De Anima (On the Soul)
83. Summa I, Q.76 A.5: Why the Understanding Soul Is Joined to Such a Body (Touch, Reason and the Hand)
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[0:00] seems to be almost the same, right? huh? You see. I'm not sure I really see the distinction on this. one. Yeah, yeah. So, but we've got to call it a halt. So next week we'll go on to articles. In the name of the Father, Father, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. God our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly.

[0:24] Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Pray for us. And help us to understand what you've written. In the name of. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. They did the regular reading from Hebrews today, but the ultimate reading, you know, is from Book of Wisdom, chapter seven. There, so.

[0:45] Yes, verses about seven, ten, fifteen through sixteen. So, see what they thought was appropriate for Thomas's feast. The article five here: Whether the understanding soul is

[1:05] suitably united to such a body as it is, or whether it's unsuitably divided or united to such a body. Well, first you're going to object, right? To the first one proceeds thus. It seems that the understanding soul is not suitably united to such a body as it is. The first objection: For matter ought to be proportioned to form. They're kind of relative to each other, but the understanding soul is an incorruptible form.

[1:40] Therefore, is not suitably joined to a corruptible body. Well, I could agree with that, couldn't you? Yeah. Or is it Thomas is talking there about Saint Paul? You know, he's talking about don't weep like the the pagans who have no hope. But Thomas, in the commentary, says that you can be sad about the death of somebody, and one of the reasons is because his body is what corrupting.

[2:16] His body is. But the other reason to be sad is that you know this is a punishment for sin, and then of course it makes you think of your own death and so on. So.

[2:31] Moreover, the understanding soul is a form most of all immaterial. Every form is something other than matter, but this soul is most of all material because it rises above activity that's in the body. A sign of which he says is that it has an operation namely understanding, but also you could say willing too, in which bodily matter does not communicate or has no sharing. But insofar as the body is more subtle, means more what thin or finer, so it has less of of matter.

[3:11] Therefore, the soul ought to be joined to the most subtle, the most finest, thinnest body, namely fire, in the older opinion. Yeah. So just like as you go from the four elements, from mother earth to water to air to fire, you seem to get something finer and thinner. And a lot of times we think of air almost as being immaterial, maybe for its airiness and fire. So if the soul is the most immaterial, a body or excuse me, the most immaterial form, they're not to be joined to a body that is. Less material, less gross.

[3:53] It's something like in modern science. I have a book in my office there, written by the perhaps the greatest French physicist of the 20th century, the father of wave mechanics, Louis de Broglie. And the title of the book is La Lumière, et la Matière. But in English, Matter and Light. That's interesting, Matter and Light. Because a physicist would often say that light is something material. Material has particles, but here you have matter and light.

[4:28] You think of light as kind of a less material matter. Yeah. So it's contrasted matter and light. Yeah. Just like sometimes we contrast matter and energy. The energy is something material, the way the physicist looks at it, but that's something of what's behind this objection.

[4:54] You better have a body of light than a body of matter, because your soul is most immaterial. Moreover, since the form is the beginning or the source of the species-specific nature, from one form there ought not to come about diverse forms. But the understanding soul is one form. Therefore, it ought not to be united to a body that is put together from parts of dissimilar or unlike species or character, Because I have a body and soul, one type of thing to correspond to the soul, which is just one form.

[5:49] Moreover, what is receptive of a more perfect form ought to be more perfect. But the understanding soul is the most perfect of all souls.

[6:08] Since, therefore, the bodies of other animals have naturally, you might say, inserted in them clothing such as the dog over there doesn't need to put a coat on when he goes outside, and and they have, like the horse has something in place of shoes, doesn't have to have shoes and so on, and they also have their weapons naturally what given to them as teeth and horns and so on, nails.

[6:44] Therefore, it seems that the understanding soul. Ought not to be joined to an imperfect body that is lacking in all these things. But against this is what the philosopher says in the second book about the soul, that the soul is the act. He actually says it's the first act of the natural body, composed of tools, an organic body that means composed of tools, having life in potency, meaning the operations of life.

[7:24] Now, that's what Thomas says reply to this. I answer it ought to be said that since the form is not an account of matter, but rather matter is an account of form, Aristotle manifests that interesting way in a very proportional way in the second book of Natural Hearing, and he compares three arts that you find all the way through human industry. You have the art that uses the product.

[8:00] You have the art that forms the product, and you have the art that prepares the raw materials. You see that triple art again and again in different lines of industry. So my father's company made farm wagons. So they practiced the art of forming the product, but there are companies that made steel for my father's company. There are lumberyards and so on that prepared wood for his farm wagons.

