De Anima (On the Soul)
133. Nature, Habit and the Fixed Will After Death; the Beatific Vision; Article 2: Free Will Is a Power
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[0:00] Okay. Now the fifth objection. Huh? Let's get a long reply to the fifth objection here. Mormon The Philosopher says in the third book of the ethics that such as each one is, so does the end seem to him, right? Okay. But such as I am is partly what determined by nature, right? Huh? Okay. Now that's a very important thing in ethics as well as in this thing here.

[0:31] To the fifth, it should be said that the quality of man that's referred to, when you're talking about such as a man is, so does the end appear to him, right? To the fifth, it should be said that the quality of man is twofold, right? One quality is natural, right, inborn, maybe, and the other coming upon the man, right? Huh? Okay. Not inborn. Now the natural quality can be taken either concerning the intellective part or concerning the body and the powers that are joined to the body, huh?

[1:15] Now from this, that man is some is such by natural quality, which is on the side of his intellectual part. Man naturally desires the last end, which is what beatitude, right?

[1:32] Which desire is natural and is not subject to what free judgment, right? I naturally want to be happy. I naturally want to be blessed, right? Huh? Okay. I naturally want to what live well and do well. Okay. And I really choose to live well and do well rather than to live badly and do badly, right? Huh? Okay.

[2:01] On the side of the body, huh? And of the powers joined to the body, huh? A man can be such by a natural quality, according is as is such a what makeup, right? Huh? Such a complexion, right? Or such a disposition, right? Which is from a certain impression of bodily causes, huh? Okay. So some men are disposed to anger, and others to concupiscence, and others to what fear, right?

[2:33] Some men are more timid than others, right? Okay. So we see this even in children, right? Some children are more shy than others, right? Huh? And so on, right? So their body, in a sense, disposes them to certain emotions, huh? Some children are more apt to what get angry about things, right? Others are more apt to what be fearful or something, right? Huh? Others, you know, may have more of a weakness for candy or something than others, huh?

[3:01] Okay. But that's in the body, right? Huh? And the body doesn't what. Press upon the intellectual part, though it has some influence over it, huh? In that the intellectual part is not the act of somebody. Thus, therefore, such as each one is according to bodily quality, so the end seems to him, right? Because from such a disposition, a man is inclined to choosing something or repudiating something, right?

[3:35] But these inclinations are subject to the judgment of what? Reason, right? To which, to some extent, as we saw before, the lower desire, the sense desire, obeys, right, Whence through this,

[3:57] nothing is prejudicial or going against free judgment, right? Okay, I don't have to give in to my anger or my concupiscence or my what? Fear, right, huh? And so one can, by his intellect or reason in his will, oppose, right, his own fear, right? Resist his fear and not run away when he should stay and fight, or whatever it is. Or he can resist his concupiscence, right, huh?

[4:28] Like St. Benedict's supposed to be jumping in the bush with a lot of prickly things in it, huh? Or he can see Saint Francis de Sales resisting his inclination to anger, right, huh? Okay. So you may know people who who had to fight all their life against a you know tendency to anger, right, huh? You see, and other people don't have that particular problem, right? Other people, though, are naturally kind of timid and they and they have to kind of push themselves, right?

[5:10] You see, into. I remember a student years ago, you know, who was shy to get up and speak in public or something, you know. So he took some kind of a speech class. We had to get up and speak in the class spontaneously, you know. And professor called you today, he could have to give a speech on citizen's topic, you know. So on. But pretty soon, you know, he was running for office and getting elected, right?

[5:30] You know, he was in office, you know? But when he started off, I mean, you know, just you know, you know, couldn't couldn't speak up at all, just to to shy or timid, huh? So you can resist to some extent the what? The passion or the emotion to which you are what subject, right, huh? Okay. Um.

[5:52] Obviously, alcoholic anonymous or something like that, right? You know, they fight this tendency that they have to want to what? Drink or something, right, huh? Okay.

[6:03] Um. So. What we and what does Shakespeare say? What we in passion to ourselves propose? The passion ending, doth the purpose lose? I've got it exactly quoted there, but in Hamlet, there in the play within the play, right? What to ourselves in passion we propose, right? The passion ending, doth the purpose lose? So when I'm angry, it seems, you know, a suitable goal to hit you, right?

