Prima Secundae
Lecture 90: Bodily vs. Spiritual Pleasures: Article 5, Question 31

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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, strengthen the lights of our minds, order the room in our images, and arouse us to consider more correct. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor. Pray for us. Help us to understand all that you have written. Father, Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Well, Article 5 here in Question 31. We're on the pleasure here, the emotional pleasure. I just mentioned something, I was reading the, rereading the Prima Pars there, right? And the question on the will of God, right? And of course, one of the objections is, well, the will is a appetitive power, right? Right, huh? But appetitive comes from the word for desire or want, right? Well, there's no desire or wanting in God, therefore there's no, what? Will in God. Will in God, right, huh? And it's interesting, huh? Because, you know, we talked before in here about how the appetitive powers are named from one act of the appetitive powers. The one which to us is most, what, known, huh? Hunger and thirst, right? Wanting, right? And of course, the English word want is beautiful because it has not only the sense of desire, but the sense of lacking, right, huh? So we say, you know, about the salad dressing, you know, it wants something, right? Or the sauce, it wants something, you know, and you've got to figure out what, but you've got to add to it, right, huh? So there can't be any wanting in God, right? Because then he would, what? Lack. That'd be for something he lacks, right, huh? And so therefore, there's no appetitive power, and since the will is an appetitive power, there's no will, right? Well, Thomas admits, of course, in the reply, you know, there's an aim from that, right? But there are other acts, and two of them we've studied here, love or liking, and then, what, joy or pleasure, right, huh? And so just those acts are found in God, but not, what? The middle one, right, huh? Like I'm thinking, well, if heaven is partaking the life of God, you won't want anything there, right? Because there's no wanting in God, right? That's the life it is, there's no wanting, huh? It's kind of strange for us, right, because we all want something we don't have, and want some more of this or that, right? So, I like an objection like that, because it brings you back to the way the thing is named, huh, right? The scripture says that God desires it all in the same, he desires it all in the same, he desires it all in the same, he desires it all in the same, he desires it all in the same. Is that the metaphor, yeah? Yeah, well, not only that, but is that the bridge, is that the echo? Well, notice what he adds there, and comes to the knowledge of the truth, doesn't it? In that same passage, right? Yeah. Didn't say to love, but to come to the knowledge of the truth, right? Because you've got to have love, you won't get there to the vision of the love. So love is not what you're seeking, but the vision. But it will be given only to those who love God, huh? Okay, we're up to Article 5 here, huh? To the 5th, oh, by the way, last night we were reading these physical refutations of our style with my students there, and some of them had the English text there, you know, and I had the logo, too, you know, and so on. Some of the translations are really, yeah, yeah, but that's a common thing, you know. I think one of the logo editions, you know, I managed to actually translate one of the texts in our style, the exact opposite of the meaning of the degree. Wow. I know I once had a, somebody gave a dissertation, I was looking over, they'd already submitted it, it's been great, they got the degree and everything, and I was looking through it, and she was citing a passage in St. Thomas, I don't remember it now. Well, in support of a certain position, but the translation was, they put in a negative, but not. And I thought, that's exactly the opposite of what she wants it to say. And then I went and looked in the Latin, and I didn't have the negative, because at that time I didn't know enough Latin, and I asked Father Lyme, could this ever be translated as the, so if there's something I don't understand, but no, the translation was just wrong, they put in a negative, and it wasn't in it. I was reading the Navari text, and it had Ab, and I said, that shouldn't be Ab, it should be Ad, you know. So I went to Mary Eddie, Mary Eddie had Ad, you know, something. Yeah, it's very common. But, okay. That's an interesting question now, huh? I see that you guys have given up here now. Well, the fifth one goes forward thus. It seems that bodily pleasures, and sensible pleasures, right, are greater than understandable spiritual pleasures, huh? For all seek some pleasure, according to the philosopher, which means Aristotle, in the 10th book of the Nicomachean Ethics, huh? So the 10th book he considers pleasure, right? That's so early or two, for other reasons, but more people follow sensible pleasures, right, than the understandable spiritual pleasures, huh? Therefore, the bodily pleasures