De Anima (On the Soul)
74. Averroes' Mistakes, the Soul Not Wholly Immersed in the Body, and St. Teresa, Mother of Spiritual People
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/4-de-anima/074-averroes-mistakes-the-soul-not-wholly-immersed-in-the-body/

[0:00] Now it goes into a discussion here of some of the futile attempts. To understand this union, right? Some misunderstandings of it, right? Now he says this union. The commentator now, the commentator is again an example of what? Figure What figure of speech? Antonomasia. Yeah, antonomasia, right? And Averroes got the nickname or got the name commentator because he commented on all Aristotle's works, apparently. Okay, so he stood out then.

[0:34] He's called the commentator, right? Because he's the one who commented everything. But I think he's unjustly called the commentator now, right? Thomas should be called the commentator. But in Thomas's time, Averroes was known as the commentator. Okay.

[0:52] The commentator has some misunderstandings there. The third book about the soul, right? This is that strange opinion, you know. That the commentator had the idea that the understanding is a like an angelic substance, right, separate from us, right? He's got to figure some way in which the separated substance understanding. Yeah. Can he help us to understand, right? Right. And the way he tried to tie him up was through the fact that we have these images, right?

[1:21] And the separated substance is understanding of what it is of what we're imagining. So, to imagine this, we tied up with this separated substance. That's how we understand. But as Thomas points out, if that's the only connection we have with the one who understands, is the way of the images that he that this separated substance understands, then we don't understand, but we're understood, or our images understood.

[1:44] Okay. Um. This union, the commentator in the third book about the soul says, is through the understandable what form, right? The form by which the separated substance understands, which form has a twofold subject: one, the possible understanding, the one that is able to understand, the ability to understand. And the other is the what images or phantasms which are in the body organs. And thus, through the understandable form, the understanding, the possible understanding, the one that that's as opposed to the act of understanding, is continued to the body of this or that man.

[2:33] But this continuation or union, Thomas says, does not suffice. That the action of understanding be the action of Socrates. And of course, he first shows this through the proportion of Aristotle. And what is the proportion of Aristotle? He said that the the images, right?

[2:57] The images are to the understanding like the. Exterior sensible is to the senses. Okay. So as you are out there to my eye, right? Huh.

[3:25] So the images are to my understanding, to my reason. Now, what's the justice of that proportion? Well, when I look towards you, I see the blackness of your clothing, right? Huh. Okay. So I'm seeing the color of something outside of me, right? Okay.

[3:50] But is the color black in your vestments there? Is that seen? No, it's seen. Right. Yeah. But the seeing is in my eye Not in your clothing, right? Okay. And likewise, son. When I imagine a triangle, I understand what it is of a triangle. What it is to be a triangle, right? I'm understanding what it is as something imagined, right? But is the image what the understanding?

[4:25] No. But you're understanding something of what you imagine, right? Okay, just as I see something of what's out there. So the fact their image is in us in no way would make us be actually understanding, right? Any more than because there's black in your investments, right? It's being seen. Does your clothing see? Sure. That's the only reason for saying it's seen. Now, in, some of the more fully discussions that Thomas has of this, and maybe you'll see them later on here in the Summa too.

[5:02] But Thomas will say that he's deceived by the fallacy of the what accident, right? Which, as Aristotle pointed out in the book on Sophistical Refutations, is the first of the fallacies he speaks of outside of speech, right? And he says the one that deceives even the wise. Not the wise, maybe the fullest sense, but it's a very strong way of saying how difficult it is to avoid this, son.

[5:29] And Plato, we saw, made that mistake, yeah. When he confused matter with lack of form, he was deceived by the accidental. Well, Averroes is deceived by the accidental, huh? Because insofar as the what a triangle is is in the image, right? It's not in the understanding. It's in the image singular, right? Right. Here, and it's in the understanding, but in a universal way, right? So, in so far as it's in one, it's not in the other.

[6:02] So he's being deceived by the the accidental, huh? Okay. And what's the accidental there? Well insofar as it's one with the image and one with us, it's not the same. Okay. But there's some kind of continuity there, right? Yeah. So the the act of understanding has separated, right? What a triangle is from the triangles that you imagined, huh? And it's actually understood in so far as it's separated.

