De Anima (On the Soul)
71. Q.75 a.7: Are the Soul and the Angel of One Species? Lowest Species, Origen's Error, and Understanding Compared with Reason
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[0:00] To the seventh, thus one proceeds. It seems that the soul and the angel are of one what species? Huh. A species is a what particular kind of thing under a genus, right?

[0:23] For each thing is ordered to its own end by the nature of its species, which it has an inclination to its end. But the same is the end of the soul and the angel, namely eternal beatitude. Therefore, they are one what species? Huh.

[0:46] Second objection: Moreover, the ultimate specific difference is most noble, because it completes the definition of the species. But nothing is more noble in the angel and the soul than to be understanding, huh? Therefore, the angel and the soul come together. In their ultimate specific difference, therefore, they are one species.

[1:21] Now, sometimes it's it's hard to tell when you come to a what a species that's what they call in logic a lowest species, a species that cannot be divided into different ones. And one thing is kind of amazing, I think, when you think about even in geometry where the divisions are rather easy to understand. When you divide triangle into equilateral, isosceles, and scalene,

[1:53] are those lowest species or not? Or are they different kinds of equilateral triangle? What did you say? Yeah, I don't think there are different kinds of equilateral triangle, in the sense that you know there's different shapes of equilateral triangles. It could be maybe bigger or smaller ones, but but they all have exactly the same shape, all equilateral triangles. But when you get to a isosceles triangle, there it seems to me you could have what different shapes, right?

[2:35] See. And and maybe maybe the you know the ratio of the equal side to the unequal side might be two to one or three to one or you know, and you have a slightly different shape, right? So I think it's kind of interesting because they are on the same level. I mean, they're they're you know the first division of triangle, right? But one of them is a lowest species and the others are not, right?

[3:03] Now likewise, when you divide quadrilateral and even parallelogram in particular into the square and the oblong and the rhombus and the rhomboid, what seems to be square is like a lowest species, huh? All squares have exactly the same what form or shape, right? But do all oblongs have the same? See. No. Ten by two and six by two, are they the same? No. See? Not exactly, are they, huh?

[3:36] So one member of the same you know division could be a lowest species and the other is what not, huh? Now there it's easy to tell in geometry which is a lowest species, which is not, huh? You get into dividing, say, drama into tragedy and comedy, right? Was comedy a lowest species, huh?

[4:01] Well, I think in Shakespeare there's at least two kinds of comedy, right? And one you might call I call the good-natured comedy, which is my favorite, and the other is a satire, right, huh? See, three different kinds, but it's kind of not so clear there, right, as it is in geometry, huh? Aristotle divides the virtues of reason into what five there in the sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics, and he has natural understanding and wisdom and reasoned-out understanding and art and foresight, right?

[4:39] Well, are they lowest species or what? Well, wisdom is a lowest species, huh? Even though it's the highest knowledge, right? There aren't many kinds of wisdom, right?

[4:54] The wisdom he's talking about there, and natural understanding is is the lowest, huh? But episteme, scientia, reasoned-out knowledge, that's a genus of geometry and natural philosophy and. Other ones, and art is a genus, right? The art of carpentry and the art of cooking and many other arts. And foresight is a genus. It's the foresight of the human being, and the foresight of the father, and the foresight of the king, and the foresight of of Douglas MacArthur, the general, right?

[5:28] That Thomas distinguishes. So it's a little tricky sometimes, right? Huh? And sometimes we don't maybe even have a name, right? Huh? So you have maybe you know I use the term good natured comedy satyr a different kind of thing, and maybe there's more than one kind of what tragedy, right? Huh? You know tragedy like Macbeth is that the same thing as King Lear, you know? You know where a man knowingly chooses what's evil, and eventually he's he's defeated, and where a man is, since

[6:11] suffers because of circumstances, right? More than maybe he should for his mistake, huh? So when you say intellectuale esse to be understanding, huh? Able to understand,

[6:30] is that a lower species, right? Or is the soul's way of understanding and the angel's way of understanding not exactly the same, right? Okay.

