Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
1. Why 'Metaphysics' Is the Wrong Name: Wisdom, Reason and Shakespeare's Definition of Reason
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[0:03] Okay. So this is 120, so it'll be a bigger swath. This is 90, Okay. Good. to say a little prayer. In the. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. God, our enlightenment. guardian angels strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, pray for us and help us to understand all that you've written.

[0:40] Name of the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. I thought today, before we go into the ninth book of wisdom, as I call it, we ought to situate the ninth book of wisdom within the whole of the 14 books of which it's a part, and even before that, we ought to talk a bit about the title, huh? And my unhappiness with the title, metaphysics, at least in English,

[1:14] and perhaps I could begin with a little quote from Shakespeare there, from Act 1, Scene Three of Othello, where Othello says, "The tyrant custom." He calls custom a tyrant, huh? And that shows Shakespeare's ability to understand and make great metaphors. Now, custom is not always a tyrant. In fact, Hamlet will praise custom to his mother, and as you know, custom is necessary to acquire the moral virtues and so on.

[1:54] But nevertheless, custom can be a tyrant, not only in the moral life but in the life of the mind and the reason. So Aristotle, for example, in the second book of wisdom, he'll talk about how men are accustomed to one method and they want to proceed everywhere according to that method. So that method, by custom, as a kind of misrule over the mind, or if a mistake or error becomes customary, it's going to rule or misrule the mind for some time.

[2:36] A tyrant is a man who rules for his own good and not for the good of the whole. Now, we're accustomed to calling these 14 books the 14 books of the metaphysics, huh? But the name metaphysics doesn't mean much to us in English, and it's not the name that Aristotle gives to these 14 books. And most men don't know what it meant originally in Greek and so on.

[3:11] And when I go into Borders Bookstore or some bookstore like that, I always see a section entitled "Occult and Metaphysical Books," and I cringe, huh? When I see that.

[3:26] As you know, the word metaphysics is supposed to come from three Greek words, huh? Not one word, huh? Meta, meaning after, ta the the article, and then physica, meaning the books in natural philosophy. And this title is said to go back to one of the editors of Aristotle's works, Andronicus of Rhodes not a Shakespeare, of Aristotle's works, Andronicus of Rhodes. And perhaps he put these fourteen books meta after ta the physica books in natural philosophy, because that's where they come in the order of learning.

[4:09] And even in the so-called basic books of Aristotle, there, like some of you have down there, someone's got a copy of it. They put the meta ta physica after all the books in what natural philosophy or the selections from them. So, there's, some reason to call this meta ta physica, if you want to name these books from their place in the order of learning. But that's not perhaps the first place or where you should first or the way you should first name something.

[4:41] So, there's perhaps another reason why they could be called meta ta physica, and that is that when Aristotle begins his proemium at the beginning of Book One, the name he uses for these books or this knowledge is wisdom.

[5:04] And for 200 years, the Greek philosophers identified wisdom with natural philosophy. And it's not until you've gone through some parts of these natural philosophy, and until you get some evidence from, let's say, the seventh and eighth books of natural hearing, the so-called physics, or from the third book of the about the soul, you get some evidence that there are immaterial substances. It's only when you begin to have that evidence that you realize wisdom, the knowledge of all things, is not the same thing as natural philosophy.

[5:51] So, in some sense, the word meta ta physica is more distinct than the word wisdom, huh? In so far as the fact that the Greek philosophers for 200 years would have identified wisdom with natural philosophy.

[6:09] And now, in saying this, wisdom is meta ta fuzika. You distinguish it, huh, from natural philosophy, as well as giving it its place in the order of learning, huh?

[6:24] But in a way, to name it meta ta fuzika would be like naming natural philosophy meta ta mathematica, because in the order of learning it comes after Euclid's Elements, or call Euclid's Elements meta ta logika, because in the order of learning, thoroughly these things, logic comes first.

