Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 68: Eternity, Divine Knowledge, and the Philosophy of the Continuous

Transcript
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Peter's in some place, you know, and you go back there again, in fact, quite the enthusiasm or exhilaration or excitement of whatever it is, right? You see? So, we can't possess those really, what? As you hear my mother say, you know, climax spoils the romance. You see? And so there's all kinds of examples of that, right? That these precious moments, but you can't possess them, right? Because it's always flowing on, right? Time waits for no man, as the saying goes, right? The same is true about the now, right? It's always flowing on, huh? But now, if you could stop the now of time, right? See? And you can, of course, but in fiction, we can stop the now of time, huh? Of course, you have these fairy tales where the bad witch came down to the thing, and she cast a spell upon the princess and the whole court, right? And I can still remember these, you know, pictures in my little children's book, you know. Everybody was, what, frozen in one now, right? The now is frozen, huh? And then, you know, the princess will be frozen in her bed until the prince shows up and gives her a little kiss on the cheek. And then all of a sudden, everybody will come alive again. I remember, you know, seeing it. There's a servant bringing in, you know, a turkey or some big bird on the plate, you know, like that. And he's frozen like that, right, huh? Well, the point is, if you could freeze the now of what? Time, right? How much life would you have in that now? I mean, yeah, yeah. So it's not only the feeding character of the now, but you have practically no, what? Yeah. You have practically no, you possess practically nothing, right, in the now of time, right? I can't really, you know, do an article of Thomas Tsuma in the now, right? You know, I can't go through an argument with him in the now, right? He is worthwhile, right? You see? In other words, what I have of life in the now of time is not only fleeting, but it's practically nothing of life in the now. So, when he adds the word perfect, he's negating the what? Imperfection of life that we have in the now of what? Time, right, huh? See? He has a perfect possession of life in this eternal now. Okay? I think in our false imagination, right, Roy's, you know, falsely imagining eternity, huh? I know one thing that I think it's hard for people to understand, and they tend to falsely imagine. When you talk about the will of God, for example, right? God, having willed something once, can never change his will. You say, gee whiz, that sounds awfully confining. Because we're always changing our will, at least about little things, right? You see? And never say never, as they say, right? I'm never going to do that. And all of a sudden, you are going to do this or that, right? And so we're always, you know, seeing things, you know, that we didn't think were worthwhile doing, and now we realize they're worthwhile doing, right? Or, you know, I'm in that body reading those sort of things, and all of a sudden I realize the reason why I shouldn't read this or study this, right? And so, so we kind of falsely imagine God to be, what, frozen in the now, right, huh? Without realizing that he is, what, now, but not in my now, but in the now of eternity, right? He is, what, actually choosing everything. With full, what, now to what he's choosing and why he's choosing and so on, huh? We kind of imagine him to be like us, huh? That's strange, huh? Now, sometimes Thomas, when he's comparing the now of eternity to the now of time, we use this little comparison here to the circle, and you have that point in the center of the circle, but you can have many points along the, what, circumference, yeah. And if you take this point here, let's say it's after this one, but before this one, or vice versa, right? Okay. But if you compare these to the point here that's in the center, they're all right across from it, you might say. Okay? And that's because this point is not really a part of the, what, circle, is it? This is kind of a homely example, though, to bring out the difference between the, what, the now of time, which is, somebody said it before and after there, right? It's always other in some way, and the now of eternity. But what's past or present or future is all, what, present to God in His, what, eternity, huh? So, my old teacher, you know, used to joke that in the old days there used to be a program, I don't know if during your time, you used to be on the radio, I guess, in the old days, but the name of the program was You Were There? Yeah. Yeah. And there's always kind of a reenactment of some historical event. I remember one time they were doing Socrates' trial, you know, and so on. But it might be, you know, assassination of Lincoln, or whatever it may be, some historical event, you know. And it's reenacted, and it's like, you were there, right? Focus Rick says, you could see God, and he goes, you'll be there, you know. But you can see that, huh, that the past, the present, the