Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
49. The Meanings of 'Necessary' and Metaphysics IX, Reading 4: Rational Ability, Choice, and Mind versus Love as First Mover
Class of 2005-11-05
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/049-the-meanings-of-necessary-and-metaphysics-ix-reading-4-rational/

[0:00] came to reading, huh? Talking about the word "necessary" for a moment. Is it necessary to understand the word "necessary"? Well, if you say it is necessary to understand the word "necessary," right, then you better understand the word "necessary," right? But if you say it is not necessary, right, to understand the word "necessary," you're going to have to understand what necessary means, because you can't understand the negation of necessary without understanding necessary, right?

[0:49] Furthermore, if you say that it is necessary to understand the word "necessary," next question I'm going to ask you: Why is it necessary to understand the word "necessary"? And then you see, you're going to have to understand the word "necessary" to understand why it's necessary to understand the word "necessary." But likewise, if you say it's not necessary, right, to understand the word "necessary," you're going to have to understand the word "necessary" to show why it is not necessary to understand the word "necessary."

[1:21] So in either case, you must understand the word "what." Necessary, necessary, right? Okay. Even though in one sense the word "necessary" is not necessary to understand the word "necessary," but in another sense the word is very necessary that we understand the word "necessary." Okay. Yeah, yeah. And why is it so necessary to understand the word "necessary"?

[1:58] Because we want to understand the truth, and when we talk about necessary truths, finally those are the ones we want to understand the most. Yeah. But is the word necessary? The next question I'd ask, right? Once you get someone to admit it's necessary to understand the necessary, then the next question is, what is necessary to understand the word necessary? Understand the possible. Perhaps, yeah, yeah. But more basically, you can say that to understand the word necessary, you have to understand what stands under the word necessary, right?

[2:40] And it's one of those words that's equivocal, but equivocal by reason, right? So you have to understand the meanings of necessary and be able to distinguish them, and maybe there's an order among them. You see. So when I say, for example, that

[2:59] it's necessary that two be half of four, right? And when I say it's necessary to breathe, does necessary mean the same thing in those two cases?

[3:15] And when we turn to the first article the first question, of Summa Theologiae, right? Whether besides the philosophical disciplines, right? Some other teaching is necessary.

[3:28] What sense of necessary is that? It's more like breathing. isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or if you say, you know, Thomas may have an article on faith. which is necessary to believe, right?

[3:48] What does necessary mean in that case? If you also like breathing. Yeah. To be well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But sometimes something is said to be necessary

[4:04] when something else cannot be without it, right? And so we say that to breathe is necessary to live, right? And sometimes we say something is necessary for the well-being of something. Okay. Now, when Thomas talks about

[4:28] necessity of believing, is it necessary to believe those things about God which reason can find out? No. See, Thomas will distinguish between those things that reason can find out about God and those things that must be revealed, right? Okay. But Thomas will argue. That belief is necessary, even for those things that reason can figure out by itself,

[5:16] and it's necessary for those things that reason cannot figure out by itself, right? But is it necessary in the same sense for both of those?

[5:28] Because you could say that the Trinity, right? Reason could not know at all without revelation, right? But those things that reason could know without revelation about God, even very few men would know them, right? And those few men that would know them would know them towards the end of their life, and maybe with mistakes and errors and so on, right? So

[6:07] maybe you can't know those things well, right? Without revelation, it's a little different sense, huh? So, but you know, when you're in philosophy, you say, "Is logic necessary?" A lot of people don't like logic, right? And you say, "Well, is logic necessary for a philosopher?" What would you say? This is important question, right? Definitely. You say.

[6:44] But what sense is it necessary? The sense of breathing. Well, breathing might be necessary in the sense you can't live without breathing, right? Okay.

[7:02] But could a man be a philosopher without being a logician? There seems to be absolute. I find in a way it's very close, but it's not the absolute. He could be a good philosopher, certainly. You see, both Plato and Aristotle say at the beginning of philosophy is wonder, right? And you see there's wonder in the first philosophers, huh? And you have the beautiful fragment there of Democritus.

