De Anima (On the Soul)
62. The Soul as Act of the Body, and Substantial vs. Accidental Form
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[0:00] Now, Thomas says the falsity of this opinion, although it can be shown in many ways, right. Nevertheless, you're going to use one, right? Which is what? More common, right? And more certain, huh?

[0:22] That the soul is not a body, right, or by which it can be seen that. Okay. So he's proportioning himself to us beginners, right? Okay.

[0:36] Now he says it is manifest that not just any principle of a living operation is a soul. Because then the eye, for example, would be a soul, since it is in some way a cause of what vision, right? Huh? And the same would be said about the other tools of the soul, right? Instruments.

[1:02] But we say that the soul is the first beginning of life, right? Okay. These tools are a beginning or cause of life, but not the very first, huh?

[1:19] Now he says, although some body is able to be a beginning of life, as the heart, for example, is a beginning of life in the animal, right? Nevertheless, is not able to be the what? First beginning of life in some body, right? So that's why you got to be very careful, as I was saying. The soul is the first beginning, the first cause of life, right? In my Latin text, they tell us, I'm sure Thomas is going to tell us, but the emphasis is there upon being first, right, to separate the soul from the heart or from the eye or something, right?

[1:58] Because the heart is obviously a body, right? And the heart is in some way a source and cause of life. If your heart stops pumping, you're going to die, right? Okay. And your eye is a source of, in some way, of seeing, right? Your ear is a hearing, and so on, right? But the soul is the very first beginning or cause of life, huh?

[2:23] Now I was going to show that it's not this, for he says it is manifest. That to be a beginning of life or a cause of life or living does not belong to a body from the fact that it is a what body right now how does he know that because it belongs to a body because it is a body then every body would be living or be a principle of life right okay

[2:56] it belongs therefore to some body that it be living or a cause of life and through this that it is what such a body right Tali is a Latin word there Do you have that translated such Such a body. yeah yeah but what is an act such it has this from some principle or cause that is called its what act huh

[3:27] now notice now if you went back to what we learned when we studied change right and a living body is a changing thing right and living bodies die and so on right we say that in every changing thing there's matter and what form right huh okay and which is the soul then the matter or the form

[3:53] say well the matter as such is not alive right okay therefore it must be the other right the act of the form the soul therefore which is the first beginning of life is not a body but the act of a body and notice he compares it now to an accidental form right you see because the emphasis here is upon the soul being a form right and that being true about the soul right he's not at this point bringing out so explicitly that it is a what substantial form right but that will become clear in the next article when you see that the soul is something subsisting right huh that's not accidental right just as heat which is the cause of heating is not a body

[4:47] but a certain what act of a body huh okay and notice the way he's proceeding there right go back to what we learned about the changing thing there right suppose we said you got a wooden chair right okay now is a wooden chair a chair because it's wooden

[5:22] no the first reason why it's a chair is because it's wooden no say no because The wooden table then would be a what? Chair. Chair. The wooden house would be a chair, right? Mm-hmm. So why is the wooden chair a chair then? Because of a certain act. Yeah. Because of the the form, the act of it, right? Okay. Now this is an example of an accidental form, right?

[5:55] The shape of the chair. The chair is the wood is more like a substance, right? But the shape of the chair is like an accident, right? Okay. But nevertheless, that shape of the chair is to the wood as form is to what? Matter, right? As act is to ability. So it's an act of that thing, right? Okay. Just like if I say, um you take act cat and act, another example there, right?

[6:27] Okay. Um. through what is this first? The word cat. Was it first the word cat through these letters? No. Say. Order. Well, this word act has the very same letters, right? Right. So it's not through the matter, you might say, the letters out of which it is made, that is first the word cat. It first gets to be the word cat when those letters are in this order, right?

[7:04] Mm-hmm. Well, the order of the letters is to the letters as what form is to matter, right? Matter is ability, right? And it's able to be what arranged in this order or in this order or in some other order, right?

[7:25] So the order is as an act, right? Whereby the ability is made what For us to be this word or that word is made actual, right? So you could say those three letters that end the word cat or act, they're able to be the word cat, they're able to be the word act, right? But they're actually one or another through this or that order, right? So it's the order that first makes it to be the word cat.

