Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
14. Anaxagoras on Mind, Part 2: How the Mind Rules Itself, the Ten Attributes of Mind, and a Greater Mind That Is Angelic Rather Than Divine
Class of 2005-02-17
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/014-anaxagoras-on-mind-part-2-how-the-mind-rules-itself-the-ten/

[0:00] contradiction in something that Heraclitus had said, right? And we've seen a bit in Heraclitus, huh? How contradiction might be the start of discovery, right? Aristotle will talk about this explicitly at the beginning of Book Three when they look at that. But you see two things that seem to contradict each other here.

[0:30] He said three things about the mind, and he's given a reason for one of the three, right? And he compared those four things. The two of them seem to kind of contradict each other in a way. So What do you say where do you get four, two and three, between two and three. Yeah, and between two and and not three by itself, but the reason for three, right?

[1:04] Yeah, because two is said that the mind is self ruling, and that seems reasonable. And the existence of logic is a sign that that's true, right? But it also seems reasonable that the ruler must be separated from the ruled, but the mind is not separated from itself. So there's an apparent contradiction between the second thing he says about the mind and the reason he gives for the third thing, right?

[1:33] And I think you know, teaching this fragment said you know in college for years, I maybe had maybe one student who saw the contradiction, you know, on his own, and even I asked him what the contradiction is. A lot of times they can't find it, you know. But it's a very striking one, right? What's important about it is that there's truth in

[1:58] the reason for number two as well as in the reason for number three. So, but they seem to contradict each other. So two things are both highly probable that the mind can in some way rule itself, and that the ruler must be separated from the ruled. Both seem reasonable, but they seem to contradict each other. I know, and so something here is hidden from us, right?

[2:27] The hidden harmony, as Heraclitus said, is better than the apparent harmony, right? We've been in a state of apparent harmony because when I say to my students, I say, "What two things seem to contradict each other?" and a lot of them can't find them, you know. So all these things seem seem to be acceptable, right? And yet when you stop and compare the second thing with the reason for the third, there seems to be a contradiction here.

[2:52] And now you out of the state of apparent harmony, and you're in this state of perplexity, huh? Where even reasonable things seem to point in opposite directions, huh?

[3:06] And how do you do this, huh? Well, maybe there's a difference between self between self ruling or self direction and ruling objects. Yeah, sorry, yeah. But when the mind is is self ruling, is there a distinction there in the mind between the ruler and the ruled?

[3:33] In the sense of its operation and not itself. Yeah, yeah. Well, let's go back and take another. Key from Socrates, because he gives us the key solution to this. But let's go back to another thing he says in the Republic, right? In the first book of the Republic, Socrates shows some things, and they can't really

[4:04] deny what he's saying, but they're still not convinced. And so, someone says to Socrates at the beginning of the second book of the Republic, "Do you want to have seemed to have convinced us, Socrates, or do you really want to convince us?" And Socrates says, "Well, I really want to convince you." And so they're asking for and make things more clear, right? And so Socrates says, "Well, I'm going to blow up."

[4:33] He's been showing something about the soul and the way the parts of the soul should be in the first book, and it's hard to see the parts of the soul and so on. So he makes this famous comparison between the parts of the soul or three parts of the soul and three parts of the city, right? And then he goes and talks about the city, right? And you are able to see from that later on.

[4:56] Still, be like enough. I say, you know, it's terrible in your soul to have your emotions not moderated and controlled by your reason. No, I don't see that. Say, but I was thinking about that one time I was in McDonald's, right? And it was a busy time, you know, and the people behind the counter rushing to get the orders filled and so on. I said, "What an awful job!"

[5:25] I said, "You know, to be, but the customers demanding all these things, right? All these people at the counter, you know, demanding their food and want to get out fast, you know, and so on." And that's in a way what's your reason is to your emotions, right? You're kind of enslaved to it.

[5:41] So I go back to the idea of self-rule, right? And I say, now let's take the city, right? When a country is a colony, it's ruled by the mother country. But when that country gets independence and starts to enjoy self-rule, what does that mean? Does it mean that the whole country is ruling the whole country? No, it means that one part of the country, called the government, is ruling the other parts of the city or country.

[6:13] But we still speak of this as self-rule, right? But still, there's a distinction between the ruler and the what ruled, right? That's easy to see, right? Okay.

[6:27] And then I go from that to a man, right? And sometimes we speak of self-rule, maybe more often as self-control, right? But even using that phrase, self-control, what does that mean? Does that mean that the whole man is controlling the whole man? No, self-control means that one part of you, like your reason maybe or your will, is controlling another part of you, like your emotions. That's a little harder to see than the the government and the other parts of the city because they're different individuals, right?

[7:01] Here you got different parts of the same man. So one part of me, my reason, is controlling the other part of me, my emotions. Now, when you speak of reason having self-rule, well, you don't have two parts of reason. One part of which is ruling the other part, right? In fact, as he goes on to say, reason is the thinnest of all things. So you don't have one; it wouldn't be the thinnest of all things.

