Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
55. Metaphysics IX, Reading 10: Evil as Privation, God as Pure Act and the Best Thing, and Why Act Is More Knowable
Class of 2005-12-01
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/055-metaphysics-ix-reading-10-evil-as-privation-god-as-pure-act/

[0:00] Okay, so in the second paragraph in page twelve, then he draws the conclusion, right? It is necessary also that in bad things the end and the act is worse than the ability. But notice, gotta be very careful. He's speaking there, kind of what? Metaphorically, yeah, yeah. For is the same that is able to be both contraries. But now in the third paragraph, right? He's starting to go back to what the bad really is, strictly speaking.

[0:35] And this has to be expanded upon. But if you know what we read a long time ago, I guess we read the first book of natural hearing, the first book of the physics. And Aristotle takes up matter, form, lack of form, right? And there you begin to see more clearly that bad is a what? A lack, right? None being the sense of a lack.

[1:00] Now, what's the difference between saying, example, that the stone does not see? This is a simple negation, right? Okay. And saying that the man is blind. Well,

[1:27] this is merely negating, right? Seeing of the stone, but blind is not merely saying the man what does not see, right? But this is the none being of sight in a subject apt by nature to have sight and that should have sight and when it should have sight, right? Do you see that? Okay.

[1:54] Strictly speaking, is this piece of chalk ignorant? You can say this piece of chalk doesn't know what it's doing. Doesn't know at all, right? Okay. But strictly speaking, this piece of chalk is not ignorant, huh? Because ignorance is more than just the none being of knowledge, right? Ignorance is the none being, the non-existence of knowledge in a subject, right? Able to have knowledge, and especially when it should have the knowledge, right?

[2:33] Okay, do you see that? Yeah. That's very important. You go back to, you know, the the axiom about being an enemy, right? I usually quote Hamlet there, right? To be or not to be, that is the question, right? But it's a question because you can't both be and not be, and you must be one or the other. Okay.

[3:02] Now, if you have a simple negation, contradictory, everything is going to be one or the other. Either you know or you do not know. There's no other alternative.

[3:17] But if you take not the contradictory of to know, but the lack, the privation. Lack is English word. Privation is Latin word. Is everything either know or ignorant?

[3:39] No. See, this piece of chalk doesn't know, but it's not ignorant either. See the difference. To know. And not to know are contradictories, right? But to know and to be ignorant, different kind of opposition. Aristotle has a chapter there on the four kinds of opposites in the categories, and he has a chapter on that in the fifth book of wisdom, right? Okay. There's contradictories, and then there's the having and the lack, right?

[4:18] And then there's contraries, and then there are relatives, huh? Okay. But you know, the contraries have not only a common subject, but a common genus. Huh? Virtue and vice are both habits, right? Okay.

[4:39] But sight and blindness are not both powers, no? They're not a common genus, but they have a common subject, right? Okay. So not everything either has sight or is blind, right? Strictly speaking, but only those things which are by nature apt to have sight and should have sight, then they either have sight or they're blind. So a man either has sight or he's blind.

[5:10] This mug is neither, right? Strictly speaking, huh? Okay. Now Aristotle's position about the bad there is not that the bad is none-being, right? But it's a lack, right? Okay. So there's nothing bad about this glass, this mug here, not seeing. it. There's nothing bad about this piece of chalk, not knowing, right? But there is something bad maybe about my students being ignorant, and there's something bad about the dog or the man being blind, right?

[5:53] You see? So guys, see that Augustine, in a way, is kind of using hyperbole there when he says that sin is nothing, and the man who sins becomes nothing. But he wants to emphasize the fact that the root there is a kind of non-being, right? But to be more precise, you've got to realize that it's an unbeing called lack, huh? Okay. That's where Aristotle says now in the next passage.

[6:22] It is clear, therefore, that the bad does not exist apart from things. For the bad is after ability by nature. You couldn't have blindness unless you had something able to have sight. Okay.

