De Anima (On the Soul)
135. Summa I, q.84 a.1: Does the Soul Know Bodies Through the Understanding? Heraclitus, Plato's Forms, and the Central Question of Philosophy
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[0:00] 4th. Yeah. December 4th is Thursday. Yeah, Yeah. Uh, you say, you know, if I happen to have an exam scheduled at that time, you know, probably don't. But we'll see. Okay. Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. God our enlightenment. Guardian angels strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor.

[0:31] pray for us, and. Help us to understand what you have written. In the Name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen.

[0:51] So, the first article: whether the soul knows bodies by the understanding. So this is the first article in the first question here on the knowledge of the things that are below the soul, right? Okay. It seems that the soul does not know bodies through the understanding. For Augustine says in the second book of the Soliloquies, so he speaks to himself, right? Yeah.

[1:32] That bodies are not able to be comprehended by the understanding, nor is anything bodily able to be seen except by the what senses. He says also the twelfth book upon Genesis to the letter

[1:55] that the understandable vision is of those things which are in the soul through its essence, but these things are not bodies. Therefore, the soul through the understanding is not able to know bodies. Now you've always got to explain Augustine, right? Second warner. Just as the sense has itself to understandable things, so also the understanding to sensible things. But the soul by sense in no way is able to know spiritual things or immaterial things.

[2:46] Spirituality, there means what immaterial things, huh? Which are understandable. Therefore, in no way through the understanding is the soul able to know bodies, which are sensible things. You can argue if you say that the eyes cannot know sound, and therefore the ear cannot know color, right?

[3:15] Moreover, the understanding is of things that are necessary and always having themselves in the same way. And those are the things that are fully what understandable.

[3:29] But bodies, all bodies are what movable, and not having themselves in the same way. Therefore, the soul through the understanding is not able to know bodies.

[3:47] But against all this is that reasoned-out knowledge is in the understanding. If, therefore, the understanding does not know bodies, it would follow that there is no reasoned-out knowledge about bodies, and thus natural science would perish, which is about movable bodies.

[4:14] Okay, so Thomas says I answer. It should be said to the evidence of this question that the first philosophers who investigated the natures of things they thought nothing was in the world except what body.

[4:36] And we often quote Aristotle's statement there in the fourth book of the Physics, fourth book of Natural Hearing, where the common opinion of the Greeks before him is: whatever is must be somewhere, and if it isn't somewhere, it doesn't what exist. But to be somewhere is to be what contained in some place, and is a property of body, the natural body. So identifying what is with what is in place, yeah, and so they think only that bodies exist, huh?

[5:19] And because they saw that all bodies are what movable, right, changeable, and they thought them to be in a state of what continuous flux, huh? Flowing, huh? They estimated that no certitude about the truth of things is able to be what had by us, huh?

[5:50] For what is in a continuous flux is not able to be grasped by certitude, because it what is going to fail, right? Huh? Before it is what judged to be such by the mind, huh?

[6:15] Just as Heraclitus said, it is not possible to touch twice the water of a river that is flowing. Because you come to it again, it's not the same. What water? It's flowing on, as the philosopher recites in the fourth book of the metaphysics.

[6:44] So we take that image of the river ourselves over, and we say the situation is fluid. That means it's changing as we describe it.

[7:00] So Heraclitus said you can't step twice in the same river because it's always other, than other waters flowing by. And Cratylus, who was the student of Heraclitus and a teacher of Plato, says you can't step once into the same river because as your foot breaks the surface of the water and starts to go down in the water, the water at the surface is no longer the same.

[7:28] So you can't step even once in the same river. And usually, I get up in front of the class there and I walk, you know, in front of the rows of desks and I say, "Now, where is Berquist right. Well, he's here, but before I can finish saying that he's here, he's no longer here. And so the Cratylus's followers said all you can do is point. You can't say anything because before you finish saying it, the thing would have what changed.

