Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 95: The Second Way: Per Se and Per Accidens in Motion

Transcript
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But you'll point that out, right? It's not a first time something's in motion, right? It's not a first distance it goes, right? There's nothing first, right? But here the emphasis is upon the fact that the body that's in motion is itself divisible, right? And therefore the motion of the whole depends upon the motion of the part. And if the part is not in motion, then the whole would not be in motion, right? So how can motion belong first to the whole when the motion of the whole depends upon something other than the whole, namely the motion of the part, right? Okay? But it kind of adds something to it when you see that in the context there of the beginning of the seventh book where it refers back to the fact that in many other ways there's nothing, what? There are many other ways in which motion can not belong first to anything because when is it first in motion, huh? Right? See? What is the first distance it goes, right? What is the first time it's in motion, right, huh? There's no first. Okay? Those are different senses of first, right? Yeah. But I mean, it kind of seems to add something to this, right? You know, the way Thomas speaks. You know, this is kind of like a summary of the whole of the eight books of natural hearing, right? But if you go back to the context in the seventh book after he's finished the sixth book, right, where he starts to argue and develop this first argument, right? You know? There Thomas points out that not only in this way is there nothing first, but in other ways there's nothing first, right? You see? So if you understand in some way that if something is responsible for itself having something, right, that's got to belong first of all to that thing. But motion is not the sort of thing that can belong first of all to anything. Right? Okay? Although here he seems to be signaling out the fact it can't belong first to the whole because if it did, it wouldn't depend upon anything else, right? But the motion of the whole does depend upon the motion of the part. So if I can't have motion, if motion can't belong to me first, how can I be responsible for my own motion, right? If something has to belong to me first, to be what? An effect for me. Or for me to be responsible for it, right? Okay? If I move myself, right, then motion has to belong to me first. Motion can't belong to anything first. It needs to hold a thing in motion because it's composed. So it seems that the places Aristotle does distinguish and say what is that which is first moved. Well, he said you can, in some sense, you can designate a, you know... I don't know, but I don't know what I'm going to say. I don't know what I'm going to say. I don't know what I'm going to say. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds. Order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Pray for us. And help us to understand all that you ever did. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. These are the most complete editions, the art and Shakespeare editions, you know. They have, you know, these long deductions here, like in this one, it's 64 pages, you know. And then half the page is taken up with long notes, you know. Look at them, you know. There's actually several editions that have come out of that, you know. Like, some of these are like the third or the second, you know. You have to look in the thing. This is the, uh, this is the eighth edition. But, I mean, sometimes they'll put a new series out, and someone else will do a new edition of the, uh, work, and bring it up to date, and so on. But, what I like is these old, you know, high school editions, the new Hudson Shakespeare, huh? And they give you more what you want, you know, to know. And, uh, they have a little thing on diction, diversification, so you can get a little more sized up. But they're also older ones, and the people were more, they were common sense in those days, right? And, uh, one of my favorite deductions to Shakespeare is this thing here. It's just in the, in addition to As You Like It, huh? Shakespeare generally preferred to make up his plots and stories out of such materials as were most familiar to his audience. Like, for example, in this edition here, you can get, in the appendixes, a lot of these, you know, excerpts of these other sources, right? Now, this we have many examples, huh? But the fact is too well known to need dwelling upon, okay? He starts with observation, right? Shakespeare is very, uh, rarely of ever original, right? In the sense that he takes characters or plots and he'll have some antecedent, and sometimes many antecedents, huh? Of this we have many examples, but the fact is too well known to need dwelling upon. Now you start to reflect on this, right? Though surpassingly rich in fertility and force of invention, he was notwithstanding singularly economical and