Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 44: Matter, Form, and the Fallacy of the Accidental

Transcript
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Now let me take a comparison here, using the example I did with the mind before, right? Can you teach God anything? No. Why not? Well, it's because he knows everything, right? That's why I can't teach him anything, right? You can only teach someone who's ignorant, right? Okay. So it's because you're ignorant that you're teachable, right? You might see it that way, right? Why aren't you making a similar confusion here, right? You can't teach God because he knows everything, right? You can only teach somebody who's ignorant, right? So it's because you're ignorant that you're teachable. Is that really so? Or Daristyle would say you're confusing the mind, which is the ability to know, right, with ignorance, right? Ignorance as such is an unbeing of knowledge, right? The mind, you'd say, as such is not an unbeing of knowledge. The mind, in some way, is almost knowing because it's the ability to know. But ignorance is in no way, no way, right? Okay. But he wanted to argue in a way similar to this. He might say, well, let's compare the mind and ignorance to knowledge, right? And let's say that knowledge is something God-like. Why would you say that knowledge is God-like? Yeah. So, except that we know something, we become in some way like God, right? Okay. And it's something, therefore, good, right? And desirable. Now, when you compare the mind and ignorance to knowledge, huh? If knowledge is something God-like, good and desirable, then ignorance would seem to be something, what? Bad, right, huh? Okay. But the mind, would that seem to be something bad? No. It seems to be good because it is capable of what? Of knowing, yeah. They could also say that the mind, what? Desires to know, right? Okay? Meaning that the mind is ordered to knowing, as the ability to know is ordered to, what? Actually knowing, right? So the mind, in that sense, is perfected by knowledge, huh? But what would make sense is to say that ignorance desires to know. If ignorance were to desire to know, it would desire its own what? Yeah. So if the mind desires to know, but ignorance cannot desire to know, how can the mind and the ignorance be the same thing? So you're able to learn because you have a mind, not because you're ignorant, right? But notice, huh? Before you learn, your mind is, what? Necessarily ignorant, right? And it's kind of a strange accidental thing to be necessarily there, right? A lot of times you can see that something is accidental because it's not always there, right? But one is always ignorant before he, what? Learns, right? Okay? And yet it's not through being ignorant that he learns. It's through his ability to know, through his mind, that he actually learns, huh? You see, somebody can confuse the two, right? Hegel speaks of what? The portentous power, the negative. Portentous, you know, very significant, you know. But the power of the negative, right? Well, in a sense, the negative doesn't have any power at all, does it? See? Mm-hmm. That's a real, what? He's kind of universalizing this mistake, huh? So you see, I could argue in a similar way against this confusion, right? Mm-hmm. As Aristotle reasoned against this confusion of matter and lack of form, right? Mm-hmm. There's a tendency for the modern philosophers to identify man with his freedom, rather than with, what? Reason, right? Okay? Mm-hmm. Now, of course, freedom is something that does characterize man, distinguish man from the other animals, and so on. And it's good that the existentialists, like Sartre, defend the reality of man's freedom, right? Okay? But man wouldn't really be free if he didn't have reason. Like Shakespeare says, right? And Hammett says, when he's talking about how he chose, right? Horatio is his friend. He says, since my dear soul was mistress of her choice, it could have been distinguished, huh? Her election has sealed before herself, huh? So he had to have his reason, right? Before he could, what, really choose, huh? But leave that aside, huh? Now, when Sartre tries to understand man's freedom, he identifies man's freedom with non-being, with nothingness. Now, why did a man do that, huh? Well, when I explain this to my students, kind of lead them into thinking the way Sartre does at first, you know? I say, when I go into the restaurant, huh? And they hand me a menu, right? If I'm really free to choose between steak and chicken and these other things, right? Then, before I choose chicken, let's say, as opposed to steak, or vice versa, is my will determined to choose chicken before I choose? No. If I was determined to choose chicken, why would you be free? I go into the restaurant? I couldn't help but choose chicken, right? So if I'm really free to choose chicken or steak, or not to have these, or have something else, then before I choose, my will is undetermined, right? So it's that indetermination of my will that makes me free, right? Yeah. And the indetermination is a kind of non-being, isn't it? And so, you know, kind of the magnification of words, right? So man is free because of non-being, because of nothingness, right? And Sartre says man is the one by whom non-being came into the world, right? With his freedom, right? Okay. Now, is that true? No. No. What is he