De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 21: The Nutritive Soul and Generation in Living Things

Transcript
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For a second here, I'll take a little passage here from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. And it's a section here on the body and the soul, right? But 365 is the number of the reading. It says, the unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the form of the body. And then it has a footnote there, 234, and that's the Council of the End, right? The one that we looked at before. It is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living human body, right? Spirit and matter and man are not two natures united, but rather the union forms a, what, single nature. The next one talks about how the human soul didn't come from the parents and about the immortality of the soul, 366. Peristyle himself says that in the book of The Generation of Animals, that the human soul doesn't come from the parents. That's about to say, yeah. But that's because he saw it was not dependent upon matter, right? And therefore it couldn't be produced by the transformation of matter. Yeah. By the transformation of matter through the parents, you have a body that's suitable to receive the soul, right? But the soul itself is not brought into existence that way. Interesting that he saw that, you know? Yeah, sure. Saw the immortality of the soul, of course, too. So we're down to page 12 of your text there, number 147, which is, in Thomas' division, has started a new lesson. And the lepsios here, which deal with the living soul, right? Or the plant soul. The feeding soul, you wish, huh? Aristotle calls it here the, what? First soul, too, huh? And it's first in what sense of first? Second sense of others. Yeah. Can't be without it, but it can't be without the others. Yeah. Just like when you go back to those grades of life, right? You can have the power of feeding, right? And reproducing, right? Without having the powers of, what? Sensing, right? And you can have the powers of sensing without having the power of understanding, right? Or to leave in, or complete there. You can have the powers of sensing without the power of moving from one place to another, right? And you can have the power of moving from one place to another without the power of understanding, but not vice versa, in mortal things, right? Okay. Now, perhaps it's before, too, in time or generation, huh? You know, after you have the seed of the fertilized egg, let's say, even the animal, what first appears is growth, right? Okay. And then later on appears the senses, right? And last of all, the use of reason, right? Okay. So it may be that, too, right? Okay. But which soul is first in the fourth sense of first? Yeah. The understanding soul, as Shakespeare calls it. Okay. So he's going to talk about the first soul in that other sense, right? Here, huh? And first, as Thomas points out, he's going to clear up some things that are necessary as a preparation to talking about this soul. And he's going to answer a couple mistakes, too. So in 147, he says, Whence one must first speak about food and generation, huh? For the nutritive soul, the feeding soul, right? Is even in the other living things, at least they have these powers, right? And is the first and most common power of the soul. It's common to all living things, huh? And it must be before the other ones can be in mortal things. It's common to all living things. It's common to all living things. It's common to all living things. according to which living is in all living things, and the works of which soul are generating and, what, using food, huh? That's more clear, I suppose, you use food when you nourish yourself to maintain yourself, right? And you use food to, what, to grow, right? See all these immigrants, you know, where the father is short and the son is towering above him, and maybe the daughters are taller than the mother, too, and so on, right? They've got a better diet, right? Yeah, so, but in a more obscure way, generation is tied up with, what, food, right? Now, because he had spoken, Thomas says in the commentary, because he had spoken earlier more about the first soul as feeding, right, as being the feeding soul, he wants to manifest a generation that very much pertains to a living thing, huh? And he says some very interesting things here, following, to some extent, in the, some words of Plato himself in the symposium. For the most natural of the works for living things, which are complete, huh? Once you're a mature individual, and not mutilated in some ways, right? Like the eunuch, as Thomas says, huh? Or spontaneously generated, huh? Aristotle and Thomas said the idea that some of these insects were spontaneously generated, right? Not from seed. Maybe they couldn't find the seed or something, right? So we don't want to follow them, that opinion. For the most natural of the works for living things is making another like themselves, huh? And this seems to be something that even in the non-living things you seem to have, right? Like fire seems to generate, what? Oh. Fire. You can see it in all these big fires we've had down in Colorado and other places, California. And they see these fires