De Anima (On the Soul)
126. Summa I, Q.81 a.3: Do the irascible and concupiscible appetites obey reason? The political, not despotic, rule of reason over the emotions
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[0:00] compared to Mozart and Bach, I would say that you want two things for music, right? You want it to be noble and to be sweet. Um. And the music of Handel, someone could argue, is more noble than that of Mozart, huh? You know, I mean, although. God our enlightenment, guardian angels strengthen the lights of our minds, ordain luminary images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, pray for us and help us to understand all that you've written.

[0:33] Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. So, in question eighty-one here, Article Three, yeah, whether the irascible and the concupiscible mean these two powers or the emotions that they have, whether they obey reason? So he first objects saying they do not obey reason. The first objection, of course, is taken from things Augustine says. Correctly, the irascible and the concupiscible are parts of what we spoke before of how sensuality in English isn't exactly meaning of it, but it fits the context here somewhat, right?

[1:14] Huh? Okay, three one three there, right? Yes. Okay, but but sensuality does not obey reason, whence it is signified by the serpent, as Augustine says in the twelfth book of the Trinity. Therefore, the irascible and the concupiscible do not obey reason, huh?

[1:36] Okay. Moreover, what obeys something does not fight against it, but the irascible and the concupiscible fight against reason, right? According to that of the apostle. Now notice how he calls Saint Paul the what? Apostle. Yeah, yeah. And doesn't John Paul II, Saint Peter and Paul, as the princes of the apostles? Oh. But Thomas, I guess there's some basis that even Scripture that that Peter and Paul will call themselves apostles more in the epistles than the other ones will.

[2:15] Okay. And so it's by Antonio Messiah, but Thomas usually refers not to to to Peter but to to Paul, right, as the apostle. Um,

[2:29] in the epistle to the Romans, huh, verse chapter seven, I see another law in my members, huh, fighting against the law of my mind, huh. So even Paul is experiencing this, huh? Yeah.

[2:47] Even Christ said, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." Huh. Therefore, the irascible and the concupiscible do not obey reason, huh? Moreover, just as

[3:09] just as the desiring power is below the what rational part of the soul. So also is the power to sense, but the sensing power of the soul does not obey reason. For we do not hear or do we see when we want to, right? So Romeo can't see or hear Juliet, right? He says the mice there can see and hear, rats can see and hear, but I can't, right?

[3:36] So if you don't have any control over that, right? Can't see if you're not here. Therefore, likewise, neither are the what powers of the sense desire, namely the irascible and concupiscible, neither do they obey reason, huh? Okay, so these guys see that there's a distinction, right, between the senses and the sense desire, and why the one doesn't need to obey the other, but the other can.

[4:09] But against this is what Damascene said. So John Damascene, what obeys and is persuadable, right, by reason or through reason, is divided into and notice the way they translate there concupiscentium. I guess Damascene would be writing in Greek, huh? Originally concupiscentium irascentium. That's probably just like the Greek words, what epithumia and thumas. I would say translate, but usually when they refer to these two powers in Latin, now they use the term concupiscible appetite and irascible appetite.

[4:45] But it's just one word in the Greek, huh? This is very close to it, huh? Goes back to Plato and Aristotle, huh? Epithumia and thumos. So Thomas is going to reply now. I answer that the irascible and the concupiscible obey the higher part, in which is the understanding or reason and the will, right? In two ways they obey them. In one way as regards reason, and the other as regards what?

[5:26] Well, the will, huh? Now, do you want to take a look at those separately, right? Okay, yeah. They obey reason as regards their very acts, huh? How is this so? Okay. Now Thomas doesn't mean that they're going to what perfectly obey, right? Huh? Anything like that, but he's

[5:51] saying that they do some extent obey reason, or they can. Now, what's the reason for that, huh? Because sense desire, huh? And also he says appetitus sensitivus. He means what?

[6:10] We mentioned before how in Latin. They're more apt to take the name of the act, right, and give it to the what power, right? So, a petitus might mean desire, right? Yeah, yeah. But then the word desire in Latin, appetitus, can mean the power or the ability to desire. Now, I mentioned last time that sometimes in English we do that. So, someone might say, "Is understanding is the name of what

[6:39] the act, but also you could say, 'Man is an animal with understanding, meaning the power to understand, ' right? " Right. So sometimes we do use the same name, right, for the act and the power, and that's what happens with the word appetitus here, right? It means desire, right? But also the ability to desire. Well, it would be like in English if you took the word desire to name the act, the wanting itself, right, and then use it another meaning, meaning the ability, the power for that same act, okay?

[7:10] And sensitivus means the what ability to desire following upon the senses, right? Okay. He says the sense ability to desire in other animals, right, is apt to be moved by the estimative power. What does the estimative power mean? Well, we talked about the internal senses, right? And there were four inward senses that Thomas distinguished.

[7:44] But two of them are retaining what the other two do. So it's what we call the common sense, the sensus communis, the sense that we're aware of from the fact that we not only sense the difference between white and black, or we sense the difference between sweet and bitter, which outward senses can do—one, the eye, one—and we also sense the difference between white and sweet. Yeah. And so they come back to a common center, and they call that the common sense, right?

[8:20] Or I sometimes call it the central sense because common sense has other meanings in English, right? Okay, the sensus communis. Aristotle talks about that in the third book about the soul, right? And he begins the third book. He goes to that, but then in the other animals, even there are things that they seem to be aware of when they sense that are not really sense quality. And so, when you take the example he gives there, right, of the the sheep there, right, when it sees the wolf, right,

[8:59] it's not that the the color or the shape of the wolf is repugnant, right, but he recognizes somehow as something to be flee, right, run away from, huh? And especially last time, think of how there's these little birds that they notice, huh? Who are often preyed upon by these big birds, you know, and when they're little and the big bird flies over, you know, they just you know crouch down, right, as if recognizing that.

