Prima Secundae
Lecture 91: Imitation in Art, Pleasures of Sense, and Natural vs. Unnatural Desires

Transcript
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They differ by what they imitate, and then how they imitate, right? But the natural starting point is to see that it's an imitation, I like this, huh? If you don't start there, you're going to miss the whole thing, right? Now Shakespeare, you know, in Hamlet, he says that, right? He says it both properly and, what, metaphorically, right? To hold the mirror up to nature, show virtue of your own face, go on your own image, and the very age and body of the time is form and pressure, right? Like, perfectly orgy, right? He never said that. Shakespeare says best of anybody what he himself is doing. He teaches us that way, you know? It's an amazing thing, huh? Shakespeare, as I often said, is, Shakespeare and Plato are kind of unusual in the history of man, right? Because Shakespeare is basically a poet, right? But with great philosophical gifts, right? Like, as you can see in the exhortation, he has reasonings. And Plato is primarily a philosopher, but with certain poetic gifts, right? You see the dialogues, right? And so it's kind of unusual that a man can combine those, what, two, you know? You don't find Thomas writing plays or... We did write some poetry. Yeah. We did write some poetry. Yeah. But you've got to be careful, you know, because I don't think people call poetry something that's in meter or something, you know, or... But it's not, huh? We're just speaking... It's not an emesis, right? Say, the Lord is my rock. You know, you're not saying... You're not making an invitation of likeness of God so much. Briscoe, Briscoe, did we finish that picture? This article, yeah. Yeah. Oh, we finished that. My question would be, when it's Shakespeare, since you know him so well, would you be able to make a good educational guess of what his educational background is? Well, we know he was probably educated in the school there, and his father was born to do, right? The... St. Thomas? No, we don't know that, no. You couldn't glean that? No. I mean, the thing about Shakespeare is that there's something, there's some natural gifts there, right, huh? So to some extent, he was self-taught, but he's very well-read, right, huh? And so, I mean, he knows Plutarch, right, huh? You see? And it comes out, I mean, I used to have some of Plutarch's Moralia, you know, as well as his lives of the illustrious Romans and Greeks, right? And, you know, there's a famous essay, you know, how you could profit from your enemies, in Plutarch, and he's saying, well, your enemies are what? They're going to point out what's wrong with you, right? Well, your friends might kind of pass over your faults, right? So from your enemies, you learn what your faults are, and therefore you can profit from them, in a way, you know? Well, you know, you read Twelfth Night of Shakespeare, right, huh? And the clown is there, right, huh? And the duke comes over who's interested in the lady, and so he says, you know, how are you, he says. He says, the better for my enemies, and the worse for my friends. And the duke says, don't you mean just to reverse, you know? No, he says, because, you know, my enemies tell me that I'm an ass, you know, and I am. And so I profit a knowledge of myself, you know, from them, you know? But from my friends, you know, they tell me that I'm this, that, and give me a false impression on myself. Well, you know, he's probably, you know, had read Plutarch, right? But he comes up in such a natural way. It's just as a brother that I'm saying it now. I mean, one thing, another actor like that, huh? So he said he knew Plutarch, right, huh? And Plutarch, you know, kind of reconciles the way Plato and Aristotle, you know, and take what they have in common, you know, and he knows both, right, huh? So a lot of good things in Plutarch, right? You know, in the Roman plays, right, you know, you've got all this Plutarch in there, right, and sometimes he even, you know, plagiarized a bit, you know? Well, there were no laws in those days. There were no contrary laws. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, uh... Licensing agreements. So, what's wrong with that, though? My favorite piece by Brahms is a variation on a theme by Aydin. Imitation is the highest form of flattery. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My book on Mozart's piano concertos, he gives 23 piano concertos by Mozart, right? So you've got to, when you go out to buy a record, though, you've got to realize that what he calls 23 is really 27, called 27. Well, the first four concertos of Mozart are what? Kind of taking Johann Christian Bach's pieces and orchestrating them and so on right now. So he regards the fifth concertos, maybe the first one by Mozart, right? Well, so I, you know, learned, look at this, a terrible bug right there. What? Oh. That's a marvelous creation by God. Yeah, I know. Interesting. He's got... You don't want to crush it? Don't crush it, whatever you do. It'll make a stink? Yeah. Oh, my goodness. So I think you're going to have to take him home with you. Bring him home with you. I suppose you'd like to save lives here. Okay, should we go into Article 6 here? Yeah. Okay. To 6, one goes forward thus. It seems that the pleasures which are according to touch, right, are not greater than the pleasures which are according to the other, what, senses. For that pleasure seems to be greatest, which being excluded, all, what, joy ceases, huh? But such is