[6:36] You say. But I'm concupiscent, you know, to eat the candy or whatever it is, right, or pursue the woman, right? Okay, or if I'm under this feeling of fear, right? The goal seems to be to escape from this the situation, right? Run off, right? Okay. But I can resist those passions to some extent, right? Okay.

[7:02] But he says the qualities supervenientes are the ones that come upon us, right, through our own actions, right? Are as the habits and passions by which someone is more inclined to one thing than another, huh? Nevertheless, these inclinations are subject to judgment of reason. And qualities of this sort

[7:31] are subject to it, insofar as in us it belongs, is in our power to acquire such qualities, right? When I start thinking of what Thomas is thinking in there, what you learn in ethics is that the so-called moral virtues and actually they used to speak before of moral virtues and moral vices, right? Because moral comes from the word mores, custom, right? So there are certain dispositions and even habits that are acquired by repeated acts, right?

[8:03] So if I've repeatedly given in to this desire to eat candy, and now I've become a glutton, right? Okay. Or if I have given in to my anger so much that I'm an irascible person now, right? I'm habitually of this sort, then I'm responsible for that habit, right? That quality whereby it seems suitable for me to do what I what do, right? Okay. And and so you know in the famous play there, Shakespeare Coriolanus, right?

[8:36] Coriolanus is by nature inclined to anger, but he hasn't what fought that inclination, right? And therefore he what acts as for an end to what fits his anger, right? And since Rome is treated him rather shabbily, right? He's now going to what destroy Rome, right? Yeah. And

[9:04] Don, Giovanni's been giving in to another passion, right, all his life, and then when the commandant takes him by the stony hand, he can't say what. And he can't repent, right? And down he goes to hell, right? Do you ever see the the movie version of that? The one that the one that Cesare Siepi did, and it was taken right from the stage there at the United States Opera, because the flames are bursting out, you know, they really do it.

[9:29] Well, you know, huh? And of course he goes down. Ah, Once it's got in D minor. So, but but Thomas, you know, when he talks about these habits that we form by repeated acts, when we die, right? Yeah. Those habits remain, see, and

[9:55] but we're no longer in in time like we are now, right? And then there's a kind of permanence about those habits, and uh Therefore, the next life, you know, if you're turned towards the good, you're going to be turned towards the good forever. If you turn towards the bad, you're going to be turned forever, right? In the Old Testament, it says, you know, where the tree falls, there it shall lie.

[10:26] And and the understanding that the Church Fathers give of that is as talking about the will, right? But the will is here, as if we're in an upright position there during this life, and it can fall this way or it can fall that way, as you know, if you chop a tree down, right? Yeah. But whatever direction it falls, it'll lie there forever. Yeah. You see, that's what your will, right?

[10:47] When you die, you know, maybe that's God, and that's the devil or something, right? And my will is going to fall like that towards God, and then it falls towards God; it's going to stay towards God forever. Yeah. But if it falls towards the evil, there, it's going to stay there forever. Can't be changed anymore, right? You're not in a state in this changeable state that you're in now, right?

[11:15] Maybe it has to do you know such as a man is, so does it appears to him, right? But you see that already sometimes in this life, you know, you know how hard it is sometimes to change people, you know, who who have habitually consented to some sin or to some, you know, bad thing, right? And now they have a habit, you know, and they just can't do it.

[11:39] Can hardly change it, right? It's very hard to change. huh? Aristotle's very strong about that in the Nicomachean Ethics, you know. He says it makes no little difference how a person has been brought up, right? Even by his parents and so on. It makes a great deal of difference, he says, or rather, all the difference, right? You're going to be a very hard time changing these habits once they're formed, huh?

[12:05] Now these these habits, these virtues we bring to heaven, that will determine our degree of glory in large part too, huh? Well, I mean, primarily though, by charity, they'll say. Charity is a virtue, of charity. You see, in heaven there, it's interesting. if you get the beatific vision, right, you will love God much more than you could love God in this life, huh? It was kind of striking.

