Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 77: Natural Understanding and the Axiom of Limits

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

with a child, right, right, you see, so she's got to have the choice of abortion so she can choose freely to continue her career if she wants to, right, always a man would be free to, you know, pursue his career, you know, and she wouldn't be, so that would be inequality, right, so I mean, it's denaro, nature, you see, it's like that, I guess it's a true story, but it's kind of funny, like, you know, there's some, New York, I guess the only way it was, rather than buy her daughter a doll, she bought her a truck, you hear about that, and the daughter was putting the truck in the bell like a baby, you know, it's like these parents don't buy their kid a toy gun, right, and the kid, it's a gun, you know, some kind of a thing, you know, I mean, we all did as a kid, you know, you didn't have a gun, you invented something, you know, and you had maybe the map, you know, the wooden map there in the United States and you got Texas or some state that's like that, you know, or Florida's not that, that's your gun, right, there's the daughter putting the truck in the bell like it's a baby, you know, why the hell did she buy her a baby, you know, and I remember one time, you know, watching the kids, you know, because my daughter had the dolls, you know, and one time the boys picked up the dolls and said, hey, the dolls, see, you know, and I said, I don't see anything, I just watch, you know, and very soon they get bored of the doll, you know, they go, it's something else, you know, just natural, you know, you see, and the, my little nieces there, old nieces there, my sister-in-law here, you know, she's just crazy about the babies and when we come to the babies and like that, you know, and she's been saving up her money from babysitting, you know, so she can fly out to see the babies, you know, I mean, I mean, she did all that maternal status, love to see that, you know, but you can't let, but it's hard to just hide the sparks of nature, it's kind of natural, it's sort of a thing, you know. My brothers, and there were four of us, and my sister was the youngest, so we used us to try to make her act like a boy, and she was just a little, she says she would say girls are different than boys, she would tell us, baseball instead of a doll, you know, she would just, we couldn't do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, there are natural inequalities, and it's life. I see another account there, you know, some woman was giving an account of the, of the now speaker at Harvard there when it was, you know, and, you know, the first principle was the autonomy of the individual, right? Well, autonomy means actually what? Make your own law. Everybody's got a right to their own conception of the world, and what, you know, the Supreme Court said that, I guess. You live your life, and I love my life. I always joke about, you know, these bumper stickers, you know, you see for a year there, longer, you know, challenge authority, challenge authority, right? And then after a few years, I began to see a new bumper sticker called challenge reality. I was like, why? I didn't get it, but I chose authority, you know, I chose reality. Have you read, um, Harold Bloom's book on Shakespeare? No, no. It's got to be a book, though, that Shakespeare, the Evidence, uh, it's kind of a, um, pretty good, uh, account of the life of Shakespeare, you know, so far as we can figure it from the various sources, right? And when the plays are written, of course, and so on. And, uh, it's kind of interesting because, uh, he brings out a lot of, you know, Shakespeare's Catholic sympathies, right? And the Catholics that he was associated with, huh? And, of course, nobody knows, you know, for sure what Shakespeare's religion was, right? But even Rouse, you know, the, the Oxford scholar who, you know, is having a job about Shakespeare not being a Catholic, right? You know, admits this is a very good book, right? You know, and he's not leading anybody astray, you know, as to what the facts are about Shakespeare's life, you see? And, uh, there's all kinds of things, you know, the connections that you see, you know, Shakespeare's association. Um, like, you know, Shakespeare had twins there, Hamnet and Judith, right? And, uh, they were named after the couple that were acted as the godfathers for them, right? Well, they were both known to be Catholics, right? Okay? And, uh, Hamnet, of course, died, and he was fairly young, you know, people that think that in those days. And, uh, Judith didn't make too good a marriage. Shakespeare, you can tell it from his will, right? You know, that he left most things in charge of his other daughters. Susanna, right? Well, Susanna appeared on the recusancy list, you know, those who are not, you know, obeying the rules, you know, about receiving communion in the England church, right? So, you know, and this couple that were the godparents, right? So there's all kinds of things like this, you know, running through the whole life of Shakespeare, huh? And, uh, and, of course, you know, they have the, the, uh, you know, Shakespeare's, uh, father's will, you know, is made out in the Catholic form rather than the Protestant form, you know? In the form of St. Charles Barmale, Phyllis Barmale. And, uh, and anyway, you know, at the end of his life there, you know, it's kind of strange that Shakespeare did, you know? He, he, he was, uh, buying land in