De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 11: The Three Divisions: Defining the Soul Through Being and Act

Transcript
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bit easier. But notice he's going to begin by saying that the body seems to be something in the genus of substance. He's going to begin when 12, for that matter, with substance. Now, that's an interesting division to go back to, right? The point I made about the distinction of four kinds of cause, that that is both a distinction of four kinds of cause, but it's also a distinction of four meanings of the word, right? By the distinction of the kinds of quadrilateral that I just gave, from Euclid again, right? It's a distinction of four or five kinds, right? Of quadrilateral, but is it a distinction of four or five senses of the word quadrilateral? No. Now, I'm going to ask him to do something like that, except instead of with cause, of the things, huh? How many kinds of things are there in the world? Well, chiefly, you can say there are four kinds of things in the world. So, I want to understand this distinction of the four kinds of things. You could have maybe more kinds of things if you use the word extremely loosely, but distinction of four kinds of things, which is also going to be a distinction of four meanings of the word there. I think it's kind of interesting to note that, huh? That these most universal divisions of kinds of things or kinds of causes are also divisions of what? Senses of the word, huh? So, suppose you have a man in here, right? So, you do have a man in here, right? And suppose you have orange in here, cat, right? Okay. And you could ask, what is this? Socrates in here, huh? What is Socrates? Or what is orange? And you say Socrates. What is Socrates? Well, Socrates is a man. What is orange? Now, what about the size of orange, huh? How tall is it? How big or how tall? What's the size, huh? Now, is the size of a man the same thing as what a man is? Is the size of the cat the same thing as what a cat is? It's another kind of thing, what a thing is, and the size of that thing, right? Now, how is Socrates, huh? He's healthy, right? He's just, right? Orange, he's what? Healthy? Orange, cruel? Maybe. What is Socrates, huh? Towards his sons. What is he? What is Socrates towards Plato? What is Socrates towards Enthippe? Husband. Yeah. These are four distinct kinds of things, aren't they? One you might call substance. He's the most fundamental, what a thing is, right? Okay? One you might call quantity. One you might call quantity. The size of the thing, how big it is, how tall it is. One you might call quality, how it is. And one you might call what? Relation, right? Words and things, such stuff, causes. Okay? So, chiefly, there are four kinds of things in the world. Substances, quantities, qualities, and relations, right? Now, isn't that also a distinction of four senses of the word thing? Because you might not think of relations being a thing at first, would you? You'd think of a substance, first of all, as being a thing, right? Okay. But then, isn't the size of a thing something, too? It's not what it is, but it's pretty close to what it is, right? And isn't the health of a man, or the health of a dog, isn't that something? Our relation seems even less a thing, right? So, it's not equally a thing, right? As opposed to, say, quadrilateral, right? A square is not more a quadrilateral than an ablan. Or if you said animal, let's say the dog, and cat, and horse, right? Is the dog more an animal than a cat? It's an equally, right? But is things said equally to these four? If you ask a man even this question, you know, in the bar, right? Is your nose and your ear the same thing? What would he say? The common man there, the bar there with this bear? Two different things, your nose and your ear, right? Now, how about your nose and the shape of your nose? Are these two things, too? Like your nose and your ear are two things? Can you hesitate a bit, do you think? Because the nose can be independent of the ear, and vice versa, right? But the nose and the shape of the nose, you can't separate them in that way, can you? The shape of the nose is something of the nose, right? It's the quality of the nose, right? And some then have a Roman nose, and some have a little Irish nose, I guess. I don't know what I have. Herring to my mother's nose, I guess. So you didn't have a Roman nose in there, right? Romans are known for having big noses, aren't they, I guess? But you want to see the shape of your nose as nothing, would you? If I flatten your nose, right, does that have nothing? You see, the way you might hesitate at first to call something a thing, right? And then later on, it's a thing, right? So, these are the four kinds of things, huh? But it's also a distinction of four senses of the word thing. In Latin, Thomas speaks of quantity and quality as saying something absolute, as opposed to relative, right? To be, let's say, take a simple example of the thought, take a double, right? To be double is nothing in itself, it's only something towards another, right? To be a father is nothing in itself, it's something towards another, right? It hardly seems to be a thing at all, right? And if you study, you know, the history of human thought, there's some people who thought that all relations are just something of reason, right? As I say, you know, having had a number of cats in my life, you know, I'm convinced that my being taller