De Anima (On the Soul)
63. Summa I q.75 a.2: Is the Human Soul Subsisting? Why the Intellect Is Not a Body
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[0:00] begin to be a logician. It's through health that I that I am healthy, right? But it's not through any of these that I am, right? Let's say our little prayer. Name of the Father and the Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. God, our mighty men, 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, pray for us.

[0:30] and help us to understand all the truth. Name of the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit. So we're looking at Article Two and maybe Article Three today.

[0:45] So Article Two is whether the human soul, right, is something what subsisting, right? What does that word subsisting mean? Having existence uh in its own right? Yeah, yeah, existence by itself, yeah.

[1:07] First objection: what is subsisting is said to be a hoc aliquid, a this something, right? Okay, and that's a translation of what Aristotle said about individual substances. It's a to de ti, a this something, you know. Okay,

[1:27] but the soul, he says, is not a hoc aliquid, but something put together from the soul and the body is a hoc aliquid, right? Okay.

[1:41] Therefore, the soul is not something subsisting. Moreover, the second argument now, second objection: everything that is subsisting can be said to what do something, right? But the soul is not said to do something, because as Aristotle says in the first book about the soul, to say that the soul senses or understands, it would be similar as if one were to say that it what weaved something or built something, right?

[2:17] Therefore, the soul is not something what subsisting, huh? Now the third objection, which is perhaps the most interesting one. Moreover, if the soul were something subsisting, huh, there would be what some operation of the soul without the body, huh? But there's no operation of it without the body, not even what to understand, huh? Because it does not

[2:53] happen to understand without a what phantasm or image, huh? And the image is not without the what body, right? Therefore, the human soul is not something subsisting, huh?

[3:11] That's maybe the most substantial the objections, right? Because the other ones are somewhat based upon. How you understand haec aliquid, right? And he distinguishes two senses, as you'll see in the reply. And in the second one, he says, "Well, Aristotle is not necessarily speaking according to his own opinion, there, right? Yeah. " And then he'll he'll make some other ways of solving it too. But the third one is the one that, in some form or other, that people will bring up, right?

[3:41] Like when I say, you know, a blow in the brain interferes with thinking, and therefore people think the brain is the organ of thought and that sort of thing, right? So some connection between the brain, which is a body, and thinking, right? Sure. But most people think that the brain is the organ of thought, just like the eye is in some way the organ of seeing, right?

[4:02] Yeah. And he's going to solve it in the way that you see me solve it, but yeah. Okay. Those are three objections. But against this is what Augustine says in the tenth book about the Trinity.

[4:21] Now, when you use the word "mens" there in Latin, right? It's used often not just for the mind, meaning the reason, but for the what? Oh, mind and will. Yeah, for the soul, in so far as it is above matter, right? Huh? In so far as it's a spirit, as we say, right? In so far as it has a reason that's not a body and a will that's not a body, right?

[4:48] Okay. Whoever sees the nature of the mind and that it is a what substance, right? And that is not a body. Who sees that those who think, right, it to be something bodily, right? That they err on account of this. That they join to it those things without which they're not able to think of any nature, namely the images of what bodies, right? So we never think without imagining, and we never imagine anything other than something that is like a body that is continuous, right?

[5:33] And so, if we never think about anything without judging it in a way by our images, right, we think of everything as bodily, right?

[5:44] So the nature, therefore, of the human mind, the human soul, is not only incorporeal but also a substance that is something subsisting, huh? Notice the word "substance." etymologically, comes from the fact that it what stands under the accidents, huh? Okay. But subsisting is called more because it's has existence by itself.

[6:13] Now we go to the body of the article, and Thomas says, "I answer." That is necessary to say that what is the beginning or the source of the operation of understanding, which beginning we call the soul of man, is a certain what? Principles. Beginning. In corporeal and subsisting beginning, right? Now. Now, how is he going to show this? Well, by the main argument that Aristotle gave in the De Anima, in the third book.

[6:50] For it is manifest that man is able through his understanding to know the natures of all bodies, huh? And also the, sign of that is the fact that we know what body in general, right? What it is to be a body, right? And we distinguish between living bodies and non-living bodies, right? And we can go from the confused to the distinct, right? Talking about all these bodies in particular, if you want to, right?