Stratford, getting ready to retire, right? And he was, you know, moving out to Stratford, right? And all the time he'd been in London, he always rented, right? And then at the end, he buys the Blackfire's, uh, gate, uh, residence there. And, and establishes somebody in there, right? And this man, Robinson, becomes one of the, what, witnesses to his will. Of course, this is the most notorious place in London for hidden Catholics, right? And where the Mass was being celebrated, right? And so, so why is Shakespeare suddenly by when he's sitting down to retire in, uh, Ox, right? This, of all places, the place associated, right? Mm. In fact, later on, there was, you know, after Shakespeare died, there was, uh, the Blackfriars there, which would be the old Dominican place, right? The Blackfriars, you know, one of the forests, you know, 200, 300 Catholics said a secret Mass and the floor collapsed, you know, kind of a tragic thing, you know? Because of the way to wait to meet people, right? I mean, this is a notorious place for these things to go on, right? You know, all kinds of, you know, things where he seems to be. And, uh, you know, I mean, there's, uh, you know, one of the scholars at the time there, you know, he died a papist, you know? Oh, yeah. I don't know what his evidence was for us, but, I mean, you know, since, you know, they had the, you know, the old people showing up, you know? You know, so, and, uh, you know, the way Shakespeare, you know, in the plays, he represents favorably the Catholic priests, you know, like Friar Lawrence. I'm going to give a talk there to the, uh, to the, uh, what do you call it, the, uh, the visionaries, you know, every year I give a talk, I'm going to give a talk. This is Friar Lawrence on Stumbling, that's what's going to be on, you know, I think I told you that. Mm-hmm. But, uh, but, uh, he presents the Franciscans in the Catholic priests, you know, as wise and noble people, you know, by the, the Protestant ministers are all boom, boom, like, and kapoops, you know? You know, really? Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, all, all, all, it's a concession of evidence. I mean, nobody can say, you know, that they know what Shakespeare was exactly, you know, but, I mean, between his father's will and, and, and his daughter's his enemy, he leaves everything to, almost, you know, you know, people he seeks to godparents, you know, all kinds of, you know, people he associates with, you know, and, uh, who writes these plays, so. Is it your opinion, he's Catholic? I think so, yeah. But, I mean, yeah, you know, we can know for sure, you know, and, uh, but it's kind of interesting, I mean, you know, the, you know, that, he, he puts on the beginning, you know, this is one of his, you have to be a Catholic, I read in the book, yeah, almost, uh, but he calls himself a liberal woman, Catholic, whatever that means, uh, but, uh, you know, but, you, but, as I read Rouse on Shakespeare, and Rouse is very adamant, you know, about Shakespeare not being a Catholic. Catholic, you know, and trying to, you know, dismiss this, you know, but he praises even this book, you know. But there are other books, you know, that are, that have dealt the same subject, you know, and he refers to some of them too, you know. But it's hard to know Shakespeare the man, you know, to himself somewhat, you know. There was a conference there, you know, a couple of summers ago, there was something in Shakespeare, you know, and, you know, Shakespeare, you know, all kinds of Catholics in the area he came from, you know, and there's a reason, you know, the so-called lost years there, you know, that Stratford becomes prominent in London, you know. There's, I mean, it's suspect that he was tied with the Catholics, so who knows. I mean, it makes some of the English extremely nervous, you know, that's our greatest writer, you know, that's the greatest writer of all time, you know, poets and, you know. Get Catholic, you know. You know. It's scandalous. But it's just, you know, these two statements, I just kind of finished writing out that you want to say more or less about the first statement about stumbling, you know, and can't say anything more time-wise, you know. But I'm working, you know, when I saw the second one. But that's incredible what Shakespeare does in the second one, huh? It's the words, you know, we're, we talked to you about those words, you know. For not so valid on the earth doth do, but to the earth some special good doth give, not so good, but strained from that fair use. Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse, right? What's the last part there? Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse, right? What does he mean by true birth, right? He seems to be extending the word birth, like the Latin word nature or the Greek word fousis was extended eventually to what a thing is, right? So when you revolt from your nature, from what you are really, right, then you stumble on abuse, right, huh? You see? And, you know, it's not limited to the first sense there for birth, right, huh? Although we always keep that in mind, you know, huh? You see? But that's what this woman wants, you know, abortion for equality, you know. They're obviously revolting from birth in the original sense of the word, right? But revolting from your nature as a woman, right? Revolting from nature, demanding inequality. It's unnatural, right? You know, Shakespeare talks about women, you know, he always puts the most beautiful words about mercy in the mouth of a woman, you