[6:44] Third objection. Moreover, the soul differs from the angel; does not seem to differ from the angel except through this—that is, united to a body. But the body, since it is outside the essence of the soul, does not seem to pertain to its species, huh? Therefore, the soul and the angel are one in what species, huh?

[7:10] But against all this, of those that have diverse natural operations, they differ in what species, huh? Those things in which there are diverse natural operations, different species, huh? But the souls and angels, but of the soul and of the angel, there are diverse natural operations, because as Dionysius says in the seventh chapter about the divine names, the angelic minds have a what simple and blessed understandings, not gathering right from visible things divine knowledge, huh?

[7:57] Aristotle Shakespeare defines reason as what the ability for a large discourse, right? Huh? We gather, what? The universal from a large induction, right? Okay. Why the angelic angels don't have to induce, right? They see the universal right away.

[8:19] About the the contrary, which he says later on about the soul. Therefore, the soul and angel are not of one species. Now he's going to touch upon the the error of origin, and origin is kind of influenced by the Platonists, right?

[8:39] And answer ought to be said that Origen laid down that all human souls and angels were of one what species, of one type, of one kind, huh? They didn't different kind, huh?

[8:56] And we're all created in the beginning, and some of us sinned, and we got attached to bodies. Okay. And yeah, something like this kind of you know in the Platonists, huh?

[9:10] And maybe those people who believe in the transmigration of the souls, right? Yeah. And the worse you've been, the worse body you go into, right? And if you gradually purify yourself, you may not have to go back into body. Yeah. Is that why I believe that everyone might be saved? Because. Well, that's that's another mistake of his, but you know. But in other words, we're all created equal in the beginning, and and kind of you know kind of democratic thinking in a way, is if it would be unjust for God to make us unequal.

[9:39] Oh. We have to do something to be made unequal, right? Yeah. Okay. But as you know, God is equality. And therefore, because he laid down the diversity of grade found in these substances to be accidental, right? As coming about from what?

[10:07] Free will, right? Okay. This has been said above. But this is not able to be, because in immaterial, incorporeal substances, there cannot be what. Diversity. A diversity by number, huh? Without a diversity in kind, yeah. Oh. And without a what natural inequality, huh? See. Now, since Plato saw this when he spoke of the world of forms, right? Although he's kind of mistaken as to what these immaterial forms are, but each form is different in kind from the next one, right?

[10:50] And the only reason why you can have many things of the same kind is because you have matter subject to what continuous quantity, right? And therefore, I can what. Put this form of chair in this metal and that metal and that metal and that metal, right? Okay. And the woman rolls out the dough, right? She can make this cookie, this cookie, this cookie, this cookie, this cookie, right?

[11:16] Because she has enough what dough to make this many cookies, right? So they can be exactly the same. They can all be Christmas trees, right? You know, Christmas tree cookies. Um, but they differ because what the shape of a Christmas tree is in this dough and in that dough and that dough. And dough is something material with part outside of part, so you can cut it up, right?

[11:45] If you have enough, you can make a large number of these Christmas tree cookies, which I'm all in favor of. But if you don't have that, then these two form then going to have to differ in form, and therefore differ in what. Kind huh you have many squares exactly the same, right? Remember the first theorem here in Euclid, right? You know, in a straight line to construct an equilateral triangle, right?

[12:21] And he rotates it around one end, gets a circle, then he rotates it around the other end, right? And when he bisect, intersect rather, he draws a line, right? But you have two circles exactly the same, yeah, even in size, right? But one's here and one's there. Center the one is here, and the center of the other one is here, right? Okay. But if you didn't have part outside of part like that, then they have to differ like a circle and a square differ, right?

[12:51] In a triangle, right? And that's the way these immaterial substances differ, like circle and square and triangle. They can't differ like two circles. Two circles can differ, but one being here and one being there, huh? You see that in modern science too, in quantum theory, because they discovered that these particles, when they come together, they lose their what? Definite position, right? They become blurred, and the blurring is in the thing, and you can't say exactly where they are.