[12:35] I've been teaching the Love and Friendship course, right? And basically, there's two causes of love. One cause of love is the good, although Thomas says it's really the good as known in some way, right? The good as known, he says, one cause of love. The other cause of love is likeness or union, huh? Okay. Because I've been teaching that you know that that part of the course there for some time.

[13:07] So now I was reading Thomas there again, and he's talking there in the third book of the Summa Contra Gentiles. He's talking about the beatific vision, right, and how we're going to see God face to face and see God as He is, right? And then Thomas is asking, well, how does this? How is this possible, right? Huh? And it can't be through any created form, right? Huh?

[13:33] And then he says that in the seeing God as He is, God has to be both what is seen and that by which He is seen. Huh? Now I say that by which He is seen only in the sense that He's the power, intellect, but He's the form by which our intellect sees Him. And that's why he understands the words in the Psalms: "In Your light we shall see light," right?

[14:01] Okay. But then Thomas, you know, remarks at that point: "Huh? Apropos the words of Saint John. Right? We know this is what one three two there, right, in the first epistle, right? Okay. We know that when He appears, we shall be like Him.

[14:24] Saint John says, right? For we shall see Him as He is. Now, why should we be like Him? Because we see Him as He is. We're going to see Him in the same way that He sees Himself. Not not as perfectly, obviously, right? But God sees Himself through Himself, right? And we're going to see God through God. God's going to be joined to our mind, huh? Okay.

[14:49] And this is far more intimate than than bodily marriage, right? Huh? Okay. You know Shakespeare says in the famous sonnet of love, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments," right? Okay. We use the word marriage between minds now as opposed to bodies, right? Huh? But the union of God in our mind, whereby we will see God as He is, is much more intimate than than the union of bodies in marriage, huh?

[15:21] But Scripture speaks of it under the likeness of marriage, right? You know, because kind of, you know, it's like Scripture uses us, you know, metaphors in a sense, right? It leads us to the spiritual through the through the material. But anyway, Thomas, in in talking about how we're going to see God through God, he says, and then he says, "This will be when we are at this point.

[15:46] Says this is would be more like God than we've ever been before, right? This will be the most like God there ever be, right? It struck me, you know." How perfectly that explains why we will love God much more in the Vedic vision than we could before that, because what is the cause of love? It's the good as known, okay, yeah, and likeness, huh? And in here we'll have what?

[16:14] Obviously, the goodness of God will be most known, right? Ah, in when we see God as He is face to face, right? So that cause of love will be what the greatest, and the other cause of love, likeness, since we'll be seeing God through God being joined to our mind as the form by which we see Him, right? Then we'll be seeing Him in a way very much like the way He sees Himself, and therefore we will be what most like God, okay?

[16:46] And so both causes of love, right? The good as known, right? And likeness will be at their strongest, right? See, the goodness of God we know much more as it is in itself, right? Not just in the kind of you know from creatures and so in the way it's known now, and and the likeness will be greater than we ever had any likeness to God, huh? Therefore, going to love Him more than we could ever love Him now, right?

[17:15] And some people interpret, you know, the words of the strange words of Christ, you know, when He's talking about Saint John the Baptist, right? And you know, that nobody greater, you know, born a woman, right, huh? And then He says, but He was at least in heaven is greater than John. Said, well, how can you say that? Oh, because because the only reason to be greater than somebody would be charity, right?

[17:36] So it must be He was at least in heaven loves God more than John does before John sees God as He is face to face, right? Yeah. Because He has both causes of love more fully, right? Much more fully than than John has before he sees God, right?

[17:58] So this is perfect the way things tie together there, you know, the understanding. But it's interesting that Saint John will emphasize that, huh? That there is a likeness there, right? We know when He appears that we should be like Him, right? That there is really very much like Him, you know, not not like Him in some other way, you know. Because He speaks to our being the children of God already, right?

[18:20] But but but that there is some kind of what you have much greater likeness, huh? That we'll have to God once we see Him as He is, huh? You know, Christ says it's kind of metaphorical way of speaking of the vision where He talks about you're going to sit the same table and eat the same thing we eat, right? Well, you're going to what see the same thing we see it, right?