[6:48] As I mentioned before, Aristotle in the Proemium calls this wisdom, and so I like to refer to these as the fourteen books of wisdom, and sounds much more impressive, I think, anyway. You say that, right? We're having a course this summer on the ninth book of wisdom, rather than ninth book of metaphysics, whatever that is, huh? And metaphysics, as you know, is used almost in a pejorative sense by scientists and so on.

[7:16] Aristotle usually refers to it as what? First philosophy refers to these books, and it's called first there because of its order and dignity, huh? It has most of all the character of philosophy. Incidentally, what does the word philosophy mean? What would be the synonym for philosophy in English?

[7:43] No. A lot of times, people think that the word philosophy means a love of wisdom. Well, that's the etymology of the word, right? And philosopher does mean a lover of wisdom, but the meaning of the word philosophy is not the love of wisdom, but the knowledge that a lover of wisdom would pursue, and therefore philosophy means first of all wisdom, and what most of all is the character of wisdom.

[8:17] So you could call these fourteen books the fourteen books of wisdom, which I like to call them at first, or the fourteen books of first philosophy, or the fourteen books after the books of natural philosophy. But heaven preserve us from calling it the metaphysics. But custom is a tyrant, right? And if you want to be understood in this or that conference or talk to somebody, you may have to refer to this as the metaphysics, right?

[8:51] But there you see the tyranny of custom, right? You're kind of forced to do so sometimes, huh? And sometimes I'll slip into that way of speaking, you know, and condescension to those I'm with, right? But among us in the know, right? These are the 14 books of wisdom, rather than 14 books of metaphysics. Okay.

[9:19] Now, in some ways, I suppose first philosophy is more precise than wisdom, because as you learn in the proemium to wisdom, wisdom is really the knowledge which God alone has, or at least which God most of all has. So, in that sense, wisdom doesn't name our knowledge so well. But you could say among all kinds of human knowledge, this is wisdom simply. Natural philosophy is wisdom in some way; it's wisdom about natural things.

[10:01] Ethics and political philosophy are wisdom in some way, wisdom about human things. But only this, these 14 books, are wisdom, but about all things, wisdom simply.

[10:22] So, we could perhaps be a little more precise and say that this wisdom is the wisdom which our reason can acquire, which we can acquire through the use of our reason.

[10:38] And secondly, it's the wisdom which, when acquired, is the greatest or the highest perfection of our reason. So wisdom has a twofold what connection? This wisdom with reason. It's acquired by the use of reason,

[11:05] and when acquired, it is the highest and the greatest perfection of reason. So, can you know what wisdom is, or how to acquire wisdom without knowing what reason is? Can you?

[11:28] Can you know what the highest perfection of reason is without knowing first what reason is? And can you know? Can you acquire wisdom by reason, by the use of reason, without knowing what it is to use reason? Could you?

[11:55] Now, the definition of reason not only tells you what reason is. Which you would expect, right? Being a definition, because a definition is speech making known what a thing is.

[12:21] So obviously, the definition of reason is going to make known what reason is, and you have to know what reason is before you can know what the highest or greatest perfection of reason is. Makes sense. But the definition of reason will also tell you what it is to use reason,

[12:46] and we'll see that when we consider the definition of reason. Because as you'll see, reason is defined as an ability for a certain act or acts,

[13:04] and those acts are the same thing as use of reason. So the definition of reason will tell you both what reason is and what it is to use reason.

[13:18] Now, where do you find the definition of reason? Well, again, in this guy called Shakespeare, right? Okay. And you find it here in the what? Hamlet, yeah, in the fourth act, yeah,

[13:39] of and fourth scene, huh? Okay. Yeah, you want to see a copy of that, there, young ladies? Down here, again, a little ways in there, a little ways in there. Okay. Now, what

[13:59] Shakespeare gives here in the middle of this is what I consider to be the best short exhortation to use reason, and it's very short. It takes up exactly forty-nine words, which may have some symbolism to it.

[14:23] Seven times seven, right? And Shakespeare puts it on seven lines, which also has some symbolism. And it's written in what is called blank verse, which is unrhymed iambic pentameter. So there's roughly ten syllables per line, right? With the accent on the even syllables, but there's some variations.