[8:36] But no, it's the art of making farm wagons. Is a third art which is the art of using the farm wagon on the farm. Now, if you examine those three arts, which art commands which art?

[8:53] Using command all the other ones underneath. Yeah, the art that uses the product commands the art that forms the product. But likewise, the art that forms the product commands the arts that prepare the raw materials. So the steel company doesn't tell my father's company how to make a farm wagon. Oh yeah. Or how thick the steel should be underneath it, or how thick the boards. The lumberyard doesn't tell him that, but my father tells the steel company what kind of steel, what size, or what shape he wants.

[9:32] In the same way, he tells the lumberyards, and likewise the art that uses the product and sees that the product works well, or in some cases that there's some defect. They command the art that forms the product. In the case of a farm wagon, you get out on the farm, and the farmland is hilly, and there's gulls and so on, and the farm wagon actually bends like that.

[10:02] Well, if you don't have enough steel underneath, it might just snap, and then the farmer's going to be all mad and so on. So you might discover a defect in the construction of the thing, and then you go back and redesign it. My father's engineer used to say sometimes we're making a product that we had some interesting ideas, but now we'll see if they're any good. Yeah.

[10:24] And they'd take it out, they'd make something according to his blueprint, but then they go out to this kind of experimental farm. Yeah. And test the product. Sure. The same way, like Detroit might recall, a whole bunch of automobiles are doing this fairly often. And so, in the use of it, you see the defect. Yeah. So you have a proportion there. The art that uses the product is to the art that forms it, as the art that forms it is to the one that prepares the raw materials.

[10:51] But since the use is the end of the formed product, you can see why the art that uses the product commands the art that forms it. But then, likewise by analogy, the art that forms the product is to the art that prepares the raw materials in the same relation, because the raw materials are for the sake of the finished product.

[11:14] So matter is for the sake of form, just as the formed product is for the sake of the use. But generally, you can say that ability is for the sake of act, and so since matter is something in ability, and through the form it's an act, then matters for the sake of form. So you start out that starting point. As has been had before, seen before, according to the order of nature, has the lowest place, the lowest grade among understanding substances.

[11:53] So much so that it does not have naturally within itself a knowledge of the truth, as the angels. The angels, when you study them, their mind is filled with forms. It's like you possess all the arts and sciences actually in your mind. That's where the angel is created. Like I mentioned how my son Marcus one day, a little boy, saying, Why couldn't we be born knowing everything we need to know?"

[12:19] I say, "You want to be born an angel?" I said, "You know, see." But our mind is compared by the philosopher to a blank tablet, blank page nothing had been written on it at first. But our mind, huh, is not created knowing these things and filled with forms. But it's necessary that it gather from divisible things by way of the senses, as Dionysius says, but Aristotle, presents in this before in the seventh chapter about the divine names.

[13:00] But nature does not fail, huh? Not lacking in necessary things. Hence, it is necessary that the understanding soul not only have the power of understanding, but also have the power of sensing,

[13:19] because the mind is going to what get its basic thoughts through the senses as at least an instrument of the active understanding. So it's got to have senses, but the action of the senses is not without an instrument that is a body, without a, body instrument. It is necessary, therefore, that the understanding soul be joined to such a body as is suitable to be a what organ of the senses.

[14:00] Okay, that's the first step he's saying. Our understanding soul is the lowest of all understanding substances. In the beginning, we know nothing, but we're able to know something. We're not born with or created with our mind formed, so we have to get our basic ideas through the senses, and that's why our reason, our understanding soul, is naturally joined to a body, so it can get those knowledge through the senses.

[14:34] And the senses, of course, are as he says, a bodily. Knowing power. Okay, but now he says among all the senses, the most fundamental one is the sense of touch. All the other senses are founded on touch. An sign of that is that you have touch even in your eye. If you stick me with a pen, I'm going to be feeling pain. Stick me with a pen in my ear or something, or my my tongue, since the touch is the fundamental sense.

[15:14] It's the most necessary sense. But now, what's required for the sense of touch? For the organ of touch, is required there be a kind of mean between contraries, which are hot and cold, and wet and dry, and things of this sort.

[15:37] So if the body was too hot or too cold, it wouldn't be a suitable body to have sensation. So it has to be kind of a mean between these things, like hot and cold, wet and dry, and so on, which the sense of touch grasps.