[7:17] So, our soul, you can say, through our understanding, is able to know the natures in some way of all bodies, huh? But what is able to know some things is necessary that it have nothing of them in its nature.

[7:39] And what's the reason he gives for that? Because what existing exists within it naturally, in this case, would impede its knowledge of what other things, huh?

[7:57] Just as we see that a tongue, right, of a man who's sick, right, that is infected with a choleric and bitter humor, right, liquid, cannot perceive something what sweet, right, but all things seem to it what bitter, right, huh?

[8:19] In the same way, you could say that if my tongue was what sugary, right, I couldn't taste the opposite, bitter, right? Everything would taste sweet, right?

[8:31] So, if you go back to the De Anima and Aristotle develops this more slowly, he begins with the senses first, right? And he points out that the senses know by receiving the qualities of things, huh? So, the eye receives the colors of things around us, and the ear receives sounds and so on, and that the senses have to lack, right, what they're going to receive. That if the eye had in itself, like in the Wizard of Oz, right, these green lenses and so on, and green things, everything would appear to be what green to it, right?

[9:10] So, in order to receive all colors as it does, it has to be lacking any color. The same way, if I had Mozart built into my ear, so I would hear, which would be so bad in some ways, but it would prevent me from hearing other things, right? And the same way with my tongue, in his example there, right? Had that. So he's saying, therefore, that because reason, the universal reason,

[9:39] knows all bodies, it can't itself have be limited to any any body. So if it was a body, it would it would it would be what screwed as far as knowing all bodies, huh? Yeah. So he says, if therefore the intellectual beginning or the source of understanding had in itself the nature of some body, it would not be able to know what all bodies, huh? For every body has some determined nature. It is impossible, therefore, that the intellectual principle be a what body?

[10:17] Okay, that's that's the first argument that Aristotle gives there in the De Anima, if you recall, right? Yeah. There's other ways that we can talk about if we have time today, where you might show that the understanding is immaterial, right? It's not a body, but this is the first argument Aristotle gives, and Thomas appropriately gives that to beginners, huh? But it's a lot more accessible an argument if you've seen this already in the senses, right?

[10:49] The senses can be a body because they're not what knowing everything, right? Yeah. The eye is just knowing color, right? Yeah. The sense of my tongue can be red; it doesn't impede my tasting because the tongue is not knowing color, right? It's knowing the taste, right? But if my tongue had sugar, was sugary, or if my tongue was bitter or something, right, that would prevent it from knowing all things, huh?

[11:25] And likewise, he says it would be impossible that it understand through a bodily organ, right? Because again, the determined nature of that bodily organ would prohibit it from a knowledge of all bodies, right? Just as if someone what if some determined color was not only in the eye but also in a what vase, right? Huh? Glass dish. The liquor infused or poured into that thing would seem to be of the same what color, right?

[12:06] Everything is green up there, and was it a vase if you've read that story as a child, right? Huh? Put on your special glasses, huh? Yeah. Okay. So this is the way he's showing that the what understanding, the reason that knows the universal, knows all bodies, is not itself a body, right? Or in a body, huh? Yeah. Okay.

[12:36] So notice he is reasoning from what the operation you'll see now, the soul, to its what nature's subsisting, which is what we said about the order of reasoning, right? Can you repeat that again? What you just said? Yeah. Well, as you'll see, especially in the next paragraph, he's going to reason from the operation of the soul not being in the body, right, to the existence of the soul not being tied to the body.

[13:04] Okay. The question I was thinking of was trying to figure out why did he. Because the initial question of this article was whether it subsisted or not. Yeah. But then he went back to this notion, stressing its incorporeal. Okay. Well, if you go back to the thing we were talking about here, um, remember the famous Cartesian cogito, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. So Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am," right?

[13:37] Mm-hmm. But you could say, you know, I talk, therefore I am. Right. I I walk, therefore I am. Right. Sure. Okay. Um. You must be before you can do something. Mm-hmm. Okay.

[13:55] But um, that's the order in things, right? But in this way of proceeding, the cogito, you're going from what? You're doing something to your being, right?