[8:03] And this produced a kind of negative crisis in Plato's thinking, because how can you have understanding, which, as the name stands, implies, how can you understand something that doesn't stand still, right? How can you understand something that is always changing? And even in old age, Aristotle said Plato was still holding on to some of these things he had learned from Cratylus, who was a student of Heraclitus quoted here.

[8:36] In fact, Plato had a dialogue called the Cratylus where Socrates and Cratylus have a conversation, and you can see Cratylus's opinion, right? But so Socrates, rather Plato, was looking for what something he could understand. And in two places he found apparently understanding. One was in mathematics, when he studied with the Pythagoreans And then Socrates, through definitions, was apparently getting at some understanding.

[9:20] So, if you understand what a dog is and what a cat is, you might understand that no dog is a cat, right? Okay. So he thought that if you have understanding of the truth in mathematics, and you understand the truth through definitions, there must be some unchanging things corresponding to mathematics, and some unchanging universals corresponding to the definitions which are of the universal. And that way, he tried to get back to what something unchanging, huh?

[10:03] So he says Plato coming upon these, huh? That he might be able to save a. Certain knowledge of truth by us through the understanding laid that apart from these bodily things, there is another genus of beings, right? Separated from matter and motion, which he called what species or forms. I don't know. He translates that idea, but it's actually Greek word for form.

[10:42] Species is a Latin word, and the Greek word is what eidos. Huh? Actually, that's kind of a little change there in the course of translation. But the Greek word would be eidos. Okay.

[11:00] So to get the word idea, but in English idea refers to not a objective form out there, but to a thought or something, right? An image, huh? So that's kind of a bad way to translate that in English by idea, right? It should be translated as Platonic ideas but Platonic forms, huh? Okay. Species is the is the Latin word, and of course in logic, the object of definition is what is called a what species, huh?

[11:37] But in Greek, the Greek word would be eidos, huh? In both species and eidos, have a little bit of reference to the eye, the form that is seen by the eye. That's why you get the word spectacles, right? Or you know, something to be seen, right? Yeah. And eidenai in Greek is the Greek word for to see, right? So eidos is the form that is what seen, huh?

[12:06] But in English, we just translate it by the word form, which doesn't have any reference to the eye, but. So in order that one might be able to have a certain knowledge of the truth by us through the understanding, Plato posited that apart from these bodily things, right? Another genus of beings, separated from matter and motion, which he called the species or forms, huh? Through the partaking of which each of these singular things and sensible things is said to be either a man or a horse or something of this sort, huh?

[12:53] Thus, therefore, Plato said that reasoned out knowledge, sciences, and definitions, and whatever pertains to the act of understanding, should not be referred to what these sensible bodies. But to those immaterial and separated things,

[13:16] so that thus the soul does not understand these bodies, but he understands the separated forms of these what bodies, huh? Now, as I say, one reason why Plato did this was, as Thomas will explain,

[13:39] that he thought that he answered yes to the central question of philosophy, right? Does truth require that the way we know be the way things are? And since, in a confused way, we think of truth as being the harmony of the mind with things, right? It might seem at first sight, at least, that the way we know must be the way things are. Otherwise, you don't have truth, huh?

[14:10] Now, if you add to that that we have truth in mathematics, and you add to that that we have truth through the definitions of science, and he just considered the definitions here, and the definition is a knowledge of the universal form separated from the singulars, right? If it's true knowledge, they must really exist in that way. So, what a man is must exist in separation from all individual men, and what a dog is must exist in separation from all individual dogs, huh?

[14:51] And what a cat is, and so on, and so he called this the world of what forms, huh? Now, perhaps another way he might come to this is from the fact that in material things

[15:12] something doesn't seem to be what it is entirely, right? So, is Socrates what a man is? Well, Socrates is an animal with reason, and that's what a man is, right? But is Socrates identical with what a man is?

[15:41] If he were identical with what a man is, then he'd be the only man there is, huh? So, Socrates is not a man through being Socrates, then is he? And then Plato said, "Well, what is so not through itself must be so through another. What is so through itself, right? Just like if my coffee is not sweet to being coffee, but my coffee is sweet. It must be sweet to something that is sweet to itself, right?