[7:57] Well, the same way at the living and the unliving, right? They're made out of the same what matter, huh? They're both a body and so on, so that one is alive and the other is not alive is due to something that is as an act or a form rather than as matter, right?

[8:26] So notice in this body, this article, you're getting two conclusions, huh? One affirmative and one negative, right? The negative conclusion is that the soul is not a body, right? Huh? The affirmative conclusion is that it's an act or form of the living body, right? Okay. And of course, the living body, as Aristotle pointed out in the De Anima, there is a body composed of what tools, right?

[8:57] Huh? So it's the act or form of a what natural body composed of tools, right? Almost back to the definition of the soul there, right? That we had in the De Anima but you still have to bring out more explicitly the fact that it's a substantial form rather than a what accidental form, right? Huh? Yeah. And we might you know ask ourselves what is the difference between a substantial form and accidental form, huh?

[9:30] What do they have in common, right? And how do they what differ? Right? Excuse me, Dr. Burke. Um. What else is a substantial form besides the human soul? Is there another example of that? Well, that's the one that's most known to us, right? Yeah. You see, substantial forms are not sensible, right, or imaginable, right? So, if you're asking for a sensible example, right? I guess I am.

[9:59] Yeah, yeah. But but but the animal would have a substantial form too, in the plant, right? Unless you were to say that the the dog is simply a what a combination of different substances, right? But then we wouldn't have any substantial unity, huh? But since you got to begin with us, because we're most convinced that we're one substance, right? And then next, that the dog is one substance, right?

[10:27] The tree is not as clear, right? And the stone least clear. You know, where the stone is just uh amalgam of several things, right? Okay. This is why he has to use an accidental form as an example here. Yeah, yeah, but he's emphasizing the fact that the soul is not a body, but a form of the body at this point, right? Okay. There's a substantial form. Will come up in the next.

[10:52] article, and especially to see in the case of the human soul, because it's subsistent, right? Okay. Okay. But but um, I will see how he reasons that, Okay Hermann Weyl has got a very interesting passage there. I had one time. He's a famous physicist, mathematician, huh? To a lot you know, explaining relativity theory and so on, right? But when he talks about life, he has an interesting point, right?

[11:28] He's comparing life as known from inward experience, and life known through outward experience, right? Now it's easier to examine a plant outwardly, right? Yeah. Than an animal, right? Because if you start to take apart an animal, he very quickly dies and you and so on and corrupts, right? While a plant is not as what delicate, right? And you can act upon it and so on, and cut into it, you know, without it screaming on you and going into shock and so on.

[12:04] Um, and why man is is extremely what? Physical comfort. Yeah, yeah. We always we always joke about, you know, in in teaching, you know, it's a common thing said that you want to see how somebody performs in the classroom, right? Huh? When you got people in there to evaluate him, right? Uh huh. He gets kind of nervous, you see. Yeah. And so you don't see him the way he would be normally, right?

[12:33] Right. See. Um. And we notice this thing, you know, with things as simple as taking pictures of somebody. Oh yeah. A lot of people, you know, they don't take a good picture, and they don't like their pictures because somehow they can't relax in front of a camera. Sure. Yeah. And you see, even little children, right? They they'll make these funny grimaces or something, and they're going, "Don't do that!"

[12:59] You know. I'm saying, you know, now smile naturally, and so on. And the cat really got some kind of a crazy look on their face. And and and I have a lot of experience, you know, you know, pictures in the family, and so on. And we often remark how the cat or somebody, you know, the cat we have would would steal all these pictures, right? Because they they they don't seem to be aware of the fact that they're just being taken.

[13:26] so they, you know, But human beings are all screwed up because they're they're they're camera shy, so to speak, of this, huh? And the animals don't have any camera shy.

[13:38] The uh, but he says, as far as inward experience is concerned, we know ourselves best, right? And then a little bit, what would be like to be a dog or a cat, because he has something in common with us, right? What would be to be a tree, you know, is is very hidden, right? See. And and I'm more aware inwardly of me, my my sensing nature, right?

