De Anima (On the Soul)
156. Q88 a1–a3: Knowing immaterial substances through material things, and whether God is the first thing we know
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[0:00] So the second objection here, like is known by like, but our mind is more like immaterial things than material things, since our mind itself is immaterial, right? Therefore, our mind understands. Since therefore our mind understands material things, much more does it understand immaterial things, okay?

[0:26] And Thomas says to the second, it should be said that the likeness of nature is not a sufficient reason for knowing. Otherwise, it would be necessary to say what Empedocles says that the soul was of the nature of all things in order that it might know all things.

[0:47] But what is required for knowing is that there be a likeness of the thing known in the knower, as a certain form of the knower. But our understanding, our possible understanding, according to the status of the present life, is apt to be informed by the likeness of material things taken from the what images, huh? And therefore, it knows more material things than the what immaterial things, huh?

[1:19] By the likenesses by which the angel knows, come to it from what? God and its creation, but there is no likenesses in our possible understanding to begin with. It's like a blank tablet, right? And the likenesses are gotten through the what agent intellect, acting upon the images and drawing something from them. Okay.

[1:44] Because the side of that is the fact that, in like Aristotle says in the fourth book of the Physics, there that the ancients thought that whatever is must be somewhere in some place, right? So all they know about it first is what bodies, right? And as he points out when he divides their opinions there in the second reading in the first book of Natural Philosophy, he says for them the investigation into natural things or to bodies and the investigation into what is was the same.

[2:17] See, and it's not until the great Anaxagoras began to realize that there was a greater mind, and this greater mind was not mixed with matter, right? And then later on, when Plato and Aristotle begin to have reasons to think that the human soul could exist without the body, right? Or that there was an unmoved mover who couldn't be a body, right? Then they begin to realize that what is is not to be identified with bodies and what is in bodies, but they had a reason to the existence of such a thing, right?

[2:49] They had a reason to the existence of an unmoved mover, and they had a reason out that the unmoved mover could not be a body, because a body doesn't move things without being moved itself, and so you have to reason out that there exist things that are not material, and then you realize the first time in your life, hey, the what is is broader in meaning, right, than just the material or bodily things.

[3:17] But most people are stuck at that first level where they identify bodies with material things, and they just like people normally imagine the soul to be a kind of what air-like substance, right? Very fine body, but kind of air-like substance in the shape of a what human being, and so he had that kind of amusing thing there in Dante's Divine Comedy, right, where he encounters the souls of people he knew in this life, like I, I recognize your soul because it's got the same shape and you know, but then he wants to to hug you know to embrace these people, and of course, how can you hug or embrace air, right?

[4:01] It's you know, it's very frustrating, right? But that's not what the soul is. The soul has no length, or width, nor depth. Nor does God any length, or width, or depth. Properly speaking, right? Okay, metaphorically we say of God length, and width and depth, right? Depth of the divine wisdom.

[4:32] Okay, the third objection. Moreover, those things which in themselves are most sensible are not most of all sensed by us. This happens because of what? The excessive or the excellences of sensible things corrupt the sense, right? So if something's too loud, it's going to make you deaf, right? I used to work in my father's factory, right? You work with these men down there, and they'd be whanging something, and I thought, oh my God, now how can they stand that sound, right?

[5:07] Well, they've become deaf to that sound from cracking it over these years, right? Okay. But the excellences of understandable things do not corrupt the understanding, as is said in the third book about the soul. Therefore, those things which in themselves are most understandable are most understandable to us. But since material things are not understandable except because you make them understandable in act by separating them from matter, is manifest that the

[5:44] that the substances which in their very nature are immaterial are by themselves or in themselves more understandable. Therefore, they are more understood by us than material things. So he's saying the angels, and he affords here, a fortiori God, they're more understandable than these material things. So if we understand the less understandable things, we should understand the more understandable things.

[6:09] Okay. But Aristotle pointed out long ago what's more understandable is less understandable to us. To the third, it should be said that there's required some kind of proportion of the object to the knowing power, as of the active to the passive, and of perfection to the perfectible. Whence that excelling sensible things are not grasped by the sense. Not only is the reason because they corrupt the sensible organs, but because they are not proportioned to the sensitive powers.

[6:47] Just like there are things that are not proportioned to our ears, and the dogs hear them, right? Okay. And in this way, the immaterial substances are not proportioned to our understanding according to the present state, so that they are not able to be understood by us.