[16:10] And that's why, as we were saying before, when we studied the sense of touch a bit there in the De Anima, it's not possible for the sense of touch or for the flesh to be entirely lacking in what hot and cold and wet and dry. But it tries to have something of that by having a constant body temperature and having a temperature that's in between something too hot or too cold.

[16:39] And so you go into the ocean, let's say, on a summer day. You first find the water may be too cold. You have to adjust to it a bit. But after your body adjusts that temperature, you don't feel the coldness so much. Or vice versa, you go into a hot shower, and you feel the warmth of the water. But after you're in there a while, you may turn up a little bit the heat because you're now starting to receive the heat as your own, and you don't really know it or perceive it so much.

[17:13] So you can't be entirely free of these things, but you got to strike a kind of balance between the two. And to me, there's something like that in the way your skin is, because if you press your skin here against, let's say, the table here, you kind of indent the skin, but then it comes back to the shape it had. So it's not like. Water that can't hold a shape, but it's not like metal where you'd have to permanently indent it in order to make it conform to that.

[17:46] So it's kind of a mean between the the soft and the hard, and between the hot and the cold, and so on. So it's kind of a mean between contraries, and that's why the body, in a way, is naturally corruptible because something is corrupted by its what contrary.

[18:13] Whence the more the organ of touch is reduced to a certain equality of complexion between these things, the more you'll be perceptive. But the understanding soul has most completely the sensing power, because what is of the inferior is more perfect in the superior, as Dionysius says in the book about the divine names. So he's saying it's especially important that the human body be a suitable thing for perfection of touch.

[18:46] And you can see that man is much more sensitive in his sense of touch than even the cat or the dog or these other animals that don't have the same kind of skin we have and don't we have fur and so on. Man's more sensitive. What's it? Can you explain that his reason again here? This quia quote, this principle. Unde quanto or where? The quia quote est inferioris.

[19:12] Oh, because what is of the lower exists more perfectly in the superior, as Dionysius says. Well, just taking an example of that. You and I have emotions, but so does the dog. Yeah. But our emotions are more elevated than the emotions of the dog or the cat, and our emotions can, much richer, you might say. Oh yeah, I understand. Yeah. Okay. We all teach to compare blood with sap in the tree.

[19:49] They're kind of similar because the sap is the the fluid there in the tree is transporting materials and so on, and blood does the same thing. But blood does a lot of things in addition to what sap can do. So you see that superiority. Or like I was saying about the higher kind of friendship.

[20:10] If you and I have a friendship based on human virtue, because we're both courageous or we're both wise or something of this sort, you'll also be more pleasant to be with, and you'll be also more what useful to me if you're a courageous man or a wise man.

[20:34] Because we're alike in something that is naturally pleasing. And obviously, a courageous man is more useful to you than a coward. And so, in the higher friendship, you have what the lower friendships have—pleasure and usefulness—but in a much, what, higher way.

[21:00] Yeah. In a sense, that will determine our friendship with God in heaven. Our virtues, right, will take them with us. Those powers. Yeah, some of them. Yeah, We'll take faith and hope. They'll be replaced by the vision. But charity will be more perfect up there.

[21:26] Whence it is necessary that the body, to which the understanding souls united, be a mixed body, so can have that be a mean between the different extremes of the. Hot and cold and wet and dry, which among all the other bodies is more reduced to a kind of equality? He says of complexion, meaning that the hot and the cold and the wet and the dry reduced to a kind of mean.

[21:53] And you kind of see Shakespeare alluding to that at the end of Julius the Caesar, when the enemy proclaims a kind of eulogy over the body of the fallen Brutus. this was a man, right? You know, and he talks about how well the elements were mixed in him. That all the world, nature might stand up and say to all the world, "This was a man."

[22:19] But notice when you get some some component of you to excess, like say if I'm irascible, right? I seem to be like a snarling dog, don't I? Or if I'm too much into the concupiscence, I look like a pig or something. I become like one of the animals that has one of these things to a kind of excess compared to us. Samuel Johnson sometimes chopped off in conversation, and so his friends called him a bear.

[22:54] B, you know, to have something these various names we give of animals to people sometimes that they kind of depart from that mean between these extremes. Okay. What? Why the word complexion? I have no idea what. Well, that that means a combination of qualities, right? Or mixture. Yeah. Okay. And but one is kind of reduced, as he says, to a certain equality or mean. So you only have one thing excelling in the man.