[18:46] You're going to see it in the same way we see it, the Trinity, right? You're going to see God through God. So Thomas will say, God is both. What is seen, and that by which the mind sees, is only in that way that you can see God as He is. Because any any created thing by which you would see God would not be adequate to seeing God as He is.

[19:14] Does he tie in the same place as he comment on that? You know, we shall know as we are known. Is it the same? He doesn't comment that particular verse. I don't think right there, but

[19:28] that's probably coming. That's the same Paul, right? Isn't it? So yeah, yeah. In the commentary in Saint Paul, you comment on yeah, but in this particular text there, he just

[19:40] quotes John, is talking about how how light, yeah. But that doesn't get the same thing, right? We shall know even as we are known, right? Because God knows everything by knowing Himself, and so if we're going to be known the way we're known, we're going to know God through what? Through God, right? Yeah, yeah. That's really impressive. Take a little break now before. the. Second article. We have to go to the last sentence.

[20:09] We didn't. do Oh we did Okay. Last two. Et huya smoti Or tamanest Let's see. Oh, okay. And qualities of this sort are subject to to us, right? Insofar as it is in us to acquire such qualities by repeated acts, you could say, right? Like I was saying. Yeah. Okay.

[20:30] Either causally or dispositively, or to exclude them. Okay, by not doing these things, and this there's nothing that's repugnant to free will, huh? Suppose that whole homosexual question is answered in this. Yeah. Yeah. See, you know,

[21:03] there's some controversy about to what extent that can be inborn this tendency, right? And some people deny it's inborn, you know. Right. So I don't know that it's altogether clear, you know. Yeah. But something certainly a man can what resist, right? And we've known people who who ever resisted this, you know. Yeah. Um, and that's because you don't have to follow your body inclinations, huh? Yeah. Even though it might be hard to not follow you know, body inclinations.

[21:33] So Francis de Sales I guess was given to anger, right? Yeah. To be, you know, to resist this enough that he became a very mild man, right? A very, a very, uh,

[21:47] modern man, even right in his advice and so on. Very prudent man, you might see his advice, right, to people. Yeah. Even if it were not inborn, it would fall under this

[22:00] coming upon. Yeah. Type, right? Yeah. Really, sort of only have those two options, I guess. A lot of people, you know, you read about who have who are into this. Yeah. You know, they've had some kind of crazy family life too. Yeah. There's been environmental. Yeah. Just.

[22:26] To the second, when proceeds thus, it seems that free will is not a power. For and I think it's the very Latin words, right? For arbitrium librum, right, is nothing other than free what? Judicium, judgment, right? Okay. But judgment does not name a power, but an act, right? Therefore, liberum arbitrium is not a power, right? Okay.

[23:03] Now, of course, you got to be careful there because sometimes a a power is named from what its act, right? And so you take the word understanding, right? Or understanding can name the act of understanding, right? But understanding can name the ability to understand, right? And so, when John Locke writes the the essay on human understanding, he's talking about the ability to understand, huh? Okay. And sometimes, you know, we do that, right?

[23:35] Sometimes we'll say, you know, about a blind man, he doesn't see, right? What does that mean? You know, he doesn't see. You know, you want to. I mean, no, he's blind. You don't mean he doesn't have the act of seeing. He's not seeing right now. Like I don't see you when I close my eyes, right? But he doesn't have the ability to see, right? So sometimes the sometimes the power is named from the act, and Thomas doesn't indicate that in the reply to this first objection, right?

[24:07] Let's just look at the reply to first objection because it's kind of dependent on that. To the, first, therefore, it should be said that it is what customary, huh, consuetum, huh, that a power be signified by the name of its act, huh? Okay. And sometimes, you know,

[24:27] we're going to reply to the first objection. Sure. And thus, through this act, which is free judgment, is named the power which is the what source of this act, right? Otherwise, if free arbitrium named an act, it would not always remain in man, right? Okay. Oh yeah. Remember how we learned before how we know the powers of the soul by their acts and the acts by their object, right?

[24:57] And sometimes you have a word like, well, sight. You know, sight sometimes means the act, right? And sometimes it means the object, right? Or taste, right? I don't like the taste of salmon. Well, then talk about the object there, right? But then taste could name the act too, right? To taste something. But sometimes maybe we might name the sense power itself. Taste is one of the five senses, right?