[16:18] Right. Like the sugar is sweet to itself, right? So if Socrates is not a man through being Socrates, right? And then he must be a man through what is man through being nothing other than what man is, and that would be the form. Okay. Aristotle says, "Yeah, but this this form you're talking about doesn't have any matter, yet that contains to what man is, huh? Okay. " And so there are some difficulties in Plato's position, right?

[16:52] But it's not like he had no reason to think this, huh? Can you say again what what he answered yes to the central question of philosophy? One of the central questions, which was. Yeah, the central question of philosophy is, I, as I put it, is called the central question because it brings in everything the philosopher talks about, and the inner purpose of which he talks about these things, huh?

[17:21] Okay. Now, if you hang around philosophers for a while, you'll find out that they talk about one of two things. Either the way we know,

[17:41] as for example in logic, now we talk about the way we know, huh? Or they talk about the way things are. So in natural philosophy, we talk about the way natural things are, right? In political philosophy, we talk about the way political things are. In wisdom, we talk about the way all things are to some extent, huh? But in logic, we talk about the way we know, huh?

[18:17] So the philosopher's goal is to know the truth about the way things are, right? To know the truth about the way we know, right? So his inner goal is truth,

[18:35] and therefore the central question is one that involves truth and the way we know and the way things are, because they're going to all be tied to that. And you might say the central question is: Does truth require

[18:53] that the way we know be the way things are? Okay. Does truth require that the way we know be the way things are? And so you could go down the history of philosophy. And see who follows Plato, who answers yes apparently to this question, and Aristotle, who answers no.

[19:27] Okay. And you probably find more people following Plato. They don't necessarily ask the question explicitly, but they seem to be proceeding from an answer yes. Okay. Now Aristotle says that

[19:50] if something is knowable in distinction from something else, if it's knowable in separation from something else, there's no falsity in knowing it without the other,

[20:07] because it is knowable without the other. The falsity would come though. If in the second act you said it is without the other, right? So you take the example: there is sugar that is white and sweet, and it's both white and sweet, right? But does the eye truly know sugar when it knows the whiteness of the sugar without the sweetness?

[20:36] We can say it's knowledge that the sugar is not complete, right? In knowing it to be white, knowing nothing about it being sweet, but it's not saying that it's not sweet, is it? It's just knowing it's being white. So is that false?

[20:55] Or the sense of taste? You taste the sugar, huh? Your tongue, and you taste the sweetness without the whiteness, huh? Is this tongue false in knowing the sweetness without the white? Because one is knowable without the other, right?

[21:20] So Aristotle said, "Well, reason can know, let's say, cube, right? In separation from ice cube, wooden cube, this plastic cube I have in my office there, like a paperweight.

[21:41] That shape is knowable without any particular what sensible matter, right? And that's the way the mathematician knows it, huh? Or I can know what's common to you and me,

[22:00] which leaves aside our differences, right? Individual differences. Or I can know what's common to the cat and the dog, even, right? To be a four-footed animal, leaving aside the one barks and the other meows,

[22:20] is what's common to two things noble without their differences? Yeah, yeah. The falsity would come if you said that there is a man who's neither white nor black nor any other individual thing. That would be false, right? But to understand what a man is without white or black being in the definition of man, is that false? No.

[22:51] And then Aristotle went on and saw that we can know things in a different order than they come. And of course, the most famous example of this is that we tend to know the effect. Before the cause, right?

[23:12] And that's why Sherlock Holmes says we have to reason backwards, right? As far as reality is concerned, reasoning from the effect back to the what? Cause. Is the mind false in knowing the effect before the cause? No. The falsity would come if it said that in reality the effect is before the cause, because it's before in our knowledge, huh? Aristotle says you have to distinguish the order in things and the order in our knowledge.

[23:47] Or I take a simple example with the students. Sometimes I say, I know you to some extent, but I never met your parents, right? So you are before your parents in my knowledge.

[24:05] Is that true in reality that you are before your parents? No. So is my mind false in knowing you before I know your parents?