[23:38] Sometimes you have a man say, as I was giving the example, I was saying the man who's irascible, right? And you know there are people who can't control their anger, and they go so far as to, you know, beat their wife, let's say, on a regular basis. Or there's a boy at trial now, 18 years old, there, who stabbed eight times the teacher in the school there, and a knife found in

[24:11] some argument about what he was wearing to school. He wasn't obeying the the school rules about wearing a hood or something. I don't know. But some who can't control their anger, and that would be one extreme. But now if you had somebody at the opposite extreme who let everybody walk over them, that wouldn't be good either. Never stood up for anything.

[24:38] So what you're going to get is a balance of these bodily qualities, and that's what he's talking about that complexion there is if they've been reduced to a kind of equality, and no one of them being excessive.

[24:55] Okay, thank you. An account of this, man among the other animals is of a better sense of touch. And that's this interesting statement that Aristotle made before him. Yeah. And among men, those who are better touch are better understanding. Yeah. A second which is that the soft and flesh are well apt in the mind we see. Something quote from Aristotle in the second book about the soul.

[25:33] So they used to say Thomas and Aristotle that if you have a good imagination, you'll have a good mind in some way, a good mathematical mind. But if you have a good sense of touch, you have a good mind. Period. And he kind of gave a gave a famous talk there, actually, the assumption there, one of the mentors of this is the way back when the school was much smaller.

[25:58] called Sedeo Ergo Sum, kind of reply to Descartes, but where he talks about the importance of the sense of touch and how it's kind of neglected in favor of the sense of sight to the sense of the imagination. That we have kind of a visual civilization, and he talked about how the sense of touch is the source really of the most basic ideas. That's where we get the idea of good really from the sense of touch originally, and where we get the idea of nature and substance, and even our idea of sympathy is tied up with the sense of touch.

[26:39] Um. Did you ever see that movie that Orson Welles played in there? Was it the set in Vienna there after the war? And third man is it called or something like that? It's got kind of a very famous thing. But his old friend drops in, who's played by Joseph Cotton, and he's um contacted by the police because they think Orson Welles has been making money diluting medicines and selling them on the black market, and people are dying because they're getting improperly things.

[27:16] And Joseph Cotton, who's been a friend of Orson Welles, he feels he has to cooperate with the police to try to locate him. But in this one scene, they go up on this kind of a merry-go-round, like a big Ferris wheel with these little wagons, and you look way way down. How you see those specks down there? And Orson Welles says, "You know, just think of that.

[27:36] What about those people? That's. Ten thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars. But you're way up high, you don't feel anything. You feel just little specks moving around down there. Yeah, you know, feeling no more than we feel. Maybe say for an ant when we step on an ant, you don't really feel much for the the ant's suffering or something. And it was kind of looking at human beings like that at a distance, visual.

[27:58] So that's interesting, the importance of the sense of touch there for the mind. So he's referring to that then, and the kind of body you have to have that would make you have a sense of touch that is better. As you go up in the animal kingdom, I think you can see this. Now, was it the? I guess the three-blooded, the two-chamber heart, two-chamber heart. It doesn't really have constant body temperature like we do.

[28:29] And the three-chambered heart, I think, is in between. It has a little bit of it. But just take that one example: the man is having a four-chamber heart, enables him to have a constant body temperature. How important is that for the sense of touch? To have a constant body temperature. Very yes. Yeah. If you're going up and down the temperature, you wouldn't really perceive hot and cold like you do when your body stays at a kind of mean between the hot and the cold, and then you perceive what is hotter or colder than you.

[29:00] That's kind of interesting. So that's part of the reason then why man's body is naturally corruptible, because a thing is corrupted by its contrary, or if it's composed of contraries, and the sense of touch requires that balance of contraries. So you have to have a corruptible body to have a good sense of touch, and your good sense of touch to serve your mind.

[29:29] Although Thomas will say, in the original state of man, God added to our natural body something that makes it even more appropriate to our soul, namely that it could go on forever without dying. And that's what we're promised also in in heaven after the resurrection, the body will be what so disposed that it will not, you know, through supernatural means, it will not be corruptible anymore, which will be nice.

[29:57] It will also be at the 3 to three, right? Somewhere around there, your body is supposed to be at its right at its best, huh? Now, with this sense of touch, I'd always hear that Christ suffered most because he was the perfect man; he had the greatest almost perfect sense of touch. Yes, he would suffer more. Yeah, that's precisely right. Right, his body would have to be the the body most suitable to the human mind or reason, as far as its sense organs are concerned, and therefore the sense of touch, you'd have to be more what sensitive than other men.

[30:36] And therefore, capable of suffering more through his passion. Then, okay, in a related way, then would his five external senses, his sense memory, and his imagination be the most perfect too? Therefore, yeah, they would be more perfect. Yeah, they would be. So he was the most intelligent man ever. Sure, sure, sure. And all those senses were the most. He had the best sight. He had the best hearing.