the pleasure which is according to the eye, right, huh? For it is said in the book of Tobit, huh, Tobias. Quali gaudium erit me, what joys there are for me who sit in darknesses, right? And I do not see the light of, what, heaven, right? That's what he answered when the angel greeted him and just said, joy to thee. And he said, what matter of joy? Therefore the pleasure which is through sight is greatest among sensible, what? Pleasures, right? Moreover, to each one is delightful that which he loves, right? As the philosopher says in the first book of the rhetoric, huh? But among the other senses, most of all is love, what, sight. It's referenced to Aristotle in the metaphysics, huh? Premium. Therefore the pleasure which is according to sight is maxima, right? I remember one time in class I was talking about, would you rather go blind or go deaf? So you'd be obviously terribly the one. And people will say, what? You'd rather be deaf than what? Blind. This one girl, though, she says that she'd rather be... Blind than deaf. But she was, music was her thing, right? So would Beethoven rather have gone blind than gone deaf or whatever it was? He turned to lights in his thing, right? The cook would say he'd rather go deaf or blind than lose a sense of taste, right? Yeah. I remember my mother-in-law when she was dying there. She said to me, she's taking no pleasure at all in eating food anymore, just eating to stay alive, right? It's kind of a horrible thing, just eating to stay alive, you know? I remember the late, great Leo Alvarez, one day as he was chowing down on some ice cream, he said, oh, they stink, so I don't have any taste buds anymore. This doesn't taste any different than a bologna sandwich. It doesn't taste any different. Yeah, yeah. This is a good student of Thomas, huh? He once came to the book. It doesn't go away. Okay. Moreover, the beginning of what? Delectable friendship, right? Is most of all vision, right? That's what Romeo says, huh? We had the neighbor boy there, you know, mowed our lawn when we were away, you know, and we'd pay him, you know, and escort the house there, but so we were talking a little bit, and I guess he's going to be in the play, he's going to play Romeo. Oh, really? So I started sending some Romeo. I was trying to cut you off. Half tended to go and watch the high school play, just to see how he does. Helped him do it in some kind of, you know, older dress rather than do these ones in these modern, like that's terrible. I can't even, yeah, I haven't seen one of those. But the cause of such friendship is pleasure, right? Therefore, according to sight, there seems to be the greatest pleasure, right? But again, this is what the philosopher says in the third book of the Ethics, that the greatest pleasures are according to touch. He's talking about temperance there, right? The answer should be said, that is, oh my goodness, this thing's really getting thing here. Oops. This one. Oh, go ahead. It's coming down the page, you know. He wants to follow along. Start school for them. What happened to him? I'd be crawling up my leg, but you see. I always wonder, you know, what the devil's called, you know, Beelzebub, you know? That's flies, right? Something like that. Lord of the flies. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, out to our environment, my daughter's here, and she's on the farm there was a lot of flies, and I'm going to quack them all the time. I said, why is it distracting, you know, so you can't think about anything, you know, these flies flying around. Okay. The answer should be said, that each thing, insofar as it is loved, is what? Rendered delightful, pleasant. Now, the sense, as said in the beginning of the metaphysics, the senses are loved on account of two things, right? One, for the sake of the knowing, right? And for the sake of what? Usefulness, right? So you want to know your eyes, so you can drive your car and find your house and find other things in the house and make things, but you also look at the, what, sunset, right? Or something, right? Not to even do anything with it, but just for knowledge's sake, right? Or a painting or something. Whence, in both ways, is possible for there to be pleasure according to the senses. But because to apprehend knowledge itself, as a certain good, is proper to, what, man. And therefore, the first pleasures of the senses, which are according to knowledge, are proper to man, right? But the pleasures of the senses, insofar as they are loved on account of, what, usefulness, are common to all the, what? Animals, yeah. If, therefore, we speak of the pleasure of the sense, which is by reason of knowledge, it is manifest that according to sight, there is greater pleasure than according to, what, yeah. If, however, we speak of the pleasure of the sense, which is by reason of usefulness, then there is the greatest pleasure according to, what, touch, huh? For the utility of sensible things is to be noted according to the order that they have to the conservation of the nature of the animal. And to this usefulness is nearer the sensibles of, what, the sense of touch. For touch is knowing those things of which the animal itself consists, namely the hot and the cold and the wet and the dry and so on. So, once according to this, the pleasures which are according to touch are greater as being more near the in, which is the conservation of the body, as far as usefulness. In account of this, also, other animals, which do not have pleasure according to sense, except by reason of, what, usefulness, do