[6:44] So because this cup is not able to have sight by nature, it can't have that badness we call blindness, right? That's just something that you or me or the dog or the cat

[6:59] could have, right? So you shouldn't be disturbed by the fact that you're not God, right? That's that's mere negation, right? Not privation or lack, not not having something you should have. I mean, you know, be God. You know, that's something you should be. Okay, so

[7:34] go back a little bit to the natural philosophy there. Aristotle is pointing out in natural philosophy that Plato should distinguish between matter and lack of what Form. Okay, The Platonists kind of confuse the two, right? Now you could say that Anaxagoras in a way confuses matter and form

[8:15] because he falsely imagines everything that is in the ability of matter to be actually in the matter. Okay, so he's confusing matter and form,

[8:30] and Aristotle shows many difficulties in the position of Anaxagoras. Now the Platonists realize that matter and form are something different, right? But now, when you distinguish in your mind matter from form, then you think of matter as being without form, right?

[8:52] Okay, and therefore you have to confuse matter with its very what formlessness, huh? Okay. And you see, you see a little bit of Augustine sometimes in someone's works—a little confusion about this, you know. When he's talking about the first matter, you know, if I could say it's something that is nothing, he says, right? Or nothing that is something—that's what I would say, you know. Okay. Well, Aristotle reasons from

[9:29] a common opinion that he and Plato share about form, right? And the common opinion that Plato and Aristotle share is that form is something God-like, something good, and something desirable. Okay.

[9:56] This is a very profound understanding what form is. As we've seen a little bit already, God is going to be pure what act, right? Now, since form is an act, then it's God-like, huh? In a way that matter is not, because matter is ability not act, huh? Okay. That's why Thomas, Thomas recounts the opinion of David of Dinant who identified God with the first matter, right? Thomas says he most stupidly thought.

[10:33] You can see it's a stone even closer, right? It's something more actual than the first matter. So you're going, you're saying that that the pure act is is the pure ability, right? Huh? It couldn't be further away. So he's not gratuitously insulting David of Dinant he says. But the truth is, right? He most stupidly thought.

[10:55] Now, since the act of the thing is perfection of the thing, right? Then it's something good and therefore desirable, right? Well, then Aristotle points out.

[11:09] If you compare matter and lack of form to form, you could say that matter is perfected by form, right? And is a very concrete way of speaking here, saying you could say that matter desires or wants form, huh? Its order to form is its good, its perfection, huh?

[11:35] But if the lack of form were to want form, it would want in so what destruction, right? Wouldn't make any sense. Wouldn't. But the lack of form being opposed to form would seem to be something what bad. Form is something good, right? Okay. But the matter is not bad because it what is ordered to form is perfected by form. They may recall that when we, over this argument, we mentioned how Augustine, when he after his conversion and after he began to refute the Manichaeans the Manichaeans thought that matter was what evil, right?

[12:24] And if you identify matter and lack of form, you're going to make matter something bad. Okay. But Augustine used the same argument against the Manichaeans that Aristotle uses here against the Platonists. As far as we know, independently of Aristotle, you can know Aristotle's physics, huh? So in the De Natura Boni, On Nature of the Good, contra Manichaeus, Augustine says matter being capable of form is also good, huh?

[12:54] Not as good as form, but also good. But the lack of form is what, what is bad, being opposed to form. But there you get kind of the hint that lack is really basically what the bad is, huh? And what is lack, well, it's not non-being, period. it's non-being in a subject able, right, to have something, huh? It's a non-being of an act you're able to have and should have.

[13:33] Okay, that's true of of not just moral evil, but any kind of badness, right? Piano's out of tune, right? Doesn't have something it should have, right? You taste something; it lacks something, you know. The cook says, or the somebody says, right? Needs a little bit of this, a little bit of that, right? Okay. Well, that's bad the way it is, right? See?

[14:14] So that's where Aristotle says it is clear, therefore, that the bad does not exist apart from things, but it is after ability by nature. Now, this is going to be a reason why we say that God in no way can be bad.

[14:33] Question: Looking before and after, there has to be an ability for some act, right? You have to be capable of some act that you should have, but you don't have, right? Before you have something bad. When God has no ability to be deprived of the act it should have, God is pure act. So you can syllogize from God being pure act, and from what Aristotle says there, it's impossible for there to be anything bad in God.

[15:08] You have to have some ability for some act in God, right? That was deprived of the act it should have, it could have and should have, right? But there's no ability in God to be actualized. There's no ability in God that has been actualized, right? None of this passive ability. God is pure act. Okay. That goes back to what we showed earlier, right? That act, simply speaking, is before ability, right?

[15:42] Because what goes from ability to act does so because of something already in act. The ability to be actual can't give itself the act it doesn't have. That'd be a contradiction, right? Have to have what doesn't have to give itself what doesn't have. So what goes from ability to act, the ability that is actualized, does so by reason of something already in act. That points to the way that the first cause, therefore, must be what?