[31:04] Perhaps, yeah, yeah. Okay, I've. I never understood that before. I kept saying, "What's his sense of touch?" Yeah, I always put that. I never understood that.

[31:18] Now he's going to reply to the first objection that the why is this immortal soul, this immortal form, joined to a corruptible body? We've kind of answered that in a way. Um, to the first, therefore, it ought to be said that someone perhaps would want to avoid this objection. Or to evade it, to this that the body of man before sin was what incorruptible. But this answer does not seem to be sufficient, because the body of man before sin was immortal truly, but not through what, not by nature, but through a gift of the divine grace.

[32:02] Sometimes they call it preternatural gift, but it's something more than nature. Otherwise, if it was natural its immortality, it would not be taken away by sin, just as neither was the immortality of the demons taken away by sin. And therefore, it ought to be said otherwise that there's found in matter a twofold condition, one which is chosen in order that it might be suitable to a form, and the other which follows the necessity of some prior disposition.

[32:42] And he takes a very interesting example to show that this is a common one we give. Just as the artist, to the form of a saw, he chooses an iron matter, apt to what cutting hard things.

[33:00] But that the teeth of the saw can become what dull, right, and that they can rust, follows the necessity of matter. So sometimes, some of the other other top top examples is that that you might use wood to build a house, because of the availability of it and the fact that you can cut it and shape it and so on. But the fact that wood is can burn, is not what you choose it.

[33:31] You don't choose wood to build your house out of because it's able to burn, do you? No, you choose it for some other reason, huh? So what makes the wood in some way suitable for building a house makes it also subject to to fire.

[33:53] We see why why we make the window out of glass or something like that, rather than out of what iron or something, because glass can can shatter in the way iron would not shatter. But you make it out of glass obviously to let the light in to see out and so on. Then you got to have a material that has those qualities is also going to be more fragile than an opaque thing like iron.

[34:24] Thus, therefore, huh, a body is due to the understanding soul that is of equal complexion, huh, that is of a certain mean between sense qualities.

[34:38] But from this it follows that with the necessity of matter. That something be what corruptible, but if someone says that God was able to what avoid this necessity, it ought to be said that in the constitution of natural things, one does not consider what God is able to do, but what is suitable to the natures of things, as Augustine says in his commentary in the second book of Genesis to the letter.

[35:13] But God nevertheless provided a what remedy against death through the gift of what grace. Now the second objection that this human soul is the form that's most immaterial, therefore ought to have have a matter that is less material. Of course, in ancient

[35:46] chemistry, there, earth was the most material thing, and then water, and then air, and then fire. And you know one reason why we borrow the word for air, like spirit or breath, to talk about not only the soul sometimes to talk about the angels or God, because God is a spirit, is because that's a matter that seems less material, and therefore the word is reasonably transferred to something that's altogether immaterial.

[36:17] So why wouldn't you have a body then that's less material? Is that going back to Louis de Broglie there matter and light? Why not make us out of light? Well, maybe if we were made out of light, we wouldn't be able to what have the sense of touch, and therefore we wouldn't have a body that's suitable for an understanding soul, a body that will produce images and so on that can be used to get our basic ideas.

[36:56] I to the second it should be said that the understanding soul, that a body is not owed to the understanding soul on account of the operation of understanding by itself, but on account of the sensitive power, which requires a body, which requires an organ that is equally complexive we'll say, and therefore it is necessary that the understanding soul be joined to such a body and not to a simple element, which would have a kind of extreme of dryness or an extreme of heat or something else,

[37:38] or to a mixed. Body in which fire exceeds, according to quantity, because it could not be of an equal-com complexion, can't be reduced to mean, on account of the exceeding active power of the fire.

[37:56] But nevertheless, this body equally complexed has some dignity, in so far as it is remote from the contraries; it has a kind of mean between them, and doesn't seem to be exactly one or the other, right? In which it's in some way like the celestial bodies that they thought had what? No contrariety in them. Yeah.

[38:25] Does that equable complexion have something of? I thought it was more like the body has the the tools to receive this, like it has eyes, the tools to receive the power of sight from the soul. The soul. Yeah. No, he's thinking more of the fact that that the contrary qualities you find in matter, like hot and cold, and wet and dry, you can't have any one of these to excess, which have reduced into a kind of equality, so to speak.