sometimes, they get so hot, you know. They come to the road there, and just jump across the road, and it starts to burn, you know. It's kind of an amazing thing to see. My son Marcus likes, you know, the candle sometimes, you know, if you extinguish a candle, and then you're smoking up, and then you can just hold a match above the candle like that, and it jumps down. Did you see that? No. Yeah, just hold it, and then it's smoking. All of a sudden there's a seed down. The flame, and light the candle again. It's kind of unusual to see that, huh? But it gets so hot that these forest fires, you know, just. So he sees this idea of generating another as something common to all the actual things, right? And therefore, also most natural to living things, huh? Then he goes on to something very subtle, and something that Plato had said before him in the symposium. That in immortal things, when they generate, right, another like themselves, they're also striving to be so far as possible, like what? God, huh? Okay. Now, this has kind of naturally occurred to a Greek in a way, because if you know Homer, Homer sometimes refers to men and the gods, right? But then it's almost synonyms for men and the gods, so to speak, of the, what? Mortals and the, what? Immortals, huh? Okay. So when the mortal is trying to perpetuate itself, to make itself immortal, by generating another like itself, it's striving to be like the immortal so far as what? Possible. Yeah. Okay? It's very interesting that Plato, that both, Plato and Aristotle, the chief philosophers, as we said before, both see generation as aiming ultimately to be like God in some way. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, when you read the Theotetus of Plato, which is one of the very famous dialogues, where he says, one is the beginning of philosophy, and we've seen a passage in there before. It's also where he gives one of the two so-called platonic definitions of philosophy. And he defines philosophy as becoming like God so far as possible. You might think, well, gee, that's putting philosophy off the hat. Well, it is. But in some ways, all living things, right, when they reproduce, are trying to be in some way, what, like God so far as possible. As he points out here, it's not possible for them as individuals to go on forever, right? But by reproducing something of the same kind, in a way, they go on. If you look at the first 20 sonnets of Shakespeare, where he's kind of, you know, trying to persuade someone to get married, right? He's always emphasizing this idea, right? Like the first sign begins with the famous line, from fairest creatures we desire increase, meaning offspring, that thereby beauty's rose might, what, never die, as the reaper should by time and sea, you know? This tender air might bear his memory. Okay? And I often say to students, you know, what does, who's reproduced? You know, we use the word reproduction there. And who's reproduced? It's not the child. Producer, yeah. He's produced, for the first time. It's the parents we've produced, right? Okay? So in a way, there's a continuation, right? Yeah. Okay? So, he's saying, for all things have an appetite for this, huh? A desire, in a sense, to be like God, huh? And you may recall, in the first book of Natural Hearing there, that when Aristotle says, when he's discussing Plato there at the end, he and Plato agree that the form is something, what? God-like, right, huh? So when nature tries to form things, to perfect them, in other words, it's trying to be like God in some very distant way, but something like God, huh? Because God is universally perfect, right? So when these things grow to perfection, as we say, right, they're striving to be like God, who's universally perfect. But in particular, when they're trying to reproduce, they're trying to be immortal like God, huh? And the Greek has two words there, the, um, I, you know, which means always, right, to be eternal, and divine, right? Kind of coupling the two together, huh? For all things have desire, appetite for this, and do whatever they do according to nature for the sake of this, huh? So it's natural to seek to be like God, huh? Even for the plants. Now they don't know they're trying to be like God, right? But they're naturally trying to be like God. You know, Thomas is explaining the definition of the good in ethics there. You know, it still begins with a kind of induction that he brings out the first definition of good. The good is what all desire, right, huh? And you can understand that in more than one way, perhaps, huh? That each thing is seeking its own, what? Good, right? At least what seems to be good to it, huh? But nobody can understand that they're all seeking to be like, what? God, who in one sense is its own good, huh? The good is what all desire. But you see that here, huh? It's very interesting, huh? Even in a perverse way, you know, the Marxists and others are starting to be like God, huh? You know. And Marx says we reject anybody who's not, you know, it's something human-minded being the highest divinity. He's trying to be God-like in kind of a, yeah, a perverse way, huh? But even these, you know, mad tyrants who are seeking, you know, big power of people, right? God's all-powerful, right? In