De Anima (On the Soul)
139. Summa I q.84 a.6: Does Our Knowledge Come from the Senses? Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle's Middle Way
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[0:00] days for the worship of man, right? I just broke out laughing, but he is in class. Everybody else, you know, kind of seriously listening to this.

[0:10] It's so kind of funny, though. I absolutely know there are no absolutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, The Son, the Holy Spirit, Amen. God our enlightenment. Guardian angels strengthen the lights of our minds, ordain illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, pray for us. Help us to understand all that's written. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

[1:13] To the sixth one proceeds thus. It seems that the knowledge of the understanding is not taken from sensible things, for Augustine says in the book of the eighty-three questions. A little bit like Thomas's quodlibetales huh? You know, or any question about anything might show up. Quodlibet, you know, whatever you wish. It doesn't have the same order that the questiones disputatae have, huh? But you have, like, the Maratti, a whole volume almost of the questiones quodlibetales, and they're all over the place, right?

[1:50] People, whatever comes up, people are wondering about, right? Ah. And I don't know if Augustine is exactly like that, but he's given the title of the 83 questions because they probably cover different, but kind of like unity of subject or matter.

[2:13] That the sincerity of truth, Augustine says, ought not to be expected from the senses of the body, huh? And he proves this in two ways, huh?

[2:26] In one way, through this, that everything that the bodily sense attains is changing without any intermission of time. He sounds almost like Heraclitus, huh? And his followers who said that he can't say anything because before he finished saying something, the thing will have changed, right? Mm-hmm.

[2:51] Whatever does not remain is not able to be what perceived or sensed. I wonder sometimes you really sense emotion, huh? When you see somebody, you know, coming down the mountain there in the skis, huh? Do you actually see his motion coming down?

[3:15] When do you see it? Yes. It's in your imagination. It's in your something in your head or something. Yeah. Yeah. Because you're not in two places on the hill at one time, so how can you sense? His motion coming down from one place to another. Kind of means that we do sense it in a way. We do sense it. It stretches our senses more than anything else is motion.

[3:41] Another way through this that all things that we sense through the body, even when they are not present to the senses, we undergo nevertheless the images of them, right? As when we are asleep, right, or when we are mad, right.

[4:07] But we're not able to discern by the senses whether those sensibles or those images of them that we sense are false. For nothing is able to be perceived that is not separated from or discerned from the false. And thus he concludes that we're not to expect truth to the senses. You can see how much more of a Platonist than an Aristotelian Augustine is, right? in? His way of speaking anyway here, than Thomas.

[4:39] Therefore, intellectual knowledge is not to be expected from the senses. More of Augustine says in the twelfth book upon Genesis to the letter, we're not not to think that some body makes something in the spirit, huh?

[5:17] For the spirit, huh, to the body making in place of matter is subject, huh? Because everything is more, yeah. notice what he's saying there, that the spirit would be what subject, right, to the body making. Okay.

[5:40] But everything, everything that makes is more what outstanding, huh? Than the thing about which it makes something. Hence, he concludes that the image of the body, not the body of the spirit, but the spirit by itself makes. Therefore, intellectual knowledge cannot be derived from the senses. In other words, the lower would be what producing the higher. Does it make sense, huh?

[6:16] Of course, Thomas will be saying that the images are only a what tool of the what active reason, right? To what act upon the reason that understands, huh? Reason undergoes.

[6:33] Moreover, an effect does not extend beyond the power of its cause, but the knowledge of reason or the understanding extends beyond sensible things. For we understand some things which we do not perceive by the senses,

[6:53] like truth or God. Right? Yeah, this sort. Therefore, intellectual knowledge is not derived from sensible things. You can kind of guess how he's going to answer these arguments, right? Because he's going to say that the things that we don't sense, we naturally come to know them through the things that we do sense, right? In various ways, we know them through them. He's not going to say that the senses are the what complete and the primary cause of the knowledge of reason. That's going to be the active intellect, huh?

[7:33] Okay. But the active intellect will act upon the images, right, and make what is understandable in ability understandable in act. And you see this yourself. Now, what happens in the case of your of your knowing? What comes first is sensing, and then memory of what you've sensed, and then a collection of many memories of the same sort of thing, which is called experience. And then you separate out by the active intellect what those many singulars have what in common, right?

