Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
13. Anaxagoras on Matter and Mind: Infinite Division, the Continuous, and Why the Ruler Must Be Separate
Class of 2005-02-17
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/013-anaxagoras-on-matter-and-mind-infinite-division-the-continuous/

[0:00] In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, and help us to understand all that you have written. Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. So I guess we are talking about the position of Anaxagoras about matter on page seven there, and this is very fragmentary there, but Aristotle in the first book of Natural Hearing, the first book of the so-called Physics, gives us the argument of Anaxagoras, which I'll repeat here again briefly.

[0:54] He saw that by induction, you might say, that everything in the natural world comes to be from everything else. Eventually, I was getting kind of a simplified form of that, right? Cow eats the grass, so get more cow from grass, right? And the breakfast eats the steak, so get more man from cow, but originally from the grass, right? And the lion eats Burkus, huh? You get more lion.

[1:25] The worms eat the lion, and so on. So this goes on and on, huh? And then added to that, what he's saying in particular here in DK ten, how could hair come from what is not hair? How can you get something out of something that's not in there, right? Can you get any money out of my pocket? Well, if there's no money in my pocket, you know, or can you get blood out of a turnip, as the old saying goes?

[1:51] Well, you can't because, but why not? Because there's no blood in there, right? So how can you get more cow and man and lion and worm and bird and cat and daisies out of that original grass? They've got to be in there, right?

[2:09] So it seems like everything is inside of everything, right? And then, like the other Greeks and as experience seems to tell us, things keep on coming to be forever in this world, right? So it's got to be an infinity of pieces of everything inside the original grass and everything else, huh? And how do you fit infinity of pieces of different things inside a blade of grass, which is limited or finite, huh?

[2:38] Well, by making them infinitely small, right? Something like the modern mathematicians, you know, will speak of a line as a finite line, even as composed of an infinity of points, right? So ends up with the grand conclusion that there's an infinity of infinitely small pieces. Of everything inside of what everything, okay? And you see this a little bit in the beginning of this DK one here, the second quote here, a second fragment on page seven.

[3:12] All things were together, unlimited or infinite, in number and in what smallness, right? There's infinity of things that are infinitely small side of everything,

[3:28] and nothing was clear because these things were so small, right? And Aristotle sees this as trying to express what ability or potency is, where nothing is distinguished from the other. Just like you might see all the shapes can be in the wood are in there in ability, and you can't see them one as distinct from the other. Now I mentioned how in the most advanced part of physics in the 20th century, there, as regards the study of matter, huh?

[4:04] You had a well-known saying among the students of elementary particles, which at that time were the smallest things they know about, and therefore the closest thing to the first matter. But they saw in their experiments that out of any amount of elementary particle, you could eventually get the rest. So the well-known saying was that every elementary particle is composed of all the rest. But notice if you took that for what it's actually saying, then inside each elementary particle there'd be all the other ones, and inside each one of those inside that original one would be all the rest, right?

[4:43] And inside each one of those all the rest, if every one is made up of all the rest, and they'd be getting smaller and smaller and smaller without what limit, right?

[4:57] Okay. Now the rest of that DK one there shows maybe he's influenced a bit by Anaximenes and Anaximander, the men who have spoken about the infinite as being the beginning of things, huh?

[5:16] Now the next fragment there is just an elaboration upon what we've seen already, right? Calls these infinitely small pieces the seeds of all things, right? Okay.

[5:35] But now in the fragment next to the next to the last one, DK3, you have a good introduction to the philosophy of the what continuous, huh? Now the continuous is talked about by Aristotle. Especially in the sixth book of Natural Hearing, sixth book of the so-called physics, huh? But you also talk about it in the chapter on quantity, in the categories, huh? Where he distinguishes between continuous quantity, like a line, a surface, a body, time, place, and discrete quantity, like number, okay?

[6:26] Now, in the categories, he defines a continuous quantity as one whose parts meet at a common limit or common common boundary, like the left and the right sides of the straight line meet at a point, and the left and the right sides of the circle meet at a line, and the parts of a body meet at a what surface, huh?

[6:56] Why the discrete quantity, like number, the parts don't meet anywhere. So in the number seven, the three and the four, or the two and the five, don't meet anywhere. But in the sixth book of Natural Hearing, Aristotle will give another definition of the continuous in terms of its what parts, huh? And he'll define the continuous as that which is divisible forever. And he's going to, and he shows actually in the sixth book of Natural Hearing that you can cut a straight line in half, and you get smaller lines, and cut those in half, and always cutting them in half, this will go on forever, it'll never come to an end.

