De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 3: The Soul as Principle of Life: Definition and Desirability

Transcript
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knowledge of the what? Best thing, right? And if the first cause is the best thing, then everything fits together. But if the first cause is matter, and that's not the best thing, then you've got schizophrenia, right? Two different ends, right? Doesn't make any sense. So to get the ninth book of wisdom there, we'll see how natural it is to see that the first cause is also the best thing, right? But notice, if you apply this, you know, to the knowledge of God, how much better is God than other things? Infantly better, right? He's infinitely better than all other things even together, right? So therefore, a knowledge of God is infinitely more desirable than knowledge of all other things, right? So when Augustine says, you know, miserable the man who knows all other things but doesn't know God, blessed the man who knows God even if he knows nothing else, right? Blessed also the man who knows God and other things, but not the more so for knowing other things, but for knowing God alone, right? It's like there's really no comparison, right? So suddenly I just throw all my books away and just accept my theology books and buy it alone. Right? Okay? Because now it's infinitely better, right? So we only study these lower things in order for the sake of what? Yeah. Thomas says, they study the body so I can know the soul. They study the soul so I can know the angels. Study it so I can know God. And that's it. I think my old teacher, Kisari, he had a nice little passage in his translation there of the first two books of the physics, but a nice little passage there from him with the great, you know, who said that everything else we study, we study for the sake of knowing God. And if a man studies other things for the sake of something other than knowing God, unless he'd be forced to it by some necessity, he says, right? He's a pervert. Perverted. Perverse desire to know, right? So Aristotle, at this point here, he doesn't distinguish which of these criteria is more important, right? But as I say, he does in another place, and Thomas, in the commentary, refer to that place. He's saying, due to both of these, we should reasonably put first the inquiry about the soul. He's saying that the knowledge of the soul, in some way, right, excels the rest of our knowledge, at least in actual philosophy, right? Because of the excellence of the thing being, what? Known, right? But also, because there's a certitude there, right? They've got to be very careful about it. Because in some sense, the knowledge of the soul is something very difficult. Very difficult to get certitude about the soul. But in some way, the knowledge of the soul is very certain. And that's seen in a way, even Descartes, right? He says, I think, therefore I am, right? One is very certain that he has a soul from an inward experience. I sense, right? I desire, I think, you know, and so on, right? I'm very much aware that I have a soul. And because it's an inward experience, you know, I have all this problem that you have with some of the elephant senses, right? But could you also say that the soul is the best thing in the material world? Not simply speaking, right? Because the angels are better, or God is better. But in the material world, is anything better than the soul? Well, you know, it's not saying too much about what the soul is. What do we understand in the beginning here when we talk about the soul? Because one thing that strikes us is kind of strange here. In the first book, you can actually hear it. I mean, I thought he said about the soul. When Aristotle looks at what his predecessors said about the soul, they all have different opinions as to what the soul is, but they have no disagreement that man and any of the other animals have a soul. In fact, you know, in Latin, the word animal comes from the Latin word for soul. We still use the expression animate matter for what? It's a synonym for living matter, right? Okay. Land that matter means matter that has a what? Soul. Okay? But the reason why the animals name for the soul more than the plant is that the, what, life is more manifest than the animals than the plants. It's kind of different. Now, what did the Greeks understand by the word soul so that they had no disagreement as to the existence of the soul, but they were investigating what it is? Because nowadays, when you talk about the soul, there's kind of a conspiracy to eliminate the word soul from the Bible. You notice that? You notice there's a bit of mass on Sunday, right? That these readings, you know, I'm familiar with from youth, they're systematically removing the word soul, okay? Let's just say, my soul magnifies the Lord, so my being proclaims the Lord, something, right? Okay? Does it profit a man if he came to the whole world and suffered the loss of his, what, soul? Does it profit a man if he came to the whole world and suffered the loss of himself? Those translations. And if you ask people, you know, do you have a soul? They probably say, well, I don't know. What's that? You know? And why is it that for the Greeks, there's no doubt at all? No