[14:54] But it amounts to six lines in all because the first line begins on the seventh syllable, what is a man? And the seventh line ends on the sixth syllable.

[15:13] Now, in this exhortation, Shakespeare will tell you one what reason is by giving us the elements of a definition of reason. Secondly, he'll tell us what it is to use reason, because as we mentioned before, that'll come out in the very definition of reason. And third, he'll give five most powerful reasons why, in general, we should use our reason, or use it more than we do.

[15:45] Incidentally, this exhortation can also serve as introduction to ethics. So Shakespeare kills two birds with one stone. But we're considering it now simply as an exhortation to use reason.

[16:01] So it begins in the seventh syllable of one of the lines. a blank verse there. What is a man? He says, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed, a beast, no more. Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability in godlike reason to fust to grow mouldy in us unused.

[16:45] Now, Shakespeare has first of all in that exhortation, not first in order now, but first to, in our analysis of it, the elements of a definition of reason. And the genus of reason that he gives is it's a capability. Now I take the liberty of shortening the word capability to an ability, which is appropriate. We'll be talking about ability and act later on when we get to the ninth book.

[17:22] But it's ability for what? Because an ability, as we'll see in the ninth book again, an ability is defined by what it's an ability for. And Shakespeare tells us that reason is the ability for large discourse,

[17:41] looking before and what after. So the first thing he tells us is that reason is the ability for discourse. Now the word discourse comes from the Latin word for running,

[18:04] and it names the act of reason, which is like a motion. And as Shakespeare teaches us, or as Ulysses teaches us in *Troilus and *Cressida, in the great speech on fashion: things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs.

[18:29] So, you want somebody's attention? you wave or move, huh? If there's a revolution in some country, you hear about in the news, huh? Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs. And so, reason in motion catches the eye more than anything else.

[18:50] Now, discourse, as Thomas will explain, can mean just going from one thing to another, and reason has the ability to go from one thing to another. But that's not the discourse that really brings out fully what reason is, because to some extent, in a wine tasting, I can go from one wine to another wine to another wine, or in an art museum, I can go from one painting to another painting to look at another painting, right?

[19:24] But the discourse that really separates reason from the eye going from one painting to another painting is knowing or coming to know one thing through knowing another. So, when Shakespeare tells us that reason is the ability for discourse, he's telling us that reason is the ability to know one thing through knowing other things, and that includes the ability to go from one thing to another, right? But he defines it more by discourse in that sense,

[20:07] because you define an ability by the utmost of what it can do. If I can lift a hundred pounds, but the hundred first pound is the straw that breaks my back, you'd say my weightlifting ability is a hundred pounds, not fifty, but that would be understood. Anything was. so that's the first thing that Shakespeare tells us: that reason is the ability to know one thing through knowing another.

[20:38] Of course, the most characteristic discourse of reason is reasoning itself, huh? And the fact that it's named from reason itself shows how characteristic that is of reason. And so, in the later medieval logicians, I should say, discursus sometimes became almost a synonym for reasoning, huh? But actually, it's a little bit broader than reasoning, because reasoning is not the only way you know one thing to another. In reasoning, you know a statement you didn't know.

[21:14] Through two statements at least that you do know And Euclid's doing that all the time in the elements, huh? But in defining you're knowing something through something else, you're knowing what the species is through the genus and what difference is. That's what we're doing right now. We're in a discourse about what, what reason is, right? And we're coming to know what reason is through capability or ability, and through discourse and through the other words we'll examine.

[21:48] Um. Some statements are known through their parts, huh? Like I know, for example, that no odd number is even. Do you know that? Okay. But I know that no odd number is even. Ah, through knowing what an odd number is and knowing what an even number is. Or I know that a whole is more than a part through knowing what a whole is and what a part is, huh?

[22:18] So these are some of the common ways that reason knows one thing through knowing other things. It comes to know the unknown, right? Through things known already.

[22:33] Ah, this is true about calculating, right? When I add, subtract, multiply, or divide, I know or come to know a number through other numbers, huh? So that's the first thing that Shakespeare tells us about what reason is. It's ability to know one thing to know something else.

