De Anima (On the Soul)
85. Article 7 and the objections to Article 8: whether something joins the soul to the body, with a digression on Augustine
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/4-de-anima/085-article-7-and-the-objections-to-article-8-whether-something/

[0:00] articles next time, huh? Next two, and then, yeah, then we can start to go into powers a little more proportioned to us, huh? The soul is so hard. You really know the soul through its powers, right? Okay. in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. God our enlightenment guardian angels through the lights of our minds order 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 all that you have written. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. amen.

[0:42] So we start article seven today, huh? whether, the soul is united to the body. Of the animal, right? By means of some what body? Huh? That's the way it's stated there, anyway.

[1:00] To the seventh, one proceeds thus: It seems that the soul is united to the body of the animal by some other body, right? As a kind of middle. Now such a person is thinking about something like the wooden chair over there, right? And what piece of the chair's what united with another piece through a third body called glue, or maybe a screw or something, right? Huh? Okay.

[1:32] So they're tending to think maybe of the soul of the body as being parts in the original sense of the word parts, huh? In the original sense of the word parts is quantitative parts, and of course this is not the kind of parts that the soul of the body are. Let me give a very simple example here to show the equivocation of the word part.

[2:01] You take the written word or the printed word there, cat. Huh? What are the parts of the word cat? Three parts. Yeah, C, A, and T. Huh? And that's the first meaning of the word part. Huh? And you could actually separate those three parts and put the T here and the C there and the A there, right? Okay. And what are the parts of a chair? You might say the legs and the seat, and, the back, right?

[2:30] You can actually separate these parts, and they could exist by themselves, huh? Zero-style says about the quantitative parts. It's divisible into parts that can exist by themselves. They are substances, but the quantitative parts, which are divisible into parts, they can exist by themselves. They're substantial. Okay. Now,

[2:49] if you stop and think about it, though, huh? What do you mean by a part? To mean by a part is a part something outside or within the thing which is a part. Within the thing which is a part. Yeah, yeah. And can anything that is said to be within

[3:10] a thing be said to be one of its parts? Anything. Based on the last definition, yeah. It seems so. Yeah, yeah. Now, when you take another word like cat, okay, you have exactly the same letters, don't you? Mm-hmm. But they're not the same word, huh? Mm-hmm. So there's something in the word cat besides. the letters, isn't there?

[3:49] And what is that order? The order of this case, right? Now suppose I say, instead of saying that C and A and T are the parts of the word cat.

[4:10] Suppose I say that the letters and the order of the letters are the parts of the word cat. Parts of the word cat. You obviously are using the word part here in a different sense, aren't you? Now the order of the what letters and the letters themselves are not two parts in the way C A and T are three parts, huh? But nevertheless, you can say that the order of the letters is inside the word, isn't it?

[5:00] And in a way, the the word is put together from the letters and the order. Okay. Now, what are the parts of a Manhattan? Anybody know? Pardon. What's the parts of a Manhattan cocktail? Rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, and cherry. Okay, but just take the main ones: rye whiskey and sweet vermouth, huh? Okay. But now, if you mix sweet vermouth and rye whiskey in just any ratio, do you really have a Manhattan?

[5:40] No. The book will tell you two parts rye whiskey to one of what sweet vermouth. If the ratio was one to one, it'd be too sweet; wouldn't be a good cocktail.

[5:55] So, what are the parts of of a Manhattan? Rye whiskey and sweet vermouth. You got the cherry one, okay? Basically, those two parts, and there are parts in the way that C and A and T are what parts of the word cat. And the rye whiskey could exist by itself, right? And the what vermouth, huh? Might have a hard time separating them once I mix them, right?

[6:21] But you could, somebody separate the two and put one here and one what there, right? But isn't the ratio two to one inside the Manhattan too?

[6:33] Haven't the parts there in the first sense been combined in that ratio? That sounds kind of strange to say, doesn't it? That the parts of Manhattan. Are the ingredients on the one hand whiskey and vermouth, and this two to one ratio. But that is another sense, but not the original sense of the word what part? Do you see that? Yeah. Okay.