question that you have a soul. It's obvious. The question is, what is the soul that you have? Now, you might say in this whole Greek tradition, from Thales all the way down to, let's say, Shakespeare, right? The existence of the soul is obvious to everybody. And I often quote this one passage there from Much Ado About Nothing. I think I mentioned that before, but I don't know if you know this play, Much Ado About Nothing. But, I guess, the word nothing, which is like the word noting. Okay? You know the play, Much Ado About Nothing? Well, in that play, anyway, Hero, right, who was getting married, on the night before her wedding, another young lady, right, has a conversation with a man outside the window, right, adopting the name Hero, right? This is a plot of the little Don John, right? And the groom, on the night before his wedding, he thinks that his bride-to-be is having a, what, an affair, right? Okay? He didn't see it, but he sees the conversation, right? He sees the thing. So, with his ally, he decides, you know, to denounce her in front of everybody in the congregation, you know. And, of course, she faints, right, you know, okay? And, uh, uh, they march off, you know, after she faints, right? And, uh, the friar there, he's watching the girl, right? And he, he, he, he, they read faces, right? And that their fainting is not due to, what, exposure, right? But to, you know, this indignation, you know, the shame, you know, to this false charge, right? Okay? And so he says, well, let's throw out that she has died, right? And, you know, and then we'll try to find out the truth about this, right? Okay? So, um, well, eventually, of course, if you find out the truth, you have to play how they do it. But anyway, um, but, uh, Beatrice, who's, uh, Benedict is, uh, her boyfriend, if you want to put it that way, um, Beatrice wants Benedict to go, what, challenge the groom, right? Because she's a cousin of Hero, right? And, uh, he says, well, um, she's sure that Hero is innocent, right? Okay? And she says, I'm as sure that she's innocent as that I have a soul. Okay? I'm not that way of speaking, right? In fact, if I was to say, I'm as sure about that as I am that 2 plus 2 is 4, right? That would be a way of saying what? I'm very sure about it, right? Yeah? But anyway, Notice there, you find reflected that same thinking that goes all the way back to the Greeks, right? He's very sure that, we'd be sure, that hero because of his innocence is in this charge, right? He's just sure about that, he's just a soul. Now, part of the problem is, as Deconic explains in his essay, Induction to the Study of the Soul, is just in the word itself, right? And you wrote the Induction of the Soul in French first, right? So he takes an example from one of Moldier's plays, right? And the man's distinction between poetry and prose, right? And you probably make that distinction between poetry and prose when you're a kid, right? In great school, something like that. Of course, the man finds out, I've been speaking prose all my life, I didn't know it! Well, you know, this is a comedy, right? You see, but the point is there, the problem is just, we need to be, what? In the word, right? It's not to know it to work out. So, when we hear the word soul, you see, if we hear it at all nowadays, we probably hear it only in the context, maybe, of the Church, right? Or in the context of the Bible before these changes, right? And you're thinking of the immortal soul of man, and so on, right? And what Christianity says about the immortal soul, and so on, right? And that is not obvious, right? So, if you're thinking of that, in particular, what the Church might teach or touch upon as to what the soul is, or something about what the soul is, that's not obvious to everybody, right? What do the Greeks understand by the word soul, right? Well, what they understood simply by the word soul was what you might call the first cause of life within living bodies, right? This is kind of like the meaning of what the word could be, right? The Greek word would be psuche, huh? The Latin word would be anima, right? And his word was soul. Now, is it obvious to everybody that some bodies are alive and some are not? Everybody knows that, right? Okay? There may be some question, right? In some cases, right? But that cat that comes around here when I'm lecturing sometimes, I have no doubt the cat is alive, right? But the stone out there, you know, not alive, right? Okay? And secondly, everybody has this rough notion of life as being what? Self-motion. Okay? My stock example there, you know, you're walking down the path there in the woods or something like that, and you, what, kick a stone, right? And it rolls a little bit. You know, it gets alive to you. If you step on something, right, without kicking it or something like that, I'll say, shoot your crud. You see? It's all right! Okay? That's it? Okay? And sometimes, you know, I see, you know, in the carpet at home, there's a little speck on the floor, and I know it's a bug or something like that, and it's got it, and just a piece of thread or something, you know? But other times, it shoots it off. So, why do we call this one thing alive in the stone, although it moves, right, when I kick it, we don't call it