[7:10] In philosophy, when they when they show that, a lot of times they show it through less universal statements, which is more known to us, the cause of the effect. Okay. Yeah. But the cause really illuminates the effect, doesn't it? Right. So the cause is more illuminating than the effect, but it's less known to us, right? So what is more illuminating

[7:38] is less understood by us, right? So that's one way we show that what is more understood by us is less understandable. And of course, men often know the effect and don't know the cause, right? Or they know the effect and they're sure about the effect, but they don't, they're not sure about the cause. So the effect is fully knowable only in the light of the cause, but we know the effect more by itself than in the light of the cause.

[8:09] So what is more understood by us is less understandable. It's more dark, right? And the other place where Aristotle applies that is the fact that we know things more in a confused way than a distinct way, right? What's that chair that's up there? I think it's a wooden chair, right? Okay, right. What kind of wood is that? I don't know. So it's more known to me that, in kind of a vague way, what it is, right, than in a precise way.

[8:42] So what's more known to us is less known, right? A thing is more known when it's known distinctly and clearly, right? But things are more known to me when they're known in a vague and imprecise way.

[9:00] I'm more sure about that, right? Yeah. If you gave me a glass of dry red wine to drink now, I'd be sure I'm drinking maybe dry red wine. Pretty sure, I think. Might be dry blueberry for all I know, but anyway. But the particular kind of wine, I maybe wouldn't know, right?

[9:19] So it's a sign, right? What's more known to us is less known. When the wine is known to be Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley, 1985, right? It's more known, right? But less known to me. It's more known to me that it's dry red wine. Less known as Cabernet Sauvignon, and least known as Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley, 1985, right?

[10:01] Okay. The fourth argument was this: this is the argument that that these separated substances would be in vain if they couldn't be understood by us, right? Thomas, that's an argument, a reason that, in many ways, is deficient,

[10:24] because it does not follow that if the separated substances are not understood by us. It doesn't follow that they're not understood by some understanding, right? For they are understood by themselves and by each other, right?

[10:38] And and secondly, it's not the end or purpose of these separated substances that they be understood by us. And that is idle or in vain. that does not what achieve the end to which it is, right? And thus it does not follow that the immaterial substance would be in vain, even if in no way they were understood what by us, right?

[11:03] Like saying, you know, the geometry is in vain because my cat can't understand it. Okay. Morver, the fifth objection: as the sense has itself to sensible things, so the understanding to the understandable. But our sight can see all bodies, whether they be the higher bodies and the incorruptible bodies, like the sun, moon, stars, are thought by them to be, or the lower bodies, right, the corruptible bodies, like the animals and the plants and stones.

[11:45] Therefore, understanding can understand all what understandable substances, the higher and the lower, right. To the fifth, it should be said that in the same way sense knows the higher and the lower bodies, namely through the change of the organ by the sensible. But not in the same way are understood by us the material substances, which are understood by way of what abstraction from the senses or the imagination, and the immaterial substances, which are not able to be known by us in this way because there are no images of them, right?

[12:26] Okay. So if you want to have a picture of your guardian angel, there's no such thing. Right? A picture of God the Father and God the Son, right? There's no such thing.

[12:46] Right? Like a metaphor, in a sense, right? Isaiah said the image there, you know, of God sitting on the throne, right? Is that God in himself?

[13:05] No, he has no length and width and depth, right? Okay. So we have the second article here, We'll take our break here. Now this is the other side of the question. To the second one proceeds thus: It seems that our understanding, right, through a knowledge of material things, is able to arrive at understanding the immaterial substances.

[13:39] For Dionysius says in the first chapter of the celestial hierarchy, and what Elbert the Great commented on that, right? Thomas commented on the divine names of Dionysius, but Thomas often refers to this work, right?

[13:58] For an understanding of the angels, for it is not possible for the human mind to be aroused to what the contemplation, right, of that celestial hierarchy, unless it be led by the hand, right,

[14:20] by material things, huh? It remains, therefore, that through material things we can be led by the hand to understanding material substances. That's a bit like the objection from Augustine in the previous article, right? We can, in some way, be led to some kind of knowledge, but not a knowledge of what they are, right? But a knowledge that they are and what they are not, and something by way of likeness to our own mind.

[14:51] Moreover, science or science is in the understanding, but there are sciences and definitions about the material substances. For Saint John Damascene defines angel, right? And about the angels, there are some things treated both in the theological as well as in the philosophical disciplines. Therefore immaterial substances are able to be understood by us. Moreover, the human soul is of the genus or the kind of immaterial substances, but it can be understood by us through its own act, by which it understands material things.

