De Anima (On the Soul)
109. Remembering That We Understood: Replies on Intellectual Memory, the Definition of Eternity, and the Beatific Vision
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[0:00] Okay. Let's look at the replies now to the objections. That was taken from Augustine's remark that in the superior part of the soul, you don't have things common to us and the beast, right? You have things that are private to man and not shared by the beast. To the first, therefore, it should be said that memory, according as it is what conservative or conserving the species, meaning the universal species, is not what common to us and to the beast, huh?

[0:38] For species are conserved not only in the sensing part of the soul, because that can be common to us and the beast, right? So I remember where the food is and and Moppet remembers where the food is in the house. I guess the ants do too. I don't know. But more in the the conjuncta, since the memorative power is an act of some body, but the understanding by itself is conservative or conserving species, apart from the what, or without, or outside of, I suppose, the what coming together with some body organ.

[1:19] Whence the philosopher says in the third book about the soul that the soul is the place of the species, huh? Not the whole soul, but of the intellect. He's thinking of species there in the sense of the universal ones of Plato, right? And that would be what they call the Platonic ideas, but rather the Platonic forms, right? Okay. And Aristotle says they're not in the world by themselves.

[1:40] But the universals are in what our understanding. That's where man himself is, right? And dog himself is mean universal, right? They're not in the world by themselves. Okay.

[1:56] So the place of these universal forms is the understanding, and therefore this is not something shared with the beast. Okay. But what preserves these individual images? I remember how somebody looked that I've seen. Okay, I recognize somebody that I've seen before, right? Then that's in my sense memory, right? Say, okay. I don't have any universal ideas about you, or if I do, they don't really fit you in particular, do they?

[2:29] Okay. Do you follow that first reply there? Fair enough. Okay. Maybe a little bit like saying, you know, that my dog loves me, and you know. And then not realizing that the love that's in the will is something that we don't share with the beast, okay? But this love that is in the emotions, the beast might share something of that with us. It's an affection between the dog and its owner, right?

[2:54] You know, the dog mourns the loss of the owner, and so on. You know the dog moans over the casket, right? It's owner, so man's best friend, right? But it's not, you know, friendship in in the sense of

[3:15] of charity or something of that sort. That's in the will primarily, right? See, so we share emotions with the dog, don't we? Even though our emotions might be more elevated than than the beast, but we share the will with the angels, right? God Himself.

[3:40] Okay, now, incidentally, as you read the next couple objections, you are going to see another way that you can admit memory in the understanding besides its what retaining these forms. But we'll see that when you get there. Now, the second objection was that memory was of past things, right? But the past is according to some determined time, so on. And Thomas says to the second, it should be said that pastness can refer to two things: to wit, to the object that is known, and to the act of knowing, which two things are joined together in the sensing part, which is grasping something through this that it is changed by the sensible thing that is present.

[4:34] Once together, the animal remembers that it itself has sensed something in the past, and and that it has sensed some past sensible things, right? The object as well as the act.

[5:02] But as far as the understanding part pertains, pastness happens to it and does not belong to it as such from the side of the object, the understanding. Now, why is that? Because the object, the understanding, the direct object is something universal, okay? And that's neither past nor present, future, right? Okay, something kind of quasi eternal about the universal, huh? Okay, so

[5:36] my grandfather is past now, right? My great grandchildren are future. Okay. But man is what? You can't really say past or future, right? And abstracts from that distinction, right? Huh? Okay. So knowing universal, I don't know the past, do I?

[6:03] In the sense that's an object of mine, the past is something singular. For the understanding, he says understands man in so far as he is man. But to man, in so far as he is man, it happens; it's accidental, right? That he be in the present, or in the past, or in the what future, right?

[6:29] But from the what part of the act itself, pastness can be taken per se. Also, in the understanding, as in the sense, huh? Okay. Now he's admitting in a certain way pastness there, right? Because the understanding, the act of understanding of our soul, is a particular act, right? Existing in this or in that time, according as man is said to understand now or yesterday or tomorrow. And this is not repugnant to intellectuality, because to understand of this sort, although it is something particular, is nevertheless say what immaterial act,

[7:16] as has been said above about the understanding. Just as I can know that I understand something, right, as an individual, huh? I understand what a triangle is, right? See, and I know that I understand it, right? I can know a singular in that way by my mind because it's something what immaterial.

[7:35] But when I know directly that what it is is something sensed or imagined, it's universal. So I don't know the singular in that way,

[7:45] as has been said above about the intellect. And therefore, just as the understanding understands itself, although it itself is a what singular understanding, right? So it also understands its own understanding, which is a singular act, either in the past or in the present or in the future. Sic igitur. Thus, therefore, the definition of memory is saved as regards that which is past in the understanding, according as it understands that it itself has what understood this before.

