Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 91: Seven Places Where the Wise Proceed Slowly

Transcript
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But he says, nowhere is it more dangerous, he said, to make a mistake, than here. And nowhere is it more fruitful to see something, right? And he's in marvelous the way he speaks there, right? Nowhere is it more dangerous to make a mistake. And nowhere is it more fruitful to see something of the truth. It would seem that probably profoundly, to say the least, the most wise thing to do would be to make the study of logic almost a type of avocation or hobby for all of one's life. It takes most of us dummies, yeah, most of our lives. I understand everything he's organizing from the very start, although I'm known as being a magician, you know? It's like a constant, you know, helpful mother companion for something so utterly, profoundly important. Almost like, I don't want to use the term disproportionate, but for lack of a better term, to spend on that, so profoundly. But I would say that with great thinkers I've had, like Iconic and Monsignor, you know, they would come back to some of the things, you know, from time to time and consider them again, you know, and you see more, right? Isn't that right? And I, you know, hear when I say Dion, I see something, and I come back a year later, it's like that, and you'd see something more about it, you know? It's always, you know, understanding those beginnings, more, right? Now, another thing, you know, where there is knowledge over the road, where there is knowledge over a road. Now, most people don't realize that, in a way, all of our knowledge is along a road. All of our knowledge is along the road from the senses into reason, somewhere along that road. But the knowledge of reason, or reasoned-out knowledge, is especially over a road. Logic is about the common road of reasoned-out knowledge. And then each reasoned-out knowledge has, to some extent, its own private road that it follows. So where there is knowledge over a road, Aristotle, in the second book of wisdom, said, you can't, at the same time, get that knowledge over a road, and get a knowledge of the road, okay? And it's not easy, since you're either one. But you, first of all, have to have a knowledge of the road to follow, before you can follow that road, okay? Or before you can follow it well, anyway, huh? So, what you see in the great Aristotle, but it's this euphoria in Plato, that they realize that our knowledge is over a road, it follows a road, and that you have to know the road before you can really acquire this knowledge. So in the Timaeus, which is in some ways the last work, perhaps, of Plato, we're not sure, but the last work we have, maybe. Timaeus does most of the talking, and Socrates does the listening, but the, you know, applause, the applause and the agreement. And Timaeus gives this marvelous premium to his discourse on the universe, and how he's going to speak about it, and so on, and insists upon knowing the road, right? And he turns to Socrates, but you, he says, will have, you have this education in roads, right? You can follow what I'm talking about, and Socrates, you know. He says, well, great premium this is, right? If you turn from the Greek of that to the Greek of Aristotle's premium of Nicomachean Ethics, you'd see how close they are, you know, in the words, huh? So in these two central philosophers, these chief philosophers, as Thomas calls them, and Albert, they see the importance, of stopping and trying to know the road, right? But most men, they just, what, jump into the things that the knowledge is about, because they're more interesting, right, than to talk about the road. They don't take the time to really, what? Know the road, huh? In a sense, you could say that the distinction and the order of all the roads in our looking knowledge was really worked out, explicitly by Monsignor, right? That's the law there. And it was implicit, you know, in Aristotle and Thomason, and I'm sure they knew what it was in a sense of, but Dion kind of worked out explicitly, right? Just like in Ysagogi, Ysagogi is really dependent upon Aristotle, but he's drawing things that Aristotle touches upon in these places. We've read them all together, right? Which is a big help to us, right? So it's in Dion, who's doing this all together, but saw explicitly the distinction and the order of all the roads in our knowledge. When I was first up there, Dion was lecturing on Thomas's commentary on Boethius and the Trinitate, where Boethius is distinguishing, following Aristotle, right, and the three parts of looking at philosophy, the big distinction is the road in each, right? And he'll say, natural philosopher, natural philosophy proceeds watching the video care, and mathematics proceeds this is the video care, wisdom proceeds intellectuality care. Thomas, I have a whole article on what it means, right? To say that it proceeds this way and so on, right? So you see Thomas stopping and being very careful to know what the road is, right? And you see that in the Summa Concentiles, right? Following Boethius and Aristotle, how careful he is to talk about the road. I remember when I first read Chilsona, I was in high school, you know, and Chilsona is kind of the introduction of philosophy, and his introduction of philosophy is following the order of the Summa Concentiles. Well, Thomas in Summa Concentiles says, the order of philosophy and theology is just the reverse. God is the first thing you study in theology, and everything else you study in creation, God. God is the last thing you study in philosophy, he belongs to the last part of the last