[8:15] So one day your mother pointed out a dog, right? And you saw the dog, right? See the dog, and you remembered maybe that what you sensed, right? And another day there's another dog, and she said, "See, says see the dog. Oh, dog, yeah. " And after the child has seen a number of dogs, he separates out what they have in common, and that is something universal, and that's the beginning of the knowledge of what reason.

[8:43] And so Boethius says that a thing is singular when you sense, and even when you remember it, right? And even in your experience, you have only singulars, huh? But when the thing is finally understood, it's something what universal. And now, when I understand what is common to these many dogs that I see, then I recognize another example. Like when I came in here, there was a dog here laying in the rug, right?

[9:11] But I'd already separated out what the dog is, as a result of my mother saying, "See the dog, " you know. Now people are saying, "See the dog. " You see? So the the the chief cause of the universal is going to be the act of understanding, huh? The cause of it being actually understandable. It's actually being separated from the singulars. Okay.

[9:41] I answer against this is what the philosopher proves in the first book of the metaphysics. When you look again at the premium to wisdom and the meaning of metaphysics, he'll talk about sensing and memory and experience and so on. And he talks about something like that at the end of the first book there of the Summa Contra Gentiles, or into the second book, I guess.

[10:05] Aristotle proves that the beginning of our knowledge is from the sense. Thomas is a very what humble and faithful student of Aristotle, huh? Kind of interesting. I was looking at a text there in the. Summa Theologiae, where Thomas is talking about how God is goodness itself, right, and no creature is goodness itself, and he gives you know three reasons why the very substance of the creature is not its own goodness, and one is that the substance of the creature is not its own existence, okay.

[10:50] Another thing is that for the goodness of the creature requires requires that in addition to the substance should be added certain accidents among which are the virtues and so on, and then a third one that the end or purpose of the creature is something other than itself, right.

[11:09] But I was reading, then doing a similar reading of the De Veritate there, right, and actually you should call it Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate et de Bonitate, right, because there'd be kind of a breakthrough and you'd get to question twenty, I think it is. But there Thomas is taking up the question, similar question, and he says, and he takes a text from Boethius, one from Augustine, and one from Aristotle, or from the Liber de Causis, which you know goes back I thought to Aristotle at that time, and he brings it all together, you know, and it's kind of beautiful to see him doing that, right.

[11:51] But the way he inherited what's like like Cajetan says in beginning the Summa Theologiae, that Thomas seems to have inherited the mind of all the Church Fathers, because he so what reverenced them, huh.

[12:07] But he had a great debt to to Aristotle. I answered ought to be said now. This in the body of the article. I answered ought to be said that about this question there was a threefold opinion among the philosophers.

[12:28] Democritus laid down that there is no other cause of our knowledge except those things which we what think about from these bodies, and there come and enter into us images from these bodies into our soul, as Augustine notes in the Epistle to to Dioscorum,

[12:53] and Aristotle also says in the book on Sleeping and Being Awake, huh? It's not so concrete Aristotle, got right? That Democritus laid down that knowledge came to be through things flowing out from bodies, right? de fluxionibus, right,

[13:16] and the reason of this position was because both Democritus himself as well as the other ancient natural philosophers did not lay down that understanding differed. From what sense, as Aristotle himself says in the book about the soul,

[13:39] and therefore, because our sense is what changed by the sensible, they thought that all our knowledge comes about only through the what change that is produced by sensible things,

[13:59] which change which Democritus asserted came about through the flowing out of images, right? Okay. Now Plato, a contrario, in his position, now was what furthest away from his position, right? Laid down that the understanding differs from sense,

[14:28] and the understanding is an immaterial power, not using a bodily organ in its own act, and because the bodiless, let's say incorporeum, cannot be what changed by the bodily, right? He laid down that our intellectual knowledge does not come about through the changing or transformation of the understanding by sensible things, but by partaking, right, of separated understandable forms, as has been said before, right? So now it's got two positions that are what furthest apart, right?

[15:12] Okay. Now does virtue lie in the middle? Yeah, and is truth lie in the middle between two extreme errors? I mean, as a synthesis of what's true about them, right? Well, you see, what is what does it say to say the truth? Say the truth.

[15:48] To say the truth is to say that what is is right, and also to say that what is not is not right. Okay. Now, if you say Berquist is standing now, right, you're speaking truly. You're saying that what is, namely my standing, is right. If you say Berquist is not sitting now, right. You're also speaking truly, right? You're saying that what is not, namely my sitting, right, is not, right?