[7:35] I would rather discover one cause than be master of the kingdom of the Persians. So he's a philosopher, right? But logic is not discovered until really Aristotle, and I'm just, you know, teaching the Phaedo there, and it's in the Phaedo, which, as far as I know, is the first place where someone has said we need an art about arguments, right? Which is really what logic is, most of all.

[8:06] So Socrates is represented by Plato there, right? With Socrates or Plato himself is saying this, but he says we need an art about arguments, an art that would help us distinguish between a good argument and a bad argument, and among good arguments between one that's necessary and one that's only what probable, right? And this is, you know, what you find in the works of the father of logic, right?

[8:36] Because the Prior and Posterior Analytics are about arguments that are necessarily true, the conclusion, and then the books of the Topics or Places is about arguments that are what good but not necessary, right? And then, just refutation, what arguments that are simply bad, right? Okay. So Socrates is kind of anticipating the the three parts of the art about arguments, huh?

[9:04] The analytics and dialectical part and the sophistical part, right? That the father of logic, Aristotle, built, right? And you know, Albert the Great in his logical works sometimes say, you know, the problem for the early Greeks, you know, but they didn't have logic, right? Okay. But would you say that these men before the father of logic were not philosophers? No, you can be a philosopher and you can philosophize as they did, right?

[9:37] And they wondered about things and philosophized about things, but maybe you can't philosophize well or entirely well without what logic, right? So maybe logic is necessary for the what the well-being. Clear. Okay. Okay. But now, if we say, "Is it necessary to love your neighbor as yourself?"

[10:05] Okay. In what sense is that necessary? Like logic necessary for philosophizing, or like breathing necessary for living? Well, this would be necessary, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, if you want to get to heaven, right? You must love your neighbor as yourself, huh?

[10:32] It's not that you get there better if you do. You don't get there at all if you don't, right? Is it? So, no, it's all these things, huh? But won't it won't it won't it still be well-being there because there is you are making it really a conditional argument. When I say it's necessary to love your neighbor as yourself, I am thinking if you want to get to heaven, yeah, yeah.

[11:02] And you won't you won't get to heaven if you don't love your neighbor as yourself. Okay. So, in that sense, it's absolutely necessary, right? Okay, necessary for the being, right? Okay. Sometimes when they talk about the family and the city, right, and they say the family is necessary for being, okay, but the family is not sufficient for the well-being unless you have Mozart as your brother and Shakespeare as your another brother and Euclid as another brother, right?

[11:36] You know, you need the city for the well-being, right? And so that's one seems to make the city and and the family are both necessary, but the family for being and and and the city for the well-being. Man. Okay. So.

[12:00] So yes, whether loving your neighbor as yourself is necessary, what sense is necessary? Is it? Well, that would be absolute. Yeah. Yeah. Or when Saint Paul says, "Without faith, without belief, right, it's impossible to please God, right?" Well, then,

[12:23] it's necessary, right? In the way you know our Lord speaks, you know, about you know, it's absolutely necessary. It's amazing to speak in the Gospels, right? Okay.

[12:38] So, all these things come up, right? With the logic necessary, with the love of the neighbor, so all these things involve understanding some meaning of what necessary, right? Okay.

[12:54] Of course, God Himself is the one who is necessary to be to Himself, right? What does necessary mean there? You say that cannot not be. Yes, it's a meaning necessary, right? Or when I say it's necessary that there be three persons in God, right? You may not understand this too well, but what kind of necessity is that? Because you know, Thomas's explicit article, you know, was was a choice for the Father to generate the Son.

[13:27] No, no, no. And it wasn't a voluntary act; it wasn't a matter of choice. There's a natural necessity, right? So this is this is another meaning of what necessary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's very necessary to understand the word necessary.

[13:52] Okay. Let's take a little break, and then we'll do the fourth. Reading now. Aristotle is going to be talking about the comparison here of ability and act in the same subject, and how one goes from one to the other, right?

