De Anima (On the Soul)
123. Aquinas, Summa I, Q.81 a.1: Sensuality as a Desiring Power — Knowing as Rest, Loving as Motion
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[0:00] He did something terrible. Saint Francis de Sales said, "Look, I worked twenty years to build up this virtue. I just can't throw it away. "

[0:12] Something along those lines, but he wanted to control that passion, that anger. Holy Spirit, Amen. God, your enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, Praise. and help us to understand all that you've written. Name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen. Now If you transliterate this word sensualitas huh, they have exactly the same meaning in English, huh?

[1:08] Although sensuality does refer to the emotions, maybe you know a disorder in them, right? Or excess in them, right? Huh? But it doesn't have necessarily that sense in what Latin, right? Huh? Okay.

[1:28] It's interesting about words, though. Sometimes, huh? I remember how how they list the capital vices when I was a child, and maybe I got in the catechism or it was one. The capital vices was anger, right?

[1:45] And anger, of course, doesn't necessarily name a vice, huh? Right. Anger names an emotion. And if you're using my kids for target practice, I mean, anger is not a vice. And actually, you see, there's in the Gospels sometimes our Lord when he chases them out of the temple and so on. Other times, when they're being particularly stiff-necked and obtuse and rebellious, he's he's said to be angry, right, in the Gospel.

[2:20] But because people often and most often go astray, I suppose, because of their emotions, huh? Yeah. Then these emotions sometimes that are strong, right, take on this bad sense, huh? Sure. So anger becomes the name of a vice, right? When it isn't really, huh? So as I say, you don't want to translate this as sensuality in English, huh? Because that would be not exactly the sense of it at all, right?

[2:52] Okay. Thomas will explain the word in the body of the article, and we'll see a little better how he understands it, huh? It's going to be applied to to what we call the ability for emotions, right? Huh? The ability to feel emotions, or the ability to have these sometimes we call feelings, but feelings has a lot of other meanings too. Latin they call them passions, huh? Okay.

[3:23] To the first, thus it proceeds. It seems that sensualitas I'll leave in the Latin then. Not only is a desiring power, huh? But it's also a what knowing power. This is what the objectionists say. Because the word seems to be borrowed, obviously, from the the word sense, isn't it? Yeah. For Augustine says in the twelfth book of the Trinity. What? In the beginning, article one, question eighty-one.

[3:58] Oh, yeah, ten days. Yeah, okay. Um, I put my turn two pages or something. For Augustine says in the twelfth book of the Trinity that the

[4:14] we might call it in the sensible motion of the soul, right? Huh. Which is what directed towards or aiming at the senses of the body, right? It's common to us and to the the beasts, huh?

[4:34] But the sense, um, the senses of the body, right? Probably be the plural there, senses. The senses of the body are contained under the knowing power, right? Therefore, sensualitas is a knowing power, by Thomas and I don't understand the words of Augustine as not meaning exactly what the objection takes them to mean, huh? Right. But we'll see about that.

[5:06] Moreover, the things which fall under one division seem to be of one kind, but Augustine in the twelfth book of the Trinity divides sensualitas against higher and lower reason, which obviously pertain to knowledge. He says, therefore, sensualitas is also is also a what knowing power, right?

[5:37] Now, interesting, you know that sometimes we put things together that are different genera. Like you hear this remark sometimes that there are four cardinal virtues, huh? Okay. And actually, justice is in the will, and fortitude is, and and temperance are in the what we call sensuality here. But prudence or foresight is what in the mind or reason, huh? Okay. They're put together because they deal with the same what matter, right?

[6:09] Okay. Okay. Because foresight or prudence is directing us in these things that are the matter of justice or courage and so on. And then this word sensualitas comes up in the temptation of man. It's discussed when Augustine talks takes it up, and it's symbolized by the serpent. But the serpent in the temptation of the first parents is the one announcing and proposing the sin. now you'll be like the gods or like God himself, if you.

[6:48] eat of this fruit, right? And of course, to announce something, propose something, seems to be something belonging to knowing power. Okay. Therefore, sensualitas is a what knowing power, right? Okay.