[8:27] Not, however, as it understands the past in so far as it is here and what now. So my understanding, when I think about something again, um. I remember, right? I've understood this already, huh? That's what he seems to be saying there, right, huh? Okay. In that sense, it has a little bit of the what? Knowledge of the past. It's not only conserving the species, right? But it's able to what?

[9:00] Remember that it did understand this before. This is not altogether new material to me when I go back and pick up Euclid after a few months or something like that, right? Think about the theorem again, yeah, you know. Okay, I make it a little bit hazy in my mind, you know, but you know, I thought that before, huh? Okay.

[9:25] Now sometimes I seem to forget that I thought about something before, you know. You know, as soon as I think it out again, you know, then I ends up having the same thought expressed twice in my notes or in my computer or someplace, right?

[9:44] Let this happen. So there, he's getting a little bit over what he does in the body of the article, isn't he? There, it seems to me, huh? Okay. Because in the body of the article, he seems to be admitting memory, insofar as the understanding what retains these forms by which it understands, huh? And the ordering of those forms is really what is its habitual knowledge, right? Okay.

[10:12] Okay. Yeah, but now he seems to be admitting that, in a way, it knows the past, insofar as it knows that it itself has understood this already. Okay. But it doesn't know the the past in this very singular way of here and now. You have to go back to the senses, huh? Okay.

[10:38] So when did you first understand the Pythagorean theorem, Mister? Huh? Yeah. You know that you've understood it, right, in the past? I assume so. Right. Yeah. See, but you have to go back and say, "Well, gee, was I first studied Euclid maybe at TAC or something, right? " And what year did they study that? Well, it's the first year, right? Huh? Okay. So, but now you're kind of going back to your sense memory, aren't you?

[11:06] I say to get the here and now, huh? Or the then and then. Then there, yeah. I see. But maybe without the senses, you would know that you understood this before. It's not new to your understanding, huh? Right. Yeah.

[11:30] Very subtle things here. Now, the third objection was taken directly from Avicenna, you know. Okay. Of course, what Thomas is going to say is that, like Aristotle already said that these forms can be in a middle state between what potency and act, right? What's called first act as opposed to second act. A little bit like the man who's sleeping, right?

[12:04] Do I have the ability to see when I'm sleeping? Yes. I'm not a blind man when I'm sleeping, am I? No. But I, what? Not actually seeing, am I? But I actually have eyes, right? And able to see, right? But then I have to open my eyes, and then I'll actually see again, right? So he's going to say something like this: I have to turn myself and want to think about these things, right, before those forms exist in fully enacted in my mind. Intention on my part, right, and attention too.

[12:45] So it says to the third, it should be said that the understandable form, at some time, is in the understanding in potency only, and then the understanding is said to be in potency.

[12:59] Sometimes they are in there according to the what, ultimate, huh, completion of the act, and then understands an act, and sometimes in a what, middle way, it has itself between potency and act, and then is said to be understanding in what, habitu, right, an habit, huh, and according to this way, the understanding considers species even when in act it does not what, understand them, huh, does not understand, I should say.

[13:37] So there's that intermediary stage there, huh? And of course you're forced to say that once you admit that the what is received is received according to the way of the receiver, huh? And therefore the understandable forms are kept in the understanding, right? But as a matter of experience, we're not always actually what, understanding according to them, right?

[14:00] So therefore they must be in the middle state between that pure potency before we first receive them, right? And this full act when we're actually using them to think about something, huh? Okay. And I know

[14:18] myself a lot of times, you know, now with things I know pretty well, like I've been teaching for twenty, thirty years in college, you know, I don't prepare a class, you know, so I just go in there and actually think about something that I habitually know again, huh? And as Aristotle says here, you know, you can, when you want to think about that, you can do so, right, huh?

[14:41] See, but before you have the habit, when you want to think about something or or you want to understand something, you can't, just because you want to understand it, right? You see? So before I learned say a theorem in Euclid, I may want might want to understand the Pythagorean theorem, huh? But that's what Proposition forty seven, Book one. I got to do a lot of things to get there, right, huh?

[15:05] And so if I want to understand the Pythagorean theorem, I can't just understand it. I want to understand it. But if I've gone through all forty seven, right, and know them all, right, then when I want to understand actually the Pythagorean theorem, I do it,

[15:23] right? That's nice, right? Right? You see? Then you like the senses, huh? When you want to see the painting, just open your eyes and see it, no problem.

[15:37] But students are in that position; they don't realize it. You see, so they have kind of a false idea. Of what the life of the mind is, because they're associated with this what stage where you're trying to understand something and you can't understand it, or you want to understand it, you know, and you have this difficulty, huh? They say.

[15:58] Thing I found, you know, kind of just, you know, in reading books, there's so much to understand in a book of Aristotle or a book of Thomas, you know. That I say, well, some things I think I understood there, and some things I don't think I really understood. But next time I read through, I'll maybe understand a few more things. Don't get too excited because you know you don't understand everything you read,

[16:27] you know. And Charles DeConick, you know, the great teacher we had there at Laval, you know, we'd, we'd get through with, say, one of the books of the physics, the, these books in natural hearing, and De Koninck would say, now if you think you've understood everything here, he says that means you've understood nothing.