[14:13] And he begins in the first paragraph here with this odd thing where he's distinguishing between an ability that seems to be inborn and preceding the act, right? And then these acquired abilities that come to be as result of performing an act, right? So it's by playing the piano that I acquire the ability to play the piano. And of course, this comes up in in ethics. It's by doing courageous things that I become courageous, and by doing temperate things that I become temperate, and by doing just things I become just, right?

[14:59] And there's a little paradox here, right? Someone might say, "Well, if you become just by doing just things, aren't you just in doing just things?" And well, there's a difference, right? That when you do just things before you're just, there's a what struggle there, right? And in a what instability you might say, right? In you doing the just thing, right? But then, as you repeat that act, you acquire the virtue of justice, right?

[15:36] And then you have an habitual inclination to do what is just, huh? And now there's a certain stability there, and there's a it's more pleasant to do it or more agreeable to do it, right? Before it might have been a strain to do it, and and there's a little ifiness, a little uncertainty of you're actually doing it, right? Then. So,

[16:07] so he says, all abilities are either inborn, such as the senses. I don't acquire the ability to see by seeing, right? But I have the ability to see by nature, and then I see. But some are by use or by custom, huh? Such as that of playing the flute, or by learning, such as that of the arts, huh? Whatever are by use or learning, we must acquire by doing something before.

[16:38] But this is not necessary with those not such, and those for what undergoing, huh? Okay. So the paper doesn't acquire the what ability to be burned to be burnable. by being burnt. Okay.

[17:02] That's interesting, that distinction, right? Aristotle, they said, will raise that problem in the ethics. What do we mean by saying you become courageous by doing courageous things? Because Aristotle will deny that the virtues are simply what inborn. huh? Although you might have an inclination to some virtue or another, but you don't have even by nature an inclination to all the virtues because they're kind of contrary the way they work.

[17:35] Because some virtues work more by restraining the emotions, and some by strengthening them, so it's hard to have a natural inclination to to all of them.

[17:49] One thing you notice about powerful men to command, right? They tend to have a certain sense of anger, right? And we saw it in some of our presidents and so on. Huh? They're very nasty with their subordinates sometimes. So I mean, their inclination to command, which involves a virtue of their command, but then this lack of mildness, huh? They don't have an actual inclination to that.

[18:21] What's the difference between by custom and by by learning? It seems like this isn't playing the flute an art. Yeah. But we're talking about the maybe the physical aspect of it, huh?

[18:40] Okay. Okay. But say, as opposed to say, my my learning what geometry might be doing geometrical theorem. I see. Okay. That's what's nice about you. Once you know geometry, it's kind of pleasant to think about these things, and not the same strain before. Can

[19:03] you get out of plain geometry and solid geometry and back to plain geometry? Easy stuff, right? I just know your your brother Mark was very cruel to a friend of mine. He was my my friend. Pat was convinced he had trisected the angle. Your brother Mark just proved theorem.

[19:26] Yeah, cut down as ambitious students. Now, in the second paragraph, he's coming back back to the difference between what the natural ability and the rational ability, and then how they go to act, right? Because the natural ability is determined to one, so you put it in front of its what, its matter, huh? That it can act upon. You put the paper in front of the what, fire the fire automatically, you burn it, right?

[20:10] But you put the patient in front of the doctor, and since he what is able to do contrary things to the patient, right? It doesn't automatically do one or the other, right? And he can't do both. So what determines him, right? There's something else involved there.

[20:36] Since that which is able has an ability for something at some time. time in some way, and whatever other things necessary add in the definition, and since some things can move by reason and their abilities are with reason, he's recalling that distinction he made, and some are without reason and the abilities without reason, more natural ability, right? Those abilities, the former, must be in a thing with soul, while the latter can be what in things without a soul as well, souls that have a soul, okay?

[21:13] Now, as regards the abilities of the latter kind, the natural ones, when the one that acts upon and the one that undergoes meet as they are able, the one must act and the other be what acted, huh? But with the former ability, that is to say, the ability with reason, the rational ability, this is not necessary, right? And this goes back to the difference we saw in the second reading.

