De Anima (On the Soul)
119. Summa I, Q.79 a.12: Synderesis as the Natural Habit of Practical First Principles (reason as nature, Heraclitus on listening to reason, habit and power)
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[0:01] They don't use them consistently. They don't define them properly. Yeah. Huh. So we'll finish the next two articles in the last article. It was in that question, I'm going to go on to the one. and in the Name of the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. God our enlightenment, guardian angels, think from the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly.

[0:36] Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor. Thank you, God. And help us to understand all that you've written. Name of the Father, and the Son, and the, Holy Spirit. Amen.

[0:53] Okay, to the twelfth article. One proceeds thus. It seems that synderesis and. That's again a kind of a unfamiliar word, right? Yeah, not in my dictionary. Yeah. Yeah. It seems that synderesis is a certain special power distinct from the others. For those things which fall under one division seem to be of one genus. But in the gloss of St. Jerome on Ezekiel, chapter one, verse six, synderesis is divided against the irascible and the concupiscible, and the rational, which are certain powers.

[1:43] Therefore, synderesis is a certain what? Power. Moreover, opposites are of one genus. But synderesis and sensuality seem to be what opposed, because synderesis always inclined to the good,

[2:13] sensuality however, always to the bad. Whence it is signified by the serpent, as is clear through Augustine, the twelfth book of the Trinity. It seems, therefore, that synderesis is a power just as what sensuality.

[2:40] Moreover, Augustine says in the book about free judgment, free will. We often translate that now. The Greek, I mean, the Latin has the word judgment there, which in the Because in the natural judging power there are certain rules and seeds of the virtues, right?

[3:06] Seeds that are true and unchangeable, and this we call synderesis. Since therefore the unchangeable rules by which we judge pertain to reason according to its superior part, as Augustine says in the twelfth book of the Trinity, it seems that synderesis is the same thing as reason, and thus there is a certain what power?

[3:45] Yeah, the third objection is a little different from the first two. The first two are going to be solved in a somewhat similar way, but the third one will be solved in a different way. But against this is that the rational powers have themselves two opposites, according to the what philosopher in the fifth book. When you talk about reason as reason, right, or the will as will, then you have sort of openness to opposites, huh?

[4:17] Because reason can reason to, with probability anyway, contradictory conclusions, and in the courtroom we can reason to contradictory conclusions that he is and he is not guilty, right? And the will is able to choose to do something and not to do it, right? Or to do this or to do that.

[4:43] But synderesis does not have itself two opposites, but it inclines only to the good. Therefore, synderesis is not a power. For if it were a power, it would necessarily be a what rational power, since it's not found in the what roots, huh? I was reading a little bit of Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. Have you read that? Very interesting things in there, but those conversations are interesting.

[5:19] But Boswell in his publication there, The Rambler, and one of the conversations repeating it, the question comes up: Would the brutes have reason, right? And he says, "Well, the bird makes its nest the same way the first time it makes it as the later times it makes it. So if he was really figuring out how to make a nest, right, he probably make a inferior nest first, right, and then make a somewhat better one.

[5:45] The way that man, you know, I mean, the first airplanes didn't fly very well, or the first cars didn't go very well, or something, right? Or the first computers or radios weren't very good compared to the later ones, right? And so those things that that we invent by reason and that we perfect by reason, usually it takes a course of time before we get the kinks out of them.

[6:09] By the the bird makes its nest the first time all around, as well as it's going to do it later on. huh? We could sign that. they're not. Operating by reason the way we do.

[6:37] Okay, now. Answer: Ought to be said that synderesis is not a power, but a what habit? Huh. Although some lay down that synderesis is a certain power,

[7:01] higher than reason, right? And some say that it is what reason itself, not as reason, but as a what nature. Okay, now remember we talked about that before, didn't we? Okay. Yeah, didn't we talk about that. When Aristotle distinguishes between, ah, reason, and nature. In the ninth book of wisdom, and also between nature and what will, in the ninth book of wisdom. He says that nature is determined to one and two opposites.

[7:51] The stock example is if you put the paper in the fire in front of the fire, the fire is going to burn it, right? It's not going to burn sometimes and cool it other times, right? It's determined to one of two. opposites going to heat the thing, right? Okay. I put something in the water. It's going to get what wet? Huh? It's going to get softened. It's not going to be dried out by the water.