[6:36] See. In so far as it's still in the image, it's not actually understood. It's understood only in potency, huh? Okay. So even the great Averroes here is deceived by, like Plato before him, by the accidental.

[6:59] But Thomas here is being, you know, for beginners here, he's taking this much more easy to see here that the using this proportion that Aristotle did, right? It obviously

[7:14] just as the exterior sensible doesn't sense, well, the image doesn't what understand, right? And just as what has the blackness out there, like your clothing, doesn't have sensation, so what has image doesn't have understanding, right? So the fact that we have images doesn't mean that we're able to understand. So this way doesn't work,

[7:43] and this is clearly says the likeness, huh? So likeness a ratio here, in the sense for which Aristotle proceeds to considering those things you have the understanding. For as images have themselves to the understanding, as is said in the third book about the soul, so colors, meaning the exterior color, right, to sight. Just therefore as the form of the colors in sight, so the species or the form of the images in the possible understanding.

[8:10] But it's clear from this the colors are in the what wall, right? Whose likenesses are in sight? It's clear that from this one doesn't say that the action of seeing is going to be attributed to the wall, right? Okay, or the action of seeing is going to be attributed to your vestments, because okay. We do not say that the the wall sees, but more that it is seen, right?

[8:35] I wouldn't say that your clothing sees, but it is what seen, right? From this, therefore, that the species or form of the images are in the understanding, it does not follow that Socrates, in whom are the images, understands, but that he himself or his images are understood.

[9:01] Okay, so he dismisses that way of trying to understand the union, right? Now some others try to understand it in a way that's even weaker, right?

[9:15] Some, however, wish to understand that the understanding is the meaning again. I think the understanding soul is united to the body as a mover, right? And thus, from the understanding and the body, there comes to be one thing, so that the action of the understanding can be attributed to the whole, right?

[9:38] But this is multiplex, pitched here, Avad. Now I think if I think about it, this is the way Descartes tries to do it, huh? Because Descartes does. Two things: the res extensa, right, which is body, the extended thing, right, and then the res cogitans, the thinking thing, right, huh? Okay, and they're two quite different things, right? But now you've got a problem with man, right? So apparently, you know, in his study of anatomy and so on, in the brain, they found some little organ up there—the pineal gland, or something—it's called, and it's through this that the res cogitans, right, is in contact and can move through the brain, right, the whole body, right, huh?

[10:27] Okay, so in sense, he's seen the union there is one of mover and what? Moved, right? Huh? Is it okay? And you know, sometimes you know, we have someone who's very adept at using some instrument, huh? Like a sword or a pen or something, right? Or violin, and he seems to be one with his instrument almost, right? Sure. You know, but that's not enough to explain really what the unity, right?

[10:56] Huh? See, when the violin gets out of tune, you know, it's not the same thing as when your body gets gets sick, right? No, it's not. You might be upset that your violin's out of tune, but it's out of tune, but it's not the same thing as your body being sick and not of tune, right?

[11:16] But this is in many ways vain. First, because the understanding does not move the body except through desire, whose motion presupposes the operation of the understanding. It's not therefore Socrates is not therefore moved.

[11:34] It's not therefore because Socrates is moved by the intellect that he understands, right? But rather because what he understands, huh, that Socrates is moved by the understanding. And we saw that somewhat in the third book of the soul there, we got to talk about the moving power, right? And how we saw that desire and then either imagination or reason, right, are the movers, right, and they're united in the in the good desired, right, and understood, huh?

[12:10] Secondly, that since Socrates is a certain individual in nature, whose essence is one, composed from matter and form, if the understanding or the understanding soul was not his form, it would follow that it's apart from his essence what he is, and thus the understanding soul would be compared to the whole Socrates as the mover to the moved, huh? But to understand is an action remaining in the one doing it; it's not one that passes over to another, as heating does.