[14:11] Okay. What do you mean? You're doing something. You're saying, "I think, therefore I am," right? You can't do something unless you what are. Are. And therefore, if you're doing something or undergoing something, does that matter, right? You must be. You must be right. Right. Okay. And that's common whether you're talking about material things or immaterial things, right? Sure. Okay. So, um,

[14:45] Aristotle mentions there in the ninth book of wisdom, huh, how motion seems to us most real. Right. Even though it's not, it's the least real in the sense of all acts, but it seems to people most real, right? Right. As he says, things in motion sort of catch the eye, but not stirs. And he says, people will say sometimes that I thought about something that doesn't exist, right?

[15:12] What does not exist can be thought about. What does not exist can be imagined. What does not exist can be wanted or desired. But does what not does but does what not does not exist? Does that move around? Huh? Well, no one thinks it moves around, do they? No. No. See. So we don't think that what does not exist moves or does anything, do we? Okay. So our mind sees that you must be before you can do something, or you must be before you can be moved or undergo something, right?

[15:51] Mm-hmm. But as you know, as Sherlock Holmes tells us, or as Aristotle tells us, we usually reason backwards, right? As far as reality is concerned. So Sherlock Holmes says to Watson, there, one of the stories, "We're going to have to reason backwards." And, oh, Watson is a little bit slow. What do you mean? He says, "We're going to reason from the effect back to the what cause, right?

[16:23] Okay. So you're reasoning from what comes after in things, yeah, to what comes before in things. So as far as reality is concerned, your thinking is what backwards, backwards, right? And so in a sense, God is the last thing the philosopher reasons his way to, huh? So what is before all other things is after thinking about all these other things, huh? Okay. So this is an example of that in particular, right?

[16:58] As far as reality is concerned, you can say that a thing must be before it can move or do something. And a thing can be maybe without doing something, but it can't do something without being. So being is before doing. But we become aware that something is from what it does, does, yeah, yeah. Okay. And so when the question arises now, what kind of existence does the soul have, right?

[17:31] Does the soul exist only in the body and have no existence except in the body? Well, since you must be before you can do anything, right? If the soul's existence was only in the body, if the soul's existence was as were immersed in the body,

[17:53] then the soul would do nothing except in the body and through the body. But we're now backwards, right? Yeah. If we see that the soul does something like understand, huh? Yeah. Or choose, for that matter. Yeah. Not in the body. Right. Right. Then its existence is not immersed in the body. Right. Its existence is not only in the body, right? Right. It has existence by itself. Okay.

[18:26] Okay. Now I was looking at the Theaetetus again the other day of Plato, right? And in the Theaetetus, it's kind of interesting, huh? Because it reminds me a little bit of the third book about the soul. And Socrates is pointing out there to Theaetetus that not only do we sense color and we sense what sound and we sense the flavors of things, right? But we also Speak of color as being something different from what, the flavor of something, right?

[19:09] Well, do we say that by the eye, that color and sweet are something different, or do we say that by the sense of taste?

[19:24] No. So Plato says, well, then the soul doesn't say it through one of these bodily organs. The soul says it by itself. That color is not what sweet, right? Okay. Now, notice what Plato's done there, or Socrates has done there. He's gone from the outward senses

[19:51] to what something inward, right? Right. Which he says isn't to a body organ, right? Right. Whereas Aristotle sees that there could be an inward sense, which he calls the common sense, right, the central sense, because we not only know that what a color Is or what a flavor is not the same thing, which would be proper to reason. But we also sense the difference between red and sweet, and that seems to require something bodily, huh?

[20:25] Okay. So Aristotle, it doesn't go directly from the outward senses to the reason, but it goes to the common sense, and then he sees find the difference between the common sense and the images and and reason, huh? Okay. But Plato's kind of on the way, the way there, right? Huh? He's trying to see

[20:49] whether the soul has some activity not through a bodily organ, huh? Okay. And Aristotle completes that work that Plato began, huh? Okay. When you read the Platonic dialogues, you see sometimes you see, you know, questions raised and not fully answered, right? When you pick up Aristotle and get the answer to the question, and sometimes you see, you know, in the dialogues you're on the way to it, but not going all the way.

