Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 90: Wisdom, Slowness, and the Avoidance of Intellectual Stumbling

Transcript
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You can reason to or calculate or give you the contradictory of the, what, third thing, right? You see? Just like, you know, take a simple example of that. If I say that the width of this rectangle is 2 and the length is 6, it can't get you any coverage of anything. But then if I add, but the area is 10, now something's wrong, right? And this doesn't tell me which is wrong. But can these three be all correct? Because 2 times 6 would be 12. 10 divided by 2 would be 5, you see? So if you need two of these, kind of get the third one, right? Okay? Of course, you reject the one which is least known, right? Or I don't know, right? So if the slave boy is very sure that 4 is double of 2 and very sure that 16 is not double of 4, then he's going to reject the idea that doubling the sign will double the, what, area, right? Look at Einstein there in the evolution of physics. He says that the theory of relativity arose from a contradiction, right? And he points out the statements that are really the contradiction, right? And then the reason why they rejected this one is because they didn't have the experimental evidence that the other ones had, right? You see? So, this is what Socrates does with the man, right? He examines, he says, he didn't say you're true or false, he says, what do you think? You know? You tell him what to think, right? I want to assume it's that third admission can be dangerous, right? Because he may be able to take two of your admissions and deduce the contradiction of the third one. So, this is some example in the dialogue. He's doing that thing basically again and again. So, the Socratic method of examination is, in a way, based upon the truth of what Parmenides insisted upon. That something can't both be and what? Not be, right? According to what he said, that the way to double the square is double the side, and four is double the two, this square is now double that, right? But it's not double that, because 60 is not double. So, from some things he says it is, and other things he admits it is not double that, right? But can't both be doubled and not double, can't it? So, Socrates' method is based upon the possibility, right? That something can both be and not be, right? Okay, at the same time, same way, you can't have the size. So, in that sense, it's illuminating, right? That Plato represents Socrates' learning the Socratic method, from Parmenides and Xeno, right? Because it does have a connection there. It's interesting that sometimes they accuse Socrates of being a sophist, right? If he's trying to get you to refute your, you know, contradict yourself, right? Well, when Aristotle talks about the four conversations, these four logical conversations, argumentative conversations, he distinguishes between the examination conversation, which Socrates is very fond of, and the sophistical conversation, right? And he wrote the book called On Sophistical Refutations. Refutation involves, what, contradiction, right? But a sophistical refutation is not a true refutation. You didn't really contradict yourself, but I give the appearance to people watching that you have to contradict yourself, okay? And so, but in the examination conversation, the idea is to find out if you really are in contradiction with yourself, right? You see? And therefore, the examination conversation could lead to a true refutation, right? Okay. So. What are the other two? It's a demonstration? I think there's a teaching conversation and the delicate conversation, right? And you see, they're all found in the dialogue called the Mino. Because in the first conversation that Socrates has with Mino, Mino claims to know what virtue is, right? And Socrates says, well, tell me what it is, right? And eventually we see that, what? Mino does not know what he claims to know, right? Okay. Now, at the end of that, Socrates proposes that they put their heads together and try to figure out what it is. He's proposing, really, a dialectical investigation of what a virtue is, huh? Because Socrates says, I don't know what virtue is either, right? Okay. Now, if you have two guys, neither of whom knows, then they should put their heads together in the sense that two heads are better than one. And what does it seem to you? You know, go back and forth. Dialectically, right? But, at that point, Mino comes in with a sophisticated objection against the very possibility of investigating what you don't know. And he says, How can you direct yourself to what you don't know? Right? It's like me coming into the filling station, the gasoline station, saying, How do you get there? Well, where do you want to go, buddy? See? Well, how do you get there? I don't know where I'm trying to go. How do you get there? See? How can you possibly direct yourself to what you don't know, right? See? You can't do that, right? See? So this is an objection that would seem to destroy the very possibility of logic and logistic, these arts that direct us in coming to know what we don't know. Okay? And Socrates tries to reply to that, but he falls into the same kind of mistake that Mino made. Okay? Then, later on, he has two conversations with the slave boy. And the first conversation is an examination conversation, like I was repeating here on the board, huh? Okay? Now, notice, huh? An examination conversation is necessary sometimes because it's not always clear who knows and who doesn't know. So sometimes you have a would-be teacher, like Mino is going to teach Socrates what virtue is, right? But the would-be teacher doesn't know what he claims to