[7:05] Well, let's take a rubber ball, right? What would be the parts of rubber ball? Like the letters and the order are the parts of a the word cat, or like the the the ingredients there and the ratio two to one are the parts. What would be the parts of rubber ball? The rubber and the ball shape. Yeah, yeah. But again, you're using the word in a different sense of part.

[7:37] But certainly, the shape of the ball is something inside the ball. It's not outside the ball, is it? And you might say in a kind of different sense that the rubber ball is put together from the rubber and the shape. You need both that rubber ball, right? Both have got to be in the rubber ball: rubber and that shape.

[8:05] So when we think of parts, and there are other senses of part besides what you mentioned here. In fact, there'll be some more mentioned in the next reading. But the two common kinds of parts that we have in the world around us are the two I mentioned: the quantitative parts and the what matter and form, which they sometimes call the essential parts.

[8:31] It's essential to the word cat to that word being the word what it is. Both the letters and the order of the letters, huh? It's essential to what Manhattan is, not only sweet vermouth and rye whiskey, but the ratio of two to one.

[8:51] It's essential to what rubber ball is that you have rubber and that you have this spherical shape, right? It's essential to a tire out there that you have rubber and you have also this circular shape, huh?

[9:08] So when you say that the soul and the body are the parts of man, that man is composed of body and soul, you could say body and soul are the parts of man, but to the parts of man in this second sense, I think you call the essential parts as opposed to the quantitative parts. Do you see that?

[9:37] And notice in the case of quantitative parts, sometimes you can actually what they're not different in kind like the letters are. I could take the straight line, and this whole thing—what is it—a straight line? What's this here? Yeah, still straight line, right? If the quantitative parts don't differ in in in kind, actually, you might be able to divide a whole, and the parts are as much what the what the whole is.

[10:09] But if you take the order of these letters out of the word "cat," you no longer have the word "cat," so they're essential to what that that is. You can't take the order out of there or the letters out of either one and still have the word "cat," what the word is. The same way you can't take the shape out of the rubber ball—the circular shape instead of rubber ball.

[10:30] Yep. Establish the quantitative parts over against the essential parts. Yeah. It seemed analogous in that within that distinction, you were you were saying we could take the quantitative parts. Place them over against the letters in the order. But aren't the letters really the material cause, the quantitative parts, and the order is the formal cause? Yeah, you can speak of that. Yeah. So the the order is to the letters as form is to matter.

[11:06] The letters themselves would actually be the quantitative parts, not so much the order. The letters themselves would be by themselves. Yeah, the quantitative parts. the order would be. yeah, but see. what's one reason why the quantitative parts easier to understand is that you can take apart the word cat. I could take my scissors and cut the three letters out, right? Okay. I could take apart the chair and put the legs here and the seat here and maybe some other parts somewhere else, right?

[11:34] Ah, we do that when we cut up a chicken or something, huh? Or turkey or something, huh? See. But I can't take the this table and put its shape over there, and leave the wood over there, right? Can't do that, can you? See. So it's a little less easier for us to see them as distinct parts because what's most clear to us that things are distinct when one is here and one is there.

[12:02] Nothing's more clear than that, huh? In fact, the word for difference in Greek and in Latin comes from to carry apart. Pharaoh in Latin is to carry. Yeah. You know, you have the word difference. Is a Latin word. The Greek word is diaphora. Kind of emphasize here.

[12:31] But that same root there, huh? To carry apart, huh? Carry apart. One here, one there. Okay. But a little bit like you do when you get something you have to assemble yourself, huh? What do you do? You kind of lay out the parts, separate one from the other, huh? Then you identify them with the charts, you know. Then you start to see which ones you want to put together with which, but you kind of lay them out, huh?

[12:52] Carry them apart, separate them. but you can't do that with the rubber ball. You put the rubber over here and put the shape over here. You can do that, could you? Huh? No. Okay.

[13:08] So the quantitative parts are in many ways more known to us. That's original meaning. And when we say that a whole is more than one of its parts, we're usually thinking of the quantitative whole first.

[13:23] But why I mentioned this, huh? Well, because a lot of times the first cause there on the side of our doing power is false imagination, huh? Is at work here. We imagine the parts in the sense of essential parts, right? To be like the parts that are more imaginable, the quantitative parts. If you think of it that way. Then you see them as two actual things, which require a third thing to make something one out of them.