are greater, right? Moreover, the magnitude of the cause is known from the effect, but bodily pleasures have more potent effects, huh? For they, what? Change the, what? Body, right, huh? And some they make insane, right, huh? As is said in the 7th book of the Ethics, huh? Therefore, bodily pleasures are, what? Stronger, huh? Moreover, it's necessary to temper and refrain bodily pleasures, huh? On account of their, what? Vehemence, huh? Remember, Mark used to be standing and joking between us, you know, about these wonderful theorems in Euclid, you know? The pleasure is so great to understand these things. We've got to, you know, restrain the vehemence of pleasure, you know? Just such, such delightfulness, huh? But it's not necessary to refrain, what? Spiritual pleasures, huh? Therefore, bodily pleasures are greater, right? They need to be. But against this is what is said in Psalm 118. How sweet to, what? Her throats, I guess, are your words, huh? Loquitua. Above, what? Honey to my, what? Mouth. That's a bodily pleasure, right? Kind of fun to see the stories in the paper there about the bears breaking into these little cabins, you know, and eating all the honey and all the jam and stuff, you know? Got a real sweet tooth, you know? And the philosopher says in the Tenth Book of the Ethics that the greatest pleasure is that which is according to the operation of, what? Wisdom, huh? What's Thomas going to say about this, huh? I answer it should be said, this has been said, pleasure arises from the joining of something, what? Suitable, which is sensed or what? Known, huh? In the works, however, of the soul, and especially of the, what? Sensing soul and the understanding soul. This ought to be considered, that since they do not go forth into exterior matter, right? Like making a chair or something, right? Like for dinner. But they are acts or perfections of the one, what? Acting, right? As to understand, to sense, and to will, and other things of this sort, huh? So is it more a perfection of me to listen to the music of Mozart than to make a chair? Because making a chair is a perfecting of the, what? Chair. Chair. Why the operation that remains within me and doesn't go into exterior matter, like hearing the music of Mozart, that's a perfection of me. So I should sit around listening to Mozart and not do anything. Well, at least don't make any change. Don't make dinner. For the actions. Don't make any change. Don't make any change. which go forth into outside matter, are more the, what, actions and perfections of the matter that has been changed, right? For motion, as Terztauf says, is the act of the movable thing from the, what, mover, right? So motion is in the moved, not in the mover, except for action is. Thus, therefore, the four set actions of the sensing and understanding soul, these are a certain good of the one, what, acting, huh? And they are also known by the sense or by the, what, understanding, right? Hence also from them, from the acting, that's right, there arises pleasure, and not only from their, what, objects. If, therefore, we compare understandable pleasures to the sensible pleasures, according as we delight in the actions themselves. He's adopted my word there, right? Axial, rather than operatio. That is to say, in the knowledge of the sense or in the knowledge of the understanding, there is no doubt that much greater are the understandable pleasures than the, what, sensible pleasures, huh? For much more does a man delight about this that he knows something and understanding it, right? Than about this that he knows something by, what, sense again, huh? I'd come to Kosserich, you know, listening to Mozart, I'd be babbling about what Mozart's music is representing, and Kosserich would say, you'd think it has more meaning than it does. But I was thinking, you know, some understanding, right? Because the intellectual knowledge is what? More perfect. More perfect, huh? And it's also more known because the understanding more reflects upon its own act than the sense. So in Shakespeare's education to use reason, huh? We learn what reason is and what it is to use reason, huh? In a way, the senses don't know what it is to use the senses. There's also, what? You can say intellectual knowledge is more, what, loved, huh? For there is no one who would not rather lose his bodily sight than his intellectual sight, huh? In that way, in which beasts of these stupid lack it, right, huh? Just as Augustine himself says, the great Augustine here, in the book on the city of God, huh? So would you rather go blind or go mad? Would you rather go blind or go mad, right? And Shakespeare kind of touches upon that in what, King Lear, right, huh? where the man's eyes are put out, right, in the scene there, and he was blind and didn't know what the situation was before and how he's starting to understand, right? But in which more fear, going mad, huh? Alzheimer or something like that coming up, you know? Didn't go blind? He's tough. I'll go blind, but, you know? So Lear's a faith. He's going mad. He's going to lose his mind, right? Comparison, comparing it to, like you might remember something 20 or 40 years ago when you