[24:17] The falsity would come if I said, since I truly know you before your parents, then you must truly have come before your parents. Then I would be identifying the way the order which we know in this case and the order in things, huh?

[24:35] Now Spinoza and Hegel follow him. Spinoza says the order in thoughts and the order in things is exactly the same. Well, basically, I think Aristotle's right that the order in things and the order in our knowledge are just reverse.

[24:56] I take a simple example. You know, say, water, hydrogen, proton, which is first in our knowledge. Water. Yeah. And then we discovered hydrogen in reference to water. That's why we named it hydrogen. It generates water, right? And then after we knew hydrogen in some way, we came to know proton. A proton is gets its name from the Greek word proton, meaning first, because it seemed to be the bulk of the atom, right?

[25:33] Was it first in our knowledge? No, it was last in our knowledge, right? And what was first in our knowledge of these three things, is water, is apparently last in reality, huh? So if anything, the order in our knowledge is the reverse, exactly reverse of the order in things, huh? So it's a great mistake that Spinoza is making, huh? Because Hegel takes it over from Spinoza.

[26:07] And of course Hegel identifies what the most confused notion in our mind—that of being—with the one who said in Scripture, "I am who am." He's identifying, right, the most imperfect thought in some ways in our mind, right—the most general or confused thought, that of being in general. Something is, you know, That's the only way different with God, who said, "I am who am." Thomas, in my favorite book, there, the Summa Contra Gentiles has a whole little chapter devoted to showing that they're not the same thing, right?

[26:48] But Hegel is identifying what is first in our mind again with what is first in what reality. So, identifies the first thought of our mind with the first thing in reality. Terrible, terrible confusion, right? But it goes back to

[27:09] Spinoza, and it's kind of anticipated by Descartes, but it's very explicit in Spinoza. Is that what what got Anselm problems? Same kind of thing with his his

[27:31] existential proof there, whatever. Well, that's a little a little different problem he had. Okay. He's confusing the name right with the thing. Okay. Okay.

[27:48] But after enumerating the position of Plato, or reciting it, he says, "But this appears false in two ways, right? First, because or since those forms were immaterial, right, and immobile, you would exclude from the sciences a knowledge of motion and what matter, right, which is appropriate to natural science, huh? And you would also do away with any demonstration through moving causes or through the movers and material causes, huh?

[28:35] And secondly, because it seems laughable, as Aristotle said, or before him, that of things which are manifest to us when we seek the knowledge of them, right, we bring in other beings in the middle, which are not able to be their substances since they differ from them in their very way of being.

[28:59] Aristotle compares this, says, you know, it's like if I had a hard time, you know. Counting people in this room, right? And so we go down to the Yankee Stadium there and try to count you people along with everybody there in the stadium. Just compounding it, right? Difficulty, huh? So we want to know these material things around us, and Plato brings in another world. we've got to know in order to know the world.

[29:23] We're trying to know already, yeah. Um. And thus, those separated substances being known, not on account of this would we be able to judge about these sensible things? Because these sensible things are by their very nature material, right? Subject to motion. Why these forms would not be material, nor would they be subject to motion. Now I'm going to explain, though, why the great Plato seems to have deviated, huh, from the truth, huh?

[30:01] Because he estimated that all knowledge is by way of somewhat likeness, huh? He believed then that the form of the thing known. From necessity is in the knower in the same way in which is in the what known. That's not what he's saying, he's answering yes that the way we know must be the way what things are. Yeah. Now he considered that the form of the thing understood is in the understanding universally, and therefore immaterially and immobily, which appears from the operation of the understanding, who understands things universally, and by way of a certain necessity, huh?

[30:49] And the mode of action is according to the mode of the form of the agent, huh? And therefore he estimated that it's necessary for the things understood in this way in themselves to subsist, namely immaterial and immobile. In other words, if our mind has an unchangeable knowledge, right? An immaterial knowledge, it must be a knowledge of something unchangeable and immaterial. As if it was impossible to have a what unchanging knowledge of what change?