[21:23] Well, you see, we don't have any of Plato's lectures in the Academy. All we have is the dialogues, huh? And some people say the dialogues are written to be read by people coming into the Academy. That you would read the dialogues under the direction of a student or in the Academy, and after you had exercised your mind the dialogues and had all kinds of interesting thoughts and questions, then you want to get in the Academy, or you're really an eager beaver student, right?

[21:53] But also, if you didn't really absorb the dialogues, you would not have been into the Academy, huh? And so it's supposed to have been a sign of the Academy too Let no one ignorant of geometry come in here. Right. But did Plato in the in the lectures in the what Academy get further than in these problems and these questions and answering them than in the dialogues, right?

[22:23] See. See. Now we see that Aristotle got further, huh? Yeah. But what took place in the Academy? Aristotle was there 20 years in the Academy, huh? See? And did Plato go further in the dialogues? We have no information really about that, huh? You know. Yeah. We kind of think he didn't get further in the dialogues, but who knows, right? Huh? You see. But there is a kind of continuity between these two great thinkers, huh?

[22:53] Plato is supposed to have said Aristotle is the mind of the school. And some of the later dialogues of Plato, they some people think there's already an influence of Aristotle there, but you know, but we can never know those things exactly, right? Hmm. See. But there is a kind of Development there, and the more you you read Aristotle, the more the role of Plato. If you know Aristotle, you're reminded, you know, how Aristotle develops this thing further in some work.

[23:24] Sure. And you realize how much he he got from Plato, right? I mean, Aristotle was no fool. He wouldn't have spent 20 years in the school of Plato if there wasn't something to be learned in that school. He left when Plato died, huh? So Aristotle came in at the age of what, 17, and left about the age of 37.

[23:45] Okay. But Speusippus there, the nephew, I guess, Plato took over the Academy, but he had to be an Athenian citizen. Aristotle was not, right? But later on, Aristotle came back to Athens and set up his school, the Lyceum, right? So that's where you get that word Lyceum, huh?

[24:07] You y you read uh uh uh Lincoln's speeches, right? And you see a speech to the Lyceum here in this or that city, right? Yeah. Kind of place where people would go for some cultural event, so to speak, right? But that name Lyceum is derived from Aristotle's school. When I was

[24:30] a little boy in St. Paul, Minnesota, one of the downtown movie theaters was called the Lyceum Theater. I didn't know it was named after Aristotle's school, but

[24:41] okay. But the Academy is such a famous school that the academic world is named from that. And I went to a high school called an Academy, and many people did go to schools called Academies, but the name comes from Plato's school. So as I tell the students, you know, you should know something about Plato, huh? Yeah.

[25:07] Okay. So he says, therefore, the intellectual principle, which is called the mind or the understanding, has an operation per se, right? By itself, right? Meaning not in the body, right? To which the body does not what communicate, right?

[25:30] Now he reasons from that to the kind of existence it has, which is its subsistence, right? But nothing is able to what do something by itself, right? That does not subsist by itself, right? See the way he's reasoning? Sure. See, he's reasoning backwards, huh? Okay.

[25:56] For to do something only belongs to something to a being that is actually existing, right? Okay. Whence, in the way something. Acts or operates in that way it is right, or something acts in the way that it is. Oh yeah, can you close? Once in that way something, what, operates in which it is. Okay, but the idea that if the soul's way of existing was only in the body, right, then it could only do something in the body and through the body, right.

[26:39] But if it does something not in the body, right, and through the body, um, then its existence, right, which is presupposed to its doing this, right, is not just in the body. Do you see that? Makes sense. Can you go through that sentence again? The one I just read. Yes, non enim. Ah, okay. If it does not, ah, non enim est. Something is unable. You could say really.

[27:08] Okay. To operate, unless it be a being and act, right. Oh, okay. Yeah. okay, sure. Quo modo, in that way, right, something operates in which it is. Something operates in which it is. Yeah. Don't understand that.

[27:29] In which this quote. What? What else he's saying there? In the way something exists, right, it operates, right, because it has to exist before it can operate, huh? So if it exists only in the body, its existence is only in the body, then it's going to only operate in the body. Body. Yeah. But in fact, it operates in understanding, not in the body. Therefore, its existence is not only in the what, body.

