De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 5: Definition, Nature, and Substance in Natural Philosophy

Transcript
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As opposed to pushing or pulling or kicking or something like that, right? So sensing doesn't really have an exterior product or it's not really acting upon something outside of you, right? Sensing is something that goes all within you, right? So you don't really know sensing from outward experience, do you? You know, things like, you know, brain waves and all sorts of stuff, right? You don't see sensing there in the brain waves, do you? And even they try to, you know, map the brain, you know, and they stimulate different parts of the brain, right? And they say, oh, I'm tasting sugar, I'm tasting chocolate, you know? You know, I'm feeling wet, you know, and so on. But I mean, they have to ask the guy what he's feeling, you know, what he's sensing, right? You know, you can't, you know, you don't see the sensing itself, do they? You know, like covering your head or something, you know. You know, I'm not going to see the sensing going on there, right? Now the image of what we imagine of the, all the images are in the brain, aren't they? In a sense, in a real sense, they're not outside. The actual image is in the brain. So you know, imagine an image more by our new experience of it than we would open somebody's head and see the image there, wouldn't we? And then we just, when we reason, we just order these images in a certain way. Well, I better wait to get to the third book here, then we'll see the difference here. Uh-huh. Okay? Okay. But Aristotle, you know, I mean, he will begin from our obvious differences, and then he will go into more. And the first way of distinguishing between sensing or imagining and thinking is he'll say that I'm free to imagine more or less than I want to imagine, right? Yeah. So I can imagine a bottle of champagne in there, right? This can be brought out in a moment of breath, right? So I can find me champagne in there. But can I think there's a bottle of champagne in there? Am I free to do that? See? See? See? I'm imagining a bottle of champagne in there, but I don't think there's a bottle of champagne. I don't mean you guys get champagne up here today. You know? I don't have any reason to think you'd have champagne up here, right? You see what I mean? See what I mean? I have to have some reason to think that there's a bottle of champagne in there, right? But I can imagine a bottle of champagne without having any reason to know it. So the thing is not the same thing as imagining, is there? See? I can imagine one of those terrorists out there, you know, blowing himself up in here, or he's going to come in with a machine gun and start shooting us. I can imagine him right now. Can't you see him? Put him over his head and, you know, clutch the cloth where they thought. Can't you imagine that out there? See? But am I free to think there's a guy out there like that now? See? I'm imagining a guy out there now with a machine gun. Do I think there's a guy out there now? See? I don't have to have some reason to think there's a guy out there, right? Mm-hmm. That I saw him, or the FBI took me off, he was on the way. Right? Mm-hmm. See? I can imagine something of that having a reason to imagine it, right? Yeah. But I can't think that something is so without having some reason for thinking it's so. Mm-hmm. And then he gives a second difference, right? Mm-hmm. That if I imagine that I don't necessarily feel any strong emotion, I'm a terribly brave man, but I don't have to have any fear now imagining that terrorist out there, you know? Mm-hmm. But if I thought there's a terrorist out there, I would be... You see? But that's manifesting a difference, though, between thinking, you know? See? I always say in classes, if I can imagine myself winning the sweepstakes, you know, $5 million, right? I don't get particularly inceligated now imagining that, right? See? But if I thought I just won $5 million, oh! You see? I mean, you know, that's not intrinsically showing the difference between thinking and imagining, right? But it is manifesting, in a sense, what? The difference by its effect, emotional effect upon you or the two, right? Yeah. See? I can imagine my best friend in his casket right now, right? If I thought he was dead, though, right? Then I'd be sad, and you know? You know? You know what I mean? Yeah. See? But then, you see, the first difference he points out is the one that you have a reason for what you think. And that fits in what Shakespeare said, right? That discourse, right? Right. Discourse is what? You know, most known for us about reason, right? Because it's a kind of discourse when you have a reason for something, right? You're going from one thing to another, right? Okay? There's a lot of discourse there. You heard the cat, the sound, right? And your mind went from that to the, what? Cat being there, right? Yeah. Going from