[9:24] Or I was taking that example of the the cat there, right, who seemed to react to that belt, which seemed to be like a snake, as if the snake was a kind of naturally natural enemy, right? They don't, you know, have statements. They don't say this is an enemy. I got to run away. But they, when they see that shape of the wolf, they

[9:48] see as something to be fleeing, right, to run away from. Okay. So notice, you might say, there's some fear in the animal when he sees that, right? Okay. And so the emotion is obviously being controlled by the what? It's obeying to some extent the estimative power, right? Okay. The instinct, huh? Oh is it that that's what we'd call. in English instinct Yeah, to some extent. Yeah, the estimative power is what we'd call instinct.

[10:21] Okay. Um. Now, as we learned above, in place of the of instinct, there is in man, as has been said above, this cogitative power, as it's called sometimes, which is called by some the particular reason, in that it is what bringing together individual right images and so on, just like the universal reason brings together what universals.

[10:55] Whence, by it, the sense desire in man is apt to be moved, just as in the animals, the sense appetite is apt to be moved by instinct.

[11:07] Now, the difference, one difference between, you didn't speak here fully. One difference between the cogitative power, as they call it, and the instinct of the animal, is that the cogitative power

[11:24] sees the singular under the universal, right? There's a kind of a collaboration of these two powers. Okay. So I see this as what something to be dropped, right? I see this as as as a beverage, right? I see this as what I know it in singularity, but I see it as coming under something more what universal that I know, right? And that's where the the universal reason, right, can what influence this thing, right?

[12:03] So he says the particular reason is apt, naturally apt to be moved and directed by the universal reason. Whence, in syllogism, you might say, right, from universal propositions are concluded what singular conclusions, right? People always joke about the death of Ivanovich, uh what's his name, The, one by Tolstoy, you know, where the guy had gone to school and heard it: "All men are mortal. Socrates is a man, therefore he's mortal."

[12:32] We never thought it applied to himself, right? And now he's on his deathbed. Okay. And therefore it is clear that the what universal reason can command the sense one, right? The sense desire, which is distinguished by the concupiscible and the irascible, and that this what desire obeys it, right? See what he's saying there, right? He's saying that just as the sense desire of the animal obeys its instinct, right, so our sense desire is apt to obey what our cogitative power, right?

[13:13] Our cogitative power is under the influence of the universal what reason, huh? Okay, and therefore, universal reason, in some sense, commands right the sense one. Okay,

[13:31] and he says, and because to deduce universal principles or from universal principles to singular conclusions is not a work of what simple understanding, right? Right. But more reason. That's the kind of movement there. Right. Therefore, the irascible and the concupiscible are more said to obey reason than to obey what understanding, right? See. So you have to apply universal in a sense to singular. That's like a kind of reasoning, right?

[14:05] So the old standard textbook is is this woman is not my wife, right? So this actor is adultery. Adultery is prohibited by the sixth commandment or something, right? Therefore, I shouldn't do this, right? Okay, you see that? Yeah. Okay, so you're applying universal to this singular here and now, right? This money is yours, right? It's not mine, right? Okay, so take what is not mine is is robbery.

[14:32] Robbery is prohibited, but you know, so the universal, right, is applied to the singular, right? And that is kind of reasoning, huh? I should not steal. This this would be stealing. Therefore, I shouldn't do this, right? You see, so that's why he said to obey reason more than to obey simple what understanding, right? It's not going to obey. In other words, my just understanding that that robbing is wrong, right?

[15:00] But I've got to say that this is robbing. Therefore, this is wrong, right? So it's it's said more to obey reason than to obey what simple understanding, huh? Adultery is wrong, unless I I bring under that the particular this is adultery. Then I don't syllogize, as he says, right? I don't reason that this is wrong, huh? Okay.

[15:38] He says this also. Each one is able to experience in himself that by applying universal considerations, he what mitigates, right? He doesn't say illuminates entirely, right? But he mitigates anger or what fear or something of this sort, right? Or also that he what he might instigate, right? Okay.

[16:13] So I was driving up to Quebec City one time in a new car, right? And I. Went through Maine and what they called the route the President Kennedy, but wasn't very well kept up, right? There's all kinds of potholes, right? Yeah.

[16:31] So I was always putting on the the brakes, so because you're covering their pothole, right? So I had some crazy French driver behind me, right, who was getting impatient, yeah. So finally he roars by me, and as he roars by me, his his car picks up a stone. I can hear it hitting the side of the car, right? Well, I knew it was going to be a mark in the car, right?

[16:53] And they say your first reaction got a little bit, you know, upset when I said that yeah. But I'm a philosopher, you know. Yeah. To get excited about this, you know. So I was applying something universal, right? Philosophers don't get excited about these sort of things, you know. I'm a philosopher, but do I care? You know. But what did the misses say? Will. So. Oh, by the way, when did you use that?

[17:27] Yeah, what? A couple times he says "natus est. Yeah, it's naturally apt. Yeah. Natus is related to nature. Oh I see what you're saying Yeah. okay. So that's how you say aptum natum est, you see the whole phrase, right? But it's kind of a little more briefier. Okay. Now, in the Nicomachean Ethics, you see when they talk about this this experience here, right? If you don't have that experience, right, you're not in a position to do ethics, right?

[18:00] Yeah. Kind of textbook common example there is that that sense desire is diminished by what abstinence or something of this sort, right? Okay. And by saying no and so on, and that's a matter of what experience, huh? Okay. Um. Now, as a little boy, there I was stuffing myself with candy one day, and my brother Richard, there, four years older, right, said,

[18:31] "Stop eating that's all that stuff, right? " And I said, "Well, it's no sin to eat candy. " I said, "I fed myself. " And he says, "Well, no, it's not a sin. " He says, "To eat candy, " says, "But if you can't say no to candy, you can't say no to something that's lawful. Then you're going to end up what not saying no to something that's unlawful.