[7:47] Now, Anaxagoras, in that way, is seeing something of this, huh? Nor is there a smallest of the small, he says, but there is always a smaller, for what is cannot cease to be by being cut.

[8:08] Now, let's just stop a little bit on that, huh? If you cut a line up, could you cut a line up into nothing? No. What would be the objection to saying you cut a line up, you cut it in half, and you got nothing left?

[8:38] Instead of two shorter lines, you have nothing left. Well, you cut a thing up into what it's made out of, right? And so, if you cut a line up into nothing. It would be what made of nothing, right?

[8:59] You get nothing out of something. Now, the only other way you could maybe end up with an end to this cutting would be if you cut a line into two points. Okay, now the point you can't divide, right?

[9:20] And if a line could be put together from points, right? Then you couldn't cut it forever. You take two points next to each other, right? Okay.

[9:34] But now, is it possible that a straight line be put together from points? Well, how do you know that it can't be put together from points? That's the way the modern mathematician sometimes in high school talks that way, right? As if a line is composed of an infinity of points. Composed is Latin word for put together from, right? Well, Aristotle, in the sixth book has a number of ways of showing this, one way we show it is by a disjunctive or either-or syllogism, right?

[10:12] And we say that there are what three, perhaps four ways that things could what touch, because you've got to put a line together from points; they have to come together and touch, right? Well, one way they can touch is where part touches part, like these two circles, right? Part touches part.

[10:41] Or you could have part touching the whole, or the whole of one touching part of the other, right? Or then you could have, Mr. Hard to draw, the whole touching the whole, right? So I just kind of go around twice, you know that thing. Can write that, okay? Whole

[11:05] touches whole. That might seem to exhaust the possibilities, because what do you have besides the whole and the part, right? But maybe you could make a distinction between the limit of a circle, right, and a part—not really a part in the strict sense, huh? So you could have what? Yeah, at a point or something. Yeah, limit touching limit, right? Huh? Okay. The limit touching.

[11:44] Now, does a point have any parts? No. No, in fact, that's the way Euclid defines the point there—that which has no parts. So part of one point cannot touch part of the other point, right? And part of one cannot touch the whole of the other, because the point has no parts, huh? Okay. Now, can you make a distinction between a point and its edge or limit? So there's a little bit of the point inside; it's not the same as the edge or limit.

[12:22] Well, then you're making the point into a what? A circle. Yeah, yeah. A small circle. So the only way two points can touch is for the whole of one to touch the whole of the other. Now, two points touch; they're going to coincide, then, right? Which case two points have no more length than one point, which is how much length? No, no, yeah. And if ten or a hundred or a million or an infinity of points were to touch, right?

[12:54] The only way they could touch would be to coincide. And if they coincide, they have no more length than one point, which is no length at all. So you can't make a line, which is something, which is length without breadth, by putting points together, right? Okay.

[13:16] Incidentally, sometimes you know you have a student who will say, "Well, do points really exist?" Right? And I say, "Well, this is the way we show you that point really does exist. Are there bodies that don't go on forever? Yeah. So this table doesn't go on forever, right? So there's an end to the table, right? An end to the body, right? Which is the surface of the body, right?

[13:45] Now, is the surface of the body, which is the end of the body, does that surface have any depth? Well, if you give it any depth, you haven't come to the end, have you? Okay. So it does come to an end, but you haven't come to the end so long as you've got any depth. Therefore, the surface must have no depth, although it has length and width, right?

[14:12] Okay. Now, if you take the surface of that door, right? It has length and width, but no depth, right? Now, does the surface of the door go on forever? There's an end upwards and this way, and so on. And does that end have any width?

[14:36] Now, if it had any width, you hadn't come to the end yet, had you? So now you have length without what? Width. But does that line let's see on the right here, that has length without width, does that go on forever? So it has an end. How long is the end? But if the end of the line has any length? It's what? Not the end of the line yet, right?

[15:01] Yet it has an end because it doesn't go on forever. So the end of the line has no length, and obviously, therefore, no width or depth, right? And we call that end of the line a what? Yeah, Euclid tells us there, right? You know, I think the first definition in Euclid is that of the point, the second one that of the line, the third one points out that the end or the limit of the line is the same point, right?

[15:27] So if points were to come together and touch, they would have to coincide, huh? This argument shows by elimination. And if they come together and touch or coincide, they have no more length than one point, which we already saw has what? No length, right? So it's impossible to put together what?

