Prima Secundae
Lecture 26: Man's Attainment of Beatitude and Its Degrees

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Thank you, God. Thank you, Guardian Angels. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas. Dios, gracias. God, our Enlightenment, Guardian Angels, do the lights of our minds, orden and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor, pray for us. And help us to understand all that you have written. So we're down to Article 8, I guess? Yes. Okay? This is the last one, I guess, in this question, right? It's required. Witherfore, Beatitudes require the society of friends, huh? To the eighth one precedes us. It seems that friends are necessary for Beatitude. Aristotle speaks of the ethics, right? I mean, no one would want to live without friends. For the future Beatitude in Scriptures is frequently designated by the name of Colori. But glory consists in this, that the good of man is brought to the knowledge of many. Therefore, for Beatitude, there's required society of friends, huh? Well, that's a kind of strange argument, in a way. Moreover, Boethius says that there's not a joyful, what? Possession of any good without consortium, right? Without a sharing, yeah. But for Beatitude, there's required dilatatio. That's coming back to the word jokunda there, right? Therefore, also, there's required the society of friends, huh? It's not when you enjoy a joke and you can't tell it to anybody. Run around, find somebody, right? Yeah. My cousin used to say that the history professor there at the College of St. Thomas, he thinks he had his jokes with him in various places, you know, in his notes, you know. So, he's done the same joke for year after year. Year after year. It's okay, you know, if you've got new students, because they don't, you know, if you want somebody else, you kind of repeat yourself, right? It's kind of like the monk. This one Dominican I know, he's quick, funny, and, you know, they say after about a year or so, then he, you know, he ran out of his jokes and then he started telling the same ones over again. Moreover, charity is perfected in Beatitude, huh? But charity, as Thomas himself says, is a kind of friendship. But charity extends to the love of God and neighbor. Therefore, it seems that for Beatitude is required a society of friends, huh? This is actually kind of strange, isn't it? That Thomas usually takes the opposite side of what his objections are, right? What's he going to say to this man here, huh? He had no friends, huh? I don't know. But again, this is what is said in Wisdom, Chapter 7, huh? There came to me, right, with it, maybe, what, divine wisdom, all, what, goods, huh? And wisdom, of course, consists in the contemplation of God. So if all goods come with this, then for Beatitude, nothing other is, what, required, huh? Unless you say friendship's one of those goods that comes with it. The answer should be said that if we speak of the felicity, right, of the present life, as the philosopher says in the Ninth Book of the Ethics, the happy man, right, the fruitful man, needs friends, huh? Not on account of, what, to be useful to him, right, huh? Since he is sufficient to himself, huh? Nor even on account of, what, pleasure, right? Because he has in himself perfect pleasure in the operation of, what, virtue. But on account of good doing, huh? That to wit, he might do good to them, or, and, and looking upon them, right, he might be delighted in what? In doing what good. And that also by them he is aided in doing what? Good, huh? Man needs for doing well, the aid of friends, both in the works of the active life, huh? You're a politician, right? You have an awful lot of friends, huh? As well as in the works of the contemplative life, huh? But if we speak of the perfect Beatitude, which will be in the Fatherland, there is not required to society of friends of necessity, huh, for Beatitude, huh? Because man has the whole fullness of his perfection in God, huh? But adbeniesi, the well-being of Beatitude, that's something that the society of friends does, huh? So I think we mentioned before, you know, we asked the question imitating the master there, Aristotle. Is it necessary to understand the word necessary? If you say yes, then you better understand the word necessary. If you say no, you're going to have to understand the word necessary to show why it's not necessary, right? Well, among the four senses of necessary that Aristotle distinguishes, there is necessary without which something cannot be, right? And something else is necessary to what? Live well, right? Okay. So is food necessary in this life? Yeah, you can't live without food, right? Are Mozart's operas necessary? For many, I say, yeah, yeah, okay. So he's saying here that friendship is what? For Beatitude, it consists essentially in seeing God as he is, right? It's not necessary, right? But for the well-being of it, huh? It does. It seems to be making that distinction there, huh? Uh, whence Augustine, of all people, huh, says in the eighth book on Genesis to the letter that the spiritual preacher, in order that, what? He might be blessed, huh? Is not, what? Except intrinsically aided by the eternity, the truth, and the, what? Charity of the Creator, huh? Extrinsically, however, if he, what? Should be said to be aided, right? Fortase, perhaps, huh, huh? In this only is he aided, right, huh? That they, what? See each other, and they rejoice in their society in, what? God, huh? So are the saints