[7:08] But now against this is that sensualitas is defined. And not in the yeah yeah to give you the reference there, right? It goes back to the what Peter Lombard there, the second book of the Sentences, Distinction twenty four. Now Thomas has a commentary in the whole of the Sentences, just about all of it, anyway, and and divided into four books, Sentences. And sentences means kind of what famous sayings, you know, but going back to the church fathers, but mainly from what Augustine, right?

[7:47] Okay. And then Lombard develops this and distinguishes things, and they're divided into distinctions. Distinction twenty four. So Thomas will will divide the text of

[8:05] Peter, and then he'll take up questions like in the Summa. I guess when Thomas was going to write the Summa Theologiae, he was he at first thought he was going to revise this thing on the Sentences. Oh, okay. And then he decided to do his own thing, right, with his own order, right? Okay. Which, in some ways, is better than the order of Peter Lombard, but anyway.

[8:28] But it's good to go back there sometimes because sometimes he's more what explicit there than he is in some of the later works. Okay. Okay.

[8:42] Okay. Now I answer, Thomas says. Sed contra, do we? I think. Yeah, the sed contra is one. They just said it's referring to what the magister says, the teacher. But against this is that sensualitas is defined as desire of things that pertain to the what body, right? Or you could say it's a desire of bodily things. Yeah. And that definition then is what is given by the by Peter Lombard, but notice something that he's always referred to by Thomas as what magister, right?

[9:20] The teacher. So he has that title there, right? In the Middle Ages, by antonomasia, it was amazing for how many I don't know several centuries that people who wanted to to get a degree, you might say, in in theology, would would comment or lecture on the sentences. So you have commentaries by all kinds of medieval. Teachers, right? On the census, uh, Thomas is undoubtedly the best. But you know, even for you know several centuries after Thomas, this was kind of the key text, right?

[9:59] Yeah. You know, closer to our time, the Summa Theologiae became kind of the standard text. You know, everybody was kind of exposed to. But

[10:10] excuse me, but do you all have magister in your text? No, no. I was saying in the Marietti edition, they have a footnote here that. All right.

[10:22] Because Thomas's text doesn't identify where it comes to. Okay. Okay, but if you have the Marietti edition, there maybe you have it. Does it or not? No. Okay. BAC, yeah, must be a Merrietti copy then. Yeah. In the the definition is there is put in italics, right? Like it's exact words as someone who's defined it. Yeah. Who is it that's given that definition? Well, the magister has done it, right?

[10:48] Yeah. The master. I do have a variation. Okay. I Did did you have the footnote or what? I don't have the footnote in the Sed Contra. I have I have in quotes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so that's what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. Um.

[11:10] So if there's a quote and it's not it's unidentified, is it always the sentences? No, no, no. You'd have to. But but it's like it's a common thing, you know. That's people where Thomas doesn't identify it so much there, right? All right. See where we're saying that. I answer. It should be said that the name of sensualitas, right, seems to be taken from a what sensible motion, right?

[11:39] Huh. Okay. And Thomas sees that in in the word, right? Huh. About which Augustine speaks in the twelfth book of the Trinity. Now, if you go to the Peter Lombard's work, right? Okay. He does draw upon many of the Church Fathers, right? But I would say, you know, most of all, and almost predominantly upon what Augustine, right? Uh huh. Now Augustine, you know, his writings are kind of what ad-hoc because he's always replying to some heretic or some somebody who's getting out of line, right?

[12:17] Okay. And so it's not quite as digested and ordered the way like the Summi is, right? Sure. But the sentence is doing that in a sense for us, huh? But you're getting kind of an account of what Augustine and sometimes some of the other Church Fathers are saying, right? This is kind of a

[12:41] bring together what is in the tradition of the Church, right? Yeah. And then raising questions and then solving them, right? And. Uh. Sometimes Thomas doesn't completely agree with with the Magister, but had to a bit by bit. But he's a very important writer, nevertheless. Um.

[13:03] So he says the name of sensualitas seems to be taken from a sensible motion. Let's put it that way, huh? Okay. About which Augustine speaks in the twelfth book about the Trinity, just as from a what act is taken the name of a power, right? In other words, sensualitas here is naming a power, but originally it's naming a what sense a sensible motion, right? But you you tend to name a power by its what act.

