Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 67: Boethius's Definition of Eternity and Divine Knowledge

Transcript
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So all these intermediary sciences don't use metaphors, huh? It's just that lowest one, the one in the basement, that uses these metaphors, huh? And so it seems inappropriate then for Saccharide Arcana to use what is appropriate to be, what, lowest, huh? Okay? Now, what's the reply that Thomas gives to that, huh? What's the reply he gives to that? Metaphors. Are often used for things that are not well known to us. Okay. Because they're above or because they're above. Yeah. So he sees the distinction, right, huh? That Saccharide Arcana is talking about things that are, what? To a large extent, above our mind, right? While poetry is talking about things that are really below our mind. And therefore, they have something in common, that they're about something, in a way, beyond, right? Our mind, right? But for exactly, in a sense, the opposite reasons, huh? What is above our mind, it is below our mind, huh? So, our mind, so to speak, is in the middle here, right? And so the Infibod Doctrina, it uses metaphors to bring things up to our level a bit, huh? Okay? And Saccharide Arcana, or the Bibles, right? It uses metaphors to, what? Bring them down, in a way, to our level, right? Okay? So this is the way he solves that, what? Objection, huh? And, of course, there's many reasons why we use metaphors in Scripture, but as far as his objection is concerned, that's the distinction that he brings out, huh? And I think that's important, huh? Thomas has given us an important thing there, for understanding not only, you know, the use of metaphors in Scripture, but also for understanding, not only the use of metaphors down here, but also understanding what is characteristic of great poetry, great fiction, if you wish, huh? And that is that it's making things more, what, understandable, more intelligible, more knowable, more reality, therefore, right, than they really have, huh? Very interesting thing that he's doing, huh? Okay? And you can see that in other things besides the metaphor, huh? Sometimes I take a whole other example, but if you're familiar with Charles Dickens, huh? And his novels and so on, huh? And when he's, you know, describing the house of, of, um, an old miser, right? Penny hinching, right? Well, even the furniture in his house starts to look kind of, what, pinched and tight and so on. And his chairs and everything seem to somehow, what, have more meaning, right, than the chairs in real life would have, huh? They seem to have something of his, what, very character, right, huh? Or like in Bleak House there, where you're dealing, you know, that famous novel of Dickens, where you're dealing partly with the decaying English, what, aristocracy, huh? You have the summer home there and the country home there, you know, where the wood is rotting and the rain is falling and things are, are, uh, seem to have more meaning, right, you see? And, uh, Aristotle makes a point something like this in the book on the poetic art, you know, where he, he, um, talks about, uh, well, kind of a very simple example from some work in Greek fiction, where a famous man or a great man is, what, assassinated, right, or, and, uh, but no one knows who has, what, killed him, right? But because of this, he is, what, a statue is left to him in the marketplace, huh? And one day, there's a big festival in the marketplace, there's a huge crowd there and the crowd is swaying, and the crowd, you know, is pressing up against the statue and the statue, what, falls over on top of somebody and kills him. Guess what man it was that was killed? The man who had, what, assassinated, isn't that right? Now, when you see that, there seems to be some meaning in this event, right? Right. See? But in real life, huh, when a statue like that is, you know, knocked over, could fall on anybody, it could be any particular, what, reason why it fell on this person, around that person doesn't have any meaning, right? See? But the fact that it fell upon this man, huh, the man, in fact, who had killed him, there seems to be some deep meaning to that, right? Okay? And, um, when Caesar was, what, assassinated, right, huh? I don't know if it's historic or not, but it's supposed to have been, what, nearly the statue of, what, Pompey, whom he himself had eliminated, right? So, there seems to be some meaning to it, huh? Or take an example of anyone known to you, the one from Roman and Juliet, right? At the end of Roman and Juliet, you know, the duke there, the ruler of the city, right? You know, where are you? Montague, you know, come here, you know? And, of course, he's upgrading them, huh? And they've been having this feud for, what, generations, right? He says, heaven has found me to punish you for your hatred, right? By, what, the death of the only son and the only, what, daughter, right? That kind of reconciles them, right, huh? See? But they seem to be being, what, punished, right, for their hatred by their, the one's only son and the other's only