inclined to pray for us down here, huh? I think they are, huh? We call upon them, right? It says in the Mass there, and in the Mass I here, anyway, that the, uh, you know, depend upon them, right, huh? Always. We depend upon the prayers of the church, uh, trumpet, huh? And so they'll rejoice, son. There's rejoicing over one sinner repenting, huh? So rejoicing that we are joining the, what? Society, right? I told you, Thomas' definition there of the kingdom, right, huh? It's the ordered society of those who, what? See God, right, huh? But they rejoice in each other seeing God, right? So what, we rejoice that Thomas sees a God more clearly than we will? Yeah. No jealousy, no envy up there. No jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy, no jealousy I think I've spoken about that, how these two greatest poets there, Homer and Shakespeare, right, huh? They represent this true friendship by likeness to the love of the father for his what? Son, right, huh? I think it's kind of interesting that these two great poets should see that, right? Because wicked as we are, you're bad as you are, do good things for your children, right? But I mean, as bad as we are, I don't think I've really experienced a father being envious of his son if his son is more intelligent than him or he plays the sport that his father played better than the father did, right? But he what? Rejoices that his son is even a better picture or a better batter, you know, that he hits even more hormones than he hits in his heyday, right, huh? But, you know, the reason for this is that a friend is another, what, self, huh? Ophilos esten alles autos, right? Remember that from my Greek book. One of the symbols that says that. Ophilos esten alles autos, huh? A friend's another self, right? And sometimes Shakespeare says a second self, right? Well, it's most natural that the father looks upon his son as a continuation of self, another self. We can hardly be envious of yourself, right, huh? I envy myself understanding Euclid better today than I did last year. So you rejoice in the one you love as another self, right? Just as you rejoice in your own good, right? So you realize how excellent is the vision of God if it doesn't require friendship necessarily, right, huh? You know, there's some bene yes in there, right? To the first therefore it should be said that the glory which is essential to be uttered to is that which man has not before man but before what? God, huh? That's the way Thomas has at the end of the outer otte devotee, doesn't he? He uses the word glory there at the end. Before God, right? In his glory, right? Amen. Okay, now, the second objection here, which is from the great Boethius, huh? Without consortium, right? There's no joy. He says those words of, or that word of Boethius should be understood when in the good which is had there is not, what? Plene, full. It's efficiency, right? I was remarking, you know, how the word plena there, right, is obviously taken from the senses, right? You know, my glass is full, right? Then we carry it over to the spiritual things. So full sufficiency, which in the thing proposed at hand here cannot be said because every sufficiency of good a man has in what? God, huh? I was meeting Thomas in the Summa Contagentiles today and he was quoting there, what God says to Moses, I will show you every good, right? And show himself, right? You will see every good, right? So it is necessary, right? For beatitude that you have friends, right? If you're the only guy in heaven, you'll still be blessed, right? Now, what about the perfection of charity? That was kind of interesting that Thomas says here. To the third, it should be said that the perfection of charity that is essential. Let's put it in a little bit of a translation. The perfection of charity is essential to beatitude as regards the, what? Love of God. Love of God. Not over as regards the love of one's neighbor, no. You've got to be careful if you don't quote this out of context, right? Because you might say, you know, in this life it's sufficient to love God, not to love your neighbor. Don't bother me. And so that, you know, what did the Apostle say there? That a man who says he loves God but doesn't love his neighbor, he's a liar, right? So, yeah, watch out this. This could be taken out of context, huh? They were giving a thing on TV the other day there, I guess. Some people going around and saying that Obama is a Muslim, right? And they give this quote from his own words, right, huh? And then he gave the full text. Obviously, he's not saying he's a Muslim, right? He says he's a Christian, you know? You know, at least what he's saying. And so they just couldn't, you know, by itself, you know? Whence if there was only one soul enjoying what? God. It would be, what, blessed, right, huh? Not having a, what, neighbor, proximate, one we could love, right? So we're not studying charity here, but in heaven there's a, can you have charity for the damned souls or for the demons, huh? Can you love the devil by charity? No, yeah. So everybody else was lost, right, huh? You'd have no charity for them, they're lost, right? But you would still have, what's most essential, the love of God, right, huh? But supposing that one does have a neighbor, right, huh? There follows the love of him, I guess, right? From the perfect love of what? God, huh? Whence, as it were, concomitante, right? Not as being at the very essence of beatitude, right? Friendship has itself to, what, perfect