[16:14] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pure act, huh? Now, what's beautiful about this, you know, that Aristotle says in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, when he's showing what human happiness truly is, with the truth he says all things harmonize, right? Everything fits together, right? Okay.

[16:40] Now it's kind of interesting here because in the proemium, beginning of Book One here of the Metaphysics, Aristotle showed that the end or goal. Of our mind is to know the first cause, okay?

[17:01] And you can see our mind naturally wants to know why, right? And the question "why" is answered by knowing the cause, right? But if the cause is the kind of cause that has a cause, the mind wants to know the cause of the cause.

[17:24] So I hit you because I'm angry with you, right? But then anger is the cause of my hitting you. But anger is a kind of cause that has a cause, right? Okay. Or the insurgents are blowing us up because they hate us, I guess. So the hate is the cause of they're doing this, maybe. But hate is a kind of cause that has a cause. Why do they hate us?

[17:50] Okay. Well, then, as we show in the second book of wisdom, not every cause has a cause. It's going to be a first cause, and each of the four kinds of causes.

[18:03] So just as our mind wants to know why, if the cause has a cause, it wants to know the cause of the cause, and it continues until it gets to the first cause. So you develop that the end of our knowledge

[18:23] is a knowledge of the first cause. But now, in the beginning of the first book about the soul, Aristotle develops another criterion, you might say, huh? For what would be the end of our knowledge, huh?

[18:54] Because he argues there, and in the beginning of the parts of animals, for even more precise knowledge of a better thing is better knowledge. Okay.

[19:10] You could say what's most essential to knowledge is what you know. So knowledge of a better thing is better knowledge, huh? And from that you can reason out that a knowledge of the best thing is the what best knowledge, right? Now, since the end is always better than what is for the sake of the end, right? You could say the end of our knowledge must be a knowledge of the best thing, right?

[19:42] Okay. So. So we have very good reason to think that the end of our knowledge is a knowledge of the first cause. We also have very good reason to say that the end of all of our knowledge must be knowledge of the best thing. Now, if the first cause is also the best thing, then all things harmonize, right? Together, all fits together, right? But if the first cause is not the best thing, right?

[20:28] Now you've got what schizophrenia, right? Huh? You can't put it together. You can't put Humpty Dumpty together. Now, the evolutionary humanists, right, and general materialists, they make a mistake about what the first cause is. And the kind of mistake they make is a mistake of mixing up what is so simply, right, and what is not so simply, right. The same kind of mistake that Meno makes in the middle of the dialogue, right, and Socrates makes when he tries to respond to that, okay?

[21:14] But Aristotle showed, saw the distinction, that in the thing that goes from ability to act, ability is before act, right? But since it goes from ability to act by reason of something already in act, simply you could say act is before ability, huh?

[21:38] But they're thinking that what is before in some way is before simply, and therefore they're thinking that the first thing must be most in ability in the passive sense, right? That it must be the first matter, whatever the first matter is, right? But now, if the first cause was the first matter, it would be the least perfect, huh? Now you you can't put the two together anymore.

[22:12] Did they clash, right? Because there's a mistake somewhere, right? Okay. But when Aristotle sees that act is simply before ability in time, right, and in being, he said causality, and therefore the first cause must be pure act, right? And when he saw that act is better, right, than ability, and therefore what is pure act must be the best thing, everything fits together perfectly, right?

[22:54] But for the moderns, they're lost. You see, they can't, they can't put these two together. The first cause is not the best thing. So what's the end of our mind?

[23:16] You got schizophrenia, right? Two different last ends, huh? You can go in different directions too. That's beautiful. It comes up so naturally, right? I haven't seen the text where Aristotle puts it together the way I was just putting together. But if you think back upon what he shows in the premium to the fourteen books, right, and that the End of all our knowledge is a knowledge of the first cause, right?

[23:57] Then you go back to the first, the premium to the proemium, right? And you see that a knowledge of a better thing is a better knowledge, right? From which you can see that a knowledge of the best thing must be, therefore, the the end, right? Because the end is always better, but it's for the sake of the end, right? So the end of all our knowledge must be the best knowledge, and that must be a knowledge of the best thing.

[24:24] Well, they fit together those two truths, right? You see. But if you're mistaken about one of those, then they're going to clash, right? Yeah.