know, like Portia there in The Merchant of Venice, right? And when a woman is cruel, it's more against her nature than for a man to be cruel, right? See? But, you see this in the Middle Ages, you know, when they speak of Mary, like in the Hail, Holy Queen, Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, right? She never said to be the Mother of Justice, right? And, you know, Mary, Christ came first in mercy, right? And he comes through Mary, right? You know, and it's Mary who speaks to Christ about they're running out of wine and so on, right, huh? You see? And I just seen a little pamphlet the other day that they have in the church there about the La Salette, you know, the appearance of the La Salette, I don't know much about those, but there, you know, Mary's saying to the children, you know, I can no longer hold back the arm of my son, like he's got that, you know? But it's very, very vivid, though, I mean, and very, very concrete, a way of speaking there, you know. And when Christ comes a second time, he's going to come in, what? Justice, right, huh? You see? And he says, the apostles, you will be, you know, sitting there judging, right? You know? But it doesn't seem to attribute any role to Mary in that judgment, does he? You know? Mary's going to be sitting on the thing there, you know? You see? You can kind see, you know, how the woman is by nature more merciful than the man, right? But the man is by nature more, what? Just, right? You know? I remember a case, you know, kind of a serious case, an assumption there, where someone had been sending, what? Threatening letters to a girl student, right? Okay? Threatening terrible things, and they suspected, you know, somebody who went class of hers, right? And so they got specimens of the handwriting of the students in that class, the male students. And they made use of the FBI, which is a service, you know? And apparently it's pretty, pretty reliable that they will, unless they're pretty sure, they won't say that, you know, this handwriting is this, right? So anyway, the handwriting identified one of the students as this, right? So there was, you know, kind of a almost judicial thing on this, you know? And the father and the mother of the boy came, you know? And well, it was his uncle, who was the DA. So, of course, this is not really, like, a legal proceeding, you know, that far, but the FBI evidence was there and so on. And the father was, well, he admitted that his son was guilty of this, you know, these threatening letters, you know, but the mother just couldn't, you know? And you can see that the father is, you know, more objective, you know, more just, you know, the mother just can't commit to her boy who can do this, you know? So, I mean, I don't hold it against her that she did, you know, that's the mother, you know? And it's like the mother, this muscley, you know, the terrorist that they caught there, you know, that's being on trial in Virginia there, you know, this mother's trying to intercede, you know, her boy can't, you know, he's not, especially, you know, the other guy's going to be on the airplane, you know, but he'll stop because of, you know, circumstances, right? But, I mean, a father more apt to disown the son than the mother will, right? The son doesn't much be up to what the father thinks he should be. But, that's just the nature of the woman, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, you know, the commentator there on, wait, this is a constellation of philosophy, you know? Philosophy comes down to lady wisdom, right, you know? And you see, as a woman, it gets more consoling than the man, right? You know? It's like the child tends to run to the mother when he gets bumped, you know, before the father, right? He gets more consoled than the mother. That's the nature, you know? That's the nature there. People are revolting from nature, right? And, you know, abortion, I mean, killing your own child, you know, to begin with there, that's really revolt against nature, huh? Because you're abusing the medical profession, everything, right? You know, it's, I mean, Hippocrates, who wasn't the Christian, the Hawaiian Outlands, right? But, you know, the Hippocratic Oath there, you know, abortion was explicitly forbidden, right? You see? Mm-hmm. And I think the word physician, you know, which isn't one of the words for doctor, right, comes from fuses, right? Mm-hmm. You know? So, he saw that as really, you know, violation of the doctor should be, right? Mm-hmm. So it's terrible, this abuse going on, huh? Yeah. And Son, Holy Spirit, amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, speak in the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor. Praise for us. And help us to understand all that you have written. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and Holy Spirit, amen. Amen. So, Brother asked me to go over again briefly the word end or limit, huh? The word that's translated edge here in that first reading could be translated end or limit, huh? I think Aristotle actually uses the word eschaton there, which is the idea of last, huh, with the limit, huh? But usually the word you have for end or limit is Greek is either peros or horos, huh? Okay? Now the first meaning of end or limit is the end of a magnitude, right? Like, this is the beginning of the desk or the table, and down there is the, what? End, right? Okay? That's the first meaning of end or limit. It's one that most obvious to the senses and we name things as we know them, right? So we tend to name things we can sense first, and then we carry the word over to things that are less sensible or not sensible at all, a gradual process. Now the second sense he gives of end or limit is the end or limits of a motion. So in the motion from hot to cold, right? The end or limits are hot in, what? Cold, right? Okay? Now the third meaning he gives of end or limit is the end of, what? Intention, right? End in the sense now of that for the sake of which. The goal, the purpose, huh? It's one of the four kinds of causes, right? Okay? And then he gives as the fourth meaning of end or limit definition. And definition, to use the Latin word there, comes from phimisa, which means end or limit in Latin. In Greek, the definition is sometimes called the horos, which means the limit. We get the word horizon, limit of the sky, and so on. Now, what Tom has to say in the fifth book of wisdom there, fifth book of metaphysics, when he explains that fourth sense, he says, well, the ultimate thing in knowing is to know what something is. But we tend to know things starting with our senses in a kind of outward way. And that's why the great Heraclitus says that nature loves to, what, hide. So in a way, the definition comes at the end of our thinking. So, Aristotle has been the whole book one, say, about the soul, trying to find out what the soul is, right? And it's not until the beginning of the second book about the soul that he arrives at the end, huh? As Thomas explains in the commentary, there's another reason why we speak of what? The definition is a end or a limit, huh? And that is that when you define something, you, in a way, draw a line around that thing, separating it from everything else, huh? And if you go back to the first meaning of limit, you see a likeness there, all the way to the fourth meaning. So, if you take the city limits of Worcester, that's a very precise notion, right? No part of Worcester is outside of the city limits. And none of the surrounding towns are within the city limits. It's a tight fit, huh? As the logician says about the definition, huh? It's convertible, the thing defined, huh? Every square is an equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral. And vice versa. Every equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral is a square. So, you, in a sense, drawn, what, the limits around it, huh? Okay. You see that in a way in the first act of the mind, which Thomas calls simple grasping, huh? Now, I'm going to grasp the glass here, right? It's not hard for me to grasp the glass, even though there's air around it, because my hands easily push the air around, away from it, right? But now I'm going to grasp the center of this table. You got a knife? You're going to have to cut it out, right? And separate from everything else, and then I can grasp that center of the table, right? And that's why in logic and in the reason there, you divide in order to what? Define, right? Okay? So you want to define the square. You can start way back if you want to, you know, with figure, right? Plain figure, right? Rectilineal plane figure. Quadrilateral, right? But these are going to be separating the square from some things, right? So the word quadrilateral, which is a four-sided rectilineal plane figure, that separates the square from everything that is not a, what? Quadrilateral, right? But there are other quadrilaterals that are not square, so you have to add, let's say, equilateral to quadrilateral, right? And that separates the square from the oblong, and it separates it from the rhomboid, separates it from the trapezium, but it doesn't separate it from the, what? Rhombus. Rhombus, yeah. So I need another difference, right? And then I say, well, it's right-angled, right? The right-angled separates it from all the other quadrilaterals except the oblong, right? But equilateral separates it from the oblong, so the combination of those two with quadrilateral separates the square from everything else, right? And that's kind of an amazing thing, right? You know, some of the early Greeks there, they said you can't define anything. Why? Well, to really know what something is, you have to separate it from everything else, right? And how many other things are there? Well, there's an infinity of other things, so how could you possibly, you know, separate it and say, you know, it's not this, it's not this, it's not this. So they said, you know, defining is a long story. Meaning it's a story that has no end, right? But they forget that we know the, what? Universal, right? And when I know, for example, that a perfect number is a composed number, right? Composed numbers separating it from infinity of what? Prime numbers, right? Okay. So the universal is said of many things, right? It's because of the universal that we can actually, in our mind, separate the thing we want to define from, what? Everything else, huh? So you see how those meanings are, what? Ordered, right? Now, the Greek word telos, does that fit all of them? Or there are certainly three? I think Aristotle uses the word peros more, but telos, if you translate telos by in, you could extend it, right? This is the arche, this is the beginning of the table. That's the telos, that's the in, right? But as Aristotle points out in that same chapter there in the fifth book of wisdom, we sometimes apply the word in, not only to what's opposite to the beginning, but we speak of what? Both as in, so the in's of the table, right? Yeah. Okay. And then, if I get on top of this table and run down to that in, and run back again, the beginning and the