not delight according to the other senses, except in order to the, what, sensibles of touch, right? So, not really enjoying, you know, the sunset, the way we are, right? But they're beautiful. For neither do the, what, dogs rejoice in the smell of the, what? Some, must be some, what they eat, right? Hair. Oh, it's a rabbit or something. Lepidus, yeah. Said, sebatione food, right? Sebatione food, yeah. Nor the lion in the sound of the voice of the cattle, but eating of it, right, huh? As is said in the third book of the, what, yeah? Exit. Since, therefore, the pleasure of the sense of touch is maxima by reason of its usefulness, right, the pleasure which is of sight by reason of its knowledge. If we compare both, if we only should compare both, one will find simply that the pleasure of touch is more than the pleasure of, what, sight, according as it, what? Things that are in the. Pleasure, yeah. Because it is manifest that that which is natural in each thing is most, what? Oh. Potent, yeah. But pleasures of this sort of touch are those to which, what, natural desires are ordered, right? Those of food and venereal things and so on. But if we consider the pleasures of sight according as sight serves the, what, understanding, then the pleasures of sight will be, what, more potent, huh? For that reason, for the very reason that we gave you four, in which understandable pleasures are more potent than, what, sensible ones, right? What's the muthos that Socrates gives there in the, I guess, in the phaed, was it? Well, it's a beautiful proportion, right, huh? And he says, you know, suppose you were born in the, what, water. You lived under the water all the time, right? You looked up through the water and you saw the sun, the moon, and the stars, right? You would not see them as clearly as you see them through the air, right? But if you, one day, somehow or other, you got up above the surface of the water and into the air. Wow! This is far more beautiful than I realized, right, huh? Well, he says, above the air, there's another thing that the air is to, like water is to the air. And that's called, what? Ether, yeah, yeah. And after the soul leaves the body, it gets up into the ether, right? And then these things are even more beautiful than they are now, right? I noticed you go down in the desert someplace where it gets very dry and you're away from the cities and so on. If you're ever driven through there at nighttime, you know, you look up at the sky, the stars are much more brilliant. They say in Saudi Arabia, you know, these dry places, they're very brilliant, yeah? And it stimulates you to think about them. And perhaps this is where you get the ether in modern science, the use of the word, I mean, because you say water is to air and then air is to ether, right? Well, your first meaning of the word wave is what? The water wave, right? And then you have sound waves, which are in air, right? And then you have these, what, electromagnetic waves. And light turns out to be waves, somewhat, or that would be like aspect. And there's got to be something that is to those waves, like air is to the sound waves. So they borrow the word from there. They're ether, right, huh? It's a very fine thing. And then Einstein said we can't find the evidence, so there's an ether there, right? So you have a wave with nothing waving, right? It's kind of an unusual thing, right? But that's, you know, that's, but they were, you know, looking for all these things to see ether, leg, and so on, you know, succeeded. So this audiovisual, right, the eyes and even the ears are more important for knowing in some ways, right? But you've got to be careful, right? They kind of gave a famous talk there, and the sense of touch and the sense of sight, right? In the modern world, there's sort of attachment to the sense of sight, right? I wasn't thinking of a common man, but that the most basic thoughts, you know, are tied up with the sense of, what, touch, right? The sense of substance and so on, the sense of good. Interesting. Take a little break now, or the Latin text, do you like? It signifies, what, an animal pleasure, and this most of all pertains to sight, huh? But the, what, natural pleasure most of all pertains to, what, touch. That's right. The animal pleasure is more the one of knowing, right? And that's the way it explains what Aristotle says, that the sight is most of all loved an account of knowledge, in that it shows many, what, differences of things, right? So if you had only the sense of touch or something like that, you'd only know what is the context. You wouldn't know things at a distance. You wouldn't know the sun and the moon and the stars right now. But that the sight is more spiritual is shown by the fact that we carry the word seeing over to understanding, right? See what I mean? Do you understand what I mean, right? Basic activity, you see. In one way, pleasure is the cause of carnal love, and another way, vision, right? For pleasure, and most of all, that which is according to touch, is the cause of what? The pleasant friendship by way of an end, huh? But the vision is a cause as when there's a beginning of the motion, right? Insofar as through the sight of the lovable is impressed the species of a thing which attracts one to loving and to desiring its, what, pleasure, right, huh? So Romeo has to see Juliet, right, before he pursues her, right, huh? So I used to ask the students in the love and friendship course, right? In the beginning of the play, Romeo's not in love with Juliet at all, right? But