sparing in the use of it, which aptly shows how free he was from everything like a sensational spirit or habit of mind. Nature was everything to him, novelty nothing, or next to nothing. The true, not the new, was always the soul of his purpose. Then this nothing could better approve the moral healthiness of his genius. Hence, in great part, his noble superiority to the intellectual and literary fashions of his time. And incidentally, you know, the best discourse on fashion is in Shakespeare on Troyes and Cressida. He understood these fashions perfectly, but he deliberately rejected them, or rather struck quite above or beyond them. We rarely meet with anything that savors of modishness or modestness in his rickmanship. How will be the best judgment ever pronounced upon him is Ben Johnson's. He was not of an age, but for all time. For even so it is with the permanences of our intellectual and imaginative being that he deals, and not with any transgencies of popular or fashionable excitement or pursuit. And as he cared little for the new, so he was all the stronger in that which does not grow old, and which lives on from age to age in the perennial, unwithering freshness of truth and nature. To be carried hither and thither by the shifting mental epidemics of the day is but a tacit confession of weakness or disease. It only proves that one has not strength of mind enough to feel the soul of nature, or to live at peace with the solidities of reason. You never have anybody in the 20th century writing this way, right? And because the attractions of mere novelty had no force with Shakespeare, because his mind dwelt far above the currents of intellectual fashion and convention, his dramas stand exempt from the wrongs of time, and the study of them as a wholesome discipline in those forms and sources of interest which underlie and outlast all the fitting specialties of mode and custom. Then he ends up this with a little quote from a poet, huh? Kind of nice, appropriate, huh? Truths that wake to perish never, which neither listlessness nor mad endeavor, nor man nor boy, nor all that is at enmity with joy can utterly abolish or destroy. I like those little things. That's my favorite thing. Kitchen is very good, too, you know. Kitchen taught at Harvard there a long time ago. Sometimes you get, you know, and all these people, you know, from time to day get a very interesting note, huh? Take, for example, this note on Anthony's speech, huh? Act 3, scene 2 here. There's a lot of part of the speech there, he says. I am no orator, as Brutus is, but as you know me all, a plain, blunt man, that loved my friend, and that they know full well that gave me public need to speak of him. Now listen to this next couple lines. For I have neither wit nor words nor worth, action nor utterance, nor the power of speech to stir men's blood. I only speak right on. I tell you that what you yourselves, you know. But notice those words, huh? For I have neither wit nor words nor worth, action nor utterance, nor the power of speech to stir men's blood. Listen to Kittich's note on that. A complete list of the qualities of a good orator. And he starts to enumerate the six of them, right? Of course, we know Aristotle's rhetoric, you can see this is complete, huh? He doesn't give them in the logical order because he wants to, what? Alliterate, right? Had no wit, nor words, nor worth, right? But you touch in there upon the three means of persuasion, the character of the speaker, the way he moves the audience, right? The arguments or parents arguments he gives, and then the words in which he puts them and the style and so on, right? That Aristotle talks about in the third book. Now, why does Shakespeare do that? Huh? A complete list of the qualities of a good orator. There's an incredible precision in Shakespeare, right? And why is that so, you know? Wisdom. I mean, it's not the sort of thing you would catch, you know, when you hear the play in the theater and you weren't supposed to anyway because it would be too distracting, right? You know, but why does he have that precision? Apply that part of philosophy, he says, in one play, the character says, apply that part of philosophy that treats of happiness by virtue especially to be achieved. I can hardly give a better, succinct summary of what the Nicomachean ethics is about. It's about happiness by virtue to be achieved. That's what it's about. It's about happiness and virtue, right? and which would be necessary to achieve, to happiness, huh? You won't find that sort of thing on every page of cryptid, but I mean, in case you'll find that thing like that. Very, very impressive. You just have to discover things yourself. So, set aside Shakespeare for the time being, and go back to Tommaso, here, from Aquino. I think last time we were in the first argument, and we saw with Thomas that there are really two statements, or two premises to be proven and to be backed up, that are used in the main argument. And one statement is that