know, right? So he should be a co-investigator rather than a teacher. Sure. But then you have the should-be student. But he also thinks he knows what he needs to be taught and so he, what? As an impediment to being taught until you convince him that he doesn't know what he thinks he knows. And now the should-be student will maybe be a student, right? At least he's as humble as a slave boy, right? But now the second conversation that Socrates has with the slave boy is, although he denies it, right? He's really teaching the slave boy how to double the, what? The square, right? Okay? He helps the slave boy order his thoughts, right? And eventually the slave boy can see that the diagonal of the original square, right? Would be the side of the square twice as big, yeah? But notice, on the teaching conversation should take place when one man knows, right? And the other man doesn't know, right? And then the man who knows should teach the man who doesn't know, right? So Socrates, although he may not know what virtue is, right? He does know how to double a square, right? The slave boy doesn't know how to double a square. In fact, he's mistaken about how to do so, right? But after he's purged to that mistake, right? Now he'll want to know, right? And Socrates says to him, you know. And then Socrates can teach him how to double a square. Now, finally, in the dialogue, the third part of the dialogue, Nino still wants to know whether virtue can be taught, even though he doesn't know what virtue is. And Socrates says, well, we can't really fully know whether it can or cannot be taught until we know what virtue is, right? Well, if you twist my arm, right, I'll examine the matter, right? And so he reasons with probability that it can be taught, right? And then he reasons with probability that it cannot be taught. And this is the way our style describes the dialectical conversation. It's reasoning from probable opinions, right? Even to contradictory, what? Conclusions, sometimes. Okay? So Socrates reasons to... So you have a really example there of the dialectical conversation, right? Socrates kind of conversational. to themselves, right? But, yeah, that kind of conversation there in the third part, reasoning from probable opinions to even to contradictory conclusions. So in a way, you have all four conversations there in the Mino. Plus, you see the order of the examination conversation, right? It should, in some cases, prepare the way for a dialectical conversation and other times for a, what, teaching conversation, right? So what are the four? I got examination, dialogue, public teaching. I give them the proper order there. You have the teaching conversation, right? Okay. Then the dialectical conversation, and then the examination conversation, and then the sophistical or contentious, they sometimes call it conversation, huh? Now, what do you put in this order? It's from the... More perfect, yeah, down to the thing. Because the sophistical conversation is really a bad one, right? Because it's not really ordered to knowing, but to what? To victory, or to the appearance of knowing. Okay? You see, one way of examining this is in terms of the fact that a conversation is between two people, right? And as far as knowing anything, two people can be in one of three conditions. Either both know, or neither knows, or one knows and the other doesn't know, right? Now, if both know, you don't really need a conversation about that. Right? Okay? If one knows and the other doesn't know, then you should have a teaching conversation. If neither knows, you should have a dialectical conversation. But it's not always clear who knows and who doesn't know. And sometimes a would-be teacher doesn't really know, but he thinks he knows. And sometimes a should-be student doesn't know either, but he thinks he knows, right? So you may need a, what, examination conversation before you can have a dialectical one. And so after the examination of Mino, where it becomes clear that Mino doesn't know what virtue is, and Socrates admits he doesn't know, right? Then Socrates proposes a dialectical conversation. Although it doesn't take place because of, you know, the statistical tendency of Mino, right? With the slave boy, right, Socrates really does know how to double square. The slave boy really doesn't know. In fact, he's mistaken, right? But when Socrates shows him by an examination that he doesn't know, because you don't double square when you double the side, you quadruple, right? And the slave boy says, it's a guess. Well, how about three, you know? Well, it's a closer, nine, you know? But he still hasn't got it, right? And then Socrates, since he does know and knows that he knows, right? He teaches the slave boy how to do this, right? Okay? Okay? Do you see that? Yeah. Sophistical, no one knows. Well, sophistical, I mean, is kind of like a bad thing, right? Yeah. But notice now, the sophistical and the examination conversation can resemble each other, right? I think. And sometimes, in some of the dialogues, you know, someone will get kind of irritated, Socrates, you know, and say, you're trying to refute me. Right? Well, Socrates says, what difference does it make whether you're refuted or I'm refuted, right? In either case, we'll get closer to the truth, right? But he might appear to somebody, you know, like he's trying to be a bit of a, what? A sophist, right? He's trying to, he's trying to, he's trying to, he's trying to, he's trying to, he's trying to, he's trying to, No, I see the, clearly Aristotle, they use the term, they ruin, you're hunting down a definition. It comes in the word for a wild beast, I got a wild beast, So, the cat is kind of a, you know, a lazy hunter, right? And John