[14:00] See, I have two actually existing, independent of each other pieces of wood, and now I got to make them one. I need a third thing to make them one, don't I? Right, like the glue or the screw or something like that. But you need a third thing to unite the shape of the rubber ball with the rubber.

[14:26] No, you can have an agent, right? A machine or somebody who shapes the rubber, right? But as far as the rubber and its shape is concerned, there's nothing in between the two. Yeah. And the shape or the form is nothing other than the act of an ability that the rubber has. Yeah. The rubber is able to be a sphere, a cube, a cylinder, right? And it's actually one or the other through the form.

[14:54] So the form is nothing other than the act and ability of the matter. So that's why they're united immediately, and so you have to bear in mind these objections, huh? That the objector, in a sense, is is falsely imagining the kind of parts that soul and body are. They're parts in the sense in which form and matter are parts. What is called essential parts as opposed to quantitative parts.

[15:26] So he says, it seems that the soul is united to the body of the animal by means of some other body in between. For Augustine says in the seventh book on Genesis to the letter, right? I guess that's supposed to be his reply to Jerome. Jerome, so he wasn't being sticking close enough to the text. So he says, you know, commentary Genesis to the letter, right down to the individual words.

[15:50] That's what I heard you. I don't know. Ah, that the soul through light, right? That is fire and air, which are more like the spirit, they administer the body.

[16:05] But fire and air are bodies. Therefore, the soul is united to the what human body by means of some other body, huh? Okay, so even the good Augustine here now is being brought in to object, huh? But as usual, Thomas understands Augustine better than most people do. That's

[16:32] kind of interesting, huh? This word "spiritus" you have sometimes. You see in Thomas, but you see Aristotle before. As kind of a a more indistinct ancient science, but they had the idea something very fine, huh? But material in nature that was involved in the movement of the body, and you could compare it a bit to what we might speak of as electrical impulses of brain waves and things of that sort, a very subtle matter, which sometimes is called spirit, because spirit is originally breath, right?

[17:11] Which is something material but something very fine, and so they kind of carry that word over to something that is material but very fine in its nature. And I mentioned how you know Louis de Broglie there has this book called Matter and Light. Although the modern scientist thinks of light as being material, sometimes they contrast matter and light because light seems to be such a fine and subtle thing, right?

[17:37] And of course Aristotle and Thomas didn't think of light as a what matter at all. We mentioned that I think before when you look at the diagram.

[17:48] So he says that which taken away unties or dissolves the union of things united seems to be a middle between them. But when the spirit fails, right? When the brain waves stop, the electrical impulses stop in the body, right? Then the soul is separated from the body. Therefore, the spirit, which is a very subtle body,

[18:13] is a middle in the union of the soul and the what body. Okay. So a lot of times you see people, you know, talking. When is the man dead? Well, so they say brain dead, right? Well, that means that the spirit, right, the electrical impulses, whatever it is, are no longer what functioning, right? You see, and then the the man seems to be dead, and therefore the soul has left the body.

[18:44] Moreover, those things which are very distant from each other are not united except through some middle. But the understanding soul is at a great distance, you might say, from the body, both because it is not a bodily thing itself, and because it is what incorruptible.

[19:06] Therefore, it seems you need some intermediary, right? Therefore, it seems it is united to the body with something else as an intermediary, which would be a incorruptible body. So you're thinking of kind of a very fine, incorruptible body that is in between the soul, which is incorruptible, and this corruptible body that we have, this sniffling here and and getting old and other such things, huh? Okay.

[19:39] And then you know the kind of strange opinions going around at the time, and this seems to be some celestial light, right? Which conciliates the elements so they don't fight too much among each other, and renders them something one.

[19:55] Now, all this of course comes in ejector, but that's the quote here from Aristotle. It's a very important quote. But against this is what the philosopher says. huh Calls Aristotle by antonomasia the philosopher.

[20:11] But against this is what the philosopher says in the second book about the soul. That is not necessary to ask, right? If the soul, the body are one, or what makes them one, to maybe more fuller. Just as neither wax and what the shape of the wax, huh? Same example like I was using the rubber ball, and it's what the rubber and the shape, right? There's not a third thing between there, okay.