[8:16] So the nature is determined to one or two opposites, but reason, as you see in the case of human art, it's open to what opposites, right? And so by the art of grammar, I can speak correctly and say I am your professor, or I can speak incorrectly and say I is your professor, right? And by the art of the medical art, I can make you sick, right?

[8:43] As well as healthy, right? I can injure life as well as preserve it, right? So reason is capable of what contraries are opposites, huh? And the same things about the will, because the will has ability to choose, right? Can choose to do something or not to do it, right? Or can choose the good, choose the bad, right? Okay.

[9:15] Now, some people misunderstand that distinction Aristotle is bringing out because they think the distinction there between reason and nature is like the distinction between, let's say, virtue and vice, or one is an entirely different thing, or black and white, entirely different, right? And actually, distinction between nature and reason and will is like the distinction between, let's say,

[9:54] man and but animal, right? Sure. You said. And the distinction between man and animal, or between man and what is just an animal, right? Ah, it's because not that man is something entirely different from an animal, doesn't anything about an animal is inside of him, right? Well, he's not just an animal; he's an animal plus something more, right? Yeah. And the same way, if you distinguish between, say, two and three, right?

[10:32] Well, three is a way it contains two, doesn't it? But so distinction between three and two is not that two is in no way in three, but that two is just two, and three is two plus one, right? Sure. Okay.

[10:55] But you know, if you say, "Well, two is half of four, three is not half of four," you know, you can see between two and three, right? This in other ways, but in a way, three contains two, huh? So

[11:13] there are some things that reason knows naturally, and it can't think the opposite of those things. And there are some things that the will wills naturally, like you naturally want to live well, right? Do well, right? Huh? Naturally, you know, like pleasure and dislike pain and so on, right? Okay. Naturally, like love life and so on. So

[11:46] we make a distinction then between reason as a nature, right? Yeah. Where it has a determination to one. And where it knows something naturally, right? And then reason as reason, right? Where in addition to that, reason is able to investigate things it doesn't actually know, and here it often, you know, arrives at opposite conclusions, right? And sometimes a person thinks one thing, and then they only think the opposite, right?

[12:26] Huh? You see. So, but as far as the whole is more than a part, I don't sometimes think one, sometimes other, but I seem to naturally know, right, that a whole is more than a part. You see, well, the one is not the same thing as many, right? One is not more than one. I never have any doubt about that. Do you?

[12:53] Sort of lost the thread. What is more than one. One is not one. The one and the many are not the same, right? Yeah, right. Okay. So some things that we don't think the opposite of, we all kind of naturally know these things, and you can speak there for a reason as a nature, right? Huh? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Just like you'd say, you know, man as an animal, right?

[13:21] Yeah. Has or pertains to an animal, namely senses, right? Uh huh. And emotions and so on. So there is something that belongs to man insofar as he's an animal, but since he's not just an animal, there are some things that belong to man as man, right? And those are the things that he has, you might say, in addition to what he has in common with the other animals, right?

[13:50] Yeah. Okay. Mhm. So this is not too far off when they say that what, synderesis is reason as what, nature, right? Huh. Got it. And of course the reference here, I don't know if you have a footnote in your thing, but Alexander Hales right? huh Alexander of Hales who's? that He's an earlier scholastic, and I've seen his books in some of the larger libraries, you know, but I've never really studied his.

[14:18] His summa theologiae, right? Yeah. Teacher St. Bonaventure. Oh, okay. That's interesting. Oh, okay. Yeah. That's all right. Yeah. that's. Interesting. Okay. So maybe in him was already that distinction, you know, as well as in Thomas, huh? Interesting. Okay.

[14:36] Now to the evidence of these things, huh? Or of this matter he says, it should be considered that it has been said above that the reasoning of man, right, since it is a certain motion, you're going from one thing to another, right? It proceeds or goes forward from the what understanding of some things, huh?

[15:04] To it of those things known naturally, without the investigation of reason, It goes forward from them as from a what immobile, unchangeable beginning, right? We talked about that before with the proportion of Boethius, right? That reasoning is to understanding a bit like motion is to what rest, huh? And of course you find out when you study motion that it depends upon something, what at rest, huh? Yeah.

