Love & Friendship
9. Aquinas on Love: Review of the Treatise's Divisions and Union as the First Effect of Love
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[0:00] the more I understand even Euclid. Right, the more I'm able to understand and the more I'm impressed I am with the whole thing. Huh? So.

[0:12] So next week we'll talk about. The first three effects of love. The Union is very. Name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. God our enlightenment. Guardian angels strengthen the lights of our minds. board and illumine our images and arouse us to consider more quickly St Thomas Aquinas, angelic Doctor. Pray for us. Help us to understand what you've written.

[0:44] So I admit I'm heretic, right? I uphold the rule of two or three. That's my heresy. Now, what is the rule of two or three? Every word is logically divided or divisible into two or three. Yeah, the logical or understandable division is usually, not always, usually for the most part, most of the time, right? Into two or three.

[1:17] And that if you divide into more than two or three, you are what? It's not understandable. Yeah, or you're you're giving a division with a subdivision and the results of that, right? Or you are what? Crisscrossing two divisions, right? Okay. So if I divide human beings into good men, bad men, good women, bad women, how do I get four?

[1:52] It's two and two. Yeah, men, woman, good and bad, right? Okay. Now what does that got to do with the treatise on love, right? The treatise of love is divided into how many parts? Two or three. Three. Three, yeah. And the three questions Correspond to that, right? The first question was on the what? First cause. No, the nature and the kinds of love. The second was divided into what?

[2:31] Well, it was the second. The second. Part. The cause of. And now the third part. Yeah, this it's into three, right? Okay. Now you go back to the first part and how many articles were there in the first question? Three. Four. Oops. Now what do you do with four articles? Who could understand that? Goes beyond our intelligence, right? But notice the first two articles on the nature of love.

[3:06] The third and fourth were on the what? Kinds of love, right? So you had. Two divisions of the kinds of love, right? But notice, the first two articles will be divided against the last two, right? Okay. Now, second question: causes of love, right? How many articles?

[3:40] Four. Scandalous, four, right? Okay. But if you think about that, right? The first two causes went together, kind of, didn't they? Like St. Thomas said that the knowledge is a cause of love for the same reason that the good is a cause of love. What was that reason?

[4:12] What was it? Knowledge is on the side of the subject. Good is the side of the et cetera. And. The object, yeah, yeah. That the object of love is the cause of love, right? The good is the object of love, therefore the good is cause of love, right? And the knowledge is in a way a condition of the good being an object of my heart, right? The good as known, right?

[4:46] So the first two articles go together in a way, right? On the side of the love, right? Which is the good, right? The good as known is a cause of love. What about the third and the fourth article?

[5:07] The third article is that likeness is a cause of love, right? And so we expand on that in the question here. Why do I love you? Because you're like me.

[5:22] But because I love myself, right? Okay. Am I the loved or the lover? I'm more the lover, right? Right. So the third was on the side of the lover more, right?

[5:39] What about the fourth article? Was the fourth article? Where there's some other emotion in me, right? Or where there's some other act of my will, right? Could be the cause of my love, right? So if I love

[6:07] health, right, and therefore I want to be healthy, right, therefore I want to take the antihistamine or something, right? Ah, so my love of one object is the cause my love of another object, right? So the third and the fourth article are both on the side of what? Me, the lover, right? The first of the two articles are on the side of what? The loved, right? Okay.

[6:37] I love God because He is good. And because I know that He's good, right? I didn't know He was good when I loved, right? Okay. That's on the side of the love, right? But I love you because you're like me, and I love myself. Or I love antihistamines, I do, because I love what? Health, right? Do you see that? So you could divide the first two articles against the last what?

[7:06] Two, right? Do you see that? Okay. Now, the third question, right, is on the effects of love, right? Now, how many effects of love are there? Tamso, take up.

[7:22] Three. Six. I mean, there are six articles, right? Okay. Now, I divide these into three and three, not because of that division, but because of the multitude of words, right? Okay. And now, perhaps the first four articles.

[7:52] Right. Okay. Are talking about the effect of love in comparison to love? Okay. These are effects of love. In comparison to the love. Okay. And the last. Two articles. Give me some room, please. Chris, right?