[16:32] Okay. Now there's two ways of being false, right? And one would be to say that what is is not, huh? And the other would be to say that what is not is, right? It. Now, sometimes they take the mistake of thinking what is is not as subtracting from the truth, right? Okay. If you say that what is is not, which is one way of being false, huh?

[17:18] One way of speaking falsely to say what is is not. If you say for example, that Perpus is. Not standing now, your mind would be speaking falsely, right? You'd be saying that what is, namely, my standing, is not, right? And then your mind would be false, right? But the other way,

[17:47] the other way of speaking falsely would be to say what is not is. Yeah. If you should say, for example, that Burquest is what sitting now, right? What is not now, namely, my sitting, you're saying is, and so you're being false, right? So this, in a way, is adding to the truth, right? This is what subtracting to the truth, right? Okay. How much money do I have?

[18:35] Huh? My billfold, huh? Forty dollars. Okay. Now, if I say I got sixty dollars in my billfold, right? I'm saying I have something I don't have. If I say I only got twenty dollars, I can't lend you forty dollars. I'm saying I don't have something that I do have, right? So the truth, in that sense, is in between two extremes, one of which is adding to the reality, and the other is subtracting, right?

[19:10] We've talked about this before, right? Now that's why Shakespeare says, you know, as one of his kent there in King Lear, all my reports, he says, go with the modest truth, nor more, nor clipped, but so, right? Now, in you know Shakespeare's grammar, there they don't say neither nor, they say nor nor. Yeah. They don't say either or, they say or or. Okay. So he's saying all my reports go with the modest truth.

[19:44] This here is the middle, the mean, the modest truth. Neither more, we'd say, right today. Nor, but clipped. Okay. And Falstaff says the same thing, right? If they say more or less than the truth, they are villains and the sons of darkness. Okay. And that same thing, as we mentioned before, I think, we need to touch on this, is found in the formula in the courtroom, right?

[20:18] I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I say. When I swear I tell the truth, I'm swearing to say what is is, what is not is not, right? But the whole truth, I'm not going to subtract from it, right? And nothing but the truth, I'm not going to add to it, right? Okay. I give me a simple example there. If they ask me the bartender who was at the bar between nine and ten, John and Henry were there, right?

[20:48] And so if I leave out either John or Henry, I'm saying what was was not, right? If I add Tom or Paul or somebody else, right? I'm saying who was not there was there, right? And being false, right? Okay.

[21:08] Now you see that you know in the great mysteries of the faith, you know, make the sign of the cross. What two mysteries are we touching on? Trinity and Incarnation. Yeah, yeah. Now in the case of the trinity the Incarnation, the mysteries in our way is the reverse. In terms of in the Trinity, there's one nature, but three persons, right? In the Incarnation, it's reversed. There's one person, but two what?

[21:40] Nature. Natures, yeah. Okay. Now what are the heresies, right? Well, as far as the Trinity is concerned, you have two heresies, really two sides. Those who thinking there's one nature think there's only one person. What was it, Sabellius, I guess, right? And then those who think that because there are three persons, there are three natures, like Arius, for example. Do you see? But now if you stop and think about it, the man who says that there are three persons here, that as there are three persons here, there are three natures, he's saying what is not is.

[22:19] He's adding two natures there when there's only one. Okay. But the man who says that as there is one nature, like Eutyches says, so there's one person, right? Okay. He's saying that what is is what is not. He's denying the multiplicity of persons there, right? They have to reverse things in in the mystery of the Incarnation because some say that because there are two natures, there's two persons, and therefore what is not that second person, they're saying that's what Nestorius is doing, right?

[23:02] Okay. She shouldn't be called the Mother of God, but the Mother of Christ, right? Okay. Because he's denying the two-person there, right? So he's saying that there's another person there, there's a human person and a divine person. So he's saying what is not the human person is, right? But then you have those who say what? As there's one nature, as one person there, there's one what nature that.

[23:28] Word was really made into flesh or something, right? And then is saying that what is is not, he's denying one of the natures, right? So the truth about the Trinity, about the incarnation, are in between two extremes, right? One of which adds to the truth, right? And the other which subtracts the truth, right? Okay.