[13:26] In principle, not just in practice, and therefore they're not really individuals. They lose individuality, as Schrödinger says, huh? In his essays huh? Because you can't say one's here, one's there. They become blurred in reality. Okay.

[13:47] Which is not able to be, because in incorporeal substances there cannot be a diversity by number without a diversity by species or kind, and without natural inequality. Because if they are not composed of matter and form, which is what the truth I think it is, but they are subsisting forms, it is manifest that it is necessary for there to be in them a diversity in species or kind.

[14:16] For it cannot be understood that some separated form be except one of one kind, just as if whiteness, huh, were separated, it could only be what one only, huh? For this whiteness does not differ from that whiteness except through the fact that it is of this or of that, right, huh? But the diversity by species always has a diverse, a natural diversity following upon it, just as in the species of colors one is more perfect than another, and likewise in others.

[14:54] And this because differences dividing a genus are contraries, and contraries have themselves according to perfect and imperfect. And you first learn that a bit in the first book of Natural Hearing, remember? When Aristotle was trying to find a common Thought among his predecessors, and he found that they all spoke of change as being by contraries, right? But then he saw that in the contraries, one is more perfect than the other, right?

[15:25] One seems to be lacking something in comparison to the other. So, when Democritus spoke of the full and the empty, obviously empty is lacking something, right? But even when they talked about love and hate, hate seemed to be missing something that love has, huh? And when they talk about hot and cold, well, the cold seems to be kind of lacking what heat has, huh? And so one contrary tends to be more perfect or better than the other; the other to be kind of lacking in it.

[16:04] And this is developed in a more perfect way in the tenth book of wisdom, tenth book of first philosophy, tenth book of the metaphysics, because the beginning of contrariety is what lack and having, right?

[16:31] Now he says the same thing would follow. He still wants to take in those people who have this kind of strange notion that there's some kind of spiritual matter, right? The same thing would follow if these substances were composed of matter and form, but were not bodies, right? And had the continuous. For if the matter of this is distinguished from the matter of that, it is necessary that either the form be the principle of the distinction of matter, that the matters are diverse on account of a relation to diverse forms, and then there would follow still a diversity according to kind and a natural what inequality.

[17:11] So I was saying about the angels, son, when they met in convention, right? They said we hold these truths to be self-evident that all angels are created. unequal. So there's no democratic government up there, that's for sure. That's right.

[17:32] Or matter would be the beginning of the distinction of forms. Nor can this matter be said to be other from that, except according to a quantitative division, right? Which would not have any place in bodyless substances, right? Of which kind are the angel and the soul? Hence, it is not possible that the angel and the soul be of one what species. But the same thing is going to be true when you study the angels.

[17:58] One angel cannot be of the same what species as another one, right? In what way, however, there are many souls of the same kind. Will be shown below, right?

[18:12] In case you don't know it, your soul was made for your body, huh? Or your body was made for your soul. Okay. My soul couldn't fit into your body. Okay. So

[18:37] they weren't made for each other. There's a there's a priority. Yeah, you see, matter and form are kind of like relatives, right? Okay. And so, not any form can be in any matter, right? And this individual form, my soul or your soul, is adapted to your individual what body, right? So if your parents had not met, and if they had met, they'd not produced your body, right?

[19:07] Right. God would not have created your soul, huh? Oh yeah, I see. So you have to thank God that your parents met, right? Oh. Yeah. Kierkegaard, you know, talks about this strange thought comes across a man who realizes his mother and father might never met.

[19:26] But you know, I mean, even if your mother and father meet, a number of say seeds, right, in the male especially, I guess, huge number, right? Huh. So your chances of being the one. Cool. Small. You know, just from the point of view of chance. From the point of view of chance, yeah. Yeah, yeah, but but you say God's providence extends all the way down to your parents meeting, right?