[15:35] Therefore, the other material substances can be understood by us through their effects in material things. Moreover, that cause through its effects cannot be comprehended, which infinitely differs from its effects. Right. But this is proper to God. Right. Therefore, the other immaterial substances that are created can be understood by us through material things. So you understand something through its effect. It's got to be a effect that kind of what is proportioned to the whole ability of that object, right?

[16:17] Okay. He's saying, well, it's only the case of God that the effects are not what revealing his whole power, right? And therefore, not his whole nature.

[16:29] But we'll see about that. But against this is what Dionysius says in the first chapter of the Divine Names that understandable things by sensible things and simple things by composed things and bodyless things by bodily things we are not able to what grasp. Okay.

[16:58] I answer. It should be said that as Averroes narrates in the third book about the soul, Avempace, right, another Arab philosopher, but not as eminent as Averroes or Avicenna, right,

[17:16] laid down that we are able to arrive by understanding or to an understanding of immaterial substances according to the true principles of philosophy. Yeah,

[17:33] I'm misreading that right there, man. He laid down that through the understanding of material substances, right, we are able to arrive according to the true principles of philosophy to understanding immaterial substances, right. Now this is the way Avempace proceeded, right? For since our understanding is naturally apt to separate the what it is of a material thing from matter, if again in that what it is there is something of matter, it could again abstract from that, right?

[18:10] And since one does not go on forever doing this, finally it arrives at understanding some what it is. That is altogether without matter, and this is to understand an immaterial substance.

[18:28] Now, this would be sufficiently said if the immaterial substances were in fact the forms and species of these material things, as the Platonists understood or laid down, right? For this, but this not being laid down, but supposed that the immaterial substances are an entirely different definition from the what it is of immaterial things. No matter how much our understanding abstracts the what it is of immaterial things from matter, never does it arrive at something like what the immaterial substance, huh?

[19:08] And therefore, through material substances, we are not able perfectly. He says, he doesn't say entirely, perfectly the immaterial substances. Okay. Now, the first objection is from Dionysius,

[19:33] who seems to be saying that we can come to know the angels through material things, and Thomas is going to make a distinction here, right? In some imperfect way, we can know the angels through material things, and even God, right? Okay.

[19:49] To the first, therefore, it should be said that from material things we are able to go up, right, into a some knowledge of immaterial things. Not, however, can we ascend to a what perfect knowledge of them, right? Because there is not a sufficient comparison of material things to immaterial things, but the likenesses, if they are taken from material things, are much what unlike, right? For understanding immaterial things, as Dionysius himself says in the second chapter of the Celestial Hierarchy, right?

[20:31] So he's saying you can't what understand them except perhaps by way of likeness, right? But they're not exactly like the immaterial things, right? So you're going to have a deficient and imperfect knowledge of the immaterial things through the immaterial things, huh? Okay.

[20:59] Second objection: Some things are said about these immaterial substances, right, in the sciences. That's what he's saying. As Damascene says, to second it should be said, huh? That about the higher things, in sciences we most of all treat by way of what? Negation, right? Removal. Removing. For thus also the heavenly bodies Aristotle makes known.

[21:30] Aristotle thought that the heavenly bodies were not what? Ah, didn't have weight, you know. They wouldn't fall down, right? But that's negation, right? Okay. They're not corruptible like the bodies down here. They seem to go on forever, right? Okay. So he's knowing them negatively, right? A fortiori going to be knowing the immaterial substances, as the word "immaterial" indicates, negatively, right? Okay.

[22:02] For thus Aristotle makes known these celestial bodies by negation of the properties of lower bodies. Huh? Whence much more are the immaterial substances not able to be known by us, right? So that we grasp what they are, right? Their quiddities, right? Their natures. But about them in the sciences certain things are treated by way of negation, right? And by way of some what relation to material things, huh?

[22:35] Okay. That's the same way we know God, right? We say God is the unmoved mover, right? Well, mover is knowing him in a way in relation to what material things, right? And unmoved is, of course, a what? Negation, right? Yeah. So we know them by negation and by relation to material things, huh?

[23:03] Okay. Now the third one is saying that our soul understands itself, but it's an immaterial substance. To the third, it should be said that our soul understands itself through its own understanding, which is its own what? Act, right? But an act perfectly or fully showing its what? Power and therefore its nature, right? But neither through this nor through other things which are found in material things are we able to know fully the power and the nature of immaterial substances, right?

[23:42] Because these do not equal their what? Powers, right? Okay. That's a fortiori true about God, right? Okay. You go that text if you look at it very carefully there in in Romans chapter one verse twenty. You know the one the church takes and understands to be saying that it's possible to have knowledge of God through creatures, right? But you talk about the virtus there, huh? And the nature of God, right?