[15:37] And this is the reason why you can't walk in the water, right? Because the water gives way; as you step on it, right? I can walk on the earth because the earth remains at what rest, huh? Aristotle gives the example; it must be a common sight, huh? Or a mouse would get on top of a grain, a mound of grain, and he couldn't get off it because the grain kept on what moving, right?

[16:04] So even that simple example, you see how how motion depends upon something that is not in motion, yeah, yeah, okay. And we said that if you understood nothing before you begin to reason, you'd have nothing to reason from, right? So you couldn't go anywhere by reasoning. So what you understand before you reason, you might be said to understand what naturally, or you naturally come to understand it, but don't you don't reason it out.

[16:42] It's a natural result, maybe of experience and the agent intellect, the act of acting upon understanding, right? Okay. So everybody experiences whole in parts, and the acting upon understanding separates whole and part, right? And so everybody understands in at least a confused way what a whole is and what a part is, and therefore sees that a whole is more than what one of its parts, right? Huh?

[17:11] Okay. That's something like an animal couldn't even have those first principles. No, no, because it's tied into reason. So we reason from those, and what we find in reasoning from them, we also bring back to those things to what judge it, right? Huh? And there's care for kind of a circle in a way. and to understanding it is terminated, right? Insofar as we judge through principles naturally known to themselves, huh?

[17:51] We judge by those things about those things which we have found by what reasoning, huh? As we the meaning of Aristotle's two books there on the perfection of reasoning, there the prior and the posterior analytics, right? The analytics is the name of the last part of the books where you're coming back to principles and judging it, huh? You're resolving to the principles, huh? Okay. To

[18:25] see what he's saying now, okay. Now he makes a little comparison there between the looking reason and the practical reason, huh? Now it stands that just as looking reason reasons about

[18:44] lookable things, right? Okay. Things you look at. So practical reason reasons about things to be done, right? Let's see. Argues by analogy. It is necessary, therefore, that naturally there be within us, just as there are principles of the things we speculate about, so also there are principles of the things to be what done. So just as reason naturally understands that something cannot both be and not be, right?

[19:20] It must either be or not be. So it naturally understands, you know, it should do good and avoid the bad, right? Huh? Now again, he continues in the analogy. The first principles in speculative matters and looking matters are naturally found in us, huh? And naturally found in us do not pertain to some special power, but to a special what habit, right? Which is called the understanding of beginnings, right?

[19:57] As is clear in the sixth book of the Ethics. That's one of the virtues we talked about last week, right? Okay. That's interesting that in the sixth book of the the Ethics, Aristotle doesn't talk about nous as he calls it, right, in the practical reason, huh? But he does talk about nous in the looking reason, huh? And so some people have rashly concluded doesn't see that what we call synderesis right, which is nous in the practical reason, huh?

[20:28] Natural understanding. But he does talk about it in the third book on the soul. If you recall that, huh? Where he said he's talking about action there, right? That nous, he says, is always what correct, right? Huh? Was referring then to something proportional to nous in the speculative reason, something that we naturally know is to be done, like do good and not to be done, maybe the bad, right?

[20:58] Huh? So the the Greek of this intellectus principiorum is nous. Yeah, yeah. The word would be nous there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the sixth book of the Ethics, but then I mentioned how in the third book on the soul he talks about nous in regard to action too, right? In the practical reason, huh? And but but in Latin here we have a special word for this, synderesis huh?

[21:28] Might be derived from the Greek, but I don't know where the word really came. Did you find it here, Thomas? a lot. Yeah. Whence also he says the beginnings of things doable by us are naturally in the mind.

[21:51] They also then do not pertain to a special power, but to a special what natural habit. Which we call synderesis. Now, you could say that this natural understanding

[22:18] is a work of nature. You see, it's an opus naturae, Latin. It's a work of nature. huh? While this reasoned out understanding, what in Latin they would call scientia in Greek episteme, what Thomas calls scientia. Says that's an opus rationis, a work of Reason. Oh yeah, okay. you say that it's a work of nature. You have to remember now that reason is also nature, or includes something of nature, right?

[23:20] Yeah. Okay. So it can involve the acting upon understanding, right? And the undergoing understanding, insofar as it has something of nature in it, right? Yeah. And even experience, right, or the the thoughts are in some sense taken from.