[13:45] Yeah. So, for example, sometimes we say instead of saying that man has a reason, we say man has what understanding and will, right? When you say man is understanding and will, what does understanding mean? Knowledge and understanding. Yeah, the ability to understand, right? But it's named in a way or given the same name as the act, right? Okay. And you see that with the with the senses, don't you?

[14:12] Sometimes, and he gives an example here from the senses, as vision from what sight, right? Or like smell, right? Or taste, right? So, what does taste name? Does taste name a the object or the act? Does it name the the sense that is able to taste things? Well, sometimes we give taste as a name of a sense, don't we? But maybe we see that taste might name the act of tasting something before it names that ability to, right?

[14:46] Okay. Now, Thomas seizes upon the word motus there in that meaning of the word, and he makes a very interesting point here. He says,

[15:06] "A sensible motion is the desire following upon what sensing, grasping, grasping, yeah, yeah. Now, he often uses that word apprehensiva, right? Grasping to refer to the knowing power. And he's going to be coming back to the thing that we see most clearly in the case of the mind, but also of any knowing power, that

[15:40] when you know, you got the thing you know inside your knowing power. See, and that's brought out in a sense by the word grasp, which comes from the hand. So when I grasp something, it's contained in my hand, huh?

[15:59] Okay. And because of that, he's going to see a distinction here. Why the word motion applies more to the desiring power than it does to the what knowing power? Because the knowing power knows by having the thing known in it, and therefore the knowing power seems to be more like rest,

[16:27] and that's why that's seen in the greatest kind of knowing, which is understanding, which is named from standing, which is a rest, not a motion. But motion applies more to the desiring power because when I desire something, I'm what moving towards that, going out to the thing, right? Okay.

[16:54] So he says the act of the grasping power, the act of the knowing power, is not so properly called motion, as the action of the desiring power. Now, why is that? For the operation or the action or the doing of the grasping power, the knowing power, is perfected in this that the things grasped are in the one grasping them. Yeah. But the operation of the desiring power is perfected in this that the one desiring is inclined towards the desirable thing, huh?

[17:41] Yeah. And therefore, he says the operation of the grasping power, the knowing power, is like rest. Okay. Creating. Yeah. But the operation of the desiring power is more like motion. Of course, we do have the emotions very much, don't we? The emotions are a name from what? Motion. Yeah. You see. You see. And those are and those are the apperative acts that are most known to us.

[18:14] The ones that belong to s what he calls sensualitas in this article, See. Once he says if the word sensualitas means what a sensible motion, one should understand by that the operation of a what desiring power, right? And if he carried over it to the ability, right, the power, then it's the name of a what sense desiring power, a power that whose

[18:54] desire falls upon some kind of knowledge of sense, right? But still, desiring power. That's a very interesting distinction there. Yeah. You know, I was teaching the love and friendship course, this semester there, and we're talking in the beginning there about whether love is a giving. We had all kinds of readings indicating this, right? Yeah. Give your love to somebody, right? Yeah. And then we had a whole series of readings where love is said to be a suffering, right?

[19:27] Yeah. An undergoing of being moved, right? Yeah. And he seemed to be saying contradictory things, huh? And Thomas, in the article that we looked at there, says that it's a what undergoing, huh? Okay. Okay. And then then you have to resolve the question: Why do we use the word "give" for love?

[19:55] Why is that? But it goes back to the same difference here, right? See, because in giving, what you're going out to the thing, right? I left my heart in San Francisco, or the opposite. People say my heart is not in it, huh? Or Christ says where your treasure is, there your heart shall be, right? So the heart goes out, right, to the thing, huh? Augustine says the soul is more ubi amat than quam ubi animat.

[20:28] The soul is more where it loves than where it animates. Well, it's the idea that your heart is in what you love, right? And so it seems to be what you're giving your heart, right? Okay. So a lot of times I'll say you know, it's always bad to lose your mind. Is it always bad to lose your heart? No, depends upon to whom or to what you lose your heart, right?

[20:59] But I think that brings out the difference there, right? Yes. Because if when you love, you are in some sense said to lose your heart, right? And then you can see that the object of love is in things, right? And you run up to the things.