[16:48] If you'd really understood something, you'd realize you've not understood everything. And that's kind of an interesting point to make, and a good point to make, huh?

[17:04] I get a few minutes here, just thinking again today, you know. Aristotle takes up in the categories of the words before and after, you might say.

[17:24] He really gives the meanings of before, but that gives the meanings after. And then he takes up the word "hama Greek, huh? Okay. And then they translate that into Latin, and it's like "simul," huh? Okay. How do you translate that in English? You say together at once. Yeah, sometimes you say at once, sometimes you say together, right? Okay. Now,

[18:05] why does he define before and after? Before at once or together? Why does he do that? That's a kind of well, could say that together as a negation, not before or after. Yeah, yeah. I I think that that's the way we understand together, right? Only negation. Yeah, that two things are together. Let's say in time, take the first sense of together, when one is neither before nor after the other, right?

[18:43] Then okay, then they're together in time, huh? I kind of see that. Okay. Now, in the tenth book of Wisdom, Aristotle has a very interesting thing here. He's talking about more and less and equal, right? And he says that

[19:12] more and less are before equal in definition. Okay. I was talking about in a student there before class, and I says to him, "What does it mean to say that two straight lines are equal? "

[19:36] And he would say, "But I was hoping he was going to say that one is neither what longer or shorter than the other, right? Okay. "

[19:52] And I think Aristotle is right there, but I'm not altogether sure that I fully understand why he's right, huh? Okay, why this is so, huh? And you know, I often think about what he says there when I'm teaching the Phaedo, because in that great dialogue, the Phaedo, Socrates is trying to show that the human soul is immortal, and one of the arguments is from recollection, huh? And he takes the idea of equality, huh?

[20:26] And he tries to show that the bodies of the world around us, like these chairs, huh, or these squares here in the floor here, one might say these squares are all equal, right? And Socrates says, "But when you examine them more carefully, are they really equal? " "No, no. " And there's some irregularity and so on. Right. And so he says, "What takes place is that we see things in the world around us through our senses that approach equality, huh?

[20:58] " Yeah. But that aren't quite equal, huh? Now, how do we make that judgment, huh? That things approach equality but fall short of being equal? Must we not have an idea of equality that we recall when we see these things resembling equality? But when we recall what equality really is, we then make the judgment that these things aren't equal. You see? And Socrates has a very nice, you know, monoductio there, where he says he takes example of of a painting, say, or a statue of somebody, huh?

[21:44] And is someone did a painting say of me, right? And I wasn't here, but they brought the painting in, and they say, "Do you recognize who this is?" And you might say, "Oh yeah, that's a painting of Berkowitz." Yeah, the guy comes up here and and but then maybe you look at the painting, you might say, "But Berkowitz's hair is a little more gray than this guy's hair.

[22:09] Berkowitz's nose is not so Roman, but kind of short or something, and so on, right?" And could you make that judgment that this painting, although it approaches the way Berkowitz looks, falls short? If your whole knowledge of Berkowitz was derived from that painting, see, a stranger wouldn't be able to make that judgment, would he? So, if looking at that painting, you make the judgment that this resembles Berquist. uh somewhat you know, but it falls short.

[22:46] You must have a knowledge of Berkwist not derived from that painting. Do you see that? And so I always take the example in class with them of of the great Frenchman there, Lafayette, who came over and helped us gain our independence, and then he went back to France and almost lost his head in the French Revolution, and and of course he was a great friend of George Washington, right?

[23:07] He went down to Mount Vernon, you know spent some time there and went back to to France, and he's the man who what told Washington to get down here to Virginia, right? You know, because this is a chance to finally finish off the British, right? And of course, so they were great friends, and of course Washington was very concerned about Lafayette. He had an agent in Europe there with money to try to relieve him and so on.

[23:33] But anyway, years later, Lafayette got free and came back to the United States for a visit. And by this time, of course, the great George Washington was dead, right? But America was filled with what paintings and what statues of the great George Washington. And of course, he'd go around and say, "Well, nah, that's not really like him at all. " But this is this. He's a little more like this, you know.

[23:56] I guess I think it's that statue that's that's down in the Virginia House of Burgesses of of of Washington that he said, ah, that's that's really the very close, right? But could he make all these judgments if his whole knowledge of Washington was derived from these paintings and statues that the country was now filled with now in commemoration of the father of the country? You must have had a knowledge of him separately of that, right?

[24:25] That's something I think, a pretty good argument, right? See, but the point is that if the definition of equal is by the negation of more and less, right? As Aristotle argues in the tenth book, he doesn't apply to Phaedo but I mean, if that's true, right, then you could say, well, the bodies around us are clearly some more and some less, right? There is no doubt about that.