[23:58] Well, in a sense, a sign too that the truth lies in the middle there is that the middle explains extremes because it contains a part of the truth in both extremes. So the man who says there are three natures in God as well as three persons, right? He shares with the truth that there are three persons. There really are three persons there. Okay. And the man who says there is only one person and one nature, he shares the other part of the truth that there is one nature there.

[24:38] See. But if someone claims that the truth is there is one person, one nature, how can he explain that someone to think there are three persons or three natures? There'd be no basis in the truth, right? There'd be no part of the truth, right? And therefore, no basis for any probability in the contrary position. And vice versa, right? If there really are three persons and three natures, right?

[25:06] Why should anybody think there is only one person and one nature? See, there is no part of the truth that could serve for the probability of that opinion. In the same way with the incarnation, right? If there is really one person there and one nature, right? Why should anybody think there are two persons and two natures? Right? There'd be nothing, no part of the truth for the probability of that opinion.

[25:37] But vice versa, if there really are two natures and two persons, why should anybody think there is one person and one nature? But if there is one person and two natures, then both of the extremes have a part of the truth in them. Okay. Well, I mentioned that again, going back here, because the way Plato is going to have the knowledge of reason be entirely derived from something immaterial and not corporeal or sensible, right?

[26:10] Okay. While Democritus sees the whole of our knowing coming, you know, as if the sensible is by itself sufficient to explain the knowledge of reason, right? Aristotle is going to say, no, there is a. There is an immaterial power of man that we talked about before, the act of understanding, right? But there's also a role that the senses play, right? And everybody experiences that after they've seen a number of examples of the same thing, right?

[26:40] They begin to separate out what they have in common. They don't do this too explicitly at first, you know. Myself, I mean, I don't. I never really had any formal music education, right? But I've heard enough baroque music that I kind of recognize baroque music when I hear it. And I might mix up, you know, a piece of Haydn with one of Mozart, maybe in some cases, right?

[27:05] But not very much a piece of, you know, baroque piece or an ordinary piece of Mozart, you know. Occasionally, Mozart has a little bit of baroque stuff too, but I mean, Mozart for the most part, right? I could maybe even say distinctly what that baroque thing is, but I recognize it, you know. I separate out something common to these baroque concertos and so on. Okay. So Plato, on the contrary, laid down that the understanding differed from sense.

[27:38] So that's true, and that the understanding was an immaterial power, not using a bodily organ in its act. And because the incorporeal or non-bodily cannot be changed by the bodily, he laid down that the understanding's knowledge does not come about through the changing of the understanding by sensible things, but by partaking of some understandable forms that are separated from what matter, right? What they call the ideas, right?

[28:11] But the forms, a, better translation of it. The sense he also laid down to be a power operating by itself. Whence neither the sense itself, since it is a certain spiritual power, is changed by sensible things, but the organs of the senses are changed by sensible things, from which change the soul, in a way, is excited, right, and aroused that in itself it might form the species or forms of sensible things.

[28:55] So Plato, you know, remember the thing that Aristotle has in the beginning of the De Anima when he touches upon this question of whether the human soul is immortal or not, right? And he says the question of the immortality of the human soul depends upon the answer to another question: Does the human soul have some operation or activity by itself, right? Okay. Does it have some operation or activity in itself that's not in the body, right?

[29:30] Because the existence of a thing is presupposed to what it does. It's like Descartes said, right? I think therefore I am, right? You have to be before you can do something, right? So if the soul had existence, if the soul had being only in the body, right, it would have no doing, no activity, no operation except in the body. But if the soul has an activity, if it does something not in the body, right, then its existence is not entirely immersed in the body, and therefore is existence apart from the body, okay?

[30:20] And Plato was getting into that same position about the senses, is it? And Aristotle is quite clear that. Sensing and imagining are something bodily,

[30:34] and it's the understanding, the act of understanding, and the act of willing that are not in the body. So the men before Plato would deny that the soul has anything, any operation that's not in the body and through the body. Plato is saying that not only the understanding and the will, but also the senses, right? The activities of the senses that are in the soul only, right?

[31:06] And so, since Aristotle is in between the two, right? You see, the others are saying that neither the senses nor the reason have any activity that's not bodily, but the brain say is the organ of thought, right? And Plato is saying both the senses and reason, right? Activities of the soul alone or by itself. Aristotle's in between. He says the intellect is, but not the senses. And therefore, we can see an element of truth in both Plato and the what?