sentence. So it's just the reverse. So it's just so in his proposal, right? You know, to teach philosophy in exactly the reverse order, which is to be caught, right? I mean, it's a gross misreading, you know, a gross misapplication, you know, of the Summa Concentiles, right? So, most people don't even stop and consider that philosophy is knowledge, like, or for a road, right? You could say, a philosopher can do one of three things, really. He can follow a road, or he can wander. And if he follows a road, he can follow the right road, or he can follow the wrong road, right? Now, in my experience with most philosophers, they either follow the wrong road, or they wander. I don't know which is worse. But when the mind wanders, you have a disordered movement of the reason, and a disordered movement of the reason is going to lead to some kind of error. As I tell the students, you know, when a machine, a coke machine isn't working, they hang up a sign that says, out of order. So when your mind is wandering, it's out of order, huh? And therefore, it's act to function badly, which means it's happening to be a mistake, huh? And it's interesting that the Latin word for error comes from the Latin word to wander, huh? Like you have in the night errant, a wandering night, huh? And the Greek word for error, planet, comes from the Greek word to wander. That's where you get the word planet, huh? Because the planets seem to wander around the sky. And when Christ is speaking there in the gospel, there are the Sadducees, huh? Who are trying to attack the idea of resurrection, and so on, right? And they have the example of the man who married a wife and had no children, but then his brother married her, and he had no children, and went to the seven brothers, right? And now, there was a rechirm, whose wife was she being? You know, he tried to give this ridiculous situation, right? And Christ says, well, you what? Yeah, yeah. But the Greek word is from the word for planet. Can I stay, right? Okay? Understanding neither the power of God, nor understanding the scriptures, right? And then he goes on to explain, it's not going to marry or be married, right? It's not going to marry or be married, right? It's not going to marry or be married, right? It's not going to marry or be married, right? It's not going to marry or be married, right? It's not going to marry or be married, right? It's not going to marry or be married, right? It's not going to marry or be married, right? It's not going to marry or be married, right? You know, to death do us part. Okay. I just mentioned that text because in the Greek there, it's the word from that word, the one, right? You were, right? You understand, right? Understanding neither the power of God nor understanding the scriptures. But then you have people, you know, like Descartes, who want to follow a role, but they want to follow the role of mathematics everywhere, right? And this is a serious mistake, huh? Because that road doesn't fit everything. He has Phonosor doing the same, and so on. So when there's knowledge of a road, the true wise man will stop and consider what the road should be, right? And he'll be very careful. Because everything else is going to depend upon that. You don't see that same slowness, huh? Most people aren't even aware of the fact that Vasi has now drove a road. Oh, okay. Now, fifth place, of course, is where there is the general and particular. Now, often I make this point when I'm teaching the beginning of the so-called physics of Aristotle, the Greek books of natural hearing. Aristotle is saying that we have to consider things in general before in particular, right? And the reason he gives, if you recall, is that we naturally know things in a confused or indistinct way before we know them, like, distinctly, right? And to know something in general, right, is indistinct compared to knowing in particular. So knowing that those two little disturbers were animals doesn't distinguish between a cat and a dog, right? But to know that they were cats is more distinct, right? So when you go from the general to particular, you're going from the confused to the distinct. But in the eight books of natural hearing, Aristotle is going to stay in the general. Well, then I ask them sometimes, does this mean he's not going to go from the confused to the distinct in the eight books of natural hearing? Because he's going to stay in the general and not go to the particular? Well, there's more than one way of going from the confused to the distinct, which he mentions even in that first chapter, right? When I go from the name of something to the definition of it, I'm going from the confused to the distinct, right? When I go from a whole to the parts of that whole, distinguishing the parts of that whole, I'm going from the confused to the distinct, right? Okay? So, there's a movement from the confused to the distinct on the level just of the general. And there's a movement of another kind in the confused to the distinct when you descend from the general to particular. Okay? And sometimes I take an example from geometry, where it's a very clear example. Euclid moves from triangle both to a definition of triangle, right? And he moves from triangle to equilateral, as Soseles and Scalii triangles. And both of those are movements from the confused to the distinct. But when he goes from triangle to the equilateral triangle, as Soseles and Scalii, he's going from the general to particular. When he goes from triangle to the definition of triangle, he's staying in the level of the general. He's not the same for any particular kind of triangle, but he's still going from the confused to the distinct. So, two