[24:54] You say the Empire State building is taller than my house, and you know my house is shorter, right? And so, if I could get the idea of equal from more and less, then there is just a weakness in in in Socrates' argument there.

[25:11] But there is something similar in these two, right? That's it. So Aristotle says, you know, for two things to be equal, you have to have the same kind of quantity, like say two straight lines. But when you say two straight lines are equal, we mean one is neither more nor less, One is neither longer or shorter than the other. Well, the reason why I got to think about it today again was that this is the definition of eternity, huh?

[25:42] You know, Tota simul et perfecta possessio vitae interminabilis huh, okay? Well, I was trying to explain to the students how you know in the Via Negativa in theology, and I talked about this earlier in the course, and therefore you have to we understand more what God is not than what He is, right? In the beatific vision, we'll see God as He is, as Saint John explains in the first epistle, right?

[26:30] That when He appears, we shall see Him as He is. huh? But I was trying to explain the negations. How many negations are in the definition here of eternity, huh?

[26:42] Three, three, maybe four. I see it here, but I see most people, and maybe all of you in class here today, I say to the students, think of eternity as a kind of endless time, okay?

[27:00] Now, of course, we as Christians don't think that time is endless. We think it has a beginning. You read about it in Genesis, and the end is you read about it in Apocalypse. But even if time had no beginning, right, and time had no end, as the Greeks thought, you know, probably Plato and Aristotle speak as if this or so on. Still, this endless time would not be the same thing as eternity, okay?

[27:29] And I think it's Plato, I guess, in the Timaeus, huh? Sees that, and it's important that Plato sees it because Plato thinks that time is interminabilis right? Has no beginning, no end, huh? Okay. Although you know our life in time has a beginning and end, but time itself is endless, right? He thought, but he still thought that time was not eternity, huh? And that's because he saw that even if time always was and always will be, there'd be a before and after in time.

[28:01] Yeah, yeah. Well, in in eternity, there's no before and after, huh? But if you understand this by the negation of that, right, then this involves a negation of the what before and after in time. Do you see that? Yes. So it's more clear that you're going by negation there, right? Yeah. If this is known by the negation of before and after, and that's perhaps the reason why Aristotle gives before and after before a not, right?

[28:39] Okay, because before in in definition, right? Okay. Um. So I said, you know, if you take your life or my life or Mozart's life or whoever's,

[29:00] whatever life is measured by time. Has a beginning and end in time, right? Okay, so the divine life, unlike the life of Mozart, has no beginning and no what end. I think Mozart he didn't live very long, and I was present, you know, for the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Mozart in nineteen fifty six, right? Where he had two concerts entirely devoted to Mozart, right?

[29:26] And I was present at so many musical festivities for the two hundredth anniversary of the death of Mozart. So, so my life is what you know. I've been longer than Mozart's life. I don't say it's productive, obviously, but so Mozart's life had a beginning and end, and the divine life is in interminabilis, right? It has no beginning, no end. But even if Mozart's life, if he had always been, it always would be right.

[29:53] His life would still be spread out before and after. One year of his life would be before, after it, and another year. So t here is another difference here, right? Tota simul, right? Okay. So, those whose life is measured by time have a beginning and end in time, right? While the divine life has no beginning and no end. And those whose life is in time have a before and after in their life, but t here is no before and after in God's life, huh?

[30:31] Okay, then you go and you say, well, in that respect, the now of time resembles eternity more than time does, huh? Because in the now of time, now in the strict sense, which divides the past from the what future, right? And using the now in the strict sense, including none of the past and none of the future, that now is at the point indivisible. So in the now, t here is no before and after.

[31:12] So in some respects, the now of time resembles eternity more than time itself does. And St. Bwethius brings this out when he says that what the now

[31:25] that flows makes time, and the now that stands still makes what eternity, okay. Now, he wants to express the definition how time, how eternity differs from the now of what time, right? But the now of time, like the eternal now of God, is all at once and has no before and after in it. But the now of time is, in one sense, always other, right? Okay, it flows, right?

[32:21] Okay. So, but like you know, like we had imagined in doing geometry, imagine a point moving down the line, right? The point would be the same point, right? One sense, but always other as to where it is, right? So, the now of time always seems to be what. Always other in some way, right? It's always moving forward. You might say, okay. So, or the now time is always fleeting, right?

[32:51] We can never hold on to it. So, as I say to students, you know, a lot of times, and some nice moment of your life, and some thing which I wish this could last, you know, but you know it can't last. you can't hold on to it, right? That's why we're always told by our parents as children, you know, all good things must come to an end.

[33:09] Time to go to bed. Is it okay? So, in order to negate the fleeting character of the now of time, right? You never possess it, right? He adds the word what possession, right? Which separates the eternal now, which stands still, from the what now of time that's always other. The divine now, the eternal now, is always the same. Right, the now of time, in one sense, is always other as to where it is.