[7:31] if you have parts. So that's not what it means there, right? What does it mean? Well, Socrates, I think, gives us the clue to that as well. as. The way of proceeding up to this point,

[7:51] because what was Socrates doing in the dialogues? What was he doing as he recounts it in his defense there of his life and the apology? Right? What did Socrates find out when he went around and talked to men?

[8:10] That people didn't know that they did not know. Yeah, that they had mixed up what they didn't know with what they did know, right? And they thought they knew things they didn't know, right? And Socrates was trying to get them to separate what they really do know from what they don't know, right? Now that's really the proemium I'd say, or the preparation for logic, right? Because logic is the art of using what you do know to investigate and to prove, if you can, what you don't know, right?

[8:55] So logic presupposes the separation or distinction of what you really do know from what you don't know. And of course, later on, Aristotle would say in the separation of what is more known to you from what is less known to you, right? And even the separation of what is most known from from the other things that are more known. But so long as the known and the unknown are mixed up in your mind, you can't use one to know the other, right?

[9:26] So, what is the separation in the mind then that makes self-rule possible, right? Well, the mind should be ruled in what it doesn't know by what it does know, and it should be ruled in what is less known to it by what is more known to it, and it should be ruled ultimately by what is most known to it.

[9:55] And that's possible only if you separated the known from the unknown, and the more known from the less known, and the most known from the rest of what is more known.

[10:10] So the ruler must be separated from the ruled. See, and that's the discovery. See, Socrates, in a sense, is preparing us for understanding how it is possible for the mind to rule itself. What does that mean, right?

[10:32] It doesn't mean that the ruler and the ruled are identical. You know, that goes against the other truth down here, right? It doesn't mean that there are two parts of the mind, one which is ruling the other part, right?

[10:48] But what it means is that the mind is ruled in what it doesn't know, but what it does know. So if I know the the length and the width of this rectangle, right, but not the area, I'm going to be ruled by my knowledge of the length and the width and how to multiply them, and what I eventually say about the what area, right? Okay. And in the syllogism, right, one is ruled about the conclusion through the what premises that one already knows, huh?

[11:27] So this apparent contradiction is solved with the help of Socrates, right? But Socrates, in a sense, is also in his experience showing that most men's minds are not yet ready to rule themselves.

[11:47] I'm always annoyed at graduation time. The students develop dictatorialism. Is always complimenting professors, everybody in the place for that matter. But complimenting professors, you know, for having taught to think for ourselves, right? And I say, I say, well, fine, to think for yourself if you can do it. But he'd be a little more clear if he'd say, you know, that your mind is ruling itself, right? But your mind can rule itself only if it's what separated what it knows and what it doesn't know.

[12:24] Not that that's all that's required. It's got to know how to use what it it knows to to doesn't know. But if it hasn't even got to the point of separating what it knows from what it doesn't know, it's not yet capable of ruling itself. And Socrates showed when he talked to men that most men are in that position of having mixed up the two. So most men cannot, in fact, rule themselves.

[12:48] They can't think for themselves. You see. And of course, you have logic too, because that teaches you how to use what you do know to investigate what you don't.

[13:06] Do you see that? That's which is beautiful, but but it's a good example and a very you know fundamental example of the role of contradiction, in, the development of our knowledge, right? What seems to be a contradiction between two things that are both reasonable to say that the mind is self-ruling and that the ruler must be separated from the rule. The apparent contradiction between those two forces us to look more deeply, right, into what it means to say the mind is self-ruling, right, and what, in fact, is the distinction in the mind between the ruler and the ruled.

[13:51] That makes ruling of this sort possible, right? What do he means? And of course, what does Socrates use to separate the known from the unknown? What does he use to show men, at least, that they don't know what they think they know, right?

[14:12] Dialogue questions. Well, he asks them questions, yeah, but then he shows that some things they think contradict other things they think, right? So he's using usually, you know, syllogism, but ultimately contradiction, right? But nothing's more known to us than something cannot both be and not be, right?

[14:35] Um. So I'd say the simplest example of that is a slave boy, right, who thinks the way to double a square is to double the side, right? But if you take a square that's two by two and you double the side, eventually he's going to see that two by two is four, and four by four is sixteen, and he knows that sixteen is not double of four, but he says if the side was twice as long, it'd be twice as big, but twice as big is not four, so the things he says don't fit together, right?

[15:05] They don't harmonize, huh? So there's noise in his mind, and Socrates is going to restore him to music, huh? The harmony. Should we take a little break, now? Yeah. It's interesting to compare him a bit with Anaxagoras, because Anaxagoras comes to this idea of a greater mind by reason, not as a believer, right? I mean, he was not a believer; the original, at least, at the time, the Greek religion.

[15:38] No, Anaxagoras got in trouble, you know, for saying that the sun is a stone on fire, but the sun is the god Apollo, right? Huh? But he comes to the idea of a greater mind through the intelligibility of that, is to say, the order he finds in the universe. Well, Einstein, you know, when they ask him about what he thinks of God, he has the same idea that there is a greater mind that reveals itself, right, in in nature, and this is all scientific work of a higher order, is based on you know a feeling like that of religion, right?