[18:51] " I think that was good advice. And I think you know you see something you know of what he's talking about here, right? That experience, huh? That if you have if you don't in any way say no to yourself, even those things that are lawful, right? Then your appetites are getting too strong, right, for you, maybe, and you're going to not say no to something that's really unlawful, and that's.

[19:16] A matter of experience, huh? Okay. I think another thing that he knows a lot is is in in anger. I think it's interesting. I was thinking of, of, Francis de Sales, and there have been other saints, I guess you know, who were by nature what irascible, and sometimes you see this. No children too, that you know, some children are more given to anger than others, huh? And if you correct them and try to make them mild, right?

[19:54] Then they, they sometimes what, you know, well, yeah, yeah, they do, yeah. And you hear people saying, you know, some people are nervous, camp, and speaking for a group, right? And They have a certain fear, right? Huh. And there's all kinds of little tricks that people have, you know. I wouldn't repeat some of them, but but I mean, things that people will think about, right? To help them to be more what, you know?

[20:31] Yeah. To dominate the audience, so to speak, rather than to be intimidated by by the audience, huh? And you know, you know that you're kind of, you know, kind of picking out one person in the audience. You're kind of addressing that person, right? If that's the only person there, you know, and then maybe you you're, you know, you want to stare at one person, obviously a lecture or talk or whatever it is.

[20:52] Then you look at somebody else, right? You're talking to him or her alone, right? Huh. So all kinds of little universal considerations that mitigate these things, huh?

[21:09] When I was senior there to graduate, I goofed up on something on my, you know, according to school requirements, you know. No. And Casuri was my advisor, see. You see, and so he hadn't caught the thing, see. Oh. And because Casuri was all concerned he said, he just laughed. You heard it, see. He says, "Duane says, I thought you were smarter than that." Yeah, yeah, yeah. You see, I start to feel a little bit of, you know, anger and stuff.

[21:35] I owed so much to him. I couldn't possibly. get angry at the man, see, you know. So you know, I'm thinking, you know, you know, I can't get angry with this man, right?

[21:45] Yeah. So that's really kind of the experience that has to underlie ethics, right? Huh. The experience that the emotions, right, can be to some extent calmed or tamed, right? Oh yeah. It's like the Bible says, you know, soft word turns away anger. Oh yeah. And to some extent, it's true that it takes two to make a fight. Huh. Well, some people are pretty persistent trying to get you into a fight, but but

[22:19] I think it's a matter of experience, right? That you can turn things off to some extent. That's as far as as what the reason itself, huh? But then he said the the will also directly, huh? And he says to the will also is the sense desire what subject in some way, right? As far as it's what execution, huh?

[22:52] Which comes about to the the moving power. In other animals, right? At once, to the what desire the concupiscible or the irascible, there follows motion, just as the what.

[23:07] Sheep. Sheep. Yeah. Fearing the wolf, immediately flees, right? Huh. Yeah. Because there is not in them some superior appetite. which fights against this, right? But a man is not immediately moved according to the what? irascible and concupiscible appetite, huh But he expects the command of the will, which is the superior desire, right? Yeah. So,

[23:35] when my brother still used to get, you know, when he was young and get angry, go pick up something to throw, at me a block or something. My mother would always what? You know, she saw that she come right over and give a little patting, right? See. So after a while, if you pick up a block going to throw, then he'd stop and look around and say, "My mother's there, right?

[23:53] " So he has some command over that, right? And a lot of times you see people when they're kind of seething, you know, angry. You've probably seen this, you know, and they they've got something in their hand, you know, but they're kind of thinking twice that if I get in trouble, if they really, you know, go and club you with this stick, however it is that they have in their hands, right?

[24:09] You see. So, but you're kind of learning to control your anger a bit, right? Because you're controlling the the carrying out of this in your body, right? So your body is not a magical being. your anger to hit this person, huh? And the same we see a prince sometimes, you know, on the on a diet or, you know, the kind of you know struggle to keep from reaching for the candy bowl or the other drink or whatever it is, right?

[24:36] You know, and and the so the will is really what more powerful, right? Than my desire to reach for the candy, right? I can say no, right? Okay.

[24:55] So he says, in all moving powers that are ordered, the second mover does not move except in the power of the first mover. Whence the lower desire does not suffice to move unless the superior desire consents, right? And this is what the philosopher says in the third book about the soul that the superior power moves the lower one as the sphere, the higher sphere, the what? Lower, right?

[25:22] In this way, therefore, the irascible and concupiscible obey reason, huh? Now Plato sometimes compares reason with the emotions, though, like what a man and the what? Horses, right? Yeah. See. And how the man has to some extent tame the horse, right? Mm-hmm. And kind of marvelous. You read Washington Irving, you know, the Tour of the West, Tour on the Prairies, which he made when he came back from Europe for that first long time.

[25:52] And he's talking about how these wild horses, how they are very hard to capture, you know, but when they capture them, the men know how to break them in pretty quickly. It's kind of amazing to see how quickly the horse becomes tame, and so, but sometimes the saints talk about this too, you know, sort of the violence that you have to use with yourself, right, in order to bring these the emotions on the control of reason.

[26:16] And obviously, this control was something much less after the fall than what before, right? So Thomas, you know, I think Augustine too, when they talk about the the fall of Adam and Eve, they couldn't fall through the passions; it had to be a what a very spiritual sin, huh? Had to be a kind of what pride, huh? Okay. But now in the fallen state, I mean, the emotions can instigate a lot of what sins, huh?

[26:47] So if you look at the so-called what capital vices, right, which are the vices that lead the other bad things in their train, huh? But a lot of them are named from what emotions, like you know, one for anger and one for you know, lust and one for maybe you know, drunkenness and so on. Okay. Um.