[20:40] But the figure is united to the wax with no body in between. Therefore, also the soul to the body, okay. So Aristotle is Comparing the union of the soul and the body, which is of a substantial form, right, to its subject, with that of an accidental form, right, to its subject, like the wax and its shape, but that's more known to us, the accidental form, than the substantial form.

[21:09] It's more sensible. Substantial form isn't sensible. You have to understand it. You can't see or picture it. But if you understand that the union of soul and body is not like the union of two legs of the chair or the legs of the seat or something, but it's like the union of the wax and its shape, then what is the act of the other? Right. Then you realize that there's not going to be anything in between.

[21:47] Now Thomas says, "I answer, there ought to be said that if the soul, according to the platonists, was united to the body only as a mover,

[21:59] it would be suitable to say that between the soul of man and that of any animal and body, that some other bodies in between intervene. Huh. For it is suitable to the mover who is moving something that's distant from it that through many things in between it moves. Huh. Just like the engine might move the caboose. Huh. But through many intermediaries, huh? Because it's at a distance from it, huh?

[22:28] The many cars, huh? You see Plato thought the soul was being in the body like a sailor in a boat, as they say, like a man in his car, huh? And so he moves one thing to another. Even the car could do that, huh?

[22:47] But all that collapses if you see that the soul is united to the body as a form. This has been said already. If that's true, then it's impossible that it be united to it by some other body in between. Now he starts to give the reason for this, son. The reason is because thus something is said to be one in the same way that is said to be what a being, huh?

[23:17] This is something that's developed in wisdom if you ever get that far in our studies here. But when Aristotle is taking up the subject of wisdom

[23:28] and showing that it's being as being. Then he goes on to show us also about the one and the many, and he shows how being and one go together. And you can see that the things that are more known to us because the. Being of this chair, of the being of this table, will be had only so long as the parts are what united, and if we break them up, that's the way we go to what destroy it, right?

[24:01] And so a thing tries to hold on to its unity, and the same way tries to hold on to its what being, right? Okay, divide and conquer, right? You want to keep the army, what? If the army loses its unity, its chain of command, its order, then you have a rabble, a crowd, or something, right? And no longer any what army, right? To be an army, you have to what have a certain unity, a certain order, a certain chain of command, and so on.

[24:35] So being and one go together, right? The form, however, through itself makes the thing to be an act, since the form is in its very nature an act.

[25:01] Nor does it give to be existence through some what middle. Whence he says says the unity of a thing composed from matter and form is through the form itself, which by itself is united to the matter as its act. Nor is anything uniting it except the agent, right? That makes the matter to be an act, as is taught there in the eighth book of wisdom, of metaphysics.

[25:35] So what is it that unites rubber and the spherical shape? Only the man who shapes the wood, right? The agent, right? But there's nothing in the rubber ball uniting the rubber and the shape, is there? But the man who reduces it, right? The ability of rubber to be a sphere, to actually being a sphere, he's the cause of the union of the two, huh? But nothing within the rubber ball is there between the what rubber itself and the shape, is there?

[26:11] No. That's because the form is the act of that ability of matter. It's not the form and the matter two actual things that have to be united by some third thing, but one is actually the act of the other's what ability. Whence he says says it is clear that those opinions are false who lay down that some bodies are in between the soul and the body of man,

[26:47] of which some Platonists said, huh? That the understanding soul has an incorruptible body naturally united to itself. All these very imaginative positions here. From which it is never separated, and that by that as intermediary is united to the corruptible body of man.

[27:10] Some say that is united to the body by means of a what? Spiritual body, meaning by spiritual body, or corporeal spirit, a very fine, thin body, right? Okay. Notice the word "spirit" first means breath or air, and that's kind of extended to any very fine and what? Thin and subtle matter, huh? Then "fine" is carried over and applied to the angels and to God Himself, as Christ says, right?

[27:41] God is a spirit. The Father is a spirit; it must be worshipped in the spirit, huh? And then using the word "spirit" then to name something that is not material at all. But we borrow that word because air to begin with is hardly what visible, hardly sensible, and then we apply that name to something that is in no way sensible, like an angel or like God in His divine nature.