end of my emotion, right, seem very close to that first sense, don't they? Like we see in this fifth, in this sixth book here. And then, you know, the end of the sense of purpose is something like that, right? See? If I run all the way down to the end, you know, where I'm going, right, and I stop, but something like that when you're pursuing the end, right? The end is pursued for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else. So when you get there, you come to a kind of what? Stop, right? Like Thomas says, I consider the body, he says, so I can consider the soul. And I consider the soul so I can consider the angels. And I consider the angels so I can consider God. And that's it. That's the end, right? See? Okay? So you see how that's the sense like the end of the emotion, isn't it? Mm-hmm. But there's an end, obviously, between something like death. Sometimes when I'm teaching the students the meaning, the equivocation, the word end, you know, I'll give them this argument, which is sophistical. I'll say, happiness is the end of human life. The end of human life is death. Therefore, happiness is death. That's true. But notice, in a sense, you say death is the end of human life, you mean it's the, what, limit in terms of the time, right? Okay? And so maybe you just add to the second sense of end or limit, huh? But it's not the end in the third sense, huh? Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Aristotle himself, you know, points that out, huh? But I find, you know, students in exams, even though I often explain what the word end, and what the sense we're using the word end means, they are easily deceived by the equivocation of the word. It's the most common kind of mistake in thinking, according to the father of logic, huh? The fallacy for mixing up the sense of word. And when you talk about nature acting for an end, like we talked about before, huh? Since you have a student giving this argument that if nature acted for an end, all things would come to an end. But they haven't come to an end. They're for nature. You know? And they obviously confuse nature different senses of end, huh? That's extremely common, something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So, Aristotle has done a lot of good in distinguishing the sense of these words, given terms of avoiding the fallacy of equivocation. But it's just awful the way moderns use words, huh? Just incredibly bad, huh? I read a group of candidates the other day, they're using all these big words, you know, and one phrase, huh? Teleological end. So, I think they were teleological, right? So, tell us, end, huh? See, they don't want to use that word, huh? They don't want to be understood, huh? You see. Apparently, they actually have, you know, Hegel's admission that he wrote obscurely because he thought he would not be admired unless he wrote obscurely. Yeah, yeah. Oh, heavens, he said that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. One of my teachers, Charles DeConnick, used to go on these great lecture tours, right? He had 12 children, and I had to make a little money on this thing. And sometimes, he said, for the fun of it, he would stick in a sentence in his public lecture that made no sense at all, not even to him. And he'd have somebody coming up, but they'd do after a lecture sometimes privately and, you know, say how much they liked the lecture, and they would hit upon that sentence, right? But, you know, there's something really, you know, perverse in the mental attitude of this person, huh? That they enjoy what they don't understand. My friend Jim used to say, you know, he always tells women, I don't understand you, you know? And they just love the fact that they're not understood. Makes them more mysterious or something, right? So sometimes we don't appreciate something that we, what, understand, right? And you find people don't like to have things explained, made plain, because then they don't have that fuzzy feeling about what it all means, see? Okay. Now notice, what? The Greek words, you have eschaton, horos. Yeah, paras, I think, is the word in the fifth book, I remember right there, yeah. Like P-E-R-A-S? Yeah, P-E, yeah, paras, yeah. Translation, okay. That's a common one in the physics, you said. Yeah, I think, I'm trying to think what Euclid uses now, is it paras? He uses both when he says the boundary is the limit. Yeah. He uses both words. One, like, the horos is the paras. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And sometimes, you have to use more than one word, you know, just because there's a little bit of limitation. But they're basically cinnamons, really. Yeah, so they often, you know, they have to form these. I don't know if I like my translation here, edge, you know, I don't know, you probably say it more, the end of the limit, huh? Yeah. But, no, so when Aristotle distinguishes those words, he's also helping us to understand better the axioms, right? Because all the axioms are based on those common words there in the fifth book, huh? And so, what would be the axiom that Aristotle used here in the first reading for end or limit, huh? It's like the axiom he had for beginning in the first book of the physics. The limit is other than that, which... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's just state that in the sense here. Nothing is an end, or a limit, whatever word you want to use. Nothing is an end of itself. Okay? And I suppose the other side of the coin is that something is always an end, if it is an end, of something other than itself, right? There's always some distinction between the end and that of which it is an end. Okay? And he had a similar axiom that he uses in the first book of the physics, huh? And that is that nothing is a beginning of itself. There's always some distinction, huh? Between a beginning and that of which it is a beginning. Now, it's interesting, huh, that the axioms, known as ever, to my knowledge, really, enumerated all the axioms, huh? The Aristotle, in the fourth book of wisdom, has this long consideration, defense of the axioms of being and unbeing. Something cannot both be and not be, right? Same time, same way. And must either be or not be, right? And when Thomas talks about axioms, he always gives us an example of the whole is vaginal of its parts, right? Okay? But this here would be another example of an axiom. Nothing is an end of itself, huh? And in the first book, nothing is a beginning of itself. And perhaps we have, you know, a positive one, that an end is always the end of something other than itself, right? A beginning is always the beginning of something other than itself. So Aristotle, in the first book of natural hearing there, I've got an end there, right? When he's talking about permenides and leases, and they're saying that there's no multiplicity at all, right? Everything is one, right? Okay? He says they're really doing away with beginnings, or causes, right? Because nothing is a beginning of itself, right? Nothing is a cause of itself, right? Therefore, if you don't admit some multiplicity, some distinction among things, right, it's impossible to have any beginnings, or any causes. Do you see that? Yeah? It would be interesting to see how the Buddhists would apply that to their understanding. You have everything. Yeah, yeah. Nothing is a beginning of itself, and how can everything be one? Well, at the point, I don't know how to consider that in a different way. Now, when you are trying to understand this axiom more distinctly than the man in the street understands it, right, then you can go back to those four senses, right, of end in the fifth book of wisdom, and you'll see, right, starting with the first sense of end and going through each of them, this more distinctly, right? So, what's the end of a body? Surface. Yeah. And a surface is not a body, right? Because a body has length and width and depth. Surface doesn't have length and width and depth, right? It's got length and width, but not depth. What's the end of a surface? A line. A line. Now, is a line a surface? Nope. No. It's got length, but a surface has length and width, right? What's the end of a line? A point, yeah. And is the point a line? No. What's the end of a point? It doesn't have an end, right? And the point can't have an end, right? Because if it had an end, there'd be some distinction between the end or the edge or the limit of the point and the rest of the point. And then it wouldn't be, what? Indivisible. Right? You see? So there's no distinction in the point of any kind, huh? So they can't be, you know, the edge and then the rest of the point. So you argue from that in the first reading that therefore two points can't, what, have an edge or a limit or... It can't be continuous? Yes, it can take... Well, they couldn't have a common end or limit because they don't have any end or limits. They could have... They could be touched. continuous, because they couldn't have their endolimits together, they don't have any endolimits. So the only way they could touch it would be to go inside, and then be, you know, picked it all. And it would be more correct to say that the point lacks a limit, rather than to say the point is limitless. Well, you've got to be careful now, because lack is not lack, not lack. Negation. Yes. No negation. Does it happen? Because lack, in the strict sense, is the none being of something you're able to have, and especially something that you should have, right? So, strictly speaking, the stone is not blind, right? But if you or I didn't see, we'd be blind. Yeah, okay. Okay? And so, strictly speaking, the point does not lack an end, right? You can see it doesn't have an end, but it doesn't lack an end, huh? Okay? Now, there's another axiom that I'm fond of, that nothing is before or what? Sorry. After itself, right? Now, let me go through this for a moment here. In the second sense of end, the end of emotion, right? Okay? Now, is the end of emotion, emotion? Oh, heaven. No. No. And is the end, the end of it in the sense of purpose, is that the purpose of itself? No, that's the end or purpose of the mean. Is that what it's for the sake of the end, right? Mm-hmm. Okay? The definition is the definition of something, but, yeah, it's kind of interesting, right? Cuts it off from everything else. Yeah, yeah. Even the definition of definition is not a definition of that definition. I don't know what you say. Think about that, right? The definition is a definition of definition. It's not a definition of itself. Mm-hmm. I mean, the definition of definition fits any definition, not just the definition. Mm-hmm. Well, you know, when Thomas talks about order in the sentences, he says that order means, what, involves distinction, right? And before and after, but then he kind of corrects that and says, well, distinction is really presupposed to order, right? See? But I sometimes say, you know, what does reason have to see before it sees a before and after? Well, if you realize that nothing is before or after itself, it's always a before or after something other than itself, you