the sign or the effect to the cause, right? Now, an animal couldn't do that, right? Well, no, an animal has something like that, maybe, yeah. But not really. They would just hear a noise and associate an image with the... But they don't go from one thing to another, we do. They do something like that, though. Something like that. Now, I can imagine a pink elephant, but there's no such thing as a pink elephant. Yeah. I can imagine unicorn, right? You see? You know? But I don't think that there are unicorns out in the woods, right? Well, that's the same thing, yeah. Yeah. That's the same. In the Greek, Aristotle calls it, you know, when he's dividing them, he doesn't call it nous, you know. He calls it dianoetike, right? Which is the Greek word for discourse, in a sense, to know through another, right? You see that in the post-analytics, you know, he's talking about, you know, all the enoetic knowledge, right, is through another, right? You know, he shows it by induction, right? Syllogism, induction, all that kind of intimean, and so on. It's always through another, right? That's what a Greek word has, that sense. So, if it's imperative, let's take some time, for a reason. You are hard and good, you know. In one pair, the younger brother is being unjust to the older brother. The younger brother is, he's served the throne. Frederick is the served the throne of the duke, right? And the duke is now banished, isn't it? Went to pardon, right? And then you have the other brothers, Oliver, who's the older brother, being unjust to the younger brother, Armando. Because being the older brother, he's kind of inherited the family thing, and he's not providing any way for his brother or his brother's education. He just, you know, they have that conflict. And then suddenly you have the two women who are the daughters of the duke and the younger brothers who served it. And they are closely bonded together and in concern of each other, right? Because eventually, because they're linked with their fathers in conflict, because they're the daughters of the fathers, right? And eventually they marry the two other men. But the brothers are reconciled when they finally get out to the woods, right? And of course, that's the symbol of what nature is in the woods, right? And like the duke says, you know, they find sermons in stones and books in brooks and good in everything, right? So it kind of symbolizes the fact that nature is what unites, right? Now, in King Lear, you have, again, the unnatural presented, where the son or the daughter, right, is being, not only ungrateful to, but you might say persecuting, in a sense, the father, right? But in the case of King Lear, it's two of his three daughters who are persecuting him, in a sense. And in the case of Gloucester, it's one of his two sons that is doing him in, so to speak, right? So again, you have some parallelism there, right? But in one case, it's the daughters, in the other case, it's the brother, right? Then you have the good daughter, Fredelia, and the good brother, Enta, right? And so you have to contrast everything to the natural and the unnatural, so it's very interesting that it's done. I think that's a little footnote here, you can read it, it's kind of interesting, I think. Let's see, I'll paraphrase there, I don't know. It's a Shakespeare in the class. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. God, their enlightenment, guardian angel, strengthen the lights of our minds, order the luminary images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor, and help us to understand what you have written. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Do you know the plot of King Lerabit? We see Gloucester, you know, who is the father whose son has betrayed him, in a sense. He's cruelly, what, tormented by the daughter and her husband of King Lerabit, and his eyes are put out, right? Okay, terrible thing. And he's wandering off blind, and he's in despair, and he wants to take his own life. And he runs into his good son, who's disguised because he's being pursued if you're the enemy. And he wants him to lead him to the cliff of Doverite, right to the edge, and then to take off. And he's going to jump forward and go down the cliff, right? Well, the son, of course, is not going to cooperate, and his father's attempted suicide. So what he does instead is, he says, now we've come to the cliff of Doverite. He describes, you know, beautiful. It seems so real, right? And the father jumps forward, right? Of course, he stumbles, right? And then the son comes forward in his different voice, right? And he says to Gloucester, this is above all strangeness, upon the crown of the cliff. What thing was that which parted from you? He jumped off the cliff, he thought he did, right? But some of his life had been saved, spared, right? Despite this fall, this unusual, the way Edgar's saying. And Gloucester says, a poor, unfortunate beggar was conducting in there, right? It's really Edgar. And