[8:25] The effect of love in comparison to the what? Love. Yeah. Okay. Now, in comparison to a lover, what's the effect upon me as a lover from the fact that I love? Am I a better person?

[8:53] Am I a worse person? Right. Well, maybe if I love God, I'm a better person, right? Maybe if I love truth, or I love wisdom, I'm, a better person because of that love, right? If I love candy, right? Maybe I'm not a better person. Okay. So, am I a better person or a worse person from the fact that I love? Right. That's an important question, right? And very often in poetry and so on, love is said to be a disease, right?

[9:34] Shakespeare, we saw it in, Shakespeare, right? So if I'm diseased, huh? Because I love, then love is said to be what? Words, right? Okay.

[9:46] So that's one effect upon me of my loving, right? A better or a worse person because of my love, right? Now the other effect upon me is what do I do, right? Because I love wisdom, I read Thomas Aquinas, right? Because I love candy, I go to the drugstore, right? Huh? Okay. Get some candy. So the sixth article is to be about how love is the cause of all that I do, right?

[10:23] You see. Okay. So if you love God in the way a Christian should love God, that could be the cause of all that you do as a human being, right? You see the idea, okay? So articles five and six are in comparison to the what? Love, right? What's the effect upon me for the fact that I love? Once I heard Harry Truman used to quote that thing used to quote that thing: "Better to have loved and lost than ever to have loved, Right?

[10:55] Am I a better man for having loved? Right? You see. Well, things are going to be nuanced, right? What did I love? Right. Okay. If I love bad things. I'm a bad man because of the fact that I love bad things, right? If I love good things, especially if I love the better among the good things, right? Then maybe that made me a better man, right? Okay.

[11:21] We are shaped and fashioned by what we love, as Goethe said, right? And also, my love is a cause of what? Some kind of love is a cause of all that I do, right? Do you see that?

[11:40] So five and six down here would be comparison to love. Now, how are these first four articles? Well, we can't understand division of four, can we? Right. It's got to be either two and two, or what? Three and one. Otherwise, couldn't understand what this is all about, right? Okay. And in this case, it's in two, what? Three and one, right? The three articles we're going to talk about today are in comparison to the love, right?

[12:14] Okay. And the love unites me in some way with the thing I love, right? It attaches me in some way to the thing I love, right? The second article is that what? If I love something, there will be a mutual staying within of me to the thing I love, and the thing I love in me, right? So if I love something, I try to get into it, right?

[12:46] Both with my mind and my heart, and I keep it in my mind and in my heart if I love it, right? So it's a mutual staying within of me and the loved, and the loved in me, right? And then in the third article, I go out of myself into the love, right? Ecstasy, right? Okay. And more. So if I have the love of friendship of wishing well to another, than the love of what?

[13:18] Wanting, right? Even there, I go out of myself to get the candy, right? Okay, but because I bring the candy back to my mouth, I don't go down to myself, right? If I have an unselfish love of another person, the love of wishing well, I seem to go entirely out of myself, right? And I'm in full ecstasy, right? Okay. Now those three articles are very close related right?

[13:45] Okay See the right order what's this odd word down here right Well in Latin what's this odd word down here, right? Well, in Latin is one word, but in English there isn't one word, right? This fourth article is about zeal or jealousy, right?

[14:08] Okay. It depends on it depends upon whether I have the love of wishing well for you, or the love of of wanting, right? If I have the love of wanting for you,

[14:22] or something, right? And something's getting in the way of my enjoying you, or getting what I want, right? Then I have what? Jealousy, right? Okay. But if I have the love of wishing well to you, then I move against what is going to harm you, right? So if I wish well to my children, I move against what could harm my children, right? Okay. If I love the woman, but you want the woman too, then I move to jealousy, you know, towards you, right?

[14:59] You see that? So three is with respect to the loved itself, right? Four to something that either what could harm what I love, or could impede me from getting. Or enjoying freely what I love, right? Do you see that? So that's the way these three are the one are divided, right? But they're all in some sense comparisons of love, right? Either in itself, or to what could harm the loved, or what could impede one from getting the love, right?

