You go into the ocean. You know it's kind of cold at first, right? Even don't turn what either or mattresses. But after been in the water a while, it doesn't feel so what cold, you know? People are always saying that, right? Huh? Oh, it's fine when you get in, you know.

[37:22] But once your body has got what adjusted, adjusted to that, right? Huh? I used to go swimming with a friend there, you know, and he had little kids like to splash you, don't you know? And Chris, he likes to go and gradually say, you know, you splash me, I hold your head under the water and stuff. But it's kind of shocking just to go in sometimes. But then your body gradually what takes on the what coolness of the water itself, and then you it doesn't feel so cold anymore, right?

[37:52] So you need a kind of a body that is what balance between what extremes of hot or cold or hard or soft, huh? Okay. It's kind of interesting if you look at your skin there, you know, when you press your skin against the corner here of the table, you know, and it kind of dents and then it's kind of what upside. Yeah, yeah. If if my

[38:19] hand was like whipped cream or something like that, it wouldn't do that, right? But if my hand was like glass or something like that, you know, or stone, you'd have to, you know, it, wouldn't give way at all. If it did, you would wouldn't come back, right? Huh? See, it's kind of a mean between hard and soft there, hot and cold. And part of the thing that you notice in the higher animals, and especially man, who has the best sense of touch, is that he has this more or less constant body temperature.

[38:49] Where some of the lower forms of life, you know, they don't have this constant body temperature, so they don't have as good a what sensing of hot and cold as as we do, right? Not as sensitive to it as we are. So Aristotle's saying that a simple body, and of course, so the Greeks, the simple bodies were earth, air, fire, and water, right? And things like fire would be what excessively hot, right?

[39:16] They wouldn't have that mean between the qualities that's necessary for the sense of touch. So he'll many times in here say that a simple body couldn't have sense, right? And that's against the position of Plato and the Platonists, who spoke of there being creatures like Ariel there in Shakespeare, right? These kind of air, air daimons, you know, that they speak of. Thomas always quoting Apuleius or somebody talking about them, but they were kind of immortal animals made out of air, and there might be some other ones made out of fire or something.

[39:53] But if you're made out of some extreme like that, you couldn't have the what sense of touch, huh? Which requires kind of a mean between these qualities, huh?

[40:05] Okay. got another question. or I was just gonna ask would you like a mirror. If you get something really bad in your eye you wanna No, no, no, no. Maybe just tired or something, you know, too much reading or too much looking at the computer or something. Yeah, okay. Oh, what's new one of these? No, it's okay. But it's not necessary that sense be in all living things, for that of which the body is simple cannot have touch.

[40:35] Nor is it possible that anything be an animal without this. Huh? We define what an animal is as opposed to a plant. That it have what? Sense, right?

[40:49] No, whatever is not receptive of the species of the form without the matter. Well, we already saw that as being characteristic even of the senses, huh?

[41:01] That take my example again, even there in the in the shower, right? I know the warmth of the water. I feel the warmth of the water more when I first get in, than after I've been in there for a while, right? So that when the warmth of the water is received as the warmth of my own body, I don't perceive it. In the same way, out there in the ocean, right?

[41:26] When the coldness of the water there in the ocean, right? When that becomes the temperature of my own body to some extent, huh? I don't feel the coldness so much, right? So really, what's involved in knowing is receiving, right? The form of another, what you call species here, right? Not as your own, but as what? Other, right? Receiving the warmth of the water as the warmth of the water, not of your own body.

[41:56] When I see, you know, some color, I see the red there. I'm receiving the red of that object, not as the color of my own body, right? But as the color of that body out there. Okay. So not everything has sensation, especially not a simple body, right? But any body that's not able to receive the species or form without the matter cannot what sense, huh?

[42:27] Oops. Nice. Yeah. No. Okay. Oh. Okay. But it is necessary that the animal has sense, and he's going to show this first of all in regard to the higher senses. If nature does nothing in what? Vain, huh? Now we saw before that nature what? Acts for an end, huh? When he studied the four kinds of causes, falling upon that, huh? Of course, you find the same statement in the first rule of reasoning there in Sir Isaac Newton, right?

[43:10] Nature does nothing in vain. For all things which are by nature are for the sake of something, or there will be something what following upon those things which are for the sake of something. If, therefore, now he's thinking of the higher animals, the animals that move from one place to another. If, therefore, every forward-moving body, every body that moves from one place to another, did not have sense, they would be destroyed and not arrive at the end, which is the work of nature.