[27:58] Okay. Does that that quote go back to eo modo? Is that what it is? Yeah. What was it? Eo modo is referring to operata, right? Once in that way something operates, right? Yeah. Quest in which it is. Okay. Okay. The order there is a little more Latin, huh? Yeah. We always joke about it because people who read Thomas a lot when they write their philosophy in English, you know, you kind of see the influence, you know, of the word order or the Latin grammar, you know, and it's a little bit strange, right?

[28:38] Sometimes, huh? But I'm translating very literally the way the order goes here, right? Um, you could say in the in English in the way a thing is, yeah. So does it what, act or operate, huh? Yeah. Okay. So knows

[28:56] what he's doing, huh? He's reasoning from the operation of the understanding, right, to the understanding itself being immaterial, right. Mm-hmm. And because the soul has a power and ability that's not a body, right? That shows its existence is not just what tied to the body, okay? Yeah. It's another expression of agere sequitur esse right? Is it more or less? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what we're saying here, in in slightly different words than what you're saying.

[29:33] Yeah, yeah. You must be before you can do something. Okay. It's the old joke, you know, where these people have been kind of confused by modern philosophy, you know, and they always tell the story: the student raises hand in class and he asks the professor, you know, "Do I exist?"

[30:06] Professor says, "Who's asking?"So, got to be somewhat slow if you don't see the point, just say. But obviously, if you're asking something, right? In that kind of an activity, right? Don't have to be understanding something; just asking something, you must what? Exist. Exist, right?

[30:43] Okay. Now, you could develop a whole series of arguments for the understanding, universal understanding being immaterial, if you understand the what connection between the body and the continuous, right? And the non-continuous character of what thinking and thought, right? Okay. Now,

[31:21] one thing that we see about the continuous. What's the definition of continuous? Now I think we studied that before, didn't we? That whose parts meet at a common boundary Yeah, one definition. Yeah, and the categories Aristotle gives that definition of the continuous, huh? That whose parts meet at a common boundary. If you take the left and the right side here of the line, those two parts meet at a point, right?

[31:54] Aristotle contrasts that with the discrete quantity of a number, right? So if you take the number seven and take any part you want, let's say three and four, two and five, do they meet at a point or somewhere? The two and the five, or the three and the four? No. So that's the way he distinguishes between continuous quantity, which is studied in geometry, right? And numbers, discrete quantities, is called, which you study in arithmetic, right?

[32:27] Arithmetic. Now you can have something continuous in two dimensions, okay? Like a circle or a square or something, right? If I take the left and the right side of a circle, they meet at a what line, right? I could take the left and right, or I could take the diagonal here, right? But if I take the diagonal of the rectangle or the parallelogram, the two sides meet at that what?

[32:58] Yeah. Okay. Now what's the other definition of the continuous, huh? Which is divisible. Forever. Yeah. Okay. And so. If you just consider this straight line, you can divide that in half, and you can take half of the half and half of the half, right? And the only way they could stop would be if you cut it into what, two nothings,

[33:26] or if you cut it into two points, right? But as long as you cut a line into shorter lines, they can always be what, divided again, as long as you have length, right? But those other two proposals there, could you cut a straight line into two nothings? No. Could something be made out of nothing? No. No. So when you cut a straight line, you don't end up with two nothings.

[33:55] Could you have a straight line composed of two points? No, because it's not continuous. Well, the point is that if two points touch, right? Coincide. The only way they could touch would be to coincide. You couldn't have two points, you know, overlapping like two circles can overlap, because then the point would have some what, size, right? No. Okay. You couldn't have the whole one touching part of the other because they don't have any parts, huh?

[34:27] Mm-hmm. And you can't really distinguish between a point and its what, edge, because then you'd be imagining the point to be a little circle. Sure. So the point has no parts. It has no length, no width, no depth, but it does have position, right? Okay. So

[34:48] if you bring, you put two points together, they're going to coincide, and in that case, they'll have no more length than one point, which is no length at all, right? Right. And if ten or a hundred or a million or infinity of points should touch, right? Mm-hmm. The only way they could touch would be to coincide. Mm-hmm. And if they coincide, they have no more length than what, one point, huh?