[28:13] Others say that is united to the body with light as intermediary, which they say to be a body of the nature of the fifth essence, the old science, huh? So on the earth we had four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. That's a standard theory in chemistry from, for two thousand years almost, from from Empedocles, huh? To Shakespeare, you know, you read Boyle's The Skeptical Chymist in the sixteenth century, sixteen hundreds, and he's doubting whether earth, air, fire, and water really are the basic elements.

[28:49] But that's still a question, you know. But it's a very it's the most long lasting chemical theory in the world. But then they thought that the heavenly bodies were something different from earth, air, fire, and water. So that would be the fifth nature, huh? And somehow you have light from up there that becomes the intermediary between your soul and your body, huh? Because we got, we all teacher Kasurik would say, an overactive imagination, huh?

[29:16] They come up with these unusual positions, huh? And then we go into the details of different souls. Thus, that the feeding soul, the plant soul, is united to a body by means of a of light of the heaven of the stars, the sensible one by reason of even higher heaven, the light of the crystal heavens, and the soul, the understanding soul, by reason of light from the highest heaven of all, the Empyrean heaven, huh?

[29:54] And what does Thomas say? Quod fictitium et derisibile apparet huh. This is fictitious, huh? Now it's a work of the imagination. Now they don't have any reason to say these crazy things, huh? And derisible, huh? Worthy of laughter. Thomas usually doesn't say those things, but I see it more often in in his teacher, Albert the Great, huh? Oh. Because Albert the Great, you know, when he takes up some question that there are different opinions on, and sometimes he takes very seriously these opinions, and he'll discuss them, and if he has to refute them, refute them, right?

[30:29] Other times he'll mention them. He says, "This is so ridiculous." we're not gonna bother to refute it, you know. So asinine you know. But you know, he'll say this should be more laughed at. He says, "And what? Refuted? So stupid." Thomas is not going quite that far, but sort of. But Again, he and Aristotle themselves might have been mistaken about what light is, huh? Because light is not a body, right?

[30:58] Now, you know the reason why Aristotle said light is not a body. I think I mentioned that before, but yeah, it had to do with the speed. Yeah, yeah. Aristotle did this.

[31:14] If illumination we get light all over the sky, if illumination is a local motion, right? It's spreading through space like matter does, right? Then it takes time,

[31:38] okay? If the sky, for example, when the sun comes up, if the sky is illuminated, right, by some very subtle body, huh? Spreading out, you know, from the sun across the sky, huh? That's going to take time, and that's certain. That if that statement, huh? Okay. Then he argued, but it

[32:08] does not take time. Okay. Therefore, it's not a local motion, huh? But the minor premise here, if it is true, then you could say with necessity, right, that the illumination is not a local motion there. it's not a body traveling along. But we now know that Aristotle and Thomas Ptolemy maybe other men too, were were mistaken about this, right? We now know that light travels across 186, 000 miles per second, okay?

[32:49] But it takes a very ingenious experimental apparatus to actually detect that, basically. Now, Thomas is I think sometimes in his is aware of the weakness they are in some sense, because he does say explicitly when Aristotle is talking about the stars that the stars are incorruptible. Well, as long as men can remember, they're always there, and so that's a probable reason at least to say that they're incorruptible, huh?

[33:22] They don't seem to be diminished anything like that. And Thomas says, "Well, it is possible that the time it takes them to corrupt is longer than the life of a man, even the life of many generations of men, right?

[33:37] So, you just hear right? I think you know if you confronted Thomas, you know, and said, "Well, isn't it possible, you know, that light would travel at a speed so great that you could not be detected with your own eyes? Well, I mean, not that far, right? It's kind of amazing, though, huh? Yeah. I think you know, with with you have all these cell phones, all these means of communication between people now, and we can watch what's going on, you know, millions of miles away, huh?

[34:10] If you told the ancients that, they would say, you know, well, you know, tissue, tissue, and there is the ball. This is lots, right? Huh? Okay.

[34:32] Okay. And third, a second, because the fifth essence, meaning the what, the heavenly bodies, does not enter in in a material way into the composition of a mixed body, since it is an ultimate, according to the old sciences, I'm mentioning already. But also because the soul is immediately united to the body as formed to matter. That's the argument I insist upon huh? That's the main one, huh?