[19:52] And to their conceiving you, right? Your body, huh? And that was intended, huh? You know, you realize how, in a sense, how gratuitous is our existence, right? Yes. On his part, huh? You know, and what right do I have to be, you know, more than those countless other people that could have been generated even by my parents, right? Even by my parents. Yeah. You know, I mean, do I have some right to be more than they did?

[20:26] No, no, it's it's purely generosity in God's part that that I'm around here at all, you know. Um. Yeah, a bit interesting, you know, our thankfulness in heaven, right? I mean, it's going to be much more, much more obvious, right? Yeah. You know that. But of course, you know, you have also considerable debt to your parents, right? You know,

[20:58] you wouldn't be without them, obviously. So this the soul. How can the soul be? Kind of modified or something in itself to a body, to one body, without being a different species.

[21:19] Well, it's something individual, yeah. It's not different kind of soul, but it's still peculiar to your body, right? And so, even when your soul is separated from your body, you know, some people thought, you know, when the soul was separated from the body, there would be one soul, right? You see? Wait, can they come, please? When when the soul is separated from the body, right? Yeah. Um, that you don't have any body there, you have only one soul.

[21:48] See? And so they deny the personal immortality of your soul or my soul, right? Oh, it's just one big soul. Yeah, yeah. See, it's just one soul. See? Uh, but even if my soul is separated from its body. It still is what a soul that's proportioned to that body, right? Right. And when your soul's separated from your body, it's still a soul proportioned to your body, right? You know.

[22:14] And so, you don't have to worry at resurrection. I'll get your body, get my body. We'll be back in the same body, right? We'll be resurrected, right? I thought those differences that distinguish the souls only came because they had been in bodies. But if they weren't first in bodies, then there would only be one soul. Yeah, you know, your soul was made by God for your body, right?

[22:40] Right. You see, to fit your body, right? What's What's What's unique? What? Your flesh and blood and bones are not mine. That's for sure. Well,

[23:01] when the souls are after death, after death before the resurrection, how do they keep souls separate if they don't? Well, we bring our supernatural gifts at, and we know that. Yeah, but but nevertheless, as they say, your soul is still relative to your body, even when it's separated from your body. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Just like a nut and bolt, right? I mean, you don't have to be together, right?

[23:28] To be relative to each other. Yeah. Yeah. Don't try to understand it too distinctly now. Okay. Right. Yes. Is one man more intelligent than the other just because of the matter, or is it form and matter combination for a human?

[23:49] Well, it may be a bit of both, but you know, you kind of start from the body there, right? Huh? Yeah. Because it's not because of the kind of thing the soul is that one soul is more intelligent than the other, right? But this soul was made for this body. I mean, Thomas's body.

[24:07] Very, very good soul for that body, right? You know. His magnanimous. Yeah. So his intellect itself would have been greater. Greater power. Maybe some individual differences, yeah. Are hard to specify exactly what those are, but you read them, you know. He's quite different from you.

[24:39] I always thought that was all came from his body, his brain, and senses were better, so his intellect was then better. You're saying it's also something of his soul. Well, there's some proportion there, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to bring that. I have to remember that text. I was going to bring that text in from Paul the Six. You know. Oh, that's right. But that's even more clear.

[25:10] The difference between the woman's body and the man's body, right? Yeah. That has something to do with that difference in their soul, right? I was referring to the text there, where when Paul the Sixth, if I remember it correctly, when Paul the Sixth made Teresa of Avila a doctor of the Church and Saint Catherine of Siena were the first two women there, and then he spoke of the difference in the way they are a doctor of the Church and say Saint Augustine is, and so on.

[25:39] And then, if I remember right, he quotes Saint Francis de Sales there, you know, to the fact that a woman has a greater capacity for love than a man. You know that Saint Francis de Sales, as a doctor of divine love, there

[25:57] doesn't hesitate to say this, right? You know, so he seems to be quoting it with with approval, right? At the time he's making this woman a doctor of the Church, huh? Claiming her a doctor of the Church, so that's kind of interesting, huh? That the woman's soul

[26:20] has this natural difference in the man's soul, huh? Now I was mentioning how Aristotle wants to show that friendship consists more in loving than in being loved. He doesn't give the reason why this is so. As if you should be able to figure it out for yourself, but he gives a sign from the mother, right? And Thomas notes, you know, that he takes it from the mother rather than the father, right?