some sense, they're seeking to be like God, huh? However, that for the sake of which is twofold, that which or that for which, huh? It's kind of obscure, though, what Aristotle's saying. Thomas gives a couple of explanations of that, right? We could say the doctor is acting for the sake of what? Health, right? Or for the sake of a, what? Healthy body, right? Okay. One could be the good itself, and the other is that of which it is the, what? The good, right, huh? Or another way he understands it is more in terms of the end, and what is for the sake of the end, right? Okay. But now he comes back to the idea of trying to be divine. Since therefore it is impossible to take part in always being, huh? And in the divine and continuous way, huh? He's more. He's more. He's more. He's more. He's more. things cannot go on forever, right? They have a lifespan, huh? Kind of amazing, those trees in California, you know, they go on and on. Such a long lifespan, huh? Because not one of the destructible or corruptible things can persist the same in one in number. Insofar as each is able to share, it takes part in this one more and that one less, huh? Some are able to exist longer than others, right? They've got some of these bugs and so on, they have a lifetime of a day or so, you know, and they go through their whole lifespan, their whole cycle, you know, in one day, huh? Okay? But none of these things go on forever. And the same thing does not persist individually, but what is like the same, huh? Not one in number, but one in species or what? Kind, huh? So the dogs produce a dog and a cat a cat and the oak tree, another oak tree, right? And so on, huh? Makes another like itself. Yeah. And you have to have this understanding, I think, when you get into ethics, too, you know, and Thomas is talking about sexual ethics, what we might call that. He's talking about, you know, misusing your sexual organs or using them other than their actual purpose and so on. He says, well, some people might say, you know, well, is there any sin in a man walking on his hands, you know? Because you've seen people, you know, who can walk on their hands a bit, you know, and have a pretty good balance to do that. I don't think I can do that. But that's not much interfering with the good of man, right? Even though you're not using the hands. The hands are not really made for walking, are they? See? But when you realize that the sexual organs and so on are made for what? Reproduction, right? And they're ordered to what? Therefore, the common good of the species, but ultimately even to being like God in some way, right? Realize how those organs are ordered to a good much greater than the individual. And therefore, he doesn't have, what? The leeway, right? Of interfering with the order that they have to these goods that are greater than him. Now, Sundays, I'll point to the fact that we interfere sometimes with the natures of the animals and the plants that we're using for our various uses, but they are subordinated to us. They're for the sake of us, as you'll go on to say here in a short time here, right? But in the case of the reproduction there, you're ordered to a good, which is the common good of the what? Species, right? And ultimately to what? Becoming like God, right? So you're not really free to do whichever you want with that, huh? It's just like, you know, the order to truth, right? Truth is the common good of the whole universe, huh? You're not just free to think whatever you want to think. You've got to make a real effort, you know, to have the tools you need and so on to find out what the truth is in order to a good which is greater than what? Yourself. Yourself, right? Yeah. As I mentioned here, Plato talks about this in the, what? Symposium, right, huh? He has a kind of, I think, an interesting idea of sexual attraction, right? In terms of this, huh? As I said to our students, you know, why other things being equal, right, are men and women more sexually attracted to a beautiful or handsome person of the opposite sex, right? You know? And we don't really know the reason for that, see, huh? If someone else is more beautiful or is very beautiful, you can enjoy how they look, right? Because that's obvious and the beautiful is what pleases when seen, huh? See? But I'm saying, why is there a desire to reproduce with that person who is beautiful? See? I'll go back to those words of Shakespeare. From fairest creatures, meaning the most beautiful creatures, we desire increase, why? That thereby beauty's roles might never die, huh? In other words, you want to perpetuate and make what? Eternal so far as possible, the beauty that you see in this person, right? Without realizing it, right? You're naturally drawn to that person sexually, right? Because you have a natural desire to perpetuate the beautiful, not the ugly. Is it? That's to be very profound. He understands that, right? See? But the beautiful should delight your eyes, that's a separate thing. That's true, right? See? But this desire to reproduce with the beautiful goes back to this, right? The desire to make perpetual that. And then Plato, if you read the symposium, he goes on from the desire for the immortality of what? Of the beauty of the body to the immortality of the