[22:57] That's important when it comes to study ability, huh? Because ability is not knowable by itself. Ability is only knowable through the act for which it is an ability.

[23:11] And that's why ability is known only by reason, because reason alone knows one thing through another. Reason is the ability for discourse. That's what it means.

[23:27] Now Shakespeare doesn't stop there, though, right? He says reason is the ability for large discourse, huh? And what does that adjective large bring out now about the discourse of which reason is capable?

[23:50] Well, a discourse can be called large for three reasons, huh? We can say a discourse is large because it is about the large, or because its limit is large,

[24:12] or because The discourse itself is large, or perhaps more idiomatically, long. Now, each of these is said in two ways. Let's look at the first way now. A discourse can be called large because it's about the large,

[24:37] and there's two ways you could understand the word large there in those in that phrase about the large. You could say the discourse of reason can cover a large area, and that's because the discourse of reason is about the universal, not just about the singular, and the universal covers a large what area, right? There are some universals, like say number or even odd number, right? That can be said of an infinity of things.

[25:14] When I demonstrate that a triangle has its interior angles equal to right angles, I'm covering all triangles, right? When I say no odd number is even, I'm covering all odd numbers, huh? There's an infinity of them. So reason is capable of a discourse that's about the universal, huh? And even about very universal things, huh? Okay, and that separates reason again from the senses that know only the singular.

[25:49] And you could say that a philosopher's discourse is larger than other men's in this sense. So, for example, in ethics, huh? We talk about all the goods of man, at least in general. Why the medical doctor talks just about health, right? And the carpenter just talks about the good house or chair or something, right? But when Socrates says, you know, that the Athenians are wrong to pursue the goods of the body and exterior goods more than the goods of the soul, he's talking about the distinction of all the goods of man into the goods of the soul, the goods of the body, and exterior goods.

[26:34] Or when he talks about the good is what all want, very universal, right? And in this respect, the discourse of the wise man is the largest of all because he's speaking about what is said of all things. Like we learned in the fourth book of wisdom, that he's going to talk about being as being, right? Whatever is in any way whatsoever, in some way, comes under the concern of the wise man.

[27:08] First attribute of the wise man there, and the premium is that it's a knowledge of all things in some way, right? Not that he knows all things. In particular, like God would know them, but He knows them all, in knowing what is said of all. In some way, He knows them. Now, the other sense in which a discourse can be said to be about the large is taking large now in the sense of great, important.

[27:39] Large, in the sense that's opposed to small, is when we say small talk. What is small talk? It's talk about the small. It's talk about small things, unimportant things, little things, right? Well, reason is capable of a what discourse about great things, important things. A discourse about, say, what is human happiness, right? Or a discourse about the soul, or even a discourse about the whole universe, huh?

[28:17] And even ultimately a discourse about God, huh? So reason is the ability for large what discourse, huh? A discourse that covers a large area, a discourse about what the greatest things, huh?

[28:40] Now we define reason by the ability for large discourse, even though it's more capable of a small discourse. Because you define, as we say, an ability by its utmost, right?

[28:59] The man's weightlifting ability, right? Can lift five hundred pounds, but not a pound more. We'd say he's got what ability to lift five hundred pounds? He can lift a hundred pounds easier than five hundred pounds, right? But to say his ability is ability to lift a hundred pounds would not give you the whole ability with it. When you say he has ability to lift five hundred pounds, that's it, right?

[29:24] Well, if you have a picture out there in the kitchen and says, "Well, this is a quart, quart picture or something," right? Well, you can put less than a quart in there, but that doesn't tell you the full capacity, it does it? Okay. So when you define the capacity or ability of something, you define it by its utmost, huh? Even though it might be more capable of something less, right?

[29:50] How fast can this car go, right? Okay. How fast can you run? Well, we define that ability, right, by the utmost you can do, huh?

[30:02] So that's why Shakespeare defines it in his ability for large discourse. But That tells you not to cut yourself short, right? Okay. Now the second way we said that an ability can be called, discourse can be called large, is that its limit is large, right?