have to see some distinction before you can see a before and what? After, right? Okay? Now, these axioms are something that our reason naturally comes to what? Know, huh? Okay? And you can't really avoid it knowing it, huh? Although sometimes you get somebody mixed up and thinks he doesn't know what he does know. Yeah. Would you say that would be the product, I don't know if you have the best term, but of the natural understanding that one arrives at from repeated experiences, these axioms? Okay. The whole is more than a part, huh? You can't live without experiencing wholes and parts, right? Right. And if you experience wholes and parts, you'll come to some understanding of what a whole is and what a part is, and you'll see that a whole has parts, right? And therefore, it's going to be obvious to you, really, that the whole is more than one of its parts, right? Okay? So the composed whole is composed of more than one of its parts, and the universal whole is set of more than one of its parts is set of, huh? But again, let me just stop on that thing for a moment, because that's very important here. What here? No, no, no. Okay. One thing that's very important to see is the complete dependence of philosophy upon the natural, okay? The complete dependence, that's what I read in that. The complete dependence of philosophy upon the natural. Now, you can consider that, perhaps, in these three statements, huh? Each of which you might consider by itself, huh? One, what we were just talking about, there are some statements, and of course there are parts, which our reason naturally knows, or at least naturally comes to know. So you'll find inside of everybody, if you talk to them, that they know that a whole is more than one of its parts, huh? And so naturally do we come to know that, that you can't really say, when did I first realize that a whole is more than a part? And if anybody says he doesn't know that, he's either just saying it, which gives him part of his salary this week, right? Part of the dinner that he orders in the restaurant, part of the car he bought, and so on, because it's any different, right? He'll scream and rant and show that he really does know it, right? Or else it's because he's deceived by a, what? Sophistical argument, huh? And I gave an example there, the argument, based on the quotation there, the word part, from that argument. Let's repeat it briefly. But I give this in class sometimes, I say to the students, you all know a whole is more than a part, and you all know that, right? And then I say, now, what's a man? Well, a man is to begin with an animal, right? Okay? But my mother didn't like it when I called a man an animal, she didn't like me saying that. And I say, well, mother, I don't mean he's just an animal, he's an animal with reason. Well, that's better now. Okay? So man is not just an animal, he's an animal with reason, right? So animal is therefore only a part of what man really is, right? Okay? And then I say, but animal includes besides man, cat, dog, horse, elephant, right? So what is only a part of man includes more than man. And the students say, wow, I guess the whole is not always more than a part, sometimes a part is more than a whole, see? Now they're all deceived, right? By the most common type of deception, which comes from mixing up different senses of a word, huh? And it's these words that are equivocal, not by chance so much as deceive us, because they're different meanings have no real connection, right? And I always give the example there of Roger Maris and 61 homelands of the bat. The bat is a flying rodent, huh? Therefore Roger Maris and 61 homelands are a flying rodent. No one's going to be deceived by that, you see? Because both meanings are, what, quite sensible, and they have a real connection, right? But here the word part is equivocal by reason, like the word end, you know, where students will make that mistake of mixing up the senses of end. So they mix up the senses of what? The gint of a part here, huh? When I say that animal is a part of man, I mean that animal is a proposing part, right? Of the definition of man, right? But I could say that man is a part, a subject part, huh? The species of the gene is what? Animal. Okay? And so I'm mixing up two senses of whole and part. The universal whole, which is set of its parts, and the composing part, right? From which its whole was put together. And because the student doesn't see that, I'm able to, what? Deceive them, right? Okay? Now, this I got to mention in class, trying to write a difficult example there of before, right, for the students. Our reasoning from the second sense of before, remember, to the fourth sense of before. They're saying that breathing is better than philosophizing, because you're not going to be breathing, not going to be anything else if you're not breathing. And I say, well, that's showing that breathing is before philosophizing the second sense of before. It can be without philosophizing, but not vice versa. Does that show it's before in the fourth sense that it's better? Maybe I'd say that Chaucer is better than Shakespeare, because it came before Shakespeare in time. But because it came before him in time, can you say it's before in goodness and in being better? No. And so people are very easily deceived by that. As we were in the Summa Compagentia the other day, and Thomas, you know, was having to deal with Averroes and his things. It's easy to see by a provocation, he says, Thomas says. Averroes now is being deceived by it. By a provocation, the