[21:42] For all these, meaning the natural abilities, are something one productive of one, right? So the fire is productive of heat and so on, but not of cold. But those are of what contraries, right? Okay.

[22:04] So Mozart takes what the melody before the development, right, of the turning of the plot, and then the melody comes back afterwards, since going from major key to minor key. Okay, so

[22:24] so if he did everything he's able to be, he'd be making the melody what in the major key and the minor key at the same time, which is impossible, right? Okay, and the doctor would be curing you and making you sick at the same time, or delivering the baby and aborting the baby at the same time, right? But this is impossible that you do contraries at the same time, right?

[22:48] Okay. Necessarily, therefore, there is something other which what determines, and what is that? Well, it's going to be will. Well, it's going to be will, yeah. It's going to be desire, right? Okay. I can teach the students, or I can deceive them, right? My knowledge enables me to do both, and sometimes, you know, I will deceive them, but then I'll you know go and correct them in their hair, right?

[23:20] But I've told you some of those sophistical things. I know will what deceive them, right? I told you the one at the beginning of the physics there, where Aristotle reasons out that we should consider things in general before in particular, and the reason he gives is that we know things in a confused way before we know them distinctly, and to know something in general is not as distinct as knowing in particular.

[23:50] So therefore, the general should come before the particular, and then sometimes just you know make things difficult. For them, I say. But Aristotle says, in many other places, that we sense before we understand, and the senses know only particulars, whereas the reason that knows the general. So sensing comes before understanding, and the particular comes before the general. So Aristotle has clearly contradicted himself. Oh yeah, I think he's contradicted himself.

[24:25] I know they're gonna gonna gonna be deceived by that, right? And so I say, Aristotle has come up to the floor here, you know, say Pericles to the sophist, right, deceiving these poor students, and by the kind of mistake which I said was most common, mixing up the senses of a word. So when Aristotle says that the general comes before the particular, by general he means the more universal, and by particular the less universal.

[25:01] But what he says elsewhere that particulars come before the general, right? By particulars he means what? For singulars, singulars, and by general, universal. So he's saying that singulars come before any universals, but among universals, the more universal comes before the less universal. But because we use the word particular both for singulars, like we say Socrates is a particular man, right? And for the less universal, like we say the dog is a particular kind of animal, right?

[25:40] Or particular doesn't mean singular, but something less universal than animal. And we use the word general sometimes to mean what universal, and sometimes to mean more universal, right? They are deceived because they can't distinguish the two senses of general and the two senses of what particular, right? Okay.

[26:03] Incidentally, I sometimes you know give a second objection and say, okay, it got off this time, Aristotle, but if the singular comes first, which is closer to the singular, the more universal, the less universal. And seems well, the less universal is closer, so when you go from the singular to the less universal to the more universal, see? But you're forgetting that we know things in a confused way before distinctly.

[26:29] This is true of reason as well as the senses, and so I try to bring it out with some very simple examples. And one example I give is that if you're going to classify alcoholic beverages, right, and take nobody's word for it, right, all your knowledge of alcoholic beverages would begin with individual, singular glasses of whiskey and beer and wine that you drink, right? But now, when you started to what classify these things to see universals, right?

[27:01] What would you see first, huh? The distinction between beer and wine, or the distinction between Budweiser and Miller's, or something, or the distinction between Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir. Well, you'd see the distinction between wine and beer before you see the distinction between particular kinds of wines, huh? And of course, another reason for saying that is that the distinction between the difference between wine and beer is much greater than, say, between Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir, or between different kinds of wines and beer.

[27:37] So it's easier to see, right? All right, give an example. If you're going to classify the vegetation on this campus, present company excluded, obviously.

[27:57] All your knowledge will begin with senses, right? So the individual trees and bushes and and patches of grass that you saw, right? But now among universals, what would come first? Tree and bush, or the particular kinds of trees, particular kinds of grass? Well, you'd see the difference between trees and grass before different kinds of grass, huh? Different kinds of trees. When I was in college in a botany class, and we had brought and identified trees on the campus, and no one mixed up a broadleaf tree with a needle one, but you get the Norway pine or a different pine, which I can never keep straight.