[26:50] And it's because of this, huh? There's a certain excellence in love, right? But then I was mentioning, you know, if you read the treatise on love there by Saint Francis de Sales, the way he would take his examples from Teresa of Avila and other women's saints, rather than from Augustine or Thomas, right, huh?

[27:13] And I was always struck, you know, you know, by this difference just in my own one time reading something there, St. Teresa of Avila, and she was saying,

[27:28] "I don't know what more I could have in heaven than I have now." She says, "Our union is already complete." She says, "But that's obviously union of love, right? That's complete, huh?" And then when you go to Augustine, you know, the vision is a whole reward. You know, a little different emphasis there, right? You

[27:52] see, not not that Augustine neglects the importance of love or that he doesn't have love, and not that she would not want to see God face to face, right? I can't imagine Augustine or Thomas saying that, right? I don't know what more I could. The vision you got to get. You mean? You know, you don't see God face to face, right? But but but but this this union of love, I see.

[28:16] It's already complete," she said. "That kind of amazing thing to say, but but she was bound, okay. And now it's going really that thing, you know, where Christ is supposed to have said, "Someone there, if you're looking for me, you'll find me in the heart of virtue. Well, you wouldn't say that. don't think about. it. You'd say Augustine or St. Thomas, you know, even though I'm sure he he was in some sense in their heart too, right?

[28:42] You know, but it's kind of amazing he would see that, huh? Very, yeah. You know, and but Shakespeare understands that a lot, is that you know, in this in the plays, you know, this the difference between man, and, woman, in terms of these of reason and love, you know. Is it like two unions, or is there just a sense that union of love is for this life, and union of and like this vision is next life, or it's it's not quite.

[29:15] No, no, the the charity is going to remain. Yeah, right. But faith is going to be replaced by the vision, right? But but when you see God as He is face to face, then you will love God more than you could in this life. Yeah. But

[29:40] the degree to which you see Him, right, depends on how much you love Him. Right. Okay. So, in in a sense, I mean, this metaphor of of marriage, there, you know, you know, it says in Thomas quotes it in Hosea I guess Hosea I have espoused you in faith, right? So he calls this kind of you know a betrothal, right? Faith is kind of betrothal, but then there's going to be a wedding, right?

[30:12] But obviously, you don't want to marry somebody you don't. There's not this love, right? Yeah. Okay. So the more the soul loves God, the more God will unite Himself with that soul. And the more unites Himself with that soul, the more clearly they will see God, because you're going to see God through God being in your soul, right? Oh yeah. But then, no matter how much you love God, when you die, you're going to love Him more after you see Him face to face than you did before you saw Him face to face.

[30:45] So it's going to be proportional in a sense, proportional to the love you had when you died, right? Because the the clarity of the vision that you'll see, star differs from star, magnitude is as Paul the sixth says. So the more clearly you see God, the goodness, the more you're going to love it, huh? And you can't help but love it then.

[31:13] So in that sense, the greatest perfection of the heart will come from the beatific vision, right? But the beatific vision will be given only to those who love God, and and the more they love God, as I say to people, you know, I mean the metaphor there, marriage there, the union of bodies in marriage is not as intimate as the union of God with our soul in the beatific vision, right?

[31:40] You know, and if the union of bodies is repugnant, you know, except between people who love each other, right? This intimacy of God being in our reason, right, as that by which we understand as well as what we understand, that by which we see and what we see, He wouldn't unite Himself in that way with us, right? Unless we had this pure love of Him. That's why most of us will. at. best go through purgatory, right?