different movements, right? From the confused to the distinct. And then I ask the question now, of those two different movements, which movement should be made first? They're both going from the confused to the distinct. But should I move from triangle to equilateral, as Soseles and Scalii, or should I move from triangle to the definition of triangle first? Yeah. Should I move from quadrilateral to square, oblong, rhombus, rhomboid, trapezium? Or should I move from quadrilateral to the definition of quadrilateral first? Definitely. Yeah. And there's a reason for doing that, right? If I don't understand distinctly what a quadrilateral is, I can't see the basis for the division into square and oblong and so on, right? Unless I see distinctly what a triangle is, that's a plain figure contained by three straight lines. I can't see the basis for the division into equilateral, isosceles, and Scalii. Either all three are equal, or just two or none, right? You see? Now, it's been my experience, what most thinkers do is that they would jump from a confused knowledge of the general down to trying to get a distinct knowledge of the particular. What the wise man does, like Harris-Tavo, he will go from a confused to a distinct knowledge on the level of the general. And then he will descend, right? Okay? And at that point, he seems to be, you know, we'll see more slowly than people, right? Because they're already down to the level of the particular, right? Now, I notice that, like when we talk about, say, in ethics, and you talk about human virtue, a very important subject, right? Human virtue. Most of the ethics is taken up with the discussion of the human virtues, right? Courage, and moderation, and justice, and foresight, and art, and so on, right? But they're trying to understand human virtue before they understand distinctly virtue in general. And that's the reason why they often stumble, right? On these things, huh? Or they want to talk about the goods of man, and which are better, right? Which is a very important thing to do, right? They don't understand good in general. They don't understand better in general. In general, what is better? I ask my students. What do you mean? Well, in general, what is better? You can use the word better in all kinds of particular contexts, right? But in general, what does it mean to say that this is better than that? What can you say about better in general? Well, the main thing I developed at that point is that the end is always better than what is for the sake of the end. Okay? And I show that by induction, and I show it by syllogism, that the end is always better than what is for the sake of the end. Okay? Then we go into the apology, right? And you find that Socrates and the Athenians all disagree about which goods of human life are better. Socrates thinks the goods of the soul are much better than the goods of the body and exterior goods. While the Athenians are madly pursuing the goods of the body and exterior goods as if they were the main and best goods, right? Which are better? Now you start to reason from what? The end is always better than what is for the sake of the end. And what I first show is that the outside goods are for the sake of the what? Inside goods, right? Which is pretty easy to show by induction. And if the end is always better than what is for the sake of the end, then the inside goods are better. If they knew the body was for the sake of the soul, you could argue the same way, right? But usually I take up what the end of man is before this so that you can reason from that. That the end of man is the act of reason and so on. So, the same way with virtue, right? You don't understand what virtue is in general. You know, my friend has in his kitchen there a plaque that says much virtue and herbs that do in men. What's this general meaning of virtue? Most people don't know it. They can't explain that, right? Christ used that same likeness there, you know. You're the salt of the earth, right? The salt loses its, you know, flavor and strength, right? It's to be cast out and block them, right? Yeah. So we talk about, you know, the virtue of a knife. Aristotle talks about the virtue of money. Wealth is the virtue of money. He didn't say the virtue of the man now. He said the virtue of money. But you have to understand what virtue is in general, right? And virtue in general is as broad in meaning as a thing's own act. It's the quality of a thing that makes that thing good and its own act would, right? So if the knife's own act is to cut, the virtue of the knife would be sharpness, right? The vice of the knife would be sharpness, So you've got a general understanding, right? And most people don't have that. They're jumping all the way down into human virtue or some particular human virtue. They don't understand human virtue of general, distinctly. And they're talking about chastity or some other virtue, right? In particular, right? And they unfortunately don't understand virtue of general, right? So, the wise men, right? Where there's a general and a particular knowledge, the wise men will go from the confused to the distinct, not at first by going from the general to particular, but on the stay in the level of the general, he'll go from the confused to the distinct, right? And then he'll descend. Just like Euclid, right? We'll define triangle in general, right? Before he descends to particular kinds. He'll define quadrilateral in general before he descends to defining square and the other ones in particular. So, that's very much a place where I see the wise men proceeding slowly, right? Now, the last two ones that I put together at the end here, because they touch upon