Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 24: Hope and Fear in Philosophical and Spiritual Life

Transcript
================================================================================

Second psalm there, but one of the psalms there, where it speaks of both hope and fear, right? And Thomas says, well, hoping in the divine mercy, right, without fear of the divine justice will make one, what, presumptuous, huh? But fear of the divine justice without any hope in the divine mercy would make one, what, despair, right? So what you need is this kind of a balance of hope and fear, huh? You need the hope in the divine mercy balanced by the fear of the divine justice. And sometimes things get unbalanced, huh? I was in a, one of the Catholic bookstores there a few years ago, I was just coming around, and here's St. Anson, you know, meditation to gain fear of the Lord. And I say, you don't have that very often now, right? You don't have the old, you know, four last things, you know, death, judgment, heaven, hell, you don't have much of that, you know. And so I think, you know, you're always being told in church that God bless you just the way you are. Well, be careful with that statement, right? I did it over and over again, the courage and so on. So you need this balance, right, of hope and fear, right? But again, you have to, in a sense, adapt yourself to the person, right? If you're thinking of a woman who's committed abortion or had an abortion, right, she might be very tempted to, what, to spare her salvation if she realizes and find what she's done, right? She might have to build up her hope in the divine mercy at this point, right? But someone else has come in there who thinks they're pretty good, you know. If you ever read the autobiography there of St. Margaret and Mary out of Coke, you know, the one that was trying to say, her heart. And sometimes she's feeling pretty good about herself, you know. Boy, does Christ tear it. It's really frightening, you know. You see this, right? You see? But Christ is a master, you see. He knows when to, what, be merciful and when to, you know, straighten you out with justice. So, I mean, if you're a priest, say, that's hearing confessions and so on, you have to kind of, in a way, know what is necessary with this, what, person, right, huh? Would they need to be consoled or encouraged or, you know, rely on the divine mercy and so on? Or would they need to be, what, straighten out a bit, you know, with their lax life and, you know. When I first came to Worcester there, I used to be in the cathedral parish downtown there and you owe him on Senior Daily, you know. He was, I used to like his sermons, you know. He was a good guy to go to confession. I go to confession with him, too. But I remember getting the thing, you know. And some of you are going to have a mighty unhappy eternity, he said, you know. He was explaining, you know. But, you know, most churches nowadays, you don't hear anything about sin or anything about the consequence of sin or anything that is a hell, you know, and so on, huh? And every time I go to a funeral home, you know, people are always talking as if the person who's died is in heaven and they're, you know. Well, I mean, I'm going to the granny's probably in purgatory, but I mean, you know, I mean, you've got to, you know. I think we've kind of gotten, I know when my father died, you know, and Father Stein, a very good priest we had there, he was saying to my mother, you know, I never stopped praying for him, you know, because we don't know how long you're in purgatory or how long, you know, and you don't hear that at all now, you know, now they think, I know my father died, you know, he would say, you know, but I was always suffering as orphanages, but I said, I hope so, you know, but I don't know, you know. You read the life of the saints, you know, you say, probably for most of us, if we make it at all, it's going to be through purgatory and not through, you know, first come, first served, or first immediate, you know. You read the life of St. John the Cross, and he says to his friend, you know, pray that I have my purgatory on earth. Well, you've got to stop and think about that, right? You say, John the Cross, asking his friend to pray that he, John the Cross, have his purgatory on earth, huh? It's better to have your purgatory on earth than up there, see. I mean, these things are kind of frightening the people, now they're very, you know. But you've got to, you know, you're afraid of people too much either, you've got to realize where they are, huh? Well, it's like that in the philosophical life, you see. And in a way, with my three main teachers there, Kisuric and Deconic and then Dianna, sort of in that order, right? Kisuric probably encouraged me the most, right? But Dianna, most of all, what? The fear, yeah, yeah. And I think it would have been bad for me to have Dianna as my first teacher, right? Because I would have been afraid to think. Yeah. You know, you get in so easily to be mistaken, see, you know? And so I haven't, you know, unfortunately, in exactly the right order, right? The spirit of Deconic and Deon, huh? Like my friend Warren Murray used to say, well, gee, Deon, his predominant passion is fear, right? But that was good, right, huh? The fear of being mistaken. But you see that very much in Socrates, huh? There's a lot of development of fear, huh? But when these people have despair, then they don't need to have more fear, because fear would just, what? The deed of despair is not balanced with hope. So a balance of hope and fear is something, there's different kinds of hope and fear, right? But it's a very important thing in the spiritual life, in the Christian life, right? You know, to balance the hope and the divine mercy with the fear of the divine justice. But in philosophy, another kind of hope and fear, but the hope of overcoming the difficulties of knowing the truth, balanced by the fear of making, what? A mistake, right, huh? Okay? And for the politician, the hope of getting elected, and the fear of being, what? Thrown out. You