confusing here? When I get to students like that, they say, yeah, yeah, you're free because you're undetermined. As if your determination is really the essence of your, what? Freedom. It's the determination of man that makes him free. What is he confusing there? Yeah. He's confusing the ability to choose with the lack of choice before I choose, right? Okay. Now, he's identifying those two, isn't he? But now if you compare them to a third thing, maybe to choice, you could say that the ability to choose is for the sake of choosing, right? So choice is the fulfillment of this ability, right? But is it the fulfillment of the lack of choice? No, it's the elimination of that indetermination, right? So how can these two be the same thing when one is for the sake of this third thing, right? And the other is opposed to that third thing, right? When the one is perfected by this third thing and the other is what? Eliminated, right? When I first present that to the students, they tend to agree with Sartre, right? That one is free because of that indetermination in his will. And you can say before I choose, necessarily, there is an indetermination in my will. That's not my freedom. But this is something that necessarily happens to the ability to choose before you choose. Just as ignorance necessarily happens to the mind before it learns, right? Because it necessarily happens, I think that's the reason why people will tend to be, what? to identify the two, right? I had a relative, right? I lived out in Twin Cities. So he comes down to St. Paul to visit, and one of the relatives dies, so I run into him at the funeral home. A few weeks later, he comes down again to visit. Another relative dies. I need him at the funeral home. He says to me, I don't think I'll come down anymore. Somebody seems to die. And now, to the best of my knowledge, this was purely, what? Accidental, right? But suppose nobody ever died until after this guy came to town. You'd probably, what? Ask him to stay away, wouldn't you? Right? But notice, one never learns without being first, what? Ignorant, right? Before one chooses, right, there's always this indetermination of will. So if A always comes before B, you might think that A is in some way a what? A cause, huh? But it's not really a cause as such of what comes to be in these cases, is it? Even though it necessarily goes before. Now, my little addition to Aristides remarked there on the fallacy of the accident, when he says that it deceives even the wise, right? I think that it especially deceives the wise when it's, what? Necessarily found there, right? Because then it doesn't seem to be accidental, does it? See what I mean? It seems to be as such. See, the ancients thought that swamp air caused malaria, right? And the reason to think so is that people who were in the swamp air is the ones who got malaria. If you weren't in the swamp air, you didn't get malaria. Okay? But then someone, you know, slept in the swamp air with a mosquito net over him, he didn't get malaria. So was it the swamp air as such that was causing malaria? No, it was the mosquito. Well, maybe it's not even the mosquito as such. But the germ, or whatever it is, that's the mosquito, or some mosquitoes, are a carrier, right? So you might think, you know, that the malaria, as such, right, is the cause of, I mean, the swamp air is such as the cause of malaria. But you can, you know, separate those, right? But where the accidental was necessarily found there, it's hard to separate them, huh? Okay? I'll give you another example from the bottom. It's a little different, an entire different matter, you know? But the way, a little bit of a parking proceeds a bit. Okay? Now, does your mind know something if that thing is not in your mind? So all you know is what is in your mind, right? It's going to be outside your mind. Right? Okay. In a particular way. See? In other words, everything that I know is necessarily true that it's known by me, right? It's known by me insofar as it's in my mind, right? Therefore, everything I know is only in my mind, right? I have no knowledge of the... This is a common thing among all the body philosophers in the sense, but as you see it embarked and so on. What are you going to say about that? You have that line of thought thinking, I don't have anything in mind right now so I know nothing. Yeah. I mean, the person's going to say you don't know the same thing, right? I don't know what's in my mind I don't know what's in your mind. But no, let's say, if I know what a square is, right, huh? Is square being in my mind accidental or necessary or what is it to my knowing what a square is? It's necessary. Yeah. See? So that I know what a square is, square is necessarily in my mind, right? Right. Okay? But, when I define square, do I say it's an equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral in the mind to go into a question? Yeah. See, even though when I understand that definition of square that Euclid has, it's necessarily in my mind, right? But that it's in the mind, in my mind is not part of the definition of that, right? Yeah. It's accidental, right? Uh-huh. To what a square is that it be in the mind of me. Uh-huh. It's actually to be a square that's in your mind, right? So here's something necessarily there, right? But notice, if in the mind, in my mind, was in the definition of everything I