[32:10] You know, to be before. But it's like it's like you know these people you know who hear about things, honeymoon you know, where they break out in rashes or something, you know, because. And and if someone around honeymoon time or marriage time broke out to some rash, they'd want to what, you know, have the rash pass away before they got married, right? They wouldn't want to. Well, that's what they say that the soul that that needs to be purged, right?

[32:44] No, you know it doesn't want to be division until it's purged, right? Because it's so ashamed of itself, or so, you know, feels itself so on. But it wants to be purged, and it wants to go through this, however painful, maybe in some ways.

[33:00] So. Okay, so we're ready to go to objections now. I guess. Yes. Okay. Now the first objection was the one that's saying, "Well, we and the angels have the same end, right? Which is this eternal beatitude." And Thomas says, and of course it's reasoning from that that that the species and the end huh? Correspond, But he says that reason precedes about the what proximate end to the natural end.

[33:33] That's the one that's tied to the what species of the kind of thing it is, huh? But eternal beatitude is the last end and the what supernatural end, right? So you can't reason from man and the angel having the same supernatural end that they are naturally the same, right? And of course, our natural understanding, which is turning to these images, right, is entirely different from the angelic way of understanding, huh?

[34:07] Where the angel understands through what his own substance, right, and through infused forms, huh? But not by turning to the senses or through the senses at all. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, doctor. Yeah, because he says that angel intelligence is simple and blessed. I think I may understand simple in that what they know they know all wants it completely. Yeah. Blessed is that the infused aspect you're talking about?

[34:37] Well, I don't know if in the text from Dionysius whether he's using beatos there, you know, in the sense of the blessedness of the angels. I mean, the supernatural blessedness, but just their natural. Natural blessed. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But their mind is is completely formed, you might say, right? Okay. They're filled with forms, right? Like I was saying about my son Marcus there, you know, his little there saying, you know, why can't we be born knowing everything we have to know?

[35:03] You know, we have to go to school and learn all these things. You want to be an angel? That's what an angel is, right? He's he's born. He's created. As you say, knowing everything, right? That he naturally is able to know, and that's really to be something, right? Huh? We're we're born, as Aristotle said, like a what? Blank tablet with nothing written on it, right? Thomas, you know, is it isn't the letter to the students?

[35:28] You know, you know, you know, thinking your mind is kind of empty vessel, you know, that needs to be what filled with something, right?

[35:38] So we're quite different than our natural understanding, huh? In the is in the sentences on Thomas, a lot of times uses the the words of Isaac. There, I mean, the the philo the philosopher, not the prophet. You know that man has an intellectus obumbratus, right? An overshadowed understanding, huh? So it's quite different from the angels, huh? Very clear understanding.

[36:14] Okay. Now the second objection was saying, well, the ultimate difference is understanding, right? The angel is an understanding substance, and the human soul is an understanding substance, right? But there, their thinking is if understanding or the ability to understand was really what

[36:36] one in species or kind, huh? Okay. Now it's interesting, huh? The way we use the word here, we use the word understanding, not to name now the act, but the ability to understand.

[37:00] The Latin word would be intellectus. Okay. Then we divide it sometimes into what understanding and reason. Okay. So in Latin, it's a intellectus, as common now to man and the angels, right? Is divided into intellectus, which is what the angels have, and reason that man has, huh? Now this is a good example of one way that we have of naming things, huh? Right. And a good example of one kind of name equivocal by reason, huh?

[37:58] And that's where the common name is what kept by one of the particulars, and a new name is given to the other one, huh? And there's two ways that takes place, right?

[38:16] And one of the ways is where only one of the two has fully what is meant in the common name, and the other has imperfectly and deficiently what the other what's meant by the common name.

[38:33] And we're the one that has the deficient one, right? Now, when Shakespeare defines reason, he defines it as the ability for large discourse, looking before and after, right? Okay. Now, the discourse of reason is not understanding, but it's a way to arrive at some understanding. And so he doesn't say the ability for large discourse, seeing the before and after. He says looking before and after. That in the discourse of reason, reason is trying to understand or to come to understand something.