see? So, this first thing here is against the natural desire to know, and it's against the hope that we need, huh? The second thing is against the fear that we need, huh? And the boldness of Descartes, huh? The audacity, once you be on, say, of Descartes, right? It's excessive fear, fear of boldness, huh? Well, now, is there any other alternative to this situation, this sad situation, which reveals the human mind is, for the most part, mistaken, huh? It's a frightening thing. Is there any alternative to despairing and giving up, or to, what, forget about these guys and do it ourselves? Is there any thing that avoids the despair and avoids the boldness, huh? What is Dionysius, you know, when he sums up the cause of error, he says it's bold imagination. That's the source of error, not bold imagination. And the side of the annoying powers is this false imagination, right? But on the side of what, the mind is this boldness, huh? Bold imagination, that's what it is. So, is there another way out, huh? In other words, is there some way to go forward, as opposed to this, which is to give up, right? But to go forward with the help of these other men, right? Yeah. Unlike trying to go forward here all by yourself, huh? Would it be then the separation, trying to separate what is right and what is wrong with what you've said? Well, let's look back. I'm going to give you two things here. One was said by Pedocles, and we have it in the fragrance on method, I put it with those. And one is said by Heratitis, huh? But there's fragrance that suggests two possible ways of going forward with the help of those who disagree, right? Okay. Two ways of going forward. And one is suggested in a fragment of Empedocles, huh? Where Empedocles says that men don't live very long, right? And having seen a part of life, they boast of having seen the whole. Now, again, that shows the danger of pride, right? But he's saying men see a part of the truth, right? And they boast of having seen the whole. Well, this is an important thing, huh? That man sees a part of the truth before the whole, right? He ever says seen the whole. But that men seeing a part of the truth, out of pride, they think they've seen the whole, right? And that's part of the reason why they disagree more than they maybe even have to, right? Okay? Because of the... effected their will. Now, this suggests, right, that there may be parts of the truth scattered among those who disagree, right? And if they're reasonable men, maybe each of them has seen some part of the truth, but out of human weakness, out of human pride, they think they've seen the whole, right? And we can see Empedocles to some extent doing that, but he came to earth, air, fire, and water as the four roots of all things. Maybe he thought, you know, that Thaddeus had seen something when he said water is the beginning of things, and especially it's the beginning of living things, and so on. But maybe he thought he got carried away and thought, well, I see the whole truth about the origin of things, huh? But we saw he combined not only earth, air, fire, and water, but he also brought in the, what, numerical ratios of our friend, uh, um, Thaddeus, yeah, right? Okay, and then he tried to add something himself there, right? So, um, this is one way, huh, of trying to go forward with the help of those who disagree, and that would be to gather the parts of the truth divided among them. I was talking in Dexana Fossey today, we were talking about the Phaedo, going through the Phaedo, and, uh, I was mentioning, you know, that, um, Socrates or Plato was thinking of the soul as a complete substance distinct from the body, huh? So the soul is in the body like a man in his boat, a man in his car, right? Simmius is bringing in his opinion that the soul is kind of the harmony of the body, kind of an accidental form or order of the body, huh? Like the modern biologists think that the soul is, or the cause of life is, anyway. Well, actually, Aristotle will see a part of the truth in both of those, huh? The truth that Aristotle will eventually bring out is that the soul is a substantial form. So the idea that the soul is something substantial, that's the part of the truth that Socrates and Plato see, huh? It's a form, as in the other opinion, right? But it's not an accidental form, and it's not a complete substance, it's a substantial form. So Aristotle's going to gather the parts of truth that are common to both of them, okay? So this is one way of going forward, despite all the disagreement, to go forward not by yourself, right? With the help of those who disagree, gather the parts of the truth, divide amongst them, huh? Okay? And this is one reason for dialectic, to have the different opinions clash together, because it's like a war, right? And when the two armies, like the KMs there and the Trojans meet in front of Troy, the weak men on both sides go down, right? And if you could stop the battle after the first conflict done, and then gather up those who remained, you'd have a better army than either one that you started with. You'd have Hector and Achilles in your army, you'd have the invincible army, right? You see? So when the different opinions clash, the weak points or weak elements tend to go down, the strong ones emerge, right? And then you can kind of gather up, right? Hector and Achilles, and you come up with the best army, right? It's superior to either the armies to begin with. Now, there's another way of going forward, suggested by the fragments of Heraclitus. There's a whole bunch of them dealing with the common, huh? But I usually single out one in particular where he says, those who speak with understanding, he says, must be strong in what is common to all. Is it possible that among those who disagree, they might have something in common? Remember the disagreement between Heraclitus and Parmenides, right? Where Parmenides is saying that a contradiction is impossible in things, and therefore change doesn't exist, right? And Heraclitus is saying, what? Change is real, right? But it involves contradiction, right? Yeah. Well, there's