[34:59] Okay. Now he replies to that objection from Augustine that Augustine is speaking about the soul in so far as it moves the body. Huh? Once he uses the word administration, and it is true, Thomas says that the more gross parts of the body are moved through more subtle ones, just like we'd say that the electrical impulse, right? Which is something material. electrons are material. Um, are going to get the muscles to contract or something, right?

[35:33] And the muscles contract to move the bones, huh? Okay. So the more gross thing, the bones are moved by the muscles. The muscles are moved by electrical impulse or something of this sort. Right. So the more subtle ones, you see, that's what he says Augustine is talking about. You know, if you look at the whole text.

[35:56] And the first tool of the moving power is the spirit, as Aristotle says in the book about the cause of the motion of animals. But spirit, there, I say, if you want to try to put it in something like what we think today, it's a very fine body, like we think electricity is something very fine, huh? But you know how electricity can go through a piece of metal or something, right?

[36:19] It seems almost to not be a body, doesn't it? Very fine, very. Now to the second objection that says when you lose that subtle body, like we'd say when your brain dead, you know your soul probably is gone. Well, Thomas says to the second, not to be said that when the spirit is subtracted, the union of the soul to the body fails, not because that was the medium holding them together, but because you've taken away the disposition.

[36:50] Through which the body is disposed for such a union, it's no longer a suitable body for such a union, huh? But nevertheless, the spirit could be a middle in moving, right? As the first tool of motion, huh?

[37:11] Now the third objection is a little bit different. He's saying that you should have something in between things so far distant, right? And he says, granted that the soul is distant from the body in many things, if the conditions of both are considered by themselves, whence he says, if both of them had being separately, if they were like, in other words, the quantitative parts, right? Parts that can exist, right, by themselves, huh?

[37:41] It would be necessary that there be many intermediary to a divine. But insofar as the soul is the form of the body, it does not have being by itself apart from the being of the body. The body, as we saw before, shares in the existence of the soul, but not completely, right? That's why the soul has certain abilities that are not in the what body, like the ability to understand and the ability to choose.

[38:12] Which is, in that matter, any form, if it be considered as act, has a great distance from matter, which is being in what potency or an ability only. Okay, we'll

[38:30] go on to Article Eight here, or maybe we'll take a break after we go through the objections or something here. Okay, that's a little longer article, so yeah, go on for a little bit before we take our our break.

[38:43] Now this is an interesting article, and you find Thomas, you know, talking about this in many other works too. But as you'll see in the said contra there, it comes from a text of Augustine, right? And I don't know where Aristotle explicitly says this, although I think you would agree with it, huh? But look at the said contra just a moment to realize where it's coming from.

[39:08] But against this is what Augustine says in the sixth book about the Trinity. That the soul in every body is both the whole of the soul in the whole body, and in each of its parts, the whole soul is. Okay, so that's Augustine that says that, huh? And you have to admire Augustine that he saw that, huh? You know, it's really kind of amazing, huh? I mean, Augustine is remarkable because he doesn't seem to be, you know, he knows of paganism to some extent, but maybe kind of secondhand, you know.

[39:44] He doesn't even know Aristotle hardly at all if he's acquainted with him. He has such a profound understanding. You have to admire Augustine very much.

[40:03] Okay, so let's look at the objections to that. It seems that the soul is not whole in each part of the body, for the philosopher says in the book about the cause of the motion of animals. It's not necessary that in each part of the body be the soul, but that it exists in a certain what starting point for the body.

[40:35] In that, at once they are apt to make what the own motion through nature. Translates very well, but the soul is present in that part from which motion originates. Okay. Now, this may seem like Aristotle is disagreeing with what Augustine is saying, right? But again, this is going to be talking about the soul insofar as it's the mover of the body, huh? And

[41:03] the thing that Augustine is saying is about the soul insofar as it is the form of the body, huh? Okay. Incidentally, when you study the incarnation in the Athanasian Creed, which is one of the main creeds, huh? It's in your official list of creeds. In the Athanasian Creed, it says nothing is more like the union of the Word and human nature than the union of the soul and the body.

[41:37] And why is he saying that, huh? You know. And and Thomas when he explains it, he says, well, it doesn't mean that the divine nature is like the heretics say, the form of the body, right? You know, there was this misunderstanding of the text to say John and the Word was made flesh, where he took only the body aspect from us and not our human soul, and in place of the human soul, he had the divine Word, huh?