[23:39] While this this here could be said to be a work of reason as reason, right? Because it's through reasoning, huh, thinking out these things, right, that you acquire this habit of science okay. Because both of these things, as you're asking at the beginning of class, both of these things are result of the undergoing reason, right? Being acting upon, right, by the acting upon understanding, using the images, right, as kind of tools, right, whereby it can separate out something universal.

[24:21] So what these habits then are something added to the to the power, right? You might say that what they call the understandable form, huh? Okay. As result of your being acting upon in some way by the object, right, that you now for the first time understand it, huh? And that result of being acting upon, that remains there in a virtual way, right? Okay. It's what the habit really consists in, right?

[24:54] Nothing other than an ordering of those forms that have been received. Okay. In the understanding, huh? Okay. You see, the ability or the power gives you the ability to do these things, but the habit enables you to do them actually or to do them well, right? Okay. It's a facility you want to think about them.

[25:22] So the power has been reduced to act when you acquire this habit, but it's still in potency to a further act, the actual thinking about these things, huh? Okay. So Aristotle said that understanding is an undergoing, right? Huh? Yeah. And before that he said that sense is undergoing. Yeah.

[25:47] Sound, let's say, or color has to act upon my eye before I see something, before I hear something, right? And the result of its acting upon my eye is the form by which I can see, or the form by which I can hear, right? Okay.

[26:11] And likewise, in the case of the undergoing understanding, right? What we usually think of as understanding, right? The ability to understand, right? It's acting upon, right? And that acting upon results in a certain what form? as they call the understandable form. The understandable form joined to the acting, undergoing understanding makes it able to what understand something. Okay. Is habit greater than ability? Is it? It's a perfection habit, yeah.

[26:49] Yeah. Okay. Of course, the habits in appetite, will, and emotions usually are a result of repeated acts. Okay. I'm developing a certain habit, huh? Which is like a second nature. You said second nature to me now, right? And second nature is a habit. It's not the power itself, right? Okay.

[27:26] So my ability to be angry, right, is something I have by nature, right? But that I become angry, neither too much nor too little, right? Huh? If I acquired the virtue of mildness, right,

[27:46] by repeated acts here, I have acquired a certain habit, right? Whereby my ability to be angry follows reason more or less. Okay. And Aristotle figured out that that's what happiness consisted of, or that would lead to happiness. Well, see, what he's going to say in the Nicomachean Ethics is that happiness is

[28:22] man's own act, right? According to human virtue, right, throughout life, right. Mm-hmm. But after he goes through the main virtues in books two through six, right, and certain things that follow upon them in seven, eight, and nine, then he comes back and determines more clearly which virtues are the highest, right? Oh. And and it turns out for a very good reason that the virtues of reason itself are higher than the virtues of the what emotions or the will, huh?

[29:02] Because they're what partaking of reason, yeah. Mm-hmm. And in the practical reason, the virtue of foresight is higher than the virtue of what called art, huh? Yeah. And among the kinds of foresight, political foresight is the highest. And then among the virtues of looking reason, the highest turns out to be wisdom itself, right? The Aristotle finally says, well, does happiness consist more in activity according to foresight or in activity according to wisdom?

[29:39] And the reasons that the happiness according to foresight is more human, but that according to wisdom is more divine, because you're knowing divine things. So that's the highest friendship, highest happiness of all for man.

[29:56] It's got to be perfect operation, and if an operation according to good habits, right, according to virtue. Okay. Notice how he's reasoning here from something maybe more known here. That there is a natural understanding in looking reason, right? And the similar reason why there must be a kind of natural understanding in practical reason, huh? Okay. And it just as that natural understanding and looking reason is not the power itself, but a habit added to it, right?

[30:40] It's a certain order, you might say, of these understandable forms. So then, likewise, the natural understanding in the practical reason is a habit, right? But a natural habit, right? Added to reason, huh? Perfecting it, huh? Whence also he says the beginnings of the principles of things doable by us naturally found in us, they do not pertain to a special power, but to a special natural habit, which we call synderesis huh?

[31:20] Whence synderesis is said to instigate to the good, right, and to complain about the bad, right, huh? In so far as through the first principles we proceed to finding something to do or not to do, right, and we judge that these things can to be found to be so, huh, to be something you should do or not do. It's clear, therefore, that synderesis is not a power, but a natural what habitus, right?