[30:25] And that means the what? The beginning or the end of the thing, right? Now I see even in other authors sometimes I hear people use the phrase sometimes a large induction. What does that mean? Many examples? Yeah, yeah. So you induce something universal from a large number of examples, huh? From many, right? See how they way of speaking. So a large induction is one kind of large discourse.

[31:04] And well, applies to wisdom eventually. But that's one way, right? Now the other way you could call a discourse large from its limit is from its end. Because sometimes from something one and something even simple, you can deduce many what? Consequences, right? Take you know force equals mass times acceleration or some equation, right? How many forces or masses or accelerations can you calculate from that one equation?

[31:48] See? So from one simple equation you can deduce an infinity of consequences, right? And you know how Euclid and people like that, from one premise they'll draw all kinds of what interesting consequences, huh?

[32:07] So reason is capable of coming to see something one that's universal from many things, huh? Or vice versa from something one that's simple but profound, seeing many what consequences, huh? Now that's not easy to do. It's easy to have a short induction or so on. But reason is capable of these things, huh?

[32:46] Okay. Now the third way that a discourse can be called large is because the discourse itself is large. That is to say, long, right? And there's two ways in which you could speak of the discourse as being long. One is When there are many steps in the discourse, right? Okay. Now you know in something like, say, Euclid's Elements, there how you prove one thing by something, and then what you prove you use to prove something else, and this chain gets longer and longer, right?

[33:21] And as we say, a chain is as strong as it's what? Weakest link. Weakest link, huh? So, you know, someone comes to me and say, Berkwist, I've heard about the Pythagorean theorem, and I say, Yeah, what about it? Well, will you show me that? Say, Well, the only proof I know is Proposition forty-seven in Book One of Euclid, and most of these other ones are presupposed. Are you willing to go through all these?

[33:48] Well, I don't know. Say, now, no, as reason is much more capable of a short discourse, right? Just a couple steps or one step, right? Than than forty-seven steps or whatever it is. But that doesn't give you the full power of reason, right? Some of you have gone through all the way to the Pythagorean theorem, right? And even beyond. And so the reason is capable of a long discourse, huh?

[34:19] That's kind of amazing thing to see that, huh? And things you think you could never know, all of a sudden after the long discourse, huh?

[34:29] Now the other way you could speak of a discourse as being long is when it goes between things that are very far apart. And for example, we go in the first proof for the existence of God, we go from motion, which hardly exists, right, all the way to God, who is I am, who am, right? So we go almost an infinite distance, you might say, in that discourse from motion to the unmoved mover.

[35:03] It doesn't mean there's as many steps as there might be in some later theorem geometry, but you go between things that are very what far far apart. huh

[35:16] And Aristotle in the De Anima when he talks about understanding being a suffering and undergoing, right? He's going all the way from getting a pinpoint pricking you to understand it. and that's a long way, huh? From something bad like getting stuck with a pin or a knife or a sword to understanding, a long way, right? Referring to the word undergoing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's word used in English.

[35:46] So reason then is capable of a what, or the ability for large discourse in all six of these senses of of large. So Shakespeare is telling us an awful lot here, huh? As he says elsewhere in Hamlet, brevity is a soul wit. It's in a few words he's telling us six different things there, right? He doesn't stop there, right? What is reason trying to do in its large discourse?

[36:18] Huh? Well, it's trying to understand, right? So he adds the word looking, right, which means trying to see, but to see obviously in the sense of to what understand, right? Notice these words like large and to see or to look are equivocal. But in the case of large, many of these senses are to be understood, right? In the case of looking, just one. Trying to see in the sense of understand, huh?

[36:52] Not see with the eye or with the imagination. But then he says, looking what? Before and after him, and that's the culmination. Now the definition of reason: that reason looks before and after. That reason seeks what order, right?

[37:14] Of course, you will notice that all the great minds see that reason is looking for order. So the scientists always talk about what law or something like law, right? Law and order go together, right? And Heisenberg says in the Gifford Lectures, you know, the first universe is a medley of all kinds of colors and sounds and so on. In order to understand it, we got to find some order, huh?