[28:41] Then they start mixing them up, right? You see. So although all their knowledge of the trees on campus begins with their senses, and therefore singular trees, huh? They'll see the difference between a needle tree and a pine tree. I mean, needle tree and a flat leaf tree before the difference between different types of needle trees, so. Or

[29:07] I gave them this other example. I thought with I asked them which is better, breathing or philosophizing. I told you that. And of course, I'd said earlier in the class, but mix up the senses of before and after, right? They'd forgotten that they told that.

[29:27] And so I say, now why do why do you say that breathing is better than philosophizing? Of course, the reason I give, right, is that breathing. If you're not breathing, you don't be doing anything else. I said, well, that that shows that breathing is before philosophizing in the second sense of before, before being, right? Breathing can be without philosophizing, but philosophizing cannot be without breathing. But we're not asking whether breathing is before philosophizing in the second sense of before.

[29:57] We're asking in the fourth sense, is it better? Is it? And you're saying that because it's before the second sense, it's before the fourth sense. I say that would be like saying that because Chaucer is before Shakespeare in the first sense of time, right? Therefore, he's before him in the sense of being better. That's obviously no mistakes, okay? But I know they're going to make this mistake, right?

[30:22] You see, so I'm able to what teach them and to deceive them, right? And my my knowledge of logic and so on enables me to be the one, right?

[30:38] And I can't both teach and deceive at the same time, okay? So what determines then that I do one rather than the other? Yeah, do I love them or hate them or something? I wish to get them. Do you want to get to heaven? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did I stop to see my students? So Aristotle says then in the fifth paragraph, necessarily, therefore, there is something other which determines.

[31:11] I say this is desire or what choice, okay? For whichever two things is chiefly desired, it will make when it is present and is able and near the undergoing, right?

[31:27] Therefore, everything which has an ability with reason, when it desires that which it has an ability and as it has it, necessarily makes this right, huh?

[31:39] So when I choose to teach and the student is there and presumably teachable, then I teach, right? Okay. Or if I choose to deceive, right, and the deceivable is there, then I deceive, okay?

[32:01] He says you don't have to add nothing outside preventing because we put in our idea of possible, right? That you have all the what circumstances, right? You can do this, okay?

[32:19] And he goes on to point out that even if one has a wish or desire to do two things or contrary things at the same time, one will not do them, right? One does not have the ability to what do both at the same time, yeah, okay.

[32:37] Now that's kind of important. Now you go back to the first philosophers, and you get the two great thinkers there, Empedocles and Anaxagoras. Anaxagoras says that the greater mind is responsible, right? Is the is the mover, right? And you may recall that he came to see this perhaps in this way.

[33:15] Like effects have like causes, huh? That's probable, right? And then he sees the order in artificial things, like the order in the building, here, say, or anything made by art. And he sees the likeness between that and the order in what natural things, huh?

[33:40] And that order is so similar that if art was to make what nature makes, it would make it in the same order, right? So if my natural teeth were replaced with artificial teeth, the dentist would put the biting teeth in front and the chewing teeth in back, in the same order that nature has done.

[34:10] Now we know the cause of the order in artificial things, which is the human mind, right? So if you see the similarity then in the order in the parts of an animal and the parts of an artificial thing, and you know the cause of the order in the artificial things, and like effects of like cause, right? Then it becomes a reasonable guess that there's a greater mind, right, responsible for the order in natural things.

[34:40] Makes sense, huh? Okay. But then you have these other philosophers like Empedocles, who speaks of love and hate as being the movers, huh? And he has a kind of mindless love and hate moving the world, and that's why he has kind of you know idea like some of the modern evolutionists, you know, where things are brought together and they kept on being brought together and they kept on being brought together, and eventually they they make sense.