[27:16] Okay. Now, the first objection was based on what the irascible and concupiscible coming under what is called the sensual power, right? And this was signified by the serpent, right, in the scripture, I guess. Thomas says to the first, therefore, it should be said that the sensuality signified by the serpent, as regards what is proper to it on the part of the sensing power.

[27:51] Okay. Well, he says the irascible and the concupiscible more named the sensing desire on the part of the act which is induced from reason. That's a little bit strange that he says that. Um. But I mean, the distinction underlies this is the idea that the what emotions, after all, are something common to us and the other animals, huh? Because we share the other animal senses, and so the emotions are going to be moved, as he goes on to say in the reply to the objections, sometimes by the what the sensible without you know reason at all, right?

[28:27] Okay. And you know, this is always a question in moral theology, right? When is lust, so to speak, right, or even anger, right? When is that a sin, or when is it a moral sin, right? You know, and whether these first movements of the appetite that seem to what recede almost, right, the activity of reason or the will, um, they they are less than a mortal sin, right?

[28:54] Okay. Um. When when the reason the will are not consenting, right, to to that first move. The same way, you know, this question that people have about. Judging others, right? But sometimes somebody's what they're doing is so flagrantly out of line that the moment you see it, do you kind of recognize that they're, you know, there's a prostitute down there soliciting or something like that, or a man soliciting prostitutes, you know?

[29:31] You kind of almost judge it automatically, right? You see. So it's not like you're giving necessarily a, a, a, absolutely firm judgment, right? But I mean, is this, you know, sin of judging others? I don't think so, really.

[29:53] Now the second objection, and that's when he took you know, less a person than St. Paul talking about seeing another law in his memories, right? Okay.

[30:11] So I've heard some priests describe, you know, the, the, uh sense desire. There's like an animal you've kept caged up all these years, and you can't quite trust it, you know. You know, I can't quite trust an animal because you know you read the newspaper sometime, you know, somebody's had a pet some kind of animal, and all of a sudden they attack a child or something, you know, and there's something like that, right?

[30:33] It's like you can never wholly trust your your lower self. To the second, it should be said that, as the philosopher says in the first book of the Politics,

[30:50] one can contemplate or look at in the animal two kinds of rule, right? This is kind of Marxist. Aristotle says this, yeah. And one is the despotic rule, and the other is the what? Political rule, huh? Aristotle says that the soul dominates the body by despotic rule,

[31:17] but the understanding, right, dominates or rules the appetite by a political and kingly rule, huh? Okay. Now, sometimes Aristotle states it simply like this. He says, and it's very clear way of stating the question because in Greek society, in a Greek household, you always had what? The father, and maybe the father had a son, and the father had what? Slave. Yeah, so he's both a father and a master, right?

[31:54] Yeah. And that's why you see in St. Paul's epistles when he's giving domestic instructions, right? He'll give instructions about husband and wife, instructions about father and son, and and master and slave too, because that's what a Greek household would have, huh? Yeah. And you know, if you read the Odyssey, you see this, right? The Odyssey, Odysseus is coming back home after what ten, twelve, twenty years, I guess it is, and so he's got a wife there, right?

[32:23] Who's been faithful to him, though she has many suitors, and he has a son, right? And he has a faithful servant or slave, right? Eumaeus, Eumaeus, Eumaeus, faithful swineherd, right? Okay. And so, oh, you know, so you have the three relations there, right? Husband and wife, husband and son—I mean, father and son—and master and slave for a servant, huh? Okay. So that's where you get the terms, you know, liberal education and servile education.

[32:55] Yeah. People don't realize how it arises, but Aristotle says in the metaphysics there that just as we say, you know, in society that the slave is what for the sake of his master, right? Yeah. Not for his own sake. Why the free man, as opposed to slave, is for his own sake. So by certain likeness to that, huh? Yeah. We call a knowledge that is not for its own sake servile or slavish, and a knowledge that's for its own sake liberal or free.

[33:26] Okay, so that's a common analogy, huh? And it's the metaphysics that we're showing that the end of liberal education is wisdom. The beginning is the liberal arts. Yeah. Okay. So, liberal arts is the beginning of liberal education, and wisdom is the end, and and geometry of Euclid and so on, and natural philosophy and so on in the middle, right? So,

[33:54] but he uses this likeness, likeness to this here, because he he asks sometimes, should reason rule the emotions? Say, that's you kind of know that it should, but he asks, should reason rule the emotions as a master rules a slave, or as the what? The father rules the son, right? Okay. Now,

[34:23] what's the difference between those two rules, right? Well, there is a number of differences, huh? One difference is in the end or purpose, huh? The master rules the slave, not for the good of the slave, but for his own good. But the father rules the son for the good of the son. Okay.

[34:48] But a second thing is the slave has nothing to say about what he's going to do or not do. Why the son has what

[35:00] something to say about what he's going to do in life, et cetera, right? So, there is a real difference in the rule there, right?

[35:14] Now, sometimes you know, a father may try to force his son into being what he is—if he's a lawyer, if he's a doctor, whatever it is. He's a general. He might want to be a soldier, but maybe the son is not really suited to what the father is, right? You see. So, if the father were to try to what force the son to be in the same profession he was in, when it's wholly unsuitable to the to the son, right?

[35:40] Well, then he'd be treating him like a what? A slave, in a sense, right? He's not ruling him for the good. Yes, sir. So you have to listen to some extent to where the the interests and inclinations are of the son. You give him some direction, right? You don't let him just run wild, obviously, but it's a different thing, you know.

[36:01] Remember my father, you know. My father was a businessman, right? But he kind kind of saw we were interested in other things than being in business, you know. But I remember telling me this story of one of his business friends. Now, if I ever told you the story, but. This businessman had quite hopes for his son, right? So we're in Minnesota, right? So he got his son out here into a prestigious college, like Amherst, I guess it was, right?