[12:49] Therefore, to understand could not be attributed to Socrates. On account of this, that he was moved by a what? Something that understands, huh? Third, because the action, the mover, is never attributed to the moved, except as to an instrument, as the action of the carpenter to the what's that? The saw, I guess. The saw, yeah. If therefore to understand is attributed to Socrates, because as the action of his mover, it would follow that it would be attributed to him as to a instrument or tool, which is against what the philosopher, right, who showed that to understand is not through a bodily what instrument, right?

[13:34] So, the fact that man if man was just a body didn't have an understanding soul, you couldn't say that this body understands because it's moved by something that understands. Could you say that? Sorry to say it again. Could you say that your ballpoint pen there understands because it's writing very understandable words? It's moved.

[13:59] Okay. Fourth, because although the action of the part is attributed to the whole, as the action of the eye to man, never, however, is it attributed to another part, except perhaps by accident. For we do not say that the hand sees, right? On account of this, that the eye sees. If, therefore, from the understanding soul and Socrates in the foresaid way there comes about something one, the action of understanding, the activity of understanding, the act of understanding, could not be able to be attributed to Socrates.

[14:41] If Socrates is the whole that is composed from the union of the understanding soul to the rest, which are Socrates, and. Nevertheless, the understanding is not united to the others, which are Socrates, except as a motor, It follows that Socrates is not one simply. He'd be like a man in his bike, in a sense, right? And consequently, not a being simply, for something is a being in the same way that it's one.

[15:11] It remains, therefore, that the only way, which is the one that Aristotle posits, on, that this man understands because the understanding beginning is his form. Thus, therefore, from the operation of understanding, it appears, the fact that man himself knows he understands, that the understanding principle is united to the bodies of form.

[15:38] Now he's going to manifest this in another one. You notice what he's done here now. The first thing he did was to repeat the demonstration of Aristotle, right, in the second book on the soul, and then he showed what

[16:03] that the other ways of what uniting the two don't work, right? And so he concludes that the only way he can be united is his form and matter, right? And now he's going to do it in a third way.

[16:16] This is able also to be made manifest by reason of the human species, for the nature of each thing is shown from its what operation. But the proper operation of man, insofar as he is man, is to understand. For through this he transcends all the other animals. You should know that from your study of Shakespeare's what exhortation to use reason, right?

[16:45] Whence also Aristotle, in the book in Nicomachean Ethics, in this operation, as in the one that is private to man, constitutes his ultimate what felicitas right? The word I was mentioning before, right?

[17:01] It's necessary, therefore, that man, according to that species. That man, according to that, obtains his species, right? Which is the principle of this operation. But each thing acquires its own species through its own what? Form. For In fact, species—that's like species taken from the word form, right? And difference, which completes the species, is taken from form. It remains, therefore, that the understanding principle or beginning is the man's own form.

[17:40] But now, in these last two paragraphs, is going to be bringing out what's necessary to answer these objections, right? This is very important to see what he's going to bring out here now.

[17:52] But it should be considered that as a form is more noble, so more it dominates what bodily matter, and less is it what immersed, right? In it, and more by its operation or its power, it exceeds matter. Whence we see that the form of a mixed body has some operation which is not caused from the elementary qualities of earth, air, fire, and water, huh? And as one proceeds the nobility of forms, so the power of the form is seen more or found more to exceed elementary matter, as the feeding soul, the vegetable soul, right, more than the form of a metal, and the sensing soul more than the what feeding soul, right?

[18:50] Huh? Of course you see that on the case of sensing, and it seems to be already something almost immaterial, right? For example, I recognize all these things around the room, you know, by their shape, right? So I have the shape of the cat and the dog and the man and the table. They're all in my head, right? Right. Because there's some piece of matter in my head that has that shape.

[19:26] So even then, it seems to be kind of what arising above the limitation of what of matter, right? I don't have a bunch of old bony statues of everybody that I know, right? Is that the way it is?

[19:44] So even the the animal or sensing soul rises more above matter than the plant soul doesn't. But the human soul is the last word, right? In the nobility of forms, whence to such an extent by its power it exceeds bodily matter that it has some operation and power. In which, in no way, the bodily matter communicates, right? And this is the power called the what? Understanding. I think he's using intellect as for the power of understanding, right?