daughter, right, falling in love and the tragic death of them because of the enmity of the two families, right? There seems to be some meaning in this, doesn't there? Yeah, something like this, too, in painting, huh, where you get Titian or somebody who's a great portrait artist, right, and he's trying to capture the whole character of somebody in, what, one expression, as it were. And it's kind of a remarkable thing when you see a great portrait painter like Titian. They seem to give, what, more meaning to a man's face and expression on it. They need an expression in daily life as of the man, huh? You know how when you talk to somebody and you see them in different circumstances and they laugh and when they're, you know, sad and all these other things, right? And you gradually start to kind of see what kind of a person they are by the way they react to different things and so on, huh? And I know a lot of times, you know, I have students sitting in class in front of me, you know, and sometimes, you know, for one reason, they have to come to the office, you know, and they have a little more, you know, personal conversations and so on, right? And they seem to come alive, you know? I mean, this blank face that's been staring at me for half of the semester now seems to have meaning and, you know, seems to have some reality, you know? And it has some contact with reality, too, and so on. But, I mean, but you talk to the person and you see them reacting to things you say and things that they laugh about and so on. But the portrait painter, he's trying to find, right, or put an expression, he's trying to capture where the whole character of that man in this one, what, picture, right? You know, I don't particularly like the Mona Lisa, but it's a common example, you know, of how people, you know, write books and articles as to what the smile of Mona Lisa means, right? And there was a while to revive it, you know? I remember years ago, Time Magazine, you know, had a whole series of articles and medical doctors were writing in as to what it meant to smile her face and all kinds of people got theories and recently there was another, you know, crazy theory, I don't want to mention it. No. But, you see, there seems to be, right, more meaning in that smile than, what, people can quite express, right? And the same way, you know, with the music of Mozart, you know, you hear many of these melodies of Mozart, and they seem to have so much meaning you can't quite say it, right? See? But it gives you that impression. That he's taking, you know, ordinary emotions, like in the operas, that you meet in daily life and so on, all of a sudden they seem to be, what, much more meaning than anything, huh? Some people say that the origin and history of the Iliad, really, is maybe a pirate raid or something like that, right? When Homer gets through representing this, right, it's an image of what? The whole struggle of mankind, right? And the whole life of man, right? And, you know, like Job says, our life on earth is a warfare, right? He seems to be, you know, raising things up, huh? Okay? In that sense, you know, a work like Dante's Divine Comedy, or a work like Milton's Paradise Lost, is not really so characteristic of what? Fiction, right? In a sense, Dante is trying to do something more like what we do in what? Sacred Scripture, right? They're trying to bring something down, right? You see these, you know, the saints are in heaven there, right? And, of course, their joy and their vision and so on is beyond our understanding, right? Eyes not seeing, nor is he ever heard, right? But he's got to put it in front of your imagination, right? He's got to bring this down in some sort of way. You know how he does it now, with the rose and so on. It's beautiful, right? But he's, in a sense, you know, pulling things down, right? And that's not really proper to fiction, right? That's kind of a, what, fiction trying to imitate Scripture, right? In the same way for Milton, not as good, obviously, to characterize thoughts, but I mean, that sort of thing, right? But you've got to kind of set those aside as not what's really characteristic of fiction. You go to Homer and say, yeah, that's what it's all about, right? He's making things have more meaning, or seeming to have more meaning, right? More significant, than they really do. And one example of this, too, I mean, that's characterized as good fiction, and Homer is the first man to realize it, in a sense, at least when Aristotle speaks of it, he says, Homer taught all the other Greeks how to make a good plot. And Homer saw that a good plot had to be a course of action at a beginning, a middle, and an end, right? So Homer didn't write about the whole history of the Trojan War at ten-year, long war, right? He just chose, what? Well, this is historically not part of the battle, right? But he chose a course of action that had a beginning, a middle, and a, what? End, huh? He didn't write in his second work that we have with him, the Odyssey there, right? He didn't try to give an account of the whole life of Odysseus, right? But he dealt with a course of action that had