[43:42] For how will it feed, right? How will the the lion feed? Say, if it doesn't what see the the giraffe or whatever it is, right? That's going to eat, right? How could it chase it, right, and run it down and grab it, right?

[44:02] Well, to those stationary animals, those animals that seem to be like plants that are fixed to the floor of the ocean, they don't need the sense of what seeing or hearing or smelling, right? Because their food comes to them, right? What advantage that they have, right? It comes to them with the movement of the what of the water in the ocean there, but the lamb is not going to come to the lion, right?

[44:31] The sheep is not going to come to the fox, right? Fox has got to go in pursuit of it, and therefore he needs these senses, the senses of distance, huh?

[44:46] Now, in 388, huh? He's coming to now this third order here that the a second order got on the border, that the sensing soul is before the understanding soul, right? Of course, we saw that in our studying of the in our study of the understanding soul that the object of the understanding soul is the what it is of something sensed or imagined, huh? The what it is, especially of a natural or mathematical thing.

[45:19] So you don't have in these mortal bodies and so on, mortal things, an understanding without having what senses, huh? Okay. It is not possible that a body have a soul and a discerning mind, huh? Now this again referring to the what rational mind, huh?

[45:50] Okay. So the Greek word there is nous, the genitive of mind, nous, understanding, kritikon right? Okay. The um actually that's the Greek word for what judging, which you could translate maybe as discerning too. What's the definition of judging? You get that definition.

[46:26] It's the act of deciding the true or the false. Yeah, yeah. But very often we use the word separating there and defining it, right? Okay. So you say judging is the separating of the true from the false by some beginning in our knowledge, huh? Okay. Okay. Or the separating of the good from the bad, right? By some measure, some beginning in our knowledge, huh?

[46:59] So you're sitting, you're not sitting. Your sitting is true. Your not sitting is false, right? I'm separating the true from the false by some beginning. What beginning is it that I'm separating them by? In this case.

[47:20] What's the beginning of our knowledge? Oh yeah, senses. Yeah. See. So it's by my senses that I'm separating the true statement "You are sitting" from the false one that "You are not sitting now." Okay. But when I separate, when I say now, no odd number is even. Some odd number is even. Which is the true? Which is the false one?

[47:51] Based on the definition, the beginning would be. Yeah, but I mean, I would separate no odd number is even. That's true. Some odd number is even. That's false, right? I separated the true from the false. But here, the beginning would be maybe the definitions of odd and even, right? If an even number is a number divisible into two equal parts, right? And an odd number is a number not divisible to equal parts, right?

[48:20] Then by those definitions, which are beginnings in my knowledge, right? Not the very first beginning, right? But they're beginning in geometry or in the science of numbers, right? Then I judge that no odd number is what even, right? Okay. Or when I say, for example, that all right angles are equal, right? Or if I said an obtuse angle is greater than a what? Acute angle, right? I go back to the definition of obtuse, right?

[48:50] Acute angle. So in general, that's what judgment is, right? It's a separating of the true from the false by some beginning in our knowledge, right?

[49:04] Okay. Maybe going back to the beginning of that science. Ultimately, we go all the way back to what our senses, because that's the very first beginning of our knowledge. And that's why we express our judgments using the word sense. Nonsense. That doesn't make sense. See, or that does make sense, right? Right. A man of good judgment is a what? Sensible man, right? A man of good sense, right?

[49:37] Good judgment. Right. Because we judge or separate the truth from the false by some beginning in our knowledge, and the very first beginning in our knowledge is the senses.

[49:53] And that's why you know, in a dream, right, we tend to very often be deceived in a dream, right? Because we're cut off from our senses. Yeah, yeah. Shakespeare says, "Awake your senses, that you may the better judge."Okay. So to be out of your senses, it'd be out of your mind.

[50:32] So he says it is not possible that a body have a soul and a discerning mind, huh? A judging mind, huh? While not having sense, not being stationary, but still what, genitable, right?

[50:53] Now, as Thomas says, there's some question what this next part of the text refers to, you know. And Thomas considers: is he thinking about the heavenly bodies, huh? Or is he thinking about these bodies that the Platonists lay down, right? Okay. And a little bit like the way Shakespeare presents Ariel there in the Tempest, huh? This air-like creature, right? Okay. Which they thought were kind of like eternal things, right?