[31:25] No, when you say universally that a thing changing is becoming other, right? That's always true, right? And necessarily true, right? Yeah. So we can have a necessary truth about something that is not what necessary, huh? Well, yeah. We can have a timeless knowledge of time. What time is? Okay.

[31:54] So he says but this however, is not necessary, because even in the sensible things themselves we see that the form is in one way in one sensible things, and in another way in another one. For example, in one thing white is more intense, right? In another, it is more what remiss, huh? Less intense. And in one thing there is whiteness with sweetness, and another without sweetness, right?

[32:29] And in this way, a sensible form is in another way in the thing which is outside the soul, and another way in the sense which receives the forms of sensible things without matter, just as the color of gold without what gold, huh? I notice that when I come here, if I recognize you people, right, and distinguish between you, then I have the shape of you in my what memory, right?

[33:03] When I go home tonight, I can think about any one of you, and your shape will be in my what memory, right? But is your shape in my memory in the way your shape would be? Like in that statue over there, right? If we had Michelangelo, somebody's going to make a statue of you. Would your shape be received in my eye in the same way it's received in the marble or the plaster or whatever it is?

[33:32] Not in the same way. No. And is there a piece of bone or flesh up in my head here that's chiseled out into your shape? Hmm? Wouldn't seem to be no. No. I mean Shakespeare says poetically, "Huh? My eye hath played the painter, right? " He says, my eye is up here, you know, and you know, drawing a painting. But is there really a painting of you in that way?

[34:02] No. So when the marble or the wood or the plaster takes on your shape, it becomes its own shape, doesn't it? But when my eye takes on your shape, does it become the shape of my eye or the shape of some part of my head? You see? So I'm receiving, nevertheless, I recognize your shape, right? I recognize the shape of the dog. I recognize the dog by its shape, right?

[34:29] So I obviously receive the shapes of you, and the shape of the dog, and the shape of the table, and so on, shape of the glass, in a different way than matter. receives it, don't I? So the thing known is not in the knower in the same way it's in the what? Known. Okay. And yet I truly do know the shape, right? You know these, you know, my grandchildren, you know.

[34:58] And she had these plastic boxes that they have now, right? And it's got lid you can open and close it, and it's got what? Round things and triangular things. And then you have the little blocks that go with these things, right? Yeah. And the child's got to put the round one through the round thing, otherwise won't go through the box, right? And the triangular one through the triangular one, and so on.

[35:23] So those shapes are really there, right? Huh? And so I really do know them, right? You see. And I have to, you know, see that the circular one fits the shape of this block here, so I can put this block through the thing, right? But yet that shape is not in my eye in that way. That my eye has taken on that shape.

[35:47] One of the one of the Greeks said, "You know, go up to somebody's eye and look in their eye, you know, huh? " You see, look in my eye, and you'll see yourself in my eye, won't you? Yeah. But is that the way that I know you by that shape that you see when you look in my eye? Not in the same way. No, that's more like the way the mirror receives my shape, right?

[36:09] Yeah. So, but once again, the mirror receives the shape in a different way, and the color of something, right, in a different way than something else does, right? So it's not unheard of, even in the material world, that color and shape are received in things in different ways, huh? And so,

[36:35] yeah. So Thomas is pointing that out here, huh? And similarly, the understanding the species of things which are materials, material and mobile, it receives in an immaterial way, in an unchanging way, according to its own mode. Now the the general principle, for the received is in the one receiving, in the manner of the one what receiving, huh? And that's what Jet Rum is a teacher, right? Huh?

[37:11] You say the same thing, but received in the different students' minds, right? According to their capacity to understand, according to their previous knowledge, and so on, right? Okay. So that that though is a different understanding of this principle, right? Well, this is a very common principle. You know, used to when I was growing up. It seems like it's being used here differently than in that case of.

[37:45] See the the fact that the fact that our reason knows changeable things in an unchangeable way, right? The fact that our reason knows material things in immaterial way.