[33:49] Do you see that? Yeah. So that's the third negation, right? You might say this involved in this great definition. Now I said suppose you could stop or freeze the now of time, right? You can't do that, huh? But in the fairy tales that sometimes takes place, you know, where it's the birthday of the beautiful princess, huh? And the fairy godmother comes there and blesses them, everything, so.

[34:16] And then she's up the witch, you know, and she casts a spell upon everybody, and everybody's frozen there. You've seen those, and I can start remembering the pictures in the childhood books, there, you know, where the servant's picking the dirt like that, he's frozen like that, you know. And the princess of course is asleep until, but the prince charming shows up and kisses her, and then everybody comes back, you know, alive, huh?

[34:38] I said, if you could freeze the now of time, how much life would you have in the now? See, you can't play a game in the now. You can't eat your dinner in the now, right? You can't drink a beer in the now, right? You can't really think in the now, right? You have practically no life at all. See, so the eternal now, though, there's a perfection, the fullness of life in the eternal now, right?

[35:06] So he adds perfecta, right? He's in a way negating the defect of life that there is in the now, right? He says possession. He's negating the what the fleeting and always other character of the now. So in a way, there's like four negations here in the definition of eternity, which is the one of the great. This is the one of the great Platonists, right, in the fifth book of the Consolation of Philosophy, huh?

[35:35] But Thomas takes over this definition. You can read right here in this same prima pars, right, in eternity. So you have two negations of life in time, and two negations of life as it is in the now, or two negations of what you find in the now of time. So I was trying to emphasize here, there's almost like four negations there. But it's kind of beautiful to see too how if you ask which is more like eternity, life in the now or life in time.

[36:16] Well, if you talk about a life that has no before and after, then life of the now is more like eternity, right? But if you're talking about perfect and the full life, well then we have a fuller life in time than we have in the now, right? So it's beautiful to see how how in one way life in time is more like eternity, and in another way life in the what now is more like eternity, huh?

[36:47] But what you have is perfect life all at once in God. That's absolutely marvelous to see that, huh? And the beatific vision there, which will require another light from the Father of Light, huh? And more light than I can cast upon anything here. But eternal life for us is a partaking of the divine eternal life, huh? And and then we share. That'll be all at once. There won't be any before and after in that vision of God.

[37:18] When you see God face to face, you see God as He is. Huh? There won't be any before and after, any change in that vision, huh? And but that's going to be the fullness of life, huh? But there will be the feeling of that flow you were talking about. There won't be anything like that. There'll be the understanding that we have with the flow. Is that what you mean?

[37:44] But no, I say when the seeing God as He is, the seeing of God face to face, there'll be no before and after in that vision. It'll be all at once. It'll be a perfect life. Won't move. Won't move. No, no, no. Yeah, like a temple. You know, that was a piece of a pillar there, right? You never go out again. And that's kind of marvelous to to think about that.

[38:09] I was reading there a little bit about you know the De Potentia there about the you know Thomas commenting on Augustine's explanation of the morning and the evening, right? You know how how Augustine takes morning evening to refer to two knowledges of the angel, right? And the evening knowledge of the angel is the knowledge the angel's natural knowledge, right? And the morning knowledge of the angels a knowledge he has by seeing God face to face, huh?

[38:40] Of course, the reason why you call one morning, one evening, is because morning is the beginning, right? And of course, everything is beginning is God, right? Huh? So you see things in in morning knowledge, you see things in the beginning of things, which is God Himself, huh? But the evening is at the end, right? Tending towards darkness, and that's the creature, right? Huh? Because left to himself, the creature tends towards darkness, huh?

[39:09] But the angels that are saved, they go back to what God, referring back to God, and so they receive the vision of God. They go from evening to morning, huh? See. But kind of interesting objection there, which kind of struck me the way Thomas handles it and idea as well.

[39:31] Scripture says, "But evening, you know, in morning is is one day, right? Huh? As if the angel has at the same time morning and evening knowledge, right? And objection saying, "Well, this is impossible, right? You know, how can you have both of them at the same time? " Huh? And Thomas says, "Well, if you had two understandable forms of the same kind, you couldn't be in perfect act by both of them, huh?

[40:03] But if there's an order among them, right? Then you can be in act with regard to both, okay? And he says that the the evening knowledge of the angel is like a disposition for the what? Morning knowledge, huh? Okay. And so the angel at the same time sees God face to face, and at the same time he sees things by his what? Natural knowledge, huh? That's kind of marvelous, huh?

[40:35] Just like in Christ, huh? Christ is is seeing God face to face. He has a beautiful vision from the moment of his incarnation, right? But he also has what many other kinds of knowledge at the same time, huh? So he can even wonder when he sees a centurion, you know, and that sort of thing, huh? That's kind of marvelous, huh? Now a lot of times you you know you just think of you know once you have the beatific vision, all this natural knowledge we have is like nothing compared to that, and that's true.