[15:52] Yeah. So therefore, when you cut a line in half, either you end up with what? Two shorter lines. Always, which case would be divisible forever, or you end up with two points. But we saw that's impossible, right? Because then a line would have been put together from two points, right? Or you cut it up into what? Nothing, and that's zero, right? Okay, because then the line would be what?

[16:22] Put together from nothing, right? So it must be that the line is divisible forever, And he, in a way, sees this, right? when we speak about the point, does a point exist? Is there um? Do we have to understand exist in a certain way? Yeah, maybe the point exists in the way that an accident exists rather than a substance, right? Yeah. And so, just like I was saying about the surface of the body, right?

[16:55] Huh? It exists maybe more as an accident as a substance, huh? So you couldn't cut off that surface without taking some of the depth, in which case you'd be cutting a body off from a body, right? But You couldn't cut the surface and have it exist by itself.

[17:14] So he says, "Nor is there a smallest of the small, but there is always a smaller. For what is cannot cease to be by being cut." But then he adds the next sentence: "But there is also something greater than the great."

[17:31] Now, he seems to be saying that you never come to a greatest either. But how does that, in a way, follow from there being no smallest of the small? There's no

[17:47] limit at one end. Well, no, not so much that. But if you can cut a line in half, and you always get smaller lines, and they can be cut in half, and this goes on forever, what is getting greater the more you cut the line? The number of lines. Yeah, the number of lines, right? And so sometimes we say, and this is really the basic meaning of number, that number

[18:15] arises from the division of the continuous. Continuous, as we saw, is divisible what forever, right? Well, therefore, numbers can increase forever, right? Ah. So in a way, if someone says, "How do you know you won't eventually come to a highest number?" Right? And my grandchildren are counting up to a hundred. You know, you can count to a hundred. I say, wow! I remember my own children being impressed that you know they count to a hundred.

[18:59] Um, but how do you won't come to a greatest number, right? Well, if number arises from the division of the continuous, and the continuous, as we've seen, is divisible forever, then numbers can increase, right? And so maybe the great Anaxagoras saw something of this, right? But there's also something greater than the great.

[19:22] Okay, there's always a greater number. And is equal to the small number. Well, that really shouldn't be said exactly that way, maybe. But he's saying they correspond, right? Okay. That the division of the continuous going on forever corresponds to the number of lines going up forever, right?

[19:49] But now each thing to itself is both great and small. It shows he doesn't quite understand what relation is, right? Relation is what? As Aristotle calls it in the categories. proste. or in Latin they say ad aliquid, towards another, right? Okay. So to be double is something towards another, right? But is anything in itself double? No. So you shouldn't speak that way, should it? Okay.

[20:27] It's very important you understand the Trinity later on, right? Because, because in the Gospel of Saint John there, we translate it. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, right? But the Greek says, "and the Word was pros, towards God, right? " So if you understand what relation is, pros ti, right, towards another, then you can see the beginning there of what Augustine and Boethius and Thomas and so on see that distinction of the persons is a relative distinction, right?

[21:11] Now the next paragraph is again merely coming back upon things we've seen before, right? But notice, nor is it possible, he says to exist apart from other things, but all things have a share of everything, huh? Okay. Well, in a way, that's true. as Aristotle would say, in ability, right? So there's something in me that's able to be a what? A lion, right? Something me that's able to be a shark.

[21:45] It's not that I have a little bit of lion and shark in me, but there is something in me that is able to be worms, right? To be dust, right? You see? Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return, huh? Well, maybe we're not dust actually, but we're able to be dust. Um. But he's imagining these things to be actually in there, right? And of course, our mind has a hard time understanding this ability of matter, or I should say, this ability that is matter, right?

[22:25] And they tend to imagine what is their inability to be actually in there, and then they have problems about fitting it in. That's a very common mistake in human thinking, but it's a good example of what we call false imagination. As Weizsäcker says, when you imagine something, you make it actual in your imagination.

[22:54] Now, at the top of page eight, he's again emphasizing an idea. The things in the one world are not separated from each other, nor cut off with an axe. Neither the warm from the cold nor the cold from the warm is almost back in Anaxagoras saying hot and cold are the same, right? But you could say, right, that what is actually warm is able to be cold, right?

[23:20] And what is actually cold is able to be warm. In that sense, are not cut off, right? But it's not as if they're actually both, right?