learned it in the joy and you still can enjoy having learned something. I doubt you have, you might have a recollection of a really, really special million in it 20 or 30 years ago, but probably you're not rejoicing over it anymore. It's gone. But you can still enjoy it. Yeah. It's good that you learned something. Now, but if we compare understandable pleasures, spiritual understandable pleasures, to the bodily sensible pleasures, right, huh? Thus, as such, a kundum se, right? And speaking, what? Simply, right? Those are almost synonyms, a kundum se and some ichite, right? But a kundum se is more synonym with per se, right? To itself as such. And simply speaking, spiritual pleasures are, what? Greater, right? And this appears by three things which are required for pleasure. To wit, the good that is, what? Joined to or joined with. And that to which it is joined, right? And then the, what? The joining itself, right? Now, the spiritual good is both, what? Greater than the bodily good and it is more, what? Loved, huh? A sign of which is that men, even from the, what? Greatest bodily pleasures abstain, that they might not lose honor, which is a understandable good. Here's the example, right? Because it's something, you know, less than the highest understandable goods, huh? Likewise, the part to which it is joined, right? The intellectual part, the understanding part, is much, what? More noble, right? And knows more than the sensitive part, huh? What's the object of the understanding part? What's the fundamental object, though? Hmm? What it is is something, right? Okay. And the senses don't know what a thing is. Even the eye might recognize a square, but doesn't even know what a square is. So it's margis cognoscitiva. The main thing to know about a thing is what it is. They were talking about the debate, I was like, what was that? What was that? Because their candidate did so poorly, right? What was that? And then the very joining itself is more, what? Intima, right? More intimate, huh? More inward, right? And more perfect and more, what? Firm, huh? It's more intimate because the sense stops, right? Around the exterior accidents of the thing, right? So it's because our knowledge starts with the senses that we have a kind of outward knowledge of things at first, huh? So you know another person in an outward way first, right? And as you talk to them and in the moment of truth you see what they really are, right? What's it? All's well that ends well, huh? There's a character called Paroles, which I guess comes in the French for words, right? And he's always talking about how brave he is and this sort of stuff. So the moment of truth comes up for him, you know, later on, right? He's completely disgraced, right? So we know things in an outward way first, huh? And that's why we think about something before we understand it. And of course, in Latin, huh, what's the etymology of the word intellectus or intelligere? To read within, right? Okay? We use the word sometimes in English, the word insight, right? To see within, right? So it's more intimate, huh? The way in which you are, what? Knowing the object when you have insight, huh? And therefore, the union is going to be greater, right? So as such, the pleasure is going to be greater. More intimate, he says, because the sense stops around the exterior accidents of the thing, huh? We use that word, outward is in English almost a synonym for what? Sensible. When I was studying the definition of sacrament in the Baltimore Catechism, which they still used in my day, such as how old I am, the definition was an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace. What did outward mean? Sensible, yeah. What's interesting on the outward is kind of like a synonym there for sensible, right? But the understanding as the name itself indicates the etymology. a synonym. It's kind of like It penetrates, right, as far as the very nature or essence of the thing, what it is. For the object of the understanding is what it is. So the first act of reason is called grasping what something is. The first thing you do in geometry is grasp what a point is and what a line is and what a square is and what a circle is and so on. It is more perfect because to the joining of the sensible to the sense is joined, what? Motion, which is an imperfect act, right? Even the scene of Mozart, right? It involves emotion, right? And it's an imperfect act. Whence, as you said earlier, sensible pleasures are not, what? All at once, right? Totesimo, right? But in them, something passes and something is expected for a consummation, right? As is clear in the pleasures of, what? Food and venereal. But the understandable pleasures are without, what? Motion. Whence, such pleasures are totesimo. All at once, huh? So, you ever see the Greek word there that they translate by scienzi and latin, but the word scienzi and latin doesn't have the etymology of the Greek word. Episteme, right? Episteme means what? Coming to a halt or a stop, right? So when you come to understand something, right, your mind comes to rest. The way it says, reasoning, right, is to understanding, like motion is to, what? Rest. And as you look