[38:02] Not that it understands them to be material immaterial, right? But that by which it understands, huh? Okay. That reveals something about the nature of our mind, huh? See, does our mind know changing things in an unchanging way? Does our mind know material things in an immaterial way? Because of the thing being known. No, because that's material and changeable. Yeah. Therefore, it must be knowing, changing, and material things in an unchanging way, in an immaterial way, because it itself is immaterial and unchanging, huh?

[38:42] And so that's that really hints, right, at the soul being what? Immortal. Immortal, yeah. That it receives things, right? That in their very nature are material and changeable, right? In a way that is unchanging, huh? In a way that is immaterial. That's a sign of its being immaterial. Mm-hmm. As being unchanging, huh? Mm-hmm. If if it was knowing, you know, angels, that'd be a little different thing, you see, because the thing itself is.

[39:15] Is unchanging or immaterial, right? But here it's knowing a material thing in an unchanging and immaterial way. This example, though, with the students, isn't that putting it a little differently? Because it's really talking about how each person's mind is different and receiving it differently. Well, I mean, this is a very universal principle. They say when I grew up, they would say "quid quidquid recipitur secundum modum recipientis almost like a tongue twister.

[39:48] But whatever is received is received according to the way of the receiver. So that's you know, if you have something hard, you see the shape in a more stable way than something that is soft, right? So I mean, this can be applied to all kinds of things. But Thomas is applying it here to the to the way the mind. receives right. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Doctor Berquist what was that shorthand again you just said?

[40:20] Quid quid recipitur. Recipitur. Okay. Whatever is received. Recipitur is received. Right. Secundum modum recipientis, according to the way of the receiver. Thank you. It should be said, therefore, that the soul, by the understanding, knows bodies by knowledge that is immaterial, universal, and what necessary, right?

[40:56] Because sometimes we we play around with this a little bit, you know. We can say, is a definition of stupidity stupid? Right. And is a knowledge of ignorance.

[41:19] Ignorance. It's interesting. Who knows the ignorance of the student better, the student or the professor? The one who knows. Yeah, yeah, the one who knows, right? Knows ignorance of the student better than the student knows his ignorance, right? Right. And how could the student know his own ignorance fully if he didn't know what he was ignorant of? In which case, he would not be ignorant of it.

[41:53] So it's through my knowledge of something that I know your ignorance of that, right? Yeah. Now is that is the way of knowing there the same as the the way of the thing?

[42:14] I have a knowledge of your ignorance. Because ignorance is a lack of knowledge, right? But I know the lack of knowledge through what the knowledge that I have, yeah. So the way we know is not the same way, but. Yeah, yeah. What we say about the thing, right? Huh? I don't say that the ignorance is knowledge, do I? No. It's a lack of knowledge, an unbeing of knowledge, right?

[42:48] And a subject capable of knowing it. Changes between what opposites, right? See, this is a universal and an immaterial knowledge, right? Immobile knowledge and changing knowledge Change, right?

[43:14] When a thing is changing. does it is it staying the same or is it becoming other? See, and does that change? Or is it changing always becoming other?

[43:28] When it's changing, so we have in that sense a what a universal knowledge of the what singular right? When I say, you know you're a man, right? And that beast that's in everything I see is out here now. Is a cat, right? Huh? I have a universal knowledge of a what? Man and a cat. Yeah, but of a singular, right? He's an individual man, but I know him to be a what?

[44:05] A man, right? Yeah, I'm not going to identify him and say, well, because man is universal, therefore he's universal, right? Because that would be to attribute the way I know him, right, to the way he is. Yeah.

[44:31] Of course, in God, in God, they're identical, right? Yeah. God knows all things by knowing Himself. Yeah. But there's no distinction between what God's knowledge and God Himself, right? They're all one. Some people want us to have that knowledge, right? But we can't have that knowledge, huh?

[44:57] Now, first thing he's got to reply to now is Augustine's words in the soliloquy, huh? What do they call those things in Shakespeare now? When Hamlet comes out on the stage all by himself and he speaks his thoughts. Yeah, I mean, monologue is only in work. They call it soliloquy, don't they? Yeah. I think so. Yeah. Soliloquy, huh? To speak to oneself, right? Speak alone, huh?