what? Beauty of the soul, right? And that's in a way what the teacher's after, right? See? Because the teacher wants this knowledge that he has, right? To be what? Passed on to this, right? Just like, you know, take Cecilia here, the patroness of music, huh? You know, just like, you know, if a man plays a violin, he wants other men to what? Be taught the art of violin playing. So when he's gone, other men will play the violin down through, what? History, right? And Heisenberg said to Max Planck, you know, should I leave Germany, you know? You know, because they had to come to power and so on, right? And of course, the Jews had to get out of Germany if they knew what they were facing, you know? Einstein and Max Born and those of Jewish blood, you know, saw the particular danger that they were in, right? And they left Germany. Planck says, well, if all you guys need German science, well, what? Die, right, huh? You see? So it's kind of a concern there for the perpetuation of what? Truth. Of the beauty of the soul, right, huh? Which is knowledge and virtue and so on, right? Okay. The same way their parents want to pass on, assuming they're good parents, right? They want to pass on their virtue or something of it, right? In their children, right? An honest man doesn't want his son to be a thief, right? Or the courageous man, his son to be a coward or wants to pass on something of their son. That 149 there, he's going to talk about how the soul is a cause of these things, huh? The soul, however, is the cause and principle of the living body. But these cause and principle or beginning are said in many ways. Now, if you recall from actual philosophy there from the second book of natural hearing, there are four kinds of cause, huh? Which Aristotle gave there in the order of matter, right? Form, mover, and what? End, huh? Okay. So just recall for a second there, right? Um, you take the chair that I'm sitting on, right? The matter is the, what? Wood it's made out of, right? And maybe some metal and so on it's in it, huh? The form is the, what? Shape of the wood, right? And the order of the parts, huh? The angles at which they make and so on. And the mover or maker is a carpenter. And the end of purpose is the, what? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Now, Aristotle's saying here that the soul is a cause of the body in more than one of these ways, huh? But not in all four ways, but only in what? Three ways, right? Okay. Now, which three ways is it a cause, huh? Notice what he says here, huh? For the soul is a cause as whence is emotion itself. It's a cause as a mover. Of course, that's kind of our first notion almost of life, huh? We think that things are alive that in some way, what? Move themselves, right? So you think of the soul as a cause of motion. He says it's also a cause in the sense of in, and he gives the definition of in there. That for the sake of which, huh? And finally, as a substance of in-souled bodies, animate bodies, living bodies, right? When he says substance there, he means what? As Thomas says, the form, right? Aristotle, I see in the metaphysics, he often speaks of matter, and you keep the word matter for that, but then substance in the sense of form, you'll keep the word substance, huh? Okay? It's kind of interesting that he does that, huh? It's a little confusing maybe at first, but remember how the definition of form was the definition of what was to be, right? What was the definition of what was to be, right? What was the definition of what was to be, right? What was the definition of what was to be, right? And, of course, substance means what a thing is, right? That's one reason why he does it, right? Now, he's going to manifest it in those three ways. But in no way is the soul a cause in the sense of what? Matter, right? Let's look at the way he manifests these three things, and then we'll come back and talk a little bit about the significance of why it has those three and not the fourth one, right? It is clear that it is a cause as substance or as form. For in all things, substance or form is the cause of what? Being, right? Now, why does he say that? Well, let's take a very simple example of that. Wood is a chair or a table or a bed only in what? Ability, right? And when can you say that the wood is a chair or it is a table or is a door? Well, when it gets its what? Form, right? Okay. So to be a chair or to be a table is through some what form, right? So he's saying substance or form is the cause of being, huh? By the soul is the cause for living beings, for living bodies, right? Of their living, right? Yeah. Okay? And he's taking living here now in the sense of what? The being of a what? A living thing, right? The to be of a living thing. Sometimes we take life to mean also the operations of life, right? He's taking it here for the very being of it, huh? You say I'm alive and not dead, right? Yeah. But the soul is the cause and principle of this. We saw it before that the soul is the form of the body. Moreover, it's the what? Act of a being in potency, right? And so we saw that definition of the soul. It's the first act of a natural body composed of tools, right? Okay. So those are two ways he's showing that the soul is a cause of the body in the sense