future, they're all, what, present to God, right, yeah? Okay. But that's why he's got to be following Aristotle's, what, insight there, that the way we know doesn't have to be the way things are, right? And if he had to do it the same way, then the past or the future and time couldn't be, what, present to God, right? Okay. Now, sometimes he compares it, too, you know, to a man when he's up in the mountain, he's looking down at the, what, people down there that are walking along the path, right? And this man here, got to wear that man, or vice versa, because they're too far apart, right? But then up here, he sees all three of them together, right? He sees the whole picture, right? Okay. Notice now we have a faint imitation of something like that when we talk about the past, right? Because I can remember the past now. And sometimes people, you know, talk about something in the past that they went to the same school or something like that, and they talk about, remember that time when we did the action hour or something like that? And the past is present to you in your memory, right? Well, that's a faint image of something that God has, right? The past and the present and the future of time, they're all present to him now in his knowledge, right? But am I false in remembering the past now? No. I'd be false if I said the past is here now because I remember it now, right? But I remember the past now. And to some extent, I try to anticipate the future now, right? But in either case, am I false, right? But I'm more sure about the past, obviously, than the future, right? So God knows the past and the present and the future. This is one thing where we say that God knows what they call future contingents. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Future contingent means something is in the future, and it could happen or not happen, right? So you can't be sure about a future contingent, huh? But, you know, why are you standing, you know, ten minutes from now, or are you sitting there? It's undetermined, right? But God knows now, right, whether I'll be standing or sitting ten minutes from now. And when that's present to you ten minutes from now, right, you see, just like now, you're sure that I'm standing rather than sitting, right? Okay. But God knows, what, ten minutes from now, just like you know me now. So you can't be, what, mistaken about this, huh? That's why it says in Scripture, you know, announce the future to us and we'll declare you gods, right? Okay. But, you know, in the second, not second, but the first Vatican Council, it talks about the motors of credibility, huh? And the ones that are proportioned to everybody in a way is the fulfillment of prophecies, right? And the miracles, right? But the miracles are a sign of the divine, what? Power, right? But the fulfillment of prophecies is a sign of the, what? Divine, how is it, which you continue, huh? And, you know, some people wonder, you know, what was exactly the sin of Adam and Eve, right, huh? You see? And the way Thomas understands it sometimes is that they wanted a knowledge of what? A future contingent, huh? And that, of course, what, is something that you can't handle, huh? Then we'd be like the gods, you see? And, you know, it wasn't knowing the moral law, I mean, it's if Adam and Eve were even to that, huh? It was a very intellectual sin in a way, huh? You know? Adam and Eve, you see, people misunderstand Adam and Eve because they cover themselves and they recognize their nakedness afterwards, right? But that's after the sin, right? You see? God punished them that so long as their reason and their will was, what, subordinate to God, then their body was, what, completely subject to their soul? Yeah. And their emotions and passions, right? Were completely subject to their, what, reason and will, right? Uh-huh. Well, then God proportionally punished them, right? Mm-hmm. If you're not going to be subject in your reason and will to the one you should be subject to, right? Then what should be subject to you will not be, what, a revolt, right? Mm-hmm. It's a little bit like you have in the story of David, right, where David sins, right? Uh-huh. He votes, you know, against God, and then he's punished by what? Son who won't against him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of appropriate, right? I don't know. It's kind of a, yeah, I would say white justice is kind of divine justice there, right, huh? Yeah, you see? You know, where, I mean, I don't know if it's simplifying too much here. You know, when parents are not subject to God, sometimes they're punished by their own children being not, what, subject to them, right? Yeah. I'm not saying parents are always involved from God when their children are involved. Yeah. I don't know if I say that. But it's a citizen, you know, sometimes it's the way it is, right? You see? And when you're not subject to whom you should be subject to, right? Then those who should be subject to you are not subject to you, right? But there's an appropriateness of being punished that way, right? Just like in, you know, asking God to forgive you, you have to