a beginning, a middle, and end. But notice, if you realize that reason looks before and after, right, that orders what makes things understandable, beginning, middle, and end, right? That's not the way our life is, in fact, huh? You see? Our life is more like the newskeeper, right? We have all kinds of things going on that don't really, what, have much connection with each other. They don't have a beginning, a middle, and a, what, and end, huh? So the poet is giving things more intelligibility, huh? You see that? Now, all of that, because of this question I'm saying now, when Shakespeare says in the sonnet there, he's giving a simile, instead of metaphor, but it's similar, he says, like as the ways make towards the pebbled shore, right, so do our minutes hasten to their end, each changing place with that which goes before, in sequent toil all forwards do contend. So it's simulating the minutes of our time to the ways coming to the shore, but which has more reality, which has more existence, the multitude of ways, the number of ways, if you wish, or the number that is time, which has more being, existence. Yeah, yeah, because you can see there's a number of ways coming in, you know, there's down in the ocean here in Florida with the grandchildren, right, you can see, you know, the ways coming in, right? So it's not just the way that's crashing into the shore, but in a way the next, you know, two or three ways are there already, right? See? But the next two or three days are not out there in the hall waiting to come in, are they? Waiting to return, so to speak, right? They don't, strictly speaking, exist at all yet, huh? Okay? So any number of time, you're numbering things that are not, what? There. Right? See? As opposed to the number of chairs in this room, right? What Aristotle's saying is that the number of chairs in this room, you can speak more of a, there being a number of chairs in this room, even though we haven't counted them, right? And you can speak of a number of days or a number of years or a number of minutes, right? A number of hours, because that number would not be without what? I remember yesterday, right? And I'm anticipating tomorrow, and I speak, well, yesterday and today and tomorrow are three days, right? But yesterday isn't here, and tomorrow isn't here, and even all today isn't here for that matter, but, right? Or if I talk about, if I talk from two to five, right? Well, I mean, two hours, but we know those three hours here, you know? Now it's between two and three, and three and four is not here yet, and four and five is not here yet, and not even all between two and three is here, is it? So, in a way, when you speak of three days, you're speaking as if there are three days, right? Are there three days? No, hardly at all, right? You know? So what I was saying is that time would barely be, it would hardly be, without the, what? Numbering soul, right? There never would be, what, three days, right, without a soul to, what, number them, right? Because three days never exist. So it's only one day at a time, and even that doesn't exist. Do you see that? And notice the same thing could be said in a way about, what, motion, right? That motion never is, what, fully there. And so later on, when we, when we reason from, say, motion to the unmoved mover, we're reasoning from what hardly exists, right? The one who said, I am who am I? But it's a, the most extreme example, you might say, of what Aristotle taught at the beginning of the first book there of natural earth, the first book of the physics. And what is more known to us, right, is less known by nature, right? And what is more known by nature, right, is less known to us, right? But here, kind of taking the extremes, huh? This is most known to us, motion, and therefore it seems most real to us, because it's most known to us, but it's at least real almost to things. It's the least actual, I should say, of all acts, huh? Okay? Matter, of course, is not even actual, considered by itself, huh? But we go from the act, which is the least actual of all acts, to the act, which is what? Pure act, huh? And therefore, we go from what is least knowable to what is most knowable. What is least knowable is most knowable to what? To outstanding. It's a very strange thing, huh? Of course, Narasdell talks in the second book of wisdom about the cause of difficulty. He says, sometimes the difficulty in knowing is in us, and that's the difficulty in knowing God. Weakness of our mind. Sometimes it's in the thing, right? The weakness of the thing. It hardly is. It's hard of anything to be known there. So you have one kind of difficulty here, and another kind of difficulty here, right? You can see how people have a difficulty of going from one to the, what? Other, right, huh? They have a very good difficulty of one kind here, at the end, another kind of difficulty, it's even greater difficulty, as Aristotle says in the second book, so, of wisdom, huh? In fact, we better have ourselves, huh? But right here, we're just talking about what Aristotle says. He comes back to what he said before, right? You know, those projections