[20:23] And the same thing could be said about the ability to what? To choose, right? Huh? It should be noted, however, that as someone lays down that the soul is composed from matter and form, that opinion he was arguing against. In no way could the soul be said to be the form of the body, for since the form is act, but matter is being and potency only. In no way could that which is from matter and form composed be itself the form of another.

[21:00] By itself, right? Is something, however, by something of itself is formed. That which is formed we call the soul, and that of which it is the form is called the first thing that is animated or alive.

[21:20] Now let's look at the replies here to the objections, which can be seen. To the first, therefore, it should be said: as the philosopher says in the second book of physics. The last of natural forms to which is terminated the consideration of natural philosophy, is the human soul. That's interesting, huh? Because what defines, in a sense, the object or the subject of natural philosophy, always got to involve matter in some way, right?

[21:57] Huh? So the human soul, being a form that is the form of a body, can be considered natural philosophy. but insofar as it can be without the body, right? And be therefore, you might say, just within the immaterial world, it seems to what belong to metaphysics or wisdom. Talk about huh? Immaterial things. So it's kind of the consideration of human soul, like the consideration of the unmoved mover, right?

[22:26] Is the limit? It's the end of natural philosophy and the beginning of what? Wisdom, right? Because Aristotle says in the sixth book of wisdom, if there was nothing apart from material things, natural philosophy would be wisdom. I think. And when we study the the human soul, and when we study the dependence of motion upon a mover and the moved movers upon an unmoved mover, and we can syllogize that the unmoved mover cannot be a body, it's there at the at the end of natural philosophy, and the beginning of the science of immaterial things.

[23:09] But nevertheless. Yeah. Okay. This is the last of natural forms to which is terminated the consideration of the natural philosopher or natural philosophy, namely the human soul. It's separated, right? But nevertheless, in matter, which he proves from this, because man generates man from matter and the sun.

[23:38] The sun has something to do with our generation. That's a quote from Aristotle. Yep. Is that what he's saying? Okay. It is separated by its understanding power, because the understanding power, the power to understand, the ability to understand, is not the power of some what bodily organ, right? as the seeing power is the act of the eye, right? But to understand is an act which cannot be exercised through a body organ, as seeing is exercised.

[24:16] But it is it is in matter, insofar as the soul of which it is a power is a form of the body, and the end of human generation. And thus the philosopher says in the third book about the soul that the intellectus, and now he's using the word intellectus here to mean the what, power of understanding, is separated, right? Because not the power of some body organ.

[24:42] And to this is clear the response to the second and the third one. It suffices for this that man is able to understand all things through his understanding. And to this that the understanding understands things that are material and universal, that the power to understand is not the act of the body, right? Okay. That's kind of amazing thing, huh? To think that the human soul is what, the form of the body, right?

[25:13] Right. But that it has a what, an ability that's not in the body, huh? Right. How can that be, right? Yeah. Well, it's because the existence of the soul is shared by the body, but when you say shared, we mean what? It doesn't fully attain to the existence of the soul. Okay.

[25:38] Another way he expresses that is to say that the soul was not entirely what, immersed in the body, huh? Right. Okay. Like that body floating in the ocean, right? It's partly in the water, but partly above it, huh? So it's like.

[25:56] The scene there where where I mean in real life there was Saint Therese of Lisieux there she had what? Um, pneumonia, but she had what tuberculosis? Tuberculosis, yeah. So she has difficulty breathing, right? Yeah. She could hardly breathe anymore in this world, she was saying, right? And not yet able to breathe in the next world, right? It's like a man, you know, who's partly above the water, right?

[26:20] Right. To breathe in another world, and he can't no longer breathe in this world down here, right? It's kind of interesting, huh? Human soul. One of the assumptionists there, a Diderot philosophy, Father Innes Fertan. I don't know if you know him at all. No. But anyway, I guess his last words there, you know, the the one that was attending him there at the the home, you know, said, "I think I see something beautiful, kind of interesting, just down the border there of the next world, huh?

[27:00] How old is he? You know, does he very old? Oh, what? Was he very old? Was it his seventies? Yeah, yeah. Um, he's a man who hired me at assumption there. Yeah.