[39:20] So we don't understand much to begin with, and most of what we understand requires, if not all, in some way, requires some kind of a what a discourse, right? Even understanding what what is called natural understanding, what Aristotle calls nous or intellect is one of the habits of reason. Even that depends upon what sense experience, right? Induction. So we gather by some kind of a discourse, you might say, even what we naturally understand.

[39:55] But if it's your, when you go towards episteme, right? We have, you know, you've had some experience of geometry, right? And even understanding those things, right? You have to go through, you know, definitions and syllogisms and so on. And so by large discourse, we come to some understanding, right? So simply say that reason is the ability to understand would seem that it is to understanding like the eye's ability to see, right?

[40:33] Open my eyes, the right way I see. Stop using my reason, the right way I understand. No, no, I'm sure when I correct the exams next week, the students will not be uh, I mean, still a lot of things, right? Huh? They didn't open their mind to what I was saying, right? It takes a long time to understand these things, huh? And I've read Thomas a long time, you know.

[41:00] Still, many things I don't understand in there, right? Huh. Or as Augustine said about what Scripture, there are more things he doesn't understand in Scripture than he does understand. Even though Augustine went much further, than, the rest of most of us, huh?

[41:18] So this is called a what overshadowed? I was giving you the Latin there, obumbratus huh, shadowed over understanding, kind of like a darkened understanding, huh? So we have what is meant by understanding in general. the ability to understand in a very what imperfect way, right?

[41:40] It's very difficult for us to understand much, and we always require some kind of discourse to understand it. Even so, we don't understand very well when we get through, right? So we're kind of a intellectus defectivus, huh? So we need a different kind, right? Now

[42:05] the different angels, though, will differ too in. Kind, huh? And the way we can understand a bit about that is that the first thing an angel understands, you can see, is himself, his own substance. But in understanding his own substance, he doesn't understand everything, and therefore he has other what thoughts in addition to his own what

[42:38] substance, huh? Now the the higher the angel, the fewer thoughts he has, but the better he understands by them. And the lower the angel, the more thoughts he has, and he doesn't understand as well as higher angel. Now you can see a certain likeness of that, Thomas says, even in human beings who are much more equal than than angels, right? And that is that the more intelligent man gets the point, understands something quicker than the less intelligent mind.

[43:17] He understands it better, right? Now I was thinking back, and you know, I know when you went to grade school was like this, but when I was in grade school, you'd have like say you're learning mathematics, right? Huh? Something in some kind of mathematics course, and there'd be in the book some explanation of the thing, right? And then there'd be some exercise you had to do, right?

[43:41] And then there's a second set of exercises, extra exercises. Those who needed was called. I always joke about this extra exercises. Well, some people could do the first group of exercises and understand it better than those guys who had to do the second group as well. Right. And as Thomas says, you know, sometimes you have to multiply your examples and your comparisons and so on before someone can begin to understand something, right?

[44:09] And someone else may understand right away with very few words, right? Someone else you have to multiply examples and comparisons and so on to help them understand, and they still don't understand as well as the other guy did right away. And as Dionne to say, you know, these guys are pretty wise compared to us, you know, and they say an awful lot in a few words. And you know, you have to read, learn how to read again, and you learn how much they can say in a few short words.

[44:46] And so you see a little bit, you know, a likeness there to what you find in the what angels there, right? That, but sometimes you know that they compare God who's above all the angels, huh? God said it all in one word, right? Right. You heard my little. Put on that, huh? A little poem, huh? God, the Father, said it all in one word. No wonder when that word became a man,

[45:22] he said so much. I don't know. He spoke in words so few and said so much. He was a brevity and soul wit. A little far, little line there from Shakespeare, right, huh? But no, that the expression that brevity is a soul wit, right? That the wise man says more in fewer words, huh? You see my.