[36:26] It's hard to get into, right? So first year at Amherst, the kid of course flunked out, and he not only was not, you know, caliber for that institution, but wasn't really, you know, suitable for college at all.

[36:43] And the father finally saw this, right? So he might have had some hopes, you know, he's going to send him to some fancy college, you know, and who knows other plans he had beyond that, right? But here the guy's not even fit for the fancy college; that's fit for any college, apparently. So the son comes back, and my father's friend asked him, "Business friend, what do you really want?

[37:05] " You can see he wanted a gasoline station. He wanted to run a gasoline station, so his father had lots of money, right? So he buys him just to run the gasoline station, right? Obviously. But I think my father was telling me, you know, like, like you know, that man was sense what, what a father's supposed to do, right? Yeah. I mean, you might have hopes that your son would be something higher than that, you know, like you are or something like that, but but maybe your son isn't, you know.

[37:31] So you have to kind of, you know, consult his inclinations and consult his his abilities and so on, right? Okay. So, how should reason rule the emotions? That's the question Aristotle raises, right? Should be like a master rules a slave, or like the father rules the son?

[38:03] Well, actually, when reason rules the emotions, it should be for the good of the emotions, huh? But it's not the emotions have nothing to say, huh?

[38:14] And so you don't you don't to some extent you consult the inclination of your own emotions, huh? But within reason, right? You mean for the good of reason? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know yourself. I mean, it

[38:34] might be some some day or or some time of some day when I normally study, but I just emotionally I'm not in the mood for this, right? Well, maybe I should. Maybe I shouldn't force myself, right? Maybe I can't accomplish myself if I force myself, right? So maybe I need some kind of diversion or something, right? Or some kind of relaxation, right? Um,

[39:01] watch the last part of the baseball game or something. We had a good the other night, huh? Oh. You know, it was it was the last. Well, yeah, Boston's behind three to two, I think it was, and then the enemy there in I don't know the ninth inning or something, they had two more runs, so it's five to two, right? Oh. Now Boston is up five to five to two the game, and you know I said they're going to come back now.

[39:29] You know this is that last half of the ninth, last chance. Wow. Well, they managed to get two guys on base, but they had two outs. Oh wow! And so now the the the fifth guy's up at bat, see, and it goes it goes to three and two the count. Oh boy! See, see anyway. Boston's great at this. Go ahead. Yeah, he knocked the ball out of the ballpark.

[39:53] So three runs come in. Now now it's tied five to five. See, and then so goes in the tenth inning. They they stop the enemy there in the the Baltimore was the first half right in the tenth, and then I think it must been the first guy up or something like that in the second half of the tenth bottom of the 10th Wow! Home run! No way So everybody's all. Excited see, yeah.

[40:18] So my wife turned on the thing last night to see this game. They wanted to win one more game again in the playoffs already. And Baltimore, the plan is to win Baltimore again. First inning, Baltimore's up. They scored seven runs.

[40:36] It must have been you know. when he, came back right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're never able to catch up with them, right? But you've got seven runs the first. you know. And it's kind of funny because they were recounting it in the evening sports news or it was, and and they kind of showed that that first half of the first inning, But they split up the camera.

[40:56] You see, so we gave it, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, This sort of stuff. Yeah. So now you you might listen to your emotions a bit, right? Sure. And and I remember one thing is kind of funny. You know, someone's saying to me years ago. Sometimes you're kind of you know distracted, so you turn the TV set on or something like that, right? Of course, it's so stupid the TV used most of the time, right?

[41:26] He says that I get up and I turn off before the program is finished. Then there's a little bit of frustration because you didn't see the whole thing, right? Yeah. Well, it's kind of six of one. half it does the other, right? It's kind of a stupid story where it is. But you don't see the finale, you see, the emotions get kind of, you know. So, you have to, to some extent, what listen to your emotions, inclinations, and what they're capable of, right?

[41:52] Okay. And that's a little bit like you listen to your son and what his inclinations are and what his things are. Yeah. Now it's a little bit different analogy here, but because here he's not going to talk about he's not talking about how we should be with emotions, but he's saying how does reason rule my hand? Huh? You see, I see my hand's automatic. You see, if I want to move my hand out, you know, to here, it doesn't resist me at all, right?

[42:25] It doesn't have to resist me at all, right? You see, you know. So it's kind of a despotic rule over my hand. Huh? You do this, and hand doesn't have anything to say about what's going to move there, right? But that's not the kind of rule I can have over my what emotions, huh? You see. So I say, don't get angry. Don't don't be afraid. You see.

[42:47] Well, it's just not like that, huh? Yeah. So the soldier may feel you know some fear going into battle, right? Right. Even though he's got his anger somewhat under control, right? Huh. This this is actually interesting. This came up in another context. Does Saint Thomas develop that aspect of the question of the emotions needing to be listened to to a certain extent? Yeah, he's following up with Aristotle.

[43:16] Aristotle is his teacher. His master, right? Well. Yeah. Excuse me. It just seems so. How does I reconcile this whole father son relation with you know the saints doing all these exercising that violence on themselves, which seems you know kind of despotic. Well, Chris, there you know, and they say the kingdom of heaven is taken by violence and so on, right? Right. They may be doing something that's above the human mode, right?

[43:48] Okay. See. Yeah. And when Thomas, for example, divides the books of Scripture, I don't know if you ever seen the commendation partition of Sacred Scripture. According to Wednesday's cycle, this is the opening lectures that Thomas would give. He's beginning like the term he's going to lecture on the scriptures. Yeah. And so it's appropriate to to commend obviously what you're going to be studying, right? The scriptures and and dividing, right?