beatitude, huh? Article there of Thomas, huh? And Augustine seems to be the same, you know? So when Augustine and Thomas agree, I just... Okay, sir. Okay, now, we come to another question here, question five, right, huh? Now, let's just recall a bit the way he divided the text here, right? Look at the premium at the beginning of question one. Where first we're not to consider about the last end of human life, and then about those things through which man is able to arrive at this end, or to depart from it or deviate from it. For from the end is necessary to take the reasons of those things which are ordered to the end. And because the last end of human life is laid down to be beatitude, it is necessary first to consider about the last end in general, and secondly, about what? Beatitude itself. So question one was about the last end of man, right? Kind of general way. And then beatitude started to be considered in chapter in question two. Now look at the premium in what? Yeah. Then we're not to consider about beatitude, huh? And first, about those things in which it is, right? That was question two. Secondly, what it is, and that was question three and what? Four, right? Because question three was a very, what is beatitude, right? And then question four was kind of things falling upon that. Is this and that, or this or that required for beatitude, right? And then the third part was question, what, five, huh? In what way we're able to, what? Yeah. In general, right? But then in starting question six, you'll go into great detail about that, right? But not as much as in the secundi secundi, not as much as in Alphonsus. That's right. Yeah. When Sonia Dianus would say, you know, that in the summa, even the secundi secundi, you've got the common principles of ethics, right? But you've got to go to Alphonsus for the proper principles, right? Down to the, you know, particular, right? So the perfection there would be down to, in the practical there, down to the particular, right? Okay, so let's go to question five now. Then we're not to consider about the attaining, I guess, of beatitude, huh? About the getting of it. You wish. Okay. About this fourth, eight things are what? Asked, right? First, whether man is able to, what? Obtain or arrive at beatitude, huh? Secondly, whether one man is able to be, what? More of us. Less than another, right, huh? I was thinking about that in the Summa Cane Gentiles this morning. And Thomas Pitchie comes down to these two texts, you know, one, in my father's house there are many mansions. And that's inequality of beatitude, right? But then in the parable about, what, everybody gets paid the same thing, everybody's beatitude is in the same thing, seeing God. But one person sees it more clearly than another. And that's a different, what, mansion, huh? So, ask his reasons for that. Some people have a front row seat, and some people have a little further away. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No glasses. I'll be glad to be on the porch. Take the lowest seat, and maybe he'll say, a couple more seats. Come on, I'm going to take the big seats. Think, oh, there's time. My father. Third, whether someone is able to be blessed in this life. Vanity Fair there, huh? For who in this life ever gets what he wants? Or having gotten it, is satisfied. That's kind of the last motto of the whole. Vanity Fair by factories now. That's now why I guess it is. A paraphrase of that was, unlike the source, was, I read this a number of years ago, to share, you know. She said, you never get what you want, you just get what you get. That's easy. Fourth, whether Beatitude, when it's had, is able to be what? Lost. Could not be had that one. Five, whether man, through his natural powers, I guess, is able to acquire Beatitude, and the answer is no. Six, whether man can achieve Beatitude through the action of some higher creature. Well, I could be helped a little bit, but he can't get Beatitude through the battle. No creature can make me blessed. Seven, whether they're required, but some doings of man, in order that man might achieve Beatitude from God. And we wonder sometimes, you know, why didn't God just create all of us blessed? That was all about it. And we never sinned, because we used to sing out. It's something against, you know, the way in which man is, by nature, to achieve his end, right? No. By what he does, huh? Kind of contrary to the nature of man. Yeah. That's the way God's blessed, right? God didn't do anything to deserve his Beatitude. Boy, I'm with a silver spoon right now. Yeah. Golden spoon, yeah. Golden spoon. Flat one year. I was looking at, thinking about these texts about Beatitude in there. The three ones that they quote is, one I guess is in, I don't know, in Luke, I think, but one of the Gospels, you know, where we'll sit at the table and eat the same thing, right? That's a kind of metaphoric way of speaking, that we will, what? Have the same life that God himself has, huh? And God's life consists primarily in contemplating himself, right? And loving himself. And so we're going to have the same food, right? And then you have in St. Paul, in, was it 1 Corinthians 13, chapter, I think it is, 12th verse, where he speaks of it, and now we're seeing in a mirror darkly, right? But then we'll see him face to face, and Thomas, you know, says that's referring to the vision, right? And then finally you have the ones in 1st Epistle, John, chapter 3, verse 2, where we'll be like him, because