[15:33] Do you see that? But the last two articles is what's the effect upon me and upon what I do, right? Do you see the way it's divided, right? So Thomas is still what in the six articles giving us the result of a division into two, and then division into two, division into three, division into two, right? Okay.

[16:07] I defend the rule of two or three mainly from my experience, right? Although you can give a reason for dividing into two and a reason for dividing into three, right? The reason for dividing into two is that we divide by opposites, good and bad, male and female, odd and even, right? And opposites are what two, okay? But there's a reason why we divide into three, and that is that

[16:41] beginning, middle, and end, right? Is complete. That's three. Okay, and that's the likeness that we have of the Trinity the beginning, middle, and end, which is okay. So let's look now at the first effect of love here, which is what to unite one with the beloved, right?

[17:08] Rosalind to Orlando, right? And Rosalind has found her cousin falling in love with the brother of Orlando, right? Okay. Oh, I know where you are. Nay, tis true. There was never anything so sudden but the fight of two rams. That's interestingly Shakespeare compares this emotional, right, love for man for woman, with the love of with with what war, right? Okay. There in the very wrath of love he uses that metaphor, right?

[17:42] Okay. If you look at the Summa Theologiae of Thomas, he takes up what the virtue temperance that moderates love, right? And he attaches to that the virtue of what mildness that moderates what anger, right? There's a likeness there, right? Now, of course, when you're angry, you come together, but to fight, right? When you love, you come together to make love, but there's a likeness there, right? It's a beautiful the way Shakespeare understands these things, right?

[18:14] I mean, it you know when Thomas. Divides the virtues according to the cardinal virtues, prudence and justice, and fortitude and temperance, Right? He takes up the four cardinal virtues in order. Right? And then he takes up the other virtues by their likeness to the cardinal virtues. Right? So he takes up the virtue that moderates anger, but the virtue that is concerned with what pleasures of the body.

[18:41] Right? Okay. Beautiful. What's said here? There was never anything so sudden but the fight of two rams. They're falling in love at first sight. Right? That's incredible. Shakespeare, right? And Caesar's Thrasonical huh? Thraso is his boasting character in the plays of the Romans. Not so great, Shakespeare, huh? Now in Latin, say "veni vidi vici." Right? I came, I saw, or came. And of course, that new non-classic, church pronunciation of Latin.

[19:16] "Veni vidi vici." My old teacher, Kasurik, said, "You know, I can't believe that he said 'veni vidi vici. '" Must've been "veni vidi vici." I came, I saw, you know. When Shakespeare, of course, you can't alliterate like like Caesar did, right? "Veni vidi vici." I came, I saw, overcame, right? So he what? Rhymes. I came, saw, overcame.

[19:45] For your brother, Orlando's brother, and my sister, actually her cousin, right? No sooner met but they looked. That's the danger to look, right? Because what looking is a cause of love, right? No sooner looked but they what? Loved at first sight. No sooner loved but they sighed because they didn't have each other, right? No sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason. No sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy. And in these degrees, have they made a pair of stairs to marriage, which they'll climb without, incontinent without any delay?

[20:23] There, in the very wrath of law, right? That's the same metaphor he has when he speaks of the five two rams, right? And they will together. Clubs cannot part them. Well, if you're trying to use a club to part the two dogs, right? The two rams. You have to have a club to part these young people. It's so incredible Shakespearean writing, isn't it? I mean, it's just absolutely incredible.

[20:50] Now, in Sonnet 36 here, as Thomas says, you'll see in the body of the article, he makes a number of distinctions, right, between the union that is a cause of love, right, the union that seems to be almost the same as love, which love makes formally, as he says, right, and the union which you seek as a result of your love, right. And here you have a what, a little bit of distinction, right?

[21:18] Let me confess that we two must be twain. They can't be joined together in that third sense, right? Although our undivided loves are one, right? They're united by their love, but by circumstances they can't be together, right? So they lack that what ultimate effect of love, but they have a certain union because they love each other, right? You see that,

[21:51] Helena? Oh, were that all? All is well that ends well is one of the six mercy and forgiveness plays, right? Beautiful play. Now Helena is a commoner, right? Son of a doctor, and she's fallen in love with the what? Count's son. Well, you don't marry nobility you're a, commoner, right? So how could she ever be united with him, right? But the idea that you know love is going to try to bridge that gap, and if you read the play, you'll see how she tries to do it.