[35:17] Mm-hmm. So you can't put together a line from points. If you tried to do so, you'd have to have the, you know, going to have something more than a series of points. You're going to have to bring the points together to touch, right? And if they touch, they coincide. If they coincide, you have a line. So that's the other definition of continuous, that which is divisible forever, right?

[35:40] And that's also contrary to what you have in the case of the number, because you can divide seven into three and four, and four into two and two, and two into one one, but the one is not what, divisible, huh? Okay. Let's go back to the top of one line, we've been talking about the continuous, right? Oh. But the one that's the beginning of number is simpler than a point.

[36:06] At least a point has position, but in fact, sometimes the the ancients would say that a point is a unit having position. So it's more involved in the point than in the one. So if the point is indivisible, the one is indivisible. So you could also say that the number its parts don't meet at a common boundary, like in the first definition, and is not divisible what forever.

[36:34] And therefore, in the first book and a part we didn't read of the De Anima, Aristotle says that thoughts are like what numbers, huh? Okay. Now, why are thoughts like numbers, huh?

[36:50] Well, when you define, huh, or when you reason, huh, are these divisible forever? No. Does every statement have a statement before it? If every statement was in need of being proven, no statement could be proven. Right.

[37:23] Right. Right. Because someone would say, "Well, the statements you use to prove any statement, before you use them to prove it, you got to prove them first, and then the same thing would be said about the statements used to prove that."

[37:39] Okay. So there'd be infinity of unproven statements before any statement. So you'd never know any statement, right? But do we know some statements? I like to say statements exist. I know that's true. Now, someone wants to say the statements do not exist. He's making a statement, right? So it's very frustrating, right, to say we know no statements, huh?

[38:15] So, so statements that are known that show us that not all statements are in need of proof, and therefore they're not divisible forever. This reasoning process you can't keep analyzing into previous statements forever. The same way with definition, right? You know, sometimes when I tell students, you know, Shakespeare's exhortation to use reason, it's written in blank verse. I say, "Now, you all know what blank verse is."

[38:46] I know. I say, "Well, blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter." Okay. You know, all know what an iamb is. No. An iamb is two syllables with the accent on the second syllable. Okay. Now, you all know what accent is. But if this went on forever, right? That every part of every definition was in need of being defined. Could you ever define anything?

[39:22] Then definition would be impossible, right? But that means you wouldn't know what definition is either. Could you? You wouldn't understand what that sentence means. The guy who says that every definition, presupposes a definition. What does he mean by definition? Because he couldn't what it means without defining what a definition is. But he couldn't define what a definition is without defining its parts, and he couldn't define those without defining their parts, and so on forever.

[39:48] So you can never begin to know what anything is, huh? And you know the other thing that I take sometimes, huh? That's like this, a little more concrete.

[40:04] When I'm reading, say, and I come across a word whose meaning is unknown to me in in English or in in In Greek or something like that, I go to the dictionary, right? And the dictionary explains to me that word, right? Using other words, right? Now, did we learn the meanings of all words in that way?

[40:32] See, well, you come into this world knowing no names, huh? Knowing no words, right? So the first words you learn, can you learn them from other words? No.

[40:47] So there must be some words that are learned, not through other words. And those words, of course, are the ones that we learn through our senses, right? By associating a certain sound with something we sense, huh? Want a cookie? Just have a tape of that with my little firstborn. So you can't

[41:14] know every word through other words, right? If that was so, you'd never know what any words, huh? Couldn't get started to know words, right? Okay. So thoughts are like numbers, rather than like the continuous, huh? They're not divisible forever, huh?

[41:34] Um. Now, what about the other definition of continuous, huh? Do thoughts meet at a common boundary? Yeah, but one number comes before after another number too, right? See. But is there a?

[42:12] I see the definition of triangle, right? Now, say, say, say, triangle is a three-sided plane figure. Now, does three-sided and plane figure do they meet at a point? If they did meet at a point, this would be a what? A line, right? Huh? Do they meet at a line?

[42:43] Do they meet at a plane? So the definition is not what continuous, is it? Okay. But I'm defining a continuous thing here, aren't I?