[31:39] Early Greeks, right? Because his position has the whole truth, and the whole truth has the parts of truth that are divided amongst the others. In the famous work of Boethius, the Consolation of Philosophy, Lady Wisdom, when she appears, her garments are what? Kind of torn, right? And the commentator says that this is to signify that men, in grabbing for the truth, right, have kind of dismembered the truth, right?

[32:12] They have torn the truth because they grab one part of the truth and say, "I got the whole," right? And they only have a part of the truth, huh? And Empedocles, the great philosopher, had warned us about that already, right? That we don't live very long, and there is all kinds of miseries in our life, and so on. And men see just a part of the truth, right?

[32:35] But they boast, just a form of pride, they boast of having seen the whole, right? And that's happens, huh? And a man doesn't succeed, maybe, in convincing other people if he hasn't seen some part of the truth, yeah. Because there'd be no probability. he had no part of the truth in this position, but the danger is that he may see a part of the truth, and through pride or other human weaknesses, boast that he has seen the whole.

[33:05] Okay. In this opinion, he says Augustine would seem to touch upon in the twelfth book upon Genesis to the letter, where he says that the body does not sense, right? But the soul through the body, which, as it were, it uses as a messenger, right, to forming in itself what extrinsically is announced. Thus, therefore, according to the opinion of Plato, neither the knowledge of the understanding proceeds from sensible things,

[33:51] nor even the sensible knowledge, the knowledge of the senses, totally proceeds from sensible things. But the sensible things excite or arouse the sensible soul to sense, right?

[34:08] It's a little bit like what you call learning recalling, right? When you see something and you talk about something that reminds you something, you know, and okay, but you don't really get what you're reminded of or what you recall because of that from that, right? Okay.

[34:28] And likewise, the senses excite or arouse the understanding soul to what understand, right? Okay. So Plato sees some dependence there of the understanding upon the senses, right? Okay. In the dialogue called the Meno, there, right? He says, "You see a surface here, and this surface is flat, right? But is it really flat? No, there's little indentations here, right? But it's much more flat than this thing here is, right?

[35:03] And so, when I see something like this that resembles a flat surface, I recall a flat surface, right? Just like when I see a picture of you, I remember you, right? Okay.

[35:21] But Aristotle went forward in the media via, you see, truth is in between two extremes. Okay. For he laid down with Plato that the understanding differs from the sense.

[35:42] But he laid down that the sense does not have its own operation, its own doing, without the communication of the what body, right? Thus, that the sense is not an act of the soul alone, but of the what combination, the conjunction of the soul and the body, right? Okay.

[36:08] And similarly, he laid down about all the operations of the sensing part. That's why if something is too sensible, like something is too bright, right, it tends to what destroy destroy the eye, right? Huh? For these kids, you know, they say going deaf, you know, in the air that is next to the rock band or something, right? Okay. And if you taste something, you know, too strong, it prevents you from tasting other things afterwards, huh?

[36:39] Which shows the bodily nature of sensing, huh? When I think about God or something very understandable like that, it doesn't prevent me from thinking about lesser things, huh? In fact, I'm more able to think about lesser things. For I exercise my mind.

[37:02] Once, therefore, because it is not impossible that sensible things, which are outside the soul, cause something in the conjunction of body and soul, right? Conjunctum. In this, Aristotle with Democritus is an accord, right? That the operations of the sensitive part are caused by the impression of sensible things upon the senses, huh? Not over by way of something. Flowing out from them, as Democritus laid down, but by a certain operation of acting upon the senses.

[37:39] For Democritus laid down that every action came about through the flowing out of the atoms. This is clear in the book about generation. But notice, you know, the main point here that he does share with Democritus the fact that our what senses, right? Senses because they've been acted upon by these sensible things, huh? Okay.

[38:07] Aristotle laid down that the understanding has an operation, a doing, without the communication of the body, huh? And nothing bodily is able to press itself upon a bodiless thing, huh? And therefore, to causing the intellectual operation, according to Aristotle, there's not suffice only the impression of sensible bodies, but there's required something more, what noble, right? This would be the answer to that second objection, remember, huh? That was saying, you know, that a the senses are below reason, right?

[38:48] Okay. And this, of course, these words here that are in italics, that's really a quote from Aristotle in the third book on the soul when he said that the agent intellect or the acting upon understanding, right, is more honorable, right, than the one that undergoes. For the one acting upon is more honorable than the one undergoing, right? That's why we say it's more divine to what to give than to receive, yeah.