[16:14] Because you're convinced that the universe is what understandable, right? And therefore, that it's a product of some kind of greater mind. In that respect, they're similar, right? Because Einstein was not a believing Jew, and didn't become a Christian anything like that, or um, but they differ that

[16:38] this greater mind for Einstein is mixed up with things, huh? You know, it's pantheistic, and Einstein admits it, or you know, that his notion of God is pantheistic, right? Why Anaxagoras

[16:53] says that it's separated, and he gives a very good reason why it's separated: that the ruler must be separated from the ruled. And Einstein doesn't give, at least in the text I see, where he talks about this, any reason for saying that the greater mind is mixed up with things. But de Tocqueville, in the Democracy in America, in the chapter on religion, there, that's the main thing he says: the democratic customs give men pantheistic notions, huh?

[17:24] So I think Einstein is more influenced there by custom, huh, to make the greater mind mixed up with things, huh? And democratic customs be part of it, maybe scientific customs would be something to do with that too, you know? Because, as we said before in the previous reading, it's based upon equality, right? So, but equality kind of dominates modern thinking, partly because of democracy and partly because of equations, right?

[17:54] So if you think of everything in terms of equality, you can't make God much more than the than the whole or the the something mixed up with things, huh? So in that sense, Anaxagoras is much wiser than Einstein, huh? About the greater mind, huh? But they both come to the idea of a greater mind, huh? Superior mind reveals itself in experience through the order that they find out there.

[18:19] It also seems to be a democratic custom that the ruler doesn't have to rule himself in order to be able to rule. The if you look, you know, at the Enchiridion Symbolorum or something like that, the official texts of the church and so on, you find it all the way through the you know 19th century there that they're always correcting some Catholic theologian in Germany usually for his pantheistic notions, huh?

[18:51] And who was the Italian cardinal who wrote the book there where he talks about Rahner and Siri. Yeah, Siri, yeah. You know, and he'll quote passages from the books that are very pantheistic, huh? And the kind of subtle writers, you know, in the sense that they'll have a semi-Orthodox part in that one that seems pantheistic and so on. But that's been that's that's the something that to really worry about in our time, according to Tocqueville.

[19:20] There's a lot of truth to that. And of course, he always said to the students, "You know, the force be with you, because that's a pantheistic notion, right? You become part of the force and the good side, the bad side of the force, whatever it is. But that's not result of any thinking really on the part of the of the people who wrote the story and so on.

[19:40] But it shows democratic custom at work again that they make their God mixed up with things. You become a part of this force for good or for bad, whatever it is. For

[19:55] that's what Chesterton says in in his book on America. He says the devil can quote scripture. The most common party quotes nowadays is the kingdom is within the kingdom of God is within you.

[20:10] Okay, okay. Now we go to the next thing here, the apparent contradiction. For it is the thinnest of all things, right? Okay, that's the fourth thing he says now. The mind is the thinnest of all things. That's interesting how the word "unlimited" and "thin" came up before, right? You're not thinking about matter, but they have a different meaning here, right? But now, again, going back to what is more known to us, our own mind, right?

[20:58] Is there some reason to think that the mind is the thinnest of things? The sense of it penetrates. Yeah, get into and the better the mind is, the sharper it is, the more penetrating it is. And it's the thinnest that can what penetrate things, huh? Or again, it's the thinnest that divides things. It's not like when you sharpen your knife, you make it thinner. And the mind is always separating, dividing things.

[21:28] And in fact, the mind separates things that can't even be separated in reality, like it separates the universal from the singular, or it separates the sphere from rubber ball and from glass ball and so on.

[21:45] So, if it's the thinnest that separates things, and the mind most of all separates and distinguishes things, then it must be the what thinnest of things, huh?

[21:58] Because it also takes on the shape of. Well, it doesn't take on the shape? Then it would be. I don't see that in the idea of being thin as, such, huh? But the idea of dividing things, separating things, penetrating things, huh? We mentioned before how even in Empedocles, who thinks the mind as being what something material, right? But instead of taking bone or flesh, he takes thought as being what blood, right?

[22:29] Huh? And the moderns take as being electric, magnetic waves or something, right? But they take something very thin, right, to be thought rather than something what gross, right? Um.

[22:44] Because it does seem to penetrate things, huh? It's insight into things. Okay, so that's the fourth thing he says about the mind, and that shows then this not to be understood to be unlimited in the sense of what. Infinite body or something like that, right? Wouldn't be thin. Yeah, but that also shows that it has no parts, right? Otherwise, there'd be something thinner than it. These parts.

[23:18] But notice in another way, we think of the first matters being the thinnest, right? So the atom is thinner than the molecule, and the elementary particle is thinner than the atom. And if there's quarks or something like that, or these other things they talk about, that even thinner, right? But the first matter is the thinnest of things, huh? They would think, but the mind is even thinner.