[41:08] But still, I have that natural knowledge there, huh? But it will be like a what disposition and subordinate to this other knowledge, which is the culmination of that.

[41:23] It's kind of interesting, huh? Because you know, does does the supernatural desire eliminate the natural desire, huh? And I was thinking of the comparison there between the the desires of the of the true philosopher and then the desires of the what Christian, you know, how are they connected, huh? See, how is that natural wonder, that inborn desire, right, to see the cause, right, which led Aristotle, you know, to try to understand the first cause that is God, right, so far as possible, right, huh?

[42:12] How is that natural desire to know the cause, huh? Which leads us to try to know the cause, right, and to know the cause of the cause, right, Nobody's going to know the first cause. How's that related to this desire to see God face to face, to see Him as He is, huh? Those two desires in conflict, or is one really kind of a disposition for the other, and perfecting the other, huh?

[42:39] What do you think? It perfects it because you see the cause Yeah Yeah, it's not opposed to it, huh? And and what is like a disposition for the other,

[42:53] yeah. Just like you know when they talk about Pius XII and that famous encyclical, what was it on church art and so on? What's it called? I can't remember now. But famous one. But when they talk about the love of the beautiful, right? You see,

[43:20] even the love of the beautiful that you have in in beautiful church music, right? You know, Augustine says, you know, in the Confessions, there. Too late have I come to know thee, thou ancient beauty, right? So there's the love of the beautiful. If it's truly beautiful, even these sensory things, is that kind of a disposition for the love of the beautiful, which is God Himself, huh? It seems to me that it is, huh?

[43:48] I always remarked that that particular scene there in the life of Saint Gertrude the Great, you know, she's a Benedictine more or less, and she's called Benedictine. And she's out in the the Benedictines are very good in their gardens, right? The gardens were beautiful to the eyes, right, to the the senses, right. And she's out in the garden there, you know, and admiring the beauty of the garden.

[44:11] She says, "All that's missing here is someone to share this with. " That's when Christ appears to her. That's really kind of striking, you know. But you can see that that love of the beautiful, in a way, is disposing, huh? You know, in the way that the great Plato teaches us in the Symposium, right? Where Socrates is giving me, you know, when he's talking about the love of the beautiful, and then he he talks about the lesser love matters, right?

[44:36] And then he goes to the the greater love matters, right? You know, and then he talks about the ascent, you know, from the love of of the beautiful in in a bodily way, right? And then to the love of the spiritual beauty, right? And all the way up to the love of the beautiful itself, right? And then he says, and once the soul gets there, right, you know, then he sees that it's completely happy, right?

[44:58] Okay. So, in that sense, you can say that the love of the beautiful is disposing for these higher things, huh? You see, but you know, the danger is that that you may what rest in the lower, right? You see, and so you have to, you know, when the angels went from it's kind of beautiful evening, the evening, you see, left to itself is going to tend to the darkness, right?

[45:28] That's what happened to the angels that fell, right? They didn't refer back their natural beauty back to God, right? See, by those who did, went from evening to morning, huh?

[45:45] Now we'll have something of this in the next life too, right? We'll have something of an evening and morning knowledge, and that will be our disposition to how. Yeah, the supernatural vision of God, seeing God face to face, is not going to simply eliminate our natural knowledge, huh? See, that I will still know the Pythagorean theorem in the way I know it even in this life, huh?

[46:14] And that won't interfere with my seeing God as He is face to face, huh? And the seeing God face to face is going to perfect my knowledge of Euclidean geometry. It's not going to destroy that, see? Of course, you know everything that you naturally desire to know, you will know also in the beatific vision, right? We'll all know the Pythagorean theorem in the next. I would think so.

[46:40] Yeah. You understand? Yeah. And I'll know how to sing, carry a tune. You know, it's a hard time doing. You know. Yeah, Thomas is very explicit about that, huh? That there will be laus vocalis in heaven, right? You know, maybe praising God, you know, but but but primarily everything will be the vision, right? You know, of God, and it's going to be

[47:15] the whole reward, so to speak. And all determined on our knowledge as we interior knowledge of God as we when at our moment of our death. In a sense, well, it's going to depend upon how much we love God. You see, because this is metaphorically is said to be a marriage, right? You know, so you know

[47:44] the intimacy of marriage in the first sense is really kind of superficial. In the first meaning, superficial, right? You know, it's nothing like when God unites Himself with our mind, huh?

[47:59] See, so we're going to see God not through a created, understandable form, right? But through God being joined to our mind, huh? Okay, so we're going to see God by God, huh? You know, that's really intimate, right? You know, you know, I mean, this marriage is is bodies or what? I even use the word intimacy, but I mean bodies are only in contact at their surfaces, right?