alive. Because the one thing seems to, what, move itself, right? Okay? I'm taking that as a very simple example there, because it shows that we have in mind, and we're going to spell it out all the time, we don't think of life as something being motion, but as being, what, self-motion, right? Okay? And that means that the cause of the motion is, what, within, right? So, everybody knows that there is a cause of life, right, within living bodies, right? Right? That's what the soul is. That's what the word means, right? You see? In that sense, the existence of the soul is, what, obvious in our experience. What it is, is not obvious, right? You see? But that some bodies are alive and some are not is clear in our common experience in the world, right? And that the ones that are alive are alive because they seem to move themselves, right? And therefore, they have motion whose cause is within, right? And so we call that cause within the soul, right? So if you use the word soul in that way, then it's obvious that there is a soul, but not what it is, right? But yet, it's more narrow meaning of the word soul, where you're thinking just of the human soul, right? And you're thinking just of what the, you may have heard in some way through the church, or if I even remember the church, you've heard, people are members of the church, that the soul is some kind of immaterial, immortal thing inside of us, right? That's not obvious, right? Okay? But there's a immortal and material soul within us, right? Okay? As I say, it's so common here that even the, what, lack of his name, the animal, from the word soul, those are the philosophers who do that. So I'm sure I have a soul. I'm sure I'm alive, right? I'm more sure I'm alive than if you are alive, right? And sometimes you get a dead fragment in the electrical shock and the legs move or something like that, right? Maybe somebody's moving you, I don't know. But I know I'm moving myself, right? So, I'm sure, very sure that I have a soul. In that sense, it's very, what, certain, the knowledge of the soul, right? Okay? Not as to what it is, but that it is, right? That I have a soul. So the knowledge of the soul has, in one way, an excellence as far as, what, certitude is concerned, right? Okay? But now, in this world, all these material things are bodies, right? Which are better, the living body or the non-living body? And the living body is better than the non-living body because that is a soul. So the soul must be the best thing in the whole, what, material world, right? So in terms, then, of the two criterion, where one knowledge is better than another, that it's more certain, right? Or that it's about a better thing. In both of these, we put the soul, the knowledge of the soul, in first, what? It's about the place, he says, right? So he's touching here upon, you know, what he's aiming at, to consider the soul, right? But also the desirability of this knowledge, right? Now, in the second paragraph here, he goes on to say how it's useful for knowing, what? Other things, huh? It seems also that in regard to every truth, knowledge of the soul gathers great things, but the greatest in regard to nature. For it, the soul is like the principle of animus, right? Okay? But, you know, as he's saying here that some way, a knowledge of the soul is important for all of what? We could say philosophy, right? Let's unfold it a bit like Thomas does in the commentary, right? Aristotle is in the Nicomachean Ethics, right? He's in the Ethics. And Ethics treats, as Shakespeare says, of happiness, by virtue especially to be achieved. About happiness, by virtue especially to be achieved. The virtues are where? In different powers of the soul, right? In different abilities of the soul, huh? And so... If you study the soul, and you know the different powers and abilities of the soul, then you can find in what powers or abilities are the different virtues, huh? So, for example, if you take the so-called cardinal virtues, which are very well-known, you have foresight, or prudence, justice, courage, and temperance, or moderation, right? Well, foresight is in reason, and justice is in the will. Courage and moderation are in the emotions, but two different kinds of emotions, which Aristotle would establish all of these in the Deanna, right? The subjects, therefore, in which the virtues are found are studied in what? The Deanna, right? So, Aristotle says the knowledge of the soul is the ethics, something like the knowledge of the body is to the medical act, huh? And just as the man in the medical act knows something about the body, what it is by nature, right? So the student of ethics and of the virtues has to know something about the soul, and the powers of the soul, and so on, huh? When Thomas begins his premium to logic, huh, he recalls what Aristotle says about the acts of reason in the, what, third book about the soul. And then, logic is going to be directing those acts of reason, huh? And, uh, when Albert the Great begins, his logic, he says, the first thing to be talked about in logic is universal. Well, how do you know that? Well, a thing, as Boethius says, a thing is singular when sensed, but universal and understood. So the first thing to talk about in logic is universal, of what it