[42:02] That doesn't mean that at all, no. But what way is the union of the Word and flesh, the Word human nature, like the union of the soul and the body? Well, Thomas develops that. You'll see in the Summa Contra Gentiles, for example. But the body is not only the subject of the soul, but it's also the what?

[42:28] The tools of the soul. And they are tools that are joined to the one having the tool, as opposed to the hammer or the saw, which the tool is not really part of me. And so the human nature in Christ is joined to his divinity as a tool. That's very important to see that because that means that this human nature has a power to redeem us, etc.

[43:01] Due to its being joined to the divinity of Christ as a what? Joined tool. You know, so you have to spell this out. Aristotle

[43:19] compares that sometimes, and you'll see that the soul is to the body like an art is to its tools, huh? And not just any art can use just any tools, huh? And so not just any soul can be in any body, Moreover, the soul is in the body of which it is an act, but is the act of a what? Body composed of tools. That's organic means.

[43:44] Therefore, it is not except in the body composed of tools, but not each part of the body of man is a what? Body that is composed of tools, or that is a tool.

[43:59] Therefore, the soul is not in each part of the body. There is reasoning from the definition of the what soul, right? It's the first act of an actual body composed of tools. Therefore, how can it be in every part of the body? Right, but not every part of the body is a tool, although maybe a part of a tool. It's certainly not a body composed of tools.

[44:24] Okay. Moreover, in the second book about the soul, this proportion that Aristotle has there—that just as a part of the soul is to a part of the body as the ability to see to the eye, so the whole soul to the what whole body of the animal. This is a proportion Aristotle uses, right? That the soul is to the body as the ability to see is to the eye.

[44:55] If the eye says we're an animal, the ability to see would be its soul. So it's manifesting what the soul is by a very interesting proportion that helps us to understand what it is. So he's saying, but if the whole soul was in each part of the body, it would follow that each part of the body is an animal. Okay. So Thomas is going to have to understand

[45:24] some distinction of the way in which the soul was in the body as a whole, and the way the soul was in each part of the body, without denying that the whole soul was in each part of the body. That's a very subtle thing, right?

[45:42] St. Thomas has got to understand, huh? In the face of these objections, how the human soul, right, can be in the whole body of us, right,

[45:55] and in each part of us, and not exactly the same way, because only the whole body is an animal, right? And each part is not an animal, right? And notice the word animal comes from the word soul, doesn't it? Yeah. So he's got to see some difference between the way the soul is in the whole body and the way it is in each part, without denying what Augustine sees and Thomas sees that the whole soul is in each part too.

[46:25] They got to be very careful because when you say the whole soul is in each part, if you're thinking of whole in the first sense of whole, the quantitative whole, doesn't make any sense. The whole length of the line is in each part of the line, huh? The whole circles in in both what semicircles? Wouldn't make any sense, right? For a quantitative whole to be each of its parts, the whole, would it?

[47:00] No. And the other problem would be if the whole is in one part, there is nothing left of the other parts. But then you are imagining the whole to be like a quantitative one. Anyway, it's very subtle, very subtle. It's amazing. I mean, you have to admire Augustine here.

[47:27] I think I mentioned how I was looking at that treatise on the on hope there, and the the Vatican. I mean, the catechism of the Catholic Church has a very nice quote there from Augustine as to the desire for happiness being natural to man and it's in all of us. A very very nice little quote, huh? And sometimes Augustine says things are just so.

[47:50] Well, so well said, you know. That what does Aristotle say? There are some things we should try to say better than our predecessors, and some things we should try to say as well as they said. And so you find, you know, Augustine like Shakespeare, people like that sometimes saying something so well that you would despair of ever saying it better. And therefore, what you should do, or restrict yourself to, is trying to say it as well as they said it.

[48:18] Like Pablo Casals, you know, said to this pianist who was taking some liberties with Mozart, he said, "No, no," he says, "We play it the way the master wrote it. That's it. You don't try to improve about Mozart. You try to play the music the way he would have played it. Huh? Kind of marvellously. However,

[48:43] all of the powers of the soul are founded in the nature of the soul, the essence of the soul. If, therefore, the whole soul is in each part of the body, it would follow that all the powers of the soul are in each part of the body, and thus the ability to see would be in the ear, and the ability to hear would be in the eye.