Lockham, again, there's some human understanding, he compares the philosophical life to a hunt, right? It's kind of appropriate because the English gentleman, right, like to go hunting, you know? And so, this is kind of a mental hunt, right? But, as I say, Plato does it even before, right? And, kind of reminds me, you know, you know, you see this in the, in India, there, when they're trying to get a, you know, a man-eating tiger, whoever it is, and they kind of, what, get a whole bunch of the natives together, and they beat their drums, and they kind of, you know, advance here, and they're kind of corning the animal until they can shoot it, right? Yeah. But the way you're doing that, you know, Plato will compare that, huh? Because when you start to divide, you know, you start to, you know, don't let escape, you know, you know, speak that way, you know, like a, because an animal is trying to escape you, right? And, it's kind of hard, but as you divide, you start to, what, narrow it down, it doesn't have much room to go, right? The thing you're trying to define. There's a very, a very vivid way of speaking about this, huh? So, the cat there is, I always say, you know, I had this, like this is a cause of love, see? So, I like cats because, the cat's a lazy hunter. That's what a philosopher is. A kind of a lazy hunter. What is that Greek word? Huh? Theruane. Yeah, you find that in the posterior analytics, and you find it in the, um, sophist and so on, when you're trying to arrive at a definition by division, right? To hunt it down, right? Investigate might have that origin too, to some extent, huh? Ascigium, you know? It means a footprint. So, you kind of track an animal bites. Footprints, huh? Investigate, Aristotle is very concrete when you read it. So, you have those four kinds of conversations, huh? Sure. As I say, sometimes he accused Socrates of being, what? Trying to refute them. And he says, no, I'm just trying to see whether what you say fits together with other things you say. I'd like you to do the same for me. Okay? But as Aristotle says in the first book of Nicomachean Ethics, with the truth, everything, everything, Harmonizes, huh? Everything, what? Fits together, right? It's kind of marvelous to see the way that turns out, huh? I was just talking there. We were finishing the ninth book of wisdom there in the metaphysics. And from what Aristotle shows in the ninth book of wisdom, you can see that the first cause is the best thing. And I was mentioning how, you know, we can show, like in the premium to wisdom, that the end or goal of all our knowledge is to know the first cause. Our mind's not satisfied to know the way things are. It wants to know why they are the way they are, right? Therefore, it wants to know the cause, right? And if the cause has a cause, it naturally wants to know the cause of the cause. And so the final thing it wants to know is the very first cause. Okay? But then he argues in the Dianima that a knowledge of a better thing is better, right? And therefore, a knowledge of the best thing must be the end of our knowledge. When you see the ninth book of wisdom there, it's very clear that the first cause is the best thing, right? But those who say that matter, say is the first cause, they make the most imperfect of things the first cause. So what's the end of our knowledge? A knowledge of the first cause? There's pretty good reasons to say that. Or is it a knowledge of the best thing? And they have two different, what? Inns, right? They can't have two ins, huh? They've got schizophrenia, right? But when you see the truth, it all fits together, right? And Aristotle reasons, you know, there in the ninth book, that simply speaking, act is before ability, before the passive ability, right? Because what goes from ability to act does so because they're already in act. And when that is going to reason, the first cause must be pure act. But he also shows that act is better than ability. So the pure act must be the best thing also. And it fits together, right? You know, that the end of our knowledge is to know the best thing, or is it to know the first cause? Well, which is it? If they turn out to be the same thing, well then, everything fits together, right? But if the first cause is not the best thing, then you've got schizophrenia. That's what you have a lot in thinkers. Those who say matter is the beginning of all things. Our comrade Lennon says, mind is the highest product of matter, right? But mind is something better than matter, right? But if the first cause is matter, then the best thing is not the first cause. So what's the end of our knowledge? To know the best thing or to know the first cause? And they can't put the two together. It's a sign that you have the truth that everything fits together. Or if you're saying something false, it's not going to fit together, right? Tangled web we weave. When the first we practice to deceive you, right? And the kid that's lying to his parents, right? You know? Or lying to Perry Mason, right? And the witness stand. Eventually something is going to contradict something, right? And now you're deep, deep, deep, deep trouble. You see? So, I gave a little bit of my lecture the other day, okay? But next time we're going to look at the, did you have the English text there of the, uh, some of the congentilas? Yeah, we have one. Yeah. Yeah. Just the, just the, the first two arguments for the existence of God that are based upon motion, right? Okay. Okay. We're not going to go into theology at this point in our studies, but I think it might be good to look at that just so you see the connection, right? And just give a summary of some of the things in books seven and eight, but also you see the connection