define, and in your mind is the definition of everything you define, we'd never have the same definition, would we? Because your mind is not my mind, right? Uh-huh. But that's really accidental to what I know. Uh-huh. Even though I necessarily have it in mind when I know it. It's how easy a person can get confused about that, right? Uh-huh. See? So I think men are deceived by the accidental when it's necessarily, what? Present, yeah. Yeah. In a way, as I say, Hegel universalizes this and speaks of the power of the negative, right? Well, is that because we have a misunderstanding of the word accidental? We take it as being that which is not necessary? Yeah. Well, that's part of it, maybe, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But if something is necessarily there, it seems to be as such, right? I can only teach the ignorant, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it seems that it's through your big ignorant that you're teachable, right? But I think in Sartre it's especially deceptive, right, huh? It's an indetermination. It's especially deceptive there, right? Uh-huh. It's that indetermination in my will that is my freedom. You think so? It's my ability to choose, right? So I wouldn't be free if I didn't have that indetermination of my will before I choose. If I was already determined to choose chicken once I walked in there, I wouldn't be able to choose long guidance on the menu. Do you see that? Mm-hmm. Yeah. But that indetermination is not really my freedom. It's not really my ability to choose. Mm-hmm. See? Just as the formlessness of matter is not really its ability to be formed, is it? Mm-hmm. You can only form the formless, right? Mm-hmm. Is it the will that is our ability? Yeah, but the will is not the indetermination of the will. The will is the ability to what? To choose. Mm-hmm. But the ability to choose is not the same as a lack of choice, huh? Mm-hmm. Okay. Of course, if Sartre wasn't just doing this in theory, he actually went in the restaurant to determine that chicken and brought it out raw, I bet you he would've changed his mind. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, now, this text as I mentioned as a little before, it's a very important text for understanding what bad is, huh? What badness is. Okay? Okay. Now, what they're self-touching upon here is that the first meaning of bad is always that of a, what, lack, huh? Okay. The word bad actually has many meanings, huh? It's an equivocal word. It's a word that has many meanings, but it's equivocal by, what, reason, huh? Not by chance, huh? What does that mean? You see, a word is equivocal by reason. But it means that there's an order among the meanings, right, huh? Now, the basic meaning of bad here is bad and lack, huh? And then the second meaning of bad is what has a lack, right? You can speak of having to have a lack, right? And then the third meaning of bad is what causes or produces a lack. What is lack, huh? What is lack, huh? Well, you've got to care for it. Lack is a non-being, but it's not just a non-being, okay? Lack is the non-being of something one is able to have, right? And in the strict sense, one is able to have and should have, right? A non-being of something one is able to have and should have, right? So, take an example of that, right? Blindness, right? Okay? Blindness is a non-being of something one is able to have, namely sight, right? And should have, right, huh? So, the chair is not, strictly speaking, blind, is it? You can say the chair doesn't see, right? But it's not blind, right? Because blindness is not simply the non-being of sight, but the non-being of sight in a subject, like a man or a dog, that's able to have sight, right? And that should have sight, right? Okay? So, this is the basic, the first meaning of bad, huh? It's another being of something one is able to have and should have, okay? And when one should have it, he could have one to have, right? Okay? So, blindness is something bad, right? Okay? And then, to be a blind man is not, what? Good, right? But the blind man is not simply the lack, but he's, what? He has a lack, right? Okay? And then, what blinds you is something, what? Bad, right? Okay? So, blindness is something bad, and therefore it's bad for you to be blind, right? Therefore it's bad for you to poke out your eye or something, right? Okay? But the original meaning of bad is blindness, right? Because blindness is bad, then it's bad for you to, what? Like, have blindness or this condition, right? And then it's bad for me to, what? Do something that causes this condition in you, right? But the basic meaning of bad is that of a lack. Now, when Augustine talks about sin, he says sometimes, sin is nothing. And the man who sins becomes nothing, right, then? But he's emphasizing the idea that badness there is ultimately a kind of, what? Unbeing, right? Okay? This kind of unbeing we would call a lack, right? Okay? Now, when you talk, say, in ethics, say, about a bad act, right? We're going to get back in now in the second sentence here. Now, a good act is a reasonable act. A good human act, that is to say. But a bad human act is a what? Unreasonable. Unreasonable act, right? Okay? Now, an unreasonable act is an act that is lacking something. It's a human act that's lacking something it should have. Okay? Now, reason, as you know, it orders and measures