we'll see him as he is. So as you go from those three ones, the first one is more metaphorical than the second one, right? But face to face still is a little bit metaphoric, because God doesn't have a face, and we won't see it with this face, you know, but, you know? But the meaning of that, I see the whole context there with the mirror, right? You would not be seeing God in something else, but God in himself, right? And that's what it means to see him face to face, but still expressed a bit metaphorically, right? So now I see you, and I see you in yourself, but if I have a mirror over here, I'm seeing you not in yourself, but in the mirror, right? And in the mirror, of course, God is going to be perfect, too. But then the last one, you see him as he is, there doesn't seem to be any metaphorical way of speaking there, you know? So it's kind of interesting the way the three texts come up, the orders that come up, right? The first one is most proportioned to us, right? Sitting down eating the same thing, you know? And, you know, you read this in the Old Testament sometimes, you know, where you are taken in by the king, and you will sit at his table, and you eat from his table or from his kitchen, right? That's going to be the best food around, right? That's good, right? And so it's very proportioned to us, huh? And face-to-face is still more proportioned to us in the way of speaking, you know, than the last way. It's kind of interesting the way those three are ordered in Scripture there. If you want to explain what it was, you might follow that same order that Scripture has. Beautiful, beautiful order. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. And the eighth thing, whether every man desires, huh? Beatitude, huh? It's kind of interesting, the last article, too. That'd be the first one he should. Whether man can achieve Beatitude or write it Beatitude. To the first, therefore, one proceeds thus. It seems that man is not able to, what? Obtain Beatitude, huh? For just as the reasonable nature is above the sensible nature, so the intellectual nature is above the, what? Rational. As is clear through Dionysius in the book about the divine names in many places, huh? But the brute animals, huh? But the brute animals, which have only the sensible nature, right? Cannot arrive at the end of the rational nature. Therefore, neither can man, who is of a rational nature, or reasonable nature, not for the same reason, or by analogy there, be able to arrive at the end of the, what? Intellectual nature, which is Beatitude, right? And I just stopped at a moment and recall this little bit about naming, just so we know what it is. Now, we have an ability called reason, right? And sometimes this ability called reason is called understanding, right? So, John Locke is in the essay of human understanding, right? Well, it's about reason, right? But it's also called understanding. Now, what do the angels have? Well, they call not reason, because reason is the ability for discourse, right? And the knowledge of the angels is not discursive, right? But they understand things right away, right? So we call their thing understanding, right? And that's how Shakespeare defined reason, you know, as looking, you know? It doesn't say necessarily understanding, but you're trying to see. You're trying to understand, right? And we've come to understand a bit, you know? The discourse, right? And so, the word understanding, then, is sometimes set of reason, and sometimes it's divided heads to reason, right? So, what way of being equivocal by reason is this? Why does the ability of the angel to understand, right? Why does that keep the name understanding? What our ability to understand is given a new name? Let's see. Let's see. This is an example of what way of a name becoming equivocal by reason. Something added? Yes. Something significant added. Meaning our discourse, the ability of discourse or something? Well, yeah. But there's two ways, first of all, in which a name can become equivocal, instead of one of two things which is said, right? The one that keeps the name, right? And that will be eventually one way, right? But is that what's going on here? Or does one of them have fully the common meaning, right? And the other has imperfect plan. And Thomas Hobbes quotes, who is it, Isaiah, you know, some medieval writer there, you know, who speaks of, this is intellectus, umbratus, you know, overshadowed, kind of other thing. Imperfect, right, huh? Okay. So because it's imperfect, right, huh? Then it gets the, what, new name. The one that has this fully, right? Okay. It's a little bit like, for example, where the cat divided into the kitten and the cat. And the cat keeps the common name because he has fully what the cat is, right? And the same way that you say man, you divide man into the man and the boy, right? Now, when they divide, say, epistemic, or sciencia in Latin, into sciencia and sapiencia, right? Well, then, sapiencia gets the new name because it adds something, not because it's less sciencia than the geometry or, you know, natural philosophy, but because sciencia means, you know, certain knowledge of things to their causes. But this is to the very first causes of all things, so this is an excellence that seems to deserve a, what, its own name, right? So, is this like this or like this, you know? It seems to be like these two, right? Because you say, what does the problem mean with understanding it? The ability to understand, right? What