says, huh? He's always quoting Boethius there, right? But we learned that in the Deanna, right? The sense is known as singular, but the reason known as the, what, universal. So it's very necessary for ethics and logic, huh? And then for, what, for wisdom, huh? Well, the knowledge of the soul, especially the knowledge of the human soul, is kind of the starting point for wisdom, huh? Until you know there's something immaterial that can exist apart from a body, you can't, uh, you know that there is a science of wisdom, right? And when we try to know what these immaterial things are like, because they're immaterial, they're going to have understanding and will, so that the angels there of God, as we've come to know them later on, have understanding and will. We have to understand your own understanding and will before you can understand the understanding and will of the angels, right? Because our own understanding and will are, to some extent, like their understanding and will. I feel the difference is what I have to say. But you can't see the likeness or the differences without first knowing our understanding and will. So the knowledge of the soul, in a sense, is a gateway to the knowledge of all the immaterial substances. That's why Thomas says, I study the body so I can know the soul, and I study the soul so I can know the angels. The angels, like I know God. This seems to contribute to every part, you might say, of what? Philosophy, right? Yeah? It contributes, in a way, to mathematics, because you see the kind of separation from matter that takes place there in the mind. I don't know the Hebrew there, but I was giving that lecture there to the College of Humanities there, the Legionaries of Christ. Now, that lecture in that fragment, that words of Friar Lawrence, wisely and slow they stumble and run fast, right? But in the Bible I have at home there, that comes from one of the verses, in a way, of the book of Proverbs, and the first part is where there's no knowledge of the soul, there's nothing good, right? And then it says wise and slow, right? I don't know what the Hebrew says there, you know, because I find a different translation in the Bible. Look at it, it's a different translation of it. In the Hebrew, it's kind of hard to translate, but it's kind of interesting, right? But here you see how important the knowledge of the soul is, right? See? So he's talking about, in itself, a knowledge of the soul is most desirable, because this is the best thing in the natural world, right? And it has great certitude, because you're very sure you have a soul. But it seems to also contribute to all of our knowledge, right? And I was mentioning how logic and ethics and wisdom, right? We all seem to, what? Depend upon a knowledge of the soul. And of course, the importance of a knowledge of the soul for theology is very clear, huh? So it's, you know, it shows you how terrible it is now, you know, people with misunderstanding, not knowing what the word soul means at first, and so on, and dropping that word soul. You know? Bad translations now. I don't see any texts, you know, that I, you know, you hear in that, do we admit to use in the scriptures on Sunday, in the parishes? The word soul has been dropped. You still have the word soul in the catechism of the Catholic Church, right? It's obviously based, the catechism of the Catholic Church is based not only upon tradition, but upon the Bible, right? So why is, you know, crazy, crazy, you're dropping the word, right? That's the old joke we used to have in National Review, you know? You don't think about something hard enough, it becomes unthinkable. There's no truth to that, you know? People haven't thought about the soul, you know, in a long time. But the, probably it comes to the fact that they just do experimental science now, right? And the soul doesn't mean you contribute much to experimental science, so. That's not the way you know it, anyway, right? It makes you turn on experience. Yeah. Yeah. So the definition that you put up as the first possible life for the living body as to not so much derive from their words. Well, that's the definition of the name, right? What did they understand by the word soul, right? So they, you know, so they were all agreeing as to that much? Yeah, yeah, yeah. As Aristotle says, he didn't have to, in the rest of Book 1, he'll translate that to the agreement, but in the rest of Book 1, Aristotle will show how they tried to investigate the soul through this idea of motion, right? Self-motion, and then through the idea of what? Sensation, right? Sensing, right? Okay. Mainly those two things, huh? Life is found in, what? Animals more than plants. Because life is more hidden than plants, huh? But the animals are alive because they, what, ooze themselves from one place to another because they sense, right? Well, what is the source of these two, right? That's what they're guessing. What paragraph is Skopas? Well, in the first two paragraphs, he has, in a sense, more than just a Skopas because he has the desirability of it, right? That's kind of applied there, really, huh? But now in the third paragraph, he's giving the order, right? Yeah. We seek to consider and to know the nature and substance of the soul, what it is, right? And