[23:45] Now the next thing he says, purest. At first, I thought that this was nothing new that he'd already said. This is another way of saying this, mixed with nothing, right? But perhaps you could make a little distinction here between the third and what is being said here. And here you could say that the mind is mixed with nothing else, right? Because the mixture of these things, it couldn't rule them, right?

[24:14] And here, that the mind is not itself a mixture of things. Okay. It's not. It's not in composition with other things. It's not composed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the mind is the purest of things, and this, of course, would be in order because if it's the thinnest of all things, it can't be a mixture of things because they would be thinner than it, right? So it's the thinnest of things; it must not be a mixture of things.

[24:47] Okay, but here you're saying nothing about the mind itself, but looking at it towards other things, right? It's not mixed with these other things because then it would not be able to rule over them and have a share of everything. Do you see that? Okay. I was thinking, you know, a little bit about Thomas there in the in the Summa, you know, and I mentioned how he talks about the substance of God.

[25:15] He has it divided into five parts. And the order is a little different in the two summas, but he'll talk about the simplicity of God his not being composed, and he'll talk about the unity of God and so on, right? And you could bring these under the heading that God has no parts and is not a part of anything, right? Okay, but if you look at even the treatise on God not being composed or God being simple,

[25:53] the first maybe was it six articles or so, seven articles will say that God is not what composed, you know, eliminate each kind of composition. You have creatures, no composition of quantitative parts, no composition of matter and form, no composition of of what you are and something else, no composition of existence and substance and so on, substance and accident. But then you'll say, but God is also not what composed of something else, right?

[26:27] Okay, so so he neither has any parts of any sort, nor is he a part of anything, and and those are kind of different points to be made, right? It's one thing to say God has no parts, another thing to say God is not a part of anything, right?

[26:47] And so you might say it's one thing to say that the greater mind is not mixed with anything else; another thing to say it's not a mixture of things itself, right? So it seems to me this number five here is a different thing, right? Would it be the and and as they say, its place here in the order here it does seem to follow from this too, right?

[27:12] That's not a mixture of things because then those things that are mixed together to make it would be finer and thinner than, it. and therefore it would not be the thinnest of all things. Question? I'm actually just answered it because I was wondering if it really is the same as four, but as you said, it follows from four. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[27:35] It'd be like you couldn't say, um, say a point and a line. You couldn't say number three of a point because a point terminates a line. Or is it not? Would that not be the case? Well, you say something like number five here, the the point, that the point is not put together. Not put together, but you couldn't say the other way around. You couldn't say about number three it's not mixed with other things because it is mixed.

[28:08] It is, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, some ones want to say God's like the limit of things, and it's a thing you know, like he's part of them, right? Um. It's interesting. Aristotle picks up the word limit or end. It's kind of the same word there in Greek. So I can speak of the point as the end of the line, right? Then later on, you get a meaning of end meaning purpose, after the sake of which, right?

[28:32] And God is in in that sense, and the alpha and the omega, and the beginning, the end. That's the third sense he gives of end, right? But the first sense of end would be the sense in which the point is the end of the line. And some people are saying God is. the Teilhard de Chardin right. Yeah. The omega point. Yeah. Yeah.

[28:54] That's true. Yeah. Now, and it has all knowledge about everything. Well, that in a way follows from us being the thinnest of all things, because then it can penetrate all things, and therefore what know all things, right?

[29:14] Of course, this is found fully in the what greater mind as all knowledge. I think it says that. Now, the next thing it has the greatest power. Well, as I say to my students, as a modern, you should say right away because knowledge is power. That's the modern world begins with.

[29:51] Bacon, right? That's that's the aphorism there, right? Can't separate knowledge from power. So if he has all knowledge, it has all power. So man, you know, overpowers the other animals not because his muscles are arms are stronger, but because of his what knowledge, right? Huh?

[30:22] What's the seventh thing he says about the greater mind? Huh? But notice this is to some extent true about our mind too, right? Because it's powered by knowledge, right? So they powered the atomic bomb, right? That sort of thing.

[30:44] Now the next thing he says about the mind is the mind rules all things which have life, both the greater and the lesser. Now, as far as this eighth thing is concerned, he's going to speak of the mind as ruling over all things, right? Greater mind, huh? But the eighth thing here, he's singling out the mind's rule over things that have life. That's to say, animals and what plants, right?

[31:11] Now, why should he single out that? Why is it more obvious, let us say, that mind is responsible for? Animals and plants, and is responsible for the rocks and the sandy beach and so on. What is that complexity? Not such a complexity, but something that's involved with the complexities. Because you see the order in animals and plants. Yeah, yeah. Account for it. Yeah, you see order in animals and plants because you have a diversity of parts that are well arranged.

[31:46] huh Why by a rock a rock? You don't see that, do you? That's one thing, right? A second thing is that you see end or purpose more in animals and in plants than in a rock or in water, right? You see. So I mean, most people recognize, you know, the eyes having a purpose or the ear or the the heart and so on. But does water have a purpose?