[27:17] Oh wow. Okay, now the fourth objection here is very important. To the fourth, it should be said that the human soul is not a form immersed, right, in bodily matter, right? That's one way he has of speaking of it, or by it totally what? Yeah, comprehended, huh? Surrounded, so to speak, entirely by it. And that's an account of the perfection of the soul, right? And therefore, nothing prevents some power of it, right, not to be the what act of the body, right?

[27:59] Although the soul, by its essence, is a form of the what body, huh? No, that's something very unusual, As Aristotle says in the beginning of the study of the soul, you know, that this is one of the best studies that there is, right? Because it's about what a very wonderful thing, right? And this truth about the human soul is something that we would only come to once we realize that we're soul and body, right?

[28:29] And yet that we do understand not in the body, and that we do choose not in the body, huh? And therefore, we realize, huh, from that effect, right, that the soul itself cannot be what entirely immersed in the body, huh, or comprehended by the body, and that it has an existence which the body shares in, but not what fully, right?

[29:00] If the existence of the soul was shared fully by the body, right, if the soul was completely immersed in the body or comprehended by the body, then would have no activity except in the body and through the body. But as we show when we take up understanding there in the third book on the soul, we'll take it up here again later on too. Understanding is not in the body, huh?

[29:26] I was mentioning, you know, how how Bobo Gross told me, you know, about the Canadian brain scientist there, huh, who concluded, you know, from his study of the brain, that there's no part of the brain responsible for choosing. You know, that's by you know stimulating various parts of the brain, right, interaction things, so that the ability to choose is not in the brain and not in the body at all.

[29:53] It's kind of interesting, huh? Coming to that conclusion as a scientist. But that. You know, the ability to choose, of course, follows upon the fact that you have understanding, like Shakespeare says there. Hamlet said, "Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice, and could have been distinguished, right? Her election has sealed before herself. " And he goes on to give the reasons why he chose Horatio as his friend, right?

[30:20] But notice how precise Shakespeare's words are: "Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice, he could, you know, judge men and compare them, so on, right? There's reason for that. But the soul, really, huh, is what has the ability to what choose, huh?

[30:41] Yeah, precisely it is, huh? See, but also he notes that, you know, when was the soul able to choose when it could what distinguish, right? We said earlier about about the the Planned Parenthood people there, you know, they don't want the pregnant woman to see what the baby looks like in the womb there, right? And and they resist, you know, legally, right, to attempt to to make this a part of the law, right?

[31:06] You know, so be they don't want informed choice, right? You see, so they don't want you to know what you're doing, right? And it shows they're bad faith because they know what they're doing, but they want the the woman to know what they're doing. And but you have to be able to, you know, you know to not to not know the baby in the womb there as a human being.

[31:31] You have to either be, you know, if you see it's not a human being, you're either dishonest or you're very ignorant, you know, you know, not being able to judge these things, huh?

[31:48] Now the fifth, reply to the fifth one. To the fifth, it should be said that that soul, the soul, that being in which it itself subsists, right? It is being by itself, right? It communicates that to material body, right? Huh? Okay, from which and the understanding soul there comes to be one thing, huh? Okay. Thus, that that being which is of the whole composite is also the soul itself,

[32:23] which does not happen in other forms that what we call material forms, which are not what subsistent, right? So, other forms and other souls, you could say, the soul of the animal, the soul of the of the plant, is only that by which the animal is, right? It's not an existence that the soul has by itself at all. In the case of the human soul, the existence which it has by itself is shared in by the body, right?

[32:54] Huh? But not shared in completely, huh? In account of this, the human soul remains in its being. When the body is destroyed, but the other forms, not huh?

[33:10] So you can see that the soul of our cat where they have that cat around here, right? That soul is that by which this is a cat, right? Right.

[33:23] But that soul has no existence by itself, right? Okay. It's only that by which orange is, right? Huh? But my soul, huh? Your soul, huh? Is not only that by which you, the composite, are, right? But it has existence, what? By itself, right? And how do we know that? Say, because as an operation, by itself, huh? If it had existence only in the body, like like Orange's soul has existence only in his in his his or her body. Her Her. Body.