of form, right? What was the second one again? How did that go on? Well, the second one is that it's the actuality of the body, right? Okay, yeah. Okay, that's what the form is. It's the first act of something, huh? Yeah. Or it's through the form of something as being. That's the first argument he has. Okay? So because through the soul the body is alive, it has the existence of a living thing, then the soul is a cause and a sense of substance or form. Okay? And because it's the act of a body, right? Then it's also the form of the body, right? It's sort of like those two are the same. Well, they're similar, but in one case he's talking about it's being the beginning of the being of it as a living thing, right? In other cases he's talking about it as being the, what, act of the body, huh? Okay, the form of the body. Just like I might say, you know, wood begins to be a chair to its form, right? And you can also say the form is, what, an actuality of the ability of the matter, right? So you're not saying exactly the same thing, are you? But they're obviously connected, right? What's the difference? Well, let's just stop, let's think of that for a moment, right? You can say wood can be a chair or a table or a door, right? But it's being a chair or being a table or being something is through its form, right? Right. So form is that through which something has being in some way, right? See? Just like my being a geometer, right, is through my mind being formed by geometry, huh? Yeah. Okay? Now you're comparing the form to the being, right? To the existence, right? Yeah. So through the soul, the body is alive, right? As being in the sense, huh? But you can also say that the form of the chair or the table is the, what, act of the matter, right? Sure. It's the actuality of what the matter is potentially, right? Okay? Yeah. Okay. So in one case, you're comparing it directly to its subject, okay? In other case, you're seeing it as the beginning of what? The thing existing or being, huh? Just like geometry is a form of my mind, right, huh? And through geometry, I have a new kind of being, right? And say, I am a geometer, right? See? So through the science or the art of geometry in my mind, right, I, Dwayne Burquist, am a geometer. You see? Okay? So I have a, well, that's not my being simply, is it? No. That's a kind of being, isn't it? I mean. Okay? Just like through my health, you can say, I am healthy, right? Yeah. Okay? But at the same time, you could say that, what, geometry is a, what, an actuality of my mind, huh? Yeah. So I could say in one case, it's the source or the beginning of my being a geometer. You can say also, it's the act of my mind, being the form of my mind. The act of being a genus? Well, the soul is an act, yeah. We've seen that before, yeah. It's the first act, right? It would be its genus then? What? It would be its, the act would be the genus of the soul, or no? Yeah, you could say the soul is the first act, right? Of a natural body composed of tools, or it's the first, you could say it's also the substantial form, right? Of a natural body composed of tools, huh? Okay? However, it is clear that the soul is also a cause in the sense of end, that for the sake of which, that's the definition of end, that for the sake of which. Now, how does he manifest this? For just as the mind acts for the sake of something, nature acts the same way, and this is its end. Now, without going on to the rest of it for a moment here, notice what we saw back in the second book of natural hearing, what we saw that nature acts for an end, right? Okay? And one way Aristotle manifested that, the last argument, in fact, was that nature, what? That forms matter, right? And form is the, what? End of matter, right? Okay? Let me review that just for a second, huh? When Aristotle wants to show that, in the second book there, he has a nice proportion. He sometimes compares the three arts, we've mentioned this before, I think, the art that uses the formed product, the art that forms the product, and the art that, what? Repairs the raw materials, right? If you find this, those three arts, again and again, when you go through industry, right? Mechanical arts, huh? Like my father's company, huh? Alcohol and Implement Company. They made farm wagons, some of the other things, huh? So, here's the trade, you know, grain king, right? Grain king wagons, the best wagons ever made, say, for the farm. But, what they're practicing, you might say, in my father's factory, then, was which of these three arts? The barns they've added. Yeah, yeah. Now, other people were delivering wood, right? Others were delivering what? Steel, right? Mm-hmm. Okay? So, I've unloaded wood a lot, and I've unloaded steel down there. In fact, I dropped a steel bar when I tan my foot. They really started beating me, you know, they took me to the little restroom and took me down to the hospital, you know, and I sewed up my big toe, you know. He was putting kind of a painkiller in there, you know, like, toe is bigger and bigger. So anyway, I can't get your shoe on it, honestly, afterwards. So, notice, I was unloading steel. I'm going to tell you a good joke about that, you know. Everybody hated that job about unloading steel, you see. And sometimes my father