between what we've just studied, the definition of motion and the continuous character of motion. How you reason from that to the unmoved mover, right? Okay. So, when we come to theology later in our studies, we will already see the connection to some extent, right? Okay. So, I begin by telling them that there's, uh, no one knows for sure, you know, what Shakespeare's religion is, right? Okay. But there's more and more, what? Little bits of evidence that he's, if not a Roman Catholic, very close to them, right? Okay. And these things keep on, you know, showing up, you know, one after another. You know, they, they found the will of Shakespeare's father, right? And the will of Shakespeare's father is in the form of St. Charles Borough, Mayo. Oh. The one that was imported, you know, from St. Charles Borough, Mayo, for the Catholic's use in England. And, you know, it was concealed in the walls of the house, right? Because you've got to keep it secret, right? And the daughter, when we left most of the property, right, you know, was, you know, refused to take the communion, right? So she was, you know, being, you know, fined and so on, right? Yeah. So it's easy to think of her Catholicism. At the end of his life there, Shakespeare lived in London, you know, for many years there writing the plays, huh? And he was buying property out in, what, Stratford, right? To retire, right? He never owned property in London. But suddenly at the end of his career in London, he buys the Blackfriars Tower and installs somebody in there, right, to watch for it. And this is the most notorious place in London for Catholics to hide out and have hidden masses. In fact, you know, in those buildings there later on, there was one time they had to meet Catholics there for the masses. The tragedy there, the floor collapsed, right, you know? So why is he buying this piece of property, right? Well, he's never bought a piece of property in London, right? And he's ready to retire to Stratford, right? In a place that's notorious for its connection with the underground Catholic church, you know? So they point to all kinds of things, but whether they point to the plays is the way he represents the Catholic priests favorably, right? And the apostolic divines are kind of bubbling fools, right? His sympathies, right, are with this, huh? Okay? So I especially got, you know, by way of introducing the words of Friar Lars, right? Okay? The Franciscan there in Roman Juliet. And in particular, I'll look at just a couple of lines of his about, what, stumbling, right? Okay? And they're both in Act 2, scene, what, 3 there. Okay? Now, that's the scene where he's first down in the garden, huh? And he says something about stumbling there, which I'll look at later on. But then, um, Romeo comes to this cell, right? And Romeo has suddenly changed his allegiance from Rosalind to, uh, uh, Julia, right? And he's in a big group. You get, uh, Friar Lawrence to marry them and so on. He says, um, oh, I stand on sudden peace, he says, Romeo, right? And Friar Lawrence says, wisely and slow. They stumble, they run fast, right? Okay? And this is almost like what you have in the book of Proverbs, chapter 19, verse 2, huh? Depending on what translation you have, you know? But the early translations are very close to that. The second part of the verse, huh? Okay? So, wisely and slow. They stumble. Of course, ten syllables in the line, you'll notice, huh? Now, before we look at the line as a whole, because obviously, wisely and slow is to avoid this stumbling of those that run fast, right? Okay? But before we look at the line as a whole, just take this coupling of wise and slow, right? That's interesting that he couples those two, right? Because there's also a slowness of, what? Stupidity, right? There's the slowness of stupidity. The slowness of dumbness. And that's not the slowness that goes in wisdom, is it? But sometimes the two are confused, right? Of course, the famous example is Thomas Aquinas being called, or by his fellow students, when you study in the Albert the Great, the dumb ox, right? Okay? They're confusing the slowness of Thomas with the slowness of the dumb, right? And so Albert the Great arranged for a debate, you know, to himself and Thomas, and Thomas won, of course. Thomas, and then he turns to him and says, this guy you call the dumb ox, I tell you, his bellow will be heard around the world. And so even in the 20th century, J.K. Chesterton was so impressed with this anecdote, right? That his autobiography of Thomas is called the dumb ox, right? He took that on, he saw the importance of that. Now, so he wanted to see between those two kinds of slowness, right? Now, there's also another kind of slowness, which I would call foolish slowness. And this is the slowness when you are, what? Slow to act, right? When you should act, right? Okay? And, of course, a lot of times they take this in the context of foresight or prudence, where it's kind of a common place to say you should deliberate carefully, right? Especially for some thing that's, you know, hard to figure out what to do exactly, right? But once you see what should be done, right, then you should hesitate to what? To act, right, huh? Okay? So I was talking about the ancient marriage, you know, people through many years before they ordain you, right? Because they want to examine you a little bit, with the bishops and all these other things, huh? Okay? And see, sometimes we confuse the, what? Oh, the slowness of wise deliberation, right? With the foolish slowness of someone who hesitates to act when they should act, huh? Okay? Maybe some of the scandal, you know, in the church that, you know, court, cardinal law, that was down in his deposition