[45:29] Interesting work by Augustine. He says the word of Augustine should be understood as regards that by which the understanding knows, huh? Not over as regards that which it knows, huh?

[45:53] But that's not altogether clear in Augustine, right? Okay. Certainly, Augustine does not want to say that we don't know bodies, right? Right. Yeah. For it knows bodies by understanding, not through bodies, right? Nor through material and bodily. Likenesses, but through what? Immaterial and understandable forms,

[46:22] which, in their essence, can be, are able to be, in the soul. Okay. Now, the second objection was saying, just as the senses don't know immaterial things, well, then the reason shouldn't know what. Material things, yeah. But Thomas will point out that it's not like the senses, sight and sense of hearing, which are both particular knowing powers, but the sense of what? The senses are particular knowing powers, and reason is what?

[46:59] Universal, right? So, reason can ask, "What is color? What is sound? " And so on, and about many other things, huh? To the second, it should be said that, as Augustine says in the twenty-second book of the City of God, it ought not to be said that as the sense knows only bodily things, so the understanding knows only what? Spiritual things, huh? That'd be going back in a sense to Plato's difficulty, wouldn't it?

[47:31] See, but the bodily bodies are known only by something bodily, and the spiritual or immaterial, incorporeal things are known only by something immaterial incorporeal, because the knower has to be the same as the known, right?

[47:49] Because it would follow from this that God and the angels would not know what bodily things, which is absurd. Um. Now he says the reason for this diversity that the understanding can know bodies, but the senses cannot know immaterial things, is because a lower power does not extend itself to those things which pertain to a what? Higher power. But the higher power, those things which pertain to the lower power, it does in a more what?

[48:23] Excellent way, huh? That's kind of interesting, you know. You think of in mathematics there. You think of imagination knowing a line and so on, and a line is at some length, right? And this line is going to be either greater than, or less than, or equal to another line, right? Okay. But now, when I understand what a line is,

[49:08] is what a line is. A line. No. Because if what a line is were a line, it would have to be either what equal to this line or greater than it or less than, in which case what a line is would not fit every line, would it? No. So what a line is is not a line, right? That's right. And yet, in understanding what a line is, I understand what this is, what this is, what this is, what this is, at least in general, right?

[49:48] Curious, isn't it? Yeah. Reason knows the line. The proper object of reason is that what it is is something sensed or imagined, huh? So what reason knows in the line is what a line is, just as it knows in the triangle what a triangle is, right? But it seems that you can't really say that what a lion is is a lion.

[50:25] Even though in understanding what a lion is, you understand what a lion is. Very strange, isn't it? But the thing is interesting, as you see in material things, and Plato in a way was was touching upon a great truth. In material things, what a thing is is not identical with the thing.

[50:53] But in immaterial things, what a thing is is identical with the thing. And this will come out, maybe, later on. Other things. Okay. Now the third objection says the understanding is of things that are necessary, and always having themselves in the same way. And that's why you don't really have intellectus of what contingent things, right? Okay, like you're sitting over there, right? Yeah, I know that only through my what senses, right?

[51:35] Because you could be standing, or you could be lying down, or whatever, right? And so I can't really know by my reason, right, what you're doing. Okay.

[51:51] But all bodies are mobile and not having themselves in the same way. Therefore, the soul through the understanding is not able to know bodies.

[52:02] Thomas says to the third, it should be said that all motion supposes something what immobile. For when there is change according to quantity, the substance remains immobile, yeah, the substance remains immobile. And when there is a change of substantial form, there remains the matter immobile.

[52:32] Also, he says of changing things there are certain what unchanging relations. Just as Socrates, although he does not always sit down, right? Nevertheless, it is immobily true that whenever he sits, he remains in one place. And

[52:54] account of this, nothing prevents one from having an unchanging knowledge about what changing things, huh? In every change, something becomes what other, right? In every change, something does not remain the same. Does that ever change?

[53:28] So it's possible to have an unchanging knowledge of what changing things, very subtle. So we take a little break before we do the next article, or what?