does man have that ability to understand? You know, this ethics, this journal, I don't know if you heard, you know, before you came in. The journal of animal ethics, right? Then, is to say, we cannot call animals beasts anymore, right? This is an insult to them, right? And we can't use things like sly as a fox and, you know, pig out and so on, you know, because this isn't giving us a bad attitude towards these things, you know? It's hate speech, you know, to fly down. So, yeah, so man doesn't have much ability to understand, right? And so, you know, we give him a new name and call it reason, right, huh? Man has the ability to reason, but he may be reasoning very badly. And he hardly gets anything out of it, his reasoning, right? Just a bit of understanding, right? And I would ask my students, you know, about the Pythagorean theorem, and they can't even state the theorem, you know? Plus x squared, plus y squared, because, you see, you know? But they can't even state what the thing is, let alone, what, prove it, right? So I don't really understand it very much, right? We were talking to a guy who was working for a gubernatorial candidate in the state, you know, and he was all over the state, you know, and he said, people don't know at all what the candidate stands for, you know? And sometimes they're supporting the candidate who's the opposite of what they really want, you know? And so he just talks, England's all over the state, you know, and he said, now people go in and kind of elect their people. How could the Germans, this greatly intelligent thing, how could they vote for Hitler, you know? How could we vote for a puppy? That's what Dr. Lyon said about one of his relatives was in Austin as a child when Hitler became power, and she said there's something curiously like that when it was euphoria, all about it. She said it was similar, similar experience. You know, Churchill says, in democracy, he says, the worst form of government except for all the rest. Okay. So, it seems then that man is not able to, what, obtain beatitude. And the first argument there is saying that, what, you've got the sensible nature, right, and the reasonable nature, and then the understanding nature, and the sensible nature can't get up to the reasonable level, despite this journal, and therefore, the next one couldn't get up to, what, the next, right? Thank you. Thank you. Two is to three is three is to four, and two can't get up to three, and three can't get up to four, right? Moreover, beatitude, true beatitude, second objection here, true beatitude consists in the vision of God who is pure, what? Truth. But to man, it's connatural that he look upon truth in material things. Whence he understands the understandable forms in the images, in the phantasms, to use the Greek word for images, as Aristotle says in the third book about the soul. Therefore he cannot arrive at, what? Beatitude, huh? So what Aristotle teaches there is that the reason's own object is the what it is of something sensed or imagined, a natural thing or a mathematical thing. Moreover, beatitude consists in the obtaining of the highest good, right? But one cannot arrive at the highest unless he goes through all the media. Since, therefore, between God and human nature, in the middle is the angelic nature, which man cannot transcend, it seems then that he cannot, what? Obtain beatitude, huh? He can't get up to the middle. He can't be angelic, huh? My son, Marcus, a little boy, he says, what can we be born knowing all that we need to know? I said, you want to be an angel. So we can't get up to that level, right? How can we get up to the level of God? Against all this is what is said in the 93rd Psalm. Blessed the man whom you instruct, right? Lord. It's a nice, nice little, by the time I said all the Psalms memorized, huh? The answer should be said that beatitude names the obtaining of the perfect, what? Good, huh? Whoever is capable of the perfect good is able to arrive at beatitude, huh? That seems to be a result, right? Now, that man is capable of the perfect good appears from this because his, what, understanding is able to, what, grasp the universal and perfect good, huh? And his will to, what, desire it, huh? And so even when the poet says, or the novelist says, who in this life forgets what he wants, you're having God and you're satisfied, huh? It's kind of a witness, though, that man is desiring a perfect good, right, huh? And he has some notion of a perfect good, huh? It's kind of interesting when Plato, you know, or Socrates in the dialogues there, he argues, you know, sometimes very simply, he argues that, how do you get the idea of equality, say, you know? He said, well, aren't all these pages, what, equal, you know? He said, well, if you examine this with your microscope or something, would you see that these pages are in fact equal? No, they're much closer than, say, this in my briefcase, right? But they're still not really equal, are they? Well, how can you say that, get your idea of equality from things that are not equal, but which you judge to be, what, not equal? Well, then Socrates gives a very simple comparison, beautiful, beautiful. He says, suppose you'd never seen a man, right? And then somebody shows you a portrait of this man. Could you say, that's a portrait of so-and-so? Or could you say, you know, that that's not exactly what he was, his nose was longer or shorter than that, or his eyes were brown instead of blue or something, right? Could