she's just as beautiful in the beginning of the play as she is when he meets her, so why doesn't her beauty move him to love him? Because he's never seen it! Yeah, so the beautiful or the good is known, huh? This is the sight, is the, what, beginning, right? Remember the sense of touch, huh? I want to hug this thing, huh? Okay. Isn't that one of the definitions of beautiful? It's what pleases when seen? Yeah, yeah. I think a lot about beauty, you know, is beauty more the object of knowing or the object of what? Of loving, right, huh? I have to think it's more the object of loving. I used to give it as a sign that the word lovely is used as a synonym for beautiful, right? Something is lovely, huh? As if it's more the object of love and of knowledge, you know? I'm not sure that's so, right? And you read when Thomas, you know, talks about the things that are appropriated to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Well, beauty is appropriated to whom? To the Son. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right she is, yeah. Specioso, yeah. Thomas gives a reason for that in the Treatise of the Trinity, right? That's not appropriate to the Holy Spirit, but to the Son, right? It's more the object of knowledge, right? Heisenberg, you know, it's necessary there. In the role of beauty, right? In the discovery of physical theories, right? How very important it is, huh? Like I said, sometimes, you know, their actions, it's more important that a theory be beautiful than it be true. That's why you say, phalloxysperatia. That's why the speaker says, beauty is deceiving. Yeah, yeah. But it's cute, you know, because they always call him, you know, truth is beauty and beauty is truth. That's all you know and all you need to know. Well, it's not quite the thing, you know, but you see the connection between beauty and truth, though. You know, those words, you see it in the scientists, right? They reject some theory because it's just ugly, you know. It's not beautiful. So if beauty is appropriated to the Son, are you talking about the Word or Christ? What? You're talking about divinity. No, no, see, you're talking about the appropriation, right? Certain things are appropriated to different members of the Trinity, right? So power is appropriated to the Father, right? And you get the reasons for that. You know, truth is appropriated to the Son, right? Now, I was thinking myself, and then, you know, love and to the Holy Spirit and so on. I was thinking, you know, of how the 16th chapter of Matthew, right? He had the profession of faith of Peter, right? He says, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Well, then in the Gospel of John, you have Christ saying, I am the way. The Greek word is hodos. I am the road, the truth, and the life, right? Now, it's comparing those two things, right? Peter's profession of faith, upon which the whole church is built, right? That's what Christ adds, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock of the church. And Paul VI was noting that in one of his sermons. Now, you know the whole church is built on the faith of Peter, right? Well, when Christ says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, the human is put before the divine, right? Because as man, he's the, what, road. As God, he's truth itself, and what, life, right? But notice this difference, huh? As man, he's Christ, that is, he's anointed one, right? But, you know, when he goes on to get the Son of the living God, that's referring to his divinity, right? But notice the difference, huh? In the profession of faith, you give what is proper to him. He's the Son of the living God. When you say that I am truth and life, what is that? That's appropriation, right? So our Lord uses appropriation there. Why Peter speaks properly, not by appropriation. But then you have to realize, well, why is truth appropriated to the Son, right? It's because he proceeds as what? As the Word, right? And it's kind of interesting, huh? That Paul, I mean, not Paul, John, you know, emphasizes, you know, brings out, you know, more than anybody else, that he's the Word of God, right? He points out the Word of God is also the Son of God, right? But I don't know if in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you speak much of him as being the Word of God, right? But so they call him the Son of God, right? And it's more as the Word of God that you see the reason to appropriate truth to him, right? You see it more clearly than as being the Son of God, right? It's kind of interesting, right? But in both, we have the human put before the divine, right? Although you get to theology, then you reverse the order, right? And you take up the divinity before, right? Of course, he had that in St. John, because John first talks about the Word by itself, right? Then he or I hear about the Word was made flesh. Then you get down to the human there, right? This flesh there is a synecdoche, yeah, for a man, right? So in the order of defining, the Son of God or the Word of God is before the incarnation. But for us, historically, our senses, the human nature is more manifest, right? Interesting, I was reading in John there, one of the church fathers, right? In the beginning of John there, where do you dwell, right? And Christ says, come and see. And when the church fathers says, well, he's inviting us to both the active life and the contemplative life, he says. And he says, come, he's inviting you to the active life. And he says, and see. It's kind of beautiful, right, huh? Remember that Psalm I