Edgar says, as they stood here below him, he thought his eyes were two full moons. He had a thousand noses, horns whelped and waved like the average sea. It was some fiend, huh? Some fiend was, what, leading him to, you know, this terrible suicide, right? Right? Therefore, thou happy father, right? Think that the clearest gods, you know, it's said in a kind of pagan situation with King Nurse, so he's gods in the door, right? But notice the expression here. Think that the clearest gods who make them honors of men's impossibilities have preserved thee, right? Okay? Now it's make them honors, the gods who make them honors of men's impossibilities. Furness, right? Quote Luke 17 or 18. The things which are impossible with men are, what, possible with God, right? So think that the clearest gods who make them honors, right, of men's impossibilities, when God does what is impossible for man, then we tend to, what, honor God, right? Think that the clearest gods who make them honors of men's impossibilities have preserved thee, huh? Okay? Now, the footnote on that adjective describing the gods, right? Clearest, as opposed to the fiend, huh? See? Now he gives a bunch of explanations, but the last one, I think, is the best and the most interesting. Theobald, one of the editors, says, open and righteous, okay? Doesn't get exactly what clearest means. The open has something in the meaning. Johnson, clear-sighted, well, that's the gods, right? Capel, huh? Oh, no, excuse me, Johnson was the purest, the most free from evil. That fits God, right? Sometimes they interpret the word holy instead of God, the church is purity, right? Then clear-sighted for Capel. Schmidt says, bright, pure, glorious, right? Stewart says, who perform miracles to make themselves clear to those who do not believe. This last one is the most interesting one. It's taken from something I've never heard before, but the author is Ryder, R-E-Y-H-E-R, it's in French, the original thing, apparently. Essay sur les idées to Shakespeare, right? Page 500. Anyway, there's a comment on the word clearest there, huh? Kind of interesting, I think. This word, which expresses the pure and luminous essence of the divinity, reflects the clear and profound nature of the man who understand it. God beautifully said, right, huh? This word, which expresses the pure and luminous essence of the divinity, I don't know, those two words he takes that others are saying individually. You speak of God as being most clear, right? Because there's no mixture of anything in him, right? He's altogether pure, he's holy, right? A lot of times they understand it where it's something that way, huh? Being pure, right? But also the idea of clear in the sense of what? Luminous, right? That's interesting, huh? This word, which expresses the pure and luminous essence of the divinity, reflects the clear and profound nature of the man who enters it. I think he's not saying the actor, but the man who wrote the word Shakespeare, you know? I think that's kind of nicely said here. It sounds like Shakespeare is probably thinking of Latin, Clarus, and Clarificatio. You know, we saw that in St. John, where he uses that, the glory. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. of a thing, and you seek to know what it is, you're seeking, if it's possible, a what? A definition of a thing. So sometimes when we talk about what a definition is, you'll see them use the word nature, or in Greek they use the word fousis, right? Okay, Greek word for nature. Or, you will see, I'm using sometimes the Greek word for substance, which is eusea, okay? Or else t-s-t, you know, what it is in Greek, right? Okay, this is kind of a definition, huh? Now, I could mention, you know, all kinds of places. I was looking at Ammonius Hermaeus, in the Greek called Ammonius Hermaeus, and Ammonius Hermaeus, do you know who he is at all? He's a Neoplatonic philosopher, who was active in Alexandria there, and let's see, what it would be, I'm confused now as to what the second century it was, but maybe around the 400s A.D., right? Ammonius, there are many Ammoniuses, but he's called Ammonius Hermaeus, you know, he's the son of Hermaeus, or what it was, but that's he referred to. And he was apparently the teacher of none other than Boethius, you know, Boethius studied in Alexandria when he was younger, right? But anyway. Was the one who taught Plotinus a different one? Yeah, it's different Ammonius, that's Ammonius Sacus, I think. Now, Ammonius Hermaeus begins some of the great commentaries in Aristotle, but in the logical words. And in particular, a very famous commentary of his is on the Peri Hermaeus, the book on statements, huh? And they made a study there with the Latin text of Ammonius that Thomas may have had, right? And how closely Thomas follows Ammonius. And he's always, in a difficult passage, you may refer to six or seven different predecessors who've commented on it, right? And he usually ends up, you know, rejecting or modifying what they