[31:55] Okay. Now Thomas will take up, what a habit is. Very much in the prima Secundae, right? He's going to start to take up the virtues in particular, right? And then he'll explain a lot. Go all the way back to the categories of Aristotle, where he distinguishes habit and disposition from inborn power. Yeah. Okay. And he'll work his way up to what a virtue is. That's what I was trying to think of because I was thinking of that with quality.

[32:21] I was trying to figure out what what makes Aristotle make two make them two species. Yeah. And Thomas even explained why Aristotle gives habit and disposition before power among the species, because the starting point is substance, the nature of the thing, right? And by habit, you are well or or badly disposed towards your nature, right? Yeah. Okay. Okay.

[32:49] So that nature is the principle, therefore, and everything else. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, because nature, or what a thing is, is what's first in it, huh? A thing must be what it is before it can be anything else, right? Yeah. So therefore, what a thing is is nature is what comes first, right? That's why I say that the natural road, say, right, is the first road in our knowledge, huh?

[33:21] Yeah. You know my basic syllogism there, right? The first figure, the first road is the natural road, right? And the natural road is the road from the senses into what reason?

[33:40] Just put the syllogism on the board for a second. Yeah, thank you. The minor premise, the first road in our knowledge, is the natural road in our knowledge. Okay.

[34:08] So if you understand what nature means, you can see that premise right away, right? That the first road in our knowledge, excuse me, by writing here, is the natural road in our knowledge, right? Okay. Okay. And then the natural road

[34:35] is the road from the senses into reason. Now, you have to ask, well, what is a man? huh? Well as you know from Shakespeare, man is an animal that has reason, right?

[34:58] That's nature of man to be an animal with reason. So because he's an animal, he has what senses, right? But he's not just an animal, but an animal that has what reason, right? And as you know, what is generic or more general develops in generation before what is specific, right? Okay. Instead, we have a fertilized egg, right? What first appears in the womb is what not sensation, but what cell division and growth, right?

[35:33] Yeah. But what we have in common with the plants really. And then appears the what the senses, right? Huh? See, and last of all, what's most specific to us, the use of what reason, right? Used to call seven the age of reason. I don't know how they decided that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, certainly, what is generic comes before what is specific in our generation. So since man is an animal with reason.

[36:00] Because he's an animal, he has senses, right? But he has an addition to that reason, and the animal nature is what's more generic, right? So that develops before reason. So reason, when we begin to think, we first think about what we've sensed, right? It takes a long time before we think about something we can't sense. So the kid thinks about his toys or his pet or something else he can sense, right?

[36:33] That's why you can see the consideration of change is so basic, huh? Because, as Ulysses says to Achilles there in Shakespeare's play *Troilus and Cressida*, "Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs." So if we start with what we can sense, and what grabs the attention of senses is change or changing things, right? And that's really the first thing to be understood, huh? And you know, I kind of playfully say to the students, you know, if you don't understand change, you don't understand changing things, and they all agree to that.

[37:11] And I say, if you don't understand changing things, you don't understand unchanging things, because as the word "unchanging" indicates, it is done by negation of the changing things. If you don't understand changing things or unchanging things, you don't understand anything. So you don't understand change. You don't understand anything. How fortunate is that you are in this class? What do you say to that? Well, the cat, the cat.

[37:35] So that's how I said to my colleagues, you know, they can't really put any hole in the argument, right? You know, but you know, they don't want to, accept the fact that this is so basic, huh?

[37:51] That's why Heraclitus really concentrated our mind upon change and the changes between opposites and so on, and started about that. Yeah. I'm just puzzled. I thought you mentioned it was a syllogism. It's a syllogism. Yeah. The first road in our knowledge is the natural road in our knowledge. Okay. The natural road in our knowledge is the road from the senses into reason. Therefore. Therefore, the first road in our knowledge is the road from the senses into reason.

[38:22] Okay. That's a conclusion. I didn't state the conclusion. of socialism, I just gave it to the two premises, right? Thanks for the help. Okay, so the yeah, yeah, the yeah. So you know, if someone asks you, "Why is the first road in our knowledge the road from the senses into reason?" Right.

[38:43] Well, the middle term, right, would be natural road, right? And so you have to see the connection between first road and natural, right? And in general, if you understand that nature is what is first in a thing, right? The nature of a thing, in the sense of what it is, is

[39:05] what's going to be first in that thing. You got to be what you are, before it can be something else, right? In addition, right?