[44:16] That's very interesting. He divides them, but he's talking about the Proverbs, right? Yeah. Ecclesiastes, huh? And then I guess the Song of Songs. I think that's where it goes. Yeah, and he speaks of three kinds of virtue from the ancient fathers, huh? But he says the book of Proverbs is ordered to living in this world, right, and using the goods of this world, right, but using them moderately and reasonably, right?

[44:55] Okay. So what he calls kind of the political virtues, huh? Yeah. Virtues of man in society. But he says Ecclesiastes, you know, the one vanity of vanities and all is vanity. Yeah. Ecclesiastes is ordered to a kind of contempt, right? Yeah. Even of this moderate use of these, huh? You see. Yeah. Even the moderate eating of candy, or the moderate drinking of wine, or whatever it might be, right?

[45:22] Yeah. Um. Um. So you're going to give up even these these. Now you're not going away from evil things, but you're going to give up lesser goods in order to pursue greater goods, right? Sure. And so so it's kind of being purged of these things, right? And then finally you have maybe the Song of Songs, the virtues of the soul is now purged of its attachment to the what earth.

[45:55] See, even St. John the Cross, you know, and he speaks of someone being held down to the earth even by a little thread, right? Yeah, sure. How it is, and but what you call the dark night of the soul, this sort of a thing, because there you're obviously in that second stage, right? You're you're turning away even from the what moderate and reasonable use of these goods, right?

[46:20] You hold them in kind of contempt, right? Almost like Saint Paul says he accounts everything. Loss. Yeah, it's really I guess the word is stronger, so it's like manure, okay, and some of that, sort, you know, in order to to win the love of Christ. And we read this fall there the autobiography of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, right? And Christ is immediately directing her, right? And and so you read about saints, you know, where they would, you know, mix ashes with their food, so they're getting no no delight from their food at all, right?

[47:03] And but that's kind of above the human mode, right? Okay. Okay. Yeah. So that's what Aristotle calls heroic virtue, right? In the seventh book of the Nicomachean Ethics,

[47:18] he's already finished the consideration of the human virtues on books two through six, but in the seventh book, he talks about something instead of talking about human virtues, human vices, he talks about vices that are that are bestial, you know, that are human vices that is so so repulsive, right? And he talks about what heroic virtues, right? Okay. Now, of course, a hero. Interestingly, he really uses it because a hero in Greek mythology was a man whose one whose parent was a god or a goddess, right?

[47:58] And the other one, they what? More. Yeah, yeah. So he's talking about something on the level of say the gifts of the Holy Spirit. You know, Thomas would call Aristotle's heroic or divine virtues, but something above the human thing, right? Just like the bestial vices are below even human vice, huh? You see, and Aristotle describes some of the barbarians, you know, just doing vulgar things, huh? So this is not it's not human vice.

[48:26] This is this is below even in fact, it's below even human vices, and uh, and uh, so Don Luceno's almost into that, into bestial vices of what I can, if the stories you hear are true, you know, but you know, enjoying watching somebody torn apart by vicious dogs and you know all kinds of horrible things like that, but

[48:54] not just good human vice like fornication or something like that, something really perverse and terribly perverse. But then the opposite side of that is you have these virtues that are really higher than a what normal human virtue. Sure. That's one of the reasons why they don't call the gifts of the Holy Spirit virtues. and there's something above the virtue. The virtue is more in a human mode, the way it operates, huh?

[49:21] Interesting. Hmm. So the basic sense of this of listening to the emotions is the sense of determining what they're capable of. Yeah, yeah. He's talking here more about about the the human rule over the emotions, right? Rather than something superhuman, right? Something. Yeah. So in other words, for the for the ruler to understand those that he's ruling, so he won't break them, but actually help them. Yeah.

[49:51] Let's just go back to Thomas' words now, right? Okay. You just quoted Aristotle, right? Aristotle is distinguished between the rule of the soul over the body, right, or my arm here, my hand, right, and the rule of reason over my what desires, right? Yeah. And the one he compares to a despotic rule, the other to a political or a kingly rule. Yeah

[50:16] Now Thomas explain. this A despotic rule is that by which is called that by which one rules over slaves or servants. A service of Latin can mean slave or servant, right?

[50:32] Who do not have any ability of resisting in any way to the command of the one giving precepts there, because they have nothing of their own, right? Yeah. But a political and regal rules to mark the father, right? And that's the one by which one rules over the free, right? Who, although they are subject to the rule of the one presiding, right? Nevertheless, they have something of their own, from which they are able to resist the command of the one.

[51:06] Okay. Okay. Thus, therefore, he says, the soul is said to dominate the body by a despotic principality, right, or rule, because the members of the body, in no way, are able to resist the command of the soul, right? Yeah. But immediately, for the desire of the soul is moved, the hand and the foot, and each member that is apt to be moved by a voluntary motion. But the intellect or reason is said to rule the irascible and concupiscible by political rule, right?

[51:44] Okay. To mark that of a father, which is able to what resist the command of reason? Huh. For the sense desire, he says, is apt to be moved not only by instinct or by the estimative power in the other animals, right? Mm-hmm. And the cogitative in man, which universal reason directs, but also is apt to be moved by the what imagination and by sense. Once we experience the irascible and concupiscible as what fighting against reason, right?

[52:21] Through this that we either what sense or we imagine something pleasant, right? That reason prohibits, right? Mm-hmm. Or something sad that reason what commands, huh? Okay.

[52:40] And thus, through this, that the irascible and concupiscible, in some way, what reason there's not excluded that in some other way they what obey it, right? Yeah. Okay. Now Thomas has interesting thing there in the I think in the Secunda Secundae there where he's talking about intemperance, right. And he calls it a childish advice, huh? And that's something you know, throwing an insult also the advice, right?

[53:17] But he's again seeing an analogy, here, right? If you don't correct the child right when he's young and small, right, but let him have his way in everything, eventually he gets so strong-willed that you can't control the child anymore, okay?