forgive those who offended you, right? You see that proportion, right? And so, so long as their reason and their will was subject to God, their emotions were subject to their reason and their will and their body to their soul, right? So their first sin would not have been a carnal sin or something like that, right? They discovered sex and some people think or some stupid explanation, right? But their first sin was a sin of what? Pride, you see? Spiritual sin, you see? And it wasn't that they were seeking a knowledge of the moral law, right? Because they already had a knowledge of the moral law. They were buying this better condition of moral law than we have. But, in a sense, they wanted to be able to, what? Be, in a sense, self-sufficient in the direction of their own actions, right? But the point is, the future contingent is something that makes all of our, what? Providence, our human providence, right? Our human foresight, but imperfect and defective in some sense, right? That we can't foresee, right? These things are going to happen, right? These future contingent things, right? And so we have to, what? Turn to God to guide himself, and so on, right? So, in a sense, they were seeking to, what? A knowledge of the future contingent. Knowing good and bad in that sense, right? See? Not just knowing, in other words, which they already knew, what was morally good to do or morally bad to do, right? That wasn't what they were seeking, they knew that. But that they could, what? Foresee any good or bad might happen as a consequence, unintended, right? Of what they were doing, yeah? What would that mean, and how would they seek that? What would they... Well, that's what it comes to understanding, you know? You see? And in a way, that's what the devil is promising them, right? That they'll be like God, son. Not like, you know, in a very, what? In a way, that man cannot really be like God, right? Even being like God is only the moral law, you know? It can't be like God is the only future contingent. It depends, right? Did you ever read, um... I'm sure the other example that comes to mind there, though, read the... St. Margaret Mary Ollococ and Claude de la Clombier, you know? Claude de la Clombier was going over to England, you know, which was dangerous for a Catholic at that time, to go over there, right? And before he'd leave, he'd talk to Margaret Mary Ollococ, and you're going to meet so-and-so there, and da-da-da-da-da-da, you know? And sure enough, so-and-so would be there, right? You know? But she wasn't getting this, right? From God, right? Yeah. You see? And then she'd tell Claude, and then you'd go there, and so-and-so was there. You know? Did you ever read, uh, uh... Churchill's there account, you know, of his escape from South Africa? You know, Churchill's young man was involved in the Boer War, and he was working as a, uh, correspondent, partly, too. He was captured by the Boers, right? In prison, and he escaped from prison. Uh-huh. They were trying to find him, and he was moving along. And, of course, he got to a district where he used to, you know, starve and so on, and he, uh, he, uh, went and knocked on his door, and there was the one house in the whole city where there was somebody of English origin or something, English affiliation, right? And he, you know, took him in and got him on his way, so he stuck him back in the table. But, I mean, you see, I mean, you could not possibly foresee that, right? And if you get to the other door, he would have been, you know, alarmed, and he would have, you know, hatched him and so on, huh? So this is, you know, something that's God's prerogative, huh? But because of eternity. So does St. Thomas say that they thought they could get that from the devil? Well, they were tempted out of pride, so you know, pride didn't blind you, right? In other words, it had to be something that was very, what, appealing, you know, not to their concupiscence, right? Like in our fallen state where we didn't fall into it. They didn't have any disorderly concupiscence like we have, disorderly emotions, right? Yeah. Maybe something that would appeal to an intellectual, what? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the man is given reason to direct him in his actions, right? And it's natural sense to want to, what, direct your actions by reason, you see? And, but your reason cannot direct you infallibly, right? Because many things could happen, right, from what you intend to do, right? That you could in no way foresee, yeah? And notice, what's the name of the virtue concerning directing our actions? Foresight. Foresight, yeah. See, you know, we use the word prudence, right? Okay. I don't get from prudencia in Latin, but prudencia comes from the word providentia. And if you look at Thomas there, when he's taking up the integral parts of providence, right? Or prudencia, rather. And one of the integral parts of prudencia is providentia. And the objection that you have in the article there is that providentia means the same thing as prudencia. And that's not, you know, one of Thomas' Isidori etymologies, right? You go to the Latin