[39:19] Not, however, that the operation of the understanding is caused in us from only the impression of some superior things, as Plato had laid down, right? But that that higher and more noble agent, which he calls the agent intellect or the acting upon understanding, about which we have spoken above, makes the images, right? The Greek word for images, phantasmata, taken from the senses, it makes them understandable in act, right?

[39:56] It separates out what they have in common, and that's actually understandable, the singular is not as such, by way of a certain abstraction or separation.

[40:11] According to this, therefore, from the side of the images, you can say the operation of the understanding or intellectual operation is caused by the sense, huh? But because the images are not sufficient to change. The undergoing, the possible understanding, but it is necessary that they become understandable and act through the intellect, the agent intellect. One cannot say that the sensible knowledge is the whole and perfect cause, right, of the operation of the intellect.

[40:49] But in a way, it's more the matter, the cause. That's interesting. So, therefore, he sees a element of truth in what Plato said, right? Okay.

[41:04] But Plato put you know that what it is of man and dog and cat and horse in this world by itself, right? This immaterial world, and you got a problem there because that what a man is would involve no matter, right? That's obviously false, right? Hmm. So Aristotle realized that what a man is and what a dog is, what a cat is, don't exist by themselves in the world of the forms, right?

[41:30] Yeah. But they exist only in the understanding, right? What a man is has been separated from the many images of men that you have, right? And what a dog from the many memories you have of dog, and so on. And then you have an understanding of something universal, right? Because what a man is is common to all men, right? What a dog is is common to all dogs.

[41:57] What's common to them doesn't exist as common to them except in the mind. This is why Albert the Great says the first thing to be considered in logic is the universal. What is said of many things, right? What's common to many.

[42:20] And so we don't define the singular. We don't define Socrates. We define man, right? We don't define the wisdom of Socrates or Aristotle. We define wisdom, right? We define something that is universal.

[42:42] Okay. Can you say a little bit more about it? The last sentence there, why its understanding of the matter, it's more the matter of the cause. Well, it's because the matter is that what the agent acts upon, right? Okay. So the images are like that out of which you might say, huh? Like matter, the agent intellect makes something understandable and act. Okay. So you have the images, many images of dogs, and reason, in the sense, compares those, right?

[43:11] And separates out or abstracts what they have in common, huh? Sure. So that's like the matter out of which you're you're acting upon, right? Yeah.

[43:23] Okay. The chief or principal cause is the agent intellect. This is the light which enlightens every man, right? Or sharing of that light. Now he's very brief in his reply to the first objection of Augustine. To the first, therefore, it should be said that through those words of Augustine, one is given to understand that truth should not be wholly expected from the senses. For there is required the light of the agent intellect, through which, in an unchangeable way, we know truth in these changeable things, and that we discern these things from the likenesses of these things, the images.

[44:25] So you understand, for example, what change is? Does what change is change? Instead of interesting, right? That our mind is able to know changing things in universal in a changeless way, right? And therefore, the way we know is not the way things are, right? But we don't attribute the changelessness of our knowledge to the things themselves and say that they're changeless.

[45:06] We talked about this before, right? The central question in philosophy, right? Does truth require that the way we know be the way things are, right? Is a definition of stupidity? Stupid?

[45:25] Is a definition of evil? Evil? That's interesting, right? Yeah. To know evil is good. Yeah. As such, right? But to love evil is always bad, right? Because love goes out to the thing in itself, right?

[46:02] So Thomas will will say and make very clear, you know, that the love of God, say, right, is better than the knowledge of God, huh? Because in the knowledge of God, you kind of put God into your own mind, right? And your mind is quite inadequate to grasping God, huh? But love goes out to God in Himself, right? And therefore, the love of God is better than the knowledge of God, right?

[46:30] But the knowledge of a stone is better than the love of stones. And a fortiori, the knowledge of evil is not only better than than the good love of evil, but the knowledge of evil is good, and the love of evil is evil.

[46:50] So Wisdom says, you know, we're shaped and fashioned to what we love, right? And the ancient Old Testament says they became, you know, abominable just as the things they loved, right? If you love disgusting things, you are disgusting.