that seem to indicate that time doesn't exist, right? And the same thing he said about motion, right? Where's my motion from here to that post-exist, right? Well, part of it's always gone, well, I don't exist anymore, and part of it is still to be. And how much motion is ever fully there? Any amount of motion at all? Well, the motion of going just one inch, or a half of an inch, or a quarter of an inch, or an eighth of an inch, or a tenth of an inch? Well, if it's any distance at all, then I'd be here and there at the same time, right? Which is impossible, right? You see? And see why people would, you know, say that it doesn't exist, right? What our style is saying is that it barely exists, huh? But as Ulysses says in Shakespeare's play there, things in motion, sooner catch the eye, the what not stirs, so that since our knowledge starts with our senses, motion seems to be what's most, what, known to us, which grabs our attention at first, huh? And that's why that study of not only what motion is, but what's found in motion and becoming that we've made already is so basic in our thinking. So now let's talk about, what? Eternity, right? Now, the definition of eternity that Thomas discusses comes from waytheism, and comes from the very famous work of waytheists, which is called The Consolation of Philosophy. Now, Boethius, as a young man, went down and studied in Alexandria there with the Neocentonists, huh? With maybe Ammonius there, huh? Ammonius Hermaeus, huh? He learned Plato and Aristotle and so on, huh? And he wrote a number of works. I don't know, have you read any works by Boethius? I've read The Consolation of Philosophy. Yeah. That's perhaps the most famous one, right? And what famous poet there translated this into English at his time? Chaucer, right? Oh, okay. I guess Queen Elizabeth I was doing it like a translation, too. Okay. Now, this is considered to be Boethius' last work, huh? I mean, Boethius kind of took seriously Plato's idea that until philosophers are kings or kings are philosophers, you'll have bad, what? Government, right? Yeah. So he went into government service there, right? Under the Ostergast, I guess it was. And, uh... But he was a very, what? Just man, huh? And so he was always stopping people who were trying to, what? Plunder the people and so on, huh? So because of his justice, he made, what? Many enemies, huh? And so they ganged up in him, finally. And had him imprisoned on false charges and so on, huh? And eventually he was, what? That's cute. Yeah, yeah. And, uh... There was a, you know, local cult, you know, which... Oh, he was single, right? He's never been formally, you know, canonized or anything like that, but... But the, uh... Rome has, uh... Recognized the fact that there was a local cult for him, right? So, he has many famous works, huh? He's going to try to make the whole of Aristotle's works available to the Latin world. And he translated a number of the, what? The serenthological works, you know. That's about as far as he got. But he has some famous translations of Aristotle's logical works. And then he has a number of works on his own, some in philosophy and some in, what? Theology. Theology, yeah. And the definition of person, for example, that we have in theology also comes from, what? Waytheism. Okay. Um... The, uh... His work on the Trinity there, is one that Thomas started a commentary on. You know, Thomas, some days I have a whole page or two in the Marietta edition, say, you know, which is a fairly fine print. Two or three pages on one word of Waytheism, right? Waytheism. And of course, Monsiudhiyan, you know, used to, um... compare the Trinity with the, uh... some of his things in logic, right? The Trinity is so excellent, uh, the Monsiudhiyan. They say it's the same way theism, I don't believe it, he says. But he's kind of kidding about that, right? But the Trinity is really a tremendous, what? Tremendous work of his, huh? But he's in the, you know, the tradition there, I guess, Augustine, so on, uh, understanding of the Trinity, what it is. Now, the Consolation of Philosophy is written, as they say, in prison, and it's written in the form of a, what? Dialogue, right? So, Lady Wisdom, Wisdom is, is female, and what, Latina, Sapientia. Lady Wisdom comes down to, what? Consol. Consol in, uh, in prison there, and there is a, a commentary on the Consolation of Philosophy that was attributed to Thomas, but nobody thinks it's by Thomas, but it's not, it's not a bad commentary. I know my brother Mark used to use it sometimes and he taught the Consolation of Philosophy and I looked at it and so on. But, what you have is kind of a dialogue between Boethius, who's, of course, upset that he's in prison and all these things, and Lady Wisdom trying to console him, right? And, uh, but in between each little section of dialogue there, there's, what, a pole, right, huh? Which has an elaborate Latin meter and so on, huh? And so, it's a very pleasing work to read, right? You have a little dialogue and then a pole and a dialogue and then the two are intertwined and then a thought, huh? So, um, the, the early books of the Consolation