[32:11] Well, you almost have to compare it to living things to see it as having a purpose. You see. So when Socrates in the Phaedo, when he talks about first reading Anaxagoras, he thought that Anaxagoras would go on now and explain the purpose of things in the actual world because there was a greater mind, and mind does what it does with some end or purpose in mind. And Anaxagoras didn't get around to doing that, so Socrates felt kind of let down by this.

[32:42] But the point is, there's a connection then between the mind and what end or purpose. But you see, end or purpose more, much more clearly in animals and plants than you do in the the atom or something like that, huh? Right. Um.

[33:02] So there's a reason why he singles out the things that have life, though he's not going to limit the mind's control or order to that.

[33:18] And now the the whole separation of things that is tied up with this revolution of things, he attributes that to the mind, right? And mind ruled over the whole revolution. So it began to evolve in the beginning, and first it began to evolve from something small, but now it evolves over a greater distance, and it will evolve over more, right? Okay. Now, as they say, our own mind uses what circular motion as a way of separating things, huh?

[33:48] Centrifuge and things of this sort, huh? Okay. So he wanted to make it a separate thing there from number seven, right? But it's more universal thing, huh? Okay. So the eighth thing, though, we want to make it more general. You can say that the mind what separates things, huh? By circular motion.

[34:20] It'd probably be nine, right? Because eight would have been mind rules overall things, or is that part of seven? No, I'm speaking of this eight here. Okay, but mind ruled over the whole revolution. But this is where things are being separated by this in the whole universe, right? You know, from the earth. It's like you said earlier in that earlier fragment there that the earth settled down at the bottom and so on, and the light things are now like my hat.

[34:55] Okay. Now the next thing is that mind set in order, right? Things, huh? Okay. So nine, mind orders things, right? Now, notice going back to our own mind. How did Shakespeare define our own mind, our reason? We define reason as reason as the ability for large discourse, looking before and after, which is order the definition of order, right? But if reason is able to look before and after to see order, it must be able to see what distinction.

[35:48] And I sometimes say, what does reason always see before it sees a before and after? Well, you can deduce what it always sees before it sees a before and after by the axiom of before and after. And the axiom of before and after is that nothing is before or after itself, right?

[36:18] So there must be some distinction between what is before and what is after, right? Today is before tomorrow and after yesterday, but today can't be before or after today can it?

[36:33] So reason always sees some distinction before it sees a before and after. If I can in no way distinguish between today and tomorrow, I couldn't see that today is before tomorrow, could I? But you can sometimes see a distinction and not see which is before, which is after.

[36:58] So you could distinguish between me and some other man and not know who's older, right? Who's before in time or who's better or something like that, right? But you couldn't know that one of us is older or one of us is better than the other unless you could distinguish between us, okay? That's very important when you come into wine tasting, right? Because if someone says, you know, that

[37:24] these judgments are all, you know, subjective, relative, and all that sort of stuff, but among those who know what they're drinking, there's more agreement as to which ones are what better, right? See? But if someone doesn't know what he's drinking Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot Noir or Zinfandel, he's not able to judge which is better, right? Okay. And so when they test somebody, you know, to be a judge if they want to do it up, you know, really well, they give them a test where he's blindfolded and their wines are right in there, not labeled, right?

[38:04] He's got to say, well, this is Pinot Noir, this is Carbonet, that's Zinfandel, you know. And most people can't do that, right? But among those who can do that, right? Some can go beyond that and say which are better. Some can't, right? So if you see the distinction between Carbonet Sauvignon that's Zinfandel, Zinfandel, you might be able to see that Carbonet Sauvignon is better than Zinfandel, But if you don't see the distinction, you just can't see which is better.

[38:36] So these guys just say, you know, this beer is better than that beer, right? And they give them the beers without what labels, and they sometimes prefer you know the one. So they don't know whether they're drinking Budweiser or Miller or whatever it is. You know, they can't really say one is better than the other.

[38:57] And it's interesting though, when Aristotle talks both in the Categories and the Metaphysics, the fifth book, when he talks about opposition, which is the basis for distinction, and he talks about before and after. In both cases, he talks about opposites before, before and after, and together, right? Distinction and what order, right?

[39:26] But notice, huh? Shakespeare defines reason by order rather than by distinction, because if you can see the order, you must have seen the distinction. But if you see the distinction, you don't necessarily see the order, right?

[39:47] Like John Dryden, the poet laureate of England, right? Seven years a young man, you know there were more plays of Fletcher and Beaumont performed than Shakespeare. And of course, you'd see the plays and so on, and gradually realized how better Shakespeare was, and so he said finally that Beaumont or Fletcher was just a a limb of Shakespeare, an arm or a leg of Shakespeare. But notice, he might have been seeing the plays for some time before he was able to see that one was before the other in the sense of what better the fourth sense of before in the categories.

[40:27] If you haven't seen both, you can't really see that one is better, can you? But if you can see that one is better than the other, you must see the distinction. So it's included. Another expression Chesterton, is if you don't know the reason why something is there, you can't pretend to have a better reason to do away with it, because you have nothing to compare it to.