everything that is in motion is moved by another, right? And we saw three arguments that Thomas gives from Aristotle through that, huh? And one was based upon what we learned in the sixth book, and that was the first argument, huh? The third argument is based on the definition of motion, huh? And then the middle argument was a, what, inductive argument, if you recall, huh? Okay. I don't know if you looked at the part there where, right after that, where he refers to a different use of the word motion there by Plato. Did we talk about that last time? Okay. That's kind of an aside here, but it's okay to take it up here a bit, huh? So let's look at that passage, huh? It's right after he gets those three arguments, huh? It should be known, however, that Plato, who lays down that every mover is moved, huh? He takes the name of motion more generally than what Aristotle does, huh? He says this. For Aristotle takes motion, or the word motion, strictly, right? According as it is the act of what exists in potency or in ability as such, right? In which way it is not except in divisible things and in bodies, as is proved in the sixth book of the physics, and he saw that. However, according to Plato, however, the thing moving itself is not a body, huh? For he takes motion for what? Any operation, huh? Thus that to understand and to opine, to think, would be a certain what? To be moved, right? In other words, grammatically, you could signify understanding by a verb, right? Just as walking, right? Or falling, or growing, right? So he's understanding the word motion there in this broader sense, huh? Which, he says, which way of speaking Aristotle himself touches upon in the third book about the, what? Soul, right? Okay? Or just like in the definition of, what? Reason there in Shakespeare, right? He had the word, what? Running, huh? Discourse, running, huh? Okay? But it's not really a motion in the strict sense. So, according to this way of speaking, therefore, Plato says that the first mover moves itself, right? Not by motion that way we defined it in the physics, but because he, what? Understands himself, right? And wills himself or loves himself, right? Okay? So, because God, what? Understands himself and loves himself, he, what? Moves other things, right? By loving himself, he loves, what? Other things, huh? He loves them freely, right? Okay? So, by moving himself, that's the understanding of loving himself, right? He moves other things, right? But that's using the word motion there in a, what? Loose sense, yeah. Yeah. Okay? Which is not in anything repugnant to the reasons or the arguments of Aristotle, huh? For it differs nothing to arrive at something first that moves itself according to Plato, understood in that way, right? And to arrive at something first that is altogether immobile, right? According to what? Aristotle. Okay? So that's an interesting little thing that Aristotle points out there, that Thomas points out. Okay? Okay, now he goes to the second proposition, to it that in movers and moved, one cannot, what? Go on, go forward, proceed forever, right? And he finishes, and again he proves this by, what? Three reasons, right? Okay? Of which the first is such, huh? If in movers and moved, one proceeded forever, it would be necessary that all of these infinite who was in moved would be, what? Bodies, right? Okay? Because everything that is moved is divisible and a body, as was proved in the, what? Sixth book of the physics, huh? Okay? So again, he's going back here to the sixth book of the physics, right? In the first proof. But every body that moves something else, being moved itself, at the same time, while it moves, being moves another, is moved, huh? Therefore, all of these infinite bodies are at once moved when one of them is moved, huh? But one of them, since it is finite, moves in a finite time. Therefore, all those infinite things are moved in a, what? Finite time. But this was shown to be impossible, again, back in the sixth book, right? That an infinite body, right, cannot move, what? Yeah, a finite distance, right? I don't, I don't understand that, could you say? Well, we don't go back to the sixth book right now, okay? What I'm trying to indicate now is how he's building, basing himself about what we saw in the sixth book, huh? Okay? Therefore, it is impossible that in movers and moved, one proceeds, what? Forever, huh? Okay? That Harvard is impossible, that the four said infinite things be moved in a finite time. He proves thus, the mover and the moved are necessarily, what? Together, right? As is proved inducing in the singular or in each of the species or forms of motion. But bodies are not able to be together except through either, what? Being continuous or by touching. Since, therefore, all of the four said movers and moved are bodies, as has been proven, is necessary that they be, as it were, one mobile, right? Because they're all, what? Together, right? So, it amounts to, what? The same thing as saying that you have an infinite body, right? A single body. Moving, right? Over a finite distance in a, what? Finite time, huh? Okay? And thus, one infinite thing is moved in a finite time, which is impossible, as was proved in the sixth book of the, what? Physics, huh? Okay? Now, the way he does it is basically by proportions, right? He's going to say that, if you go back to the sixth book, right? It's going to, in some period of time, right? In part of that finite time, it's going to move, what? Part of the distance, right? And therefore, whatever that part of the time is, or the whole time, right? So, the distance it moves, right? Will be a. the what? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes a difference whether you have a finite body moving an infinite distance in that period of time, right? Or you have an infinite body moving a what? Finite distance, huh? In both cases you have the infinite going over the what? Finite, right, huh? Okay. But in a part of that time, the finite is going to go over the infinite or vice versa, only part of it, right? And whatever part that amount of time you took is, right, of the whole time, so you won't be able to multiply that much, right, of the infinite body, right? Or take that much of the infinite body to go over. And so you not have gone a whole infinite distance, nor would an infinite body have gone over a finite distance in that particular period of time, huh? Do you remember the argument? Yeah. So that's based upon the 6th book again of the physics, huh? Now the second and third arguments are going to be very similar, but let's look at the second argument here first. The second reason to proving the same is such. In movers in moved, that are ordered, huh? Of which one in order is moved by another. This is necessary to be found that when the first mover is removed, or it ceases from motion, none of the others will move or nor be moved. Because the first is the cause of moving to what? All the others, right? But if the movers in moved in order are infinite, there will not be a first what? Mover, right? But all will be, as it were, middle what? Movers, huh? Therefore, nothing, none of the others is able to be moved, and thus nothing is moved in the world, huh? Now, that argument is very, very simple. But as Shakespeare says in the silence, huh? You know, he has a son where he complains about a whole bunch of things. And simple truth is called, what? Simplicity. Kind of putting on the two meanings there, right, huh? You know, you say something's a simpleton, right, huh? You know, okay? But he's complaining about simple truth sometimes, miscalled, what? Simplicity. Okay? Now, notice how this argument is proceeding here, huh? Let's take something very concrete. It used to illustrate this a bit, huh? Suppose you've got the locomotive here, right? Okay? Okay? And that's pulling a wagon here, okay? Boxcar, as you call it, right? And then, that's pulling what they sometimes call the, what? Caboose, right, huh? Okay? Caboose is, what? At the end of the train, huh? Okay? These little platforms out there, right, huh? Okay? They used to do the old campaigns, right? They'd go out of the country, and the speaker would like to try and stop it. He'd speak from the, what, uh, little platform at the end, huh? Actually, what happened, you know, when Dewey was running for presidency, huh? And he was speaking from the back platform, and I don't know what the, engineer did something up here, and all of a sudden the train jerk, right? He was speaking, oh! He's supposed to, you know, send something up, but, such and such, you know? And, of course, the press picked it up, you know, and the Democrats made, you know, oh, this, you know, brow-beating the poor. Gets the workers, eh? Yeah, so, I don't know how many boats have lost him, you know, huh? But, uh, anyway, now, if you were to say about these three, uh, things, the engine, the boxcar here in the middle, right, and the caboose, huh, the way you spell it, something like that, uh, what would you say is the mover, huh, of these three? Would you say the caboose is the mover? No. Because the caboose is not really pulling anything, is it? Okay, it's just being pulled, right? Okay? Now, you could say that the, what, boxcar here in some sense is pulling the caboose, right? Uh-huh. Okay? Well, it's pulling the caboose only because it is, what, pulled by the engine, right? So, most of all, you'd say it's the engine that's pulling the whole, what, train, right? Although, in some way, you could say that the car in the middle there, right, is, uh, pulling the thing, huh, okay? So, you could say it's a moved mover, right? Or, if I'm going to be more particular, you could say it's a pulled puller, okay? And, in general, it's an example of a moved mover, right? And Thomas uses the term there, a, um, middle mover, right, huh? Media moventia, right? Okay? Now, why do you call the move mover, or a pulled puller in particular here, why do you call that a, a middle mover, or a