today, right? Court. Oh. I think we're going to have to act for another time, too, I guess. Let me have another time. But sometimes it's hard to tell, right? Whether someone is slow to act because it's deliberating, right? As they should because it's not clear what they should do or not do, right? But sometimes, you know, the slowness is what? They have to deliberate enough or they act when they don't act when they don't act when they don't act when they don't act when they Okay, and if you kind of illustrate that difference there, or the two kindings there, in Hamlet, right? Okay, Hamlet was told by the ghost of his father, and that he, the father, was murdered by his own brother. As he was sleeping in the garden, right, he poured poison in his ear, everybody think? Okay, and that's why no one, you know, discovered how he died, right? Now, do you believe a ghost? Well, there's some caution in the part of Hamlet, because maybe the devil, right, is tempting him to something very vile, right? Maybe the devil is, you know, assuming the appearance of his father, whatever it is, right? Did you know the devil can assume the appearance of an angel of light, huh? So you can say there's some reason to maybe, you know, if a ghost appears at night and says, you killed somebody, So I acted that right away, and, you know, see? Well, when the actor's acting troupe comes to the, what, place, to the Elsinore there, he said he gets about a great idea, right? He will get the actors, he'll insert a scene, right? He asked them to insert a scene that they will act out. And it's going to reenact the, what, murder of his father as, what, the ghost created it, right? Okay? And he says, well, watch the, he says to his best friend, right, you know, he can take him to his confidence. Watch the king exactly how he reacts when this scene comes on. See, now, if you killed your own brother, right, you know how you did it, but nobody else apparently knows how you did it, right? And all of a sudden, this scene comes on, exactly reproducing, you might, what, be so startled, you give yourself away, right? And the king gets so upset, he has to get up and leave, right? Okay? But now he knows that the king has done this, right? Now the liberation should stop, and he should, what? Act. Act, okay? And he has a chance to kill the king, right? And he doesn't take it. And then he goes to see his mother later on, right? And he thinks, you know, the king must be the guy that's behind the curtain, right? And he stabs through, right? And he turns out to be Polonius, right? Which leads to the woman he loves going mad, right? Ophelia, right? Learn, it leads to what? The king trying to have him killed, right? And getting the son there, he's right, to do this. And so eventually, you know, Ophelia goes mad and dies, and Laertes is killed, of course. His mother is killed, right? And the king as well. And he himself is killed, right? You know? All this because he delayed when he was time to, what? Act, right? It's after that time, his slowness, to conclude, right? He thinks, you know, in the beginning, there's something wrong with this together, right? You know, his mother married so quickly after her, et cetera, et cetera, right? That's the first thing, right? And the second thing is, with the parents, the goats, right? The third thing is, what? The play in which we catch the conscience of the king, right? Now, he's sufficient deliberation, right? And that was a wise slowness, right? But now it's time to, what? Yeah. Act, right? Okay. You see that? You see McCarthy there in the Inchon landing, right? Once he deliberated, right? Include, this is the thing to be done. It's all to go ahead of it, right? And, of course, you know, they're grabbing their feet in Washington, right? If he hadn't moved then, it would have been too late. Because the Chinese, I mean, the North Koreans are about to reinforce that area. So if you had to act right then, the whole thing would have failed. So you see the, you know, the slowest is deliberate, but when the time comes, the man would actually act, right? Okay? So, um, your child's running out into the street after all, right? You know, not slow it around, you know, quickly stop them, you know? Okay? So, you want to distinguish the slowness of wisdom from the slowness of stupidity or dumbness or the foolish slowness of someone who doesn't act when they have to act right now, right? Okay? Pretty much going to the doctor, getting checked up, you know, as we all do, I guess, to some extent, right? Okay. Now, is there, though, in the great idea of wisdom, a connection with slowness, huh? Well, elsewhere in this great play, Romeo and Juliet, huh? When Romeo later on, this foolish young man, is about to take his own life when he thinks Juliet has died, right? And he runs off to the apothecary and he gets the, you know, he's in haste, right? To get the poison and so on, and he shows up there. But Shakespeare's very interesting words that he puts in Romeo's mouth, huh? Where Romeo is comparing his reason, in a way, to the pilot of a ship who runs the ship, where? On the rocks, right? Okay? And so he says, come, bitter conduct, meaning conductor, right? Come, unsavory guide, thou desperate pilot, right? Sea captain, right? Thou desperate pilot, now at once, when on the dashing rocks, they see sick, rearing bark. He takes the poison, right? Falls in, too late at home. Then she wakes up, right? Okay? Um, too late, huh? Come, that's what he calls it, huh? Bitter conduct, unsavory guide, huh? That's the opposite of what? The wise, huh? When Thomas explains sapientia, he explains it as sapida sciencia. The Latin word for wisdom, right? Sapientia comes from the word sapor. Sapida sciencia, which it means literally, savory what? Knowledge, right? Okay? So Shakespeare's teaching us what wisdom is by its opposite, right? Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavory guide. Conduct there is a sense of conductor, huh? So he's calling the foolish guide, right? The foolish conductor, bitter and what? Unsavory. Insipid. Foolish. All right, wisdom is something sweet and what? Savory, right? Okay? So wisdom is about things to be, what? Savory. That's one reason why it goes together with slowness, right? Ultimately, wisdom is a knowledge of what? Of God, right, huh? Okay? Now, as Augustine says, huh? Miserable the man who knows all things, all things else but doesn't know God. Miserable the man. He says, blessed the man who knows God even if he knows nothing else. He says, blessed and happy also, he says, the man who knows God and other things, right? But not for more so for knowing other things but for knowing God alone. So God is going to say earlier there, he's the end of all of our knowledge, right? So you want to savor God, right? Like Augustine savors the mystery of the Trinity through all those pages of the decryptate, right? Or Thomas savors the mystery of the Trinity through the whole treatise of the Trinity. Or the incarnation, right? Through the whole treatise of the incarnation, huh? Now, when you savor something, you go through it fast? Now, if you savor a wine, you can be fast? No, you're, mmm, you know? Even the kid savoring a piece of hard candy, you know? You don't chuck it, right? You're, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, you know? You pull on it, right? See? So, if wisdom is about things to be savored, and this is true most of all about God, but even the angels, right? You can savor the angels, are really wonderful things, huh? Then wisdom is going to be characterized by what? Slowness, right? Okay? Well, why, if I turn away from God, think about something else, right? And, um, you notice in the Adavotei Devotei, that famous prayer of Thomas Aquinas, huh? In the fourth quatrain there, he's talking about receiving the Eucharist, right? And, and the bread, he says, O memoriali mortis domine, right? O memorial to death of our Lord, huh? Panis vivus, living bread, huh? Vitam, praise talons homini, right? Praise to me, menti te te vivrei? Bistro upon my mind to live from you, right? Yeah, he goes on, Te illi semper, what? Tuce, sweetly, semperi. He wants to sweetly savor Christ always in the what? Eucharist, right? What Christ is, you know, is truth itself, right? It's interesting how the kind of says those two together, right? Doce sapere, to sweetly savor. Wisdom is the sweetest knowledge, and it's the most savory knowledge there is. But Shakespeare teaches us, later on, when he has the opposite of the wise, right? He says, come, bitter conduct. Come, one savory guide. Thou desperate pilot. Now at last, run on the dashing rocks. Thy seasick weary bark. You see that? So we want to call your attention to that, right? Now in the context of the whole sentence, though, you want to understand the slowness of the wise man that enables him to avoid this stumbling, right? Now, when you come back to this other side right now, that you stumble a bit fast, the word run, of course, is equivocal by reason. Now the first meaning of the word run is the well-known act of the legs, right? If I define it, so you know what running is, right? Okay. Now, when he says this to Romeo, is he thinking of that first sense? Although it looks back to that first sense, right? Sure. The second sense is referring to our what? Action, huh? And you see this Galatian word, course, which comes from running, right? And we say, we're in the course of human events, right? Okay. So runs the world, right? Okay. So he's warning him about acting in haste, right? And then acting at leisure. But notice, this statement is true about writing in the first sense, too, right? If I run upstairs or downstairs or run through a cluttered room or a dark room or something like that, right? You can easily stumble, right? But then it's carried over and applied to action, right? But, as you know from the definition of reason, and have it there, the ability for a large discourse, right? Looking before and after. Discourses is the Galatian word for running, right? So it can be applied then to what? The life of the mind, right? Okay? The running of the mind, huh? And so, it's easier to me to see what you mean here, but down here it's what I'm going to explain now. Okay? Because the wise man proceed slower than other thinkers, right? So as to avoid the stumbling that everybody else does when they think. Okay? Well, when I started to think this out, in a number of places where I think he knows that he does this, it turned out to be seven in number. This is appropriate, because seven is a symbol of wisdom. Okay? The first and most obvious place where the wise man proceeds slowly to watch stumbling is when there are many things to be considered, right? Before a judgment can be made, yeah? Okay? So, where many things must be considered, before a judgment can be made. So, even in a science like geometry, which is, relatively speaking, easy for us, right? If one wanted to judge, let's say, the truth of the Pythagorean theorem, well, that's proposition, what, 47 in Book 1 of Euclid, right? So, there's 46 theorems before that. And most, if not all, of those are presupposed, right? To seeing the Pythagorean theorem, right? So, obviously, you have to go, what, slowly, right? In order to, what, be able to judge that, right? Okay? Just like in, what, a difficult course of action, right? You have to, what, weigh all the circumstances and so on in the situation, right? To foresee what