at the word in English, huh? Understanding, right, comes in the word stand. By reasoning means a kind of movement of reason, like the word discourse in Shakespeare's definition, right? But, you know, Shakespeare goes on to say that reason is the ability for a large discourse, but it's looking, right? It's trying to see, trying to understand, right? And when it comes to understand, then it comes to a kind of rest, huh? And just contemplates the thing, right? Why the sensual pleasure is tied up with the emotion, right, huh? And it is more, what, firm, right, huh? Because the body pleasures are corruptible, right? And they quickly, what? Rest. Yeah. But the spiritual ones are, what, incorruptible, right? Mark says, you know, the first beer tastes better than the second beer. And actually, he says, it doesn't need to be tasted good, it's the first sip of beer. The rest of it is. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. When you understand these things more, you have more, what, wonder, more pleasure, right, huh? I mentioned how, you know, when you were doing the, it was the fourth book of the Physics of Aristotle, you know, DeConnick. He had taught that since the 1930s, right? So I'm up there in the late 50s. And he comes down the hallway and he stops in front of me, you know, and he says, Isn't this wonderful, he said. You know, you get more wonder in the light, you know, than anybody else, you know, in the class. And see, I said, a friend of my brother, Mark, that, you know, used to be Mark, you know. Once you're doing it, he's so intense and classy, but kind of, you know, people say, you know, Fudgee-foo, fudgee-foo, you know, do you see? You know, but, you know, the delight he has, you know, huh? You know, he's like that, huh? Affirm this, huh? But now he's making a little secundum quet, right? He said, quad nos regards us, right? Second, bodily pleasures are more, what, vehement, on account of three reasons. First, because sensible things are more known to us than understandable things, right? Thomas says one reason why we, Scripture speaks, fed for us is because that's as far as some people can go. The Lord is my rock. Second, because the bodily or sensible pleasures, since they are passions or emotions of the sense-desiring power, are with some bodily, what, change, right? Aristotle talks about this in the first book there, in the premium there, rather, to the first book on the soul. Which does not happen in the spiritual pleasures, except sometimes with a certain overflowing from the higher desire to the, what, lower one. And third, because the bodily pleasures are desired as, what, medicines, against bodily defects, or, yeah, from which sadnesses and sadnesses follow, right? And this is interesting now. Whence bodily pleasures, coming upon, right, these sadnesses, right, are more, what, sensed, right, and consequently more accepted than spiritual pleasures, which do not have contrary, what, sadnesses, huh? Now, Socrates talks about this in the Theodore, right, huh? You know, the idea that, you know, it always seems tied with, what, bodily pleasures, some kind of pain, right, huh? Or some kind of discomfort, right, huh? So, hunger makes good sauces, he said, huh? So, I've got to have the discomfort of, what, hunger, you know, to really enjoy my food, right, huh? If that eats too much, you know, then, then I get pain, right, huh? Same way with drinking or something, right, okay? But, isn't ignorance painful? Yeah, but kind of the opposition between the two, right, huh? Your hunger alongside the pleasure of eating, right, huh? You know, pleasure seems greater because of the, what, it's kind of an optical, you know, it seems greater, right, because of that opposition, huh? Well, it's interesting, huh, because you say, opposed to the pleasure of eating is the, you know, the pain or discomfort of hunger, right, huh? But is there really an opposite to the pleasure of understanding the Pythagorean theorem? It's not really a pain, though, to say. Yeah, we don't, and people who, well, it's not like what they say about scripture especially, or any scripture, if you don't know it, in the sense of spiritual, when you don't have some bodily good that you're lacking, that you want, then you experience the pain of it, whereas if somebody doesn't have a spiritual life, they don't necessarily miss it. Yeah, there's totally, there's totally, yes, but there's, if you know that you don't know something that you should know, or that you'd like to know, it seems to me that you're kind of, and you're aware that it's not all about it, and it doesn't happen. But then again, there's a reason why you're avoiding it, too. Well, maybe because you just have a chance to learn. Is it directly opposed to it in the way that the hunger is directly opposed to the pleasure of food, and so? More like a prohibition than a season-positive? Yeah, yeah, or thirst, and water, or something. Yeah, I guess it's in comparison with the pleasure of the thing. And the ignorance doesn't necessarily enhance your pleasure of learning the way that hunger makes the food taste better. I remember that, I tell you, the best hamburger I ever