dictionary and he'll tell you that prudencia comes from providentia. Contraction of that, huh? And Thomas, you know, says, well, the whole virtue is named from this because kind of the crowning part, right? And I made a study of many things of Winston Churchill, and I noticed he likes to use the word foresight, huh? And recently I read two biographies of, you know, Theodore Roosevelt, one of our better presidents, and I noticed he's, you know, liking to use the word foresight, right? That's really the English word, right? But the point is, you can't, what, entirely foresee the consequence of what you decide to do, right? It's because of the, what, of this, huh? I'm going to go to the drugstore, right? Okay. We light turns green and go, right? When somebody goes through a red light, backs me, right? I couldn't foresee that, right? Somebody's going to stop through a red light. A lot of people, you know, when they come to a car like that, they stick to a little spout out of their car, you notice that, something over there? Kind of aggressively like it. No, it makes me uneasy, you know. I couldn't, you know, react, I was, you know, starting to break a little bit, you know? Because, you know, nobody's going to stop or just go, you know? And sometimes they get a loophole out kind of quickly, you know? So, you can't foresee these things, right? I can't foresee them. I can't foresee them. I can't foresee the knowledge of good and evil in the full sense of that word. Yeah, yeah. What kind of knowledge were they seeking, see? But you have, you know, I said that the stupidest interpretation is this, in this false imagination that they discovered, you know, sex or something, you know? Lots of innocence. But I say that that is based upon a misunderstanding of their original state, right? Mm-hmm. See? That as long as their mind and will were subject to God, their emotions were subject to their mind and will. And their body was subject to their soul, right? But, in a way, the punishment of revolting from God is that the body is no longer entirely subject to the, what? Reason. To the soul, right? And the emotions to the, what? To the reason and the will, huh? Okay? So, the first sin is going to be a spiritual sin, not a, like we're accustomed to, you know, more, and we're used to the, to the, to the body leading us astray, right? Emotions. So, the first sin had to be a spiritual sin, huh? That's the only kind of sin you could have in the devils, obviously, right? The sin of the devils has to be basically, what? Pride, and then envy, you know, rose because of that. Pride, right to us, and so on. Yeah. Yeah. I think Augustine has that same explanation, too, I believe. Yeah. The very type of splendor, when our Holy Father speaks of it, your sin is a desire to be able to determine good and evil, sort of have a certain control over good and evil, and determine. Would you say that sort of links up with what you were saying as, when you spoke about having a knowledge of the future contingent, they could therefore sort of manipulate their own actions and sort of decide, they knew what was good and evil, but they could therefore sort of determine independently of the objective model. Well, I think, I think the, yeah. You have to, the text again, you're referring to, but I think one thing the Pope is talking about is the fact that people think that they are the measure of what's good or bad, right, see, that they can, you know, if I want this, then it's good for me, right, see, so that they kind of, you know, whatever they happen to want, right, but that's, you know, a more stupid thing than what you have in a way, in Abney, right, Abney, you're not trying to say that something is morally, right, or it's good because they happen to want it, right, see, but in a sense, they're seeking a, what, sometimes you define pride, in fact, as a, what, disordered love of one's own, what, excellence, yeah, yeah, see, and so the fact that you can direct yourself, right, by your own actions is a sign of a certain excellence in you, huh, it's the same about one's own, right, if you can, you know, the student can move in his own mind, right, that's, if he says that about you, that's a good compliment, right, you see, so a man wants to direct himself to his own actions, huh, but he can't fully do so, he depends upon God because of the, what, the contingent things, huh, see, there's the, the unintended good that comes from what I do, right, or the unintended evil, right, I can't foresee those things, right, angels don't have a knowledge of future contingency, right, no, not even the angels, no, so the divine providence, right, extends down, what is it, there's an account, isn't there, one of the books of the Old Testament there of a conflict, you know, kind of a, between two angels, right, and the one angel, like the guardian angel wants to get his, his client out of the way, right, of some danger, and the, and the other angel who sees the whole picture, you know, wants him to, what, keep him there, right, so I forget which book that is, but, but it's kind of a striking example there, you know, because in a