[43:05] So I know a continuous thing. In an uncontinuous way. Do you see that? I know a continuous thing, a triangle, in the form of a definition, right? That's the way I know distinctly what a triangle is. But the definition is not continuous. So I know a continuous thing in an uncontinuous way. Now is that because of the thing I'm knowing? The thing I'm knowing in this case is something continuous, right?

[43:53] So if reason knows a continuous thing in uncontinuous way, it's not because the thing known is not continuous. It must be because reason then is what? Not continuous. And it's not continuous. It's not a what? A body, right? Do you see that?

[44:18] So that's one way, right? Do you know what a straight line is? I think y'all know what a straight line is, don't you? Yeah. Okay. You know what a straight line is.

[44:38] No. How long is what a straight line is? I mean, this is not a straight line. How long is what a straight line is? Is it one inch long, or is it inches long, or what is it? It's not. It's not limited. It's

[45:06] something. If what a straight line is was a straight line, it'd have to have some length, right? In which case, what a straight line is would not be common to all straight lines, right?

[45:22] So I'm understanding what a straight line is. I'm understanding something that's continuous in one dimension, right? Yeah. But my understanding is not what? Continuous, huh? Hmm. Now another way of looking at this, you know, if I say, for example, syllogists here, if I say that every

[45:52] mother is a woman, and no man is a woman, so for example, here's a syllogism. What's the next statement after every mother is a woman, and no man is a woman?

[46:16] No man is a mother, right? If you affirm the same thing of one thing and deny it of the other, then those two can't be the same thing, right? So no man is a mother.

[46:33] This is the form we use all the time in theology, right? What changes is composed. God is not composed. Therefore, God does not change, right? Use that form in the second figure of syllogism all the time.

[46:48] So notice in reasoning there is a next statement, isn't there? Just like in numbers, right? After three, there's a next number, which is four, right? But in straight lines, is there a next longest line?

[47:10] Is there a next longer line? See, notice what the word "next" means. N e x t. If I speak of my next door neighbor, right? The next door. Is there any house between me and the next house? No. See, okay. And if I start here and I say this is the first chair, and then this is the next chair, right? Is there any chair between this chair and the next chair?

[47:47] No. No. See. Well, in the case of straight lines, though, is there a next longer straight line? No. No, because any longer line I take, that difference in length is divisible forever, right? Yeah. So there is a line that's closer to the one you started with, and I divide the added length, right? Yeah. And there's one closer than that, and because it's divisible forever, is there the next longer line?

[48:24] In numbers, there's a next bigger number, right? Okay. There are many numbers bigger than three, but four is the next one that's bigger, right? Uh huh. Yeah. So thoughts again don't seem to be continuous, right? There's a next thought. See. And there's no place to stop between these two statements: every mother is a woman, and no man is a woman, and the conclusion: no man is a woman.

[48:49] Mother. The same way with defining, right? If I start off with, let's say, quadrilateral, right? How many thoughts to get from quadrilateral to square?

[49:10] There are Two, yeah, equilateral and right angle, right? There I am. There's not an infinity of thoughts between quadrilateral and what square, right? There's a limit to that. There's no place you can, in other words, between two thoughts have an infinity of what intermediary thoughts. But between any two straight lines, one of which is longer than the other, there's an infinity of in-between points. So the more you study this, what the continuous is, the two definitions of the continuous, the more you see the thought is not something continuous, and therefore it's not something what bodily, because the body is always something continuous.

[49:54] Now another way that they reason from contiguous to the soul not being or reason not being a body is in terms of the fact that we saw that the Object of reason is the what it is, right, of something sensed or imagined, and the what it is of something sensed or imagined is something universal, like what a dog is, right, or what a cat is. I don't happen to cat we had their fur.

[50:29] and what a chair is is something universal, right? Okay. So as Boethius says, the thing is singular when sensed or imagined, for that matter, and universal when understood. Now, what has that got to do with the reason being something immaterial? Well, what you find out when you study material things is that there can be many individuals of the same kind, right? So I could have, for example, two identical circles here on the board, right?