of Philosophy are dealing with, what, meaning the human happiness, right? True happiness and false happiness, huh? And Boethius talks about false happiness before. He talked about true happiness because it's more known to us. that's interesting how Thomas, even in the, um, Summa Contra Gentiles, At the end of the first book where he shows the happiness, the attitude of God himself, right? and, uh, in terms of, you know, true happiness and so on. Okay, he says, even if we look at this false happiness that men seek, right? And it's, you know, God has everything that they seek in an abundant way, right? But they don't know where to find it since it's been found in God. But the other problem in the Consolation of Philosophy, besides understanding happiness, is trying to understand how good men can, what, suffer, right? Okay? And it kind of looks back in a way to Socrates there in the Apology, you know? And Socrates, at the end of the Apology, has a very interesting statement there in his last words in the court where he says that he doesn't think that God really allows bad men to harm a good man. Of course, it's seen Socrates is obviously being, what, harmed, right, by these men, huh? But, is he really being harmed by these men, huh? Well, that kind of raises the question there, right? In a Christian context, huh? We say, is the martyr really being harmed or helped to a better place, a higher place in heaven, by those who are trying to, what, harm him, right? So, perhaps some of the same things he said about Christ himself, right? But it's kind of interesting that Socrates professed this, right? Because he's not doing so in terms of Christian martyrdom or something like that. You know, when the execution there of St. Thomas More, right? Of course, the executioner asked pardon of Thomas More, and Thomas More says, have no fear, he said, and you're straight to heaven. So, that's kind of unusual, right? So, we get into this discussion, then, of divine providence, right? This question of divine providence and the, what, problem of evil. That's a very difficult thing to, what, to discuss and to understand, huh? And, I don't know if you've ever seen the Dialogues of Augustine, the Dialogues of Kassisiakum, and there's three Dialogues, right? The Edita Viata, I think, is the first one, and then the second one is Against the Academics, and the third one is very mistranslated on the third one, huh? But in the English editions of it, it's a divine providence and the problem of evil, something like that they'll translate it. Well, in the Dialogues, there is a discussion of that, right? But Augustine is trying to show his young friends in the Dialogues that their minds aren't really yet ready to discuss this. There's too many things that they have to understand before they can talk about that. Well, you see, the translators don't realize the purpose of the Dialogues. The purpose of the Dialogues is not to investigate, to any extent, the problem of divine providence and the problem of evil, how you can reconcile these evil in the world. But they see that that problem is discussing the Dialogues, they won't give it a title, right? But you go back to the Latin text, and what is the title of the work? Is that De Ordine? De Ordine, yeah. About order. And the whole point of the Dialogues, in a sense, is to show that this question is, what? Out of order, right? You see? Until you know many other, what? Things, huh? It's such a difficult question, huh? That reminded me of that other phrase that I think I pointed out before here, how Augustine, in the De Trinicapia, speaks of an immature and perverse love of reason, right? Yeah. That's right. And you certainly have an immature and perverse love of reason when you're applying reason to things out of the order in which it has to consider them, and before it's ready to consider us a question or a problem. And I know myself, I'm always getting, you know, free books in the mail, right? When I order my students, you know, to buy their $50 book or it is. But we're always getting free copies of Introduction to Philosophy books, right? And the way, you know, not all of these, but most of them are, they're kind of, you know, arranged around problems, right? One of the problems might be, you know, the problem of evil, right? Another one might be the existence of God, right? But all kinds of things that they are not ready, and obviously a freshman who doesn't know anything, really, philosophically speaking, is not ready at all to discuss, right? And they're, what? You know, plug it out for grabs, you might say, right? And what they're actually doing is trying to encourage a immature, perverse love of reason, that I can think about anything, not knowing anything, right? And not even, you know, having learned logic and so on, right? And there are things I need to know before I can discuss this. You know, and so, anyway, in the last books here of the Constellation of Philosophy, these five books, Bweth is getting into these questions of divine providence, and I think the definition of providence, you know, comes from the Constellation of