[25:26] So, you know, can be better than mind, right? Okay. Moreover, liberum arbitrium is said to be a what facultas, huh? Of will and of reason, right? But facultas names the facility of a power, right? Which is through some habit, right? Therefore, free will is a habit. And Bernard says that free will is. A what habit of the soul, right? It is free of itself, right?

[26:13] Let's again look at the reply there. To the second, it should be said that facultas, that's the Latin word, and I'm leaving it in there, means sometimes a power that is what expeditious. You might say, right? That is, been kind of habilitated or habituated, right, to doing something, right? And thus, facultas is placed in the definition of free judgment. huh? Bernard Harvard takes habitum not as its divide against power, right?

[26:49] But according as it signifies a certain relation by which something is in some way disposed towards some act, right? Now that shouldn't strike you as too strange, because Aristotle called the Latin, huh, and the Greek too, I guess. He calls the act of understanding a habitus, there, right? And some people took it to be an habit as opposed to a power, right? And Thomas says we're not using it in that sense; he's using it in the way in which every act is called a habitus, right?

[27:25] As opposed to the lack. So these are problems here more at the words, right, than with the thing itself, huh? Which he says is both through a power as through the habit. For through the power, a man has himself as able to do something, but through the habit, he is apt to do it what well or what badly, right? Okay. We're going back to Aristotle in the second book of the Nicomachean Ethics, right?

[28:05] Okay. So we can say, is ability to feel anger is that a virtue or a vice? It's undetermined. Yeah, see, that's be the power, right? Yeah, you see, but then you can be habituated to feel anger, right? More than you should, etc. , right? Huh? And outside of reason, and you have the vice, right? Or could be habituated to listen to reason and to follow reason like it did in our Lord, right?

[28:33] Yeah. Okay. And then it's by the habit, the virtue or the vice, in short, that you are what going to do that act either well or badly, right? Okay. Okay.

[28:55] Moreover, no natural power. Is taken away through sin, right? But free will is taken away through sin, for Augustine said, man badly using his free will loses both himself and his free will, right? Okay.

[29:22] The third, it should be said that man, by sinning, is said to have lost free will, not as regards what his natural liberty or his natural freedom from force, right?

[29:38] As far as being free from what some kind of guilt and from what misery, right? I mean, man is not able to entirely what avoid all sins, right? At least venial sins, right? Okay.

[29:55] So he hasn't, you know, lost his natural freedom, but he has it somewhat what diminished, right? Huh? Okay. Of course, Thomas says you know, by by great concentration, you can maybe avoid here and now this sin, right? But you're going to what? You can't be always that diligent, can you? So you fail sometimes, right? And for me, the light doesn't always happen when I'm typing, right? I really concentrate, yeah.

[30:24] But you know, but if I just, you know, try to do quickly, I always make a reverse letter or something, you know. Not that I don't know how to spell, but I think one finger works quicker than the other one, or the keys are there, you know. You know, I just, you know, you can't. You know, even that email, people who don't read over the emails, and they always misspell it.

[30:41] They always have a spelling, didn't they? Right? You see, see, so you're bound to, even though you know what letter, even though you know how to spell, these words you're using, right? You're still going to misspell, a word, you know. You're not, you know. You can't be concentrating that much always on the little things, right? You know. So we are liars, and we say we're not We have no sin, as Saint John says, right?

[31:04] Yeah. Yeah. But against all this is that nothing is the subject of a habit, as it seems, except a power, an ability. But free will is the subject of grace,

[31:26] by which assisting it, it chooses the good. Therefore, free will is a power. Now, Thomas is going to reply. Now, I answer that although liberum arbitrium, free judgment, nominates or names right a certain act according to the proper signification of the word, right? Nevertheless, according to the common use of people speaking, right? This is a common, I say not common English, right? But it's common in Latin, right?

[32:03] Liberum arbitrium, we call what is the principle of this act, right? Okay, that was that was according to the common custom, right? By which man what freely judges, right?