[24:39] In the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle has has reasoned out in a preliminary way at least the end or purpose of man, and now he wants to go out to experience and show that everything fits together with this, right? And that's what he says that the truth all things harmonizes.

[24:58] This is a beautiful example of it, though, you know, these two great truths, huh? Because it's so naturally, because you see how act is more perfect than ability, and how act is simply speaking in time and causal and so on before ability, and therefore the first cause will be in fact the best thing.

[25:23] Then I go on and I say, well, how much better is God than other things, huh? You see. And you kind of end up wondering, why should you think about anything but about God, right? I kind of joke you if they ask, "me, what are you going to do to your retirement request. Well, I'm going to think about the best thing." What's

[25:47] up? It's my dying thing, the best thing. Why? You know, if knowledge of a better thing is better, then knowledge of what is definitely better than anything else. You know, if I think it might bother to think about anything else. I don't see any reason to. you. I'll spend my retirement thinking about God, right? huh? And it turns out to be more interesting than anything else. Well, then, in the fourth paragraph here, in the top of page twelve, there he draws the conclusion,

[26:32] and therefore, in the things which are from the beginning, in the eternal things, there is nothing what bad because there's no ability there, right? Okay. Neither failing nor corrupted.

[26:51] So there's nothing in say the angel is bad. As far as their nature is concerned, right? Okay. Another question about the will, but doesn't go into that here.

[27:04] But therefore, it's the only about God who's pure act, right? You could say there could be nothing what bad in Him, right? Okay, because badness is always after ability, and God is before this ability to be actualized, right? There couldn't be anything bad in God. Again, with the truth, all things harmonize, right?

[27:31] Now we'll see other ways that there can be nothing bad in God, but this is one reason, right, to see that. Now I didn't give me a break today, but I guess there's no sense in stopping now, right?

[27:49] Okay. Now in the last paragraph of the tenth reading, Aristotle is going to turn from consideration of being in the good now to being and what No, right? And therefore, being and what True, right? Okay.

[28:32] And what he wants to bring out here is that act is more knowable than what ability, right? And the ability is knowable only through act, huh? And he takes a very simple example from the science of geometry,

[28:54] and the geometrical figures are found by act, huh? For we find by dividing, if they were already divided, they would have been clear. But now the existing ability. Why are the angles of the triangle equal to two right angles? Because the angles about one point are equal to two right angles. If then the line parallel to the side had been already drawn, it would have been clear right away to anyone seeing it.

[29:27] Let's just stop and take the example there, right? That theorem depends upon the theorem about the parallel lines, right? The theorem about the parallel lines says that when a straight line falls upon parallel lines, it makes the what alternate angles equal, right? Okay. Now you look at the triangle. Do you see that the three angles of the triangle equal to two right angles? No.

[30:06] You've got to make actual something that's there only in ability. You draw a straight line. So, when you are doing it, to the vertex, parallel to the what base. Therefore, these two must be what equal, right? The alternate angles. And then these two must be the alternate angles, right? So these two equal to those two, and the third one makes up the two right angles, right? Now it's become actually knowable, right?

[30:42] But it has to be made actual before it's actually what Knowable, right? Is that what I mean? It's only there that line in ability. It's not knowable, yet, is it? Even if you know, but you have to know. In this case, this theorem here already.

[31:03] The way Euclid does it, of course, is a little different. What he does is to combine two things. Extends the exterior angle, right? And then he draws the line what parallel, right? And then he uses alternate theorem to make these things equal, and then there is another theorem that's shown that this is equal to the the interior opposite. So this angle is going to be equal to this.

[31:32] Let's look at that. So he combines two things: the exterior angles equal to interior opposite angles, plus the three are equal to the right angles. So, But in any case you have to make actual something that is there only in what ability, right? Okay.

[31:56] Of course, we saw in the study of the soul that all those abilities are knowable only through their what acts, right? And how do you know you have the ability to see?

[32:11] Yeah. But open up your eyes before you open your eyes tomorrow morning. You might go blind during the night time. This happens to people sometimes for some horrible reason, right? Okay, so you don't really know that you have the ability to see until you open your eyes again, right? And actually see, huh?

[32:31] Some people are sometimes injured, you know, and their eyes are covered up, right? And they're not sure how much ability they've retained until the things are taken off and so on, right? Okay. And somebody paralyzed or not, right? You know, maybe don't know, but he can't move his limbs, and you might realize that he's lost his ability. Okay. So.