should be done, right? That's the most obvious place for the wise man when it would be proceeding slowly, right? Okay? Monsignor Dian there was at the Second Vatican Council there, right? And he was on that, the so-called birth control, you know, he felt that commission, right? You know? Monsignor Dian had enumerated all the different discourses that had to be made before he could make a decision about this, right? And there's some discourses that pertain to the theologian, the philosopher, and some to the scientist as to what, you know, what's actually going on in the body and so on, right? He enumerated, you know, whole series of these things, right? Most people didn't see all the things that had to be considered before you could make a judgment, right? Wow. You know? Okay? Because, you know, if we're talking about a particular, pill, you know, it might be a pill that regularizes, say, the woman's cycle or something, it might be another pill that prevents implantation, you know? But you have to have a whole discourse there as to what that is actually doing, right? Yeah. And that's, you know, quite distinct from the discourse, the moral philosopher, whether this thing is moral or not, right? You have to know what it was doing, right? Yeah. Okay? But, you know, it's kind of amazing to see, you know, you could see all these steps that you wouldn't see, right? That's one place where he's proceeding wisely and slow. And other people are jumping to conclusions, right? Yeah. Without going through all the discourses that are necessary. Now, the second place where the wise man proceeds slowly compared to other men, right? This is where something is difficult to know. Okay? When you study the second book of Winston, as you may someday, Aristotle says there's two reasons why something is difficult to know. Why it's difficult to know the truth. Sometimes the difficulty, he says, is in the thing itself. Because the thing itself is hardly understanding what hardly is. This is the difficulty in understanding matter, the first matter. That's the difficulty in understanding what? Motion. That's the difficulty in understanding time. These things hardly, what? Are. They're hardly actual, right? Okay? The other cause of difficulty, he says, is not in the thing, but it's in the weakness of our mind. And that's the difficulty in knowing the angels, or if what's your, in knowing what? God, right? You know? So scripture says God dwells in light in excessively, right? Mm-hmm. God is most knowable, but not to us. Because of the weakness of our mind, right? So, when there's a special difficulty due to the thing itself, or weakness of our mind, the wise men will proceed more slowly, right? Than others, huh? So take the definition of motion, huh? For example, Aristotle spends a lot of time arriving at the definition of motion. It's a very difficult thing to understand what motion is. Now you turn to Rene Descartes there, the father of modern philosophy, so-called. And he quotes the definition of motion in kind of a garbled version. He says, You understand that, he says, you know? And he just dismisses it, right? Yeah? Okay? Well, he doesn't proceed wisely on what? Small, right? And something is difficult to understand as motion. The same thing can be said about matter or about, what? Time. The moderns don't do that. And if you don't understand motion, the definition of motion, you don't understand motion distinctly. And secondly, you don't understand nature, because nature is defined by motion. And eventually you don't understand the argument for the unmoved mover, right? Cool. And then you don't understand the definition of motion, you don't understand the definition of motion, you don't understand the definition of motion, you don't understand the definition of motion, And John Locke, you know, he follows Descartes in this regard, he disagrees with Descartes and other things, he follows him and says, motion can't be defined, right? Eventually the modernist of saying nothing can be defined. Okay. But notice, they're proceeding, they're stumbling over motion, they're running fast, when they should be proceeding wisely and slow, because this is something very difficult to understand itself, right? Okay? Okay. Of course, it's even more of the chief difficulty, that Bill Saristock goes on to say, and Plato had said before him, is in the weakness of our mind, right? And so when you're trying to understand God, right? Or even an angel, the mind has to perceive wisely and slowly, right? Especially trying to understand the Trinity, say, or the incarnation, these deepest mysteries of the faith, right? And so you can see how Augustine there, in the work of the Trinity, the way he goes so slowly, right? You know, but so thorough, right? As Bob MacArthur should say, you know, he's saying with Brother Martin, you go through everything that Augustine Marshall is there from Scripture, I mean, almost every Roman passage, you know, and you're completely convinced, you know, that's what the Bible's teaching, right? The Trinity, right? But the time you stand in the Trinity, right? You have to receive very slowly. And I love this phrase of Augustine there, where he speaks of some, you know, who have a immature and perverse love of reason. And those are the ones who are, what? Running fast over the mystery of the Trinity and making all kinds of, what? Mistakes, huh? So, in great Mayans, like Aristotle or Thomas or Augustine, Plato, they're aware of these two difficulties in knowing it, and therefore they proceed wisely and slow, compared to other Mayans, huh? They rest over the morning things, correctively, and stumble on it. They make all kinds of mistakes about the Trinity or the Incarnation or