something in common with these two guys, that you had to choose between these two, right? And then you begin to realize that you're having to choose between the two was based upon the fact that one seemed to communicate the other, right? And then you start to bring out what's common with the two, huh? So, Heraclitus says, those who speak with understanding, it's loose, he says in the Greek, must be strong in what is common to all. As much, he says, as the city is strong in its law, and even more so, he says, the law in the city is nourished by one divine law. So, these two fragments suggest two possible ways of going forward with the help of those who disagree. One way is to gather the parts of truth that might be divided amongst them. The other is, despite the disagreement, to find something they all have in common, bring that out and become strong in that and make that the cornerstone of your analysis, right? Now, Aristotle is going to do both of these, but the next question I ask the students is, which should you try to do first? Do you try to gather the parts of truth that are divided amongst them, or should you try to see if they have something in common despite the disagreement and become strong in that? What should you do first? Yeah, a lot of times students will say the first, but I think it's the second too, down here. But what's the reason for doing the second before the first? Well, since it's common to all, well, it's less stuck you have to go through. I mean, you have one truth that's common between 50 people, well, that's only one thing you've got to learn. If it's different, then you've got 50 different things. Okay, okay. So simplicity. Okay. What's the basic before and after we learned about knowing there, in the first reading there? Even more general than general in particular, even more general than confused and distinct. More known than less known to us. Yeah, yeah. Now, we've got to start with what is more known to us, huh? Before what is less known to us. Now, which is apt to be more known to us? Something that one man sees, but other men don't see, or something that everybody sees, to some extent? Something everyone sees. Yeah, yeah. So, once you try to do what Herakitis says first, right? And then later on, do this, huh? You see that? So? Okay. Now, we'll see how Aristotle does this. Okay? Next time, okay? But, just in the last few minutes remaining, it's almost five now. Notice what Herakitis says. Now, it's a very interesting statement. Those who speak with understanding must be strong in what is common to all. He goes on in the fragment to say, as much as the city is strong in its law, right? And even more so. Because the law of the city is fed, he says, by divine law, which is more than sufficient and so on. But notice the comparison he's making there. Is it possible for you and I to live together in the city without a common law? See? In other words, if you're going by the law of England that you're driving the west side of the street, then I'm going by the law of the United States. I don't want to get on the same road with you guys. You see? So, we need common laws to live together. But now, is that also true in the life of the mind? If we're going to live the life of the mind together, you and I, must we not have something in common? See? Now, sometimes I break that down with the two ways you might lead the life of the mind together. Sometimes we lead the life of the mind together as equals, right? Discussing something. Sometimes as unequals, like teacher and student, right? But now, if we're leading the life, let's say, together as teacher and student, the teacher is trying to lead the student to see something that the teacher knows and the student doesn't know. But he tries to lead the student to see what the student doesn't know to what the student knows already. See? Like Socrates leads the slave boy, right? Socrates leads the slave boy, right? Socrates leads the slave boy, right? Socrates leads the slave boy, right? Socrates leads the slave boy, right? Socrates leads the slave boy, right? Socrates leads the slave boy, right? Socrates leads the slave boy, right? Socrates leads the slave boy, right? Socrates leads the slave boy, right? Socrates leads the slave boy, right? Socrates leads the slave boy, right? Socrates leads the slave boy, right? You see how the double-square ultimately is through things that the slave boy himself knows. But obviously the teacher has to know those things as well in order to lead the student from them, right? So the only way you can really lead truly and fully the life of the mind together as teacher and student is by having some things in common, right? That both the teacher and the student knows, and the teacher uses those things that they both know to lead the student to see the things that the teacher knows and the student doesn't know. You see that? So it's impossible really to have the life of the mind together as teacher and student without having this common thing, right? Okay? So when I learn from Euclid, who's my teacher in geometry, and he makes use of things I've learned already, right, to make me see the next theorem in the book, you know how that works, huh? And that's the only way he can teach me, huh? He's got to know those things too, obviously. That I know. To lead me from them, right? But now, if you have the life of the mind, as you do, between equals that we're discussing something, right? As we know, we often disagree, right? And I can say, you're wrong because you don't agree with my thinking. And you can return the compliment. That's kind of the end of our life of the mind together, right? If you and I disagree, the only way to go forward is to find something that we can both agree upon, that we can use to decide between us, huh? Like two scientists, you know, who might have driven hypotheses, and I can say, well, your hypothesis is incorrect in the mind, and you can return the compliment, right? You've got to know this irony, you know? You saw St. Paul using irony there with the Corinthians there in the second epistle. He hasn't been any