and bigger than a cat is extremely important to them. You know, there's a movie they made, The Incredible Shrinking Man, you know, he takes the wrong medicine and he starts to shrink, you know. He's always eaten by the family cat, right, as he gets down to the... Well, if I was as small as a toy soldier, tin soldier, toy soldier, I would be scared stiff of my cat. In fact, my cat would be tagged with me and I'd be tagged with the mouse, right? This would be terrible. So, I'm very much convinced that my being bigger and taller is something very real, you know? But it's not as real as my being, as my size, right? See? My being taller than them is something, not actually in me, right? That is something in myself. Something in me towards her. Or towards him. Do you see that? Yeah. So, the word thing here is really different into these cases. So, Aristotle, of course, is being very brief. He gets a whole book on these things here, right? Plus the lesser things, right? And he's, you know, jumping right away to the one it is, right? Okay. So, the soul is something in the Jesus' substance or quantity or quality or relation. And he's saying it's what? In substance, right? Okay. Now, obviously, if you think with Plato that the soul can exist as part of the body, it's going to be something substantial, right? But even if the soul resists the body, right? That shows not just the accident of the body. Okay? So, that's the first division on the side of the soul, right? Okay. So, he says we see that the substance is one genus of being. Well, genus, of course, is the Latin word for kind, right? What's the Latin for one of a kind? You see it sometimes. You know, it's sui generis, one of a kind. Unique, right? So, you say substance is one genus of being, one kind of being, one kind of thing, right? He's not making explicit the whole division. Quantity is another kind of thing, right? Quality and the kind, okay? Now, the second division he gives here in 1.12 is a division of substance into matter, form, right? and the composite of the two, okay? Now, just as this first division here, or first distinction, if you wish, that we gave here, this is first thought of logic, right? In the book, we call it the categories, right? Okay? So, the second division, which is a division of substance now, into matter and form and the composite of the two, where does that division come from? From the first book of natural hearing, the first book of the physics, right? Okay? And from the fact of what? Substantial change, huh? Okay? So, what we saw back in book one there, of the natural philosophy, that in everything that changes, there's something as matter and something as form. So, if there's substantial change, like when a man comes into existence, or a man dies, or a cat comes into existence, or a cat dies, right? Okay? Then there's got to be something as matter and something as form in the genus of substance. So, he's distinguishing that between the matter and the form and the complete substance that's composed of the two. Okay? Okay. Because this is the second division, is that? In 112, yeah. But what's the first one now? Well, you see, he's very, he's, as Thomas would say, students brevitate, right? Seeking brevity, right? Seeking brevity, he's touching upon the distinction of the various kinds of things, the various genera of being, right? The various genera of things, of which the fundamental ones, not the only ones, but the fundamental ones, are substance, quantity, quality, relation, right? Okay. But he just mentioned explicitly the one in which the soul is going to be found, right? Substance, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And because the living body, like a man, say, or a cat or a dog, is a substance, this makes sense to say the soul is going to be in the genus of substance. They say that division and distinction is made fully in the categories, huh? Then he subdivides, right? Substance, right? Into matter and form of the genus of substance and the composite of the two. Yeah. And that goes back to the natural philosophy, huh? Right. So you have to understand the categories to understand this first division, and then this subdivision of substance, right? The first book of natural history. Okay. Now, what's the third division is a little bit different here now. Because when you distinguish between matter and form, if you did a natural philosophy, we saw that the matter was in potency or in ability, right? For many forms, right? And the form is as a what? Act, then. Okay. Now, is the soul going to be in the genus of substance as matter or as form? So it's going to be as an act, right? Not as a what? Ability for act or ability for form, right? It's going to be as the act, right? Well, then he gives a third division, okay? Which is division of act, huh? Okay? Since form is an act, you want us to make clear. And he divides act into the first act, which is almost the same thing as form, and second act. There's a substance there. Yeah, good substance there. What is it? The sphinx down there in Egypt, right? Is, you know, kind of a symbol of the pharaoh, I guess. But you kind of combine the lion with the, what, king, right? It's like in the end of the, you know, the king there in England where you have the lion, right? It's like in the symbolism, so that the lion is, what, the king. right? The forest, huh? You know, when my son Paul graduated West Point, right? And at first summer, you know, at West Point, you're in