things, right? Okay? So, an unreasonable act is a disordered act or a what? Unmeasured act, right? Okay? So, if I eat more than I should, right, huh? Okay? Or I drink before I operate on you and so on. Okay? So, maybe the doctor should have to drink after he operates to relax, right? But not before, right? Okay? So, the root of the badness there is it's lacking something it should have. It's a disordered act. It's lacking the order that reason should have given it, right? Or it's lacking the measure that reason should have imposed upon it, huh? I know, so blindness is not immoral. You know, some people are more blind, right? Beyond their, you know, control, they become blind, right? But it's a form of badness, everyone's saying. Kind of badness, huh? So, this is kind of, this text here is kind of a key text to begin to understand the bad, right? The word, the bad, they say, is equivocal, right? But the first meaning of bad is this meaning that we be here. It's always a lack, huh? It's another being of something you're able to have and should have, right? That's very important later on to try to understand, you know, again, going back to the idea of this. You know, they have two first causes, you know, the good God and the bad God, right? And the bad God would be, what, totally bad, right? But could there be something totally bad? No, it's not to understand what badness really is. There's always going to be a subject that is able to have, right, something, but doesn't have what it should have, right? But that ability to have something is not bad. That's good, right? It's good to be able to have sight, right? What's bad is not to have the sight you're able to have and you should have it, right? You see? So, in that sense, the subject of bad is something good. And notice this paradox, you know, I mentioned how, you know, when Christ talks to St. Catherine of Siamen, he says, remember just two things. He says, I am who am, and you are she who is not. Okay? But when you study God, you're going to find out the meaning of this, huh? I am who am, right? This name of God, huh? They told Moses, right? Okay? But notice, God is entirely good, right? Okay? So if God is I am who am, can being as such be that? No. Because being as such is to be like God, right? Who is goodness itself, right? Now, if evil were really a kind of being, instead of basically a kind of non-being, right? And then you'd have a real contradiction, wouldn't you? Because if being a kind of being, it would be like God, who is good. You see what I mean? You see? So, this helps us to understand why there can't be something that's purely bad, right? And why the subject of the bad is always something good, right? So you see the nature of the doubles, right? The nature is good, right? Okay? But there's a disorder there. But it's always in some subject that is good, you find the bad. But also, you see, there's no contradiction, then, between God being I and who am, right? You can say that being as such is good, right? Now, being, you know, being an act, which is most good. right? But being in the sense of adult is good too, because it's capable of good, right? Desire is the good, as our style says there, right? So what desire is the good is good, right? And matter as such desire is the good. If lack of form is such good desire form, it would be good too, but I would say it can't. Desire is of elimination. Okay? So being as such is good. Well, if being as such is good, how can there be badness, right? Well, strictly speaking, it's a what? Not a being, right? But another being, right? But sometimes we, you know, extend the word being even to those things and we say, he is blind, right? We use the verb to be, right? Okay? But then reason is taking what? What is really a non-being is if it were a what? Something, right? That's why I say, you know, you have a lot of ignorance, right? You know? To be ignorant, is that to be in some way? I mean, if you look at it, strictly speaking, to be ignorant is not to be, right? It's not to be annoying, right? You see what I mean? But, uh, yeah, some fun with that, if you don't understand that, huh? At least that little thing, you know, the other joke was, is the whole of the donut a lack or privation, right? You shouldn't have something there. It seems to be a donut. Yeah. Yeah. You're supposed to have it in there, right? Be a bun. There's also this thing with, uh, with handicapped. I remember for a while back there was a saying, I'm not handicapped, I'm handicapable. Well, that's turning it on its head. Yeah. I'm incapable. You don't have the ability. And then also the same kind of thing, you know, going to get away from it. Understanding it as an imperfection. Because I don't have an arm doesn't mean it's imperfection. So if you consider being blind as a kind of being, it's only a being of reason, right? In reality, it's an unbeing. So emphasizing that, Augustine, you know, says in Thomas often, quote him, you know, sin is nothing and the man who sins becomes what? Nothing, right? So a reasonable act, then, is an act that lacks the order, or lacks the measure of reason, right? The reason she told me that I drank and drunk enough, right? You know, I should stop now, right? I'm going to operate on you today. I shouldn't drink before I go and operate on you, right? It's out of order, right? They tell the students premarital sex, it's