you say those things? But if you already had knowledge of this man, right, somewhere else, and then someone, you know, comes and shows you a portrait, right, then you can make some judgment as to how close it was. My favorite example is that of when Lafayette came back to the United States, you know, after Washington had died, right? But there are all kinds of statues of Washington and things, and he'd see these things and say, that's not exactly the way he was, you know? But then he saw, I guess, that one statue down in Virginia, you know, it was close, and he said, ah, that's a man, you know? Well, but how can you make that judgment unless you had a knowledge of Washington not derived from these things that are imperfect, like the citizen of Washington, huh? Okay, so he takes the example there of the equality, right? That the things in this life are not really equal, and so how do we make the judgment that they approach equality but fall short of it unless we have the knowledge of equality not derived from these things, right? Well, couldn't the same thing be said about happiness, huh? That, you know, it's because someone is being happy or someone else is being miserable, right, huh? But we judge this happiness that even those we call happy to be in some way imperfect, right? Like the fact we're saying, right? Well, how could we make such judgment unless we had some apprehension of what happiness, perfect happiness, true happiness, right, would be, right, huh? If we judge no one is truly happy, right? Though some, you know, have some likeness to it, right? Then we must have some knowledge of true happiness, right? So Thomas is kind of pointing to this, right? And therefore man is able to, what? To achieve beatitude, right? This appears, the same thing appears from this, that man is capable of the vision of the divine substance or essence, right? As has been had in the, what, first part, in which vision we say consists the perfect beatitude of man. Because, as Thomas explains, one can only see God as he is if God is not only what he sees, but that by which he sees God, that he be the form by which my mind is, what, informed, to see God, right? So that God is joined to our mind as he has had by which we see him, right? As well as what we see. It's interesting. Terribly, terribly profound, huh? So you notice this comparison that, you know, that they compare this to marriage, right, huh? You know? I've espoused you in faith, huh? In the prophecy of Osea, I guess it is, Osea. So that, kind of, the division is kind of the consummation of this marriage, you know, speaking metaphorically. And so, instead of being two in one flesh, you have two in one mind, so to speak, right? Because God is joined to your mind as that by which you see him. Now, the first part of the thing here is, what, showing that man is, what, naturally ordered to, what, wanting this beatitude, right? So that the natural desire cannot be in vain, huh? The second part is alluding to other places where he talks about how a man is capable of, what, seeing God as he is, huh? Now, you see the I'm always quoted there from Plato there. Likeness is a slippery thing, huh? And when you see two things as being like, you may exaggerate their likeness, huh? Okay. Especially when you have a likeness of, what, ratios, huh? Proportions. So the proportion was that the, what, sensible nature is to the reasonable nature as the reasonable nature is to the, what, like, two is to four as four is to eight, right? Well, it's not that exact, right? Now Thomas brings out the difference, huh? Now I remember, you know, when I was studying the four tools of dialectic, the fourth tool of dialectic is the tool of likeness, and the third tool of dialectic is the tool of, what, difference. And what's special in the fourth tool of dialectic is seeing the likeness of things that are far apart and therefore seeing a likeness that is proportional. And so I said to Monsignor, I said, maybe he puts the tool of difference before the tool of likeness because the tool of likeness is dangerous if you don't see the, what, difference, right? Okay. And so you can say, you know, that man is somewhere between the animal and the angel, right? He's kind of on the horizon in the material world and the spiritual world, right? And that makes some sense, right? But maybe there's some difference there too, right? But the two ratios, right? It's as I was saying, you know, that even in the most exact ratios, when you say that, you see, two is to three is four is to six. Well, two and, that's true, I guess. But exactly how are they alike, right? Because two and three are, what, prime numbers and four and six are what? Yeah. And four and six are both even and two and three are both even, you know? So there's differences, right? So exactly in what does the likeness consist? Well, most of my students can't say what the likeness consists. But probably the best way of saying it is that two is the same parts of three that four is of what? Six, right? Okay. So when Aristotle gives the fourth tool, he says, you know, the consideration of likeness, right? Rather than just seeing the likeness. When he says difference, it's seeing the difference, right? But, you know, it's like you have to consider, okay, they're alike, but exactly what way are they alike, right? So, you know, four and six are not the ratio of two prime numbers, not the ratio of an even number to an odd number. Well, you know, it can be considered a