what they call beast camp, right? You're not considered a human being until you get through beast camp, right? And there's an officer in charge, right? And they call him the king of the beasts. So, that's a lion, and he's the king of the beasts, right? So, the pharaoh is, you know, ready to go. Now, he manifests its distinction between first act and second act, huh? Which is really a distinction between form and some kind of, what? Activity, right? Some kind of act in the more common system, or some kind of operation, doing, doing. He manifests it as something more known. The one is science, the other is consideration. Well, notice, huh? Take an example there of a science, like geometry. I have acquired something of the science of geometry. So, you could say that my reason is formed, huh? Okay? But now, if you want to talk about geometry, I'll talk a bit about it, right? Okay? Can we prove the Pythagorean theorem now? I know. I can. I'll put the board now, do the Pythagorean theorem. See? So, notice, my reason was in ability, or was in potency, before it acquired geometry, right? But after I've acquired geometry, I'm not always actually thinking about geometrical things, right? So, the science of geometry geometry, whereby my mind is formed in a certain way, is the first act, right? And then my actually thinking about geometrical things is a further act, right? So, he calls that a second act, right? Okay? Well, the soul is going to be a what? First act, right? Rather than a what? Second act, right? It's going to be a first act in the genus of what? Substance as a form. Now, I'll mention, you know, just to make an aside here now, a theological aside, right? Because in the Council of the Enders, you see the Church, you know, officially adopting Christoph's understanding of the soul, right? And that's when they talk about the soul being the form of the body, right? But they're obviously understanding the word form here in a substantial sense of it. We can look at that text sometimes if you want to, you know? But it's kind of, you know, a late condition church that's officially adopted, right? And most people don't understand what the soul is, so they, you know, want to escape the word, right? If you don't use the word, you don't have to, what? You can ask what the soul is. So, like, that was it, was it, uh, was it, uh, 1984? Is that the one where they, you know, you became a nun person sometimes, you know? But it's like, you know, what the Russians used to do with the communists when they were in power in Russia, you know? And they would study these photographs, you know, how you have the brass up there on May Day, huh? You have Stalin and all the other brass and so on. And, uh, you get an official picture of everybody there, you know, and kind of know where they are, who's in power. And then when the picture appears again, maybe somebody's been purged, you know, and he's been removed from the picture too, right? He never was. That's kind of a frightening thing, right? But, uh, you know, so always rewriting the history books, right? So somebody who was there is no longer there, and somebody who wasn't there, now somebody appears there, right? Like he's associated with Lenin or whoever it was at the early period, huh? It's kind of funny in a sense, huh? Because the communists had their own kind of a mean sense of humor, you know? Um, you know, when, when they, uh, had the fight after Stalin's death, right? And, uh, Malenkov, you know, was trying to grab the power and they kind of, you know, self-protection, they ganged up on Malenkov, right? But instead of killing Malenkov, right, they, um, sent him out west and made him the head of a power station out there, an electric power station. Well, that's kind of a funny sense of humor, right? Because he's the guy that's like, oh, power in his hands. And now he's the head of an electric power station. And then Molotov, who was the great diplomat, right, for the communists, you know? You know, he's, you know, Molotov, Rivendorf, Rivendorf. And that's the thing that started the second war, right? Big compact. But he was, he was a big diplomat, right? So they, rather than kill him when they, when he fell from power, they made him the ambassador to Altavongolia. So, kind of the, kind of the, kind of the cruel side of the humor too, but it's kind of funny though. So, but in a, in a, in a way that intended humor, it's humor so to see the fact, you know, that in history books, you know, a guy who's gained power, you know, suddenly appears in the history books that hasn't been very close to Lenin or Stalin or somebody in the earlier days, right? And someone who was, but has been purged is eliminated from photographs. And they actually have, you know, some of the earlier photographs, you know, they appear in the West and then they have the later photographs and they have new editions. In the old days, you'd go to the, the communist bookstore there in New York, you know, and could buy the, you know, the official foreign language editions from Moscow, right? And they were very inexpensive. I remember one time being there, and we were going to the going in there, so I wanted to see if the guy was taking my picture of it. But I could buy, you know, six or seven books of Marx or Engels or Lenin, you know, for the price of one or two paperbacks in Barnes and Noble in New York. You go and buy a couple of paperbacks, you're paying as much. And, of course, most of the books in the