De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 24: Sensation as Undergoing: Potency and Act in Sensing

Transcript
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Let's look here at chapter 5. These things being determined, he says, about the living soul, right? The reproducing soul, the plant soul. Let us speak in common about every sense. The first thing he wants to really bring out about the senses, and in general this whole reading here today, the fifth chapter, he wants to bring out that sensing is a what? Undergoing, right? Sensing is acted upon by its what? Object, huh? And this is one way of dividing the powers of the soul into those where the power acts upon the object, like in the digestive power, for example, right? And a power like the senses, where the object acts upon the what? Power. And that seems to be an exhaustive division, because if the power didn't act upon the object, or the object in no way acted upon the power, there'd be no connection, right? Between the object and the power. So he begins in 170 there by indicating that sensing is an undergoing. These things being determined, let us speak in common about every sense. Sense, or sensing, occurs in being moved, right? It's moved by its object. And suffering, as was said, huh? Okay. Now, let me come back to that word suffering there. I think we talked about it. But it's good to see it again here, maybe. Sympathically says, what is worth saying, can be said twice, huh? And the Greek word here, which is translated in Latin by passio, and passio has that sense of what? Suffering, like you speak of the passion of our Lord, right? But that first meaning of suffering is not going to be the meaning of suffering when you talk about sensing. What is that first meaning of suffering, huh? Well, when you suffer, you're being acted upon by another, right? In a way that is contrary to your what? To your nature, yeah. To your well-being, right? You're suffering, huh? Now, the English word suffering seems to be stuck in common speech anyway to that first meaning, huh? But the Greek word there and the, what, Latin word were carried over to sensing and things like that. And what way were those words carried over to sensing, huh? By leaving aside part of the meaning and being... In other words, they keep the idea that you're being acted upon, they keep the idea that you are receiving something, right? But they drop the idea, or that part of the notion of suffering, that what you are receiving, or the way you're being acted upon, is contrary to your nature. It's actually perfecting, actualizing what it's acting upon in this case, huh? But it's not acting in a way that's, what, contrary to it, huh? Nevertheless, in the case of sensing, there's still something bodily, right? And if you look at something bright too long, your eye is going to be what? Damage. Could be injured, right? Okay? Now, when you get to talking about the reason, Aristotle will also say that understanding is a kind of suffering. But there, it's going to be a completely immaterial being acted upon, huh? And you're not going to be, what, hurt by thinking about something very understandable. In fact, your mind will be more perfected by thinking about something very understandable. Now, myself, in English, sometimes, instead of translating this by the word suffering, which seems to be stuck, as they say, in the first meaning, sometimes I translate this Greek word, in Latin here, by the word undergoing. I think undergoing originally has something of the sense of being acted upon in a way that is, what, harmful, right? And I often point to two signs here in our language, huh? If we say, you know, I'm under the weather, what does that mean? You've been acted upon by the elements, right? In a way that's made you kind of, what, sick, you'd say, right? Okay? Or, if we say about somebody, you know, he's undergone a lot, or she has undergone a lot. What does that seem to indicate to us? Suffer, had a hard time. Yeah, yeah, okay? Now, undergoing, in a way, is the correlative there of, what, acting upon, right? Okay? And, if you take acting upon, and you say, what is the correlative of that? If you wanted to, you could just make this passive and say, acting upon, and being acted upon, right? And kind of synonymous for being acted upon would be, what, undergoing, right? And the idea of acting upon is, I think, much less so, if at all, in the sense of it necessarily being something bad, right? Okay? And so, if being acted upon is the correlative there of acting upon, it means that you're receiving something, right? You're being moved by something, but not necessarily in a way that is contrary to nature. And, if undergoing is a kind of synonym in English for being acted upon, it lends itself, this word, more to what happened in the Greek and the Latin, where it was carried over to the, what, other, what, meanings, right? Okay? That's kind of interesting, because the Greek word there, huh? Just to give you the texture for a second, the Greek here. It's pascene, right, huh? Which is directly analogous to pascio in Latin, or the verb form, this section is verb form, huh? And so, what Aristotle uses in the categories, he's talking about the ten categories, huh? Which I usually translate in English as, to act upon and to undergo, right? Okay? But, in Greek it has that first sense of something, of suffering, right? But it was extended. So, that's why I sometimes translate the word suffering by undergoing it. Although the translation of it by the word suffering does capture the first meaning of it, right? But sometimes the fact that in English the word suffering seems kind of stuck in that first meaning. It's always something bad. Although Shakespeare does have an expression there, you know. You suffer love for me, right? And there you see almost the word being moved, right? To the other senses, right? I don't understand. I think the speech is in Benedict, you know. He says, yes, I do suffer love. And that's well said, you know, because I love you against my will, right? That's it, son. Let me mention another word that's fairly connected with this, too. When Aristotle, in Greek, when he talks about the powers of the soul, and the Greek word I emphasize here is dunamis. Okay? That's a Greek word for the powers of the soul, right? In Latin, they'll translate that by the word what? Potentia, right? Okay? Now, how do you translate that in English? Yeah, usually it's translated, you'll see in English text, by the word what? Power, right? Okay? Which is a little bit like translating the word pasty in there by to suffer, right? Okay? Because the English word there seems to be stuck on the first meaning of these words in Greek or in Latin. And the first meaning, really, of dunamis or potentia, or power, is the ability to act upon something, right? Okay? The active ability or power. But then, in Greek and Latin, dunamis or potentia are carried over and applied to the ability to be acted upon. Okay? But you can see, in English, when we take words derived from dunamis or potentia, usually tie it to the first sentence, like the