said, right? Except for Ammonius Hermaeus. Okay? And even Thomas' examples are very, what? Similar to those of Ammonius, right? You know? So you get, you know, from the vein there, the Latin text you get it now, of Ammonius' work there in the Peri Hermaeus, I have it in Greek, in my office, but they have footnotes, you know, from Thomas' commentaries, and you can see how closely he's following it, right? And I've also been told that, you know, Thomas' commentary on the Peri Hermaeus is incomplete, he breaks off at a certain point, the Kajetan completed it. But it breaks off, or one of the Latin manuscripts of Ammonius breaks off. It's kind of interesting, right? So, Ammonius, at the beginning of his commentary, not on Peri Hermaeus now, but, again, one of the categories too, but his commentary on the Aesogogia corporea, he says he has a kind of introduction to philosophy, and he wants to define what philosophy is, etc., right? But before he does that, he wants to define what definition is, huh? And the definition he gives of definition is that it's a logos, meaning a, what? Speech, right? Okay. He says a logos sumtomas, which means a brief or short speech. Reminds me of Shakespeare that brevity is a solid wit, huh? They are showing, right, the nature of a thing, right? Okay. So he defines definition there, which is speech, is what we say sometimes, making known what a thing is, right? Or speech signifying what a thing is. He defines it as speech, what? Short speech showing the nature of a thing, right? But that's equivalent to the other definition, that it's speech making known what a thing is. You see that? Mm-hmm. Okay? Now, in the categories and elsewhere, and I've seen it in Plato too, I think, when they're referring to the logos, the speech that is in fact the definition, the phrase Aristotle uses in the categories is logos tesusias, okay? The account of the, what? Substance of the thing, right? The very beginning of the book, you know, he's saying, you know, how a name can be said of many things, or things have a name in common. And sometimes they also have the logos tesusias, right? The definition of what they are. So, notice these three, right? Okay? Now, I'm not going to go into the words nature and substance here, because that would be a whole lecture in itself, huh? But the words nature and the word substance are both words that you find, considered by Aristotle, in the fifth book of wisdom, the fifth book of the metaphysics. Now, the whole of the fifth book of the metaphysics is devoted to seeing the distinction and order of the meanings of the words used, especially in wisdom, right? But which are also the words used in the, what? Axios, like I mentioned that before, right? And because of the commonality, the commonness of the subject of wisdom, right? Which is being, as being, and the one, and the many. And because of the common character of the axioms, right? These are also the words used to some extent, what? Everywhere, right? Okay? So, if you want to understand the word nature fully, or phusis in Greek, or usia in Greek, or substance in Greek, right? You have to read the chapters, or axioms, the one on nature, and the one on what? Substance, huh? Okay? But it's not going to be there right now, because there would be a couple of lectures in itself. But, I want to mention something else about this. Because, when Thomas did his commentary on metaphysics, when he divides book three, he divides it, I mean, excuse me, book five, when he divides it, he divides it into three parts. There's many things that divide into three parts, huh? And, Thomas says, the first group of names are names of causes, or something like that. Names that retain causes. The second group of words are names of the subject of wisdom, being in one, huh? And that's where substance comes up. And then the third group of names, huh? Are names that pertain more to the properties. Okay? And he's very good reason for saying this. He says, every science, huh? In a strict sense, every epistame, has some subject, right, about which it shows its properties, and gives the cause or the reason why those properties belong to that subject. So, there's really three things in every science, huh? The subject, the properties, and the causes, huh? So, it makes a lot of sense, huh? And it fits very much what Aristotle's doing, huh? So, the first word Aristotle takes up is the word beginning, right? The second word he takes up is the word cause. The third word he takes up is the word element, huh? The fourth word he takes up is the word, what? Nature, right? And we saw how nature, in one of its earlier meanings, is the beginning and cause, right? The motion and the rest. Okay? And then he takes up the word, um, I mentioned it, beginning, cause, element, nature, and then the word necessary, right? Because the effect files necessarily for the cause and so on. Okay? Then he takes up the words that pertain to the subject of wisdom. He takes up the word one, and the