would hire somebody outside the company, you know, to unload steel because everybody hated the job. One time the union representative was storming down. I hear you're hiring people without a union. My father just called up the guy and said, shop, you guys want to unload steel? No, no, no. So after they left, the union guy said to my father, I have to apologize. His husband's daughter is storming me. He says, I'll lose my job. I don't come down and complain about something. So, but then he had special gloves to be able to load the steel. You can load your pinch of fingers, you know. You can't use gloves, you know. You can't really pinch your fingers. But, no, it's like, the father's company is not making the steel, right, the bars and so on, or the wood, right? That's other arts of preparing the raw materials. My father's company was, like, forming the product, right, okay? And it's really the farmer, right, who uses the product, then. And they did have kind of a farm that they went out to, sometimes to try out a new product. And so my father's engineer, sometimes he'd design something new, and he'd say to me, now, we've got an interesting idea here. He says, we're never going to see if it's any good. But, as you make something according to that idea of the engineer, and then you take it out on the farm and see how it, what, performs, right? Just like Detroit takes a car out on the road, and maybe you see, you know, people start complaining about this and that going wrong. And then they have to go back to the drawing boards, right? Okay. Now, corresponding to these arts are three things, huh? One is the use of the product, right? The other is the form, and the other is the what? Matter. Now, of these three arts, which art commands which art? The art that uses commands the... Yeah. The art that uses the product commands the art that forms the product. So, if you get out there and start using the product, and you start to see some defect in it, right? Like the soldier with his gun, right? Sometimes you discover the gun jams after certain number of shots, or it overheats, or something happens out there, right? Using the product. Well, then they come back, and they... So, you've got to correct that, right? And so, then they redesign the thing, right? Now, in redesigning the thing, then they have to go, maybe, and what? You get a different piece of metal, right? A different shape, or a different size, or something of that sort, right? So, the art that forms a product, like my father's company, they would give orders, right? To the wood producers, or the steel producers, right? One of these steel companies was run by a woman, you know? So, I thought it was very unusual, you know? I thought that a woman could be a kind of steel company, huh? I don't know how she got into it, or whether she inherited it, or what? My father's always very kind, or kind of the man's will there, you know, steel. But anyway, my father's company, therefore, the art that forms a product, his orders to the U.S., the ones that prepare the raw materials. Where I start using that to manifest, what's the order, then, of the use and form of matter? Why does the art that uses the product command the art that forms it? Because the use of the product is the end or purpose of the, what? Form of product, right? But why does the art that forms the product, why does that command the arts that prepare the matter? Because the matters being prepared are for the sake of the form of product, right? So, just as use is the end of form, form is the end of the, what? Matt, that's a very concrete way, the way Aristotle manifested in it. And you see, if you get a farm wagon out on the farm, it's not leveled to farm, right? And the farm wagon is, what? Bending, right? As the terrain of the land. And these cheap wagons, not my father's wagons, you know, they don't have as much steel underneath, they're a sort of thing, right? They cut short, and then it's what snaps up there. The farmer comes down to the Twin Cities, and he's storming bad, right? And so, he says, who makes a good wagon, right? And they send it to my father, right? So, we go up in Machinery Hill there, where they, during the Minnesota State Fair, you know, where all the farmers are coming in, you know, and my father would be displaying his wagons, and other people would be displaying their wagons, and we go into all the wagons, see? I mean, my fathers are much more solidly built, you see? But notice, if you discover out on the farm that, with that size steel, you'd get too many of these snaps, right? Then you'd go back and you'd, what? Redesign them with bigger pieces, and then you'd give a different order to the, what, steel iron, I don't think, huh? That's another more fun story. One time on the stage fair, they were out there, and the guy next to my father's dad had done bleedies every time with a low-cut gown there, you know, and she's passing out their literature. My father went there laughing, see? Because he says, they all go in there to look at the girl, and they come up to my place to look at the wagon. So, this is the ultimate proof of superiority of my product. So, they can't get them in there without that girl out there. So, if the soul is the form of the body, right? The