[23:33] So the multitude of things separated cannot be known in word or in deed. Aristotle will give this as a sort of difficulty for Anaxagoras because to know something, you have to know what it's put together from, right? To know what a definition is, you've got to know it's put together from a genus and differences, right? And to know my name, you got to know what the letters in my name, right?

[24:01] But now, if a name or a word had an infinity of letters in it, would you ever know that name or word? No. So he's saying that everything has within it an infinity of things, right? And therefore, it seems you can't really know what anything really is. And yet, Anaxagoras is giving us whole life to the study of the natural world, right? And they ask Anaxagoras, "Why is it better to be born than not to have been born?"

[24:29] Right? So one could, you know, contemplate to know the universe, right? And yet his position makes it somewhat difficult to know that. Now, the next group of fragments is going to talk about how these things that are mixed together are, at least in part, separated, right? And in a kind of immediate way, he's going to have them being separated by a circular motion. But eventually, he's going to see that the mover or the cause of the circular motion is some greater mind.

[25:10] Okay. Now it's kind of interesting that he should use circular motion to separate things, because we do that too, don't we? Yeah. You see,

[25:27] if I want to put a stone through a window out here, right? I could tie the stone in something, right, and then what? Swirl around and shoot, right, and break your window that way, right? And if they want to split the atom, they have this thing they call what? Cyclotron Yeah, which means it runs in a circle, right? And they keep on accelerating it, and then finally shoot it, right?

[25:55] My friend Jim Franzak, the ex-golden gloves boxer, you know, he's giving me a little lesson there and how to box. After he gets me all wrapped up here in the gloves and so on, he said, "First thing you do, you just take just a question. See, you know, you stand like this, right? And then you get when you're sitting like this, you're what getting power out of a circular what motion, right?

[26:17] And you see these guys that those kicking things, you know, they they're circling around and they whack you in the jaw with their foot, right? You know, see that's a circular. motion So, and a lot of our drills and things work in a circular way, right?

[26:35] So, these things thus revolve and are separated by force and speed, and the speed makes the force. The speed of these things is not the speed of any of the things that are now among men, but altogether many times as fast. Now, you look out in the universe; you can still kind of see the whole world apparently revolving around us, right? You can still see the remains of the circular motion, but it's not as violent as it might have been at one time, right?

[27:01] Okay. And the thick and the moist and the cold and the dark came together where now is the earth, and the thin and the warm and the dry went outwards to the further part of the ether.

[27:15] Well, I remember being in the Altar Boy picnic out at amusement park, and with my brother Mark, and these machines, you know, running around, just and I had a little baseball hat on, you know, and the baseball hat was flying off, you know, got ground up in the machinery. But I didn't go flying off, fortunately, right? Because I was what thick and heavy and so on, right?

[27:39] Huh? See, but the light things go flying off. See, so the earth kind of settled down towards the middle things, and then towards the outer part, you have these what the air and the fire and so on. These light things are kind of spread out, right? So, some kind of evidence for this, and what we see now, right? And the circular motion still going on, the light things up there, and the heavy things like water and the earth, especially, and air and fire out towards extremities, huh?

[28:10] And so he talks about these things in DK16, how the heavy things were solidified and so on, huh? But now in DK17, you have a very interesting fragment here,

[28:25] and here he seems to be expressing the same thought we saw earlier in the great Empedocles, and perhaps a thought in all of these men that the only change in the world is change of what place, huh?

[28:43] And so there's no such thing as dying, you know. That's a emotionally charged word, but it's not scientific, right? There's no such thing as birth, right? That's implying there's something coming ready to be, right? That wasn't there before. All you do is what separate things that are mixed together, right?

[29:07] The Greeks do not rightly take coming into being and perishing. Nothing comes to be or perishes, but it's mixed and separated from existing things. So all you're doing is moving these things around, right? And thus they would be right to call coming to be mixing, and perishing what separating, right? Again, there's something in our mind that when a child comes into the world, or a parent dies, or a friend dies, right, that this is more than just a change of what place, right?

[29:42] Although we speak that way, right? He's gone, she's gone, he's coming to the world, he's coming to the world, he's here, yeah, yeah. But they can't really understand how this would be possible. How would it be possible that something come To be that wasn't before, right? And you've heard me say, kind of, I say, well, to the students, what's going on in learning, right? Is there a change of place of knowledge from the professor's head to the student's head?