[37:43] And even our daily speech there. In fact, the father of Othello's bride there is a little disturbed by this whole thing, right? And that nature could so preposterously, er, you know, his daughter would run off at this man Othello. huh? But notice that word pre preposterously. err. Preposterous means what?

[38:11] Before, after. part of the case. Yeah, putting the cart before the horse, right? But preposterous is something very much opposed to what reason, right? And that's a sign, a magnum indicium there praeposterum, that reason consists mainly in seeing the what before and after, right?

[38:36] Now that's kind of scratching the surface here, the definition, but you can see a little bit of how well Shakespeare has defined reason, huh? Now Thomas Aquinas in the Premium to Ethics and even to the whole of practical philosophy.

[38:55] really a marvelous thing. He, in that premium, at the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics, he will distinguish the knowledge of reason by the order that it considers, and so he will distinguish. I don't know if you know that text, but he will distinguish order in comparison to reason.

[39:23] And having distinguished order, a number of orders in comparison to reason, then he will distinguish the knowledge of reason corresponding to those orders. So he says in the proemium to the Nicomachean Ethics, there is an order which reason does not make, but only considers, and that's the order of natural things. Spring comes before summer, summer before fall, right? And then comes winter. At least where I live, that's an order made by what?

[40:01] Nature, right? Huh? So natural philosophy and and later on wisdom or metaphysics, you want to call it that, is considering an order not made by our reason. And then he says, "There is the order made by our reason in its own acts, like when you syllogize and so on, huh? " And then there is the order which reason makes in the acts of our will, in our choices and so on, and consequently our actions.

[40:36] And then there is the order which reason makes in exterior matter, like in the table here, in wood, huh? And the order made by reason in its own acts that's considered in the science of logic, huh? And the order which reason makes in the acts of the will, in ethics and practical philosophy, and the order which reason makes in tables and so on belongs to the so-called mechanical arts or servile arts, huh?

[41:09] So Thomas, to some extent, can divide the knowledge of reason by the order it considers, but why is that an appropriate way of doing it? Well, because reason, as Shakespeare teaches us, looks before and after, and before and after is the basic meaning of what? Order, yeah. Yeah.

[41:34] Yeah. Now Thomas, also in that proemium, he quotes what Aristotle says in the proemium to wisdom at the beginning of the fourteen books of wisdom. Aristotle says in his culminating description of the wise man, the wise man, what? Orders everybody else, okay? The wise man most of all knows order, right? And nobody else orders him. Well, Thomas gives a reason for that. Wisdom is the highest or greatest perfection of reason, and it's proper to reason to know order, right?

[42:19] So, if wisdom is the highest or the greatest perfection of reason, the wise man must most of all know order, right? He must most of all be able to order things, huh? You see what I was saying, huh? You have to know what reason is before you can see what is the greatest perfection of reason, huh? And you have to know that reason is characterized, as the great Shakespeare teaches us, by looking before and after, right?

[42:51] To realize that the highest perfection of reason must involve seeing order most of all, right? Do you see that? I could also say that in most of the senses of large discourse, the discourse of the wise man is the what? Largest of all, right? That's however five. I think of the six senses. It is.

[43:26] First reason we call discourse large is because it's about the universal, right? Well, wisdom is about the most universal. It covers all things in general, huh? As you learned in the beginning of the fourth book of wisdom, it's about being as being, huh? And being is said of everything that is, right? Can there be something that isn't a being?

[43:52] Okay. Can there be a thing that isn't something? So it's the largest discourse of all, right? Is the discourse of the wise man. There's no discourse larger,

[44:08] except perhaps a theologian, but kind of wisdom too. The second sense, right? About the large being about the greatest things, huh? Wisdom is not only about the order of the universe, but it's about God Himself, right? And therefore, it's the largest discourse in that sense.