[34:04] Lucy Um uh Then it would have like Lucy, no operation except in the body and through the body. See, but as a matter of fact, it has understanding and choice not in the body. So its existence in itself and not only in the body and with the body. But poor Lucy's soul is existing only in and with the body.

[34:36] But we know that you know through its operations, right? See, we have to reason as the great Sherlock Holmes does backwards, right? To know the soul.

[34:47] When your soul is separated from your body, as he'll explain later on in this treatise, then the soul will know itself through itself, like an angel knows itself through itself. So that the words of the seven wise men know thyself will no longer need to be addressed to man.

[35:08] So to say that the human body shares in the existence that the soul has, but the cat's body you wouldn't say it shares in the existence. It's completely absorbed, you might say, or comprehended by the body, right? Yeah. But if you say that the the soul of of Lucy is that by which Lucy is right, the composite now. It's not an existence that the soul has anyway by itself.

[35:42] If it had existence by itself, it has some operation without the body, right? It's not in the body, but it doesn't have such an operation because even sensing is in the body.

[35:57] You can see that even in Plato's mistake. You know, if Plato thought that the souls of the of the beasts were immortal too, right? It's because he misunderstood sensing or imagining, right? And thought that these activities were not in the what body, right?

[36:15] Now. That's where Aristotle is is is very correcting there Plato, but very careful there to distinguish the central sense right from the outward senses right and yet not confuse the central sense with reason itself.

[36:42] Okay. To the sixth, it should be said that it belongs to the soul secundum se by itself to be united to the body, just as it belongs secundum se by itself to a light body to be what. United. To be above.

[37:04] Okay, and just as a light body remains light, right, when it's separated from its proper body, right, nevertheless has an aptitude, an inclination, right, to its own place. So the human soul remains in its own being when it was separated from the body, but has an aptitude and natural inclination to union with the body, huh? And that's why it's so reasonable to believe in the what resurrection, right, huh?

[37:37] And that's necessary, right? By for for Plato or for some for theory for Manichean, right? You know, the resurrection they have to reject resurrection, right? Because yeah, you're being reunited as you know being imprisoned again or back with evil, we know itself incarnate evil. Okay, and that's why you know they deny that the word was made flesh, right? That it's an appearance, right? You know, it's again all kinds of heresies because of of a bad philosophy, huh?

[38:07] Yeah. All right. I'm so confused about because I guess I wasn't here for this part of this all the way back to Aristotle saying that the soul is the first act of a natural body, and I know this isn't the case, but that formulation, the soul as the first act of a natural body, makes it sound like you have to have a body first before you have a soul, and that as if

[38:39] as if the soul is derived from the body, or. It has to be defined, though, in reference to the body, because the body and the soul, like matter and form in general, are in a way relative to each other. Yeah. Proportional. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So

[38:56] it's a bit like you know if you talk about father and son, right? Okay. You know, you have to kind of define father and son reference to each other, huh? So they have a relation. Like you say in the last reply last objection here, right? The soul, even when it exists in separation from the body, right, it's still as such, right, the form of a body, right, huh?

[39:20] So there's an inclination, aptitude for that. Okay. Yeah. United with that. Okay. So I know you got to go now. I guess I was going to show you a little text there for a while. Sure. Yeah, it's time. We're not going to. Just forms of mystical prayer, and Saint Francis de Sales, huh? Did not hesitate to say that women have a special capacity for it, huh?

[40:04] Okay. Now, it seems to be saying woman has a certain capacity, maybe that man doesn't have, right? A mystical prayer, right? Now, if you ask a simple question here,

[40:27] do we love God through knowing Him, or do we know God through loving Him? What would you say to that? Both, yeah. And you have to say that in some way we'd have to know God before we could love Him, right? And that's why we say that faith, in order of generation, right, comes before and can be without charity, but not vice versa, right? Okay. Right. But after you love God, right?

[41:03] Then through loving God, you can what know God, right? Through the impression, right, that God has made upon your what heart, right? Okay. Now, if you go to the

[41:23] in the prima pars, if you go to the question there on whether theology is wisdom, right? Huh? Thomas makes this interesting distinction here. It's in question one, article six, the reply to the third objection, huh?