bit, you know, and it's exactly where are they alike. So in another way, the rational nature exceeds the sensitive, right? And in another way, the intellectual nature exceeds the what? Rational. For the rational nature, the reasonable nature, right? Exceeds the sensing nature as regards the object of knowledge. Because the sense in no way is able to know the what? Universal. Of which reason is knowing. But the intellectual or understanding nature exceeds the reasonable one as regards the way of knowing the same, what? Understandable truth, right? Now, what's the difference? For the understanding nature, the angelic nature, stopped him at once. We used to love that word Thomas describing the human mind, you know. It precedes paulatum. Which we tell in English kind of bit by bit, the truth, right? Not stopped him at once, right? For the understanding nature, stopped him at once. Grasps the truth, right? To which the reasonable nature through the, what? Investigation or reason arise. And that's what is meant by discourse, right? As is clear for those things which are said in the first and in Shakespeare's agitation, right? If only Thomas had known Shakespeare, right? He does quote Terence, you know, in some of the other poets, huh? It's an ethical one. What a poet. Yeah. But Shakespeare, yeah. Can I show you the little thing on Shakespeare's ethics that I brought together, the text of Shakespeare? And therefore, for this, that the, what? Yeah. And then by grasp or understand, reason arise through a certain, what? Motion. Of course, the word discourse comes from the idea of running from one thing to another, right? Sometimes I've seen Thomas say, you know, intelligere hominis, right? Yes, per monomotus, right? The understanding of man is by way of motion, right? You have to go from one thing to another and see one thing to another, right? Then we come to understand a little bit, right? Whence the reasonable nature is able to achieve beatitude, which is the perfection of the understanding nature, but nevertheless in another way than the, what? Angels, huh? For the angels achieve it at once after the beginning, right? Of their condition, right? But men, through time, arrive at it, huh? Our style speaks of man as the animal that has a sense of time. And your life is spread out in time, right, huh? That's why you're hardly alive, because most of the time is the past, and the rest of your life is in the future, right? But how much of your life is here now, right, huh? You know, we're almost dead, you might say, you know. That's the way I feel, huh? Well, that's the way you look sometimes, too. It spends a lot. But the sensing nature, right, in no way is able to arrive at the sin, right? Not even by discourse, huh? Not even by the efforts of the contributors to the Journal of Animal Ethics, right? They esteemed. They probably made a mistake because of likeness. Yeah, yeah. They just, you know, they just didn't see what they did. They just write a letter to the editor, probably. But it was like the same thing. I never think of that. And then you have this other group, you know, that thinks that the computer, right, is going to become more intelligent than man, and they give you various estimates as down the years it'll be. I told you I saw one time, Charlie Rose, you know, interviews these guys and so on, and he had this computer expert who I was, and he's actually telling, you know, by what year the computer would overtake the human mind, right, and go beyond it. He's very polite to that, so I guess they're always able to come on, you know. So between those people and the animal ethics people, I mean, we've got a wonderful... I mean, if this is the general run of the crowd, it shouldn't be hard for us to take over the world. It shouldn't be hard. I don't think so. I think there's more movies about computers taking over the world than dogs. Well, there was a plant of the eggs. That's what he's waiting for. There was a plant of the eggs. For animal farming. There was a fly, there was a fly, there was a fly, there was a fly, there was a fly. Well, they could have. Well, okay, to the second it should be said, that to man, in the, what, according to the status of the present life, supernatural is the way of knowing truth, understand truth through images, right? As long as the soul is joined to the body, it's naturally turned towards the images. But after the start of this life, it has another way of knowing that's supernatural, said in the first. So when my soul leaves my body, it understands itself, through itself, right? Quite a transition. Quite a transition. It is, yeah. I'm going to leave the material world and go to the immaterial world. And if I ever get back to the material world, I'll be entirely dominated by my immaterial side, huh? So we know a little bit the way the angels know, right? The lowest of the angels. I was sitting in the 10th pew there in church there, in daily mass there, so. And the 9th pews, yeah, yeah. What about not getting up to the angelic nature? To the third, it should be said that man is not able to transcend the angels, what, by the great of nature, right? That naturally he be, what, spirit to them, right? He is, however, able to transcend them through the operation of the understanding. When he understands something to be above the angels, right, that man that beatifies or makes blessed man, and when he perfectly, what, achieves this, he will be perfectly, what, blessed, huh? A little break here.