[51:20] They didn't die, they're immortal, huh? But indeed, neither the ungenerable, for why would it not have sensation? For it is better either for the soul or for the body, but now it is neither, right? For the soul will not understand more not having the senses, while the body will be none the more through that. Therefore, no non-stationary body has soul without sense, huh? Let's say let's leave that as being somewhat obscure what Aristotle is actually referring to there.

[51:57] But if in fact it has sense, it is necessary for the body to be simple or mixed, but it is not possible that be simple. For it will not have touch, but it is necessary to have this, huh? Okay. Now he's going to go on and talk a little bit about how the sense of touch is before the senses that know through an exterior medium, right? Okay.

[52:24] That one can have the sense of touch without having the sense of sight or smell or something, right? But not what, vice versa, right? Okay. And one can be deprived of the higher senses, right? And still have the sense of touch, yeah. But if an animal is deprived of sense of touch, it's going to involve that's what, death, right? Huh? Sense of touch is that basic sense.

[52:59] Aristotle sees a connection here that if you heat a man up too much, right? Cool him down too much. You finish off the man, right? Huh? Okay. And you hit him with something hard, right? Finish the man off, right? So the very life of the animal depends upon what? A certain mean yeah of tangible qualities, right? Like hot and cold, right? You kill a man if you get him too hot, right?

[53:32] Put him in a furnace, right? But put him in a cooler, right? He's going to die too, right? You see? So he's going to point out here that the sense of touch is tied up with those qualities that are basic to our very life, right?

[53:49] Why, if I eat something, you know, or smell something that's very pungent and strong, it might permanently or temporarily affect my sense, right? But not kill me, right? Or if you make sounds too loud, you can what? Make my ear deaf, right? Or if you, you know, shine light in my face too long, you know, the way they torture guys during the Spanish Civil War, they're going to prop that open with a toothpick, you know, and then you shine a light in there until the guy goes blind, huh?

[54:20] You see? But it happens up in the mountains too, right? Where the sunlight is up there, and a man is left up there without maybe, you know, any protection of the eyes, and the sun eventually what? Could blind the eyes, right? But it doesn't kill you, right? But you give a man too much heat, you destroy not just the sense of touch, but you destroy the man himself, right?

[54:42] So he's pointing out that the sense of touch is what's most basic here, huh? For since the animal is a insouled body, a body that has a soul, right? I think we mentioned before how the Latin-derived word animal comes from what? Anima, meaning soul, right? And we still even call living matter animate matter, right? Meaning matter that has a soul. For since the animal is an insouled body, and every body is tangible, right?

[55:16] While the tangible is what is sensible by touch, it is also necessary for the body of the animal to be tactile, if the animal is to be saved. For the other senses, the higher senses, sense through something what? Different through some kind of a what? Exterior medium there, right? Huh? Smell, sight, and hearing, right?

[55:40] But being touched, if it will not have sense, it will not be able to flee something and grasp others, huh? So you can't what? Get out of the fire, right? If you didn't have the sense of touch, right? You just, you know, you fall on the fireplace and just lay there and burn. At the end of you, right? So it's kind of a necessity, right, to have the sense of touch for the animal to survive, right?

[56:09] Because the sense of touch is a What sense of those qualities that are able to what destroy the animal? Whence also he says, taste. Huh? Taste is sort of in between. Huh? It's like a certain touch. Huh? Taste, in a way, is in between the sense of touch, right, and the senses of the exterior, right? It's like the sense of touch, insofar as you need what contact, right?

[56:39] Huh? And it's a more intrinsic thing in that sense, huh? Thomas has a long discussion of taste there when he's explaining the words in the Psalms. You know, taste and see how sweet is the Lord, right? Why they use the word taste there rather than, you know, hear or some other sense, right? Whence also taste is like a certain touch, for it is a food, while food is a tangible body, right?

[57:07] Huh? Nevertheless, the sense of what taste is a what a little more spiritual sense than the sense of touch, huh? It's interesting how we borrow the word taste there and we apply it to what? To wisdom. Yeah, but even to what an appreciation of good music, right? Oh, yeah. You know, he's got good taste in music, right? He's got good taste in paintings or in architecture or something like that, right?

[57:41] Okay. We speak of the you know wine taster, right? Having good judgment, right? Why is that? Well, it's because the sense of taste is a little more what spiritual, right? A little more concerned with knowing, right, than touch, huh? Okay. So it makes some sense for people to have a wine tasting where they taste different wines and they're trying to judge these wines and evaluate them and so on, huh?