sense, I suppose, it's representing in a human way there, kind of, you know, how the higher angel has to illuminate the lower angel, right, so, I mean, the, the lower angel is seeing something more particular, right, and, and the higher angel is seeing something more universal good that's going to come from this, but, you know, what does it say, it was the same Paul says, you know, for the good all things work for the good, or something like that, you see, but it's talking about how God in his divine providence watches over them, right, or the example of, let's say, physically Sue, you know, comparing God to a father who is, what, running along the path ahead of you. and found something that you're going to stumble over, right? And he's removed it, right? You see, something you can foresee, right? But you're dependent upon God for those things, huh? So, I mean, it says in the San Genshaw books, uncertain are the, what, providence of men, right? The foresight of men, huh? So we experience that all the time. We can't foresee the consequences of certain things we ought to do, right? So in a sense, it's very appealing to the intellectual nature of man, right? To be able to be to direct himself, huh? But you see something like that in people, and sometimes even young people, you know, they want to do their own thing, right? So you see, you know, in people's ways. What do they say about men and women sometimes? that men are less willing to ask directions than women is? Was that pride in our part or something? Better self-indirection, maybe. Yeah. We sort of were not. We're both. Yeah. A little for pride or stubbornness or something? So to direct yourself is to be more excellent than to be, you need it being directed by another, right? It's somewhat understandable, huh? You know, Thomas says the guess that the devil was the highest of the angels, and we don't know for sure, huh? There's some, you know, opinion, he says that's so, right? But Thomas says, unless he had been extremely excellent, right, how would he be, what, tempted, right, to rest in himself, right? He's so wonderful. He was so wonderful, huh? What did he call him, Lucifer? So in a sense, we maybe don't realize how how miserable Adam and Eve were, right? How much they wanted to, what, direct themselves, huh? The sin was just wanting that? In a sense, there's a movement for what? I mean, the way Thomas presents it, I mean, I think, I mean, that's an informe is that that Eve was more deceived, right, than Adam, right? Adam was kind of, what, going along with what? Flesh of his flesh, right? Bone of his bones, he said, right? But the devil, you know, the devil was crafty, what he did, right? They didn't come with the temptation to Adam directly, right? They came to Eve, right? And she might have been a little weaker in the head. Can't say that nowadays, of course. That's why they're all, when they explain the Incarnation, right, that they explain, why does it begin with the woman, right? And Mary's saying, you know, you've done it to me, right? This is part of the redemption of woman, right? That just as a downfall began with a woman, rather than a man, was perfected by the man, the downfall, or the perfection of the downfall, completion of the downfall, right? Well, then, you know, the same thing was done, right? But our redemption begins with what? Mary's saying yes, right? It's completed by Christ, obviously, right? But you have, you know, that saying what? A redemption of woman as well as man. Adam should have said, like Aristotle says in the Nicomachean Ethics, Theta was a friend, but Ruth is a greater friend, huh? But Socrates says the same thing in the Apology, right? Or not in the Apology, excuse me, in the Theta, right? If it isn't to me, you'll pay a lot of attention to the truth, and a little to Socrates, right? You know, and Socrates is talking about whether the human soul is immortal or not, right? And Simeas and Sibis have come in with these objections, and Socrates has replied to them, or is going to reply to them, but he says, now, you know, if you see an objection to the immortality of the soul, or an objection to my arguments for the immortality of the soul, bring them forward, right? But it's kind of a, you know, a classical example, because if Socrates is about to die, as he is, right, but he's convinced that the soul is immortal, he's going to face death with, what, greater courage or greater dignity, right? But if he begins to doubt whether the soul is going to survive death, then he could maybe panic at the thought of death, or be disturbed, right? So you might, out of friendship, say, well, don't disturb the man now, you know? Don't get him upset, you know, he's going to die, right? You see? In which case, your concern for Socrates is more than your concern for the truth, right? So Socrates is very much aware of the fact that they might be influenced that way, right? So he says, if you take my advice, he says, you'll care a lot about the truth and a little about Socrates. Well, then Aristotle, you know, when he's attacking the position of the Platoist there, in the first book of Nicomaric