Philosophy, too. And, but then you get into questions of God's knowledge and so on, you know, and does God know the future and all these sort of things, right? And it's in that context that Bweth is, has to, very subtly, you might say, start to follow Aristotle rather than, what, Plato in one respect, because he has to defend that the past and the present and the future and time are all present to God in his, what, eternal knowledge, right? And therefore, the way he knows is not, what, temporal at all, but he knows temporal in an untemporal way. And so the way he knows is not the way things are, right? And that, to many thinkers, starting with Plato to some extent, seemed, what, to involve falsity, right? We saw that before, right, when we talked about the difference between mathematics, you know, and natural philosophy. And Plato thought that if reason considered things in separation, truly, they had to truly exist in separation. Okay? So we can come back to that question a bit here. But at that point, Lady Wisdom, you know, announces Aristotle as your true follower. Right. This is Aristotle as a true follower. So even though Boethys, in the first books of the Constellation of Philosophy, has kind of put himself as a student in the cabinet, right? And therefore, in a way, the school that is started by Plato, right? Here he has to, what? Follow Aristotle. Of course, Thomas Foulson there. I was talking to a man the other day that just, who's used a lot in St. Augustine and so on, and I guess, you know, really this kind of substance of, or the parts, you might say, the elements of Boethys' definition are already in Augustine, right? But Augustine doesn't really put together in a, you know, a big definition the way Boethys does. And that's why Thomas goes back to Boethys, because there it's spelled out in the big definition. When Thomas talks, say, about what it is to believe, right, he goes right back to the exact words of Augustine, right? And that's the definition, right? That he takes of what it is to believe, and then he, what, you know, defends that definition and raises questions about it and so on. He's trying to understand Augustine's. But when it comes to eternity, he goes back to, what, Boethys, huh? When he's going to say, what is a person, right? It goes back to the definition of Boethys. So there's a, a constellation of philosophies, the whole mind, you might say, that they've dug into the Middle Ages, and they're always pulling things out of it, right, that are, you know, useful for this or that part of philosophy. So, in my opinion, you know, Boethys is kind of the greatest mind in the Church between St. Justin and Thomas Aquinas, huh? You know, the greats are very good, too, but Boethys seems, you know. Although he's very much involved in the practical, too, so, I mean, he didn't maybe have as much, you know, time to go entirely through the life of the mind the way Thomas did. But I see, I think he's really kind of the greatest mind in the Church there between Augustine and Thomas, you know. But anyway, so when the main wisdom first comes down to conservation of philosophy, and you see this Theta up here, and the Pi down here, right, and the Theta represents, what, theoretical philosophy. That's above practical philosophy, right? You know, just like Mary has chosen the better part, you know, but the Greeks all thought the theoretical above the practical, you know. But in Dharma, it's a kind of torn. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. The commentator says, you know, that's to represent the fact that men in battle for the truth have got a part of it and they've kind of torn it apart, right? That's kind of interesting, the symbolism there. Now, let's just come down and go to the actual statement and the definition of eternity by Boethism. And we'll give it a map in there first and then try to put it into some close Now, simul is the opposite of what? Before and after, right? So, if you went back to that chapter I gave you from Aristotle's categories on the chapter and before and after, right? The chapter really after it is about what? Simul or Hamlan in Greek, right? And sometimes you translate that as what? Together. Together. Sometimes you translate it as at once, right? Okay. But it involves a negation of what? Before and after, right? So in the Latin, you know, text of the Categorized Aristotle, you have prior and posterior before, before and after and the next chapter is on simul, right? But since we get our word English simultaneous, huh? If two events are simultaneous, what does that mean? Yeah. Maybe at the same time. Yeah. But in what you're saying, that one is not before or after the other, they were together, right? Okay. And Tota comes from the Latin word for what? Whole. Yeah. Although sometimes you can give me the sense of what? Of all, right? Okay. So in a way, you're saying here, the whole together or the whole at once, right? Or maybe the more idiomatic thing, you should say, all at once, right? Okay. That's why you translate those words, all at once. But the whole together, right? Another way of translating it, huh? Okay. All at