words, right? The wise men will proceed slowly where there is a word equivocal by reason. Now, if you look at the fifth book of wisdom, for example, the whole of the fifth book of wisdom, fifth book of metaphysics, as we call it, the whole of that book is devoted to distinguishing the central senses of the words equivocal by reason that are used in wisdom, right? And there are also the words used in the, what, axioms. There are also the words used everywhere because of their commonality, you know? So, Aristotle would be very careful to distinguish the central meanings of these words and to see the order among those meanings, huh? There's nobody else that does that in the history of us, except maybe Thomas, but it's been done for him by Aristotle, right? But it's kind of amazing when you see Thomas there in the fourth book of natural hearing, and Aristotle distinguishes eight meanings of the word in there, right? Eight central meanings. But he doesn't order them like he does in the fifth book of wisdom, right? So Thomas says, well, let's order them. And he orders them in the way he's been taught by Aristotle in the fifth book, right? And it's marvelous to order. We had to do that one time, remember? The eight meanings of in, right? Now, who but Thomas would do that, huh? Everybody else would be using the word in without what? Thinking, you know. Without, yeah, that word's going to come up everywhere. Didn't Albert do it? Didn't think Albert did it? Well, Albert might do it, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're only these wise men, right? And I'm teaching love and friendship, you know, and the student tells me, what does it mean to fall in love? Well, that's by the way, I'm thinking of the senses of in, right? You know, the sixth sense of in is what? I've got you in my power, right? So to fall in love is to come under the power of love. Oh, yeah, that's profound, you know. But it's because I've learned the senses of the word in, right? When I was, you know, first teaching logic, you know, and I was struck by this phrase in English, to think out something, right? And it seemed to make a very good thing. Philosophers don't want to just think. They want to think out things, right? You know? What does it mean to think out something, right? Well, then I recalled the eight meanings of in, right? I can understand the meanings of in, you can understand the meanings of out. And I distinguished eventually the seven meanings of thinking out, you know? But see, getting a lot of mileage out of, what, Aristotle and Thomas, and all the care they took to, what? Distinguish and order the senses of the words used everywhere, especially in the wisdom and the axioms. Now notice, huh? As the father of logic said, the most common mistake in thinking is a mistake for mixing up the sense of the word. And we're not actively deceived by a word equivocal by chance, huh? Roger and Maris hit 61 hormones with a bat. The bat is a flying rodent. Jeffrey hit 61 hormones with a flying rodent. Nobody would be deceived by that, right? Because both of those things are sensible, right? When you have a whole series of meanings, one of which is very sensible, and you get to meanings that are very far removed from it, right? Then it's easy to get these all mixed up, huh? Okay? So, men are constantly making this, they're stumbling all the time here, right? The fallacy of equivocation, as it's called sometimes, huh? They're always falling into the mistake for mixing up sense of the word. But, you know, even apart from avoiding that, that's constant stumbling that they're doing, you know? I was taking the examples from my students there, you know, that a student who says, nature doesn't act for an end, because if nature acted for an end, all things would come to an end, but all things have not come to an end, therefore nature is acting for an end. My wife said, that'd be like arguing, you know, that happiness is the end of life, the end of life is death, therefore happiness is death, right? I mean, people actually are making these mistakes all the time. So, where there's a word equivocal by reason, in fact, even the, we saw that with the word run, right? That's equivocal, right? By reason. Stumble is equivocal by reason, right? Okay? Reason is equivocal by reason. Reason gives reasons. There's a different name to the word reason there, right? That they're connected, huh? So, most people, everybody uses the word equivocal by reason, you can't avoid them, because the most common words, like in and out, and being, and one, and part and whole, and end, limit, everything, all these words are equivocal by reason, and you can't avoid using them. So, everybody's using words equivocal by reason without ever having, what? Clearly distinguish the central meanings of these words and seeing their order, right? So, they're constantly subject to stumbling over those words. Now, in the seventh place, huh? That they perceive wise and slow. You can say they perceive wise and slow. What else is stopping all these words here, right? Right? It has to stop in wise and slow first, right? Then I'm looking at the whole thing right now, right? So, where there are words of a wise man? Yeah, like Fire Lawrence here, right? Okay. Where there are these words of a wise man. He's speaking wise, right? He's in this cultural thing. Man, man, man. When Thomas was in the vish or something, you know, somebody's supposed to have said, Thomas, there's an elephant going by. Thomas, from around the window, look, you know? And they all start laughing at him, right? You know? He said, I'd rather believe, he says, that there's an elephant going by and that one of my fellows would