[32:24] But the source of an act, the principle or beginning of an act in us, is both what a power and a habit, right? For we are said to know something both by a science and by the what

[32:41] understanding power, right? Okay. So do I syllogize by my reason or by logic? Both. Yeah, yeah. And do I demonstrate, you know, a geometrical theorem there by my reason or by the science of geometry? By reason, we said by both, right? Huh? Okay.

[33:12] In the prima secundae, where Thomas takes up exactly what a habit is, right? Huh? Okay. Because all the way back to the categories, Aristotle comes down.

[33:28] It's necessary, therefore, that liberum arbitrium is either a what power or a habit, or perhaps a power with what some habit, right? Huh? Okay.

[33:45] And he's going to eliminate two of those, right? Include that it's the name of the power, huh? Yeah. That, however, it is not a habit nor a power with a habit appears clearly from two things.

[34:00] First, because if it is a habit, right, it would be necessary that it be a natural habit, huh? For this is natural to man that he have what free will, we'd say, right? Okay.

[34:24] But no natural habit is present to us for those things which are what under free will or free judgment. Because to those things with respect to which we have natural habits, we are naturally inclined, just as to assenting to the first what principles in the sciences, huh? So that's why I call you know the habit by which we what assent to things like the whole is more than a part.

[34:56] I call that natural understanding, right? That habit, huh? Yeah. It's a natural habit, huh? But those things to which we are naturally inclined is not subject to what free will, as has been said above about our desire to be what blessed or happy, huh? Whence it is against the very definition of free will that it be a natural habit, huh?

[35:29] And it'd be against the naturalness of free will that it'd be a habit that is not natural. Okay. Now as you're saying free will is something that we naturally have, right? Huh? Okay. And therefore, if it was a habit, it would have to be a natural habit, right? But if it was a natural habit, then it would incline us by way of nature, and therefore, you know, we'd be determined by a kind of natural necessity, like.

[36:02] We naturally will happiness, right? But if it was a habit that is not natural. you mean by the way Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then we wouldn't, by nature, have free will, but we'd acquire it by some. Okay. Be kind of strange to acquire free will by. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Free will is a virtue or vice. Then would be

[36:28] a non-natural habit. Yeah, it'd be a natural habit or a habit that's not natural, right? Yeah. It was a natural habit. It would incline by way of nature rather than, freedom but by freedom. And if it was not a natural habit. it was the same thing as, free will. Then free will would not be natural to us. Okay. Do you follow that? Yeah. What things would a virtue be an example of a non-natural habit?

[36:52] Yeah, the acquired virtues. Yeah, yeah, but there's a natural virtue too. See, see, like when Aristotle distinguishes the virtues of reason, for example, there's nous, which in Latin they translate intellectus, right?

[37:14] In Greek there's nous, and in Latin they translate it by intellectus. And then you have episteme and and then it's translated as scientia in Latin. And then you have sophia, which is translated by sapientia Okay.

[37:42] Now I translate this as natural understanding. Okay, and this is what reason out understanding. The reason out understanding is a habit that is a virtue habit that's acquired by what demonstration, right? It's a kind of syllogism. By this one here, right? You don't have to reason out. You naturally come to see these things just through the light of your mind. Okay, so everyone sees these things, right?

[38:29] Okay. You see that bit, you know, in the in the case of love too. There, what's the second commandment of love? First one is to love God, right, for the whole heart, etc. Second one is to love your neighbor as yourself, right? Where is the command to love yourself? Doesn't have to be commanded. Yeah, it's kind of natural to love yourself, right? huh? What do you call it a natural habit?

[39:00] I'm still puzzled about the phrase "natural habit" because I thought a habit, by definition, was. you know, acquired by repeated acts, so. Yeah, well, that's more virtue you're thinking. Yeah, yeah, moral habits. Yeah, yeah. But

[39:14] they speak of a habit but natural habit, more in the case of the mind than the will. there, see because you have to have some kind of what forms in the mind, right? But which it understands, huh? Okay. Okay, but you naturally come to have a whole and part and things of that sort in your mind. Sure. So you can't even say it. I mean, you can't say, "You know, I remember going to school and didn't ever know the whole was more than a part."