[24:10] But it doesn't equal His whole power, right? What He's made, huh? So it doesn't give you an adequate knowledge of His very what substance, huh? Okay, with some kind of perfect knowledge.

[24:29] Okay, now the fourth objection was saying that, well, this maybe is true about God, but not about the angels. We're not far apart. I was quoting Kassirik before. Remember, where he's saying, you know, you first see your guardian angel after your death, you say, "Wow, this is God, right? What a wonderful thing He is, you know." And the angel said, "No, no, no, I'm not God, you know."

[24:52] But to be such a you know impression, you know, he's going to make a very impression upon you, your guardian angel after your death, right? That you'll think he's God, you know. Brave new world, huh? They have such creatures in it. And you know, you have these lines in you know, Brave New World. He took that thing from the Tempest, right? And you know the Tempest of Shakespeare.

[25:16] I've never read it. I I I've heard of both of those works. but I never read any Yeah, but her father. Was forced out of his kingdom, right? and put on a boat, and she's just a little girl, right? So she's growing up with her old father on this island, huh? So her own experience of men is this old man, right? And all of a sudden, you know, shipwreck there, young man lands on the island, right?

[25:41] Brave new world, she says, you know, we have such creatures in it. She's amazed, huh? She's filled with wonder, right? Of course, her name is Miranda, right? Which comes from the Latin word for wonder, huh? Okay. But I say, when you see the angels, you say, "Oh, brave new world, right? They have such creatures in it, you know." I say, "God is doing this this wonderful creation," you know, you know, because the angels will be much much superior to anything you ever knew in this world.

[26:12] Amazing, excellence, right? He says the created immaterial substances in a natural genus do not come together with material substances because there is not in them the same definition of potency or ability in matter, but they come together in a logical genus. Okay, we have we have a common thought about them, right? The angel, like us, is a thing that exists not in another, right? Okay, as opposed to an accident, right?

[26:53] Okay, but what's fundamental in them is something quite different than material things, because the material substances are also in the category, the predicament, that's the Latin word for the categories, a substance, since their what it is is not their being. But God does not come together with material things, either in a natural genus, nor in a logical genus, because God is in no way in a genus.

[27:25] That's something we learn about God. Whence through the likenesses of material things, something affirmatively can be known about the angels by a common notion, although not according to their what particular kind of thing they are, right? But about God in what no way, right?

[27:51] So we can know the angels a little bit more than God, huh? From material things, but still we can't know them in particular what they are.

[28:03] You know, you know, I mean, it's very interesting. I think when the soul is separated from the body, right? Because all my life I've been living in the material world, right? And when my soul is separated from the body, and before it's reunited, huh? I'll be living entirely in the immaterial world, right? That's strange, isn't it? Think about that.

[28:31] See? Of course, I get back my body. My body will be entirely subordinate to my soul, right? So, I got a really a different life ahead of me, huh?

[28:47] Quite different, huh? Very strange creatures we are, huh? You're shuffled off this mortal coil, as Hamlet says, right? Who knows? The dreams may come to us. Want

[29:08] to take a little break now before we do another article here? This is a common opinion of some people there in the Middle Ages, huh?

[29:20] For that in which all other things are known, and by which we judge about other things, must be the first thing known by us, just as light by the eye, and the first principles or first beginnings by the understanding. But all things in the light of the true of the first truth we know, and by it we judge about all things, as Augustine says in the book about the Trinity.

[29:52] In the book about what? True religion, huh? Therefore, God is that by which we what? God is that which first is known by us, huh? Okay. Now, see, Augustine, you know, way of speaking is not as

[30:13] precise as Thomas, right? Huh? And he'll say, you know, that by the first truth, by the eternal truth, right, we judge of all the things, right? And you could take those words and say, well, then isn't Augustine saying that this is what's first known by us? Because we judge everything else by it, everything else by it. See? And actually, what takes place is that, naturally speaking, anyway, we judge by our natural understanding, huh?

[30:45] See? You know. And let me go back to that proportion that Boethius gives. huh? You've seen this proportion before. That reasoning is to understand understanding

[31:14] something like motion is to what? Rest, right? So, in the mind is reasoning, is going from one thing to another, right? And therefore, reasoning is like emotion, isn't it? Where understanding, as the name itself indicates, stand is like a what? Rest, right? Okay.