let's see the rest of Book 1 after the premium, which you don't have here, but the rest of Book 1 is looking through what the ancients beforehand said about this, right? Okay. But in the end, the second book, he will define what the soul is. And then he's going to take up the properties in the way of the soul. Using the word accidents here, not as opposed to properties, right? And he says, some of these accidents seem to be proper passions of the soul, but some seem to be in animals because of the soul. He's hitting there at the difference between what? Powers or abilities like the ability to understand, right? And the ability to choose which are in the soul and not in the body. But most of these abilities, like the ability to digest your food, right? The ability to grow, the ability to reproduce yourself, even the ability to sense. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. in the body through the fact that you have a soul. So he's going to consider the soul first, and then the, what? Abilities of the soul. Now, that could possibly mislead you as to actually how Aristotle proceeds. Because he's going to point out, a little bit later on here, he raises the questions here, the third part of the difficulty. He's going to raise the question of, really, four things, and the order in which you have to know these four things. The soul and its powers or abilities, the acts of these powers, and the objects of those acts. So the soul has many abilities. The ability to understand, the ability to choose, the ability to sense, the ability to move from one place to another. The ability to digest, the ability to reproduce yourself, and so on. And these abilities have got different acts, like the act of understanding, right? The act of growing, right? Act of sensing, right? Act of choosing, right? Then you have the objects of these acts, like color, sound, food, and so on, right? And he's going to raise a question about that. Excuse me. Look at paragraph five. I'll just jump ahead for a moment here. Moreover, if there be not many souls, but parts, by parts he means parts of the power, ability of the soul, whether to seek first the whole soul, or the parts. But it's difficult to determine how these parts are by nature different from each other. And whether one needs to inquire about the parts first, or the works of these, meaning the acts of these, right? There's not really a good translation there, the works of these, more the acts. Understanding, or the mind, which should be considered first, sensitive. sensitive. But if one should seek first the acts, someone will then be at a loss, and one must seek first the things corresponding to these, the objects. Okay? Now, let me just a little bit translated here. Should we consider first the soul, or its powers, right? When you consider the powers, and the acts of the powers, should you consider first the abilities, or powers, or the acts? Again, the acts have objects, right? Should you consider first the act, or the object, right? Should you consider first the soul, or the ability to see? Should you consider first the ability to see, or seeing? Should you consider first seeing, or color? Right? Okay? You know, you're raising it there, in that fifth paragraph, as a difficulty, right? A question, or a series of questions, right? But when you determine the truth, later on, you're going to say, we know the, what? Acts through the objects. And we know the powers, through the acts. And we know the soul, through its, what? Powers or abilities. That's what is going to determine that truth thereon. In paragraph five, it's raising a question, right? In other words, is seeing the same thing as hearing? Well, both sensing, what's the difference? The object. Yeah. Because seeing is sensing color, right? Or light. Hearing is sensing sound, right? So if I don't know the difference between color and sound, how do I know the difference between seeing and hearing? So the object really has to be known before the acts, right? Which is more known to us? Seeing or the ability to see? In fact, I wouldn't know I had the ability to see unless I, what? You saw something. Yeah. And, you know, if I get up some morning and I can't get out of bed, I've lost my ability to walk or something, right? Okay? But I can get out of bed and walk. I mean, I still have the ability to walk. Think when you're in the morning, right? You open your eyes in the morning and you couldn't see, right? You know? Say, oh my gosh, I'm blind, right? In the middle of the night, right? And the soul is going to be known by its, what? Ability, right? Okay? I mentioned that and I'm getting kind of ahead of myself there because one might misunderstand what he says here, right? In paragraph 3. We seek to consider and to know the nature and substance of the soul and then whatever are accidents of it, right? You might say, we're going to consider the soul and what it is before he considers the powers of the soul, right? And Neffrey might think, well, then he thinks that the soul is more known to us than the powers, right? That's not the way he shows that you're on. So, how do you resolve that apparent contradiction? We know the objects before the acts and the acts before the powers and the powers before the soul. We're