about motion or time, you name it, huh? Where's the third place, huh? Where the wise men proceed slowly, huh? Well, it's where there is a beginning, small in size, but great in its power. Take the example of the axiom about being and non-being, right? Or perhaps you can speak of two axioms about being and non-being. It's impossible to be and not be. And it's necessary to be or not be, right? Sometimes I quote Hamlet, you know, to be or not to be. That is the question. It's a question because you can't both be and not be. And you must either be or not be. Aristotle spends a great deal, book four, right? Of the metaphysics, of the fourth book of wisdom there, defending those axioms, right? Against attacks that have been made upon them, right? Who would spend so much time, right? On that, huh? But he saw the importance of that, right? Although small in size, it extends, but to all the rest of our knowledge, huh? Aristotle and Thomas often say that even to make a small mistake in the beginning is a great one in the end, huh? And they compare it to a man who takes the wrong road at a fork in the road, right? There's very little distance here between the two, but the further you go, right? The further you are from where you should be, right? So, notice the what? What the wise man does there. If you make even a small mistake in the beginning, it's going to be multiplied because of its power, right? And everything that comes afterwards. So you're going to be stumbling constantly, all the way through your thinking, because you didn't understand the way you're getting right. And I suspect that's one of the primary reasons why Thomas got the reputation of being a dumb ox. He was proceeding wisely and slowly in those things that everything else depends upon. And once he got those things down, then he was able to, what? Go forward in a kind of unstoppable way, right? You see? In real and Poe, I have a beautiful comparison of great minds and little minds in the famous story, the Perloin letter. Do you know that one? It's one of his detective stories. It's kind of a marvelous little story, you know, about a man has stolen a letter that's very incriminating, and the government's trying to get it back, and they have, you know, all kinds of agents, you know, trying to, you know, he's out in the rooms or quarters, you know, honeycomb in the room, you know, going into the fabric of the chair and everything, looking for, whereas he concealed this letter, right? And of course, he's very clever, but he concealed it. And I won't tell you where he is, because he has to get the story. But it's very clever. But anyway, in that marvelous story, the Poe makes a comparison between bodies and great and small minds, right? And he says that the small mind is like a small body. It's easily set in motion, but it's easily, what? Stopped, like a ping-pong ball or something, right? The great mind is like a, what? You know, a large body that's difficult to set in motion, right? But once it starts to go in motion, it's very hard to, what? Stopped, yeah. That's because the great mind, in the beginning, right? And those things, everything else depends upon, it is, what? Very careful to understand them, right? The first course we had, really, at Laval, in logic, in the good old days, when the wise were in control. We read Albert de Grace's work on the Isogogia of Porphyry, right? It was about 200 pages, right? Now, the Isogogia of Porphyry is an extremely important work, huh? In fact, they've got its name, the Isogogia, because it's an Isogogia introduction, it's a Greek introduction to Aristotle's categories that someone asked for help with. But as they began to understand the Isogogia, they saw it as an introduction to a whole philosophy. And when Porphyry is a little premium there at the beginning, you know, he says, to understand genus, difference, species, property, accident, genus, diophora, aidas, and so on, idios, bibekos. It's useful, he says, to the man he's addressing, not only to understand Aristotle's categories, but it's necessary for understanding definition, for understanding division, for understanding demonstration. The whole philosophy, in a sense, right? Okay? And here's Albert the Great, you know, you know, it's 200 pages or so, right? Reading, kind of what? Elaborating on that, right? Okay? You see Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Congentitas, reasoning from the Isogogia to no name being said identically of God and preachers. So, I mean, even at the end of all our knowledge and theology, he's still drawing upon the beginning, right? You see? So, if you, you know, I talked to my colleagues, the most people you know, and some of you haven't heard of Isogogia. So, I've studied it, right? You know, this is, this is, this is, modern philosophers don't know, right? So, you know, something like the Trinity, though, in theology, is the beginning, right, of the whole of our faith, you might say. In some sense, the, the mystery of the Trinity is logically before we do the mystery of the Incarnation, although we usually meet the Incarnation first, right? But you can see, kind of, in the Gospel of St. John there, that the way he's explaining something with the mystery of the Trinity first, before he explains the Incarnation, right? So, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was towards God, and the Word was God, and so on. And then later on, he talks about the Word was made flesh, we get the word Incarnation, right? So, if you make a mistake about the, what, in the Trinity, that's going to affect everything else in the faith. And that's why Augustine says in the great work here that they treat God, which I think we've read his greatest work myself, but...