[45:50] But the difference between the angelic mind and the human mind is especially manifest, because the human mind not only has more particular thoughts than the angelic mind, even the lowest angel, but it has to turn towards what images when it's in the body, right? And the angel doesn't understand in that way at all. And that's probably the reason why our soul is naturally the soul of a body, right?

[46:16] Because it needs very particular thoughts to understand anything. Okay. So he says the specific ultimate difference is most noble in so far as it's most determined in the way in which act is more noble than potency. But in this way, intellectuale, is not most noble, most particular, because it is something still generic, right? It's undetermined and common to many grades of understanding, right? Just as the sensible to many grades in sensible being, whence not just as not all sensible things are one kind, so not all understanding things are one kind.

[46:57] It's not in fact the lowest what species, right? Now to the third, it should be said that the soul is not of the essence of the the body is not of the essence of the soul, but the soul, from its very nature, right, the very nature of what it is, the very nature of its essence, has that it is what apt to be united to a body, right?

[47:28] Whence, properly speaking, the soul is not any species, but the composed thing is, huh? And this very fact that the soul, in some way, needs the body for its operation, not as an organ now, right, but as a object, shows that the soul holds the lowest grade of understanding, huh? It so has an inferior grade to that of the angel, who does not, who is not united to a body, huh?

[48:01] So we're the lowest understanding. Because even the great, huh? And Exeges saw that, right? Because he spoke with the greater mind. Obviously, opposition to the lesser mind, right? The greater mind is responsible for the order and natural things.

[48:23] So next week we can start question seventy-six, which is the second question about the soul before we go into the powers in particular, right? And later on to the operations. They're considering the soul partly by itself here in this first question, and now he's going to be considering in question seventy-six the union of the soul to the body, right? Huh? And we'll try to do the first two articles.

[48:45] First two. Yeah, do two articles about what you can do in one of these sessions, and so we'll go through the eight articles, son. Oh, did you know? First article is pretty big. Well, if you don't do it, then we'll have to take more of the time. Yeah, we have to take the whole. That's pretty long, yeah. Yeah. Oh, the second one's big too. Wow. But we'll say two for the.

[49:08] Maybe next two weeks. Yeah. Okay. So do I get to spend the whole course on our premium? Yeah, low premium. Oh. Yeah. I can do a whole course on Shakespeare's interpretation. and his music It was amazing. We can go faster if we just gave yes or no answers. Yes, in the bold print, you know, you got the text of the bold print there, you know. Maybe they'll put.

[49:40] Leave my answer there. The answer there is in you know, in bold print there, you know. So you got a computer there. You can just put the put the answer. We used to joke, you know, huh? You know, in us teaching out St Mary's College there, um,

[50:00] you know, you get the administrator who thinks, you know, that if you have less time, you can you condense the matter, right? Huh? So our joke was that if you have less time, you you leave out the minor premise and just state the major premise and the conclusion. And if you have, you know, just just you know, actually, you have one third of the time, right? Yes.

[50:20] And if you have only, you know, one third of the time, you you just get the conclusion, don't even get the major premise, right? Just get the conclusion, right? I realize how how something is essential as that. You can't, you know. It's like you know, you want to teach a guy what a square is, right? Well, it's an equilateral right-angled quadrilateral. Well, if you don't have time to say equilateral right-angled quadrilateral, what do you say?

[50:46] Well, equilateral quadrilateral, you know. You know, or if you don't have time, that not time to say that. Just say it's a quadrilateral, right? You know, or a circle at right angle. Yeah. I mean, you leave out something essential there. You just say it's a quadrilateral, or two two things are essential. You know, there's no way we need to, you know. To condense that, huh? You know, the king who was being taught geometry by Euclid, you know, says, "Well, I'm a king.

[51:13] I'm a busy man. You know, you got a short way of doing this." He said, "Well, there's no wrong road to geometry, right? I mean, you can't just, you know, leave out the major premise or the minor premise for the king, so you can get quicker to the faster the conclusion. He's not going to get the conclusion at all if he doesn't have both the major and the minor premise.

[51:34] You're not going to get to what a square