Ethics, he says that it's hard for him to attack these because these men are his friends, right? But then he says it would be impious to prefer your friends to the truth, right? And that's because piety refers to God, right? And God is truth itself, right? And we got to, you know, Plato is a friend, he says, but truth is a greater friend, huh? And Thomas, when he comments to us, you know, he says, you know, Plato or Socrates said this before him, you know? So I mean, that's the way to proceed, huh? So I know a famous philosopher who asked another philosopher to support his position in friendship. And we all proudly condemned him for this. It's obviously contrary to both the teaching of Socrates or Plato there and the Phaedo and the teaching of Arestamble there. Who's the reason, right? You know, one of the plays there, the duke or somebody asked the fool, how are you doing? How's he doing? He answers, well, he says, the better for my enemies and the worse for my friends. He says, all right, you mean the better for your friends and the worse for your enemies, don't you? No, no, no, no, he says, the worse for my friends and the better for my enemies. And he says, what? What do you mean? He says, well, my friends told me I am what? My enemies told me what? I'm wonderful, right, you know? And my enemies told me I'm an ass. But you learn something from your enemies, right, because they're going to point out your defects to you sometimes. And sometimes your friends will not point out your defects out of what? Friendship, right? But there's an essay of Plutarch, right, on that very subject. Have you ever seen that one? You know, how to benefit from your enemies? It's good, you know, because your enemies don't love you, so they like to point out your defects. And so you learn the truth about yourself from your enemies in a way that you don't sometimes be your friends. Your friends will put up with certain defects and faults you have, right? And, you know, the extreme example, of course, is where a man in power is, what, flattered by these people, right? And you can't get an honest, what, statement, right? Don't tell them what the situation really is, right? It's a real problem, huh? Not the conversation there, the argument between Brutus and Cassius there when things are kind of going against them. And Cassius, Brutus is kind of pointing out Cassius' faults to him, right? Cassius, well, you're not a friend, you're not a friend, you're not a friend. And then Brutus says, you know, a flatter would not, he says. You know, I mean, you know, Shakespeare speaks of the sweet breath of flattery. You know, you go to somebody's house for dinner and, oh, this is a wonderful meal. Oh, this is delicious. You're always saying that, you know. And I suppose this is a small lie, but, I mean, it is. And you know, the college, you know, people, you've got to kind of encourage people, you've got to encourage students, you know, but sometimes you've got to tell them what their thing is, you know. The story, you know, when Ossoli was presenting his draft of his thing, you know, it was so mixed up, you know, that he kind of just says, okay, let's start over again. Let's start over again. How's that? That's kind of brutal, you know. But I mean, sometimes, you know, it's just so mixed up, you know, huh? I say, just, you know, let's just, you know, get all that and start over again, huh? You see something like that in the lives of the saints, too, you know, where at the end they say, you know, they're always beginning, right? Get a start over again, huh? I know myself when I come back, you know, to think about something that I thought about before, and maybe I picked up things in the meantime and I see it much better, you know. Sometimes I, you know, I start to think over again and I'm doing much better now, you know. If I go back to the one and try to complete that one, I'd be, what, off on the wrong foot, you know. I'm off on a better foot, at least, if they're approaching it. So it's like all these, you know, these scandals going on now, you know, in the church, you know, about the... You hear about them right now, do you? No, no, I've heard about them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but pretty... More than enough. Yeah, yeah, and they keep, you know, in the paper, they love to pursue these things, you know, but there is something kind of what, you know, scandalous about these things, nevertheless, huh? You know, they have been, I was kind of surprised, I was looking at the paper the other day there, and, you know, because you were calling for laws of resignation, you know, but even Bennett called for it, you know. Bennett, you know, the former Secretary of Education. Oh. You know, the Book of Virtues and Riddles. Oh. Yeah, I guess William F. Buckley did, too, before that, too, so. Who? William F. Buckley. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so here you've got two, you know, Catholic laymen, you know, pretty solid guys, you know, but, you know, it's kind of a strong thing, right? But, you know, I'm not kind of, you know, judge whether it should be sore or not, but I think the thing is, there has been, you know, some imprudent thing, you know, done in the past, suddenly, and things are not very defensible, and if we should resign another question or not, but I mean, there really are things. But people who are going to, you know, keep on hitting these things in the paper and so on, they're really enemies of the church. Sure. But sometimes your friends won't tell you. In other words, you know, if you say, what can we learn from this, you know, well, let's go back to Blue Jack's essay, right? You know, your enemies are going to be, you know, looking for something wrong, right, about you, and especially they can get, you know, money for it and so on. And so, something to be learned from that, right? Yeah, yes. My friends won't tell you. What's wrong with you? Is that really a friend without a fodder? I was saying, Paul, there's, you know, let Peter have it that one time, remember that? Mm-hmm. Huh? Yeah, Peter was being a little bit about the Mosaic law, right, wasn't it? That was a problem. Kind of interesting example there, right? Maristyle teaches us a component of friendship, that you will tell, be able to tell. Yeah, I mean, you don't have to be carping all the time, but I mean, and some things you realize your friends won't probably never change, right? Credential judgment and how to apply it. Yeah. The general principle. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the opposite extreme, obviously, of course, is to be encouraging your friend, you know, in their vices, huh? You know? Mm-hmm. But, I mean, it's such a common thing, in other words, that their friend is a flatterer and not be your friend, really. The clear-acting is just saying how to benefit from your enemies, right? So, we're going to go in now to the philosophy of the, what? Continuous, huh? Mm-hmm. And my particular, we got to reproduce these for us, okay? Okay. Fifteen pages here, okay? Mm-hmm. So, we're going to be on there for a while, huh? Okay? Mm-hmm. Let's say a few words here, right before we go. Make me feel for copies, maybe, too. Okay. Just so I can... Mm-hmm. Um, yeah, I like to call this, this is from the sixth book now, this is a large part of the sixth book of natural hearing, huh? I like to call it sometimes, to give it a, and yourself, I like to call it the philosophy of the continuous, huh? Yeah. Now, someone might be surprised at that, because what other part of philosophy might be seen to be even more a philosophy of the continuous? Geometry. Yeah, geometry, right? Remember the distinction in logic between two kinds of quantity, continuous quantity, like width and breadth and depth and so on, and then discrete quantity, like number, right? Okay? Remember that distinction? Okay? Now, we talked a little bit about the definitions of the continuous and the discrete and so on. We'll read them again, huh? Mm-hmm. Continuous is that whose, what, parts meet at a common boundary, like the parts of a line meet at a point, let's say, or the parts of a surface meet at a line, or the parts of a body meet at a surface, or the other definition that you read in this book, in fact, that the continuous is that which is divisible forever, right? Okay? By a number, its parts don't meet at a common boundary, right? It's not divisible forever, right? So, when you distinguish between the two parts of mathematical formula, Philosophy of Geometry, like in the first six books, say, Euclid, Mineran, and the South Geometry, and then in the seventh and eighth and ninth books, there's some numbers, right? Well, Geometry is about the continuous quantity, and Arithmetic is about numbers, right? The non-continuous quantity. So, what does it mean to speak of book six as the philosophy of the continuous, huh? And how does it differ from Geometry, right? You know? Or why should there be this consideration here and this one in Geometry, huh? Euclid doesn't, for example, define the continuous. Right? In some ways, you're going to see that this is more basic, right, than Geometry, huh? But notice, does Geometry consider everything that is continuous? No. See? It considers a line, which is continuous in one dimension. It considers a surface, which is continuous in two dimensions. It considers the geometrical body, right? It has length and width and depth, right? But it doesn't consider what? Motion. Motion. Now, if motion is over a line or down a line, the motion over a line will be also what? Continuous, right? And also divisible, what? Forever, right? Right. Okay. And then the time that it takes, right, will also be what? Continuous, right? Mm-hmm. So, in a way, the continuity of motion over a line follows the continuity of the line, and the time follows the continuity of motion, right? You're going to see a connection between those three, right? So in one sense, this is about everything that is continuous, right? And Geometry is not, right? That's one difference you see, right? And the reason why each of these is divisible forever is somewhat the same, right? And we'll see that nothing continuous is composed of what? Indivisibles, right? We'll see, for