burden to them because he would, you know, support himself in his own labor, right? And so he's talking about how he's, what, you know, harmed them, right, by not expecting anybody or help from them financially. Okay, anyway, yeah, two scientists, huh? If they want to go forward, they've got to maybe find an experiment, right, that they can both perform and observe the results of, but an experiment where there are two different hypotheses, let's say, how to predict different things, huh? And then they can use a common experiment to decide between them, huh? And if you and I disagree about something in geometry, right, we have to go back to something we both know and try to use that to distinguish who's right and who's wrong, huh? So whether it's between unequals, like teacher and student, or between equals in a kind of dialectical conversation, you know, where you go forward, you have to find something, what? Common, yeah. So those who speak with understanding, he says, must be strong in what is common to all. And of course, to be strong in it means that you are able to see what does or does not follow from it, or what is or is not in agreement with it. Because if there's something common to the two of us, whereby we could resolve our disagreement, whereby we are in disagreement in the first place. We don't see what follows from what is common, right? We don't see what is or is not in harmony at first of what is common. So you've got to go back to that common and become strong in it, and then we'll maybe see whether you or me, in our disagreement, are in agreement with that common thing, huh? Okay? You see that? So what Aristotle's willing to do here is he's going to find a common basis among all of these disagreeing guys, and he's going to become strong in it. He's going to follow exactly the advice of Heraklitus. And, of course, he probably had more words, you know, to work with, you know, we used to have the fragments, right? But even some of the fragments we see, we can see Aristotle's working his way towards the common, what? Thought, huh? Okay? And so we're going to see, first of all, you know, how he finds a common basis, the common basis he does find, and then all the steps he goes through to become strong in what is common to everybody. And then later on, we're going to look at another set of readings from Aristotle, again from the first book here, where he's going to do the same thing again, but there he begins by finding a common basis among all men, and he becomes strong in that by going through several steps on. It's the amazing thing, right? And he's following exactly what Heraklitus, that's why Heraklitus is a central thinking human thought, but he goes, you know, you can imagine what he is because of what he said, right? You know, he saw the importance of that, huh? And he kind of anticipates the common basis that Aristotle first finds, and it will see, you don't see it in the fatal, right? You know, but we'll see the nurse now here. Okay? That's the only way, I think, to move forward. The other alternative is to say, well, I'm with myself. But the most natural, I just don't bring hands in despair, you know? I used to always think, you know, when I was still a college student, you know, and go to one of these meetings of professors, they're kind of close-off meetings, you know, and they're all disagreeing, you know, and so on. It's not too good an idea to bring young students in there. Right, yeah, yeah. All these guys disagreeing, you know, and no two guys saying the same thing, you know, because it can be kind of a, you know, discouraging thing, to say the least, huh? Heraclitus, you know, he has other fragments. He says, we should not act and speak, he says, like those asleep. For the sleeping, he says, what? For the wake, he says, there's one world in his common. But each man falls asleep, each man falls into his own world, right? So you can say that these men are all, what, somewhat asleep, huh? Each in his own world, right? And Heraclitus is, I mean, Tha's in the world where water's beginning of all things, and Maximinus in the world where air's beginning of all things, and the Markmanus in the world where the abs are beginning of all things. And each guy is in his own world, huh? And, of course, his own private world, huh? And, you know, the Greek word for private is idios. Forget the word idiot, huh? But in a sense, the idiot, the madman, is a man who's living in a world of his own making, right? And so, most of you must be living in their own world, not the one true world, huh? So if we all, you know, fall asleep, you know, after this quiet, you know, and I might dream I'm here and you dream you're somewhere else and we're all dreaming and it all falls, right? But if we wake up, oh, yeah, we're on the table, right? Well, we all agree, right? We wake up, you know, and come back to the one real true world. Was it Bellarmine wrote the famous thing, I think, you know, on the Protestants there, you know, the way they kept on dividing, you know, as they left the church, huh? They kept on, you know, dividing, you know, everybody got the old opinion, right? Right down to the last thing, you know? All these private worlds, huh? They've got their own catechism, their own creed, their own this, their own that, huh? They all depart from the one true common freedom. What was that court decision, that Casey decision where it says that the heart of human freedom is to define one's own meaning of existence, etc.? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a pretty example. Someone commented about that and says, yeah, well, that's the schizophrenic, which is true. Yeah. The schizophrenic is the most free person in our society. Okay, so we'll start with this. What he does the reading aid is to find a common basis among this group and that group, and then find in the beginning of 10, he finds the common basis of the all-share. And then he starts to become strong in it. He goes through many steps and will know each of the steps that goes along. You can't believe in the way he does it, you know? But, you know, when I first was, you know, I started to teach these things and translate the fragments, and suddenly it dawned upon me how carefully he's following her fight is there. That advice, I mean, it's amazing. Sometimes I call myself an Arachnetean, right? Because maybe he first saw this thing, you know? And what will come in here, too, when you get to the 11th reading, there you'll see the role of contradiction, right? It's going to be the first major example in the order of learning of the role of contradiction in the development of our knowledge, huh? At that point, we'll stop and look at the fragments again of Heraclitus about contradiction, and then Aristotle's statement of this in the Third Book of Wisdom, but then we'll give the ones from the modern scientists, right, where they see something of this, and then finally the words of... the theologians and Christ himself about this. Some kind of amazing thing to see that. We saw a little bit of that in the frame of Anaxagoras, right? The importance of seeing that apparent contradiction between the different things he's saying, which leads us to the solution suggested by none other than Socrates, right? I don't know. Socrates is very good at seeing contradictions in your thinking, right? We know he read Anaxagoras, and that contradiction, you know. I don't know how long I was teaching him, so far I saw him, you know, I didn't see the contradiction there. And then, and then... You led us to it. You gave us choices, you said, two sentences you can... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you go so far, a couple sentences. Yeah, yeah. But once you see that, and you realize that there's reason to say both of these things, and yet they seem to be opposed, then you have to, what, look under that contradiction and see how it can be resolved. And that's how we discover the way the mind, in fact, can move itself. There's gold, and there are hills. In some ways, it seems that for most people, there's more reason to despair. Yeah, yeah. Because I also say that they disagree, and also that they were more intelligent than most people. Yeah, yeah. And so, if they couldn't find the way... Yeah. Yeah. Because even finding what is the way... But, you know, you know, Thomas is, in a lot of his works, he attacks the positions of the Latin, the veroists, as they're called. I mean, in other words, they have these crazy opinions that the veroism does his head. But, you know, I think it's in the day, he taught the epilectus kato veroistisan. But anyway, he says, they speak as if wisdom began with them. It's kind of going to be the modern philosophers, you see that same thing. Each modern philosopher, in turn, speaks as if wisdom began with them. I feel like they speak. And I think Thomas has hit upon something there, right? The defect in the will of these people. You know, sometimes they have kind of a false... I think if you know it, you know, that they were lucky to discover this, you know. But, I think I was mentioning it the last time I was reading the commentary there, and the second epistle to the Corinthians there, and Thomas touches upon that, the two kinds of pride there. And, you know, I see this text, you know, more complete when we discuss Gregory's division of the species of pride and the kind of manifested, you know, by their effects. I think the fundamental division is that when I'm led by pride to think I'm better than I am, right, the two ways that you could say, you know, first to divide it, is because I think I have some good or excellence that I don't have, right? You know, I can be led by pride to think that I have some good or excellence that I don't have, right? And that's, you know, in what I have, in what I have, right? And the other one is not in what I have, but in how I have it. Right? See? So I could think that I understand something that I don't understand, right? Yeah, I just bring that obituary from Vincent de Lack, that's kind of interesting, huh? Because Father Stromberg there, he was kind of quoted in the thing, you know, talking about de Lack, you know. And de Lack would often say, not often, but sometimes say, you know, I don't understand that. You know? In other words, he wasn't doubting it, you know, something maybe in philosophy there, but just, you know, I don't understand either. That's kind of a good sign that the Magdalene would say, right? You see? So sometimes we pretend to understand something we don't understand, right? Or we think we understand something we don't really understand. Other times, we do understand the thing, and so it's not private to say we understand it, huh? But we think we discovered it ourselves, right? You see? Well, we actually learn it from somebody else, huh? You see? And, you know, not necessarily have to go on every time you explain something and say, well, I learned so-and-so, I learned something. You know? But I mean, sometimes you get to think as if you're the first guy to see these things, right? But there's another way of doing it, right? I'm the only one that's seen this. That's another kind of pride, isn't it? We think you're the only person who's seen this, and you're not the only person who's seen this, huh? And it's interesting how you know, when the two great philosophers of Leonardo and Aristotle, they both had the idea that the universe was eternal, right? It always was, right? And therefore that the philosophy and the arts and the sciences were discovered many times, huh? And then there's some kind of a cataclysm, you know, and only a few farmers up in the hills or someplace, you know, shepherds are left there, and you didn't know anything much to speak of, right? And so then they started over again, right? Well, although this is false that the universe always existed, right? It keeps us a little more humble, right? Because like, you know, not like, you know, Aristotle's the first man. Aristotle doesn't realize how unique he is in some ways, right? You see? But Aristotle is really the first man to understand what the soul was. That's a great student, you know? And, I mean, other things. So, if you