[14:01] My emotional nature, right? That my digesting powers, right? Huh? I'm more aware in within me of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, being angry or being sad or being joyful, right? Than I am about my digesting my food, you know, or that I've been growing or something, you know. You see. Are you aware of your growing as you grow? I grew. No, for growing. But you are aware of the fact that you're seeing and hearing and smelling, tasting, touching.

[14:33] So what we know from inward experience is just the reverse, in a sense, of how we know from outward experience, huh? That's very true about knowing the substantial form, right? Huh? The substantial form that we know about most of all is the human soul, right? And then the animal soul next. And then the plant soul. Say. As

[14:57] you go down to the lower world, substantial form is even more, in a sense, hidden, right? Okay. Now let's look at the reply to the first objection, right?

[15:16] The first, therefore, it ought to be said that since everything that is in motion is moved by another, um, and this could not go on, what? Yeah. It's necessary to say that there is that not every mover. Is itself what moved, right? Okay. Now we went into that a little bit there when we looked at the Summa Contra Gentiles right? What Aristotle does, in the seventh and the eighth books of the so-called Physics, he shows that whatever is in motion is moved by another, right?

[15:56] And then, since the movers that we know best of all, are moved movers, right? He asks whether every mover is a moved mover or whether there is a what Unmoved mover, right? And he shows in the seventh and in the eighth books that not every mover can be what moved, right? Okay. I don't know if you want to go back into that or not right now, right?

[16:25] But I could show that again, right? You know, something that I show is something very simple, right? If you take the example of the train, right?

[16:42] The engine there is not pulled by anything else, is it? But all the wagons that are attached to the engine, right, are pulled, right, by the engine, or they're pulled by the wagon in front of them, right? And the wagon in front of them is a pulled puller, a moved mover, right? Okay. Now, could you get any motion if every mover was a pulled puller?

[17:24] No, because no matter how long you make that series of pulled pullers, they're like one grand pulled puller with nothing to pull them. And Aristotle points out it makes no difference whether you have one or many, and if many, a limited number or an infinite number. You're not going to get any motion if the whole is composed only of pulled pullers. It's like one huge thing to be pulled, like one huge puller.

[17:58] You see? So it was Aristotle who realized, contrary to the philosophers before him, that not every mover is moved, right? That there must be an unmoved mover, huh? But the men before him thought that every mover had to be itself what in motion, right? It's a body that is in motion, so every mover has to be a body. So if the soul moves a body, it must be a body itself too, moving this other body.

[18:33] You see? Just like when you play with puppets, right? You have one body moving another body. Okay. Since to be moved is to go forth from ability to act, the mover gives what it has to the mobile, in so far as it makes it to be in what act, huh?

[19:08] But just as is shown in the eighth book of the Physics, Aristotle, there is a certain mover entirely immobile, who is neither moved per se nor what Accidentally accidentally, yeah. And such a mover is able to move a motion that is always what uniform, right? I can see it like the motion of the sky around us, huh? Was always uniform, right? Okay. But a moved mover was always being changed itself, so it can't do the same thing all the time, right?

[19:46] But there is another mover that is not moved per se, but is moved per accidens. And account of this, it does not move a motion that is always uniform. And such a mover is the what soul, right? Huh? The soul is said to be moved per accidens because it's moved when the body in which it is is moved, right? Oh. Okay. Yeah. So it's not moved directly, right, or by itself, but because it's in something that is moved, right?

[20:14] Huh? Okay. Um. But there is other reasons too why its motion is not uniform. Because we saw in the De Anima there, it has to sense and desire, and there is going to be different sensations at different times, right? And desires will be different, like before and after dinner, and so on. Okay. But there is another mover that is per se moved, right? Namely, the what body, right?

[20:45] Huh? And because the ancient natural scientists thought there was nothing but bodies, right? Then they laid down that every mover must be moved, right? Because everything is a body, right? And a body moves only by being moved itself. So every mover must be moved. And therefore, that the soul is moved as such, huh? Per se. Just like any other body, right? So the soul must be a body, right?