[21:20] Then how how can we fit in the sense of undergoing? Well, it's because the way you begin to like something, huh? Because it is that you become aware of it through your senses or through your reason, right? Impresses you. Yeah. Because the word "impresses" you sometimes, you know, you made a big impression on somebody. It means that you your good qualities have been pressed upon their what heart in some way, right?

[21:45] And that result of that is they begin to like you, right? Okay. So liking is a result of your heart being acted upon by the good, right? That it's perceived. That is that is sensed or or known in some way, huh? Okay. Okay. So this is you know a similar point he's making here, huh? Okay. But it's very it's very clear in English when we use the word emotion to name these things, huh?

[22:14] Yeah. As Thomas is pointing out, he says that that that knowing is more like rest, and you can see that most of all in this wonderful word in English, understand, right? When I understand something, then I really know it fully, right? Say.

[22:38] But but understand, in English is obviously taken from the word to stand, huh? Okay. In the philosophy of nature, there we're talking about Heraclitus and and the influence that Heraclitus had upon Plato, huh? Mm-hmm. And Cratylus, one of Plato's early teachers, was a student of Heraclitus. And Plato has a dialogue called the Cratylus, where his two teachers, Cratylus and Socrates converse. Now, undoubtedly, Socrates had you know even a more even a greater influence upon Plato than Cratylus, huh?

[23:18] But Aristotle, who spent twenty years in the school of Plato, and in the old age, obviously Plato, he says even in old age, Plato was still holding on to some things he had learned from what Cratylus, right? And Cratylus had kind of exaggerated, if you could, the idea of Heraclitus that everything is changing, right? Oh yeah. Well, how can you understand something that doesn't stand still? As soon as it's always changing, say.

[23:47] And there you see the the contrast there, right? You know that motion is opposed to that, but when we talk about emotions now, you know, we say I was moved to do this, right? I say, and and then the English word emotion itself, obviously, is taken from the word motion. Okay, and so that fits more that it's a more it fits more the desiring power than the knowing power, and desire itself, hunger, thirst, seems to be kind of like emotion, doesn't it?

[24:22] Seeking it, going out to that. Okay, now the applies to the objections. To the first, therefore, it ought to be said that to this that Augustine says that the what

[24:42] motion, the sensual, the sensualitas motion of the soul, aims at the senses of the body. He does not give us to understand that the senses of the body should be what comprehended or placed under sensualitas, but more that the motion of sensualitas is a certain what inclination to the senses of the body.

[25:14] Because we what desire those things that are grasped by the senses of the body, right? And thus, the senses of the body pertain to sensualitas as a preamble. They walk before, right? Interesting, he uses the word preamble. Yeah. Um. Why do we say? Why does he say that motion is an inclination to the senses of the body, but yet the senses of the body come before? Well, in the sense that they are inclined towards what the senses have grasped in some way, or other.

[25:56] Okay. Now the second one here. To the second, it should be said that sensualitas is divided against higher and lower reason, in so far as they come together or communicate in the act of motion. For the knowing power to which pertains higher and lower reason is a motive power, just as the desiring power to which pertains sensuality. Now we saw that in Aristotle's De Anima Remember that in the third book.

[26:34] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But notice, huh? I find it very confusing. Actually. Yeah. What moves me to go to the the dining room, say, huh? Or to the to the place, huh? Well, the smell of the food, right? Right. And the the my desire for that food, right? Okay. So the Aristotle says in the De Anima that the food is the unmoved mover here. Okay. And the moved mover is both what, um, the senses that know the food, right?

[27:22] Okay. And the desiring power that desires it. Okay. Okay. In a way, the two of them come together because it's the same thing. Sense that is what desired, huh? Okay. I smell this food, and then I what desire what I smell, right? So what is desired, what is smelled, is the same thing, right? Okay. Or I understand what wisdom is, and then I desire wisdom, right, huh?

[27:54] So wisdom is both what is understood here and what is desired, huh? Okay. So that's the reason why they're things put together because they're both what, and some are responsible for our what motion, huh?