[30:14] In which case, professor would be getting what? Yeah, yeah. They should pay you less and less the longer you teach. Did you know that's just doesn't happen anymore? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And but I said, you guys try to say, well, just a rearrangement of molecules in somebody's head, right? You know, was that really your experience, or are you really coming to know something? Is there really now some knowledge in your head that wasn't in your head before you you learned this, right?

[30:47] Did you get that knowledge out of nothing then? Is professor knows just as much as he did before? Where did knowledge come from? See, coming from those who died or something, coming to our heads.

[31:06] Lots of things in our experience so contradict this, but it's hard to understand how that takes place. And DK five, which you connect to with that, third from the bottom there. These things having been thus separated, is necessary to know that all things are neither more nor less. Because if there's ever more things in the universe than there are now, you would have got something out of nothing, right?

[31:40] And if there's ever less things in the universe than there are now, then something would have become nothing, right? Something would have been cut up into nothing, right? So things are never more nor less, right?

[31:56] For it's not possible for more than all to be, but all things are forever equal. And so sometimes I say to students, the whole modern physical science is based upon this statement, isn't it?

[32:14] Well, the customary way of expressing what we know about the world in the physical sciences is by what is called an equation, right? And as the word itself indicates, it's about equality, right?

[32:30] And I always go back to a simple algebraic example here to bring out with this idea of equality and what he's saying here. And you take something like two times x plus y, and if I go over here and I say two x plus y, he's going to mark me wrong, isn't he? Okay. I said, well, what's wrong? What did you do wrong,

[33:08] He says, well, Berquist. You see, when you put this in parentheses and you put a two before it, it means you got two of those things in the parentheses. So you got x and y. We got another x and y because you got two of what's in the parentheses. So how many x you got two, and how many y you got two, and you lost a y, right?

[33:28] What happened to that y? That's not allowed in algebra. That one of the y's has what become nothing, right? Well, no, all things are forever what equal, okay? Now, vice versa, if I was given two x plus y to begin with, right? And I had gone to two times parentheses x plus y, then he would have explained, hey, you've got a y on the left side that you didn't have on the right side, right?

[33:59] Something has come into existence. You got something out of nothing, Berquist. You see? So either way, you'd be wrong, right? In one case, something would have gone out of existence. Other case, something would have come into existence out of nothing. So all you can do is mix and separate these things, huh? And I can mix it like this, right?

[34:25] Or I could say I want to do x plus x plus y plus y, right? But I can't let anything go out of existence and then come into existence. All I do is mix and separate them. That's kind of in a nutshell there what he's saying, right? And so modern physics and saying, or physical science is saying that the world can be expressed in equations is saying that things are never more nor less, but they're always what equal, huh?

[34:57] It's a similarity between that thinking. And now he's going to start to approach the mind, which he's most famous for and most admired by Socrates and Plato and Aristotle.

[35:20] In everything, there is a part of everything except mind, and there are also other things in which there is mind. Okay, I make an exception about mind, right? Okay.

[35:35] Now let's turn to the great fragment on the mind here on the page nine, DK twelve. Now Anaxagoras will be talking about a greater mind here, but towards the end of this great fragment, next to the last sentence there, third line there, every mind is similar. Both the greater and the lesser, right? Okay. Now, perhaps the way that Anaxagoras arrives at being a greater mind

[36:11] is by something we met before when we talked about Empedocles that like effects have like causes. It seems reasonable, right? Now, if you look at the order in the parts of artificial things

[36:54] and the order in the parts of animals and even plants, you see a likeness, right? That the parts of this chair are well what arranged, right? Huh? The parts of my briefcase are well arranged. Now the parts of the car are well arranged, right? And you find the parts of the animal or the plant are well arranged. The teeth are where they should be, and so on, right?

[37:27] And as I mentioned before, if I lost my natural teeth, right, and the dentist made me a pair of of artificial or false teeth, as we call them, right, he would put the biting teeth in front and the chewing teeth in what back, not just for looks, right, but also so I could bite and chew with my artificial teeth like I do with my natural teeth, right?

[37:56] So nature or art would do it in the same way nature did it, huh? Now, the cause of the order in the parts of artificial things is well known to us, namely the human mind, right?

[38:15] While the cause of the order in the parts of animals and plants is unknown to us, right? But now, if you add to what's here the likeness of the effects and the known cause in the case of one, right, you add to that the general statement that like effects have like causes, right? Then it's a reasonable guess, right, that the cause of the order in the parts of animals and plants would be something like the human mind, huh?