out of order. It should be after, not before. Preposterous. I mean, you kind of, you know, in general, you realize that in any bad human act, there's some kind of a disorder, right? Some kind of a lack of measure that makes it bad, right? So in one sense, you say, you know, evil is weak, right? If you go back to the root of meaning of evil, it is. It's having power at all. It's powerless, right? Okay? So what about Hitler and so on, yeah? And so on, yeah, see? But the evil there was the what? The lack of order, right? Not that strength is such as bad, right? But it's that order to the right end and so, right? And apply more strength than it's appropriate. So a lot of times, I mean, the nice book of wisdom, when Aristotle's talking about ability and act and talking about good and bad there, I come all the way back to this text, right? Because in some ways, she's more explicit here than human life. What kind of mistake was her other friend making, not him, an exagress? Yeah. I mean, when he's making what is only in the ability of matter to be actually in there, right? Yeah. You can't get something out of nothing, they say, right? And then they think it's got to be actually in there, right? What kind of mistake mistake is that involving? Right, equivocation. Well, equivocation, yeah, that's always interesting to do it. But is there also a fallacy on the side of things? What's the second kind of fallacy outside of things, huh? In a certain respect? Yeah, simply in some respect, right? So if I say, you can't get something out of nothing, that's true. And therefore you say, well, therefore, if I get chairs out of trees, there must be what? Chairs and trees. Yeah. But they must be in their what? Well, if you don't qualify it, then you think of it being actually in there, right? Right. Okay. But in some respect, in some way, they are in there, right? Right. But you have to qualify it, right? They're in their inability. So what is in their inability, you're saying is in their without qualification, it's in their actual. So you're making a fallacy as simply and in some respect, right? Yeah. So the first two fallacies in language are equivocation and amphiboli, right? Now this equivocation and amphiboli is an equivocation you have one word with many meanings, right? And you mixed up these meanings, right? With amphiboli you have one what? Speech with many meanings, right? Okay. I gave you a simple example of that. I said, um, happiness is the end of human life, right? The end of human life is death, therefore happiness is death, right? If nature acted for an end, all things would come to an end, right? You're mixing up two different senses of the word end, right? Okay. Which our style, you know, points out the difference there in the end. Now, in amphiboli, I don't know if I call it. Amphiboli. In amphiboli, you have a speech that has two meanings, right? Like I took an example there earlier, I think, in the course of the word of God, right? The Bible is the word of God, huh? The word of God is the son of God, therefore the Bible is the son of God. Is that true? No. But the phrase son of God has two meanings, right? Okay. Um, knowledge of, wisdom is the knowledge of God in both senses of knowledge of God. Knowledge that God has. Yeah. Knowledge about God. Yeah. Yeah. Or if you take the phrase, you know, Shakespeare calls the philosophy of nature the wisdom of nature, right? And I say, well, the wisdom of nature, meaning the philosophy of nature, the wisdom of nature is about the wisdom of nature, right? Just as the word of God is about the word of God. The Word of God in one sense, right, being the Bible, is about the Word of God in the sense of the Son of God. Now the knowledge of reason, is the knowledge of reason a knowledge of reason? Some of it. In one sense, it's all that is in another sense. So the knowledge of reason could be like the definition of reason that Shakespeare has, right? If you understand the definition of reason that Shakespeare gives us, we have a knowledge of reason, right? Meaning what? You know what reason is. But geometry is a knowledge of reason too. Oh no, it's not a knowledge of reason. Because you can study geometry and not know what reason is. It's not going to be a knowledge of reason. Is the geometry a knowledge of reason or not? Knowledge that reason has. Yeah. If by knowledge of reason you mean the knowledge of reason has, then geometry is a knowledge of reason, right? But if you mean by knowledge of reason, a knowledge that tells you what reason is, right? Then it's not a knowledge of reason, is it? Is this a knowledge of the soul? The philosophy of nature? Or you have to go to the three books on the soul to get a knowledge of the soul? Huh? Is geometry a knowledge of the soul? Yeah. I mean, the soul has that knowledge, right? Right? Yeah. But it's not a knowledge of the soul in another sense, right? Okay. So, in these two ones here, the reason why these two come first, because in these two, you have an actual, what? Many meanings. Right? In one case for a name, in another case for a, what? A speech, right? In the old textbook example was, Aristotle's book, right? The book of Aristotle, what does that mean? It would be the book that Aristotle owned, right? Uh-huh. Or the book that Aristotle wrote. Right. Wrote, yeah. See? And so you mix up those different senses, right? Okay. And