[39:00] Yeah, I can see that on the sense of touch. And therefore, you have you have you can't have an altogether simple body because that would have one or or two of those qualities in a kind of excess, and therefore would not be a body suitable to the sense of of touch, which is a fundamental sense. You know, that's the sort of style would reject the idea you sometimes have in the Platonists that there are air-like animals.

[39:27] Oh yeah. Uh huh. And you know Shakespeare presents an air-like thing there with Ariel there in the final dialogue of the Tempest. But there is a little hard time sympathizing with these human beings because he's so and and their grossness.

[39:47] But the fairy the fairy says there in the other play there that you purge your mortal grossness as you go like a fire. You know, the fairies were very fine and thin in their matter. But the point is, if you had a body of air, you wouldn't be able to have a body that is suitable for the sense of touch.

[40:14] Now, the third argument was that ought to have a body that doesn't have diverse parts, because the soul is one form and so on. He says to the third, it should be said that the parts of an animal, as eye, hand, flesh, and bone, and other things of this sort, are not strictly speaking. Speaking in a species of some genus, but the whole animal is in the species, a species of in the species, say, a substance or a man, and therefore it cannot be said, properly speaking, that they are diverse species, but that they are diverse disposition, and this belongs to the understanding soul, because although it is one in its in what it is in its nature, its essence, nevertheless, in account of its

[41:12] perfection, it's multiple in its what power, and therefore for diverse operations, it needs diverse dispositions in the parts of the body which is united. In account of this, we see that there's more diversity of parts in animal in perfect animals than in imperfect one, and In these, than in what plants, huh?

[41:43] So the soul, although it's what the higher the soul is, the more powerful it is, and therefore the more diversity it requires in the parts of the body, so it can exercise these different operations to which it is potent.

[42:08] And that leads in naturally to the fourth one. When you study the categories, you find out that there's one category that is sort of man's category, and that's in Greek it's called hexis, or in Latin habitus. But habitus means it's a clothing now, so things that sort. Sometimes I call it outfitted. Yeah.

[42:34] But it's the category that man has, and the other animals don't have, unless they're used by man, and you put some clothing on or something like that. But other animals don't go around putting on clothing or putting on armor and so on. But man does, huh? But why hasn't man been given a body with all the tools he needs? You know, like I got a ballpoint pin sticking in here and a knife here and a saw here, and obviously I'd be, you know, way dealt with.

[43:03] With you know, think of all the tools in an ordinary home. A corkscrew coming out here and and a you know screwdriver here and ballpoint pin here and yeah, you know, so man can't. So he's given in place of that a reason to invent these tools and hands that can make them and that can use them.

[43:32] So it kind of used to give a whole lecture just on that tenth category of characteristic it was of man. It's interesting how how we will want to wear, let's say, when we still the world different clothing for different what occasions, huh? So when your children get married, the father is what got to get on a tuxedo, say, which I don't really care to get on, but you have to, you know, do this, you know.

[44:06] Even when my son got married, I mean, one thing you got to give your daughter away. When your son's getting married, you know, my my daughter-in-law insisted that I be wearing tuxedos. Both fathers be there, and you know, formal dress. So there's something suitable about that, huh? And certainly a bride would wear different you know clothing on the wedding day than other occasions and so on. And so,

[44:27] and for different functions in life, the policeman and the soldier and the priest and the doctor, that they should what be able to change their clothing, huh? Because man is not as limited as the animals. Because the understanding soul, to the fourth, it should be said that the understanding soul, which is comprehensive of universals, it grasps and understands universal. You might recall when I was talking about the definition of reason there in Shakespeare, its ability for large discourse, and one meaning of large discourse is that you can discourse about the universal, which covers a large area.

[45:15] In fact, it covers an infinity of things. When I know what an odd number is, I know what an even number is, and I know that no odd number is even. How many numbers am I knowing? In a way, an infinity of them. So the understanding soul, which is comprehensive of universals or grasping universals, has a power towards what an infinity of things, and therefore it would not be possible to determine by nature for it

[45:50] either determinate natural what instinct you might translate in that context there, or also determined what tools or instruments or aids for defense and clothing and so on, huh? As to the other animals whose souls have a what grasp and power for some what particular determined things. So the cat knows how to scratch and how to catch things with the things, but it doesn't have to do all the things we do, right?

[46:22] So it can have the tool it needs, right, built in there. But in place of all of these, man has naturally reason and a hand, which are the what organs of organs, tool of tools, because through them man is able to prepare tools of infinite kinds, you might say, and for infinite what effects. Oh, yeah, that's interesting. So he says, reason and hands. Yeah, yeah. Now there's that famous little dispute between Anaxagoras and Aristotle, because Anaxagoras has said that man is the most intelligent of all the animals because he has a hand.