[38:52] But since it's responsible for much greater order, right, it'd be some kind of what greater mind, huh? Okay. So this is a conclusion from three things, right? From seeing the likeness of the order in the parts of artificial things and the order in the parts of animals and plants. That's one thing we all see, right? Secondly, from knowing what the cause is of the order in the artificial things, right?

[39:31] And then third, that like effects have like causes. And from those three, you might conclude that there is a greater mind behind, right? Okay. Now, this likeness between the greater mind and the human mind, likeness in the causes, helps us to know something about the greater mind because of this likeness. So what he says in this fragment. Some of it will apply more to the greater mind than to our mind, but our mind is always the starting point for understanding the greater mind, so far as we what can, right?

[40:12] Okay. So let's start to look at this fragment. Huh? Other things have a part of everything. He's going to exclude the greater mind from being mixed up with things. We'll see. But mind is unlimited. Statement number one, right? Okay. We're going to be stopping in each of the great statements he makes here.

[40:49] First statement he's making is that mind is unlimited. Of course, we've met them calling things unlimited before, right? And sometimes they spoke of unlimited in terms of a multitude of things, right? Which wouldn't apply to the mind if you're talking about one mind. Sometimes they spoke of the unlimited in the sense of going on forever in the continuous quantity, like air is unlimited, as Anaximenes might have thought.

[41:27] But you'll notice later on he'll say that the mind is the thinnest of all things. So it's not unlimited in the way that air was thought to be unlimited, that it goes on forever, right? So in what sense is the mind said to be unlimited? Not in the sense that one mind is a infinity of things, or that it goes on forever. What sense is the mind unlimited?

[41:54] Yeah, in its ability, right? The mind is unlimited, it seems, in its ability to know, and consequently to make and so on, right? Now, starting from what's more known to us, obviously, or the only mind known to us in the beginning, our own mind, is there any evidence that our mind even is in some way unlimited? It

[42:29] doesn't seem to be an end. Things we can learn as long as we live. Okay, we always seem to be able to learn more, right? So our ability to know in that way seems to be unlimited. We're always making something that hasn't been made before, right?

[42:48] Like my son-in-law tells me, you know, don't bother to turn your computer off because it'll be outdated before it wears out. And. But man is always making something, you know, in our own twentieth century. Say, you know, the automobile and the airplane and the computer and all these things, right? Or it's making an old thing in a new what way, right? Um.

[43:24] But if you look inwardly at the mind, you'll see that it knows the universal, and the universal contains how many things? Yeah. That's why we said in the proemium to wisdom that the wise man, in some way, knows all things, right? You say, well, how is that possible? There's an infinity of things, right? But knowing the universal, in some sense, he knows an infinity of things. Just like the mathematician, when he knows what an odd number is and an even number is, and makes a statement that no odd number is even, he's making a statement about what an infinity of things.

[44:07] So that's probably inwardly the best evidence that the mind is in some way unlimited, that it knows the universal. And since you can go from the confused to distinct, you can go from the universal down to the more particular things, right? So the mind is therefore open to an infinity of what things, right? If I know what an odd number is, I can go to three and five and seven and nine, go on forever.

[44:35] So the mind is is open to infinity of things. And that's where Aristotle says in the De Anima, after he gets through talking about the senses and talking about reason, right, he'll say that the soul is in some way all things, right. Okay,

[44:54] but in a kind of outward way, you see this because of its always making and inventing something new, or they sometimes point to language, right? Whereby a man can keep on signifying something what new and what different, right?

[45:16] So that's the first thing he says about the mind. It's interesting now that the word unlimited here is a different meaning of unlimited than when you said that air is unlimited, going on forever, right? Okay. And this is closer to the meaning of unlimited when you say God is unlimited, right? Okay. That's the first thing he says about the mind.

[45:50] The second thing he says about the mind is that it is self-ruling. Okay. Now, one way I often approach this is to say or ask the question: What part of philosophy is a sign of the truth of this second statement?

[46:32] Logic. Logic, yeah. Logic is the art that directs reason itself, so that there can be something called logic is a sign of the truth that the mind is to some extent self-ruling.

[46:56] Now you say, why is the mind self-ruling? Well, later on he'll talk about how the mind distinguishes and orders things, and we see that the definition of reason that Shakespeare gave us, right? That reason is the ability for large discourse, looking before and after, right? So to rule things is to order them, right? And you have to know order to do that, and so on. But notice also connection between that and the first thing here, because to rule something you have to be able to know that thing as well as to know order, right?