[33:04] Even the ability to be mistaken is known by mistakes, right? But notice when all the Greek philosophers are disagreeing, you know that at least all but one are mistaken, right? Maybe they're all mistaken. but I don't know.

[33:34] maybe faculty meetings, you know, and have two guys down there counting their votes, right? Well, if they get the same count, yeses and noes, then they accept it. They get a different count, then they have to go into it again, right? So if they get two different counts, the yeses and noes, at least one of them is what. Mistaken, right? Has made a an error, right? Counting, they both could, but at least one has, right?

[34:07] Okay. Why is every angle in a semicircle a right angle? That's supposed to have been a theorem that the first philosopher Thales showed, right? So it's a famous theorem.

[34:22] Okay. Well, I suppose various ways of doing that, right? So if you have a circle and you bisect it, you draw the diameter. The theorem says that whatever points you take up here, other than the endpoints, of course, just take an arbitrary here. If you draw straight lines from that to the endpoints of the diameter, this angle will always be a what? Right angle, right? How do you know that?

[34:52] See. Well, one way I suppose would be to take the what? Center of the circle, right? And then draw a line from here to what? There, right? Then what would you know? If two sides are equal, there

[35:18] the ones coming off the center point will be equal. Yeah, you you know that. First of all, these what six angles from this theorem above are equal to what? Four right angles, right?

[35:35] Okay. And you know that these two down here would be equal to what? Two right angles. Yeah, so that means that these are equal to what? Two right angles. Two right angles. But now, since the radii of the circle are equal, these two angles are equal, aren't they? And since these two are radii of the circle, these two are equal, right? So one of each is going to be half exactly of the remaining two, and therefore be a right angle, right?

[36:09] Makes sense. No, if you know if you know these two theorems, right? then an isosceles triangle, right, the angles at the base are equal. That's the fifth theorem of Book One, right? Then you know this theorem right here, okay? These are both in Book One. This is in Book what three, right? Okay. Well, then you know that these two triangles here, right, have interior angles equal to four right angles, right?

[36:45] Okay. And then these two at the base here. Add up to two, right? So the remaining four have to be two right angles, right? And since these are all what equal the radii, right? A and B here must be equal, yeah. And C and D, so B and C will be half of A, B, C, and D. A half of two is of course one right angle, right?

[37:12] But you don't have to be concerned here about all the details in this demonstration, but you have to make the lines actual, right? Sure. Okay, in order for it to be knowable, right? It's not really knowable, right? A lot of times, you know, you see a new thing, you know. The construction is kind of the genius of the theorem, right? You see, and once you see

[37:38] how the lines might be drawn, oh yeah, now it all makes sense to me, right? Aristotle is saying something is knowable in so far as it is in what it's actual, right?

[37:53] They could also say too that the knower and the known become one in knowing, right? And so as the knower is actualized, right? What he knows must be actual. But this is a very simple way of showing it here, huh? Okay, so God, being pure act, is going to be most what knowable.

[38:17] That's where Aristotle, back in the second book, the difficulty in knowing must be more in us than in things, right? Because what is most knowable is least knowable to us.

[38:31] And this is the point he makes back in the what beginning of the physics, the beginning of the eight books of natural hearing. That what is more knowable to us is less knowable, and what is more knowable is less knowable to us. And there you meet again that kind of distinction that's so important between what is so simply right without qualification and what is so in some way, right, in some imperfect way, right?

[39:03] Now you go back to Mino, and you first kind of meet that that kind of mistake, and even more simple than what Mino brings out there, you say, when a student or somebody asks a question.

[39:22] Does he know what he wants to know? Or you could say, if you don't know what you want to know, it's kind of hard to ask questions, right? So the man who asks the question must know, in some imperfect way, what it is he doesn't know. But if he knew it simply and without qualification, he would have to ask the question, would he? You know they always talk about this.

[39:53] You know that people are afraid to ask a question because it will reveal the fact that you are ignorant of something, right? But you got to kind of encourage people to ask questions because if they don't, they remain ignorant, right? And

[40:10] I was reading a cult there of Einstein in Berlin and so on, where people are kind of afraid to ask questions because of this, you know. Einstein was never afraid to ask a question, right? Right to the point. That's kind of good. A good thing in Einstein, right? Um, but the uh, so the point is, you you can't ask a question. You certainly can't investigate what it is, right?