[22:23] It's a marvelous play. Oh, were that all? They think that she's upset by her father's death, you know. I think not on my father. In these great tears, graces, remembrance, more than those they shed for him. What was he like? I have forgot him. My imagination carries no favor in it, but Bertram's—that's the son of the the countess. I am undone. There's no loving none if Bertram be away.

[22:53] He's going to be leaving the court. Now she's talking about the distance in that society between herself and Bertram. 'Twere all one that I should love a bright particular star and think to wed it. How can I marry a star, right? That's so far above me, right? He is so above me, right? In his bright radiance and collateral light. Must I be comforted not in his sphere?

[23:20] The ambition, my love, thus plagues itself. Right? She has this ambition to love this man way above her, but there's no way in that society can be united to such a man above you. Right? And that's it. It's a plague, right? Love someone doesn't love you in return. The hind that would be mated by the lion must die for love. 'Twas pretty, she says, though a plague, though a disease, to see him every hour, to sit and draw his arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls.

[23:56] Now, heart's capable, heart too capable. Notice the idea that loving is an undergoing. Remember we saw that in the first question. A heart too capable of every line and trick of his sweet favor.

[24:14] But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy, idolatrous, fancy, imagination, love, must sanctify his relics. Who comes here now? But she's determined to get virtue, right. Beautiful, This letter. It's a little quick. It's a magnificent Shakespeare's part.

[24:35] Our remedies often ourselves do lie, which we ascribe to heaven. The fated sky gives us free scope; only doth backward pull our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.

[24:53] What power is it which mounts my love so high, right to this man way above her in society? That makes me see and cannot feed mine eye. The mightiest space in fortune, right? He's a son of a count, he's a son of a medical doctor, right? The mightiest space and fortune nature brings to Join like likes ah that's the cause of love, right? Likeness, ah, and kiss like native things.

[25:24] Impossible be strange attempts to those that weigh their pains in sense, and do suppose what hath been cannot be. Whoever strove to show her merit that did miss her love. The king's disease. Now, she's the son. I mean, excuse me, the daughter of a medical doctor, right? A very great doctor, right? And he left her a potion, you know, that's very good to cure diseases. And the king is what?

[25:53] The kingdom is what? Sick, right? Is almost given up on being cured, right? And she's going to go to that king, and what? Cure him, right? And as reward, she can have the man she wants for her husband, and she would choose Bertram, right?

[26:13] But of course, the plot is more involved than that because he's going to be very annoyed at this fact that she's using this to get him, right? You know. But my project may deceive me, but my intents are fixed and will not leave me. but no, I'm giving her this fact that her love is so strong for Bertram, right? That this great distance, she's going to try to what?

[26:34] Overcome that, right? Okay. Just like the distance between us and God is even what? Greater than between Helena and Bertram, right? But love will try to bridge that whole gap, right? Okay. I mean, why should God become a man, right? I mean, man is further away from God than even the angels, and even that infinite distance, right? So why should go over that whole distance, right? But only love explains the fact that you go over the whole distance, right?

[27:04] Cinderella marries the prince. The prince marries Cinderella, despite this great distance, right? Because love has as its first and proper effect to unite the lover and the loved, right? So it reaches over the whole distance of the prince down to Cinderella, or all the distance from Helena up to Bertram, right? Even more so from God all the way down to the what? Miserable creature that we are, right?

[27:32] The theme of *Eternal* is a very difficult poem, and it's one of Shakespeare's great love poems. And of course, he's playing upon the idea that the two lovers here are two, but in some way they're one by what? Love. So they love. loved as love in twain, love in two, right? Had the essence, but in one. Two distincts. They're distinct, the two lovers, right? But there's no division between them because they were united by what?

[28:11] Love. Number there in love was slain. They got to be in. An ancient mathematician understand that, right? Because one is not a what? Number. When Euclid defines number, it's what? A multitude composed of ones or units. Or Shakespeare says, "A multitude." I mean, Aristotle says, "A multitude measured by the one." Right. So one is not a number for Euclid, right? In the first sense, a number, right?