going to argue later on that the soul is immortal because it has the ability to understand that and understanding is not in the body. We're going to have to understand the ability to understand by understanding and understanding. We have to understand understanding by what it's a knowledge of. So, how can he then, as he would do at the beginning of the second book, define the soul, right? Then go on to take up, in the rest of book two, after that, he'll take up the powers that we have in common with the plants and then the powers we have in common with the animals, right? And not until the third book of the powers that are unique to man. How can he do that? You made a brief comment on when he says some of these accidents seem to be proper passions of the soul while some seem to be in animals because of that, because of the soul. You've got to say that some abilities of the soul, right, are in the body, right, through the soul, right? Okay. Other abilities, like the ability to understand and the ability to choose, right, the understanding of the will, are in the soul and not, yeah, not in the body, right? Okay. But, yeah, the group of the animals, right, it's just, you know, indicating that, right? But what's the order of the right? Well, when he investigates the soul in the rest of book 1, which we have in that transite here, he points out how the predecessors before him tried to investigate the soul through the fact that animals sense and move from one place to another, right? Okay. So they were, in fact, investigating the soul, to its, what, its operations, its activities, right? Okay. They were going from this towards the soul, right? Okay. And when there, they were going to be going to be Aristotle determines what the soul is, in a general way, in the second book, at the end of the second book, he is still, what, proceeding from a kind of general knowledge of the acts and powers of the soul. But then he's going to take up each one of the powers and deal with it much more distinctly, right? Which leads to have a more distinct knowledge of the soul as he goes through each of the kinds of powers in particular, right? Okay. So, if you didn't realize that, you might misunderstand the whole order here. If you just look at what he says here in the third paragraph, he says he's going to define what the soul is, say what the soul is, so the nature and substance of the soul means what the soul is. He's going to determine that before he takes up the powers, right? But maybe it can be more explicit here, right? He's going to come to a knowledge of what the soul is, in a kind of general way, through its acts and its powers, okay? But he's going to study the powers in a more distinct way, right? And there are no other various kinds of souls, right? The plant soul and the animal soul and the understanding soul, as Shakespeare calls it, when he deals with those powers more in particular, right? Okay. Now, let me just stop in that little bit here and a couple other texts here, which I just got in my turn here, but I'll leave them with you and you can reproduce them if you wanted to. The first one here is read upon something I was going to bring out here next, but it's taken from the Summa Contra Gentiles, the third book here, chapter 56, but I've got the title here. He says, no knowing power knows anything except by reason of its own object, its own proper object. For we do not know by sight something except insofar as it is, what? Colored, right? But the understanding's own object is the what it is, as the substance of a thing, as is said in the third book about the soul. We'll see that when we get to the third book, right? That the our reason's own object is the what it is, of something we sense or imagine. Therefore, whatever the understanding knows about something, it knows through a knowledge of the substance of that thing, what that thing is. Whence in every demonstration through which become known to us the proper accidents, right? I mean, the properties, we take as a principle the what it is, as is said in the first book of Posture Analytics. Now, you're going to see that very clearly in geometry, right? It's through a knowledge of what right angle is, what triangle is, and so on, that we eventually come to know that a triangle has interior angles equal to right angles. If, however, he says, the substance of something, if, however, the understanding knows the substance of some things, through accidents, as is said in the first book about the soul, it's coming right up now, right next, where Aristotle says, and he quotes Aristotle, that the accidents confer a great part to a knowledge of what it is. This, he says, is per accidents. In so far as the knowledge of the understanding arises from the what? Senses. And thus, through a knowledge of sensible accidents, is necessary to arrive at a knowledge of the substance of what it is. On account of which this does not have place in mathematics, he says, but in actual things only. I know what he's saying there is, huh? And just take geometry, which is the first mathematical science there, and take plane geometry. Everything's on the plane, on the surface, right? Triangle, square, circle, right? So you can know directly, right, and kind of immediately, before