[53:42] And remember my mother saying that when little you know, huh? But now you're under your parents, right? But if they can't rule you, you know, you may come under the the police, right? That put the fear of something into us, the police or something.

[54:06] But notice what Thomas calls it then a childish device, right? He's comparing, he's saying in a way that the concupiscible appetite, right, especially in these pleasant things, right,

[54:20] is to reason something like the child is to the parents, right? So if the parents can't say no to the child, right, and enforce that, huh? Especially when they're very young,

[54:34] then the child will get stronger and stronger his inclinations, and to get to a point where it's impossible for the parents to control the child, the child may even strike the parents or go out from them, right? In the same way, if I don't say no to my desire to eat candy, like my brother Richard was telling me, then my desire for what is pleasing to my senses gets so strong that when something unlawful, when I don't want to strict sins comes up, he won't obey me.

[55:05] See, that's not strong enough, huh? And it's a little bit like you know, in Plato's analogy there to the man the horse, because the first time a man gets on a horse, you know, I guess tries to throw you off, and you can give up. But if you keep on coming back on top of the horse, eventually you can maybe tame the horse, huh? The horse will obey you, huh?

[55:27] But if you don't tame the horse, you know, always, you know, speaking of the guy who's on the horse and and gets thrown off, and his his foot is still on the on the thing, and he's going bolting over the road, there you know, the horse goes right you down, and

[55:41] that's it, huh? So again, Aristotle is very insistent in the Nicomachean Ethics upon the importance of experience, huh? Experience. And you can kind of see, you know, when you go into houses there that one where the students students, but the children have been ruled in the way they should be ruled, right? They're actually happier, right? So they're good, huh? They're not as run down, huh? Yeah. Emotionally, huh?

[56:12] Yeah. In the same way with an individual himself, right? Yeah. If you don't control your emotions, they're going to make life miserable for you. Yeah. And.

[56:27] You know, when Hamlet says to Horatio, right? You know, since my dear soul was mistress of her choice and could have been distinguished, her election has sealed before herself. For thou hast been as one suffering all, that suffers nothing; a man that fortune's buffets and rewards has tamed with equal things, and blessed are they whose blood in judgment, its reason and emotion, right? Are so well commingled.

[56:53] They're not a pipe for fortune to play with. Stops she please, huh? Give me that man. He says that is not passion's slave, huh? Okay. Because that's just the opposite, right? The emotions should not be the slave of reason, right? I mean, but they should be ruled in some other way. But when reason is the slave of the emotions, then you really have what complete disorder, right?

[57:23] See? Yeah. He knows what he's saying there, right? A man who who's uneven keeled, right? He doesn't get overly excited when good fortune happens, or praise even bad fortune happens, huh? They made a study of these people, you know, in Canada, who won the big money. Yeah. And they found almost all of them were less happy or more miserable now than before they won the money. They always went crazy, you know.

[57:51] I mean, you know, the divorce and all kinds of crazy things, you know, and just made a mess of their lives. Because other people, when bad things happened, they didn't want to kill themselves. They want to, you know,

[58:03] jump the building, jump off, you know, and so on. I remember a girl when I was in San Francisco, She was in high school, you know. The one girl got trapped by her steady boyfriend. She was up on the roof of the school going to jump off, and they finally found the boyfriend and talked her into coming down. But people just go crazy, right, when when good or bad happens like that.

[58:22] So, but you know, in those plays of Shakespeare, you know, where they have a lot of emotion, like the Italian ones, to the Italian Romeo and Juliet and Othello, right, huh? But there's never any emphasis upon fortune, huh? I'm fortune's fool, is what Romeo says, huh? See? It's like they're the plaything of fortune, right? You're up and you're down. One day, another day, you know, depending on what happens, huh?

[58:47] See? And it's not not good, right? Yeah. But Aristotle insists, as I say, upon the importance of experience experience that these emotions, by denial and by you know restraining them, right, and so on, we can learn to some extent to what control them, right? See?

[59:13] And I remember, like, say, a student told me one time. I guess when he first came to Assumption College, right, he had stage fright. He'd get up and speak. You know, so

[59:28] he took a speech course, right? Where he had to get up in front of the class, you know, and you know, the thing was taught in his time, anyway. You know, he might be called upon spontaneously today to give a speech in front of the class on some topic that he had that chance to prepare, right? Yeah. Well, by taking that course and by forcing himself, you know, into those situations, he learned how to what control his fear, and he ended up, you know, running for office and getting elected to class office and so on, right?

[1:00:02] But that's some example there, right? That's a matter of experience, and some people have learned to control their their fear in these cases, right? Yeah. Okay. Some women are women are more given to fear than men, usually, you know, and they're afraid to go down the basement when it's dark. Some woman, you know, something like that. But then maybe they get over that a little bit. You know, they get a little bit older, more mature, and they learn how to control that fear, huh?

[1:00:35] You know, it's kind of funny because you know, you know, you know, some horrible, fearful movie. A woman can't watch it by themselves, especially, right?

[1:00:49] I remember. I remember they used to have the free films there in the summer sometimes, in Shrewsbury, where I live, right? In the In the Dean Park there, right? You know, you can bring your blanket and watch the movie. And they had that one about the stealing of the Russian airplane and so on. So I went there the kids were little, you know. My daughter's grabbing my arms all the way, you know, the boys are there, they're enjoying it, you know.

[1:01:11] But my daughter, it's kind of funny. But I mean, but you see, women are just sort of, you know, gradually learning to control their fear, you know, and you know. What was the movie? Oh, it's one about stealing the Russian airplane. It's the one where there was a special Russian airplane, they're going to try to steal. Yeah, not Spitfire. What's it called? It's got some name like that, Foxfire, something like that.

[1:01:36] I forget. Oh. It's just, uh... but uh... Kind of like a spawner. yeah. But I know people, you know, were given to anger who learn to control their anger, huh? Still, you know, possibility of it rising up, you know, but they they learn to control it in the course of time, huh?