[39:13] Yeah. Before a man can be white, he's got to be a man, right? And then you got to understand the connection between the natural road and the road from sense into reason. And they're talking there about the natural road in our knowledge, right? Well, you got to figure out the nature of man as an animal having reason, and then an animal is defined by having senses, right?

[39:39] But man is not just an animal, but an animal that has reason. And then you got to see that the general is before the specific, there, the particular in generation.

[39:52] Okay. So the road goes naturally from the senses into reason. Of course, there's all kinds of signs of that. In fact, even the word "road" itself is a sign of that, isn't it? The word "road" is taken from the road you can sense, right? Yeah. As carried over and applied to the mind, right? Okay. Yeah. And Christ Himself said, "I am the road." Hodos? In Greek, it says "hodos In the same word that Aristoteles says "Hodos.

[40:23] I am the hodos. I am the road. It doesn't mean. But I asked my son Mark, or my son Paul, his little boy there. What do you think of the natural road in our knowledge? You know, the basic road in our knowledge. And he says, "There are cars and trucks on it." See, you naturally start with the road you can what sense? Yeah. Okay.

[40:46] Yeah. So Aristotle often calls the different parts of philosophy a methodos, right? Which in Greek means "over a road." Oh. So he names this kind of knowledge a methodos, which means you know, you could paraphrase it into a knowledge over a road, right? Yeah.

[41:45] Let's look at the reply to the objections here now. The first two objections are going to be solved in a similar way. And that Thomas says when you divide sense appetite against. The irascible and concupiscible, which are the names of two powers of emotions, and the rational power. Jerome is dividing them in the basis of the what acts, right? Okay. So often anger or sense desire are what unreasonable, right?

[42:20] Huh? And therefore they're opposed to the act of reason, huh? Okay. I've had people, you know, who smoke, you know, and they say, "Don't ever start." Yeah, right. So the reason is telling them not to do it, right? Yeah. But their desire to smoke, you know. Yeah. Okay. The same with an alcoholic or something like that, right? Is maybe he's taken the pledge or he's you know joined AA or something like that.

[42:48] So his reason is telling him not to drink, but he has that concupiscence, right? huh Okay. But. You get these, you know, men who beat their wives. You know, don't have control of their anger, right? Huh? You know, just you read about these cases all the time, you know. And so, when their anger is calmed down, they see that this is unreasonable what they've done, right? No, I think the wife.

[43:13] I won't do it again, but of course, they say they will do it again because they don't have their anger under what? Under control. Control.

[43:25] Yeah. What's the the dunking stool? You know, dunking stool. There, remember in the Puritan days, right? Yeah. Yeah, if a woman had too sharp a tongue, you know, or shrew, you know, then they would, you know, like the Shakespeare's famous play, "The Taming of the Shrew," right? Yeah. Making all the jokes about that because I live in Shrewsbury. See.

[43:49] I mean, they had dunking stool, right? You put the woman on the chair, tie her in the chair, and the kid or toddler comes, drops in the water, and goes off.

[44:02] So some people have anger, right? That is unreasonable, huh? And you know, sometimes they kill somebody, or sometimes they do some other horrible thing. You know. We about it all the time, right? You know, people get into argument in a bar or somewhere else, and pretty soon they're they're being arrested for doing some kind of terrible thing, right?

[44:27] On these sites, you know, run the car through somebody's house or something, to do some crazy thing, right? Yeah. So Thomas says the distinction here is not one of powers, but one of the acts, right? Huh?

[44:49] The same way in the second objection, there, right? So synderesis is telling one to be moderate, or where it might be, and sensuality is what inclining one to go to excess in the goods of the senses, right? So the first two objections are solved in a similar way.

[45:14] Now the third objection Thomas is a little more accepting of the way it's proceeding a bit there. To third, it should be said that these unchangeable reasons, right, are these unchangeable thoughts. You want to translate "ratio's" thoughts are the first beginnings of things to be done about which one does not err, right? And they are attributed to reason as to a power, and to synderesis as a what habit, right?