middle, um, puller, huh? Because there has to be something in front of it which is pulling it, in virtue of which it's pulling. Yeah, yeah. So, there's something before it, and something, what, after, right? And, if it had nothing before it, it wouldn't pull the, what, caboose at all, would it, huh? Okay? If you take away the engine, does it make any difference whether you have one or many of these wagons in between here, right? Because whether you have one or many, huh, uh, that, that series of, of linked are like, what, like one grand moved mover, right? And it wouldn't make any difference whether that series of moved movers, if it's many, would it be, uh, in some number, or would it be infinity of them? It would still be as one, what, moved mover, right? Okay? Okay? Now, if you say, then, that all you have is moved movers, right? All you have is these middle movers, right? And nothing before them. But you've already admitted that a middle mover, a moved mover, doesn't move anything unless there's something before it. And it makes no difference whether that middle mover is one in number, like in my example here, right? Or whether there be many moved movers, right? And it makes no difference whether those many are finite infinite, right? There's still like one grand, what, moved mover, right? But you can't move anything without something, what? Before it. Before it. But if every mover is a moved mover, then there is nothing before the moved mover, is there? And you already admitted that if there's nothing before the moved mover, it can't, what, move anything, right? So it must be a, what, an unmoved mover, right? An un-pulled, puller in this case, right? Before the pulled puller. You see the idea? It's a little bit like those, you know, like a chandelier or some kind of a lamp with the house you often have, where it's attached to the ceiling there, right? And then you come down, you have little links, you know? And you can add links if you want to, or subtract links, depending on how high you want the light to be above the table, right? Okay? So over our, kind of our family room table, kitchen table in a sense, breakfast there, we have one of these chains coming down, right? Okay? Now, the last chain, right? Well, let's say the lamp itself, it's not holding up anything, is it? But all these intermediary links are what? They're held up holders, right? They hold up something because, insofar as they're being held themselves up by something above them, right? Okay? Now, if you never... Attached to the ceiling, you just went up into the air out there, right? Would make any difference as to how many lings you added going up into the sky? Would it hold up anything? No. You've got to get to a ling that's attached, not to another what? A ling that's being held up by another ling. You've got to come to something like the roof or a beam or something, right? That you can screw it into or something, right? And then you can all be held up, right? And as far as the force that I'm going to sing, it makes no difference, right? Whether you have one little link in between, a lamp and the thing about, right? Or many, right? And if many, whether you have a limited number or an on-driver, right? You're still not going to hold up anything unless you get to something that is not held up by another ling in the same way. What's the example of the train here? This might be more exact, right, to see the point. Okay? I'm going to start with pizza's argument in the second book of wisdom, huh? But basically you could generalize that if you wanted to, to all the other kinds of cause besides the mover, huh? Just touch upon that a bit, huh? Suppose A is desired for the sake of B, huh? And A is in no way desired for its own sake of the sake of B. And B is desired for the sake of C. Now, would A be desired if B was not desired? And B would not be desired unless, what? C was desired, right? Okay. Now, can this go on forever? Can there be an infinite chain here? If you had an infinite chain here, what you'd have would be an infinity of means, really. And that whole chain of means is like one grand means that presupposes, what? Well, some end to which they are means, but there would be no end, right? Okay? It makes no difference whether between A and C I have one or me, right? As far as presupposing something before them. So, there must be some end, as Aristotle argues in the Nicolamachia Ethics, he's talking about happiness, right? There must be some end, some good, that is not desired for the sake of something, what? Other, yeah. Because if everything was desired only for the sake of something else, everything would be desired as a means. And nothing really is an end. And whether there's one or many things so desired, right? Even if you have a series of these things, I desire each one for the sake of something else. The whole series is like one grand means, huh? Desire for the sake of something else. And so there's nothing else besides it. If everything is in that series, then