[41:46] And the wisdom which is a gift of the Holy Spirit is attached to what charity, right? If you look at the secunda secunda, right? Okay. Now Thomas makes a distinction here, and very beautiful magnifico he adds here.

[42:02] Let's look at the reply to the third objection there in question six. See, notice objection first of all. He's asking whether this doctrine, the summa theologiae, is wisdom, right? And the third objection there says this doctrine is acquired through study, like we're doing, right? Okay. But wisdom is had by infusion, by being poured in, whence it is numbered among the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, right?

[42:34] Okay. I mentioned, as I say, that the gift of the Holy Spirit is called wisdom, be taken up with charity in the secunda secunda, right? Okay. And that's the distinction that Thomas sees, which is a very important distinction to see. Okay, this is article six, question one, odd three now. To the third, it should be said that judgment pertains to the wise, right? That's why it's savory knowledge, right?

[43:00] Huh? Taste, huh? But according to a twofold way. And you get the word mode again. Two ways of judging. Wisdom is taken in two ways, right? There's two kinds of wisdom corresponding to two kinds of judging, right? For it belongs for someone to judge in one way by way of inclination. And he has a beautiful introduction now for what we want to see here, as the one who has the habit of moral virtue, right, rightly judges about those things which ought to be done according to virtue, insofar as he's inclined to that, right?

[43:38] Yeah. So someone who has the virtue of chastity is going to reject, you know, certain things as being wrong, right? Simply because of the inclination of their virtue.

[43:51] Hence, in the tenth book of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says, right, that the virtuous person is the measure and the rule of of human acts. In another way, he says, by way of of knowledge, as someone instructed in moral science is able to judge about the acts of virtue, even if he doesn't have virtue. Oh yeah. Okay. That's kind of interesting, right? Yeah. Okay. That's maybe difficult, but it's possible.

[44:25] Okay. So the first way, therefore, of judging about divine things pertains to the wisdom which is laid down to be a gift of the Holy Spirit, right? According to that of one Corinthians two verse fifteen, the spiritual man judges all, right? Whence also Dionysius says in the second chapter of the divine names, speaking about Hierotheus, he was taught as not only what learning, means by his reason, right, but also as undergoing divine things.

[45:00] Huh? Now, when you study love, you can see that patiens undergoing is much more true about love than is about what knowing. See, I often quote Goethe a, very beautiful quote from the poet Goethe: "We are shaped and fashioned by what we love." Yeah. They tell the students: if you love disgusting things, you are already disgusting. If you love ugly things, you are ugly yourself. If you love beautiful things, you are already a bit beautiful.

[45:30] The second, however, way of judging pertains to this doctrine, according as it's had through study, huh? How those principles are had from what revelation, right?

[45:44] So, um, notice, the title given to Teresa is very interesting, huh? She's called the what? Ecstatic doctor, mystical doctor. Yeah, yeah, Mater Spiritualium, That's what she's called, Mater Spiritualium, right? Spiritual doctor? The Mother of Spirituals. Oh, yeah. Teresa possessed the art of expounding these same secrets to such a degree as to place her among the great spiritual teachers. It is not in vain that Saint statue, which is here in this basilica, because she was a foundress, right?

[46:21] She's there. Yeah, she may have seen her statue there. You know, there is an inscription that describes her very well. Mater Spiritualium. Oh, are you doing the Bernini? Well, it's in the outside, I guess. I think it's one of those ones on the outside. We have. I've never been there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But notice huh I think she's called Mater Spiritualium and if it fits what Thomas is saying, here spiritualis homo, But by the inclination of the habit right?

[46:45] Yeah. See, so you could say that in this mystical knowledge, right? Yeah. We're knowing through loving God, right? It's and the reason why for that is because we love God if we really have charity. We don't always know whether we have really have it. But if we really, have charity. We're loving God as He is in Himself. But by faith, and therefore by theology, we're not knowing God as He is, but we're knowing God as He is not.