had in my whole life, right before we got to your house. We had spent the whole day, you know, starving to death to see the Pope in Toronto, and we had just enough money to buy a cheeseburger after that. That was the best cheeseburger I ever had in my whole life. And I was starving. I remember that very clearly. That's a memory of a sense experience. But I don't want to say I have a... When I learn these things, I don't want to say I have a close-minded pleasure. There's something like that, you know, when the person wonders about something and then finally understands it, right? The first time he understands it, it's sort of joy he has when they have maybe later on, right? He thinks about it, but it's because of that opposition that there is, right? That's more clear than in the case of the senses, right? You get hungry every day, don't you know? You get, you know, tired, you know. My wife warned me, you've got to fall asleep in that chair out there, you know? I said, bring it to bed where I can still get the bed of my own navigation, you know? Also, the difference is that you're talking about deprivation of the senses. Aren't you talking about something the senses have had before, and they yearn for something they've already experienced, perhaps? Yeah, it's more known to us, yeah. It's more known to us, but, yeah. Whereas with the intellect, if you don't know what you're missing, it's what they give you experience, ignorance is bliss. So both Aristotle and Thomas says that no man can live without pleasure, right? And so if you don't acquire a taste of these higher pleasures, right, then they tend to go to excess in the lower pleasures, huh? You see that a lot in our society, obviously, going on there. You know, the expression acquired taste, I don't know if I altogether like that, but there's some truth to that, right? That classical music is kind of an acquired taste, right? Or Shakespeare's an acquired taste, you know? Oh, yeah, there's a lot of people, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of a funny way of speaking, but you have to become accustomed to these things. Accustomed to them, yeah. Yeah, concentrate on them a bit, you know? You know, in the old 78 records, I first heard the notes to figure out Mozart, huh? The old Glyndeberg, of course, trying to save space, they can't leave out a lot of the talking in the opera, you know? I mean, they just give the arias or something. Really concentrate, you know, and put my ear up to a machine like that and listen to it, you know? And then you start to really appreciate it, right? You sit into it, huh? So, Thomas has a little distinction there then, doesn't he, huh? It's someone who knows only the pleasures of his senses, you know? And he said, well, how can I enjoy myself in heaven, you know? Socrates, you know, in the dialogues there, apparently there must have been in Greece, like we have, you know, stories of ghosts around graveyards and so on, huh? And Socrates suggests that these are the souls of those who are lovers of the body and all right, perhaps the members of the soul. And now they're cut off from the source of all their pleasure. And so they try to get back in their body so they can enjoy the pleasures of eating again and drinking and so on. Because they have no pleasures, you know, of the soul. Yeah. Now we sometimes, you know, speak of, you know, ghosts around where treasures have been hidden, you know, where they deposited their story. They're watching Irving there, you know, it's very fun to read, you know. I mean, you're attached to your fortune right now. You know, I'd be separated. It's like that wretched priest in, what was it, Will Cather? The priest that was dying. There's a priest who was the lech and the other one was the miser. Yeah. And the miser's dying. The lecher priest comes in to give him the sacraments. And the miser says, ha, ha, ha, you can't enjoy your pleasure. But I've got it all here. You've got it all here. Ha, ha, ha, I can still enjoy my pleasure. You can't. You're too old. Mocking him. A wretched soul. Remember to see a cartoon there, you know, where they're in the lawyer's office. They're ready, he's about to read the will. They're all, you know, waiting for what they get to know. And the lawyer says, he took it with him. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha And his brother has a thing on music, he talked about that, if you were to try to dance, and you didn't have any music, you'd get tired very fast. Yeah, yeah. But if you put the music, you can dance all night. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I could have danced all night and said that he didn't have any music. He'd keep going and going and going. Yeah, yeah. But if you didn't have music, you'd get tired very fast. I remember one time when we were going to pick up Paul at West Point, you know, and he was getting out after some kind of a thing, but he'd be late at night, right? Yeah, so the time he was released, he'd be late at 2 a.m. or something like that, you know, and of course, Daddy was, you know, responsible for driving everybody, you know, home. So I can put the marches on to stay awake, you know. Yeah. You know, you're going to get your thing going, you know. Well, it's like the, you know, the French canoe drivers, you know, they would, you know, be exhausted and they'd start their songs, you know, and they'd all be zooming along, so. So, so, it's kind of interesting, you know, how music can get you going again, huh? Now, what about the objection? To the first, therefore, it should be said that therefore more, or many, yeah, more, follow the, what, body pleasures, because the sensible goods are more, what? Known. To the many, right? And also, this is another reason he gave, this is kind of going back to what's in the body, and because men need, what, pleasures as medicines against the many, what? Yeah, of life, right? Okay. And so the working man stops off to get a beer after his work, right? No, I can't. No, no. I went to the Université Laval, right, well, Cardinal Laval, you know, Archbishop Laval, and brought in the beer industry there to Canada there, right? Probably could get away from the hard liquor, because there was, that was not the best thing, you know, so he wanted to have a, this thing that worked man to relax after his day of labor, right? It was not going to harm him as much as the whiskey, you know, and beer. It's a work of mercy, I know. Yeah. Or a bat bleu, you know. And since, what, most men are not able to attain to the, what, spiritual pleasures, which are proper to those who are virtuous, right? That means virtues of reason as well as the moral virtues, huh? Consequently, it is that they decline to the bodily ones, huh? So there's a lot of understanding of the human condition here in Thomas, huh? Now, why are there these bodily changes more with those pleasures, even if they're less than the other ones? Well, the transmutation of the body more happens than the bodily pleasures, insofar as they're emotions of the sensitive appetite, which is in the body, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. So when you get, what, angry, you know, you can feel the changes in your body, right, huh? When you're fearful, you know, you know, I've got to go up and speak in front of a crowd or something like that. It's a white point in my head. Yeah, yeah. Remember, you know, you're holding one of the cats there, you know, and there's a big dog coming in the neighborhood, and you can see that there. Yeah. Put it on your shoulder, and they're holding on to you very firmly. So it's a bodily thing, right, huh? So Narastal talks about that. He says, if you're going to define really anger fully, you'd have to say what the bodily change is, what the bodily aspect of it is, as well as the formal aspect of it. To third, now, why do these have to be? what? Yeah. Well, he said the bodily pleasures are according to the sensitive part, which is ruled by reason. It should be ruled by reason, right? And therefore, they need to be tempered and refrained by reason. So temperance gets its name from that, I guess. So I need to speak of moderation on the name for it. But the spiritual pleasures are according to the mind, which is itself the rule, right? Whence they are according to themselves sober and moderate, huh? And so, John will also talk about the spiritual love name, though. Oh yeah, oh yeah. And kind of love name, spiritual pleasures, and kind of curiositas, right? Yeah, I'm going to talk about curiositas in the second, part of the second, yeah. Curiosity, is naming a vice means a disordered desire to know, right? I know when I was working with Monsignor Dion there, because he was talking about the role of the will, as well as the reason in the life of the mind, right? And then I found this text in Thomas' commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul, right? Where Thomas talks about the causes of error, which is the opposite of it. But on the part of the appetite, and on the part of the, what? Reason, right, huh? And he doesn't put down curiosity as the greatest cause of error, it's pride. And so he says, pride is a cause of error, Thomas says, in two ways. One, by making you attempt something beyond your powers, will easily fall into error. And the other is to not learn from the men who are wiser than you in these matters. And because a good teacher, right, keeps you from falling into error, or calls you back from error, right? So, you know, when you meet the modern philosophers, no one believes in the other modern philosopher. And they'll go back to the great men before them, right, huh? And so they fall into all kinds of errors because of that, huh? But curiosity is a cause of error, too, because it's a disordered desire to know. And therefore you might want to know something about something that you're curious about, or that's fashionable, right? But try to know it out of order, right? You know, in the Introduction to Philosophy volumes that they would send me as a college professor, you know, because I teach Introduction to Philosophy, you know, you've got a section there on does God exist, you know, and so on. But this is not where you start with a student, huh? You know, you might be interested in this, right? It might be a fashionable thing to discuss, you know? But