[40:38] That you want to know, right? Unless you know in some way what it is you want to know, right? Okay. So the guy is looking for the cure of cancer. He's looking for the cure of this or that disease, right? You must know in some way what he's looking for, right? You must in some way recognize this disease and know what it means to speak of the cause of disease, right?

[41:00] So in some way he knows he's looking for the cause of this disease in particular, right? Without knowing what that cause is, strictly speaking, okay. Well, then we see we see the moderns there and the materialists being deceived that kind of mistake, right? When they think that matter is the beginning of all things, huh?

[41:24] What is before other things in some way is before simply they're saying, is it? Yeah, comes up again and again. So that's a that's a very a very important distinction, huh? But it comes up again in in the beginning of the natural road there, or talking about the natural road, huh? Because the road means the before and after, huh? So the natural knowledge part of the before and after along that road is that what is more known to us is before what is less known to us, but what is more known to us is less knowable, and what is less known to us is more knowable, okay?

[42:15] That's where the Bible speaks of God dwelling in light and accessible is too illuminating, right? He's too knowable. So you'll never know God as much as He's knowable, right? The only one who knows God as much as He's knowable is God Himself, but we will see Him as He is, but not as much as He is.

[42:50] So you never get bored with Him. Thomas says, "You never get bored with god, huh?" I suppose he takes up the knowability of these things a bit. You

[43:11] say act is more knowable now than ability, right? So, when Aristotle, if you go back to the second book there of wisdom, remember Aristotle says there can be two causes of the difficulty of knowing. It can be difficult to know because of the defect of the knower, or the defect of the what the known, right? So, the difficulty in knowing matter, the first matter, and in knowing motion and time is that they hardly are.

[43:49] And so when Aristotle takes up time. He says, "Well, gee whiz."The past doesn't exist anymore. The future doesn't exist yet, right? Is there any time in the now? No. So how can this exist? He says, when the parts of time don't exist, right? You see, I mean, how could this chair exist if the legs and the seat and the back and so on didn't exist, right? It wouldn't exist, would it?

[44:23] Well, the parts of time, right, the past and the future. There's no time in the now. The past and the future don't exist. So how can something exist whose whose parts don't exist? Right, you know. I mean, the puzzling thing about the time is to see how it is at all, right? So there, the difficulty is in the thing itself. It is so what? Potential, right?

[44:54] And when the case of God, the difficulty is in the reverse, in the weakness of our what? Our mind, huh? Okay. Now, as I point out before, you could say you have the same two kinds of difficulty in a way in love, right?

[45:20] It can be difficult to love something because it's not very lovable. In which case, the defect is in the thing itself, right? So rock and roll, I don't think it's very lovable. I find it hard to love rock and roll. But I think the defect is not in my heart, but in the thing itself, right? See. But if you find difficult to love wisdom or difficult to love God, huh?

[45:45] Then maybe the defect is in your what? Heart, huh? Okay. Um. Where's it? It's EWTN or something like that. They're talking about the mass and so on, and young people and so on. Some people say, you know, oh, the mass is so boring, right?

[46:09] They're saying, you know, well, the problem is that if you think the mass is boring, it's because you are boring. But the the difficulty is in you, right? Not in the mass, right? Huh? But other things are boring, and you know, it's kind of funny of reading reading.

[46:32] Human Life International, a little newsletter they send, and the father was over in I was in Indonesia, I guess it was, and they they took him to see the big Buddhist temple there, right, and so on, and and I guess it's flat at the top there to represent Nirvana, nothing, you know. He said, I didn't have to come all this way to you know to to experience Nirvana.

[46:55] I could have stayed home and turned on TV. But TV, what was it? It's very boring, right? But it's not in us the problem. The problem is in the people putting on this show. But but if the mass is boring, it's the trouble is in you, right? Yeah. So

[47:21] so if you find it difficult to love God, the defect the causes in your heart, defect of your heart. If you find it difficult to love cancer, the difficulty is in the cancer, not in not in you, right? Not a very lovable thing. right? So you have the same two types of difficulties, right? In knowing, right? In Aristotle's sense, is showing right why the difficulty must be chiefly for us in the defect of our mind, right?

[47:55] And that's because we seem to know least the things of the most knowable of all. And so he compares us to the bat, whom apparently he thought flew at night time because the light of the day was too bright for it, right? That's what Scripture says, right? God dwells in light inaccessible.