[51:05] Okay. Same shape, same size. I'm drawing them too well, but you know what I mean. But how is it possible to have two circles of exactly the same kind? How do they differ? Well, they differ only by position. One is here and one is there. Okay. But that's tied up with the continuous, isn't it? Because the continuous is that whose parts meet at a common boundary, and therefore it has part outside of part, right?

[51:41] And so you can put in one part one circle and another part another circle, right? Okay. Now, if I had a a plate of glass, huh? You know, about the size of this window frame here, right? And had a pretty good cutting instrument, right? I could cut off, you know, a number of window panes here, right? But how can I do that? Because I have enough glass, right?

[52:06] then? If I had enough wood, I could make many chairs exactly the same way, right? So the source of many individuals in material things is that you have enough matter, you have enough wood or enough glass or in geometry enough of this kind of imaginable matter, okay?

[52:31] So this chair is either here or there, right? And this circle is either here or there, right? But what a circle is neither here nor there, right? Um. So if it's received in reason in the form of universal, it's not received here or there in the continuous. If it was received, circle or chair or like this, in something continuous, it'd be received as here or there in the continuous, and therefore it'd be received as what?

[53:10] Singular or individual, see? Any circle that's here or there, right? In the continuous, is an individual circle, right? But what's interesting is that the reason, the understanding, the universal understanding, it receives these things as what? In a universal way, it knows what a circle is or what a chair is, right? And that's neither here nor there in the continuous. You've left aside, in other words, right? What individuates these things?

[53:43] What individuates them is the continuous, whether it's part outside of part. So they'll reason from the fact that reason knows directly the universal and knows these things universally, not directly in the what singular. It has to go back to the imagination, go back to the senses to know the singular in some way, right? But directly it knows the universal. It's receiving these things separated from what individuates them, and that's the continuous.

[54:14] So it receives them not with the conditions of a body, not with the conditions of the what continuous, right? In other words, whatever is received in the continuous is received here or there, and therefore a singular. But these things are received in reason in universally, huh? Therefore, it's not a body. It's not continuous.

[54:45] But the case that the senses and the imagination they know only the singular. That was the problem with John Locke there, right? I mentioned how Locke was saying the general idea of triangle is a very hard idea, you know, because is it is the general idea of triangle scaling or isosceles or equilateral, is it right angled or obtuse angled? You know what to say. It's all none of these.

[55:08] But he's trying to imagine triangle in general. Well, you try to imagine triangle in general, you can't. You can only imagine an equilateral triangle or an isosceles triangle or a scalene triangle, and an individual of that kind too. But you can understand what triangle is in general, but you can't imagine what triangle is in general. But reason does understand what's common to all triangles in separation from their differences.

[55:40] And if you have experience in geometry, you can see that. You demonstrate something about the triangle as triangle, right? And not as isosceles triangle, right? So you know the famous theorem that the interior angles of a triangle are to right angles. Well, you draw a straight line and say, one way you can do it through one vertex parallel to the opposite sides, right? And then by the parallel theorem, you know the alternate angles are equal.

[56:07] You can see it goes to right angles, but you see this about the triangle as triangle, not about the triangle as equilateral or isosceles or scalene, whatever it might be, right? But the senses and the imagination, being bodies, they know only the singular. So that's a problem of Locke there, right? He's not transcending his imagination and sense; he's trying to imagine the universal. And Plato has a dialogue about that, right?

[56:38] The Parmenides, right, where Socrates is just a young man and he's trying to understand the universal, and he imagines the universal to be like a big sail covering all of us, right? Hmm. Of course, in that case, if man, just common to all of us, was spread over us like a big blanket or something, right? You'd have only part of what man is. Yeah. Another part of what man is would be on top of you, so one of us would be an animal, one of us would be rational, you know.

[57:06] It'd be divided, huh? So Socrates' problem there in the parmenides is that he's trying to imagine the what universal. So these are some of the other ways there, from the universal that you can what I mean from the continuous, huh? You can reason that our understanding is not a body, right? Because it knows things universally, right? Or it knows them in the form of a definition, even continuous things.

[57:41] Okay. And sometimes they point to the fact that the understanding knows what truth is, huh? Things that don't seem to be a body at all, right? Are in a body, huh? And therefore, how can how can it be a body, right? Huh? Okay.