[45:46] Huh? Okay. No, it's the same thing, you know. If I go to the board here now, I'm going to demonstrate the Pythagorean theorem, right? Huh? Okay. Do I demonstrate the Pythagorean theorem by my reason? Or by the habit of geometry in my reason,

[46:05] or by both. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can say I'm doing it by my reason, but by reason as what affected, affected by this habit of geometry, right? Okay, so all these forms in my mind, right, that are ordered there, right, in the order of the theorems, huh?

[46:28] Whence by both reason and synderesis we naturally what judge, huh? Okay. Now, no, so we suddenly speak in English, huh? And it's a beautiful fragment too of Heraclitus that touches upon this, huh? One fragment where he says, "It is wise," he says, "listening not to me, he says, but to reason, to agree that all things are one."

[47:04] Okay, but since I take out those middle words there, right? Listen not to me, but to what? Reason, right? Okay, so Heraclitus is saying, huh?

[47:42] Now, Burnett, one of the famous English scholars, there, you know, has a book on the early Greeks, huh? He mistranslates this, huh? He says, "Listen not to me, but to my word." Oh. Now, Chris, in Greek, you have the same word for reason and for word right? Uh huh Namely logos, right? Okay, being the deity here, I guess, right? Okay.

[48:15] Now, first of all, there's no "my" there in Greek. They're just the one word, right? Yeah. So you're sticking in a word that isn't there, right? Hmm. But does it make any sense to say that? This is not to me, but to my word. It's the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Destroys the whole purpose of this, right? Yeah. Okay. Now, in another fragment, Heraclitus says, "Reason is common to all."

[48:49] Yeah. Now, we use that sometimes in daily speech, don't we? We say about somebody. That he won't listen to reason, right? Okay. Now, you don't mean by that you won't listen to my reason, do you? No. See, see. It's just he won't listen to reason, right? Okay. Now, what does that mean? See, because someone might say, "Hey, what is this reason you're being asked to listen to?"

[49:18] Right. Isn't it just my reason and your reason and the next man's reason? Right. What's this reason that you listen to? That is not my reason or your reason or the next man's reason. What is that reason?

[49:34] See, somebody might object to what we say in daily life, right? Yeah. And what Heraclitus is saying, saying, "Well, there is no reason except my reason, your reason, the next man's reason." Right. Okay. So, what does it mean to listen to reason, huh?

[49:53] What does it mean to say that reason is common to all, right? Now, another fragment he says that wisdom is to speak the truth. He says, and to act right in accord with nature. He says, huh? Giving ear there to right. Okay.

[50:26] Well, no, so there's connection there between common and what? Natural, right? See. What reason naturally knows is common to all of us, huh? Is it? And everything else that we find, we should judge. We find it by proceeding from what we naturally know, right? And we should return what we naturally know to judge it.

[51:07] So that's the secret in sense to understanding the truth of what we all say, right? No one listens to reason. That because of emotion, right, or because of of pride or something, right, he's cut off from that common, natural what understanding. See. And these following what images, right? Huh? Heraclitus says we should not act and speak like those asleep. For the waking, he says, there's one world that is common.

[51:43] The men fall asleep; each go into their own private world. He's hinting that that private world is false, right? Of course, the Greek word. idios, or you, get the word idiot.

[51:58] is a Greek word for private, huh? So an idiot is someone who lives in a private world. I'm Napoleon, right? You meet these guys in the madhouse there, right? In the 18th century, you know, they had a different attitude. You go down to the madhouse, kind of for afternoons' entertainment, right? To see if these people claim to be, you know, so one guy thinks he's Napoleon and he's, you know, issuing orders now, you know, for for his battle or something like that, right?

[52:25] You know, we don't think that's you know crazy. We don't laugh at these people, but but they're all living in a private world, right? You see, someone was describing somebody I'd known, and he got kind of mad, you know, and he'd be talking normally, and all of a sudden he'd be talking about his fleet of ships, like he's Aristotle and Nausiphanes or somebody, right? You know, it's like you know, all sort of the day, and I got talking about my army, you know, that's out there on the field, you know, and we're going to march there and take over Worcester, you know, I go back, you know, to being Quite normal here, you know.

[52:57] You say he's really, you know, Yeah. I saw something living in a world that's private to me, but but separate the imagination, right? And it's kind of interesting now that this this text that I mentioned in the third book of the De Anima, right? Now sometimes Thomas gets the text in a translation, right, and a little different, right? Yeah. But the actual Greek word there is nous, huh?