word being, and the word substance, which is the chief subject of wisdom. And then he takes up the names of the parts of one, and the parts of being, huh? Like quantity, and quality, and same, and other, and so on. And then finally he takes up the words that signify more, what is in a way of a property. Okay? Words like perfect and whole, perfect and imperfect, right? The perfection and defect of being. The perfection and defect of being. So it's interesting that the word nature appears among the words signifying clauses, right? And substance refers to a word signifying the chief subject of wisdom. And of course, both words have many meanings. But one of the many meanings of both is what it is. If you look at the word nature or fuses there, the first meaning is what? Birth, if it comes from native. Nativity, prenatal, postnatal. And then it's carried over to the source of the baby within the mother. And the idea of within or from within is kept in every meaning of nature. And then it's generalized the meaning we met in the second book of natural hearing. Beginning in cause of motion and arrest and that which it is, first as such. Nothing happening, right? And that's the definition of nature that defines natural philosophy. And then it's carried over to matter in particular, in the genus of substance, and form. And actually, Aristotel-Artee gives a definition of nature in the second book. He goes on to show that matter is nature and form in the genus of substance are nature. And eventually, after that, he becomes the sense of nature and the sense of what it is. So it's the last sense. The substance has other meanings. But perhaps the two main meanings of substance are the individual substance like you or me or the cat that comes in here sometimes. It's in my class. But the other sense of substance is what it is. I think it's kind of interesting because a word in the first group and another word in the second group of names, they intersect in one meaning. That's kind of interesting. It's kind of interesting if you study book five. It takes a long time to understand each word by itself. But after you understand each word by itself, it's kind of interesting to compare these words because sometimes they, like, words even in different groups, they tend to, like, overlap, right? For example, when Aristotle gets to the third group of words, one of the meanings he takes up is the word end. And, of course, he points out how sometimes we call this the beginning of the table and that at the opposite end, the end, right? But sometimes we speak of the ends of the table, calling the beginning an end, right? So in some cases there's a certain overlap there, right? Okay? That the beginning is an end. In some ways the end is a beginning, too. Because in Aristotle, it's all the meanings of the beginning. The first meaning of the beginning is the beginning of the table here. The second meaning of the beginning is where you would begin to leave the table, right? Where you have to be sitting, right? The third meaning of the beginning is the foundation of a house, the fundamental part of a thing. The fourth meaning is the, what, the mover, okay? And the fifth meaning is where you begin to know something. And then the sixth meaning he says every clause, even the end, is in a way of beginning. So the end is in some sense a beginning. It's first in, what, intention, last to be achieved, but it's first in your intention, right? And, but another way, the beginning is sometimes called a, what, end, right? So I might say the line, let's say, I might say this point here is the beginning of the line, and this point here is the end, right? So notice I might speak of the two end points of a line, right? Called beginning and end. So the end can be called beginning, beginning and end, right? That can be confusing to a person at first, right? But you have to realize that that's the way the words are, right? That they have many meanings, and sometimes, you know, one comes under the other in some way, right? Or sometimes they have a meaning in common, right? So substance, you know, if you take the Latin word, because in some ways we're interested in the Greek word, substance comes from standing under, right? And it's because substance is, what, more fundamental than accidents, right? And so substance is named from standing under. By nature is named from, what, birth, right? Well, birth and standing under are quite different, aren't they? But by different roots, they both, to some extent, in one of their meanings, right, arrive at the idea of what it is, huh? So, that's a little excursion there, right? One could, you know, take more time if you want to go and study the fifth book of wisdom, right? So, in talking about definitions, sometimes we define definition, or note it, by the word substance, and sometimes by the word nature, and sometimes by what it is, which is one of the meanings of nature and substance, huh? So, if you look at number three here, we seek