[28:40] They tell the students that's really the first meaning of number: a multitude always. So I said, I don't have a number of heads. I have a number of hands. Do I have a number of heads? If one was a number, then I have a number of wives, don't I? No. See? Is it? So notice that Shakespeare says, "Number there in love was slain." Why? Because the two became one, by love.

[29:07] And one is not a number. See how subtle that is. Hearts remote, right? The two different hearts. Yet they weren't asunder. Distance between the two of them, right? One's here, one's there. Yet no space was seen, twixt the turtle and his queen. But in them it were a wonder, some wonder. But how can two be one? So between them love did shine that the turtle saw his right flaming in the phoenix's sight.

[29:38] Either was the other's mine. I'm you, and you're me. Property was thus appalled that the self was not the same. Single nature's double name: neither two nor one was called. Now reason can't make any sense out of this, right? Because how can two be one? Reason says contradiction, right? Reason in itself confounded saw division grow together. To themselves yet either neither. Simple were so well compounded. Then reason cried, "How true a twain seemeth this concordant?"One, how true a two seems this concordant one.

[30:19] Love hath reason, reason none. If what parts can so remain? It's a beautiful, beautiful example. of Shakespeare's understanding of how union is the cause, effect of what love, right? How can two be one, right? Reason is puzzled by this, right? Okay.

[30:40] As You Like It is now one of the what second three love and friendship plays, and of course at the end, Hymen was the goddess of love, right? Then is there mirth in heaven when earthly things made even atone together, right? At one together. Good Duke, receive thy daughter. Hymen from heaven brought her, yea brought her hither, that thou mightst join her hand with his whose heart within his bosom is.

[31:15] Now Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae, Whether union is an effect of love, to the first one proceeds thus: it seems that union is not an effect of love, for absence is opposed to union.

[31:36] For the apostle, meaning Saint Paul, it's antonomasia. He's called the apostle, right? For the apostle says in the Epistle to the Galatians, "But be zealous for that which is good, in the good always. " Speaking of himself, as the gloss says, and not only when I am present with you. Therefore, union is not an effect of love. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? How could it be more love when they're absent, right?

[32:04] When union as cause is the effect of love, right? Moreover, every union either is by nature, as the forms united to matter, as your soul to your body, right? An accident to subject, like your health to your body, in part to whole, like your liver to your whole body, or to another part to constitute the whole.

[32:33] Or is by likeness either genus, like you and the cat, or species, like you and the other man, or accident, like you and another monk. But love does not cause the union of nature; otherwise, love would never be had towards those who are divided by nature. And the union which is by likeness, love does not cause, but more is caused by it. as Has been said. Therefore, union is not an effect of love.

[33:04] Now Thomas, as I was anticipating, is going to point out that union of one kind is a cause of love, right? Union of another kind is almost the same thing as love, and as a third. Kind of union that you pursue as result of love, right? Okay. So this is taking this objection is kind of touching upon.

[33:31] Okay. The third objection is a different kind of objection, and this is saying that knowing unites us with the thing known. Okay. So if I if I know you, I get your your shape, your color in my head, right? So I'm somewhere united with you by knowledge, right? Thomas is going to argue that what love unites us more with something than knowledge does, huh?

[33:57] Moreover, the sense in act becomes a sensible in act, and the understanding in act becomes the understood in act. But the lover in act does not become the loved in act. Therefore, union is more an effect of knowledge than of what love, right? But

[34:18] against this is what Dionysius says in chapter four in the Divine Names that any love is a uniting power. Thomas had a great respect for Dionysius, right? He thought Dionysius was the Dionysius that Saint Paul converted at Athens. Now we don't think that is so, right? But that's part of the authority. Gregory the Great brought Dionysius's works back from what Constantinople to Rome, and they became a great authority in the Middle ages.

[34:44] So Thomas has a commentary on the Divine Names, and Albert the Great is a commentary on the Celestial Arc of Dionysius. But they both knew both works.