substantial form of the body, then it's the end of the, what? Matter, huh? Therefore, it's a cause not only in the sense of form, but also of the end, huh? And sometimes we say that form is the end of, what? Generation, right, then? Yeah, well, Leo's on with chipping away at the marble, right? He's aiming at a certain, what? Form, huh? In the matter. He goes on to say, and this is very interesting, that the soul seems to be not only the end of that natural body, but also of the whole of, what? Natural bodies, huh? Because the plants use the, what? None living world, right? Like the water and the elements in the soil, right? To build up their body and so on, right? And the animals use the plants for food, right? And sometimes other animals are food. And man uses the animals and the plants, all of these naturally, for his needs, right? So that the soul, and ultimately the human soul, seems to be the end of the whole, what? Natural world, huh? In living things, the soul, according to nature, is such. For all natural bodies seem to be in some way tools of the soul. And just as some are of animals, so too some are of clans, as being for the sake of the soul. And he repeats again that distinction that we saw earlier. So in a way, the human soul is the end of the whole natural world, he's hinting at here. That's very interesting for what it points to, well, because if an understanding soul is the end of the whole natural world, right? And light produces light, right? Then you think that there being a greater, what, mind, right? Or understanding behind nature, right? That is directing the soul thing towards, what? The understanding soul in some way. Okay? But before that, it's directing that generation to be like itself, right? So when you say that God is the end of the universe, he's not the end of the universe in the sense that he gets anything from the universe. He doesn't need anything, right? Nothing can be added to God, right? But everything is directed towards God, at least insofar as it is, what? Trying to be like God, so far as, what? Possible, right? But then when you get to the understanding soul, and even more so, obviously, with the angels, then you have something that can not only become like God in some way, but it has two operations. Understanding and loving, which can attain God in himself, huh? So when you eventually see God face to face, only through our reason, understanding, can we do that? Though we need God's help to do it, obviously. And with our, only with the will, can you really love God, huh? So that cat around here, cat back home, we have Moppet there. Moppet is unable to, what, love God in himself, right? Okay. So that cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here, cat around here Although in reproducing and being a mother, as far as it was, she's becoming like God so far as possible, right? Immortalizing her kind, right? Now, 153, he says, But indeed the soul is also that whence first is motion according to place. However, this same power of moving from one place to another is not in all living things, right? But only in the higher animals than in man, of course. Now, he says sense seems to be some alteration. He just says that because he's not yet shown how different sensing is, right? From alteration, as we'll see if we take up that. Now, notice that those three causes, or those three kinds of causes that the soul is, they're all tied up with, what, actuality, right? Because the form is the act of the body, right? And the end is also the act of, what, ability. As Aristotle will show in the Ninth Book of Wisdom, ability is for the sake of, what, act, right? The ability to see is for the sake of, what, seeing, right? The ability to understand is for the sake of understanding, right? The ability to play the piano is for the sake of playing the piano. And the ability of matter is for the sake of form. Okay? So, Ninth is always based on some kind of actuality. And forms, you said, is an act. And then, was able to move things, because what is in what? In act, right? Okay? So, the fire, which is actually hot, right? Causes the air, which is hot, in the ability, to be actually hot, or at least warm, right? But matter is essentially, as we saw back in natural philosophy, in the beginning of natural philosophy, matter is essentially what? It's passive ability, right? So, the soul, being an act, can that be, what? Matter. I think we mentioned that before, when we were talking about the four kinds of causes, and how you can, in different ways, sometimes divide those four, right? And one way you can divide them is form, mover, end, against what matter, right? And the basis for that division is that matter is essentially ability, the passive sense, then. And the other three are all based upon, what? Actuality, huh? Okay? Some that can act upon other things and move them, insofar as it is an act, then. Because act is what you give something else. You'll give ability. You know, you give it an act, then. So, insofar as you're in act, you're able to give some act to something else. So, those three causes are based upon actuality. And I think I mentioned before, that when you take up God's causal, you say God is a cause, right? And how many of the four kinds of cause