[49:08] That's a nice objection huh? Which is inconvenient huh? Moreover, if the whole soul was in each part of the body, each part of the body would immediately depend upon the soul. Therefore, one part would not depend upon another. Nor would one part be more principal than another, which is manifestly false, right? To cut off my head, it'll finish me off more than to cut off my arm, right?

[49:49] I may go on with my arm, but hardly with my head, right? So, one part is more principal, right? But against all this, right? Is what Augustine says in the sixth book about the Trinity that the soul is in what

[50:10] in what everybody's in? It is the whole soul that's in the whole body, and it's the whole soul that's in each part. That's incredible, Augustine, to say that, huh? He should see that, huh?

[50:28] You know, you think the other two great thinkers. You know, another thinker that Thomas uses a lot is is Boethius, right? But Boethius was educated in the school of Alexandria there with Ammonius Hermias, so he's really into the Greek philosophical tradition the way that Augustine was not. And Boethius is going to make try to make available to the Latin speaking world. All the works of Aristotle, But he did translate, the, you know, at least the the logical works into into Latin, huh?

[50:57] But Augustine doesn't have that same formal training. He was trained in the school in the rhetorical schools, huh? That same, you know, really, you know, philosophical thing. But yet he what? Comes up with such subtle things, isn't it? You can see those things. That's amazing. You got to realize that Augustine is, had a first class mind, huh? You know.

[51:22] There's a what account, I guess, of Augustine appearing at St. Thomas, right, in his lifetime. Oh. I've never heard that. Just as there was another one of St. Paul appearing to have a with Thomas writing his commentaries, I guess of Paul. Of course, the the other brother was out of the hall and heard the the conversation. Heard the conversation. I was in there, you know. Thomas guy, you said you never believe who I was talking to.

[51:54] But the conversation that was where it was reported, I don't know if this is true or not, but but Augustine and Thomas are kind of comparing each other to each other, right? And but but Augustine was saying that you are that you are superior to me because of your chastity, right? You know, because he had had his sinful life too in the beginning. I was talking to one of my colleagues who was teaching the Confessions in a course in Augustine Aquinas.

[52:22] I said, "What do you think is St. Augustine's greatest work? " And a lot of times, people, you know, they're very familiar with the Confessions, and that's a very good work for many reasons, or the City of God, or something of this sort. But to my knowledge, or the things on grace and so on, they're very important. You know, the Church finally said the mind of Augustine on grace is the mind of the Church on grace.

[52:47] That's quite a book. There, one of the Pope said that. But to me, the the the book on the Trinity is is the greatest work. Oh. It's really tremendous, because it's you know Augustine is not quite like Thomas, quite as formal in his writing as Thomas. So even though the book is about the Trinity, he was talking about the soul and talking about the incarnation a lot in there, you know.

[53:12] But Thomas doesn't talk maybe the Trinity about the incarnation, just about Trinity, right? So Augustine is not as orderly that way, you know, might say, but there's so many things in that work.

[53:27] Absolutely amazing. Like I mentioned, to that phrase that Augustine has too, where he talks about, you know, nothing is more fruitful than to understand something about the Trinity, and nothing is more dangerous to make mistake about the Trinity. That's terrible, huh? But he talks about those who have a. Immature and perverse love of reason. That's really, you know, that's really profound, huh? Because as a teacher, I'm always trying to get the students to use their reason and to love reason and so on.

[54:05] But you see, you know, in a lot of rationalists and people like that, a kind of immature and perverse love of reason. Augustine sees that a defect, huh? That is very common in universities. Very common. But I mean, something got to, you know, Augustine with the brevity of wisdom there to say these things, and you have to say, well, what would it mean, you know, the opposite to have a a mature and rectified love of reason?

[54:41] I think you do see it in, say, something like Aristotle, a mature and rectified love of reason, but involves things like recognizing the great weakness of reason, and therefore the need of all kinds of what props and supports you might say for reason, huh?

[55:02] But anyway, interesting. I think that this is the quote from which we get this. You want to take a little break before you look at the body of the article, or how you going to do? Is that appropriate thing? If it will look at the body article, which has got a lot of holes and parts.