[40:52] You have no comparison of reasons. Okay, so eight and nine, you know, Thomas in the Summa when he's talking in the second, say, book of the Summa Contra Gentiles, and he's talking about the distinction over the universe, and that God is a cause of both of these, right? And by His mind, right. You go back and refer all the way back to Anaxagoras, so you have to admire this Anaxagoras, huh?

[41:23] I mentioned Aristotle said you know that when he introduced the greater mind and so on, he seemed like a sober man among drunk men.

[41:33] So you try to think of the moderns as being quite drunk, you know, because they're back with the early guys, huh? So the mind set in order, all things that were to be and all things that were but now are not. Whatever is now and everything will be. In this revolution, which the stars and the sun, the moon, the air, and ether go round and separate off.

[41:58] The revolution has caused them to be separated, right? The thick is separated from the thin, and the warm. This is nothing new, but just elaborating.

[42:09] And then, of course, going back, I said nothing is separated off nor divided entirely the one from the other except the mind, right? Okay. Now the tenth thing he says here is that every mind is similar, both the greater and the what lesser, right? And that underlies our whole thinking here, right? Of the reason why we think there is a greater mind, but also that we understand to some extent the greater mind through our own mind because they're some way alike.

[42:44] And that's why, of course, when we study the Trinity, we have to study it to some extent through our own mind and will. And so Thomas talks about the reason why the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, right, through the Son. It's because we can see a little bit of that because in our own will, right, the love of something proceeds from our what The knowledge of it, right?

[43:10] So if I'm a lover of wisdom, that presupposes that I kind of know what wisdom is, right? So if you add that as a tenth thing, every mind is similar, both the greater. and the lesser. That's a tenth thing to be noted, right? In this great treatise on the mind.

[43:34] Now the last sentence there is really more appropriate to the discussion of matter. Somebody would say, "If everything is inside of everything, you know, why call this a man and that a dog and that a cat and that a tree and that a stone? " Well, we call things what it has it has most of. In

[43:57] a way, in a way, that's true, though, right? Because there's something in me, right, that's able to be a dog or a cat or anything else that might eat me, for example, right? Why call me a man rather than a dog or a cat or a horse? Well, because what's in me is actually a man now. So it's more a man than it is what a dog or a cat or a horse, because only those things are the ability, See, just like.

[44:21] The wood in this chair is more chair than a table or a bed or a cabinet, right? Because those things only in what ability, right? This is toothpicks, in ability. But it's more a chair than it's toothpicks because it's toothpicks only in ability, and it's actually a chair.

[44:43] But he would understand more in a quantitative sense. But I call that the Anaxagorean way of naming things. We call things what it has most of. But when you stop and think about it, most things are in some sense a mixture, aren't they? In our world, and we do very often name them for what they have most of. And so I always take the example of when I grew up.

[45:09] You know, we call this the market economy, right? We Call that the planned economy or misplanned economy, but now they call it the command economy. But

[45:23] you know, in the old days, there I remember reading an article on Gaz plan in Moscow during the eighties. And Gosplan was a thousand economists and a thousand engineers who planned, or misplanned, the whole Russian economy, right? Why we have what we call a market economy, right? But does government influence economy in that states all kinds of ways, right? And was there no market at all in Russia?

[45:48] There had to be, otherwise things would quickly break down. So why do you call this a market economy? And that, well, we call things by what it has most of, right? You see? But I notice that when we divide the Bible, the books say the Old Testament, and we say that the Book of Psalms is a book of what prayers and praise, huh? It's proceeds oratory, I think Thomas says, and laudativas huh Prayerful and praising.

[46:19] Why? Why? Isaiah is a book of what prophecy, right? But are there no prayers in Isaiah? Well, there are prayers, yeah. And is there no prophecy in in the Psalms? Well, yes, there is. But why call this a book of prayer? Well, we use it that's a Korean way of speaking, right? We call it by what it has, what most of, right? Huh? Why do we call the comedy of errors a Shakespeare comedy, right?

[46:44] Because a man has been sentenced to death there, right? You know, that's rather rather a serious matter, right? But we call it what has most of.

[46:59] There's a little bit of humor in Macbeth, right? Little comic relief for this terrible tragedy, you know. But we still call it a tragedy, right? Because mainly that, mostly that. So we call a thing by what it has most of.

[47:17] Either absolutely right, or in comparison to other things, huh? Okay. I was tasting a Cabernet somebody's house the other day, and this is sweet, you know. Tasting Cabernet sweet, but I mean compared to other Cabernet, it was kind of sweet, you know. But you're calling it now, not maybe what it has most of all, but but what it has more of in comparison to other Cabernet, son.

[47:44] Yellowtail Cabernet, you know. I recommend Wolf Boss, you know. Yellowtail, that's good. Yellowtail, not let's discuss in comparison, right? So that's more, you know, to say about matter than about the mind, right? So we have these ten things about the mind. I'm pretty good, huh? Pretty good for a? It's like a book miniature of the mind.