communist bookstore are in Russian, right? But then they have the foreign editions, which are the official translations of the text. They're kind of nice to have. But you have these pictures, usually in the front, maybe, of Marx and Lenin, you know. They look such vigorous, healthy people, you know. They weren't really in real life, necessarily. But the picture, you know, like, you know, living with material prosperity. Kind of doctor things, you know. Like, like Chairman Mao in old age, they're swimming in the Yangtis River over there, you know. We did or not, we don't really know, as long as in the water. But this 70-year-old man, you know, swimming down the Ice River. So, there are three divisions he gives them, right? The first division is a distinction, right, of the kinds of things, right? Which is also a distinction of means of the word thing or being, right? Substance, quantity, quality, and so on. But it just notes the one that he's concerned with, right? Okay? Because he's kind of applying that division, right? This is one kind of thing, right? And that's the kind of thing in which substance is in which the soul is found, right? Then he gives the second division, right? Which is the one for natural philosophy. And nobody today hardly knows the categories, right? Even in the philosophical world. Nor do they know the first book of the physics. So, that's it. And then, because form is act, he gives this other distinction of first and second act, right? So, the soul is going to later on be defined as the first act of something, right? Okay? Substantial form is something we've talked to, right? Okay? What does he mean by science and consideration? Well, he's using it as an example of something more known, where you have this distinction between the first and second act. And the science itself is like a form of the mind, right? Oh, yeah. Okay. So, when I've acquired the science of geometry, my mind has been actualized in a certain way, right? Okay? Because before my mind was able to have the science, I didn't actually have the science, right? Now that I've learned geometry, I actually have the science, right? But, even after I've actually acquired the science of geometry, I'm not always thinking actually about geometrical things, right? So, there's a further act, right? Which is to be actually thinking about these things. Okay? That's what he means by consideration, actually thinking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, I was pointing out there, at the house of the night there, I said, in Book 2, 5, 9, 14. Here we go. Okay, you guys are supposed to be all teaching you guys a song. 5, 9, and 14, what's the order there? Well, 5 and 9, in both cases you're talking about what? Dividing a line into equal and equal segments, right? And then talking about the figures on this. But, number 5 is a theorem of what? Equality. Number 9 is a theorem of inequality. Okay, so the theorem of equality comes before the theorem of inequality, right? Okay. Now, 14 is proven by means of what? 5. So, I was using that to illustrate something, right? That the equal is before the unequal in geometry, right? Well, the same way with 6 and 10 and 11, right? 6 is the theorem of equality. You know, bisect a line in half and add a line to it, right? And you do that in both 6 and 10, but in 6 you have a theorem of equality, and 10 you have a theorem of inequality. In 11 you have this beautiful theorem, how to divide a straight line such that the rectangle contained by the whole in one segment is equal to the square in the remaining segment. But it's proven through the theorem 6, not through the theorem what? 10. So, the theorem of equality is before the theorem of inequality, and the theorem that's proven by one of those is proven by the theorem of equality. What's more striking, which you first notice in book 2, is that in 12 and 13 you have the theorems about the obtuse angle triangle and the equitant triangle, which correspond to the one at the end of book 1 on the right angle triangle. On the right angle triangle, the square in the side opposite the right angle is equal to the square in the sides of the right angle. In the obtuse angle triangle, the square opposite the obtuse angle is greater than, and in the acute angle one, it's less than than 2. So, the theorem of equality is before the theorems of what? Inequality. And then when you examine the proof of 12 and 13, they are proven through 47 of book 1. You prove the inequality theorems and equality theorem. So, I was using that to make the point that in geometry we consider the equal before the unequal. So, now I was actually thinking about these things in geometry again, right? Suddenly I forgot the science. Sometimes I go back and restrain from that, right? And now I'm suddenly, for some reason, talking about this again, right? To impress you or something, right? But, so there's a further act there, right? But I'm actually thinking about those things, right? Okay? As I was going to point out, in this case here, I can go to the second act whenever I want to, really, if I have the first act, right? If I don't have the first act, I can't automatically acquire whenever I want to, right? Mm-hmm. You see? So, he's contrasting the first act and the second act, because the soul will be as a first act, right? But that first act that makes possible will be what? The second act, which is the operations of life. So, maybe we should stop on it being five o'clock, yeah? Okay? Okay. But