anything else, what this is. Triangle, circle, square, and so on. And you know the soul in that way? No. See? Okay? And it's because now it starts with our what? Senses, right? The exterior thing, you know? We know color and sound, and so on. And then we know our sensing color and sound, and then we know, you know? And we work our way back, and then we're way to what the soul is. And that's the difference, in a way, between naturality of bliss, as he says, and mathematics, right? I just had a little patsy on my cross the other day, so that's a nice one. Yeah? Maybe make an objection to that by saying that this, we know the soul, not only through our senses, but through our inward experience, which is not just through our senses, so maybe we can start with the knowledge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you'll see with the Greeks, you know, the early Greeks there, they kind of confused the understanding of the senses, huh? And so you have to eventually distinguish the understanding or reason from the senses, huh? And you'll see them doing that in the beginning of the third book, right? Okay? You know, the problem the moderns have, you know, with you're awake or you're asleep, right? You know? Because imagining is like sensing, right? And in a dream, you confuse imagining with sensing, don't you? Okay? So, when you wake up again, you realize there's a difference between seeing something and imagining it, right? But we also confuse imagining with what? Thinking, huh? Imagine that's so. I think that's so, right? You know, so Shakespeare, you know, in the, when the chorus speaks there in Henry V, you know, and he's trying to get your imagination to fill out what's on the stage, right? And sometimes they use the word thought, sometimes they use the word images. Like we do in daily life, we use these interchangeably, right? So Aristotle then has to distinguish between imagining and, what, thinking, right? And so only after he distinguishes between imagining and thinking that he begins to talk about that part of the soul by which it thinks and understands, huh? Okay? And that's why we borrow words from the senses, huh? When you grasp what I'm saying, take it from the sense of touch, huh? Do you see what I mean? You know? Take it from the eye, right? No taste, no judgment. Senses are more known to us, right? And so we have to eventually, what, distinguish thinking from sensing, and that's not too hard to do, but thinking and imagining is more hard to do, right? And distinguish eventually between an image and a thought, huh? Of course, you know, the, I think I mentioned how John Locke there, he confuses image and thought, huh? He calls them interchangeably an idea, right? But the average person does that too, right? An idea, what do you mean? You're imagining something or you have a thought. What's the difference? You know? You know? So you have to gradually separate thinking and thought from imagining and image, huh? And even that from sensing, huh? So we tend to start from that, from the senses and gradually go towards the reason, right? That's why it resembles a bit what you do in wisdom, right, where you go towards the material, huh? Now, the other text I've got here is the one from the commentary of Thomas on Vyethius' De Trititate, huh? And Vyethius, when he's contrasting the three sciences that we spoke about before, he says that natural philosophy, who sees the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right And Mathematics, he says, precedes Dischief Unibilitaire. And Wisdom, he says, precedes, or in Physics, precedes Intellectualitaire. Natural Philosophy precedes Abilitaire, Mathematics Dischief Unibilitaire, and Wisdom Intellectualitaire. But Thomas has a whole article, he's one of these words. And I'm not going to go into all of that. We try to explain what it means to say that Natural Philosophy precedes Abilitaire. Well, Thomas says there are three meanings to preceding Abilitaire. And one meaning, he says, is that you perceive from something of reason, that we study in logic, say, like genus and species and difference and so on. Another way we speak of preceding Abilitaire, when something is, what, reasonable, but not known for sure. So you're still thinking about it. The third meaning of Abilitaire is that you're preceding in the way that is characteristic of Ratio, or reason. Right? Okay? And that's the way in which Natural Philosophy precedes Abilitaire. Okay? And the text I just reproduced here is the third way. In a third way, a proceeding is called rational from the rational power. Insofar as in proceeding, we follow the proper way of the rational soul in knowing. And in this way, a rational process is proper to natural science. Now, he says, natural science, in its proceeding, serves the rational soul's own way in regard to two things. First, in regard to this, that just as a rational soul, from sensible things, right, which are more known to us, gets a knowledge of understandable things, which are more known by nature, so also natural science proceeds from those things which are more known to us, and less known by nature, as is clear in the first book of the physics. For the demonstration which is by a sign, and sign is always something sensible, its