example, that the line is not composed of what? Points. And time is not composed of what? Now. Now, right? And we already have a good common word image for the indivisible in motion, but they called it the matem momentum, but that's taken on different meaning in modern physics, right? Okay? But, again, motion is not composed of indivisibles, huh? But, in a way, it's the same reason why none of these is composed of what? Indivisibles, right? And also, if you see it in one, you can see it in the others because of that. I think I mentioned how sometimes Aristotle will reason from one to the other, and sometimes reason about both together, like, for example, I gave of time and distance being indivisible forever, because it's the faster and the slower. Remember that? Right? The faster body covers the same distance in less time. In that lesser time, the slower body would cover a lesser distance, right? And so on, so you can divide them forever, right? So it seems, in a way, to be the same knowledge, or pertain to the same knowledge, of all continuous things, right? As far as they're being divisible forever, right? And as far as they're not being composed of, what? Indivisibles, right? Okay? So, according to what he teaches in the post-analytics, right? If you have a common reason for many things, you should, what, bring them together, right? And some of these things are so basic that, in a way, the geometry supposes those things to be true, huh? Take an example of a positive in geometry. Like, between any two points, you can draw a, what? Straight line, right? Now, if two points could touch without coinciding, right, could you draw a straight line between them? Yeah, yeah. So, in a way, saying that between any two points you can draw a straight line is assuming that, what? Two points cannot, what? Touch. Touch, yeah. All right. And then we made the same, right? Okay? Which is tied up with the idea that you can't compose a line of points, right? So, in a way, that is, what? Jumping, right? So, in some sense, this is more basic, right? Yeah. It's kind of interesting, right? Mm-hmm. And it shows, in a way, that actual philosophy is more the character of wisdom, in a way, than geometry does. Because this doesn't depend upon geometry, but geometry, in some way, depends upon this. Now, you can see, too, that we saw back in the beginning of Book 3, huh? Aristotle says, we're going to talk about motion, we're going to talk about, what, place, we're going to talk about time, right? Remember, he had two ways of showing that? One was, he goes back to the definition of nature, right? Obviously, natural philosophy is about things that depend upon nature. And nature is defined as the beginning cause of motion, right? So, let's, at least we're talking about motion here, right? But then he talks about how motion maybe takes time, right? So, it makes sense to talk about time when you talk about motion. And motion is also what? Falls a thing in motion, that thing in motion. Is somewhere, right? In a false place, right? Okay? That's one way we see us talking about these things. But also, he gives a second reason that these seem to be common to all, what? Natural things, right? They're somewhere, at some time, right? They're all subject to motion. And we're talking here in this first book of natural philosophy about those things that are common to all natural things. Okay? And of course, to the first philosophers, they seem to be common to all things. They're somewhere and in some, what? Time, right? Okay? So, the question, where's heaven, right? I was always asking in grade school, you know, where's heaven, you know? And, uh, what's up there? Is it, you know? And the poor, frustrated nuns used to say, you know, well, the answer was, heaven is where God is. Because then somebody asked, where's God? But God and an angel, that matter, they're not quite. Yeah, see. But in grade school, you know, you'd say, you know. A sister would say, you know. Now, leave a little room for your angel there, right? I didn't see Joseph's sisters, you know. And, uh, they were pretty good, you know, the ones I had, anyway, you know. And, uh, Sister Carolyn was the principal. We were all kind of afraid of Sister Carolyn. They used to have, on Sunday, you'd have, like, nine o'clock mass. You're supposed to go to that mass because that's a children's mass. And if you didn't go there, they knew it, you know. I'd get called down to Sister Carolyn's office, right? Well, of course, get a little talking to and, uh, you'd always try to get you something in the back of the other kids, you know. But I can remember one time that Brother Marcus was sick and he'd missed some classes or some days, you know. And I was coming up the stairs with Sister Carolyn and she went to ask me about Brother Marcus. And so, you know, looking down, you know, and says, look at the person to whom you're speaking. Hey! Hey! So, so, but, uh, so, it's just a pretty tough there's one whose name the nickname was Sister Corona but her nickname was Cannonball Corona. Wham! You know, you know, Yeah. Good day. You know, you know, you know, you know, you know,