[44:39] The next two senses of large discourse is where the beginning or the end of the discourse is large, huh? Now, Monsignor Dionne had a very interesting text one time from Albert the Great. Now, Albert the Great was talking about the various parts of philosophy, and he's talking about how some of them depend upon experience. Like natural philosophy depends upon experience of natural things, and political philosophy depends upon a long experience of human things, and so on.

[45:15] But geometry doesn't depend upon experience in that way. So he's making a contrast between the sciences like natural philosophy and political philosophy, and so on, ethics that depend upon long experience, and ones like geometry where you can kind of do in your head, right? You can go unlock yourself in your room and take a pad of paper and and do these things, right? Or if your imagination is good enough, just do it in your head, right?

[45:42] You don't have to go out there and find these things in the world around you or experience them, do you? In fact, in the way you make what you study there in in geometry, huh? You make the equilateral triangle there and so on. And but then he comes to wisdom, huh? Or metaphysics, as they call it sometimes. And he says that's a science that depends upon experience.

[46:04] And let's see, Dion says, no, he doesn't mean an experience of being. That's not what he means. Experience here is taking on a new meaning, Dion tells us.

[46:21] When you speak of experience in natural philosophy, or experience in political philosophy, you mean from many singulars, huh? You're gathering a knowledge of the universal, huh?

[46:39] So from many particulars in the sense of singulars, you're coming to a knowledge of something more general. But the particular sciences that are about something much more particular than being, like natural philosophy and logic and even political philosophy and so on, these are in a way the experience presupposed to wisdom. So I need a foundation in logic. I need a foundation in natural philosophy. I need a foundation in practical philosophy, and so on.

[47:16] And so from those many particular sciences, huh? I'm going to ascend to the most universal science, which is what wisdom, huh? So in one sense, you could say the discourse that the wise man arrives at is the largest from its beginning, because it goes all the way back to these other sciences and gradually mounts to the what most universal, huh?

[47:51] Just give an example here. You know how you learn a little bit in natural philosophy that there's a first mover, right? That there's not a cause before every cause, and so on forever. And then you go to natural, go to ethics, and you learn that there's an end or a purpose, right? That is not a mean to some further end. And then you go to logic, and you realize that there's a genus that doesn't have a genus, and so on, right?

[48:17] But then you get to the second book of wisdom, and you see universally about any kind of cause that this is so, right? You say, wow, wow. So, from these more particular seeings of this or that, you're arriving to a much more universal one, right? So, in one sense, the whole of our knowledge is leading up to what? Wisdom at the end. So, in some sense, the discourse is the largest, right?

[48:43] And then, because the wise man knows the axioms and these most fundamental things that have almost infinite what? Applications. Then his discourse is going to be perhaps the largest in the sense of its limit. The end is the largest. Boethius touches upon some of those things in the De Trinitate when he talks about

[49:10] wisdom proceeding intellectualiter. And as Thomas explains, that means getting something one from many, or from something one getting many. And the. Did that click?

[49:27] It's fine. Sometimes it doesn't. does it by itself It makes a noise. And Tom says, well, the wise man proceeds, understandably, intellectualiter. Most of all, because he most of all sees something one from the many, or something many from the one. And you'll see, I start using the word induction there, in the fifth reading of the ninth book, huh? But you realize that in some sense this is the largest induction of all, the one that leads to wisdom.

[50:05] But vice versa, from these beginnings that are almost what small in size but infinite in their power, he keeps on seeing what consequences, huh? So, in the first four senses of discourse, right? Being called large, perhaps the discourse of the wise man is going to be the largest of all. Now, in the last two,

[50:36] I don't think that the steps that the wise man goes through might be as numerous as the geometer goes through. You go through in all the different books, but in the sense of going from things that are very far apart. Very much so, right? And we're going to go from the act, which is the least actual of all, but most known to us. Motion, huh? All the way to the act, which is most actual.

[51:09] It's purely actual, but least known to us. It will be the first cause, right? So, in terms of going as we're infinite distance, this will be the largest discourse of the human mind, the largest discourse. So, in five of the six senses of large discourse, perhaps the wise man's discourse is the largest of all, right?