[28:12] My going to the dining room is my pursuit of the food is both a result of my sensing it, right? Right. And my wanting it, huh? I keep thinking while you're talking is that also that I mean the mind knows intellectually there's food there, so it doesn't, or is that just the desiring power that's operating? Well, both are involved. Okay. Okay. So

[28:43] I see the apple, right, and I want the apple, right? Right. So the apple is uh moving me, right? Right. But I'm moved in some way by my knowledge of the apple, right? Okay. And by my desire for it. Right.

[29:02] So both of them together are what responsible, right? And Aristotle says they're kind of they're kind of unify the two, right? Through the unmoved mover, which in this case is the food itself, right? Okay. Because the food itself is both an object in one way of the senses. Okay. And in another way, an object of desire, right? Desire. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So in that sense, the two of them might be distinguished, right?

[29:34] You see, the way the way it's done in the in the third book on the soul is Aristotle says, um, what is that initiates the movement of the animal towards something at a distance, right? Yeah. Well, is it some kind of sensation or knowledge, or is it desire? Well, you say both of them are involved, right? Yeah. See, but the two of them come together because what is known is the same as what is desired.

[30:10] Not that it's the same thing to be known and to be desired, right? Right. But he wouldn't pursue that food over there unless he didn't, if he didn't both what see it in some way, right, or smell it or something, right, and didn't what want it, huh? Okay. I see this cat at home. Muppet, she likes to come around. She can, you know, the tea with her, you know, kind of bothers you a little bit, right?

[30:38] Okay. Well, sometimes I take the wine glass and say, "Want some wine?" And she'll usually sniff the wine, huh? Then she'll walk away, turn away, right? See, because she has no desire. for it Yeah. She, but she smells it. Yeah. yeah See Uh huh So you have to both smell it and desire it, basically. But if I bring out a piece of meat and she smells it, she'll she desires it, and and you got to watch your hands, you know.

[31:07] I know sometimes I'm at the table like this too. Because sometimes I'll come down and give her something in my hand, but sometimes you sit at the table and I just your hand is dangling or something, right? And all of a sudden you know the you know her claws go out and her hand is hey, you know. That's the thing, see. So, because you think you're about to, you know, your hand maybe did it to give her.

[31:28] The other one's more clever. This one, I don't know if you see so well, but the one you just kind of drop it and she catches it in the mid air, you know, so it's a little safer. But they're very, very good at that. And the other cat was, I mean, the the one that's gone. I don't know.

[31:47] What was this? I'm trying to remember. I can't remember at all. With the De Anima this was in the. Remind us out of the context of that one. Well, see, you see, the early Aristotle takes up the powers of the soul. of the De Anima. He takes up the ones that the plant has first, right? Okay. Digesting your food, nourishing yourself, growth, reproduction, right? Yeah. Then he takes up the sense powers.

[32:13] Yeah. And the outward senses first. Okay. And then, the beginning, the third book, he starts to talk about the inner senses, like imagining. And then he takes up what reason, understanding, right? And then he takes up

[32:28] desire because some desires follow upon sensing, and some follow upon reason. Oh yeah. Okay. And and then finally the motive power, right? Okay. And that the motive power goes in operation, following some kind of knowing, right? And some kind of what? Desiring, right? Yeah. Okay. So an animal goes from one place to another

[32:56] Because he desires. Because he knows something. that. He desires, huh? Yeah. Okay. And so Aristotle says these are both movers, right? And that's why we distinguish those, huh? Okay.

[33:13] So when I'm eating my food or something like that, I have a desire for my food, but maybe I have to, you know, reason should say you've had enough wine or something, right? You know. So two moves: knowledge and desire. Yeah. Yeah. I see when Plato when Plato divides up the soul in the Republic. I don't know if you've read the Republic, but yeah. But he has he's talking about three parts of the soul, right?

[33:43] And one part is reason. Okay. And the other two parts. Are the ones of the other two parts of sensuality that we be talking about in the second article, and he compares reason to the what? Chariot to the one in the parts of the city. He compares it to the rulers, right? Oh, yeah. He compares the the irascible appetite to the thumas, thumos it's called in Greek, to the soldier, yeah, and then the epithumia the concupiscible appetite here, to the crowd, right, the common people, so to speak, the bottom, right?