be lying. Now, Thomas said, you know how Thomas said you should read the words of Aristotle? He says, you should read the words of Aristotle carefully, frequently, and with reverence. And the same thing he would say about reading the words of Augustine, right? You read the words of Augustine carefully, carefully, frequently, and with reverence. If you don't, you're not teachable. By that wise man. In a fortiori, you should read the words of Christ, right? Wisely, huh? I mean, carefully, right? Frequently, and with reverence, huh? As Thomas says there, you know, in the commentary on Matthew, but, you know, one never completely unfolds all the meaning and what? The words of Christ, right? You know? Now, I was giving an example there. I was thinking about that it will be done on earth as it is in heaven, right? And usually what I see in that words are that we don't do God's will very perfectly on the earth here, right? We often fail to do his will and so on. But those who are in heaven do his will perfectly, right? So that's why you understand those words, right? But now there's a lot of emphasis upon mercy, you know, and Sister Faustina and so on, you know, and the mercy of God and so on, right? So it occurred to me there's another meaning in what our Lord is saying, right? God's will is done what? In heaven and it's done in hell, right? But in heaven you see more his mercy, you know, like St. Teresa of Jesus said, forever I will sing his mercy, right? So you always take that from the Psalms, right? But in hell you see more his what? His justice, yeah. So when you say, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we're asking for his merciful, right? Did he not chastise us with what we deserve for our wickedness and so on, right? Did he be merciful to us, right? And that's, when you go back to the Mass and say what he is, you know, we, those parts we sent to music especially, you know, we canta, bisorata, we sing, you know, praise twice, we sing, what? Kyrie eleison, it's all, that's a Greek word for what? Mercy, you know, you have mercy, same word you have in Aristotle's poetics, he talks about pity or mercy, and then you have what? The Latin word, misere every, you know, agnish day, misere nobis, right? So the emphasis there upon what? In the prayers, you know, you're asking for God's mercy rather than for his what? Justice. Justice, yeah, yeah. The only time Thomas gets here to ask you for justice is he asks God that he would give him grace and then reward his grace. You know? It goes back to that thing we were talking about once before, you know, how God is chiefly responsible for the good you do, right? But you are chiefly responsible for the bad you do, right? Which seems damn unfair, you know, to a lot of us, you know? That you can't take any credit to speak of for the good you've done, but you can take all the credit, if you want to call it credit, for the even you've done, right? You know? That kind of shows, right? Justice is more concerned with punishment and mercy with the good, huh? So where do you have the words of the wise man, right? And, you know, even though, you know, David Aristotle got kind of the heights there in Aristotle especially, but I love the words of Aristotle there in the politics there, when he's planning to consider its predecessors and so on. And he says, there are some things we should try to say better than our predecessors said, you know? There are some things we should try to speak better of. Other things we should try to say as well as they've said it, right? And it's rather striking, you know? That sometimes an author says something so well that you should try to say it as well as he did, right? And I was mentioning, you know, how I've experienced sometimes with Shakespeare. I will be arguing with somebody about something, and they will absolutely not agree with me, despite the fact that I think my arguments are pretty good, you know? And, and, but finally, I recall, you know, some statement of this by Shakespeare. I give them, and all of a sudden they start to read. You know, because Shakespeare says it so well, right? And he says it better than I could say it, right? You see? So, you know, nature loves to hide, right? Now, you can't really improve upon that, huh? Like I mentioned, I was in the, in the bookshop there the other day, and the scientific section there, and there's a book, Nature Loves to Hide. I was stuck right away, you know? He wasn't acknowledging his death to the great Heraclitus, you know, because he's become kind of famous now, huh? But you can't really improve upon those things, huh? When Shakespeare, you know, refers to ethics, you know what ethics is about? You know, the plague of our Shakespeare, the Taming of the Shoe, the plague where Shakespeare talks about all parts of philosophy, right? Just about. Leaves one out because it wasn't a little right, but anyway. But he says, that part of philosophy that treats happiness by virtue especially to be achieved. I could hardly describe better the Nicomachean Ethics than that, right? It's about happiness by virtue especially to be achieved. He's just said so well, you know? Even better than Aristotle, he says, you know? Is that book any good about Nature Loves to Hide? That book he found, Nature Loves to Hide, was it in good? Oh, I didn't read it. I was just looking at it from the title time, you know? I mean, he's going off his own resume after that. I don't think he saw the whole meaning of those words. You know? But he had to proceed wisely and slow, right? He said, you know, I asked my colleagues, you know, you know, why does Nature Loves to Hide, see? And they were stung, you know? But, you