[47:20] In the beatific vision, we'll see God as He is. The text there, the text of Saint John says, "We shall see Him as He is." Right. That's referring to beatific vision. Here we see him. What? Via negativa. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't see him falsely, but we don't see him as He is. So when we see God as He is, then we will love Him more than we ever loved Him before, and then we'll be loving Him through knowing Him, right, as He is.

[47:51] But in this life, we love Him less perfectly than we will then, because we know Him only through faith, as we're darkly right now. But nevertheless, that faith is going to replace the beatific vision, but the charity is going to remain, as Saint Paul says. And so we're loving God as He is, not knowing Him as He is, and therefore through the inclination of our will towards God, through the impression that God has made upon our will, right?

[48:27] We can know Him in a higher way, maybe right, than just in theology, right? And so, if the woman has a special gift for that, right, it's because she must have a special gift for what? Charity, right? For love, right? That's something Aristotle recognized in terms of the of the what the woman is by nature, right? The woman by nature is more loving, more merciful, et cetera, right?

[48:55] I mean, there's all kinds of allusions to this in Shakespeare, but that's why you know they say you know Mary is the mother of mercy, you know Hobbes and Great New Justicia right Justicia, right? You know, mercy there, type of love, huh? So, I have

[49:17] the impression. I've been so long ago since I had the text, but in the same issue, the Pope speaks where I got this from. You know, I think it must have been at the same time, maybe the same very issue. I had his address that he gave at the Augustinianum in Rome which is an institute, you know, for the study of the Church Fathers, but named from Augustine, right?

[49:38] It's kind of a principal one, So it is Agustinianum, and it was the occasion for Paul VI to say some words about Augustine. And there he quotes the words of Augustine: "intellectum valde ama." Love the understanding very much, right? You know, the emphasis there was so different in contrast with you know Teresa of Avila, right? Um. let's. See, where did the wealth of her doctrine come to Teresa, right?

[50:20] I doubt it came from her intelligence and her culture and spiritual education, from her letters, from her conversation with great masters of theology and spirituality, from her singular sensibility, from her particularly intense and habitual ascetic discipline, from her contemplative meditation. In a word, it came from her response to grace, received in a soul that was extraordinarily rich and prepared for the practice and experience of prayer.

[50:51] Now it basically goes on here, says, but was this the only source of her eminent doctrine? Or ought we not to recognize in Saint Teresa acts, facts, and states which did not come from her, but were undergone by her? That's just the same words Thomas uses from Dionysius there. See, Hierotheus doctus est non solum discens that's what we're doing here. sed et patiens divina, undergoing, suffering divine things, right?

[51:23] Of course, you know both Teresa of Avila and Saint Teresa of Lisieux. They both received this increase of divine love under the form of being wounded. You know, so the angel comes down. You know, there's a famous painting representing that scene, and it happened to Saint Teresa of Lisieux. She was leading, carrying the cross for the station of the cross, and that she had this, you know, and very, very, very interesting.

[51:46] What she describes is being pierced, right? We're undergone by her things, both endured and suffered, huh? Mystical things in the true sense of the word, things which have to be attributed to an extraordinary action of the Holy Spirit. That's not in terms of love, all, right? So, um,

[52:19] numerous questions now arise. The originality of mystical action is one of the most delicate and complex psychological phenomena. Many factors can play a part in it, and they obliges the observer to maintain the severest caution. Okay, but the marvels of the human soul are manifested in mystical action in a surprising way. One of these marvels is one of the most comprehensive of all. It is love which has its fullest and most varied expressions in the depths of the heart.

[52:48] It is love which you must finally describe as an espousal, for it's an encounter with a flood of divine love, descending to meet human love, which drives with all its might to ascend. It is the strongest and most intimate union with God, which it is given to a soul living on this earth to experience. It becomes light. It becomes wisdom, wisdom in divine things, wisdom in human things, but it's wisdom in in in in that one of those two senses that Thomas distinguished is there, right?

[53:21] Okay, so that's why it seems that when he when he quotes St. Francis de Sales there, that light was nourished daily by intimate contact with God, even in noblest forms of mystical prayer, but that's tied up with charity. And St. Francis de Sales did not hesitate to say that women have a special capacity for it. He seems to be quoting the Doctor of Divine Love there, with with approval, right?

[53:52] That light