once. And that's simply the word and, right? The all at once and perfect, of course, is perfect, right? The all at once and perfect and possessio, of course, is translated as possession. And vitae is what? Genitive there of life, right? And in terminabilis, negative, without a term, without an in, right? Okay. So it's the all at once and perfect possession of unending life, huh? Okay. This is the definition we have to try to understand now. Now, when Thomas takes up this definition of eternity in the Summa Theologiae, okay, he takes it up after he's shown that, what, there's no motion in God, right? That God is unchanging, huh? Okay. And so, in a way, eternity is to an unchanging thing. Something like time is to a moving or changing thing, huh? Okay. And just as the unchanging involves a negation of change, right? So we're going to see how the definition of eternity, in a way, involves a negation of things that pertain to time, right? But also, it seems, it also pertains to a negation of things that pertain to the, what, now of time, huh? So, when he says unending life, right? What is the unending there, negating, refers to time, huh? Yeah, yeah. If Mozart's life, or your life, is measured by time, right, then it has a beginning and a, what, end in time, right? I took Mozart because he had a life who's, what, bicentennial, right? Of the beginning and of the end of Mozart in time, fell within the space of my life, right? Okay. So Mozart was born in, what, 1756, right? And died in 1791, huh? It was 36th year, right? Okay. So he had a beginning and an end in, what, time, right, huh? Okay. In the same way, each man's life, right, has a beginning and an end in, what, time, huh? So when you say that God's life is unending, right, you mean it has, what, no beginning and no end, huh? It's interesting when we talk about the word beginning and end, huh? You talk about it in the fifth book of wisdom. You know, if you call this the beginning of the line, this point here, and you call this point over here the end, right? Okay. But sometimes you use the word end for either limit, don't we? You speak of the end points, huh? Of the line, right, huh? And then, you know, similar to that in time, right, huh? Okay. So you can speak of the beginning of Mozart's life in 1756, and the end in 1791, right? Or you can speak of the ends of his life, right? Okay. And terminus there is Latin word that, that's actually what he uses in the fifth book of wisdom, in America he does, right? So, but probably the best English translation is on India, right? Okay. You see, it's a limitless life too, right? But I like the word on India a little bit better, right? Okay. So you're negating the fact of what you find in your life, or my life, or Mozart's life, that it has the beginning and end, that it has ends, right? The divine life has no beginning, no end, huh? Okay. Now, a lot of people think of eternity as kind of a, what? Endless time, right? Right. Okay. Um, but is that eternity? Certainly. You see? Well, they have something in common, that they're both endless, right? And, you know, Plato there in the tomato speaks, you know, of endless times being kind of a, what? A moving image of God, right? That's not the same thing he says, right? Okay. What's the other difference that would be between eternity and an endless time now? They have in common, they're endless, right? What does eternity have, or not have, that endless time would still have? All at once. Yeah. Yeah. See? Even if, um, um, next year I'm still around, right? And the year after that, and there's no year which Great Brookings ever seems to be. And you went back in time, right? I lived last year, I was alive last year, a year before that. And you never come to a year in which Brookings, what? Wasn't, right? Still there would be a, what? Before and after in Brookings, right? See, if you went back and you never came to a year in which Brookings didn't exist, right? And you never went forward, come to a year in which Brookings has ceased to be, right? Okay? Then Brookings would have an endless life, wouldn't they? A life without a beginning, right? Without an end, huh? Endless time, huh? But still there would be, what? It'd be before and after. after in my time right because last year came before this year and this year came before next year that before that one after that and so on right see but in eternity there's no what there's no before and after right and that's spread out by this part here right it's all at once there's no before and after so you see two things about my life right my life like Mozart's life has a beginning and an imminent time right and it has a before and after time right okay but the divine life has neither beginning nor an end it's endless and it has no what before and after because in that way it'd be something some kind of change so you see what you're negating here right so you need both of those really to understand both of those negations right you have to realize therefore like we were saying in the beginning of class that things are measured by time they have to be getting an end in time right and you have to