[34:59] Now Thomas is going to distinguish, right? I answer that it should be said that there is a twofold union of the lover with the loved. One is according to things, he calls it, right? For example. when the loved is present to the lover, and another by what affection, right?

[35:24] Okay, so I have a union with my wife right now by affection, right? But not in things; we're not together, right? She's somewhere else. I don't know somewhere in the state. Do you see? Okay, so two different unions, right? Okay,

[35:43] and another by affection, which union should be considered from the preceding grasping, for the movement of desire follows grasping. That's quite easy to see, right? Okay, you can like somebody but not be with them, right? Okay, different unions, right? But if you like somebody, you seek to be with them, right? Okay, but there are two loves, namely of wanting and the friendship, and each proceeds from some grasping of the unity of the love of the lover.

[36:22] For when someone loves something as wanting it, he grasps it as pertaining to his well-being. Okay, so I want food, right? And I perceive that food is necessary for my well-being. Okay, I love wisdom. I perceive wisdom is necessary for my the good of my mind. Likewise, when someone loves someone by the love of friendship, he wills good to him, just as he wills good for himself, and hence it is that a friend is said to be another what self.

[37:01] So I had my Greek course at College Saint Thomas there, huh? Ophelos estin allos autos Greek proverb: A friend is another what self, right? Shakespeare uses the expression "the second self," right?

[37:18] And Augustine says in the fourth book of the Confessions, "Someone said well about his friend, 'Half of my soul, ' right? " So it's not just husbands and wife can speak of their spouses, their better half, right? Huh? One can speak of one's friend as half of my soul, right? That's interesting. Augustine say that, right?

[37:43] Now he says love makes the first union, then its efficient cause. And what is that first union he's talking about? My being together with you, right? Okay, my being together with the food, right? Okay, it makes that union as an efficient cause, right? As a mover or a maker, right? Because it moves to desiring and seeking in the presence of the love as something suitable to oneself and pertaining to oneself, right?

[38:13] It makes. The second union, the union that he called before by affection, right? Formally, right? Because love itself is such a union or binding, huh? They speak of the bond there between the mother and the child, right? Okay. Because that bond between the mother and the child, she seeks to be with the what? Child, right? When they draft the child, they send them off to war someplace, right?

[38:40] It's not a union in things, but they still have bond to the heart, right? Okay. And love makes that union what? Says formally, right? Okay. The fact that I love you means I am attached to you, right? And therefore, in some sense, united with you, right? But then I seek a further union as an efficient cause and mover. I seek to be with you, right? You see that?

[39:04] So it's two unions that are an effect of love, right? And one is automatic, you might say, because the fact I love you, I am attached to you, right? Because I love candy, I am attached to candy, right? But then, because I am attached to you or I am attached to candy, I seek to be with you or I seek to get some candy, right? And that's a second union that is an effect of love.

[39:27] If something could impede me from being with you, something could impede me from getting the candy I want. Do you see? But those are two different effects of love, right? Do you see that?

[39:42] Whence the great Augustine says in the eighth book of the Trinity that love is as a certain life joining together, right? Or desiring to join together some two, namely the lover and what is loved. For when Augustine says joining together, he refers to the union of affection, right? Without which there is no what? Love.

[40:07] Now, since I use the word life there in the singular, right? Like in Shakespeare's what? Prologue to Romeo and Juliet, right? We use the word life for Romeo and Juliet in the singular. How can that be, right? Same way Augustine says. And when he says desiring to join together pertains to the union in what things, right? Okay.

[40:37] As I say, the article is about the effects of love, so it just distinguishes two effects of love that are union, right? The union we have from the mere fact that I love you, or the mere fact that I love candy, right? And then the union that I seek as result of that, with you or with the candy, right? The real union, so to speak. But two different unions, right?

[41:02] Both an effect of love, right? But one ipso facto by the very fact of love, right? I'm attached to you, or I'm attached to candy, depending on the kind of love it is, right? And the other one that I seek that could be impeded because of circumstances, right? But in the reply to objections, he will speak of a third relation of union to love. There's a union which is a cause of love, right?

[41:27] So I'm attached to my brother Marcus or my brother Richard because we have the same what parents, right? Or I'm attached to somebody because they're like me, right?