know how unique it, and why he thinks you know, you know, that the myths in some of them, you know, are kind of a, you know, third-fourth-hand account of, filtered down, you know, from people who discovered, you know. You see that way sometimes, right? You've probably seen that in the text there. Because, you know, the twelfth chapter there of the second epistle of the Corinthians where St. Paul says, I know a man who is carried up to the third heaven, and so on, and he's really talking about himself, huh? But then after that, you know, talking about the revelation, and he was given this thorn in his side, but I don't know what it is. It might have been some kind of physical suffering, it might have been some kind of cupiscence, right? Augustine takes that as a possibility, too. But anyway, there's something that was given to him to humble him, right? To keep him from being what, as he himself says, from being puffed up by the magnitude of the things, right? So, if Aristotle had known how unique he was, you know, he was the first man to understand these things, and most men after him would never understand them as close as he did, I'd be cold. You know what I mean? You see? So, I think it's easy to be discovered many times, and then, you know, he'll be discovered again by somebody else, you know what I'm saying? So that's a little more humble. You know, but you kind of, you know, divide providence using the mistaken notion about eternity of the world to keep Aristotle too puffed up by these great discoveries, huh? But I think it's in the politics where he says, you know, we should say, try to say some things better than our predecessors, and other things we should try to say as well as they did, you see? This isn't kind of a remarkable balance here in Aristotle, right? Because he's not anybody's patsies, obviously, and he's going to examine what people say, right? But there are some things that are said so well, like what Heraclitus says about this, you know, you don't try to improve that. Just like Shakespeare says something so well, you know, you know, you find it, you know, you couldn't say it better than that. He goes, you beat Shakespeare, you want to say it as well as Shakespeare said it, right? You see? This we could be new made when thou art old, and see thy blood warm when thou field stood cold. About children, right? You know, he says it so well, these things, huh? For thou art thy mother's glass, being your mother's mirror, and she indeed calls back the lovely April of her prime. It's so beautiful, right? You know? And you see your children and your grandchildren, you see something, you know, of yourself or other people that you've loved coming back, right? You know? It's kind of amazing to see this, right? You know? But Shakespeare says it so well, you know? Something you express better than this. It's like, you know, Varsha Nervyn, you know, in the last conversation. You know? You know? There was Pierre there at the end, you know, where he says, it's really idle for you, the rest of us, to take any credit for what we wrote, you know, because Shakespeare said it all, you know. It's kind of amazing, you know, that that's it. Never quite said it as well as Shakespeare said it all, Everton, you know. And, of course, they named the whole first age of American literature, you know, the world of Washington Irving, right, because he's the dominant man, you know, dominant writer, internationally and nationally. So when you try to do it yourself, you are speaking as if wisdom became a few, it seems to me, in a way, huh? Something like that, anyway. Interesting text there, Thomas, you know, I mean, you see things said many times, but he's saying, you know, charity is the greatest of the virtues, right? And then they come here in the Corinthians, and pride is the worst of all sins. Interesting he says that, right? You know, charity, the reason why charity is the greatest is because it unites us with God, and he's the end, right? And actually, the end is the beginning, and, you know, practical matters, right? So charity unites us, you know, most fully to God, right? Therefore, it's kind of the root, beginning of all the virtues, huh? But pride is seeking one's own excellence, not in order to, what? God, right? So then he quotes, you know, the Old Testament, where it says, you know, pride is the beginning of all, right? Kind of turning away from God, right? The beginning of all things. I guess when DeConnick and Dionne, I tell you that story, but I guess when DeConnick and Dionne were over in Europe, you know, for the Second Vatican Council, right? And they were, you know, parity, you know, with Cardinal there in Quebec, and they were working on something, you know. Once DeConnick pointed something out in the philosophy of nature, and DeConnick stopped and he says, how could I have missed that all these years? I've been teaching philosophy of nature, you know, for 30, 40 years, you know. How could I have missed that, you know? But one conversation I had with Dionne, you know, he was just recalling that, you know, how childlike DeConnick was in the real, you know, through there, huh? Even the first time I met DeConnick, you know, I met him at the house of Kusurik, and he'd come down, one of those lecturers, he had a dozen children. And I had some questions that Kusurik could not answer, say, because Kusurik says, well, when DeConnick comes down, you ask these questions. So DeConnick stayed at Kusurik's house, so he called me over, and I came over there and I put all my questions to DeConnick, and he answered them all, say. I could tell you it was a priority to DeConnick, you know, it was quite clear, you know, from that. And then when I got through with that, then Kusurik said, now, Dwayne, you explained to DeConnick your ideas on music, right? I had some things that we did on Mozart, right? I said, DeConnick, you know, so I told him to listen to me, you know. And he said, well, he said, write it up, he says, we'll publish it. He says, you know, there's no pretension at all on DeConnick, you know. And he felt like he had to say, you know. And he kind of used to, you know, when there's all those articles he'd publish, he'd go take them to Deon to read for us, you know, to see if there's anything wrong with it, you know. But, you know, that's really real. I guess that's true humility, right, you know. Kind of, you know, recognize Deon's great judgment there. But, you know, funny, most teachers, you know, you just, you know, since he didn't flock, is all he says, right? He just puffs up, you know, and so on, you know. Yeah, I was a little struck at Thomas Aquinas, but Dr. MacArthur, how often he'd just ask him, go to him with questions and say, I don't know. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. God, God, Mark Ferguson. He would just say, I don't know, what do you think about this guy? I've never read him. Some people wouldn't talk about him if they didn't read him. Yeah, yeah. You see, some of these physicists, you know, I read, you know, kind of their, you know, they call them semi-popular books, you know what I'm calling them. But before I left LaHolla, I went to see Dick Connick, you know, and even time to time before the Heisenberg, there were so many people writing and so on. And so I ended up being teaching philosophy science and so on and doing some of these things like that. So I thought he would send some of the names of these people, you know, what people thought were worth reading and so on and so on. And he was giving the names and saying, so you won't be misled by, you know, the second-rate scientists you'll have in your school, right? You know, you must be, you know, from the horse's mouth, as I always say. So I read these people, and I, you know, I use them a lot. They're important in my classes, I mean, for different, you know, things, you know. And there was a rumor going around, an assumption that Berkowitz had a Ph.D. in physics who was about to get one, you know. You know, and because I didn't, for God, whatever calculus I know, I don't think I know any calculus now. I don't think I would, you know. And so I got very far from, you know, getting a Ph.D. in physics. You know, but the rumor was either I had one or I'm about to get one, you know, and so on, and I said, gee, with how easy it is to, you know, you know, give them the impression, right, that I know a tremendous amount, you know, that I don't know, you know. I'm not going to be trying to do this, I said, but I read it, you know. I've got it from the horse's mouth, I said, you know, I speak with some authority, you know, because I can say what Einstein says about his own theory, right, or what Heisenberg says about his own theory, right, you know, you realize how easily people can get the wrong impression, right, you know. Well, so you ought to pretend to do the more than you do. I mean, it's very easy to do that in some ways, huh? With the pantheism, I forget, I was reading some a while ago, but in the East, you know, the pantheism, how it's so prevalent in India, it was always like the top was saying, you know, it's for now, it's a democracy, a custom. Is there something like that in the East? Well, I don't know, I mean, pantheism, there's a lot more to say about it than this chapter, but was it C.S. Lewis, I think? I'm familiar with the textbook one where he's talking to me about it, you know. C.S. Lewis speaks about pantheism, it's so almost natural to man to think this way, you know. But, you know, the state of the unwashed mind, so to speak, right? You know, so, I mean, it's not only democracy that makes men think this way, you know. My father, Donald Rutledge, who was a Benedictine, and he lived in India for a while, and he was in St. Thomas, and he was thinking about why they thought of that. I mean, if there's no understanding of ability, right, then you think that whatever is in the ability of something is actually in there, right? So just like Anne Xavier's thought, everything that's in the ability of matter, right, is actually in there, right? Well, that's why you might think that everything that's in the ability of God is another kind of ability now, the act of ability, right? But you might think that that ability is composed of everything that... It's able to be, right? Or able to make, or whatever it is, huh? Give rise to. Well, then you put this pantheistic then, right? You're saying all the creatures are in the ability of God, right? So they're all in some way in God. Well, you know, if you imagine them to be actually in God, then you've got pantheists, right? You know? And so, you see, the first cause of error on the side of the knowing powers is more false imagination than the senses, and it's false imagination. And like Weizsaker says, when you imagine something, you make it actual in your imagination. And so if you try to imagine ability, you make what? Actual in the ability what it's an ability for. And that's kind of involved in Heraclitus, in Xavier's position on matter, right? But the same way to be involved in understanding God, right? I'm thinking of the way of speaking to a scripture there. And Moses, God says to Abraham, to Moses, follow me and I will show you every good. And Thomas says, that is myself. Well, it's the same way of speaking there, right? God is every good, right? You know, if you misunderstood that, you know, you know? Or don't we say, instead of the apocalypse, when I see it in the saints, you know, that in the next world, God will be, what? Omnia and omnibus, don't they say that? Yeah. Omnia and omnibus, right? Yeah. In a sense, what you're saying is that God contains everything in a way, right? But it's hard for us to understand the way he contains everything in a simple way, right? So if you think of God containing everything in some kind of a concoction there, a mix of these things, well, then you're thinking in pantheistic terms, aren't you, right? So the imagination, to do that, when you try to imagine them in there, you know, the thing on this book on Gentile is there in the first hierarchy of the angels, and the seraphim, you know, see the order of the universe, divine providence and the divine goodness, and