[21:16] Okay. So he's explaining why they thought the way they did, right? Huh? They thought they're only bodies, huh? And so assuming that they're only bodies, and that a body can move another body only by being moved itself, right? Then every what mover must be a moved mover, right? As bodies that are moved as such. So every mover must be a body. So if the soul moves the body, it must be a what?

[21:50] A body. Okay. Moving a body. Hmm. Okay. Now the second objection is saying that the knower has within himself the known, right? So if the soul knows the material world, it must have within itself all these material things, right? Well, to the second, he says it should be said that it is not necessary that the likeness of the thing known be an act in the nature of the knower.

[22:32] But is something. But if there be something. That before is knowing in ability, and afterwards in act, is necessary that the likeness of the thing known not be an act in the nature of the knower, but in ability only, right? As color is not an act in the pupil of the eye, but in ability what only, right? Or my tongue is not what actually sweet, right? But it's able to receive, right, in some way that thing, huh?

[23:09] And this is the the main thing we learn there, the fundamental thing we learn there about the senses and later on about reason, that sensing and and understanding are kind of undergoing, right? And both the senses and reason, they're able to know before they actually know, right? And so they come to actually know by receiving something, right? So to begin with, they have nothing of the what nature or color or sense or sensible quality of the thing that they know, huh?

[23:46] Okay, and therefore they're not composed of these things. But because the ancient philosophers or ancient naturalists rather did not know how to distinguish between act and ability, they laid down or posited that the soul was a body in order that it might what know a body, right?

[24:13] And in order that it might know all bodies, that it was composed from the principles of all bodies. So Democritus Empedocles said that by earth we know earth, and by water water, and by air air, and by fire fire, and by love love, and by hate hate, right? As if because our soul was composed of all these material things, it knows them all, right? Okay.

[24:43] Well, if the soul were composed of all these things, then the soul would be a what body, right? Huh? But if it's not composed of these things, it's only able to receive them, right? And it's not actually composed of them, right? And if it receives them in a immaterial way, huh? As we saw in our study of the senses and reason, then they're not necessarily a body.

[25:20] So no, so those first two objections come right out of, in a sense, the first book on the De Anima. Yeah. Okay. Now in the third objection, he goes back to the first way they investigated the soul, and he says there is a two-fold contact you can speak of, huh? I can touch you in two ways, huh?

[25:42] In the first way, a body is not touched except by a body. In the second way, a body can be touched by an incorporeal thing which moves the body, huh? Thomas, you know, he goes into this more in other texts. Sometimes he'll say,

[26:03] "I can reach over here and touch you, right, huh? Okay. But sometimes I'm said to touch you for some money, huh? Or I touch you in the sense that what you feel sorry for me, right? There's another way in which we say to touch something, right? Without coming into what contact between our two bodies on the surface, huh? Okay. So there's a famous text there in in the Summa Contra Gentiles where he goes into the difference between being touched by a power, right, and being touched in the way a body is touched, right.

[26:46] When two bodies come into contact, right, they actually touch in two different ways, as he says. But there's the surface touching surface, right. But then one body is also acting upon the other body and changing it, maybe, heating it or cooling it or something, right. And there it has contacted of another kind, huh. And that first kind of contact there can't be between something that's not a body and a body, right.

[27:16] But the second kind of contact there can be, huh, for one acts upon the other. But as Thomas explains, the immaterial thing can act upon what the whole, even the interior of the of the body, right. Well one body can act upon another body only through the what through the surface. Yeah. Yeah.

[27:50] You know, it's a heating pad. If you put you know, if, you're putting heating pads in there, sore muscles, something like that, right. Well, eventually it's going to penetrate to the interior, but it's got to what act upon the surface, and then that influences what's in contact with it all the way in to maybe where your sore really is or something, right. Um, why the immaterial thing is not a body, right?

[28:15] So it doesn't have to act on the surface, right? Can act on the interior immediately, huh. Like that angel that we're we're imploring, you know, to help us, right, huh. You know, to order our images, right. Sure. Doesn't have to work out here and then sure within right away.