[47:08] If you know what is disgusting, that doesn't make it disgusting. Okay. Now, in the second one, where Augustine's talking about these images. And so on. The second, it should be said that Augustine there speaks not about the knowledge of the understanding, but about the knowledge of the imagination.

[47:43] And because, according to the opinion of Plato, the power to imagine has an operation which is of the soul only, as Plato thinks, Augustine uses the same reason to showing that bodies do not impress their likenesses on the ability to imagine, but this the soul does. Okay.

[48:17] Which Aristotle uses, right, to proving the understanding agent intellect, I should say, to be something separate, because the agent is more honorable than the patient.

[48:31] And without doubt, it would be necessary, according to the position, in the power of imagination to lay down not only a passive power, but also an active one, right? But if we lay down, according to the opinion of Aristotle, that the action of the power to imagine is of the conjunction, right? There follows no difficulty, huh? Because the sensible body is more noble than the organ of the animal, in so far as it is compared to it as being an act to being in what potency, in one respect, as a coloured an act to the pupil of the eye, which is coloured in potency.

[49:20] But one, it can also be said of it that although the first change of the power to imagine is through the motion sensible things, because imagining is a motion made according to the sense, as is said in the third in the book about the soul, in the third book it is actually said there. No, so you see that yourself. You know, look at me. You know, now see.

[49:50] Now close your eyes. You see. In a sense, the image of me, right, persists in you for a while, right, huh? Okay. And that's why after an accident, right? Hmm. They want to get the sworn testimony of all those who saw it, right? Mm hmm. And they know from experience that if they, you know, if half an hour after the accident they ask everybody what they saw, there'll be more agreement as to what took place, right?

[50:18] Who went to the intersection first, and so on, than they will a month later, right? Hmm. Okay. But there you see your images are being directly moved by the what? By your senses, right? When I was a little boy, we'd go home and we'd play this game. You know, you'd stop in front of a house. And you can look at it, you know, for I don't know, a few seconds, you know, and then you had to close your eyes, and then people would interrogate you: How many windows in the house?

[50:43] Oh, were there shutters? Were there color shutters? You know, and see how many of these questions you could answer or not, right? But you're going by what images that you have, right? Yeah. Which is an emotion, motion made by the sense in act, right? But then, when we store these images, right, we can pull them out, and we can start to twist them around, right? And then we can form things like gold mountains, right?

[51:07] You see, or read the fairy tale, you know, where there's the mountain that glass mountain, you know, and you kind of pick that glass mountain, right? And the horse trying to get up the glass mountain, and there, there, you have kind of an active aspect there, right? Okay. So Thomas says, it is able to be said that although the first change of the ability to imagine is through the motion of sensible things, because the imagining is a motion made by the sense in act, as he says in the third book of the soul.

[51:49] Nevertheless, there is a certain operation of the soul in man, which, by dividing and putting together, forms diverse images of things, even those which are not taken from the sense. This is the way we usually use the word imagination now, right? For this subsequent activity, right? Where we take images and we transform them and we combine them and separate them, right? And as far as this is concerned, one can take the words of what Augustine, right?

[52:20] So the gold mountain is not something I ever sensed, but maybe I sensed gold, and I sensed a mountain or a hill or something, right? And I put these two together, right? Okay. So imagination is, and imagining, in many ways, is very much like thinking, huh? And when we imagine something, we form an image of it, right? And when we think about something, we form a thought about it.

[52:51] That's unlike what the senses were. You have a kind of a direct knowledge of the thing, huh? So the English philosophers, you know, when they use the word idea, they don't know whether they're talking about a thought or an image most of the time. They mix up the two, you know. But a lot of times, we tend to use the word thinking and imagining interchangeably. I think that's so.

[53:16] I imagine that's so, right? Yeah. Now, to the third objection, he says, that's the one that says, "Hey, how do we know these things that you can't sense, right? " He's not too fool in his answer, but he says. To third, it should be said that sense knowledge is not the whole cause, even the chief cause, right, of the knowledge and understanding. And therefore, it is not wonderful if intellectual knowledge extends beyond the what sensitive, right?

[53:57] But we know these other things, right, through the sensible things, huh? That's why we have to know God by way of negation. We say he's incorporeal, not a body, right? He has no parts, right? We're knowing him through what has parts and what is a body, right? But negatively, but that won't be true about the beatific vision, right? What beatific vision, right? Yeah, that will not be through the senses, anyway.

[54:31] Okay, you want to take a little break?