now, in 1.13, he's going to give three divisions on the side of the body, right? On the side of that of which it is, the first act. And then he's going to bring out, find the definition of the soul. He's going to manifest it. And then he's going to demonstrate it later on again. Okay? So, the division or the definition he arrives at by these divisions will be manifested by beautiful analogies, proportions, help us to understand it better. And then he's going to give a demonstration from effect to cause, huh? Okay? Now, next week, I won't be here. Okay? I think I mentioned that I've got to go out to tell. The very famous words of the North and South, go thyself, right? The seven wise men of peace are set to put up at the Oracle of Delphi. I always begin by saying, you know, that's an exhortation, right? Know thyself. I say, to whom is that addressed? Is it addressed to the gods? Is it addressed to the animals that wander around the Oracle? Well, it's got to be addressed to someone who is able to know himself, right? But who more or less doesn't know himself. Well, the gods know themselves, right? And God and even the angels, what they primarily know is themselves. So it's not addressed to them because they know themselves. It's not addressed to the beasts because they're not able to know themselves, right? So it's addressed to man because man is the only thing that is able to know itself but doesn't know itself. But then you can say, but it's addressed more to the soul than to the body because the body can't know what a body is. But the soul can know not only what the body is, we're talking about that in the philosophy of the continuous, right? The soul can know what a soul is, as we're about to find out. So you can say it's addressed to man, right? But even more so to the soul, right? That's number two, right? Then three, you can say it's addressed to reason. Because reason can know what an eye is or an ear is or a hand is. But reason is the only part of man can know itself and has a hard time on itself, right? So it's addressed to reason even more, especially, right? And so the definition of reason that the great Shakespeare gave us, that's a knowledge of reason in both senses. See, reason's knowledge of the triangle is a knowledge of reason in one sense. It's a knowledge path by reason, right? But the knowledge that we have, that reason has through the definition of reason, is a knowledge that has it of itself. So the definition of reason is a knowledge of reason in both senses. Now, of course, that's an outrageous explanation of, in the karma, they know they're investigating this, they know they self. And they understand it to mean a knowledge of knowledge, eventually, right? You know, I mean, they understand it, right? So, in that sense, you could say, what? The definition of definition, right? That seems to be a knowledge of knowledge, right? In a way, right? A knowledge of what knowledge is. Getting close to that, right? The definition of definition. Statement about statements. But it seems a little bit kind of forced, in a way. But I think it makes some sense to say that the great words, know thyself, right, are addressed to man, and not to the beast or to the angel, for the reason he gave, right? But more so, it's addressed to the soul, right? And when the soul seeks to know what a soul is, it's what we're doing in this course right now. Right? Then we're obeying the seven wise men of Greece. We're responding to the exhortation of the seven wise men of Greece. So, what the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? Use the word soul, right? How are they obeying the oracle of Delphi, right? Of course, Socrates takes it. Okay, okay, but then I go on and I say, you know, people are interested in the definition of reason. Are they obeying the addictive know-thyself, right? Because you could say that just as man is the only thing that can know itself but doesn't know itself, so even more so, in a way, you can say, reason is the only part of man that can know itself. So if you're interested in the definition of reason, what are you? Are you interested in finding what the oracle of Delphi says, right? Now, Socrates understands it to be kind of a man, right, to find out whether we know or whether we think we know, right? So, so you might say, you know, that reason knows itself when it knows what it knows and what it doesn't know. But when it thinks it, it knows what it doesn't know, or even if it thinks it doesn't know what it does know, then I suppose you could say it doesn't know itself in some way, right? But more basically, when it doesn't know what reason is, it doesn't know itself, right? Because that's itself, most of all, right, what it is, you know? See, St. Paul takes it in another sense there, too, where he speaks to the man who, what, looks in the mirror and then walks away and forgets what he looks like, right? Well, he's talking about the moral law, right? I read the Nicomarckian Ethics, and I go through for it, and they say, do I have that one? No, I don't think so. Do I have that one? No, I guess I don't have that either. Do I have that? No. It's pretty sad. It's the state of affairs. The other thing I'm going to do. I was going to do that, you know? Like a job would be a few years. Yeah. I guess I'm mild, I don't know. So, you're right about the shooting down there at the monastery there in the, or the seminary, I guess, the monastery and seminary down there in