[58:10] But they're going on feeling things and judging them would be kind of ridiculous, I think. You know, we're going to spend two hours here feeling things, you know.

[58:22] But it's kind of sophisticated to sit around and you know taste wines and and judge them and so on, huh? But sound and color and smell do not feed as such, right? The idea that food is what the the warm and the dry and liquid is the wet and the cool, right? But those are sense qualities, huh?

[58:52] And they bring about neither growth nor diminution. Whence also it is necessary for taste to be a certain touch, because it is a sense of the tangible or the nutritive. These are therefore necessary things for the animals. It's apparent that animal without touch is not possible, right? So he's seeing the necessity of touch there, right, for the very being of the animal. So when the cat back home there in St.

[59:17] Paul jumped on the stove one day, right, smelling something good cooking up there that my mother was cooking, right? She fell on the ground and got singed, you know. But I mean, that was a sense of touch, right? Wasn't the sense of smell right? Saving her life is a sense of touch, yeah. That too. Yeah. And we say we put our hand on something hot without realizing, you know what I mean?

[59:46] Okay. The other senses, however, are more for the sake of what? Well-being, right? For the sake of the good life, right? And are not any chance kind of animal, right? But it's in those higher animals that move from one place to another, right? But in some, as it is necessary. for them to be in the forward moving ones. So the animal that moves from one place to another, right, to get its food and shelter and so on, it needs these senses like sight or hearing or smell, so it can know things at a what distance, right?

[1:00:24] Okay. For if it is to be saved, it must not only sense being touched, but also from afar, right? In the same way, the animal that is what running to save its life too, right? You try to sneak up on these animals, right? And they, you know, you have to get on the what right side of them because there's a little bit of wind blowing from you towards them.

[1:00:50] They'll sniff you and they'll take panic and run off, right? You want them to see you. Sometimes they'll put on these disguises, you know, and sneak up to the animal, get close enough to to shoot, right? Huh? Okay. But the Indians were better at doing that than the white men, right? Sneaking up on the animal. So they need those senses, right? So they can smell their enemy, right?

[1:01:16] Or see them or hear them, right? For if it is to be saved, it must not only sense being touched, but also from afar. But this would be if it is sensitive to a medium, by that medium suffering meaning in the extended sense they're undergoing and being moved by the sensible, by the animal itself by that. So the color over there, in some sense, moves the what air, right?

[1:01:51] And the sound moves the air and eventually moves my ear. So he describes then the order of the mover and the moved here, the unmoved mover and the moved mover and the moved period.

[1:02:15] He's contrasting, you know, something like you know if I it's a common example, always in the ancients, you know, of, impressing something upon wax, right? You've seen them how they would drip the wax in the letter and and stamp it, right? But when you stamp the wax, does the shape go all the way through the wax? In the case of water, you you know hit the water and spreads out great distance, right?

[1:02:42] And air even more so, right? You know if you're knocking something in your house like this, bang bang, hear it ricocheting off the neighbor's house, right? I see. So things like air or even water are mediums that you can propagate something through more easily, he's saying.

[1:03:08] Thus also an alteration, except that it alters while remaining in the same place. Just as if one would dip something into wax, the wax would be moved so far as the thing was dipped. Yet a stone would not be moved at all, but water even further. The air is moved and brings something about, and suffers over the greatest distance.

[1:03:29] Then he alludes to this strange position of Platonists. You know that the way you see is by something going out from the eye to the object and then bouncing back to you, right? What's

[1:03:41] interesting in daily speech we speak that way, right? My eyes fell upon something, right? You know, yeah. My eyes focused on the thing, right?

[1:03:54] Somebody's giving you the evil eye, right? Staring at you, you know. I was reading this this biography of Pierce there, the biography of Solzhenitsyn. you know, Oh, wow And he was describing the point where he was taken prisoner, made a prisoner, right? Because he had made some nasty remarks about Stalin, etc. , and so on. So he's sentenced for ten years or so on in the prisons and so on.

[1:04:27] And of course, you know, very humiliating. You know, when they examine you, when they first come in there, you're naked and so on. There's a huge portrait of Staline, you know, looking down upon you. Man's inhumanity, the man you really see it in Russia those times. Let's take our little break here now before we do the thirteenth chapter, okay?