[28:39] An angel said to be in the material world where he what acts upon something, right. He applies his power, but he's not here or there in the sense of being contained in this or that place.

[28:53] Isn't that one of those classic problems? Because I I mean, I have a long time thinking of how you know, incorporeal thing like an angel can give anything to a corporeal thing. Yeah. Yeah.

[29:10] It would seem that you know, like like the angel, if he was going to pick up my watch, it's like his hand would pass right through it, kind of like my hand would pass through. Yeah, but is that going to? You're thinking you're you're not transcending your imagination now.

[29:26] No, no, no. When Thomas starts in the Summa Contra Gentiles we discussed this in part Yeah. He points out that. Even in bodies, right? Yeah. They come into in contact in more than one way, right?

[29:44] Right. You see, so my example there, you know, of uh, this cat we had when I was young, right? And he smelled something cooking on the stove there. My mother's cooking. He decided to get some of it, so he started to jump up on the stove, and his paws hit the burner, electric stove, and I got singed, and the cat fell to the ground. And as I say, you know, the cat was wiser after that, right?

[30:09] Memory makes them, you know. And he never tried to jump, but to my knowledge, on the stove again, right? He did occasionally, you know, jump on the dining room table when you're out of the room, right? Because sometimes the table would be set there, and nobody was in there guarding it, right? He jumped up on the table and licked the butter. Now what do you do with the butter?

[30:29] And I get the butter out there for the rolls or something, and now and you can see the little licking things. You know, he left his tail.

[30:41] But notice, huh? Why did I mention that? Huh? Well, the cat when it jumped on that hot stove. It made the cat move. Yeah, it came on in contact with the stove. Not just in the sense that surface was there, right? Yeah. But it was being acted upon, right? In a way that was rather disagreeable, right? Yeah. And and painful to it, huh? So there's two different things there, right, huh?

[31:08] And which bodies in contact, right? But only one of them is going to be found in the case of an immaterial substance. Okay. So

[31:30] maybe we should stop there, huh? It's getting cold because we should be getting into the second article there. Oh, wait a minute, man. Doing the right thing. That must be.

[31:54] Now, it's not by chance we use the word form. Now, first of all, first of all, you want to see what these two have in common: accidental form and substantial form, huh? Well, you can say two things they have in common. Both are. in ability.

[32:40] And secondly, by both something else something else, namely the subject, and by both something else is in act. Okay. So my body is inability with respect to both health and what sickness, right? My body is able to be healthy, and my body is able to be sick, right?

[33:33] So health is an act there, right? And you can say by health, my body is actually what healthy, right? Okay. Or you could say that clay is able to be a sphere or a cube, right? Take the very first meaning there, form.

[33:55] But actually, a sphere or a cube by a certain what shape, right? So that shape is an act of an ability that the clay has, and through that shape, the clay is actually a sphere or a cube, right? Okay.

[34:19] Now, what's the difference? Okay. Well, the subject of an accidental form is something already in act. The subject of an accidental form is something already in act. In fact, the subject there is a what actual substance, right? Like the clay, huh? Or my body.

[35:18] So, although the accidental form is an act, and by it something, namely its subject, right? Is something an act? Act really belongs to the subject of the accidental form before it belongs to the what? Accidental, okay. And the accident. That's why we say some accidents are caused by their what? Subject, right? But the subject

[35:58] of a substantial form is something only an ability. In other words, you could say it's a substance in ability. The first matter we're talking about is natural velocity. And so act belongs to substantial form before it belongs to its subject. So the order is just the reverse, isn't it? In the case of an accidental form, although it gives us an act, right, accidental act to its subject, actuality is found in its subject first.

[37:04] But in the case of the substantial form, act is found first in the substantial form, and through that the subject has some actuality. Now a further difference is that the substantial form is the end or purpose in a way of its subject, That the subject, the matter underlying, you might say, is for the sake of the substantial form. Okay. But in the case of the accidents, it's the reverse.