[34:22] And they trace, understand, you know, the relations of these. Okay. But notice in the same division you've got reason and then two desiring powers, huh? Okay. And so you are talking about these in reference to action and so on. So that's why they're they're divided against each other. All you made, you know. Let's take you know a few now for dividing the theological virtues. Let's say it.

[34:57] Well, you say somebody say, well, hope and charity are both in the will, right? And so you divided them against each other. Well, then faith must be in the will too, because you are dividing that against hope and charity, which in the will. Well, it's not, is it? Faith is in is in reason, right?

[35:22] So you distinguish between faith and hope and charity, not because they're all in the same what, but because they're all related to one what? One end, right? Thomas has an interesting way of putting putting it. He says, "Faith by faith we know the end. " Okay. By hope we tend towards the end, and by charity we join to the end. Say, so they all have something in common, then, don't they?

[35:55] Right. Yeah. And so it makes some sense to distinguish faith, hope, and charity. Okay. But someone may object and say, "You know, if I object to that, like you just here and say, 'Well, hope and charity are virtues of the will, right? ' And therefore, faith, which is divided against them, should be another virtue of the will. " See, but you are not dividing virtues of the will when you divide faith, hope, and charity, are you?

[36:31] If you take the division as a whole, right? Say. If one for understanding and then one then two for the yeah yeah, but what you divide there, say you know those three. You can't see you dividing the virtues of the will because faith isn't a virtue of the will, right? So, what are you dividing, right? Why should they be in the same division? See, you know, I mean, you know, if you go back to you know something very simple, like geometry.

[37:03] In geometry, you have a division of triangle into isosceles, scaly, and equilateral, right? And you have a division of quadrilateral into what? Square and oblong and so on. We don't expect some triangle to be in there with square and oblong, would you? No. Or vice versa, right? Yeah. See, so generally, when you are dividing, you are dividing things that are the same in in kind, generally speaking, right?

[37:31] But then there is a reason for what dividing them sometimes things that are not of the same kind, huh? Oh. And might be because they are what they're all related to one end or something, right? Okay. So you say, what is moving me to to go over to get the bacon on the table, right?

[37:59] Well, it all started when I when I was laying in bed and I smelled it, right? And then I felt hungry for bacon. For bacon, you see. So you see, both my hunger and my desire, right? Now, if I had smelled salmon, I would have gone out of bed. I would have probably come over me. An awful smell. I don't know. Open the windows. You see the idea.

[38:27] So, then you might divide and distinguish, right? My sensation of the bacon and my what hunger for the bacon—they're not the same thing. And if I've stuffed myself and my hunger has been satiated, huh? And I smell the bacon, you might almost I wouldn't have any hunger. I wouldn't. I wouldn't be pursuing it, right? That's right. You see, so if you you say what's involved in my pursuit of bacon, then you would divide something that is an act of knowing, right?

[39:06] Smell and hunger, right? See, rather than dividing smell against what hearing and seeing, right? If you are dividing up the senses, then you divide smell against what. You see the objection and I'm showing how you could do a similar thing, right? Sure. Okay. If you distinguish smell against hunger, then hunger would be another kind of what? Senses, right? Yes.

[39:34] But but it's for different reason, right? They're ordered to one end. And that's in a way the thing about faith, hope, and charity, huh? They're ordered to what? By faith, hope, and charity, we are what ordered to God, right? By faith, hope, and charity, we are directed towards God, right? Okay. But by faith, we know that end, some way, and by hope, we are tending towards that end.

[40:05] But by charity, we are already in some way joined to that end. That's why Thomas says that charity, like St. Paul says, is the greatest of the three, right? Because it actually joins us to the end. But hope is even greater than than what faith, because you're tending now towards the end. Okay.

[40:27] You see that? When Aristotle defines moral virtue, he has something like that, because he defines moral virtue as a habit, huh, with choice existing in the middle between two extremes, but in the middle towards us, right? As determined by right reason, he says. So what's involved in there is this habituation of the heart, right, of the emotions, to the middle, but also the direction that they get from what reason, huh?

[41:13] Because we can't know how much to eat unless you take into account the circumstances, right? If you're not going to have another meal until dinner or something, right, you may have to eat more, right? If you're going to be doing some, you know, a lot of walking or a lot of work or something, physical work, right? You might need more food, right? Say, if it's Thanksgiving Day, you might eat more, right?