then there are other fallacies in language, where the phrase is, what? Has many meanings potentially, but not actually. And then you have one fallacy where it has some meaning meanings only, imaginatively speaking, right? But in reality, it doesn't have. Maybe we can go through those. Just, if I remember all of them, just remember these first two, you know? Yeah. They're very interesting, right? Sure. I see. Because I often say, you know, about Shakespeare's age, bad as it may have been in some ways, we're using the pun all the time, right? Uh-huh. The pun, at least, was a very intellectual thing, right? To make them very much aware of the different meanings of a word, right? And it's very important to be able to distinguish them, right? Uh-huh. But I think the epiphany is very interesting, too, huh? Uh-huh. So that the word of God is about the word of God. It's a connection between the two, right? Uh-huh. Of course, you know, on the Second Bionic Council, it compares the Bible to Christ insofar as each is a word made flesh, right? The Bible is the word of God, the thought of God, so to speak, you know, put it in the human language, right? And then you have the word of God, the second person, the coming man, right? There's a real light to see the two, right? But also there's a fact that one is about the other. It's chiefly about the Son of God, right? Bible. And the wisdom of nature, right? I mean, the philosophy of nature is about the wisdom of nature. Kind of like Shakespeare's name, right? This is why they call it the philosophy of nature. He calls it the wisdom of nature. It came clear, right? Now, the first two fallacies outside of the language are the fallacy of the accident, or the accidental, and then the fallacy of what? Simply in some respect. And those are very common, these two. So they tell the students, how often do we do something bad because it's good in some way, or not do something good because in some way it's bad, right? So you don't get up to go to a church on Sunday, which is a good idea, good thing to do, because it prevents you from not, what? Sleeping all Sunday morning. Or you, what? Murder somebody because he, what? His annoyance. So the elimination of an annoyance in your life is good, right? In some way it is good. Right? So you're robbing the bank, right? In some way it's good, right? In pieces of money in your pocket, you don't get caught in the way. Right? So we choose what is bad because in some way it's good, right? In some very diminished sense it's good, right? Or we, you know, avoid what is good because in some way it's, what? Bad, right? So it jumps to us, is it studying good or bad? You should have stayed last night. You didn't. Why not? Well, I could go to the party here. I was tired of it or something, right? So the studying could, what, in some way be considered as bad, right? But as such, studying is really good, right? These two. But in a way, when a man confuses, what, act and ability or matter and form, he's making this fallacy of simply and in some respect, right? They also say he's making this fallacy of revocation because he says it to be, right? There's also, in reality, a difference between what is so simply and what is so in some respect. What is so simply is fully and completely so, right? And what is so in some respect is in some what diminished way, right? But the man is confusing in a way. The freedom of man with indetermination as well is making the fallacy of the accident, right? I think you mentioned that, you know, when you get into Marx's view, you know. He sees man's ultimate perfection to be achieved by making, right? And in order to say that, he's got to say that making perfects the what? The maker, right? Was that so? Or was that accidental? Now, the same way with teaching, right? Does teaching perfect the teacher? Even though most teachers might say, if the teacher's like, you know, profiling like this, that every time they teach it, they learn something, right? Or they see something they've been teaching before, right? See? But still, that's accidental to teaching. I don't teach it so far as I'm ignorant or something. The other thing is, you mark, you know, a professor at the end of a course, you know. If I had known as much of the daily courses I know now, I would have taught the whole thing differently. You're going to have to say this, right? Well, obviously, in so far as you're ignorant, you know, you're not a teacher, right? But it might be that both people who teach learn when they teach, right? You see? And they try to explain to somebody else, right? A lot of times we like to bounce, if we're thinking something out, we like to bounce it off somebody, too, right? You know? So it might be true that most of the time the teacher learns something, right? But it's still, what, accidental to teaching, you know? Mm-hmm. But, you know, you probably have somebody in the academic world who will think that it's, you know, you're not really teaching without learning yourself. Well, you know, there's elements of truth there, but, I mean, they're really confusing the what? The as such and the accidental, right? Mm-hmm. You know? Otherwise, you have to say, you know, what does Christ say? You know, don't want to be a teacher, right? You know? There's only one teacher, you know? Christ, right? In a sense, there is only one teacher, right? But