[47:14] Aristotle saw the connection but changed the order and said, "He has a hand because he's the most intelligent of animals." So the hand is is for the sake of the mind to carry out all the things that it has in mind. It's

[47:34] kind of interesting too how we use our hands sometimes to make a point. Most times you know, De Koninck and some of the Europeans too had this more exaggerated. To us, it appeared use of the hand, you know, the kind of gestures like that.

[47:54] I remember one time in graduate school having some professor from Europe one semester, and it almost seems to us almost kind of comical because the gestures are so are so pronounced. Pronounced. Remember one time De Koninck was down too. I think the first lecture was more pronounced in his gestures, and he kind of cut them down because, circumstances, you know, it doesn't fit too well with our our customs.

[48:18] Yeah, sure. But there, you kind of see the connection, though, between the hand and the and the mind. It's interesting. We do borrow the word grasp from the hand and apply it to the mind. Comprehensiva Thomas sometimes says the first act of reason, which is understanding what a thing is. He calls it simple apprehension, simple grasping, and so we use that word sometimes for to understand. How did Anaxagoras phrase that again?

[48:52] His point of view about reason. and reason? He says that man is the most intelligent of animals because he has a hand. Okay. Okay. Yeah. But Aristotle says no; it's the reverse. He has a hand because he has reason. Yeah. Yes. At this universal reason.

[49:14] Let's try to do another article, but maybe take a little break just between the two articles. That's great, and then just share it, and then

[49:24] you can see clearly in the case of knives and forks and spoons and the other things. These are the tools that nature has not given us. All the tools that we need, we have to supply them. So, likewise, the tools that our reason needs, like definitions and syllogisms and things of that sort, we're not born with these definitions and these syllogisms in our mind, but we need these definitions to understand what these things are.

[49:56] We need these syllogisms to to know the truth of those theorems in Euclid and so on, and so we have to make the tools that our reason needs.

[50:09] That's more hidden to us than that we have to make these exterior tools that our hand needs. You have these in the dialogues of Plato sometimes, or in the Greek mythology, you have these kind of mythical accounts of these things where somebody's in charge of passing out gifts to the various animals. Yeah, and give me the tools they need, and so the cat gives the claws, but I got to give the bird something.

[50:43] He didn't have any claws, so you give him a wing so he can fly away from the cat. So kind of even things up that way. We got through passing on all these tools that the animals needed, and now all the tools are used up, and all of a sudden, there's man. We forgot to give him any tools,

[51:00] and so now you got to steal, reason, or get something like that to supply. Was kind of a fictitious way of explaining why man doesn't have the tools he needs. He was overlooked in the. It used to be the old expression there, you know, kind of this, fictitious insult. Where were you when the brains are passed out? People would say that to somebody, you know. Where are you when the tools are passed out?

[51:24] I mean. But the limited life that the the cat needs compared to us, the tools that he has as part of his body. Are sufficient, yeah. But we couldn't have as part of our body, we all the tools that we might need, and all the occupations of man and all the needs of man.

[51:54] Just take my glasses off last night, and this thing falls out, you know. So finally, I found that little kit there. You know, it's a little too long to screw, but I got a handicap today, also. Have those little tiny screwdrivers that they sell you? Those, but I try to do it because you know I got the.

[52:13] And then the screw falls to the floor. You kind of find the floor, and finally I screwed in there. So I stick it up like that. You put it on the bottom and so on, but so yeah, I need all those tools because because of the magnifying glass too. I don't think I was smart enough expecting to see it. So you never know what kind of tool you're going to need.

[52:36] The just tools to open jars, you know, just just kind of rubber, a little rubber mat. But said you can't even open, you know, without one of these little things. So when you say get these definitions and syllogisms in our mind, we want to know what a thing is, and more. If you call them tools, you know. Sometimes Thomas will call the definition is a tool to help you understand what something is.

[53:01] And I come into class and I'm teaching. Let's say Shakespeare's Exhortation. And I mention, you know, that it's written in in verse. It's written blank verse. And I say, now y'all know what blank verse is.

[53:16] So they don't understand what blank verse is. What do they need to understand what blank verse is? Definition. Yeah, it's unrhymed iambic pentameter. Now they probably know what unrhymed means, but what's an iamb? I don't know what iamb is. Well, now they need a tool, and iamb is two syllables with the accent on the second syllable. Oh, okay. So the definition is a tool you need to understand what something is, or to understand distinctly what something is.