[37:47] The accidents are for the sake of the what completion of the subject, which is an actual substance. Give an example of that, right? Is Dwayne Berquist, this man here, for the sake of his health,

[38:09] or is my health for the sake of my being healthy? See. Is my knowledge of geometry, let's say, right? Am I for the sake of my knowledge of geometry, or is geometry for the sake of Dwayne Berquist knowing things about triangles and so on?

[38:35] Am I for the sake of my accidents? In other words, speaking in general, are my accidents for the sake of completing me? The latter. Yeah. See. And it's like the great Heraclitus says there, you know. He says the divine nature has understanding, human nature has none. See, I understand, right? And especially I actually understand by reason of something added to my substance, right? The knowledge I've acquired and so on, right?

[39:10] Huh? So without these accidents, I'd be a rather incomplete fellow as I am. Even more incomplete than I am. Right. What is grace? Substance or accident, grace, sanctifying grace. Yeah, yeah. And so grace is there for the sake of the what perfection of that substance, right?

[39:45] So two things accidental form then substantial form have in common. Both are an act, right? And by them something is an act, right? But then when we compare them to the subject,

[40:02] the one is in a subject that already is an actual substance, right? While the other comes to something that is only inability. And then you see the second difference that act is found in the subject of accident before it's found in accident. In the case of substantial form, act is found in the form before it's found in the what subject, and then a third difference that the matter is for the sake of the substantial form, but in the case of accidents, the form is for the sake of the completion of its subject.

[40:50] This is very important to see because if the soul were an accidental form, then existence and so on, actuality would belong to its subject before it belonged to the soul. But if the soul is a substantial form, then existence belongs to substantial form before its subject. And that leaves the door open to this strange thing that we discover when we examine the operations of our soul, that we have an activity understanding the universal, right?

[41:34] Understanding what a triangle is, understanding what a dog is. We have an activity that is not in the body. But you have to exist before you can understand, right? Even Descartes saw that, right? I think, therefore I am, right? But you can't do anything without being, right? So if the soul, our soul in particular, has an activity not in the body, right? Then its existence is not just in the body.

[42:10] Then our soul has an existence that the body shares in, right? But an existence that the body doesn't fully share in. And because existence belongs to the soul, to a substantial form before its subject, right? What's unique about our soul is that the existence it has before the body, right, is not entirely immersed in the body, not entirely shared by the body. So if the soul has some operations that rise above what matter, and those activities are the activity of understanding universal, and the activity of choosing, and so on, the acts of the understanding the will.

[43:01] I think I mentioned you know the the Canadian scientist who was doing all these tests trying to map the brain, right? You know, and you can kind of stimulate the brain, you know, so a person will say, "Oh, she's tasting chocolate now." There's something there in the brain, and so the patient, right, tells you what he's undergoing when you stimulate different parts of the brain, and then you see.

[43:29] But you can never find a part of the brain where the man says, "Okay, I just made a choice." And so he concluded that that the ability to choose is not in the brain; it's not in in the body at all. And he's correct there, right? But it's kind of you know coming at it from kind of an exterior experience, and

[43:54] yeah. Seems like it would be correct to say that it seems pretty important considering the soul as the beginning of life. It would be pretty important to clarify what sense of before we're talking about, and that maybe it would be the sense of not the first sense before in time, but before in being, because if we're speaking about the soul being having life before the body in time, you'd need that without the dogma of the soul being created.

[44:35] And and and before in causality too, right? Okay, In other words, in the case of any substantial form, the actuality that the subject of it has, right, is all through the form itself, right? While in the case of an accidental form,

[44:55] like like my say geometry, right? Through geometry, it's not through geometry that I am. It's through geometry that I am a geometer, but it's not through geometry that I am actually existing. But it is through its substantial form. That the subject of the substantial form, right, actually exists, right? So actuality belongs, in that sense, to substantial form before it belongs to its subject. Its subject is an act only through the substantial form.

[45:38] That's not true of the accidental form. The subject is already an act before it receives the accidental form, right? And through the accidental form, it only has some actuality in some qualified way, right? It's not through geometry that I begin to exist, right? It's through geometry I begin to be a geometer. It's through logic that I