realize that time is what the number of the before and after emotion right you have to negate both of those right when talking about the divine what life now um is eternity something like the now in this respect because is there a before and after in the now no no and it's something that the now of time has in common with eternity it has no before and after it now boethius uh in comparing the now of time with the now of the time right boethius says the now that flows along makes what time like we were saying before the now that flows along you saw before there we were talking last week i guess the now corresponds to the body motion right now okay and it's the same body throughout the motion but it's always other another right where it is so the now corresponds to that right so it says the now that flows makes what time right but the now stands still makes eternity it's a contrast you make sure it's not expressed in the definition here but you see certain likelihood between them right someone might say well if eternity is all at once that reminds me of the now of time right there's a no before and after in the now of time and therefore what's the difference between the now of time right and now eternal now right and with he says well this is one way of understanding right the now that flows along makes time the now that stands still makes what eternity right okay um now what in the definition is going to separate the now of eternity though from the now of time perfect oh yeah possession especially right because position is something but firm right and it reminds me a bit of of of when uh our style is talking about wisdom remember that and he he says um uh the third reading there we had from the premium and he said that wisdom is looking knowledge right and then it's liberal or free right and then it's not a human possession but it's what or divine possession right okay okay now when thomas comments said Aristotle's words there he doesn't mean that it's impossible for a man to uh in any way get wisdom right uh but he says it's not human possession he gives us a reason for that that man is in many ways what enslaved right okay and a possession is something that you can use whenever you want to right so if you possess that ballpoint bin you can pick it up and use any time you want to right but this life of wisdom this theoretical life is not something that man can't what hold on to any time he wants to right he's got to go and what eat he's got to go and sleep he's got to go and and uh wash the car or he's got to go and get the gas he's got to go and do all kinds of things right go to the doctor to the dentist right et cetera et cetera et cetera right you see so he's always being what pulled away from this right and you can't hold on to it right okay um and that's the way the now is right then the now time is to say right you can't possess it right because it's always like other right now so he says possession he's bringing out the fact that the what divine now stands still right the firmness of it huh okay um you know when i was growing up you always hear this saying your parents have said you know all good things must come put in you have a good time a kid right but now you've got to go to what bed you know tomorrow you can do some other things right yeah but you better go to bed now okay and i used to hear that did you hear that i don't know if your parents said that all good things must come to the end right i wish this woman could laugh people say something like that right you see and uh you know a lot of times when i see a beautiful sunset you gotta look at right away because all of a sudden it's gone you know just and uh so you can't really possess these what exquisite moments you might say in your life right because they won't stay right they keep on passing away right okay um so with this word possession right you're in a way negating the what flowing character of the now of time right in the sense you're you're bringing out that it what stand still right okay the life that we have in the now of time right is always what fleeting right always losing it right okay my brother mark you should say the second beer doesn't taste as good as the first beer in fact he says the second song is because the first bottle you know you know he knows that you can eat food too right i mean obviously you know at a certain point you know food i i speak of the um the law of diminishing returns right you're eating more but enjoying it less right you're drinking more and enjoying it less right yeah and uh okay remember when i when i went time i dropped to quebec city the old city there was some students were interested in going to the ball you know from assumption and of course i had spent three years up there you know but we just got back to the outer gate saying wow they jumped out of the car you know wow you know it's like setting it out because you know sometimes you know with something like that you know you kind of revive your own sense of thing you know but that you can't quite catch that that first you know time you're there right yeah this time you're maybe in rome or and say