was talking about, you know, sing, joyfully to the Lord all your land, serve the Lord with gladness. Well, that's the active life, right? Then later on it says, what? It says, you know, rejoice again. And then it says, know that the Lord is God, and he made us as we are. That's my invitation to do this work. I get to you, let's. But that's the contemplative life, right? You have exactly the same order as in the words, come and see, right? That you have in that Psalm, huh? It's kind of beautiful. I've been saying that about the Psalm, you know, the order there was kind of interesting, huh? And then it goes right out and it's the same, one way of understanding the words, come and see, right? It's fun to see a lot of those words, huh? Come and see. So you have to come to God by good deeds and good action, and being his commandments and so on. And then you can, Aristotle sees that too, right? The moral virtues are more known to us, right? You've got to be disposed by them before you can. Yeah, I mean, you know, if a person is disordered, morally it's kind of hard to make him a good student in the contemplative, huh? Moderation is the greatest virtue. Yeah. Air claims. In order to wisdom, right? Yeah, yeah. Take a little break here. Sure. Where some pleasure is, what, unnatural. To the seventh one proceeds thus, it seems that no pleasure is unnatural, right? For pleasure is, what, in the affections of the soul, proportional to rest in, what, bodies, right? That's why we say that something beautiful is restful, right? But the desire of the natural body does not rest except in its connatural place, right? Because I don't want physics there, right? Therefore, neither does the rest of the animal desiring power, which is pleasure, cannot be except in something that is connatural to the thing. Therefore, there is no pleasure that is, what, not natural, right? And you notice how they're jumping up and down when they're doing this crazy music, right? They're jumping up and down all the time. That's all they do is jump around the stage, right? There's no rest there, really, huh? I saw Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones play when he was probably in his 50s and 60s, and it was amazing. This guy was a cardiovascular genius, you could say, just because he was bouncing around the stage for two hours. He's got a real solid ticket. I always go back to this time when I heard Walter Gieseking, you know, the concert, huh? And he came to, you know, Walter Gieseking, he's a great pianist, right? And when he came to the Artist Series there at the University of Minnesota, Minnesota there. And I'd never seen an audience be so respectful. You could hear the pin drop when he played the piano, right? And he played, you know, a great repertoire. He started with Mozart and went through all the tunes, you know? And when he finished the concert, of course, there's a great clapping song, so he played an encore, right? And people clapped and played a second encore. People kept on, you know, plotting even more, you know? So he went to about 12 encores. You've got to stop the thing somehow. So finally, he got down to Claire de Goon, you know, like, good night, you know? He had to do something to stop, you know, because they always clap longer and more enthusiastic. Every time, you know, but the thing how respectful there, right? You know, you could have hit a pin drop, you know, just the guy playing, you know? I guess he had to play one time for Hitler, you know? And so, American government found he played for Hitler, you know, so he wouldn't have been in the United States for a while, you know? So stupid, you know, I could have any choice about having to perform for Hitler one time. That's like telling Jesse Owens. Yeah. That's banning him from coming back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. First guy said we wouldn't meet with Jesse to give him the medal, right? Oh, right, I know. He wouldn't, you know? Yeah. The germination of lost us. He wasn't an Aryan, right? Yeah, yeah. So just as a body doesn't rest except in its natural place, right? So he's saying then the, what? The appetite will not rest except in something natural, right? So every place is natural. That's a good argument, huh? Yeah. Damn good argument. More of that which is against nature is violent, huh? And everything violent is, what? Saddening, huh? This is said in the fifth book of wisdom. Therefore, nothing that is against nature can be, what? It's like for it. It's a lot of the gay agenda. Yeah, yeah. No delight. I've been saying, you know, homosexual marriage is a square circle. Democratic parties, gone, paper, square circles. There ain't no such thing. Or to be constituted in one's proper nature when it is sense causes what? Is delight, yeah? As is clear from the definition of the flosser above. But to be constituted in nature is to each thing, what? Natural, right? Because the natural motion is that which is to a natural term. Therefore, every pleasure is natural. I'm convinced. I don't have to be afraid. But against this is what the philosopher says in the seventh book of ethics, where he discusses pleasure in the continents and so on. That some pleasures are sick. Egritudinous, huh? Sipply and against nature, huh? Very insensitive. No, it's very insensitive. Very, very insensitive. I actually should be said that the word natural means, huh? What is according to nature, right? As is said in the second book of the physics, huh? Fusis is the Greek word for nature, right? But nature in man can be taken in two