first meaning, or through an effect is more used in what? Natural science. And secondly, he says, because since it belongs to reason, to discourse, from one thing to another, this is observed more in natural science, where from a knowledge of one thing, one comes to a knowledge of another thing, just as from the knowledge of the effect to a knowledge of the cause. And one proceeds not only from one thing to another by reason, where one thing is not another thing, as one proceeds, say, from animal to man. Okay. But in natural science, in which there's a demonstration by extrinsic causes, one proves one thing to another entirely outside it. And this rational mode in natural science is most of all observed, and therefore natural science, among others, is more conformed to the understanding of man. One attributes this to natural science, not because it belongs to it all alone, but because it most of all does this. He's saying that in natural science, one observes what is characteristic of our reason most of all, which is to learn from the senses, right? And to learn by going from one thing to another, right? And you can expand upon both of those, right? Now, you recall in Shakespeare's definition of reason he put the word discourse in, right? And that's the second thing that Thomas talks about there. But a discourse not just from this to that in the mind, but from one thing to another thing. Okay? Now, Thomas sometimes, in other passages, he distinguishes four ways in which reason goes from one thing to another. Sometimes from the cause to the effect, but more often from the effect to the cause. And from light to light, right? And from opposite to opposite, right? But this is observed most of all, he says, in natural philosophy. You go from one thing to another, right? Yeah? Now, as I say, those things we could discuss, you know, some length, you know. Now, I was first at Leval there, once you'd be on this lecture, you know, this text there, you know? Going through all this, huh? And you get a whole course on that, huh? But, that's very sapiential. But I just mention those things, because you'll see this very much in the study of the soul, right? Okay? That we start from the outward, right? And go inward in studying the soul from the sensible, going inward. But likewise, we go from one thing to another, right? And this is very much true when you know the, what? What does discourse mean? It means you know one thing to another, right? Well, you know the acts through their objects, right? You know the powers through their acts, and you know the soul through its, what? Powers, right? And then, in the beginning of book two, from that you arrive at an understanding of what the soul is, in a kind of general way, right? And then you'll go on and study the powers in great detail, right? And come to understand the different souls much more distinctly, right? The plant soul, and the animal soul, and the understanding soul, right? Okay? So, I say that, you know, it's a little bit confusing what I'm doing there, but... So you don't simply misunderstand paragraph three, right? See, paragraph three, he's going to consider the substance of the soul, what it is, and determine that. And then he's going to talk about the, what? Accidents, the powers of the soul, right? Its properties, right? Okay? You might think, oh, well then, we know the soul before we know its powers, right? Or the soul is more known than its powers. And that's not true at all, right? Okay? And that'll be clear when you get into the difficulties here, right? Now, he begins here to talk about the difficulty. However, to grasp some conviction about the soul is in every way a most difficult task, right? And he's going to talk about the difficulties of knowing what the soul is first, and then difficulties of knowing its powers second, okay? For this being a question common to many other things as well, I mean the question about the substance and what it is. Perhaps there might seem to be some one method about everything of which we wish to know the substance. Just as demonstration is of properties. Whence this method ought to be sought? But if there is not some one common method about what it is, the undertaking becomes yet more difficult. Okay? So he's saying what to investigate what the soul is, right? Is there one way of coming to know what a thing is? See? Is there the same way of coming to know what a triangle is, knowing what the soul is? Okay? Okay? If there is one common method, he says, well then we have to investigate what that is, right? But if there's not the same way that these different things are known, see? It would be necessary then to grasp what is the mode or way in each case, huh? Is it demonstration or division or some other method, right? So that's kind of the first difficulty that he's raising here about investigating what the soul is, right? Is there one way of finding definitions or is there more than one way, right? And if there isn't one way but each thing has its own unique way of being known what it is, right? What is the way then that we must know what the soul is, huh? And the variety of what opinions that you have among the Greeks as to what the soul is, shows that one has to stop and think about that, right? Okay.