[41:43] To the first, therefore, it should be said that that objection proceeds about the union in things which pleasure requires as a cause. So I enjoy being together with you if I love you, right? I enjoy having some candy if I love candy, right?

[42:02] Desire to be sure is in the real absence of the loved, but love indeed both in the absence and in the presence, right? So I like candy whether I have it or don't have it, right? But I don't have it, I have desire for it. When I have it, I have pleasure, right? Okay.

[42:21] Now the second objection is adding something to what we saw about the causes of love, right? Because the third cause of love is likeness, right? But if I love you because you're like me, well then I must even more so love what myself. Not because I'm like myself, but because I'm more than like myself. I am myself. Richard loves Richard. That is, I am I? it Shakespeare has King Richard the Third say, right?

[42:53] you see Okay. And so this is adding a little bit to our understanding of what cause, right? To the second, it should be said that union is to love in three ways now, right? Huh? This is very important to see. It can also be a cause of love as well as a being but. Almost the same thing as love, and then the union that we seek is the result of our love of somebody.

[43:19] For some union is the cause of love, and this is a union of substance, identity, as regards the love by which someone loves himself, right? As regards the love by which someone loves another, it is a union of likeness, as has been said, right? You see why I put the likeness as a cause of love on the side of the lover, right? Because it unites the two of them together.

[43:47] You're under the union, right? I love myself because I'm one with myself, right? I love you who are like me because we're one in kind, right? Okay, birds of a feather flock together, as they say, right? Okay.

[44:05] But some union seems to be almost the same thing as love itself, right? But some union is essentially love itself, and this is a union by the fitting together of affection, which is like the union of substance in so far as the lover is to the loved, in the union of friendship as to himself, and the lover wanting as to something of himself, right?

[44:31] Do you see that? Okay. That's how we do speak of that. If you like something, we are said to be attached to it, right? Right. From the very fact that we love it, right? Even if we don't have it, right? All the time, right? So that attachment is a sign of our being united in some way with the thing we love, right? It seems to be almost the same thing as love, right?

[44:52] For me to love you, for me to love candy, is for me to be attached to you, or to be attached to candy, right? Do you see that? He says love makes that union formally in the body, the article, right? But here he speaks as if it's almost the same thing as as love, right? Okay. And some union is the effect of love, right? And that's the. Effect of love that he spoke of, that love makes as an efficient cause.

[45:20] It moves me to seek to be with you, or to be with the candy, right? Depending upon the kind of love. And this is the real union which the lover seeks with the thing loved.

[45:39] Just the union we seek with God in the beatific beatific vision, right? But by charity, in the second sense, we're already attached to God, right? Okay. You see that?

[45:57] In this union is according to suitability of love, for as the philosophy reports in the second book of the Politics, Aristophanes said that lovers desire from two to become one. But because from this it would happen that either that both or one of them would be corrupted, they seek a union which is suitable and fitting, as if they stay together and talk together and are joined to other things of this kind.

[46:23] Now the third objection is a different kind of objection, right? It was arguing simply that union is more an effect of knowledge than of love, right? Thomas says no, it's the reverse.

[46:36] To the third, it should be said that knowledge is perfected through this, that the known is united to the knower by its likeness, right? Okay. But love brings about that the thing itself which is loved is united in some way to the lover, as has been said, whence love is more unifying than what knowledge, right? Of course, you can see that especially the bad thing, right? By knowing what badness is, doesn't really make me a bad man, does it?

[47:05] But by loving what is bad, right? That really unites me with the bad, right? So a lot of times when Thomas talks about the three theological virtues, he'll say that faith gives us the knowledge of our end, our goal, right? By hope we tend towards that goal, right? But by charity we're already united to some extent with that ender goal, right? So charity then is greater than hope, and hope is greater than what faith, right?

[47:39] Interesting, right? But the fact that that love unites us with the thing itself is the reason why charity remains even the next life, right? Although in maybe a more perfect way, right? But faith doesn't remain because you don't see God as He is in this life, right? And so faith is replaced by the beatific vision, right? And hope is replaced by the possession of God, right? But charity is not replaced, but maybe perfected in heaven.