ways, huh? In one way, insofar as the understanding and reason is most of all the nature of man, right? Because by this, man is constituted in his, what? Species, huh? So Aristotle says in the ethics that reason more than anything else is man. And according to this, then the natural pleasures of man can be called those which are befitting man according to reason. Just as to delight in the contemplation of truth and in the acts of, what? Virtues. Is natural to man, huh? She is fair and fairer than that fair of wondrous virtue. In another way, one can take nature in man according as it is divided against reason, huh? And that's what is common to man and other things, especially what does not, what? Obey reason. Obey reason, right, huh? And according to this, those things which pertain to the conservation of the body, either according to the individual as food, drink, lactose, that's the bed, I guess, huh? And things of this sort, or according to, what? The species as the use of reproductive powers, right? Are said to be naturally, what? Pleasant to man, huh? Now, according to both of these pleasures, huh? There is possible for it to be, what? Unnatural. Simplici liloquendo, this is the old kind of distinction there. But connatural, secundum quida, in some qualified sense, right? For it happens in some individual to be corrupted something of the, what? Natural principles of the, what? Species. And thus that which is against the nature of the species, paracidens, right, comes to be natural to, what? This individual. Just as to this water, which by nature is cold, right, huh? It becomes, what? Heated, natural that it also heats things, huh? So if you're in the shower there, the hot water naturally is going to warm you, right, huh? But is it natural to water to warm you or to cool you? We'll go to the ocean, you'll see what natural water is. Especially up north to New Hampshire, right? Yeah, yeah. Take you half the time you're there to get the nerve to go into the water. Once you come out again, you say, we've got to go through that again. So I go down to Newport. It's civilized. Don't go to the Gullinac. Is that getting the bathwater? Yeah, it's 88 degrees. You walk into it. Oh, Lord, it's not. There's no real friction. It's just, it's like it's walking into a tub. Thus, therefore, it happens that that which is against the nature of man, either as regards his reason, or as regards the, what? Preservation of his body becomes, what? Connatural to this man, right? Some vicious mole of nature, as Shakespeare talks about it, right? On account of some corruption of the nature existing in him. Which corruption can be either on the side of the body, either through, what? Sickness, huh? Just as to those with a fever, sweet things may seem bitter, right? And the reverse, huh? Or on account of some bad, what? Complexion. Complexion. Just as some people delight in eating of earth or carbon, right? Complexion. Complexion. are things of this sort, or even also on the side of the soul, just as an account of what? Custom, right? It's like a second nature, right? Some delight in eating men, or in coition with beasts or with men that's homosexual, right? Or others of this sort, which are not according to human nature, right? This question should be sent to the President and the Democratic Party Chairman. I remember a student trying to do a senior paper, you know, used to have a senior paper, and was trying to claim that the end for every man was the fullest development of these individual things, right? Well, if you make that the key, well then, what's individual, right, might not be what? Yeah, and that's going to be the best thing for you, right? So if you're naturally a coward, right, to really develop that inclination to be kind of a coward, right? But these men, you know, you read about these saints, even St. Francis de Sales, right, supposed to have been by nature kind of irascible or something, and he really, you know, became one of the mildest men and the most well-tempered men, right? But he's kind of, what, going against his, what, individual nature, you know, as opposed to the common nature, right? So we've got to follow what is the common nature rather than the, what, individual, right? Yeah. That's what I remember, Stephen Parker made an interesting comment once, his insight about the expression, without necessarily throwing it out all together, but the expression I was here about how precious the individual is, or his being unique and unrepeatable and so forth, and there's some truth to that one tonight, but what makes a man precious maybe isn't what's unique to him, but what's common to him and all that. That's what I think, because that's the image of God. And I thought that was an interesting insight, because you can lose, I think you can lose your perspective by emphasizing what's unique and unrepeatable. That's so that, that gives rise to that comment that sounds cynical, but I don't think it is, where you say to someone, you are unique and unrepeatable, just like everybody else. That's what's special about that. Is that word? So you are the one who's unique or Hebrew? Well, he is, but just like everybody else. This is a more usual sense in which you understand, I think, not natural, right? It's kind of funny that it's not natural, yeah, yeah, yeah. Reason is distinguished on nature, you know? Yeah, that's like traitor, not to our own name. Yeah, but you've got to be kind of careful about that, the way of speaking, what you mean by it. Whether pleasure can be contrary to pleasure.