[41:38] Say, but only reason can take into account those circumstances and see what is appropriate now, huh? Yeah. Can you put that definition that's a habit, which is a habit? It's a habit with choice. With choice. Habit of choosing in a sense. Existing in the middle. Existing. But not the middle of the thing, but the middle towards us, right?

[42:11] So if I have have a roast there of meat, huh? It's not half of the roast that I should eat. That's the middle. That's the middle of the thing, right? You see. But what is, but towards us? But it's neither too much nor too little for me, right? See, if I have a gallon of whiskey there, or the middle. You have to drink half a gallon. No, no.

[42:38] But it's the middle towards us, right? Okay. According to reason. I see. Um. But and as but as determined by right reason, huh? Which is which is foresight, huh? Prudence, huh? The virtue of reason, huh? That says under these circumstances you should eat this much, right? Okay. Yeah. And

[43:09] see, if you bump me in the hall, right? Should I get angry? See, what else? Was it an accident, right? Right. See. Were you being careless? Is it?

[43:27] Or were you doing on purpose? You know, like the these guys in high school that bump everybody going down the thing, right? See. Okay.

[43:36] But now, if you're using my kids for target practice, huh? That would seem to me to what? To me, that's a thing to. It's reasonable to be a lot more angry about than getting bumped in the hall. Yeah. Right. Okay, you bump into my car, should I get angry with you? I say, well, it depends upon things. Are you drunk? Are you being, you know, kind of, you know, driving stupidly, or is it something that anybody could do?

[44:06] You know. Los Angeles game. Yeah. Okay. Before we take our break, I want to just come back a little bit here on this idea that this contrariety, I think, is the most interesting thing between the will between the desiring powers and the grasping powers, huh? The knowing powers, right? The siren powers. There are many ways you can show the contrariety of that. Many signs of it, huh?

[44:46] But one way of showing it is that in things, huh, health and sickness are what exclusive, huh? Mm-hmm. Okay. If I've got normal blood pressure, yeah, I can't at the same time have high blood pressure, can I? No. Okay. Or if I have an overactive thyroid or underactive too, right? I can't at the same time have one that's functioning in the way that's altogether healthy, right? Right.

[45:25] Okay. But now, in terms of knowing, there's the same knowledge of both opposites. If I know what abnormal or high blood pressure is, for example, don't I have to know what normal blood pressure is? Yeah. Same. What's the other? Yeah, and one opposite helps you know the other, huh? Yeah. Just like in ethics, huh? If I know that virtue is a habit in the middle, right, towards us, right, that helps me to know that vice is a habit in the excess or in the defect, huh?

[46:12] And vice versa, huh? Hmm. I told you about this wise guy. I was first teaching out in California. Was saying we shouldn't teach ethics because he'd learned that there's the same knowledge of opposites. So if you study ethics, you learn not only how to become good, but how to become bad. Yeah. And you can't really learn one without the other. Yeah. And therefore, since most people are inclined to be bad, he says, you're making them worse.

[46:44] See, Aristotle, like in the fifth book of the Politics, he teaches you how to preserve a government and how to overthrow it. It's the same knowledge, right? And you know, we can see, you know, tyrants around the world using the things that Aristotle teaches them to overthrow governments, right? I say, and so

[47:11] I can't know, in a sense, how to preserve the American government without going to some extent at the same time how to overthrow it, and vice versa.

[47:21] So this is the famous thing that Plato and Aristotle emphasize. There is the same knowledge of opposites, and you know one of the famous examples in Plato. There is at the end of the Symposium. I think I mentioned that before. At the end of Symposium, Socrates is talking to Aristophanes, the great comic poet, and Agathon has won the prize for his tragedy. But presumably Agathon doesn't write comedies, and Aristophanes is averse, and he says, "If you guys knew what you were doing, you could write both tragedy and comedy.

[47:56] " And that's what Homer could do, huh? Because Homer has a comic book that's been lost, the Margites, huh? But Aristophanes says the Margites is the comedy what the Iliad is to tragedy, and in Shakespeare you have great comedies and great tragedies, huh? But now, what about love? Is there the same love of opposites? Is

[48:26] the love of one opposite help you to love the other one? No. If I love health, I can't love sickness, can I? If I love wealth, can I love poverty?