is God a cause? Two and a half, yeah. Yeah. He's a cause in the sense of the mover or maker. He's a cause in the sense of end. I've got to be careful when you say he's a cause in the sense of form. He's a cause in the sense of the, what? External form, right? Like the model after which you model something. So, we're said, or our soul is said to be made in the, what? To the image and likeness of God, right? So, but the soul is an intrinsic form of the living body. We have a lesson, there's a sort of likeness there between the soul and God, right? That the soul is also like God, which you see it from the soul before you see it by God, right? The soul is a cause in three ways, but it can't be a cause in the sense of what? Matter, yeah. Because it's act, right? And when you see that God is a pure act, you realize he cannot be a cause in the sense of matter, even more so, right? But he can be a cause in the sense of the mover or maker, very much so, in the sense of the end. But form, you've got to distinguish there, right? Because if he was a cause in the sense of the intrinsic form, he'd be, to some extent, like a part, right? And parts are like matter in some ways, right? And therefore, there'd be a certain potentiality there in God, right? With respect to the whole, which he's a part. And God is in no way a what? Part of anything. That's all it's got to be unfair to say, but God is in no way a part of anything. That's a strict sentence, huh? That's why we use the word partial always for something incomplete, imperfect, right? So in no way can you say God is a part, right? You've got to be careful when you say God is a whole because that may imply that he is parts, right? But the completeness of the whole is found even more in God, right? So what did Thomas say? You know, I consider the body, so I might consider the soul, right? I consider the soul, so I might consider what? The angels, and I consider the angels, so I might consider God, right? But here, this consideration of the soul here, and it's being a cause in three ways, in a way it kind of prepares our mind for seeing that, not identically, right, because of that distinction he made, but that God also can be a cause in three ways, but not in that, what, fourth way of matter, huh? Now, starting at 154, where he refers back to Empedocles, he's going to clear up some mistakes about the soul, right? And you find similar mistakes in a more sophisticated form, perhaps, in modern times, huh? But those who might try to reduce what takes place in the living body merely to what you have in, what, the physical sciences, huh? And it's interesting, though, although you have some biologists who might try to do that, they're getting more suspicious of that attempt now. But Heisenberg, huh? Heisenberg, when he talks about these things a little bit in the Gifford lectures there, he says that the stability of the living organism, right, doesn't make much sense from the point of view of physical principles alone, right? There's a stability in the living organism that hundreds of chemicals working on their own, independently of each other, doesn't fit very well, huh? And it's kind of interesting because Heisenberg, you know, was, of course, a student of the great Niels Bohr, right? And what led Niels Bohr to introduce the quantum into the atom was that they were first trying to imagine the atom as a kind of miniature solar system. And, you know, if our solar system was coming into, what, pumping into other solar systems all the time, our planets would be all, what, wacky in their movements, huh? See? In fact, they say they discovered, I've read that, the last planets, right? Because the last planets were influencing the, what, paths of the known planets. And the known planets were not moving exactly in the way they should be according to Newtonian physics. But Newtonian physics have been so successful, they said, rather than doubt Newtonian physics, let's guess that there are other planets we don't know about and their mathematics was so perfect that they could actually predict what other planets would be and they found them, right? It shows you how delicate in a sense the solar system is that another one or two extra planets affect the orbits of all the planets in there. We can imagine it, boom, boom, the solar systems were in collision, and there'd be none, you see? And so you're trying to understand with Rutherford, you know, kind of the nucleus as being like the sun and the electrons going around it. They should have no definite paths, no definite orbits, and so on. And so, Bohr realized that there was a stability in the atom that could not be explained in the light of what, of mechanical principles, right? But A. Ford-Siori, Eisenberg, coming to think about the living organism, even in terms of what we know from quantum theory about the atom and so on, that the stability of the living organism doesn't make really much sense. You have all these chemicals operating on their own, right? Yeah. Yeah. But now, in a more simplified form, you find this in pedocles here. See? Because the planet, I mean, the planet, but the plant, grows, what? Up into the sky and down into there, right? Well, he says, well, it goes down to the earth. it goes down to the earth.