[47:39] And so the mind could not rule itself if it didn't know itself, right? But if it's unlimited in its ability to know, it can know not only other things but also what know itself, right? And so although he doesn't say it explicitly. We could put in brackets here: mind is what self-knowing.

[48:11] And what part of philosophy is a sign of the truth of the statement that mind is self-knowing? De Anima. De Anima, especially right. So my reason in the De Anima, and especially in the third book, there is asking what is reason, right? And what is the distinction between reason and sense, and between reason and imagination, right? Um,

[48:43] you could say the philosophy of nature, in general, right? Because we're in the philosophy of nature now, and the mind is knowing itself. Right, so there's connection between this and the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of soul in particular, which is a part of the philosophy of nature. But the second statement of his, we have the connection with, but logic, right?

[49:15] Now, what's the third part of philosophy? Ethics. wisdom? Ethics, yeah. Yeah, I mean, wisdom will come up here again. Ethics, yeah. And ethics is concerned with reason ruling will and emotion, and causal interactions,

[49:43] and is that connected with mind as being self-ruling? See. Well, I always ask the question: Are you fit to rule others if you can't rule yourself? Well, if I'm your

[50:00] commanding,Officer I'm going to lead you into battle, and I'm scared. You can feel the fear in my voice, and I tell you what we're going to do today. I'm not fit to rule you, am I? Right? And the same way, if a parent can't control his own anger, let us say, right, or his desire for drink or drugs or whatever it is, he's not fit, or she's not fit to be really a parent, right?

[50:30] Okay, you have to be able to what rule yourself, right? My friend used to work in the state house. There says the people come into the session sometimes drunk at night time. So these guys tend to be making laws for us. Okay. Now you could add to mind itself knowing that mind alone is self-knowing, right? The eye doesn't know what an eye is, right? Let alone does a hand know what a hand is, right?

[51:04] Or the lung know what a lung is, right? The mind is the only part of us that knows itself. Therefore, the mind is the only part that can rule itself. And if you have to be able to rule yourself before you fit to rule others, then the mind or reason is the only part in us fit to rule the other parts. So that is the idea that mind should rule the rest of man, right?

[51:37] And that's the basic thing in ethics, right? That we should live by reason, should follow reason. So you can nicely arrange around the statement mind is self-ruling the three main parts of philosophy, right? Directly, mind is self-ruling is why logic is possible, right? But vice versa, the existence of logic is a sign that mind is self-ruling, right? But if you look before and after mind is self-ruling, you see the rest of philosophy coming into play.

[52:18] So it's a beautiful thing. They didn't think that you have to go Yeah. I'm sorry. this is a little business Yeah. Now, incidentally, if you spoke of God, right? Strictly speaking, if you said God was self-ruling, you'd be understanding this in a different meaning, right? It'd be a affirmative way of saying something saying something negatively, because God is not ruled by another, is he? Say, but doesn't have to be ruled himself because he is the end of all things.

[53:03] He doesn't have to be directed to some end, okay? But he's the source of all other rule, huh? Okay. Now the third thing he says about the mind is that the mind is mixed with nothing else, right? And now he's separating the mind from matter, right? Aristotle will refer back to this in the De Anima, right? And give a somewhat similar argument for our mind being immaterial, right?

[53:35] To what Anaxagoras gives here as the reason why the greater mind is not mixed with things, huh? Okay. So this is the third thing here. Um, it's mixed with nothing, huh?

[53:56] But here now he having the text, the reason he gives for that, right? It's a beautiful one. For if it were not by itself, but were mixed with something other, it would have a share of all things, like everything in matter has a little bit of everything else in it. If it were mixed with anything, for there is a part of everything in everything, as has been said by me and what goes before, right?

[54:25] And now the hub of the reason, and the things mixed with it would hinder it, so that it would rule over nothing like it does being alone by itself. Okay. Now later on he's going to bring out that the greater mind is responsible for the distinction and the order of things in the natural world, and especially the order and distinction of the parts of animals and plants, right?

[54:50] And he's saying that it couldn't rule over the world so well as it does if it were mixed up with it. Now, what's underlying the statement is the idea that the ruler

[55:07] must not be mixed up with the ruled. He must be separate from the ruled, right? Now, going back to what's more known to us, our own mind, right? Is there some evidence, huh, that the ruler must be separated from the ruled in order to rule well? That the ruler must not be mixed up with the ruled, right?