[1:02:06] I remember reading about a Hollywood actor, I guess, who was alcoholic, right? And usually, you know, a lot of times alcoholics they're in hard liquor, right? So what he did was to take up drinking wine, see, and get all kinds of education about wine. Of course, you start to into that sort of stuff, right? Then you sit down. You want to sniff the wine. You want to talk about it.

[1:02:30] You know, and compare wines and so on. And that's actually worked for him to cure him of his excessive drinking, huh? See, that's obviously letting your appetite have something to say about do, you know, you know, yeah, yeah. But there might be some people who could do that. All they have to go on the total abstinence, the the Alcoholics Anonymous thing, you know. But you know,

[1:03:00] people who kind of really were alcoholics, you know, who actually, I did stop. You know, it's kind of amazing to see that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My father-in-law was he had a smoking, right? He was quite a smoker. Yeah, and. For about a year afterwards, he was chewing gum all the time. And say, "do you want a stick of gum." I said, "Oh yeah, I'll join you." You know, after about a year, he didn't need the gum anymore, right?

[1:03:24] But that's sort of, you know, stuff, you know. Except for the mouth, I could probably find toothpick in my mouth, you know. My brother Richard claimed to know a guy who couldn't study without putting a toothpick in his mouth. Got

[1:03:42] used to it. So, I mean, since you've seen these things. But I think if you go to to, if you consider music, say, and fiction, right, in the light of this, right, does good music and even good fiction have a role to play in the rule of reason over the what emotions, huh? Yes. And in particular, a what a paternal or kingly rule of them rather than despotic one, because it's something appealing to the senses and the emotions of music.

[1:04:30] But nevertheless, it is what it's moving the emotions in a reasonable way. So, I first read Oscar's essay there. You know, I mentioned that before towards an evaluation of music. It appeared in the Thomist years ago, and I read it when I was in high school because my brother Richard had it. He was studying under him at the time, and you know, speaking about the excellence of the music of the 18th century as opposed to the music of the Romantic period and a fortiori of the later periods, and how you know the music of the 18th century, among other things, it represents the emotions, right?

[1:05:08] In a what? Yeah, being subject to reason, not by despotic rule, but by a what political or paternal rule, huh? You see, and it's very interesting. You listen to Mozart's music, you know, you can see it very much, like when he's representing sadness, like that, you know, and the way he's calming it down, you know, and so on. It's really kind of amazing to see that, huh?

[1:05:30] And those guys in some way understood this, huh? Mm. Um, But if you read Aristotle in the book of Politics, and he talks about the role of music in education, huh? Um, Father Boulay, that I studied, one of the four teachers, of, four teachers of my life, he made a collection of things from the Church Fathers and others about the importance of music, and when Thomas talks about music, you know, he's very insistent.

[1:06:01] Nothing so changes the soul of man, he says, as music. So it's very important, and most people, you know, I think you let your kids listen any kind of music, and they do love them, and it just. You know, yeah. It's terrible the effect that it has on them.

[1:06:27] You're interviewing one of these these rock stars on TV. You know, I didn't see it, but somebody told me about it, and uh, he says, "Well, it's all about sex, you know. That's what music's all about. That's what their minds are. I've heard it, yeah. But that's what it is. You know, if you see them jumping around, you know, it's all, you know, just incredibly bad stuff to listen to.

[1:06:48] You know, yeah. And music is is the most persuasive thing there is. You know, someone's humming a melody. You know, you find somebody else will pick it up automatically in the room. Yeah, just very very powerful. Shakespeare has some really strong statements about how powerful music is. See how well the Nazis use it, you know, in a persuasive way. You once mentioned that Father Boulay's collection. seems to be lost.

[1:07:22] Yeah, it is. I don't know where it is. Do. You have a lesser collection. I know we have a couple of articles here from I think some Lavalians that Father Anthony left us, but like these collections from Shakespeare or references or something. Yeah, some of the references there to Thomas, yeah, music. Yeah, at some point I really want to get those. There's one there. I think in the Gospels in Matthew when Christ is saying, "You played this and you didn't dance," and he talks about that apropos of that.

[1:07:49] Yeah, they're very short passages, you know, but. uh, Plato, and Aristotle thought music, was a very important part of education. You know, and it's in a sense you really kind of educate the emotions, huh? But then when you get to even you know tragedy, when Aristotle defines tragedy, the definition is got catharsis, which means purification, uh, purgation, in a way of the emotions, huh? But it's a purification and purgation of pity and fear, huh?

[1:08:22] And and when you talk about comedy, that's purging certain emotions too, like melancholy, getting rid of that, you know, and so on. So, but that's a medical term originally, but then has a moral term. That's why we speak of purgatory, right?

[1:08:41] The Greeks will speak, you know, the catharsis of the body, which the medical doctor is doing, right? And then they'll speak of the catharsis of the emotions. Socrates in his dialogues is talking about catharsis of reason. Get a mistake, you know, he's going to lead you to see that you're mistaken and free you from that bad mistake that's dominating your thinking, huh?

[1:09:10] So, no, no. So, when you read this reply to the second objection, you realize a little bit that Thomas is not naive as to how. What? If you read his commentary on St. Paul, you see he's not naive as to the that emotions don't obey reason like my hand obeys me, right? Yeah. And

[1:09:32] or when he talks about you know intemperance being a childish device, right? He sees that importance of of the early upbringing. When Aristotle is talking there in the Nicomachean Ethics, he says it makes a great deal of difference. He says how someone is brought up. He says, or rather, all the difference. Extremely strong about that. See, so if you had not been brought up well by your parents in some way, it's almost impossible for you to, you know,

[1:10:06] be moral in these things. You know, it's very, very difficult. Okay. After the fight with the objection. I'm gonna take a short break here. Um