the whole series is one grand means. Desire for the sake of something else, but it can't be desired for the sake of something else, because there's nothing else. You see? So, I mean, this argument could be applied to other, what? What causes, right? Besides the mover, right? Okay? Of course, you could say that you couldn't begin. You couldn't begin to desire something, because you can't desire A before you desired B, and you couldn't desire B before you desired C. If everything was desired for the sake of something else, how would you begin to desire anything? Anything you tried to begin, to start to desire it with, you couldn't begin with it, because it was supposed to be desired for something else before you desired it. Because it's not desired for its own sake, but for the sake of something else. Do you follow me? Okay. When you do apply it to the end, like this, do you have to have an actual knowledge, say, of the end? How do you have to have the end in mind? Can you have it there? In a mystic confused way you have to end. But still, actually, is there, maybe I have a knowledge of, say, happiness in a confused manner. Yeah. But do I have to have that knowledge in me actually, or is it essential, is it a sufficiency to have it there virtually or something? I have to have it in a confused way, yeah. Because the will, the object of the will, is the good, is known by reason. Okay? So, what you're saying here, in general, is that a caused cause cannot be, there cannot be a caused cause, if you want to generalize this, without some, what, cause before it, right? And the same way there can't be many caused causes without something before them. Because that series of caused causes is like one, what, grand caused cause. It makes no difference as far as that series being like one grand cause-cause, whether it's a series of a number of cause-causes or an infinite series, right? But you can't really have the middle without having something, what, before. In a sense, it's almost like a contradiction in the words, almost, huh? To say that you have a middle thing, right, with nothing before it. How can something be in the middle? There's nothing before and after it, right? You look before and after, as you say. There can't be a middle without something before and after it. Even in the poetics, when we define beginning, middle, and end, you know, and a good plot is beginning, middle, and end. That's the definition of middle. What comes after something and before something, right? So this is what he means by a middle mover, right? It's essentially the middle, right? There's something after it, in the sense that it's moving something, right? But it's after something itself, right? Because it's a moved mover, right? And it's moving something only because it's being moved itself. So there cannot be a moved mover, functioning as a moved mover, right? With nothing before it. Do you see that? And he says the third proof comes back to about almost the same thing, except that he proceeds in a, what, transposed order, right? And he begins from the superior, right? Okay? He's using now the distinction between the, what, principal or chief mover and what we would call the, what, tool, right? Okay, and the tool, though, is really like a, what, moved mover. That's what a tool is, huh? Okay? So he says that which moves instrumentalitare, that which moves as a tool, right, is not able to move unless it be something that chiefly or principally moves, huh? But if one proceeds forever, in movers and moved, all will be, as it were, what, instrumental movers, right? All will be as tools, because they'll be laid down as being moved movers. And nothing, therefore, will be, what, as the chief mover, huh? Therefore, nothing will be, what, moved, huh? Okay? So tool is something you use to achieve your end, right, huh? Okay? And if there's no one to use, use it, it's not going to be used for the end, is it, right? Okay? And it makes no difference whether you're using one thing or many things, right? But you still can't, what, yeah, yeah, if they're being used. If they are causes only insofar as they're used. That's what a tool is, huh? Okay? So. As I said, it doesn't amount to too much different from that second argument, except he's looking at it a little bit differently, right, from the starting point of the chief mover, right? The one who's using other things to achieve its end, right? It's tools, right? But tools, almost the same definition there as what the middle mover would be, right? So in a sense, no matter how many tools you have there, right, you still can't accomplish anything. It's just one to use the tools, right? I said, the principal mover. And thus the proof of both propositions, which are supposed in the first way of demonstrating this. And thus it's clear, right, the proof of both propositions, which are supposed in the first way of demonstration, by which Aristotle proves that there is a first immobile mover. So notice, you're only a part of