[55:47] Yeah. Anti-fraternization laws. Yeah, yeah. One example is in the army, right? See, where there's a separation between the ruler and the ruled, right? And so. You know, I salute you first if you're my commanding officer, right? If he's somebody above him, he salutes him first, right? And insignia and other things, right? So there's a real separation there, right? And on the military base, they have maybe a commissioned officers' club, right?

[56:16] And the non commissioned guys can't go in there. So even on social basis, they can't mix in a familiar way. So they realize that separation is good for what? Command or rule? And I think I mentioned before in talking about these things how they said that in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, everybody was calling everybody comrade, and the discipline of the army started breaking down. And therefore they had to what?

[56:45] Reinforce, you know, the old separation of ruler and ruled, huh? For the army to work in. Or take another one. Take the idea of the judge, right? The first thing we demand of a judge, I'm going to judge between you two people, that I be impartial, right? Which means literally not a part of, right? So if I have a friendship or a financial interest in your company or something, I shouldn't be deciding between you, but two, right?

[57:20] Because I'm mixed up with you, you see. So there must be a real what? Separation there between the judge and those he judges, right? And sometimes, you know, if a man is on trial in a particular community and he can show evidence that the community opinion about him is that he's guilty, and the jury is going to be selected from this community of people who think he's guilty, he can sometimes get his thing what?

[57:49] Transferred out of that, right? And the idea to get a fairer trial if he's being tried people who have no opinion, right? And not in any way mixed up in the case, right? Or not friendly with the man who's the victim of the other thing.

[58:06] I mentioned the practice there in industry sometimes where where my friend who worked for Minnesota Mining, a big company there, said that when you are promoted from a lower echelon to higher echelon, you're expected to associate with those in higher echelon and not be buddy buddy with your former friends and how somebody tried to be buddy buddy like go in the lunchroom and eat with his former buddies and that was frowned upon, right?

[58:33] And how I ran into an employee of Minnesota Mining at a I think a wedding one time and that's got joking about this and he said, well, you can tell exactly how high somebody up is in the company by the degree of separation. So if you have a desk along with all other desks in a big room, you know that's that's the lowest stage, right? But if you got a little partition around your desk to separate you from other people.

[58:56] You're a step up, right? But if you have an office, like if I'm in that office in there and you guys are out here, I'm even higher up above you, right? And then if you have a a what inner office and with an outer office with a secretary to screen people to get in to see you, then you're really up there, right? And you're on the top floor.

[59:18] you don't go up there. So you see the same principle, right? The degree of separation, right? I've heard it said too, even like in the church, you know, when a man is is made a bishop, let's say, right? Huh? He has to somehow what cut off his buddy buddy with the priest he might have been on particular friendly basis with, right? So he can rule, right? More objectively, huh?

[59:48] Now that's true, also, you know, in the family, right? Huh? That the parents are just, you know, one of the kids. Uh. the teenage, if the mother tries to join your teenage daughter's party or something, one of them, right? Then they kind of lose that what respect or that distance, huh? Of course, when I grew up, you know, where your mother was at home, and your father was away during the day, huh?

[1:00:17] You were not so. You're more scared of your father than your mother, right? And you got a little bit out of hand sometimes, and mother said, "When your father comes home, you know." When my father come home, you know, he tell me you sit in that chair and don't get out of that chair. until I tell you to. I sit there. I wouldn't get out of there.

[1:00:34] until I tell you to. My mother was amazed at this command he had over me. You know, it wasn't just because he was a man, but partly because my mother was mixed up with us all day, right? You see, but it's kind of a separation. And you see this, you know how how a stranger sometimes, you know, will see something to a child, and they'll be more frozen by this than by their own what parents, huh?

[1:01:00] I was a little boy there. I was in my aunt's store, heritage to my grandfather there, ice cream place, and sort of found and so on. And I was spinning those stools, you know, and they used to be and driving my my aunt Helen crazy. And finally, the cop comes in to get a coke, and he sits down. My aunt just you know, so she says to him, "You know, we're just a little boy.

[1:01:23] He's been spinning these things all day long, you know." And he said, "Well, we put him in jail for a day." He said, "Oh, did I behave myself? You know." And I guess my mother used to joke about this. My aunt Helen realized how she scared the Dickens out of me asking that thing, but there's a lot of distance, you know, between me and the placement, you know, I mean, probably my aunt Helen, you know.

[1:01:48] So, you see, the idea the ruler must not be mixed up with the ruler. So, if the greater mind rules over animals and plants, huh, ranging their parts and so on, it must not be mixed up with these things. It must be separated from matter.

[1:02:09] Now, at this point, there is a apparent