the cherubim see it in the divine substance, and the thrones see it in the divine knowledge, right? And Thomas says, one should not think now is the divine goodness, the divine substance, and the divine knowledge are about three different things, right? But there's another consideration of each of these, right? And that's the way Dionysius is trying to explain the superiority, right, of the seraphim and the cherubim and the cherubim to the thrones, right? That they see the order in a higher principle, right? So to see it in the divine goodness is like to see it in the end, right? To see it in the divine substance is like to see it in the form, right? But the form is less than the end, right? And to see the divine knowledge, that's less than the divine substance itself, right? It's kind of interesting to think about that, you know, but awfully profound. I would teach a pasiricus to say when you die and see your current angel, you'll start to worship him by God, and you'll say, no, no, I'm not God. He's much better than me. But I mean, you know, this whole tremendous being, you know, this must be it, this is God. You know, kind of, you know, a little tongue-in-cheek tip, I mean, the idea that, you know, that these angels are something, right? And even your current angel, which is in the lowest hierarchy, lowest order, I mean, there will be something, right? And you say, well, this is God, right? I should have, you know, talked a little bit about that, huh? This greater mind that Ang Saquers talks about, what is it? Is it a divine mind or an angelic mind? Has he arrived at there? Seems to be an angelic. Yeah. See? It's a mind that moves matter by changing place, like the angels can do, but it's not a mind that's responsible for the very existence of matter. So he's actually a very angelic mind, huh? And, you know, I never pursued it, but one time, you know, somewhere in class in the iconic said, it's easier to know that the angels are than God, right? Of course, the other person is like, no, no, you know, because we talk so much about God, it's a little about the angels, right? But actually, it's easier to arrive at a mind that's separate from matter, for the reasons he gives, right, than a mind that could be the creator of matter. It's very hard to understand, huh? Creation is very hard to understand. And so there's a greater mind that's separate from matter that acts upon and moves it around, okay, but there's a mind that's actually, you know, created matter, well, that's very hard to understand, see? So it's kind of easier to arrive at the divine, at the angelic mind in some ways, than the divine mind. Although one might think of the greater mind as God, because you know nothing better, right? But when you see, you know, a very angel, you're going to say, you know, where you've been all my life, you know? I mean, this is God, you know? I mean, it's got to be a real impressive thing, you know? Yeah, that was Michael Bailey when he talks about, you know, his arguments for mind. He says, but I haven't proved God, I've just proved it's our mind. Maybe it's, I don't know, the planter, I don't know, there's just some mind, haven't you? Yeah, yeah. That's all I've proved. He said, you know, I'm not talking about God in this sermon. Yeah, yeah. An angel, someone who knew how to, you know, way to do that. I don't know how much of Aristotle Augustine knew, he mentions a category, you know. That's only work that we know that he was acquainted with. There's no mention of any other work that he's acquainted with of Aristotle, but he didn't have access to them or not, but, you know. He says, he thinks Plato might have ran into Jeremiah, and that's where he got something. Yeah, no, he takes those, too seriously, those suggestions, you know, that Philo was taught by Moses, and that. Of course, it's actually better for the pedagogic point of view to have the Greek philosophers developing philosophy independently of the faith, though, because then you see what human reason can achieve, huh? Yeah, sure, right. And I'll make that comparison to the Church Fathers make between one advantage of not all the Jews being converted, right, was that those Jews who were not converted and some of whom were violently opposed to Christianity, they were witnesses to the authenticity of the books of the Old Testament, from which the Christians, you know, would reason as far as the prophecies are concerned. So when they were dealing with the Gentiles, you know, if all the Jews had been converted to the Gentiles, they might have said, well, you just, you know, fabricated those books, you know, to kind of, you know, give a false credibility to your religion, right? But when the enemies of your religion, right, when they are witnesses to the antiquity of the books of which you reason to your thing, well, then that's a pretty good situation to be in, right? And, you know, the same way, like, you know, with, you know, we teach Porphyry, you know, with the greats got a whole paraphrase of Porphyry's Issa Goge, which is fundamental, Thomas, everybody uses it. But Porphyry was, as we know from Augustine, he was quite anti-Christian. One of the Christians had his anti-Christian diatribes, burnt, right? So, you know, but, I mean, it shows how philosophy is kind of, what, independent, right? And, you know, people might say, you know, well, you can't know about God by reason. You just think you know by reason because of your, you know, you have the faith and then you, you know, try to find it. But it's kind of amazing, you know, to see the Greeks how far they got, at least Aristotle, as far as the knowledge of God and of other things. I remember my, my, my cousin, she never had, you know, college education, but she was, um, she'd take, like, the miniature of great books things, you know. And, of course, you're going to cross the little bit of Aristotle in the great books there, the miniature even one. And what Aristotle says about God, she's kind of amazed at this guy could know anything about God, who is not a, a Christian. How would you know about it, right? Uh-huh.