[48:25] Now, sometimes, parting that comparison to Einstein, I'll compare it also to theology, and I say, "What is the mind that Anaxagoras has arrived at here? " They call it the greater mind. Is the human mind, or is it the divine mind, or is it the angelic mind? Well, it's not the human mind because that's the lesser mind, obviously. But is it? Is he arrived at the divine mind or the angelic mind?

[48:59] Yeah, because is this a mind that's responsible for the existence of matter? No, it's a mind that can act upon matter by what locomotion, right? Now, when we study the angels, they can act upon matter through locomotion, but they cannot produce or create matter. So, in a sense, he's arrived at the angelic mind rather than at the what divine mind, huh? You see,

[49:30] this mind acts upon things only by motion, right? Not by creation. Remember De Koninck saying one time in class in passing that it's easier to know the existence of the angels than of God. He didn't, he didn't unfold himself, or I don't know why he said that, you know. But it's always kind of stuck in my mind, you know. It's one thing he said in passing one time, but you can see it here in a sense, huh?

[49:53] He's actually arrived at the angelic mind, although he would, you know, we'd think of it as being the divine mind, you know, this mind that is completely separated from matter and is, you know, and it's greater mind. But he's actually arrived at more the angelic mind than the divine mind.

[50:15] Do you see why I say why I say that? Yeah, and therefore, you know, when Karl Marx and Engels they have a division of all thinkers, huh? And they divide them into materialists and the idealists, as they call them. And the difference is very interesting because materialists say that matter is the beginning of all things, even of what mind, huh? And so, Karl Marx, Lenin, who's one of the materialists, right, says that mind is the highest product of matter.

[50:51] Yeah, no way the evolutionists are saying that, aren't they? Right, mind is the highest thing that has evolved out of matter, right? Yeah. Okay. And then, on the other hand, you have the idealists like Hegel and Saint John the Evangelist, and so on, for whom mind or thought is the beginning of all things, right? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and all things are made through the Word, right?

[51:17] So. That's interesting division, right? Of all thinkers, right? But I ask the question: Is that a good division? Does it exhaust them? Right? All thinkers either say that mind is the beginning of all things, even of matter, or that matter is the beginning of all things, even of mind, right? Where do you put Anaxagoras? They say,

[51:47] although he does make the greater mind superior to matter, right? Because it moves matter, right, and separates things and orders them, right? It's nevertheless not the the origin of what of matter, right? So in a way, he's a dualist in the sense that he has matter and the greater mind,

[52:12] one of which is not the beginning of the other, right? Although one is superior to the other, right? So it's kind of a middle position, right?

[52:24] And they say whether it be you know by their thought or by the devils, right? But leaving out the middle position, you make it very difficult to go to the truth, right? Which is that you know that that there's a mind that is the source of all things, even of matter, right? That created matter, but our mind naturally begins with Mother Earth and thinking that matter is the beginning of things, right?

[52:51] And until you see mind as something what distinct from matter, it can be without matter, right? You never get to the idea that there's some mind that is the creator of matter, right? Is the source of the very being of matter, right? So if you leave out the middle position, you're like on one shore with no bridge over to the other shore, and so you just get kind of stuck in that first position, right?

[53:21] But when you see the mind is something distinct from matter, superior to matter, then you have kind of a bridge to seeing eventually that there's a mind that is so superior to matter that's responsible even for the existence of matter and not just for moving it around. You see that? Now, now Plato in the Timaeus sound speaks of the Demiurge the greater mind, right, as what acting upon matter and reducing it to some kind of order from the chaotic motion of matter.

[53:58] Again, that's that's the position like Anaxagoras's kind of a dualist position, huh? But until you see the mind is something immaterial and independent of matter, you wouldn't even begin to think that there could be a mind that might be responsible for the existence of matter. So this is kind of the the middle position. Aristotle really is getting to the idea of what, of of the creator, and Thomas thinks he's arrived at that, right?

[54:32] But when you read the third book, where we look at the questions he raises, right? One of the questions is, is there anything a cause without motion, right? You see, and that that's a problem for the Greeks, right? And he's still in a position of thinking, you know, that this greater mind is a mover or a cause only in the sense of being a what, a mover, right?

[54:57] You see, and it's interesting, you know, if you look at at Thomas's ordering of the proofs of God, right, which are not original with him, really, but he understands them better than most. In both Sumas, right, you begin with God as being the what, showing that he's the unmoved mover. And then you show that he is the what first maker, first efficient cause, right? And then you are starting to get more into what's altogether proper to God, right?

[55:31] Because you may almost say this mind here is an unmoved mover too, right? But but notice the order there, right? He's saying God is a cause of what motion, right? Doesn't do full justice to God, but that's where we begin, right? Even in the in the highest you know consideration of God in the two Summas he begins with his being an unmoved mover, right? Doesn't say he's a creator, does it?

[56:00] No, and then eventually come to understand him as the eventually come to understand him as the the maker in the sense of the creator, right? He's responsible for the very existence of matter and not just the motion of matter. But you see you see the order there, right? Perfectly ordered.