that, what he's gone through here, in the Summa Theologiae, in the argument for motion, right? You know, there's one reason for each of the premises, right? And here you have three reasons, right? And they're spelled out more, huh? Okay. Now the second way that he's going to go on to now, which is the second argument, for instance of God, in the chapter on the proof of existence of God, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, and the article in the Summa, in both of them there's five proofs, right? But in the Summa Contra Gentiles, the first two are from motion, right? And then the third one is from the, what, efficient cause, the maker, right? But in the Summa Theologiae, you have one from motion, and then the second one is one from the, what, efficient cause, okay? So the Summa Concentives is much more full here. The second way, he says, is such, huh? If every mover is moved, huh? Either this proposition or this statement is true per se, or it's true what? Yeah, yeah. Incidentally, when Thomas says propositio, what does he mean? Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I'm going to say something about it, right? Herstal is a book on what I would call in English the statement, right? Okay? And in Latin, they'll say, what, enunciation, right? Okay? Propositio, originally, is naming what? The premise in a syllogism, huh? Okay? And pro-positio, what does that mean? The premise before. Yeah, okay? It's something laid down, right? That's what position means, huh? Before, or for the sake of some, what? Conclusion. Okay? So, originally, propositio is naming not the statement by itself, but the statement insofar as it's a, what? Prior to the syllogism, insofar as it's a, what? A, uh, as an order to a conclusion, right? Okay? Now, the Greek word for propositio there is protasis, and from the Greek word proteno, which is even more excellent in that way, because it has a sense of, what? Stretching forward. Okay? The, the premise, in English now we call it a premise, and I always use that spelling, but some people would use this one, you'll find it more often, with the ISA. Something sent before, right? Placed before, right? But the Greek word is more, what? Uh, close to the meaning, right? It's something that, stretching forward, right? It's the idea of stretching forward to the, what? Yeah. Yeah. But, men got accustomed to calling a statement a, what? Yeah. And so Thomas sometimes follows that custom, right? But it's not a particularly good custom. But it's customary, right? Just like, you know, that word proportion, right? Proportion got to mean, what? Analogy, right? Rather than ratio, right? Excuse me. Proportion got to mean ratio, right? It actually means analogy, right? Okay? So I don't like to follow those ways of speaking, but, but, uh, it's customary in English now to refer to a statement as a proposition, uh, when it's speaking. That's why I like to call it a statement, right? Rather than a proposition. Did you ever hear this expression? Define your terms. Okay? It's very common. Define your terms. But actually, the word term comes from where? Yeah. And from the logic of the third act, huh? When you have a syllogism, right? You know, like, let's say, every, uh, mother is a woman, let's say, is a woman. This is a syllogism, right? A speech in which these two statements lay down, right? Another one's going to follow necessarily. That no man is a, what? Mother, right? So, these two are called, what? Premises, huh? And this is called the major premise, and this is called the minor premise, huh? But mother and woman and man are called, what? And mother, or woman here, would be called the, what? Middle term, right? And mother would be called the major term, and man the minor term. So, they're words, but they're called terms because they're the end of the resolution, right? The prior analytics, huh? What does that mean? The prior taking apart, right? Okay? So, when you take apart syllogism, you take apart, first of all, the two premises. You take the two premises apart into, what, three terms. Okay? So, why don't you say define your terms? Why don't you say define your, what? Words. Words. Why call the word a term here, right? Well, I suppose it's because eventually men, you know, are reasoning, right? That's kind of the act that most characterizes reason, huh? And so, when they think of the terms in the syllogism, they want you to define them, right? But really, what you're trying to do there is define a word, right? See what the word means, huh? And you can say what the word mother means, you know, apart from it being a major term, right? That's what they do with the media. It's kind of a strange way we pick it up in daily life, huh? You know, influenced by a logic, huh? They kind of used to be amused by, you know, this expression you find and things, you know, I'm in a predicament, huh? You know? Apparently, it's kind of a funny thing because the conduits you'd expect, you know, they hear the abstract, you know.