commentator, right? Because he's known in the Middle Ages by Tuan Masiya, the commentator. Okay. That's because he's a commentator in everything, right? It doesn't mean he's commentator well, right? Thomas is what I'm going to call the commentator, you know? Take away the Tuan Masik title there, Mr. Thomas, right? He is the commentator. My rule of thumb is, you know, Aristotle means what Thomas says he means. I'm shocked if I say that. So there are some statements in their parts, which are reason naturally knows or naturally comes to know. I think it's more naturally comes to know, right? But it's so natural the way we come to know these that it seems like we always knew them, right? As Plato said, it seems like we always knew them. We're just recalling them, right? Because every time we actually knew these things, we always knew them. Secondly, we have a natural desire to know the things we don't naturally know. That's very interesting, huh? There is a natural desire in our will to know we do not know naturally. We don't have any desire to know the things we know naturally, because desire is what? For a good you don't have, right? Okay? He said, in English word, English is a marvelous language for philosophy. But the English word for desire, wanting, right, sometimes has a sense of what? Lacking, right? Not having, right? So Hamlet says, you know, he's complaining about his mother's hasty marriage, and so soon afterwards, right? He says, why a beast, he says, that lacks discourse of reason, would have what? No, he says, a beast that wants discourse of reason, would have mourned longer, right? Oh, oh yeah. Does that mean desires? No. It means he lacks the discourse of reason, huh? So when I say to my students, you're sadly wanting, huh? I'm not saying there's some sad desire, but there's a real lack there that, you know, maybe part of the, not their fault, but you know, part of the teacher. So there's a natural desire in our will to know the things we do not know naturally, huh? When you ask what and why, right, huh? It's a natural desire to know what and why that Socrates talks about, huh? And, of course, the third statement is, huh? We come to know the things we do not know naturally through the things we do know naturally. So we come to know the things that we do not know naturally through or by the things we naturally know. Well, you can apply it both to the statements and to the simple things, right? The statements are from holy stuff, huh? So you look at all these theorems, say, in Euclid, we come to know them through, what? Reasoning, right, huh? Okay. But when you reason to a statement, you reason to it through other statements, huh? So do we come to know all statements by reasoning? Well, if we came to know or had to know all statements by reasoning, we'd have no statements to reason from. And so we'd know no statements, right? We didn't even know that. Okay? So notice, if you think of these three statements, each of which we could talk about some way, but if you think of those three statements and the truth of each of them, if you think of them together, you can see the complete dependence of philosophy upon naturally. The first thing to think about is the fact that there are some statements statements and there are parts that we do naturally know. And we call that, I call it, natural understanding, right? Our astrologist calls it noose, right? Understanding, huh? Because understanding is going to have to reason out, right? And Thomas would call it intellectuals, right? To explain noose, right? But I taught natural understanding to distinguish it from the reason-out understanding that we have of, say, theorems in geometry, huh? Okay? Now, there are some statements that we naturally know, huh? It's seen by the fact that these statements aren't everybody's thinking, really. And what's common to all of us is something, what, natural, huh? Well, there's other ways you can consider those, too. But when we try to go beyond those things we naturally know, the impetus comes from this natural desire, huh? This wonder, as we call it, huh? Wonder is the beginning of philosophy, right? But that wonder is a natural desire to know. But those things that we desire to, naturally desire to know, we have to come to know them through the things we do naturally know. So what we learned last time in that first reading, we learned through things that we naturally know, like nothing is an end of itself, right? Something is always an end or a limit of something other than itself. I'm sorry, I missed, I was scratching something down here. But the order you just went through, you just scratched us within like 1, 3, 2, is that? 1, 2, 3, yeah. Is that what you're saying? There are many other statements that you want to know, right? And there are parts. Like you want to know the Pythagorean theorem, let's say, right? We don't naturally know the Pythagorean theorem, right? But we're pursuing a knowledge of that through our natural desire to know them. So that's the second dependence there, right? But we come to know the Pythagorean theorem ultimately through the things that we do, but naturally know them. And so you can see from that the complete dependence of philosophy upon the, what? The natural. Yeah. Good. And therefore, if, as Shakespeare says in the Roman Juliet there, Fire Lawrence says, that those who revolt from true birth, right, those who revolt from the natural right, they stumble on abuse, right? If you revolt from the natural right, that would lead to the complete, what? Collapse.