[48:43] Not for myself, anyway, right? If I love beauty, can I love ugliness? If I love virtue, that impedes me from loving vice, huh? If I love vice, that impedes me from loving what? Virtue.

[49:04] So you can see how the the heart goes out to things, huh? It goes out to the health or the sickness in the thing itself.

[49:19] So if I love health, I hate sickness, huh? I love virtue, I hate vice. But if I know virtue and I ignorant of vice, in fact, it'll help me to know it. You really can't know without knowing the other, right? So that's a sign that the mind is taking these things into itself, right? And they're in the mind, in the way of the mind, huh?

[49:51] And that's that in the mind, and both opposites are what. Are there together? So, in the definition of abnormal, or high blood pressure, is normal, isn't it? Right? Yeah.

[50:13] But in reality, one excludes the other, and so love respects the condition of what things in themselves, right? That's because love is tending towards the thing itself. So that's we say. I left my heart in San Francisco, right? huh Where Anthony says to Cleopatra, "I go back to Rome. My heart stays here with you."

[50:42] Um, so that the the love is said to be in the thing loved. By knowing it seems reversed. The thing known is in the knower. That's why I use the word grasp with the word take sometimes. Huh? Say, and if I am talking about a definition, we want to get something into your mind in a distinct way. I say we've got to take the genus first of that, and then you've got to find the differences and take those.

[51:11] You know, but there you are taking, you know, grasping. You know, but that doesn't seem to be to name our loving, huh? You know, and a popular thing, you know, love is in love until it's given away. You see, but you don't think of grasping, you know, as as perfecting of love, but but that's perfecting of knowing, right? You grasp what I am saying. Do you understand what I am saying?

[51:35] Huh? Okay. This should be the principle behind St. Thomas's picture. says you cannot love God and money. It's not possible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No man can serve two masters. You know this sort of thing. You can't. You can't love virtue and love vice, right? Yeah. Hmm. You can know both, though. In fact, you probably can't. No one without the other. Now, another way of seeing this too is this: that knowing the bad is actually what good, and knowing something bad doesn't make you bad at all, even though the thing is bad.

[52:23] But loving what is bad doesn't make you makes you bad. Goethe says it well, huh? We are shaped and fashioned by what we love, huh? Goethe, the German poet. So if you love disgusting things, he said, you yourself become disgusting. Say, but if you love beautiful things, you are yourself to some extent what beautiful, huh? Hmm. If you love good things, you yourself are good. You love bad things, you self are are bad.

[53:05] But if knowing bad things makes you bad, then oh knowledge would be bad, wouldn't it? Because you had the same knowledge of the good and the bad. This is then it comes back to St. Thomas would say we can only make one thing our end. It's only possible. So many people are making money their end. They have no chance. tending toward happiness. Yeah, He's talking about taking towards the thing in itself, where one excludes the other, right?

[53:37] And that's what they view will make them happy, right? Everyone views this will make them happy. Yeah. Yeah. And there is only one real source of happiness.

[53:53] So. these are two sides then, right? If you compare, there is the same knowledge of opposites, but there is not the same love of opposites, right? The knowledge of one opposite helps you know the other one. The love of one impedes you from loving the other, right? But then the other thing is that knowledge of the bad doesn't make you bad. In fact, it's good to know the bad

[54:21] as such, right? Why loving the bad already makes you bad, huh? That's why it's good to know human nature. So essentially, you're taking on something of the character what you love. If you love God, already you're godly in some way, right? Huh? But if you love vice, you are already, in some sense, vicious.

[54:55] You love sickness, you're sick. You love ugliness, you are ugly yourself now. Because you're tending towards this as it is in itself. While you're loving God, then you are in some sense joined to God, huh? And this is very good. Makes you very good.

[55:39] I actually never did three. Third objection. Okay. To the third, it should be said that the serpent not only shows and proposes the sin, right, of eating the apple where it was, but he also inclines them to the effect of the sin, right? Okay. And in this respect, sensuality is signified by the serpent. Okay. Okay, so should we take a little break here before we do the article two here?