he's not ignorant of anything, right? You see? You see? But he's a teacher. More so than anybody else, right? You know? He doesn't know. He doesn't know. He doesn't know. It's not learning anything, you teach it, right? Right? Yeah. You know, God, you speak of God as a teacher in a sense, huh? But if you take your own experience of being a teacher, then you say, yeah, it was, yeah. You seem to be learning something as you teach, right? It's accidental. And the same thing can be said about the Maker, right? Is the Maker, as such, perfecting himself? No. But I heard, you know, Dr. Carpenter saying he's working with somebody, you know, who's more experienced, right? And he learns, right? He's learning, right? But insofar as he's learning how to make things, he doesn't what? He's having a Maker to know how to make things, right? You know, you're making, you know, the chef learns by making, let's say, right? Okay? But if he's learning how to make something when he's making it, he doesn't really know how to make it, doesn't really? He doesn't really know how to make it. He doesn't really know how to make it, doesn't really know how to make it. 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Do you see that? Understanding God is as such a perfecting of the one who understands God, but making the chair as such is not a perfecting of the one making the chair, but of the chair. Teaching as such is not a perfecting of the one teaching, even though he may happen to be perfected by his teaching, right? My feet growing now as he does this. Do you see, understanding of God is as such a perfecting of the one making the understanding? No, no, the one understanding, right? The one understanding, the one. See, understanding God is an activity that remains within the reason, right? It's a perfection of the reason, huh? But teaching or making or something of that sort, right, is essentially the perfecting of another, okay? So in making the universe, was God perfected by making the universe? No. So the understanding of God is a perfection of reason? Yeah. A perfect perfection of reason. You see, in general, when you say understanding the cause, right, you have more perfect understanding of something and you know why it is so, right? If the cause has a cause, then understanding the cause of the cause, why did he hit me? He's angry with me. But why was he angry, right? You know? So you're working your way back towards the first cause. So the ultimate perfection of the mind is to understand the first cause. You could also reason out that understanding the best thing is the ultimate end of the human mind. But if the first cause and the best thing are the same, then you have no problem. Well, that's a problem with the moderns, I'll see, because they think of the first cause sometimes, like the early Greeks, as being some kind of matter, right? Well, matter is imperfect in comparison to what? Form, right? So if the first cause were matter, then the best thing would not be the first cause. And there won't be the end of man to know the best thing or to know the first cause. You'd have two different ends. You'd have a, you know, schizophrenia situation, right? You know? When you study the 14 books of Wizard of Aristotle, he writes very naturally that the first cause is the best thing. And when you understand the causes, you'll see that to some extent. And so with the truth, as Aristotle says, all things harmonize. They all fit together. Moderns can't fit things together. Let's look at the last paragraph here now, page 7. Now, the consideration of matter belongs most of all to the natural philosopher. The consideration of form, as Aristotle did here, belongs somewhat to the natural philosopher, but even more so to the wise man. So in a way, he's been after matter here, and he's distinguished matter from form, right? As we saw in the critique of Anax Egris, and now matter from lack of form, right? But now he's coming back to the thought that we met in Aximander, but it's in all the early Greeks, that whatever is the first matter in some way remains throughout, what? All change, although under different forms. So he says, It passes away and comes to be in one way, but another way, it doesn't come to be or pass away. As regards what is in it, it passes away to itself, for it is the lack in it that passes away. However, according to ability, not to itself, but it is necessary for it to be ingenerable and incorruptible, for if it comes to be, it will be necessary for something first to underlie it. But if this is the first matter, there's nothing that underlies it, right? In a sense, he's going all the way back to what we saw in Aximander. Whatever is the first matter is also what? That to which things come back, right? Remember how he concluded from that that the first matter in a way is what? Eternal, right? And doesn't grow old, right? They have it reflected, you know, in a way in modern science where they make the, what, conservation laws, the, what, most basic laws, conservation of energy and conservation of momentum and so on. And so they're saying, you know, the amount of energy always remains the same, but under different, what, forms, right? Okay? Now, let's just, you know, come back to it for a moment. Go back to the first two philosophers that we saw, who were Thales, remember? And then, and Aximander, right? And in Thales,