[35:12] God knows how many how many failures, right? And then you have Parmenides when he condescends to talk about the natural world. He talks about love as what moves things, right? Okay. Well, now in the light of this being said here, who's right? Say. Or does each of them have a part of the truth? What would you say about this?

[35:37] Is the first mover a greater mind, a greater reason, right, than our own, as is shown by the order in these things, or is the first mover love, right, or love and hate, which is? It's got to

[35:57] be the higher the higher intellect moving nature, analogous to them. Yeah, but if there's the same knowledge of opposites, right, going back to what we saw in the second reading, and mind makes you capable of doing contrary things, you can't do contrary things together at the same time. It doesn't automatically follow from a greater mind, um, some effect, right? Okay. If it automatically followed whatever it's capable of, if it automatically did what it's capable of, it would do what?

[36:33] Contraries. That's impossible, right? So as he says here, there must be some appetite, right, love or hate or what it is, right, that determines the one to do this rather than what that choice, right? So maybe there's not much truth in what both of them are saying, but neither one has the whole truth about what the what the mover is, huh? Okay. What? Dante. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[37:07] But but sometimes you might say that the divine mind is the cause of these things, right? You know, Thomas, the way he begins the Summa Contra Gentiles, you know, he says that the end of the whole universe is the end of its first mover, and its first mover is intellect, and the end of the intellect is truth. Therefore, truth is the end of the whole universe, right?

[37:35] He's emphasizing that it's his mind, right? But another time he might emphasize the fact that what God doesn't produce us by natural necessity, like some of the Neoplatonists who are maintaining, right? Or, or like you know, Spinoza would say, you know, that the universe proceeds from God, like the equality the two right angles proceeds from what the triangle is, right? That God produces by kind of natural necessity,

[38:07] and I think you find in the Vatican I right? you know, it's his concern about that error, right? And and emphasizing that God does not produce the universe, right, by natural necessity, but it's a matter of choice, right? Okay. So there's an element of truth in what both are saying. Okay. And sometimes, you know, when I teach the early Greeks, I will I will say let me

[38:49] present what they say as reasonable guesses, right? Not necessarily truth, right? And so we try to see reasons that they might have what they're saying.

[39:02] But then I also had this kind of comparative thing, and I'll say, you know, why is Anaximenes' position a better guess than Thales' right? As the first matter, why is air a better guess than water, right? There are various reasons, like you know, air is is thinner than water, right? And so I ask them, you know, is the first matter the thickest of things or the thinnest of things?

[39:26] I say, and do you do you make the thin out of the thick, or do you make the thick out of thin? Well, all I have to do is think of a thick book, you know, where it's made out of thin pages, right? So it seems that the first matter would be the thinnest of things, right? Just like like an atom is thinner than what a molecule and a proton or electron is thinner than an atom, right?

[39:54] So the thinner something is, the more what. Better guess it would be for the first matter, right? So, if I say the molecule is the, beginning of all things, you say the atom, and someone else says the elementary particle. you're getting thinner and finer, right? So, the poets say Mother Earth is beginning of all things, and Thales says water, and Anaximenes says air, right? So, you are getting something finer and thinner.

[40:23] So that that's okay. So sometimes I ask them, who's better, Empedocles or Anaxagoras, right? Because Empedocles says the movers are love and hate, and Anaxagoras says it's mind, right? Okay. Well, I say which,

[40:46] apart from the fact that Empedocles takes two causes, you know, instead of one, but he has one love which brings things together, right, and one that separates things, which is hate, right? Okay. So I say, which is a better separator of things, hate or mind?

[41:06] My second example is: was it hate that split the atom? Or was it the mind that figured out how to separate these things, right? You know, and even in washing clothes and so on, right? It's mind that figured out how to separate these things, huh? What do you do to get red wine stains on white tablecloth? What do you do?

[41:34] What? Send it to the. No, no. You take to the sink and you boil water and you pour boiling water, and it comes out. Actually, does you know? Okay, I say that hate that made me see how to separate that red stain from the thing. No, it's sure you hated the red thing. So. That's why you wanted to get rid of it. Or we talked about how the geometry, right, separates quantity and shape from sense of matter.