to consider and to know the nature and substance of the soul, right? Well, those two words there are more or less, what, synonyms, right? Okay? In their use right there. And the Greek would say, we seek to look at and to know the fousina, which is the accusative of fousis, and ten usian, huh? Which is the accusative of usia, okay? But then later on, notice what he says here, right? In number four. And this is the start of the third part now, the premium, where he's going to talk about the difficulty of it, right? However, to grasp some conviction, to get some kind of belief about it, is in every way a most difficult task. And then he begins with the difficulty of knowing how to investigate what the soul is, right? For this being a question common to many other things as well, I mean the question about the substance and what it is, right? Those are asking for the same thing, right? So, I just put the three words together, right? At first you had nature and substance, and now you have substance and what it is. You might have nature and what it is, huh? Now the Greek here, huh? Legodet tu peritenusian, about the substance, kai totiesti, right? The what it is. Okay? Do you see that? So, there's a certain richness there, you might say, huh? In the fact that you can refer to the what it is by the words, what it is, or by the word nature, or by the word what substance, right? So, in the Summa Theologiae, Thomas takes up in question two of the Prima Pars, the existence of God, right? And then in questions three, right, through, what would it be? Eleven, right? He takes up the substance of God, huh? What does that mean? Yeah, what God is, huh? Although we know more what he is not than what he is, right? What you're trying to talk about, the substance of God, huh? Do you see that? So, the substance of the thing is what it is. In English, we've kind of lost the earlier means of nature, right? When you speak of nature, although we do sometimes use the word nature kind of in a hazy way for the natural world, right? You know, or the collection of natural things out there, and so on. But we often, you know, speak of the nature of a thing, right? The nature of government, the nature of God, right? Okay? And that's not the meaning of nature that defines natural philosophy, because that's found in every science, right? Okay? I'm going to give you a longer decoration when I get a little further on here, but... Ahem. Now, notice quantitatively here, right? Paragraphs 1, 2, and 3 contain the 1 and 2, the first part of the premium, 3, the second part, and 4, all the way over here to page 4, right? The third part, right? And maybe that says something, right? About the difficulty of this, right? So he says, and notes at the very beginning, however, to grasp some conviction about it is in every way a most difficult task, right? In fact, he used the word pistis, which can mean belief, right? But he's a kind of a way of saying what? It's hard to get complete certitude about what the soul is, right? But even this imperfect, maybe, state of the mind, the pistis, is even a most difficult task, right? Now, as Thomas points out in the commentary, he first talks about difficulties in investigating that first of those two things that he mentioned in paragraph 3, what the soul is, right? And then difficulties about its what? Accidents or properties, huh? Okay? Is pistis the same as opinion, or no? What? Pistis? Yeah. No, I don't think so necessarily, see. Pistis is the word you have in Latin for belief, huh? Sure. Okay? So belief is something like that, but it's not exactly the same thing, huh? It's more founded than opinion, right? Yeah, but it's a little weaker, though, than the knowledge, right? It's fair to, right? Okay? And it's part of your philosophical modesty. I don't think Aristotle is saying you can't in some way be sure about what the soul is, but it's so difficult, right? Yeah. He speaks that way, huh? Sure. Okay? So, now in paragraphs, as he's got his number, four, five, and six, right? He's going to talk about the difficulty of knowing what the soul is, right? Or we could say the difficulty of knowing the nature of the soul, right? Or the difficulty of knowing the substance of the soul, and so on. And then, in the rest of the preangium there, starting with paragraph seven, some of the difficulties to be considered in regard to the, what? Yeah. He knows what's kind of, you know, loosely, right? Whatever the... Yeah, accidents, whatever the properties, right? Okay? Of the soul, okay? Now, the first difficulty he talks about in the fourth paragraph is the difficulty of knowing how to investigate what the soul is, right? For this being a question common to many other things as well, I mean the question about the substance of what it is, huh? In every reasoned out of knowledge, we ask what something is, right? Perhaps there might seem to be some one method about everything in which you wish to know the substance. Just as demonstration is of accidental