[53:28] Okay. And Aristotle says nous is always right, huh? Okay. Like synesis huh? synesis is always correct, but in one of the translations that Thomas refers to, in one text there it's not in the context of the commentary, but somewhere else. Reason is always right, huh? But again, you see, reason is always right. You are saying reason, insofar as it's what, in what it naturally knows, right? In?

[53:58] What it judges in the light of what it naturally knows, right? You see, that's always correct, right? Okay. But imagination is seen as kind of what, free to imagine anything, right? Sure. And try to imagine things that cannot be imagined even, and so imagination is, as such, is is deceptive and. Reason is not.

[54:33] Kind of interesting huh? The first man among the grids there to really see that the axioms about being and non-being and are the beginning was the man named what Parmenides, right? Parmenides. And we have the fragments of Parmenides where you know he talks about something cannot both be and not be, right? And that this is his beginning. You always come back to this, right? It's like Thomas says, right?

[55:01] You you always proceed from that, and you come back and judge things ultimately in the light of that, huh? And Parmenides says, you know, a man who thinks something can can both be and not be is a two headed mortal, he says. Mm hmm. Of course, a two headed mortal would be a monster, wouldn't he? Mm hmm. And monster says something. What opposed to nature? Yeah. Need one head to think that it is, one head to think that it isn't.

[55:37] I mean, one head, you know, could be in doubt as to whether it is or is not, right? She loves me, she loves me not. You know, but one in the same head couldn't, you know, ascent to both of those, right, at the same time, huh?

[55:54] Couldn't think at the same time that it must be, and it also must not be. One would take away with the other one. But I can't even take and eat it, as they say, huh?

[56:22] But no, it's going back to this now. See, Now so here, as Thomas was saying, in reply to last objection, something can be attributed to reason and to the what?

[56:38] A habit, right? Okay. You might say reason, as perfected by this habit, right, is able to what judge these things? Huh? Okay. Sorry. Just like just you can see my my just like the other virtues, my ability to feel anger, right, moderately, right. I must be angry by my ability to be angry, right? What's that? You see, but if I get angry, neither more nor less than I should, right, and when I should, and about what I should get, right, Anger about like, our Lord changes the men of the temple there, right?

[57:22] Yeah. And there's another passage I remember kind of stuck by going through the Gospels the last time. I forget which Gospel it is now. one time where Christ is really angry with the Pharisees and so on because they're they're really just denying the obvious, you might say, and and he's worked these miracles, right? You know, and and they they're they're they're obstinate, right? You know, so there's real anger now over there, and so

[57:53] I have to be angry by my ability to feel anger, right? But that I'm angry in a what moderate way or reasonable way, right? Is you might say is by the habit of mildness, and it's the same virtue that moderates anger, mildness. It's a sense of meekness, but mildness is a little better way to think of it Oh, okay. Mildness, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Christ even says that, you know, learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart meek and humble heart, right?

[58:25] The virtues of humility, humility and mildness go together somewhat. You know, by the proud, you know, are spoken of as being what represented as being given to anger, right? Because a proud man is usually offended you can say that you don't recognize as excellence, so you. you know? Mm-hmm. Okay? So sometimes in Socrates leading somebody into a contradiction, they get angry, right? The slave boy doesn't because he's a nobody, right?

[59:03] He has no pride. in anything. He doesn't have any position in society, right? Yeah. If a man has some position, reputation, and he gets angry, They're trying to refute me, Socrates, and so on. No, I'm just following where the argument goes, Socrates says.

[59:32] Did I see by my eye or do I see by my twenty twenty vision? Most probably. Yeah, yeah. But the one is kind of a disposition, right? Perfecting the other, right? Yeah. Okay.

[59:57] Do I do I lift this by my muscles, you know, or by my what? Strength. Strength, you know, is it? Well, the strength here is kind of a disposition, right? A habit to us, right?

[1:00:11] And so, just like if I do push-ups or some lift weights or something, right? I build up a what? A habit there, right? It's in my muscles, let's say, right? Huh? So, likewise, if I eat moderately, then I build up a habit of what moderation, right? If I restrain my anger when I have this desire, you know, then I build up this habit of mildness, huh?

[1:00:43] So, do a little break here before we do our second article.