know, if you go back to the word Nature, which is equivocal by reason, huh? The first meaning of the word Nature is what? Birth. And, you know, in birth, the baby comes from within, huh? And in every meaning of the word Nature, there's seven or eight meanings in Aristotle's word, isn't it, right? But in every meaning of Nature, it's something within. Yeah. See? And you get to the meaning of Nature that defines natural philosophy. Nature is the beginning and cause of motion and address in that, which it is, right? It's the cause within. First, yes, such, and not by happening. And in the last meaning of the word Nature, which is what a thing is, right? But what a thing is, is within it. And that's why we sometimes say, you know, that a definition brings out, right? What a thing is. You wouldn't need a definition to bring out what a thing is if what a thing was was on the outside to begin with. It's something inside, right? And that's why, you know, Thomas always says intelligere, right? It says intus legere to be within, right? But the proper object of intellectus is what it is, huh? Nature in the sense of what it is. So, not the only reason, but the first reason, right, why Nature allows to hide is that it's within. What's within is what? In, right? So those are the seven places that occurred to me. The appropriate seven is the sum of wisdom. I didn't set out to find seven. I just got thinking about it. You know, one day I got thinking about these words, and I said, there must be much more in those words than I've seen, so I got thinking about it. So I ended up giving this talk, okay? And now, here's another statement about stumbling. The same one, right? You won't be able to explain it, but I just give it to you, right? It's a little bit earlier in the scene, before Romeo shows up. And he's out in the garden there, examining plants and so on, and he knows a lot of the secrets and powers of plants and so on, right? That's why I can make that potion for Juliet later on, right? It'll make her appear to be dead, but she'll wake up. Okay? So he says, For not so vile that on the earth doth live, he says, but to the earth some special good doth give. Nor ought so good, he said, but strained from that fair use. Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse. See that? Now ought so good, huh? But strained, huh? From that fair use, from the, what? The noble use, the good use, right? The just use of it, right? The proper use of it, right? It revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse. Why don't you make that last sentence into a statement here, right? You can say, it's kind of a question. What revolts from true birth? stumbles on abuse. I'm just using a little bit of a meter there, right? Revolts in true birth, stumbling on abuse, right? Make a sentence. Now, what does that mean, true birth, right? I think this is kind of marvelous that Shakespeare has done here, because in what sense of the word birth is he using that word? Now you see, in the fifth book of wisdom, Aristotle takes the Greek word for birth, which is phusisum, and he orders all the meanings, right? Thomas, in the Latin there, right, you have the word natura, which means, comes from the word for birth in Latin, and you have the same order of the meanings, right? Following the order you have in the Greek. Thomas often gives those orders, or some of it elsewhere, besides in the commentary of the fifth book. Now, what happens with in English sometimes, is that the carryover of the English word is stopped, right? Because we import the Greek or Latin word in its later meanings, right? And that poses a certain danger for the modern mind, because you're using a word borrowed from Greek or Latin in its later meanings without following it from the first meaning. So your mind is out of order, already using this word. Now, what is Shakespeare talking about there? He says, revolts from true birth. In what sense is he using the word birth? He's using it in the first sense of the word? He's using it in the sense of the definition of nature in the second book of natural hearing. Or is he using it already if he moved it all the way to the last meaning? Which is very common in English with the word nature, right? The nature of a thing is what it is, right? It is. Yeah, what it is. I bet it is, using it that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, as I was saying before, right? You know, for a wise man, he understands words equitical by reason. And either you have to go back, you know, to the Greek or Latin and follow, you know, the earlier meanings to the one that we have in English corresponding to that word. Or else you have to take the English word in what? Extended, right? Okay. And so I often take the English word road, you know, you know, extend it to the mind, you know. Okay. So Shakespeare has moved the word birth from its first meaning all the way down to its last meaning. Kind of a marvelous thing, huh? Okay. So he's saying what revolts from its true nature, right? And he has to understand of course that the true nature of the thing involves what? It's in your purpose, right? What revolts from its true nature is going to stumble on what? Abuse, right? Now, you can apply this, you know, first of all to action and then secondly to the life of the mind, huh? Okay. So if you take, you know, an action, take the obvious things you're starting with the parts of the body, let's say, right, huh? Okay. Take my hands, let's say, right? Okay. Now, why is nature giving me hands? So in part, to provide for my own body, right? To feed my own body, put stuff in my mouth and so on, right? And to, you know, gather the things I want to eat and