[53:50] And syllogism is a tool you need to reason out these theorems in geometry and reason out things in philosophy in general. And the more these theorems you have in your mind, that's intellectual virtue. Then that's what that's what produces it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Episteme is an effective demonstration. And notice, it's not the same thing exactly, but if you take, let's say, a magnifying, you know, a microscope, a microscope, you can look at something under low power, and then you're switching around and under high power, and it's kind of blowing it up.

[54:35] You can see it more distinctly. That's in a sense what a definition does. When you go from you know the word square you kind of what it means, but then you kind of break it up and say it's an equilateral and right angle quadrilateral. It's like kind of what? It's like a microscope in a sense. Does something a little bit like microscope does, enables you to see something more what distinctly.

[54:58] I was trying to see if I get this thing in there or not. There's a little you know magnifying glass. One of my friends he's got one like this, you know, it's set up like that, so you can you know put it under there and you can see it blown up. So you're seeing the same thing you saw before, but but more clear and distinct because it's kind of blown up and and

[55:17] Socrates does something like that in the whole Republic because he's trying to show somebody that the just soul is better off than the unjust soul apart from rewards and punishments. And he says, but it's kind of hard to look at the inside the just soul, so I'm going to blow it up so you can see it big. And he makes this comparison between the three parts of the soul and three parts of the what city, and then you can see something of what it is for the soul to be what in disorder when you see what it is for a family or for what it is for a city to be in disorder.

[55:59] And I should say, well, when your emotions are are running you, it's like a man who's on a horse and horse is throwing him, but he's got his foot, you know, caught in the thing, and and and the horse is running away, and the man is bouncing along the road like that, being beat up. Well, that's a sense what it's like. Or another thing, I person I like that when your reason is trying to satisfy excessive demands of your body for pleasure or for for for what is pleasing to the senses, it's like being a what clerk at McDonald's or someplace In the rush hour, Buses have stopped, you know.

[56:42] There's 30 people at the counter there that want a hamburger, want a french fries, want this, want that, and you're rushing to try to satisfy all these people. It's a terrible position to be in. See, and some people's reason are in the what position? The doors trying to satisfy all the demands of the body for food and drink and sex and alcohol and smokes and and drugs and all these things that ring around all the time trying to get the money to to buy these things and so on.

[57:08] And you know they'd be much more at peace if they could cut off some of these desires. See, but when their reason is a slave, huh? Yeah. Um,

[57:23] uh, Shakespeare's expression "reason panders will," that reason becomes a slave. But when when Romeo when Hamlet says, "Give me that man that is not passion's slave." Mm-hmm. When I sent you the slave of what? most people are a slave of some passion or other, and then at the beck and call of that passion that vice they have. But sometimes it's kind of hard to see that, but if you see someone else who has to do what somebody else does all the time, and he's constantly being told to do something, no peace.

[58:08] So you can kind of see how bad that is. You know, Thomas talks about about the the vices of the flesh. That's right. He calls them childish vices, but he has a very interesting way why he calls them that. I don't know. I don't think alone does it, but he says if you let a child always have his own way, and you never correct the child and discipline him, you know, in a good way, then the child eventually becomes completely unruly, and the parents cannot what control control him, and that's a terrible situation to have in a family if you can see it in a family life.

[58:54] Um. Well, that's a little bit blown up what it's like to have your emotions in revolt and not being in any way subject to your reason, and your reason kind of not being able to control your emotions.

[59:13] But vice versa, when you're in a family, when the students—not students, but the children—get good discipline, right? Not harsh, but good discipline. The children are happier as children than

[59:28] these children that are let go wild. Yeah. We're never satisfied and never pleased with anything, never at rest and never contented or even. In the same way, your emotions

[59:44] are in the virtuous person. They're not crushed the emotions, but the emotions are you're emotionally happier. you wish. Hm? Hm? I don't think I don't think Mother Teresa had any emotional hangups as far as I could see. These people whose emotions have gone wild—they have all kinds of emotional hangups. They're all kinds of, you know, they're they're on the they're on the border. This one girl I was going out with in San Francisco was telling me about when she was in high school.

[1:00:17] You know, and some girl got dropped by her steady boyfriend, or whoever he was, and she was up the top of the building threatening to jump off, and how they're going to stop her. They finally found the boyfriend, and he talked her coming down. But I mean, that's that's you know, that's that's what it is to have your emotions and. Sure. Control. Let's see a little breakdown.

[1:00:40] Let's look at article, article 6, huh?