Kansas. You're right about that? I don't know if you don't read the news here. No. No, there are two. So, let's go back here to the beginning of Book 2 here, Chapter 1, huh? Aristotle has said, we've considered now what our predecessors have said about the soul, and now he's going to make a fresh beginning investigating what the soul is. Now, is the soul defined as something by itself or as something of another? And because of that, he has to investigate by divisions, and he's going to give about three divisions on both sides, a division about the soul itself, right? And then a division of that of which the soul is something, right? Okay? So, three divisions to find out the something, and three more divisions, the something which it is something. Okay? Is that clear as mud? Yes. Okay? Okay? We met that kind of definition before when we had the definition of what? Time. Time, yeah. In a way, that's true of the definition of motion, too, huh? There's something of, what? Another, right? Yeah. I guess that's true about the definition of place, too, and I wouldn't take that up, right? Okay? So, the first three divisions, then, will be on the side of the soul itself, and the second three on the side of the, you might call the subject in which the soul is, right? Now, in 1.12, you meet the three divisions there, in case you didn't get that. The brevity of wisdom here. And the first division he's giving, and he's just touching upon it there very briefly, is division of, what? Being or thing, right? According to the ten figures of predication, substance, quantity, quality, relation, and so on, huh? And he's saying that the soul is in one of those genera, and, in fact, it's in the genus of, what? Substance, right? Okay? So, what's implicit there is that, is the soul something in the genus of substance, or in the genus of quantity, or quality, or something else, right? And, why would you think that the soul is in the genus of substance, rather than in the genus of, what would be most likely second choice after substance? Yeah, yeah. So, going back again to the Phaedo there, Socrates seems to speak of the soul as if it were a substance distinct from the body, right? And a complete substance in itself, huh? And then, what's his name? Simeas proposes the Pythagorean opinion that the soul is the harmony of the body, right? And that would be like a, what? Quality, huh? A disposition, right? So, why think that the soul is in the genus of substance, rather than the genus of, let's say, quality? Okay, that's true, although we haven't seen that really until the third book, right? Okay. But, if the soul can exist, obviously, independently of the body, which will be shown, at least about the human soul, in the third book, then clearly it's something substantial, right? Okay, because the action wouldn't exist apart. The harmony of the body wouldn't exist by itself, huh? And the other reason to think that the soul is in the genus of substance... Because the soul itself has qualities. Yeah. And that's going to lead into the immortality of the soul. If the soul has some activity, right, that the body doesn't share in, if it has an activity that's not in the body, right, that would show the soul to be something, what, substantial, right? If the soul were merely an accident of the body, right, it would have no activity except in the body, through the body, right? And, of course, you can recall Socrates' argument there, one of his arguments against the soul being the harmony of the body, is that sometimes the soul, what, resists the body and its inclinations. And it doesn't seem to make too much sense that the harmony of the body would resist the body, huh? Okay. Now, the second division is more particular, and it's, in a way, dividing substance, right? By distinguishing substance in three senses. And one, of course, is substance in the sense of matter, and the other is substance in the sense of form, or species, and the third is the composite of the two. Okay? Now, apropos that division, what makes us think that there is matter and form in the genus of substance, huh? And I think that there is a lot of things that we have to do in the sense of nature. And I think that there is a lot of things that we have to do in the sense of nature. And I think that there is a lot of things that we have to do in the sense of nature. And I think that there is a lot of things that we have to do in the sense of nature. And I think that there is a lot of things that we have to do in the sense of nature. Because when we first think of matter and form, we're usually thinking of matter as some actual substance, right? Like clay, or stone, or something of this sort. We're thinking of matter as a material substance, right? As a body. And we're thinking of form as something that happens to the body, like its shape, or its disposition, or its sense quality, or something of this sort. What makes us think that in the genus of substance, within substance itself, there's something proportional to that? That there's matter in the genus of substance, and there's form in the genus of substance, and consequently the composite of the two, too. What makes us think that is so? Because there's change into other substances. Yeah. Because there is substantial what? Change, right? Now, what is the best example, or the most certain example, of a change of substance, huh? What, let's say before that, what is the best example of a substance? Is it a stone, or a tree, or a dog, or