so on, right? Okay. And gather, you know, things that I've pulled myself in and so on, right? Okay. But nature's also giving me hands to take care of my children, right? Especially when they're a baby or something like that, right? Use the diaper. Right? Okay. Take care of them, right? Guard them from danger and so on, right? But now, my hands can be strained, as he says, from that fair use, right? So I can take into the drugs, let's say, right, which actually, what? I'm stumbling on abuse now, right? My hands have been strained from that fair use through birth, right? I'm misusing my hands, right? Not to feed me and to nourish me and so on, but I'm using my hands now to harm myself, right? Before it's already, like. Take the poison, right? Like Romeo does, right? Drugs are kind of a poison too, but I mean, poppy carries are very things, right? Or if I use my hands to kill the baby, like an abortion or something like that, right? I'm misusing my hands, right? The abortionist is misusing his hands, huh? The strength in that fair use, right? I'm stumbling on abuse, huh? Cicero says, huh, that we have, you know, these vocal cords and tongue and so on, to speak, and this is, as Aristotle says in the politics, to be signed and managed by nature as social animal, right? It's to, what, communicate, right? We couldn't really live together without being able to communicate, huh? But when we use our vocal cords and our tongue to lie, then we are, what, going against, right, the natural purpose there of these things, huh? Okay? And even Cicero saw it very clearly, right? This was against each of these things. The sexual organs, right, men, and even women, are often misusing these, right? Contrary to their very, what, purpose, that's right, okay? And so there are stumbling and abuse, right? You know, some of these scandals, but there's all kinds of scandals down through history, right, in this matter. But there's also, you could say, in the, in the moderns, kind of revolt from the nature of man in general, right? What he has, son, from the natural inner purpose of man. It's tied up with that question that we discussed, you know, where the nature acts for an end, right? But Shakespeare is in the understanding of that, right? So you'll go against the natural end of man, or the natural end of his parts, would be the hands, or the focal cords, or the sexual organs, or the other parts, for that matter. You're going against, what? You're revolting, right? The true nature of these things, but they aren't. But now in the life of the mind, you see, what you see in the modern philosophers is revolt, first of all, from wonder, which is a natural desire to know what and why, and the natural desire to know the cause. And so, in Hobbes, let's say, or Karl Marx, for example, you have explicitly rejected wonder, right? The pursuit of knowledge simply in order to know, right? Yeah. Everything's in order to power, to doing, right? To making. So this is revolting from true birth, right? You're going against this natural desire to know him. And when Plato first spoke about wonder as being the beginning of philosophy, I think we looked at that reading, right? He saw the connection between that, ultimately, God, right? Because wonder is the beginning of philosophy, and this is a desire of you to know the cause, it's going to ultimately lead to the first cause, and the God himself, right? So you revolve from that wonder. But it's kind of implicit in the modern philosophers. Heisenberg in the Gifford Lectures, right? He gives one of the customs that influenced this. He said the union of natural science and technical science, right? In the 17th and 18th century, turned natural science into a technical science, huh? At the same time, he said it changed their attitude towards nature from a contemplative one to a what? Pragmatic one, huh? Okay? So it's implicit kind of in most of the modern figures. Even though the great scientists like Mack and Warren said, you know, nothing great can be accomplished in science without the elementary curiosity, he says of the philosopher. But the tendency there in the modern philosophy is to revolt from this one neuron this desire to know the cause. This desire to be soon for its own sake. And notice how in Augustine's definition of belief, or in Anselm's definition of theology, there is a respect for that natural desire. Augustine defined belief as ascentere cum cogitationi. To assent, we're all thinking about it, right? Assent is firm, right? But you think about it because you don't understand it or comprehend it. And then Anselm said that theology is belief seeking understanding, right? But Ephesians said that before, right? I'm just a sort of man who'd like to understand what he believes, right? Although he can only understand it particularly in this life, right? That corresponds to the fact that grace and belief are not going against the natural desire there, right? Okay? Now, the second thing that he evolved from is from the, what? The natural road, you know? The road from the senses into reason and all that that really involves. And so the modern philosophy is kind of a rite of passage into modern philosophy that you have to attack the senses, right? And people who are caught up in this, you know, you know, that if you don't, you know, distrust the senses, you're naive, right? Okay? The only problem is that in order to attack the senses, you have to follow the road from the senses into, you know. So, but once you kind of check the natural road, then you can, you know, imagine wherever you want to be, you know, you're on your own. And the third thing that you evolved from is this natural understanding of the