maybe you're not ready to think about those things seriously. So you, out of curiosity, you consider these things out of order, and therefore you make what? Yeah, yeah. Someone comes to me and says, you know, I've heard this Pythagorean Theorem, can you prove it to me? That sounds interesting. I said, well, the only proof I know is Proposition 47 in Book 1 of Euclid, and there's 46 ones before you kind of go. And, well, I don't know how to do that, you know? And so they jump, you know, to something. It's kind of interesting, you know, when you go to college, you know, you go to Professor A's class, or you go to Professor B's class, or Professor C, you think about whatever he's talking about, right? And they're all talking about different things. So, you've got to find what is the natural beginning, right? For our thinking, huh? And it's kind of interesting, you know, as I say, I was reading the, we were reading the book on specific refutations, right? And Aristotle explicitly there, and also explicitly in the book on the Poitier Guard, he says you've got to start first from the natural beginning. And so he finds the natural beginning in both books. But I think he does in other books too, but he's very explicit about the need to do this. And what's interesting, if you go back to the Greeks, who were kind of the first philosophers, they have a tendency, you know, to start where it's natural to start, because there's nobody before them, right? But you get to the modern philosophers, and they start from the thing that the guy before them was talking about, right? And so, Hegel starts off from Spinoza, right? Or Spinoza starts off from Descartes, you know? Or wherever, you know, Descartes left off, or what he was, you know, he was talking about that's where he begins, right? Well, that's not where you begin. They used to begin, even Thomas, you know. Digi Innocencio, that's not the place to begin, you know? Well, out of fairness to them, if you're talking to other philosophers, if Spinoza's talking to other philosophers and writers, wouldn't he be wasting a lot of time talking about way back and starting over and reviewing everything that people should already know up to the point Well, the point is, though, that you have to go back to what is naturally known, in order to reason out the things that you have to think out on the basis of that. So you don't go back to the natural beginning, you don't have the beginning for all the rest of your thought, you already have the foundation, you've got to build on that, gradually, huh? And you know, it's interesting, you know, Socrates, in the dialogue called the Minohan, he gives a certain appearance that the way to double a square is already in the knowledge of the slave boy, right? Because Socrates, simply by asking the right questions, huh, leads the slave boy's mind in the proper order, right? And so then the conclusion as to how you double a square, you take the diagonal, will be the size of the square, twice as big, comes out naturally, right? From things the slave boy knew already. But Socrates is doing most of the work, because he's asking the questions in the proper order, and therefore the slave boy is seeing them in an orally way. But the man who discovers something by himself has to put this in order himself, right? So Socrates is really doing most of the work, and it's not been quite fair when he says the slave boy already knew this, right? He didn't already know it, but it came out of things that the slave boy already, what, knew, huh? So, you know, the thing that always struck me with the modern philosophers, and I had the impression, really, when I read, say, Kant, or I read Descartes, or I read Locke or something, that I was really learning anything about things, you know? I was learning what Kant thought, or what Kant said, and I began to suspect it didn't make too much sense, and, you know, why was it wrong, you know? So when you pick up a modern philosopher, you first, you know, add to it, you say, I wonder what this guy's mistake is. And they each have their own peculiar mistake, right, huh? But you're not learning about things themselves, right, huh? Well, when you read Aristotle, or even, you know, Plato, and even the early Greeks, huh, you have the impression that, hey, they're talking about things, and they're starting with those things that come, what, first? Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs. So the first thing we really think about is, what, motion, right? And, you know, we go all the way from motion to the unmoved mover to God, right, huh? But we've got to start with motion, huh? That's a natural place to begin, huh? What's a natural place to begin if you're talking about drama, and epic, and a tragedy, and a comedy, and an opera, and a symphony, and painting over there? What do you all have in family? Yeah, but art doesn't really, you know, tell you what it is. They're all a, what, a likeness or something, right? And that's kind of the natural beginning. But they differ in what they make their likeness. So the poet might make the likeness in words, and the painter might make the likeness in line and color, and they also