[31:38] Now, most of our understanding is result of reasoning or thinking about something, right? So we have to think about something before we understand it, right? But when we think it out, then we finally understand it, right? Or when we reason it out, we understand it, right? So

[32:04] I speak of a reasoned-out understanding, right? Okay. And that's why I kind of translate Aristotle's word "episteme." Episteme in Greek comes from the Greek verb for coming to a halt or a stop. So it names a rest after a motion. Okay. So this word "episteme" in Greek, I translate it by reasoned-out understanding, right? It's a rest, an understanding that comes after emotion, right? Okay. But now

[32:56] I say to students, you can understand rest as before or after emotion. I'm at rest now, right? And this is before this motion, right? And now I'm at rest again, okay? Now I say, is there also

[33:18] an understanding before reasoning, as well as this reasoned-out, thought-out understanding? Well, if you understood nothing before reasoning, right? If all understanding was a result of reasoning, right? So if there's no understanding before your reasoning,

[33:48] if you understood nothing before reasoning, what could you reason from? Right? Okay. So this understanding that's before reasoning, I call natural understanding. Okay. Aristotle calls it nous, and in Thomas's Latin we will call it intellectus, right? Okay. I call it natural understanding in contrast with this reasoned-out understanding. So. All of our knowledge goes back to this natural understanding, As Thomas will explain, that natural understanding, in a way, is partaking of the divine what understanding, right?

[34:39] And that's the way he understands the truth of what Augustine is saying, right? That we judge all things by natural understanding, which is a partaking, right, of the divine understanding, right? But it's not as if we're seeing this in God in Himself by Himself, right? But we have a certain what likeness of the divine understanding in this natural understanding, right? But Augustine doesn't make that distinction a lot of times when he says it, right?

[35:11] And so the pious readers there in the Middle Ages would say, "Well, Augustine is saying now that we judge everything by what Looking at."God right. Ah Okay. You see. But um it's really this natural understanding by which we we naturally judge everything else we know. It's like the law of identity and things like that. Yeah, yeah. What they call the the

[35:39] the statements known to themselves by all men, right? So not even the statements that something cannot both be and not be; it must either be or not be. A statement that the whole is more than the part. Nothing is before itself, and so on, right? Okay. And you can see even you know that simple theorem. Remember that simple theorem you put, where he wants to show if these angles are equal, these sides will be equal, right?

[36:08] You know. And he says if those sides were unequal, right? If one was longer, like if let's say this side here, AB, was longer than AC, right? Then you could cut off starting from B a line on AB equal to what the lesser one, right? And then you could draw a line across like that, right? But now you've got two triangles, right? This triangle, we'll use the D here, DBC, and ACB, right?

[36:47] Which have an equal angle and equal sides. They have this side in common, and this side is going to be equal to that one, right? Therefore, they're equal, and therefore the part is equal to the whole. That's impossible, right? So you're going back to natural understanding that the part cannot be

[37:06] equal to the whole. So our understanding was back to that, right? But Augustine, you know, will speak sometimes without that precision, right? You see.

[37:18] But you could get other things that Augustine says that we're not seeing God in himself, right? Before there'd be division, that is to say, right? Moreover,

[37:35] number two, on account of which each at that more. That's the famous thing I spoke to you about before, right? Okay. Right. Okay. How it's expanded, right? When the same belongs to two things, but to one of them because of the other, it belongs more to the cause, huh? So if sweet is said of the sugar and of the coffee, but of the coffee because of the sugar, which is sweeter.

[38:09] And if wet is said of the water and of the dishcloth, but of the dishcloth because of the water, which is wetter. Yeah. And if hot is said of the fire and the air around the fire. But the air around the fire, because of the fire, which is hotter. Yeah, and if known, instead of the premises of a syllogism, and of the conclusion of the syllogism, but instead of the conclusion syllogism, because of the premises, which is more known.

[38:46] Yeah, if the premises were not more known, you would use them to prove the conclusion, right? And if good is said of what, health and medicine, but of medicine because of health, which is more good, but health, yeah, see, okay.

[39:08] But you'll find Aristotle and Thomas, you know, referring to this that way, okay. It's some amazing examples of Aristotle, you know. Aristotle in the metaphysics theory refers to something as, "Oh, that's a breve." That's what the Latin translation says, right? That's a short. That's what he says. That's a short. And Thomas says he means it's a beginning that is small in size but great in its power.

[39:35] Breve is a short way. That's what he means. Just one word, Aristotle. You see? Well, here he has the same thing. Propter quod unumquodque that on account of which something that refers to cause is that more illogici, huh? Okay, but I have to expand it, you know, so we can understand what he's saying, right? Okay. But God is the cause of all our knowledge, right? Why? Because He's the true light that enlightens every man coming into this world.

[40:08] That's in the beginning of John's Gospel, right?