[42:04] Was it hate that separated them, right? Say, of course, the mind is always dividing and what? And you know, and okay, so the mind seems then a better what separator than what than hate, right? That separates things, huh? But hate can't separate them. And then I say, now which is better to bring things together, love or mind? You say there, you might argue that love is a better bringing together, right?

[42:35] But Empedocles makes a mistake of saying that what love brings things together in different ratios, and that's how you get different things like flesh and blood and bone. They're different ratio. So no, why is it word ratio come from? Oh, yeah, yeah. So. Is it love that makes the the bartender? I say combine the whiskey and the sweet vermouth in the ratio of two to one. We didn't even have to love, but

[43:10] manhattans, right, to put them together in the right what ratio, right? And these old books on on you know what proportions or ratio is supposed to have, you know, they give us they call mixology.

[43:27] But but even the name mixology uses the word logos, right, rather than love, right? So it's mind that that puts things together in a certain ratio, and so I argue in many ways that mind is a better guess, right? It can do what hate does better, maybe separate things better than hate does, right? And as far as love, a little more unclear, but mind is more able to bring things together in a definite ratio than what. Love would seem to be right, okay.

[44:02] And then it has an advantage of being one instead of two. I can do what the others do, and even better with what. But that maybe isn't the whole the whole thing, right? Because you come back in the light of this here, and you say, "Hey, maybe each of these great thinkers sees a part of the truth, right? " In the intellect and will Yeah. And what's reason for that?

[44:28] Because the mind cannot produce something what automatically. Is capable of contraries, and therefore it needs something else, and that's desire or choice, as he says, that would determine it to do one of the opposites rather than another, right? I need the love and hate of Empedocles I love the students I'll teach them if I hate them. I'll deceive them, right? You see.

[45:03] Yeah, in a sense, if the doctor aborts the baby, since he hates the baby, right, right, it's his hate in a sense. He might claim to love one, but he's really hating her, right? Hating the baby, right? But if he delivers the baby, then he because he loves the baby, right? I say, but his medical art enables him to be the one, right?

[45:27] And so his ability that he has in medical art doesn't determine which one he will do, and he can't do both. Right, so there's got to be love or hate there to determine which one he what he does, huh?

[45:52] So this is important in understanding God, right? As I say, there are these other thinkers that make the other mistake though of of saying what that God produces the universe by kind of natural necessity, huh?

[46:09] But then when you go to the Trinity, you got a little more problem there, right? Because there you don't have the Father was not able to produce the Son and not to produce the Son. I say, and in our scripture passages where it says, you know, the Father loves the Son and shows him everything, right? But that love is an approbation, you might say, right? He didn't, You know, the Church Fathers are very clear about that, Dan, that he wasn't against his will, but with with his love that he generated the Son, right?

[46:46] But it wasn't through love as a cause, right? But because God naturally understands Himself, that He naturally forms, or actually precedes His thought. Of himself, right? Because he naturally loves himself, huh? It's not a a what ability for opposites there, right? Okay, the father and the son are not able to not breathe the Holy Spirit. Okay, but you know, the son is the fathers are want to bring out that they weren't forced to do this, like you know, against their will, so to speak, right?

[47:25] You know, they there's not an harmony, but it wasn't harmony of their will. When you're talking in comparison to creatures, right? Then you have to see that God's choice there is involved, huh? This is what Chesterton when somebody asks, "is it the best of all possible worlds?" He says, "No, it's the best of all impossible worlds." Impossible? Yeah, because it's not necessary by itself. God doesn't create by a natural necessity.

[47:57] yeah, yeah. Thomas spends a lot of time in this reasoning, reasoning against this idea of natural necessity, huh? But this kind of came back in the modern mind Spinoza, Hegel, and people of that sort. that creeps into the other thinkers from them. A dangerous, dangerous thing.

[48:28] Well, that's a good place to stop now because this is the end of the first part now of the ninth book, huh?