[48:16] He's too knowable for us. Okay. But matter, motion, and time are not knowable enough, right? So the difficulty knowing them is is in them. And so geometry is more, you know, we can. It's easier for us to learn geometry, sincere, than to learn about matter and motion and time or about God, right? But those natural philosophy and wisdom are more difficult than geometry, for different reasons, right?

[48:51] Okay, that's kind of striking to see that, huh? You might know what you'll see in the first question of the Summa Theologiae when Thomas is asking whether Scripture uses metaphors, right? You know. And you say, well, aren't metaphor appropriate to poetry, and so on? And Thomas will say, well, the reason why poetry and and Scripture use metaphor are in a way just for the reverse reason, right?

[49:20] It's a sign of something not so accessible to our mind that we use metaphor is. But the reason why God is not so accessible to our mind, and the things the poet talks about, it's just reverse. In one case, it's because of the weakness of our mind that these things are not accessible. The other is these other things hardly have any knowability, huh? You can see, you know, when when when Shakespeare writes a play, let's say, or a Greek dramatist writes a play, you have a a plot with a beginning, middle, and end, right?

[49:55] Well, that's nice order there, beginning, middle, and end, right? But do the events of our life do they form a beginning, middle, and end?

[50:06] Do they? Just before I came down here. The guy from the computer comes up in my office. There, setting up a new program or some kind of crazy thing there, and I was getting all my back emails. You know, sixty emails. Now, what is that got to do with this class here? You know, you know. There's many things in our life that don't, you know, seem to form a whole, right?

[50:30] Huh? They just, you know. And what what what the poet does though is to select a course of action that has a beginning, middle, and end, and therefore it's kind of appealing to the mind to see that order, right? But you give me an order that things don't what have in life, huh? Or you take a great portrait painter, right? And he tries to capture the whole man's character in this one expression on his face, huh?

[51:03] So you get a master like Titian, you know, he's kind of a master of portrait, huh? He seems to capture the man's whole character in this one expression, right?

[51:14] Well, you know how people take pictures of us, you know, and most of the time they don't like our pictures taken of us, you know, on the last. But one picture doesn't seem to really capture the person's whole character, does it? You see. So the the painter is giving in his portrait a meaning, you might say, right, to an expression that

[51:40] no expression in real life has, huh? He's giving more meaning to it than he really has, huh? It's like when you hear, you know, the music of Mozart, you know, and you want to talk about it because it's really something, you know. I go down. I start talking to my professor, Mr. Eric. He says, "Dwayne, you think that's more intelligible than it is? You can't quite say what it is that Mozart is is saying, right?

[52:03] Huh? But Mozart seems to be giving a meaning, right? Intelligibility to the emotions, right? That they don't maybe really have in real life, huh? You know, so he he's raising things up, right? Huh? Okay. But in scripture, you're doing just the reverse. You're trying to bring these things down, right? That's why I say, you know, that that Dante is not really a poet in the ordinary sense, huh?

[52:33] The way Homer is or Shakespeare, right? Now, some people say the Trojan War might have been a little pirate, raid sometime, but the way Homer, you know, it becomes a symbol of the whole human life, you know. You you know how Job says man's life on earth is a warfare, you know, and he seems to have the whole life there. He seems to be giving much more meaning to some pirate.

[52:54] pirate raid would have in real life, you see. But Dante's trying to bring down heaven and you know to the earth that you can't, you know. So you're trying to imitate in a sense what Scripture's doing, right? But that's maybe not so you know appropriate for the poet and such, right? You know.

[53:13] You know, I'll give you a copy of Homer. You can have Homer of Dante. You know, got a nice edition there. That'd be great. Thank you. Yeah, got the nice, Gustave Doré illustrations, you know those. Oh yeah. Yeah, those are kind of masterpieces. You just pick up, find find these old ones, you know. My brother Richard had a copy of the, Gustave Doré and they said I was going to use bookshops.

[53:41] I finally found you know. I'd given some away before, you know. I've got a couple more, so I'll give you those ones, maybe. Okay. Well, next time. We will finish here the the book, huh? Reading eleven, huh? And then we'll

[54:02] look at this dogmatic constitution on the Catholic faith, huh? Before we go into the summa huh? So we can be done. So I'll leave these copies with me. I'll take one. You got enough copies, then, for everybody here, huh? Just take one. You give them. Okay. But we won't be into this next time much. But

[54:38] okay. No. No.