[39:38] No, you seem like like you always knew it, right? Yeah. You kind of naturally come to know it. It almost seems to be innate, huh? It seems. Yeah, but you probably have to have some experience of wholes and parts before you understand what a whole and what a part is, right? Yeah. And when you understand what a whole and a part is, you see that a whole is always more than a part.

[39:59] Okay. Okay. Secondly, this appears. Because habits are said according, or that by which we have ourselves to passions or to acts well or badly is said in the second book of the ethics. Okay. Where are we? We're down here right after he's gone through eliminating. It's a habit, right? Oh, we're still in the middle of his response. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So a habit is that by which we we might say we are disposed well or badly towards either our passions or towards our what acts right.

[40:43] For by temperance, for example, or moderation, we have ourselves well towards what our sense desires, right? Through intemperance, badly, right? Through scientia, through science, we are disposed well towards the act of the understanding, which is know the truth, right? Or wouldn't we know the truth? But through the contrary habit, we are disposed what badly, right?

[41:19] Okay. But free will indifferently has itself to what choosing well or badly, right? So by free will, you can choose what well or badly, right? So it doesn't seem to be a habit, right? Or even a power enforced by a habit, because then you'd be limited to one or the other, right? Okay. Whence it is impossible that free will be a habit, it remains therefore that it be a what power, right?

[41:53] Yeah, and it doesn't explicitly exclude the other possibility that it'd be a power cum aliquo habitu, right? Right. But that's that's can be seen from what he's done, right? Because it was assumed some habit, as I just said, it'd be the virtue or vice, and then it would be you know not indifferent to one or the other, right? Like free will, I can choose to do this or not to do it, right?

[42:15] To do this way or to do it that way, right? Always free to choose. Yeah. Okay. But now, if you're naming the power from the act, you know you might think, gee, isn't this name more the act of the reason? Because judgment is an act of reason, right? Yeah. Well, then that's just the third article. We should take up next time, right? Because in the third article, he's going to ask whether it's a if it's a potentia a power, is it a desiring power or is it a knowing power, right?

[42:52] Yeah. Yeah. And it's kind of unusual what it's named. Okay. By the way, till next week, if I know. Right. Right. What What left in my mind what you just said about purpose?

[43:11] The will is free to choose the good or the bad. Yeah. How is it not sort of constrained, you know, in the beatific vision where it's it's fixed in the good now? Yeah. Well, okay, that's going to be a kind of natural necessity. It's not going to be natural necessity. Yeah, just think it naturally wills what, in general, happiness, right? Sure. Well, now that it sees clearly, right, and without any possibility of doubt that this is what it is to live well, right, then necessarily wills it.

[43:48] Just as it naturally, just as now it naturally wills in a confused way, right? I want to live well, right? So, but you know, used to work in the shipping dock there, right? So the guy says to me one day, you know, breakfast. What would you do if you won the, you know, the state lottery or it was, you know? No, I I find a quiet place and do some reading.

[44:08] Okay. And and I said, what would you do if you won the state lottery? I said, I get a hairament says, hairament. And if you're serious about it, no. But I mean, the point is,

[44:23] we both want to live well, but I think if you find a quiet place and do some reading, you need to get a hairament, right? And so, it was kind of funny in the shipping dock, right? You know, sometimes they had these, you know, brilliant pictures up like they had on the factories, you know. Yeah. One one one summer there, this guy going on vacation, so my brother Mark had to had to take over the docks.

[44:50] Oh. We had all these pictures there. I see he tore them all down, threw them away. The guy goes back. Where are my pictures? We didn't say anything. Where are my pictures? But you have these, you know, on the factories, like that.

[45:12] But you know, in this life, you see, we can be deceived as to what it is to live well, right? Yes. And you know, I like to say to him sometimes, you know, you know, I've really been living it up, you know,

[45:26] Thomas or the Bible or something, you know. But you know, you living it up, you know, you might even be partying, you know, or doing some kind of. This is really living it up, you know. This is living it up. I mean, partying, getting drunk, losing losing the use of your reason, if you're missing the use of your reason, that's that's living it down.

[45:50] Can I ask a curious question? It's very simple. Do you hear anything