a man? Which is the best example of a substance? Yeah. And if you look at the categories, Aristotle talks about substance, and other places like that, he will give, as a first example of a substance, a man. And then as a second example, a dog, right? Or it could have been a cat or a horse, but one of the higher animals, huh? He doesn't give a tree or a plant as an example of a, what, substance, although maybe that is an example of a substance, right? And even more so, he doesn't give a stone as an example of a substance, huh? Now, you know how sometimes metals run together and they seem to get fused together, right? And is a stone really one substance, or in some sense a glued together of many substances? It's not that clear, really, right? Maybe it's really what? Maybe it's not really one thing to stone, right? Maybe it's a combination of what? Substances, huh? And even the plant, huh? There are some plants that you can propagate, not by seed, but by what? Dividing them, right? And both parts will, what? Grow, right? And, you know, is that true about the starfish, they say, that the starfish used to cut them up and you're actually multiplying them rather than destroying them, huh? What is it that a man, in that matter, even a dog has, that makes us think more of them as being one thing rather than a combination of many things? And why do you even man more than the dog, right? What does the man and the dog have that the plant doesn't have and even more so the stone doesn't have? Well, one thing with man has a personal experience of unity. Okay. So nobody really thinks of himself as what? As we, huh? You know? We came up here today to give a talk, huh? We sometimes use the editorial we, right? But in our more sober moments, right? We never think of ourselves as we, huh? You know? That's kind of lending more authority to me when I say, we think, you know? As if I was many persons, right? And that's just one fool by himself. Okay? But another thing here that man and the dog have in common is that they have sensation, right? And I think we may have spoken about this before, but let's call it a bit, huh? Is sensing the kind of activity or operation or doing that many distinct substances, right, can share. Now, it's possible, let's say, if together, several of us might be able to lift this table. Well, it's kind of a heavy table, right? But maybe one of us would have a hard time lifting this old table and transporting it someplace, right? But perhaps many of us together can lift the table, right? So we all share one lifting of the table. Or in the tug of war, you've got a rope there and you've got six or seven guys on one side pulling six or seven other guys into the mud or whatever it is they have there, between the two of them, right? This pulling of the rope, right, is the work of six or seven men, right? They share in it, right? Now, could six or seven men share in seeing that crucifix over there, seeing that clock or something like that, right? Or is there some reason to say that seeing is not like lifting or pulling, right? That's not the kind of activity that can be shared, one sensing, by many different, what, substances, huh? What is there about sensing that might indicate the difficulty of saying that? One sense, right? What is the difference in the kind of activity that sensing is as opposed to pushing or pulling or lifting or something of that sort, huh? Yeah, that's the Latin word they use, right? It remains within the one doing it, right? While lifting or pushing or pulling is acting upon something outside of you. It's a transitive activity, right? So many men together can lift or push or pull something sometimes that one of them alone could not do, right? Okay? But could the crucifix be seen there if I saw this, the vertical, and you saw the horizontal, could the crucifix be seen by the two of us together? Or if I saw, you know, one half of that painting over there, right? And you saw another half, right? Could you say together the whole painting let's see? But the whole painting is seen only when one person, or more than one person, by themselves, right? See that painting, huh? Sometimes I compare it to what? Defining or syllogizing, right? Suppose you know what a quadrilateral is, huh? You know what an equilateral, what is to be equilateral, but you don't know what it is to be quadrilateral. He knows if it is to be quadrilateral, he doesn't know what it is to be equilateral. And I know what it is to be right-angled, but I don't know what it is to be quadrilateral or to be right-angled, I mean to be equilateral, and vice versa, you don't know what it is to be right-angled, right? So between the three of us, you're going to understand what a square is, huh? Okay? Or does one of us have to see the whole thing? It's an equilateral right-angled quadrilateral. And then what a square is, is known definitively, right? And someone else is going to share in knowing that, right? He's got to see the whole thing, right? That's why it's a common good in everything. In the same way in the syllogism, if I know that every mother is a woman, right? But I don't know that no man is a woman. And you know that no man is a woman, but you don't know that every mother is a woman. Can we syllogize that no man is a, what, mother? No. One of us would have to get both premises into his head, right, before you can see the conclusion of that, right? So this is kind of a way of elaborating upon that inward experience we have.