[48:29] You know, and so God is not going to unite Himself to a soul that doesn't what love Him, huh? In the way that one should love God by charity, huh? And.

[48:45] So that might be the the main thing, right? Huh? You see, the more intensely you love God, the more He will unite Himself with you. That's why I said interior knowledge. I'm trying to express that interior love combination. I don't know how to do that. Yeah, but see, even in human marriage, if you take the the first meaning of the word, right? Huh? You know, it'd be unnatural to unite yourself with someone you didn't love and didn't love you, right?

[49:12] You know, you see. So, so there has to be this love between us and God before you have this union, right? But also the idea, you know, you know, if the bride before the the wedding breaks out in a rash or something, you know, and she's disfigured in some way, you know, I mean, I mean, she'd almost want to delay the marriage, right? Huh? So she she she would look, you know, and our radiance, huh?

[49:39] And that's the way the soul is, I guess, in purgatory, right? You know, you want to be purged. You know, you want to have the the boils and the I think I had bug bite up here. You want to have these um uh defects in you, right? Huh? These these stains in you, or so on, right? Um, you want to be purged of them. You want to be cleansed.

[50:01] You know, it's like you know, you want to be at your best before you go into the bride or the groom or whatever it is, right? You know.

[50:12] So the infant who dies after being baptized, he would be just predestined to a lower beatitude. Well, it depends upon. um, No, we don't know. Maybe he hasn't sinned as much as we have. He hasn't sinned at all. He's not purged. Yeah, I mean, it's his soul. I mean, it's, you know quite innocent. That isn't baptized, huh?

[50:47] Mm-hmm. And the time when we get our bodies back, the entire right. Well, I'm not so sure it'd be time in the ordinary sense that we we didn't know. There'll be motion. Yeah, but it won't be. You know, even the apocalypse speaks of you know, it proclaims the end of time, right? So.

[51:23] See, now we're kind of dominated by our body, right? And even our thinking seems to be in time because of the images and so on, right? And there would be just the reverse, huh? The body will be conformed altogether to the glorified soul, right? Huh. So there won't be time in any timely manner. Yeah, I've talked kind of. I've always talked about, like our evening knowledge would still have this time factor, but the beatific vision there would be the no time with the scene in God.

[51:59] We'd see it all at once, but we'd still have this same knowledge we have in this life, where there is a before and after. Like we'll be able to talk and have. Yeah. So we'll be so to the to the sun and the moon and the stars, right? Right. Time that way.

[52:25] So I don't know. I think it is an interesting thing to think about, huh? Yeah. You have to admire what he is, you know. some of these things that he does there. The Constellation of Philosophy is kind of filled with little gems in it that you see appear Here and there in the medieval writers, Thomas first takes over a lot. But at that same time, you see, uh, he has to understand the fact that, um, you know, he makes a comparison to the circle there, right?

[52:58] Where the points of the circle are the nows of time, right? Yeah. And the center of the circle is the eternal now, which is not in that whole circle. Mhm. The line here, huh? So, um, one of these is before or after another one, right? But they're all right across from the eternal now. Eternal now. They're all present to him. And of course, in order to understand, uh, that God can truly know the past now, that the past can be present to him in his knowledge, he has to follow Aristotle, right?

[53:38] Who says that the way we know doesn't have to be the way things are in order for there to be true knowledge. It's kind of subtle, as I mentioned, I think, before to you, but in the beginning of the fifth book of the Consolation of Philosophy, we're going to take this up. Although he has announced himself as a member of the Academy, which would be Plato's school, um, the, uh, Lady Wisdom, who he's having the dialogue with, huh?

[54:03] Mm-hmm. Who's consoling him. Lady Wisdom introduces Aristotle in the fifth book as her true follower. And it is a kind of subtle way of the great, uh, Boethius, huh, to indicate he's got to follow Aristotle now, right? Otherwise he can't understand the divine, what, true knowledge, huh? And we have just kind of a, as I tell the students sometimes, we have kind of a just a very shadow of this when we talk about the past now, right?

[54:35] When I know the past now, right? When the past is present to me in a way, isn't it again, huh? It's not a sight thing. Is there any falsity in the past being present to me now? No. Right? Those two articles you're reading there, I can remember them now, right? Is that, you know? Mm-hmm. So Aristotle says the, the, falsehood would come as if I attributed, uh, the way I know or when I know or how I know to the thing itself, right, huh?

[55:08] If I know the past now, it must be now. Otherwise, my knowing is false. No. No. So really, really, you know, when Aristotle discovered that, huh, he was the wit.

[55:24] And all the rest of us, the dimwits, have to learn from him this, huh. And there's two, I just remembered that little thing on the Holy Father on his Eucharist encyclical, re-emphasizing the, the holy sacrifice of the Mass making present the sacrifice on Calvary. Yeah. And that's sort of a unique Yeah. thing. I can't remember how he, how he had this really neat phrase about it, but,

[55:56] but anyhow, that's Yeah, he, he warns about, you know, reducing it to a kind of a community banquet or something, Right. community meal, you see. Right. And, uh, but that, that, that's easy to do because the difficulty of understanding the Eucharist. Right.