[56:20] So it's interesting to compare them. Usually when I get through with this, I'll compare them to Einstein, you know, and say, well, what they have in common is that they both come to the conclusion that there is a greater mind that reveals itself in the order of the natural world, right? They both come to this not as a believer or a religion that is around them, right?

[56:43] But simply as a natural philosopher, right? But Einstein, you know, has it mixed up with things. why Anaxagoras sees it cannot be mixed with things, and he has a you know a reason for thinking so, right? Which I don't think Einstein has. And then I compare him, you know, to us, and I say, well, no. In theology, we talk about three minds: the human mind, the angelic mind, the divine mind.

[57:10] But he's actually arrived more at a description of the angelic mind here, a mind that is not responsible for the existence of matter, but can move and act upon matter. You see that?

[57:24] Now you turn to Socrates there in the in the Phaedo, you can see that Socrates is expecting Anaxagoras to give the end or purpose of things in the natural world. But now you are introducing with Socrates now and Plato a fourth kind of cause, namely what end, right? So you had matter, right, in the earliest Greeks, and that's all you had. Then you had something of form with Pythagoras, with Heraclitus' advent, and more so with Empedocles.

[57:55] You have the mover, but with Empedocles, you know, he has matter with the four elements, form with the ratios they combine, and he's got the movers, love and hate. And here you got another mover, but you've got what?

[58:15] The door open now to seeing the end or purposes of cause, and that's all there is. Aristotle takes over those four, right? So one thing comes. This is a little different what I'm doing here than what Aristotle does in the rest of Book One of Wisdom. But one reason why he goes over what they say is to see if they touched upon any kind of cause other than the four kinds, right?

[58:38] Anaxagoras is not touching very clearly upon the end here. That's what Socrates was kind of let down, right? But then Socrates will talk much more specifically about the end purpose of things. Then you have no causes other than the four that Aristotle has distinguished.

[58:57] Now, sometimes I compare him, like I compare Anaximander with Thales, right? Which is a better? guess air or water, right? Which is a better guess as the mover or maker, love and hate, or what? The greater mind, huh?

[59:23] So, no, hate separates things, right? Okay. And mind separates things, right? So I say, which is a better separator, hate or mind? Was it hate that split the atom? And sometimes when people go around destroying things. Hate they destroy sometimes even their own friends, right?

[1:00:11] Don't distinguish, right? Between friend enemy, right? But I mean, is it is it? You know, when you study logic, you find out that logic is very much about seeing distinctions and divisions and definitions, right? Hate can hate do that?

[1:00:33] Hate do that? Is hate that makes you distinguish the senses of a word? I was talking about the word in there, you know. Aristotle hated that word, so he was able to distinguish it. He separated from everything else. Because was it hate that made us divide triangle into is equilateral, isosceles, scalene Hate do your numbers make you distinguish between prime and composite numbers.

[1:01:11] See, mind is more able to separate than hate can do, right? So, as far as separation is concerned, mind is a better cause than hate, right? Now, love brings things together, right?

[1:01:31] But Empedocles went so far as to say that love brings together things in different ratios. Now, what's you bring in ratio, which is a better cause of ratio, mind or love? Well, the word itself suggests that mind is a cause of ratio, right? And of course, in Latin, you have the same word for reason, ratio. ratio. In Greek, the Greek word for ratio is logos, Same as the word.

[1:01:58] So, and to bring things together in some kind of order, obviously, mind is better than that, right? But even if if mind were no were just as good as love, one is better than two, right? Kill two birds with one stone, huh? So, mind can do what love and hate can do, maybe better than love and hate can do them, right? And it's one cause, so it's better, huh?

[1:02:24] Okay. But now you got to be careful because maybe that's not the whole truth, though, right? Because as Socrates or and Plato and Aristotle point out, there's the same knowledge of opposites, right? So knowledge without love of one rather than the other, without appetite, won't produce anything, right?

[1:02:50] So I can teach you or deceive you, right? And knowledge enables me to do both. The doctor can heal you and kill you, make you healthier, make you sick, right? And so there needs something besides knowledge to do one rather than the what? The other, right? And that brings in the will, right? So that's interesting, right? That's one of the reasons why we think that God has a will, right?

[1:03:23] As a philosopher, we think that, right? Because his knowledge enables him to do opposites, but he does one rather than the other. It depends upon will, huh?

[1:03:44] But just you're looking at it here in the way that these early Greeks did. Mind seems to be a better guess than love and hate. Sober man among the drunk men, huh? You. Notice the first thing he says about the mind: it's unlimited. That's kind of anticipated by Heraclitus when he says, "You know, you'll not find the ends of the soul, no matter how far you travel."

[1:04:07] Remember that fragment? Okay, we've got to stop now around four thirty or whatever. Yeah, I guess we're better. Okay. Now we'll look at Leucippus and Democritus next time, and then we'll go back to the. Let's look at the second book of wisdom. You know. Okay.

[1:04:30] I'm giving that enough. I'm not too long. Good.