axioms, huh? Naturally come to understand the axioms. So Bertrand Russell, you know, attacks the idea that the whole is more than the part, right? And he has a nice objection to it, huh? My teacher, Deconic there, refuted him, you know? Okay? But I myself sometimes I construct an army that's, you know, one part I gave you, you know, which most students would be taken in, you know, I saw it for them. And I was talking to a Heideggerian, you know, and he said, you know, that principal congregation can be quite a bit in history, you know? So these things are, you question that, you question all the axioms because that's the natural, that's the, since he's Aristotle says an actual beginning of all the axioms. It's impossible to be or not be, right? Now once you do that, you see, then really you have to think you know no statements at all, right? Because the statements that we don't actually know, we come to know them through the ones we don't actually know. And so if we don't actually know any statements, then we don't really know any statements. And so I can, in John Stuart Mill, if I look in the essay of Liberty, right? And he's defending liberty of thought and so on. One of his premises is that we never really know whether any statement is true, right? That's kind of commonplace, you know, they're always quoting out of one of the holes, you know. I don't have to tell them a piece of paper, you know, the statements that I'm sure about, I would leave it blank. You all say that, right? You see? Why put down the holes larger than the part? Statements exist, all kinds of things. But I take down and be... Now notice, once you evolve from all these natural things, right? Then philosophy takes a lot, right? Because philosophy is based upon following this natural road and it's based on this natural understanding of the axioms and you wonder about the things you don't actually understand, but you come to know them through what you naturally understand. So you vote against nature, you're abusing philosophy, you're abusing in a sense your very reason, huh? Sure. And that's what you have. So what revolts in true birth stumbles on what? Abuse, huh? As De Connick said there, you know, you talk about the Levitic Thesis on Vorbach, you know, which, as Comrade Engel said, you know, this contains a brilliant germ, you know, the sanctity outlook in the world and so on. But it's rejection of a wonder, right? Among other things. And so as De Connick said, the whole philosophy in a sense which began in wonder is being abused here, huh? And this is what Shakespeare is talking about, Yeah. Strange and wonderful. Well, then it's a stranger given welcome, he says. Hamlet, huh? So, that's really, you know, marvelous statement, you know? I've had to talk about these things elsewhere, and I did a talk about it, TAC one time, you know, on the fragment of the great Heraclitus, right? Heraclitus says, wisdom is to speak the truth, he says, and to act in accord with what? Nature. Giving ear there to, right? Like, you're a docile student of nature, But Shakespeare, in a sense, is expressing the same truth, right? Could you say something about the word stumbling and abuse? What? Well, as I say, you're stumbling on abuse here, on your action, right? Abortion, all the rest of these things, right? I'm just using my parts, right? Okay? And I'm making no kinds of mistakes when I, what, reject these things that I actually understand, huh? If I reject an actual rule, you see, that's the first rule in our knowledge. And it's presupposed to all the other rules, and it's into the other rules. So the way to reject the natural rules is to reject all the rules, right? Which is to lead the mind to, what, to wander, as Sophocles and Shakespeare says, to wander in illusions. That's Shakespeare's phrase, to wander in illusions. Comedy of errors, right? To wander in illusions. That's a nice sound, it's a play there with the English word wander and the Latin word eric. thing. So the word stumbling, I was just thinking of the sense of that. Falling to air, right? You stumble and fall down, right? We use that, we use the word fall for moral failure too, right? Falling, right? Falling to sin, right? In other way you speak in all from grace. What's the name of the devil there, right? He's compared to the falling star, right? I saw who was there on day. It's what we stumble on. We stumble in our actions, we stumble in our thinking, right? Just like the church fathers, you know, when they're talking about our mind, when our mind speaks of, say, the Trinity, our mind stutters. You see that? Really very concrete, huh? I'm going to express now the mystery of the Trinity, right? Stuttering. Close to the heretic who rames. Yeah. Stuttering is close to stumbling, huh? A man who's stuttering is kind of stumbling over his stumbling. Close to it, right? But it's not quite as bad as stumbling, right? But stuttering is kind of an imperfection of speech, right? But notice you're carrying the thing over there, right? The word in Latin you have the, or in Greek rather, the word logos, right? Logos means first day word, right? And then later on it means the thought that the word signifies, right? So when we say in the beginning was the word and the word was towards God and the word was God, the word there is closer to thought than to what? Than the vocal sound, right? That signifies the thought, right? But, you know, there you see the word is being moved there, right? So when Thomas explains that he's going to explain this more as the thought of God, right? See? You know, you read my little poem, right? God the Father said it all in one word. I wonder when that word became man. Amen.