[56:22] I think Aristotle is the way to find it to understand. Yeah. Somebody thinks that he was the only one. Yeah. As you- as you read the dialogues of Plato carefully, you realize how much he learned from Plato too, huh? Mm. Um. Mm.

[56:46] It's kind of funny, you know, you know, you know what Plato's name means. Broad. Broad plateau, right? There's one, uh, all these kind of funny legends, you know, but, uh, that, uh, Plato was, uh, a good wrestler, you know, and Oh. and he beat everybody, you know, so finally, you know, nothing else to do, also. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's conquered there, you know.

[57:17] And I don't really truth to that, but it's just kind of kind of amusing, you know, some of these, yeah, you don't have any of these stories to believe, you know, it's kind of, kind of interesting things.

[57:30] But sometimes people do, you know, I mean, they do so well, something, and they say, well, I've done this, you know, I mean, just go on beating, beating them into, into the ground all the time and also go and, you know, do the, another challenge here, you know. But you know how Socrates, um, uses that image there of the, uh, the wrestler, huh, in some of the dialogues?

[57:52] I forget which dialogue it is now, where, where, um, I guess the Greeks, you know, are pretty much given to this wrestling, and they almost ask you to strip down, you know, and Yeah. and show your muscles and that sort of thing. And, and you're comparing what Socrates, in a sense, is doing in these conversations, you know, we've got to kind of show your mind Oh yeah.

[58:08] and what do you think, you know, and then, you know, you're going to get tossed or something like that. And, uh, it's, uh, there's something to be said of that, huh? Something to be said of that. Mental sparring. Yeah. One of the students at TSC, when he was preparing for class, he would say, I'm loaded up my ammunition. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And start shooting on it. That's the way he was in class.

[58:34] W- w- Shakespeare, Shakespeare in As You Like It uses that, that thing of wrestling too, huh? Because, uh, Rosalind falls in love with Oliver when, when, uh, Orlando, rather, when he, uh, when he tosses the, the, uh, the wrestler, right, huh? And then, uh, uh, she, she loses to it, you know, huh? You've fought well, huh, and you've overthrown more than... And then, uh, and then when she goes back and she's talking to her cousin, you know, and, you know, the idea of wrestling with your affections, right, huh?

[59:06] See? She had something like that there in, in, in the, is it Jacob, right, wrestling with the... Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm not very sure I fully understood that, I may have seen it. I think it's really interesting to see that, huh? You know?

[59:26] But, uh, as it- I was mentioning that thing earlier that I read by John Paul II there back in '84, was it '86, something, '84, '86, was it two, on the anniversary of Augustine's, uh, conversion, but, you know, he spends a lot of time in the life of Augustine there, as seen in the confessions and so on, but there's a kind of a wrestling going on there, you might say, huh?

[59:47] You see? And I remember, um, Paul VI talking about the confessions and how something very interesting about these accounts of conversion, right? Yeah. You know, I- I- I was got to reading Pearce's book there, you know, the, uh, Literary Converts, kind of interesting book, you know, and you could, of course, you know, go into the sources that he has and then even go more into details how these- these people were converted.

[1:00:13] But it's kind of interesting just to read about these, huh? Mm-hmm. And quite a few of them, and... And my wife's reading it, and she enjoys it too, so it's, uh, interesting. Um...

[1:00:27] What leads them in, you know? Mm-hmm. Alec Guinness even appears in there, right? You know, because he's a convert, huh? They tell the story about the making the movie when he was playing a priest? Yeah, yeah, that, that was part of it, yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, the story they told was, I guess he was, um, he was hurrying to one of the scenes for the- the film, you know, and he had hit on the priestly thing, right?

[1:00:49] Yeah. The priestly robe, so he was not a priest. And, uh, this little French boy runs up to him, you know, and kind of grabs his hand and- and tells him, you know, or tell his little childish things, you know, and then runs off, you know? And, uh, he was struck by the- the little child's confidence in him as a- as a priest, you know, that, you know, there's something you could trust, you know?

[1:01:09] Yeah. Um... And then I guess when he was playing the cardinal or something, he- he must have, you know, did some study for the role, so. Oh. Cardinal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, uh... Oh, yeah, I thi- I think his- his son became a convert first. Oh. And- and he was, uh, he was looking for a school, and I guess he- he was late in making application for one of these private schools, and so he had to get to the Catholic school.

[1:01:33] And, I think it was him, maybe it's mixed up with something else in this one of the stories there. Maybe it's somebody else not thinking of. Yeah.

[1:01:45] Maybe it's his son, though. Yeah. Because the headmaster says, you know, you know, we