properties, whence this method ought to be sought, huh? And notice Aristoteles are using the word method, which in the Greek is the word methodos, right? Here. Something not only over a road, but something maybe that is about a road. Okay? Closer to the use of method in English, right? Okay? Is there a road to be followed in defining something, huh? And if you look at the Posture Analytics, in the second book of the Posture Analytics, he speaks there of two different roads whereby a man might try to arrive at what a thing is. And one way is by looking at what? I mean, the examples of the same thing, right? And trying to separate out what those examples have in common, huh? That's why they're hard with the soul, because it can't exactly set up three souls that we have in common, right? The soul is more hidden, right? Than that, huh? The other way he mentions there, investigating what something is, is to find what his genus is, right? And then to divide the genus by its differences, and see under which difference it comes, and then add that to the genus. And if that speech is convertible, maybe you've arrived at a definition. But if it's not a convertible, you might have to make another division, right? Okay? So is there one way of arriving at definitions, huh? Maybe there's a little question. But if there is not some one and common method about the what it is, the undertaking becomes yet more difficult, right? For it will be necessary to grasp what is the mode in each case. Okay? Now notice, huh? We saw that when he was distinguishing between natural philosophy and mathematics, he pointed out that there's some difference in the way these two sciences define. Okay? And when you get to the sixth book of wisdom, he distinguishes natural philosophy, mathematics, and first philosophy, or wisdom. There are three different ways of defining. Okay? That's only one distinction that we've touched upon before, right? In the way things are defined, huh? But there's another distinction that I think we talked about when we were in logic, if you recall. Because that distinction that we just talked about, that you don't define exactly the same way in mathematics and in natural philosophy. In mathematics, you define without, what? Any kind of sensible matter, right? You define without any reference to motion, right? But since nature is defined by motion and so on, and things that move have matter, you can't really define actual things without bringing in matter or motion in some way. But, logic doesn't talk about that. Because that's pertaining to the, what? Particular differences among the sciences, huh? Okay? But, if you recall, our study of definition in logic, we pointed out three distinctions of definitions in logic. Remember that? And two distinctions were very similar. We distinguish between defining a thing by its genus and species making differences, right? And defining a thing by its genus and, what? Property, property, yeah. Okay? What is the difference between what Aristotle does at the end of the first book of Nicomachean Ethics, where he defines virtue as a praiseworthy quality, and then thereon, in book two, where he defines moral virtue as a habit with choice existing in the middle towards us, as a determined right reason? What's the difference between those two definitions and the same thing? Well, praiseworthy quality seems to be defining virtue by its genus and a property, right? Because praise is something outside the virtue, isn't it? It's more in the one who's praising you than in you, right? Well, he defines moral virtue as a habit with choice existing in the middle towards us as a determined right reason, he seems to be getting more into what makes it a virtue. Okay? That's one distinction in that, right? Between defining something by its genus and species making differences, and by defining it by its genus and property. As long as we define it by its property, because you don't know the essential difference, and the property is more manifest, right? So I define a cat as a, what? Four-footed animal that meows. And a dog is a four-footed animal that barks. Well, is it a cat because it meows? Or does it meow because it's a cat? Is it meowing that makes it to be a cat? Or is it because of what it is, namely a cat that meows? See? Well, I think meowing is more like, okay, what? Effect the property, the passion of the cat, right? You see? But I'm too stupid to see what the real intrinsic difference is between a cat and a dog. But the meow and the bark are known by my ears and so on, right? Stands out to my senses. So I tend to define them at first, at least by property, right? Maybe if I study biology more, I might be able to give you a more intrinsic difference between a cat and a dog. But that would be harder for me and not as clear to my senses, huh? You see that? Okay. Now, there's a second distinction which Socrates, in a way, is touching upon in the Mino, and Thomas touches upon it, and there's a dog in many places.