word dynamite. Or you see, somebody said, dynamite, right? Potent, then, you know, something that's strong that can act upon other things, right? Now, the word power seems to be, again, stuck in that first meaning. Now, I sometimes translate it by the word, what? Ability, huh? Instead of power. And I think when we hear the word ability, at first we're thinking of the first meaning, of dunamis or potentia, the meaning that power is stuck on the first meaning. Ability to do something, right? Okay? So, my example, I was given classes, you know, we put Perkwist in the ring there with Cassius Clay, and bang, bang, bang, bang, Perkwist doesn't have any ability to, you know? And they immersively stop the fight, you know? But, if you stop and think about it, though, you could say that Perkwist is, what? Beatable, breakable, right? We do, in English, use the word able, which, you know, corresponds to ability. For, in a passive sense, right? That glass is, what? Breakable, right? This table is burnable, right? Okay? Something is movable, right? It can be moved by another, right? So, again, the same principle I was giving over there is the problem about translating these things. The word power, in English, very much signifies an active ability, right? The ability to act upon another, and so on. The word ability doesn't bring it out quite as clearly, but I think it first has that sense. But the word ability is moved in English, so the word able is, very easily, right? For the passive ability, yeah? So, you see something analogous here in these two words that I'm trying to point out here. The word suffering, which is used in this translation for pascain, right? Or pascain on the Latin, right? Seems to, in English at least, be stuck on the first meaning very much, though. The word undergoing, although bringing out this forcefully, that the first meaning of undergoing is something contrary to your nature, right? The word undergoing, though, in English is more moved to the second meaning, yeah? And the same thing here, right? So, something to be seen in using the word suffering, the word power here, because you see that's the first meaning, right? And if you see purpose in the ring there being beaten by Cassius Clay, you wouldn't say purpose is a powerful fighter, would you? That doesn't seem right, right? But you could say in English that he's beatable, breakable, bustable, right? And therefore, you have, at least the word able there, and therefore, and ability, is the purpose has for a body that's beatable, breakable, combustable, and so on, right? Well, it's his passive sense of ability. You see the idea? So, don't be too shocked here by the suffering, right? If you ever have a chance to teach you that course on love and friendship, right? Thomas will point out that in loving, right, basically, the ability to love is acted upon by the object, okay? Now, sometimes you see that in the way we speak in English, huh? My typical example in classes, you know, you go to a party or something like that, and hear someone say afterwards, you know, you made a big impression on her, or you made a big impression upon him, you know, or something like that, right? But that means that you have what? Acting upon. Yeah, see? Because if I impress something, I'm, what, acting upon it, right? Okay. And, of course, even in mythology there, right, Cupid has what? Yeah. Obviously, the arrow is acting upon you. Yeah. But in the original sense, an arrow is going to be acting upon you in a way that is what? Yeah, yeah, yeah, see? And in the spiritual love, you know, increase of love, you know, receives, right, an increase of love under the, what, sense of image of an angel piercing your heart, right? There's actually, I guess, something shown in the heart there afterwards, you know, I just died. But that brings out very clearly that you are being acted upon by the, what, object. Not that you want to be acted upon by the object in a way that hurts you, or contrary to, but when you're acting upon that way, it's very clear to you that you're being acted upon. I think I've talked about that before, right? Or I just say, I'm acting upon your eyes, and I'm acting upon your ears throughout this lecture, right? You know, but if I came down and started sticking a pin in you, I'd be acting upon you in a much more recognizable way, right? See? You don't usually think, you know, the fact that your eyes are being acted upon by what's out there, do you? Even though they are, some way, being acted upon by their object. But when you're acted upon when somebody's kicking you, or sticking a pin in you, or stabbing you, or poking you, or something, and then it's very clear you're being acted upon. See? And so there's some advantage to taking a word like suffering, right? And carrying it over to these other senses of being acted upon. Even though, in a way, there's a tremendous movement, isn't there? Because when you're acted upon by a knife, let's say, you're actually being harmed, right? But when God is acting upon your heart, right? Or the beautiful painting is acting upon your eye, you're really being perfected, right? So you go from something bad, in its first meaning, to something good, even very good, right? In the end, huh? What's interesting, huh, nevertheless, that when God is giving, an example of the trees of Avila, there's a similar one, there's a similar one that's going on in front of the trees of Avila, and there's a similar one that's going on in front of the trees of Avila, St. Teresa de Silla, right? She's at the Station of the Cross, and she again, he sees like a wound, right? But sometimes, you know, even in secular love, they speak of that too. I gave you the line from Romeo and Juliet, right? You know, McCruish is making fun of Romeo because he's moaning about, what, Rosalind, right? And so he says, he chested scars who never felt the wound. But your heart has been wounded, right? Moral object, that would be the same sense, would it? What moves? Your will. Yeah, yeah. You know, usually when I begin to discuss love, I won't get into it now, but I kind of use a little dialectic, right? Because there are some passages that speak of love as being something active. So we often say, to give your love, right? The other passages that indicate that it's reverse, that the heart is not giving, but it's receiving, right? So which is it? But we'll say that in French, of course. But the reason I'm brought in love at all now is the fact that sometimes, you know, we speak of the wound of love, right? We speak of Cupid's arrow and so on, right? Even though this receiving might not be really harmful to you, right? So sense, or maybe we should say sensing, occurs in being moved and suffering, as was said. It's kind of interesting, yeah? The Greek word there, he translates by sense in 170, he translates in 171 by sensation. Now, the Greek word astasis, if you look it up in the dictionary, it can be translated, first of all, by sensing, right? But then it can also be translated by what? Sense, the power itself. Now, you'll find that, and before I come back to, you know, which is the proper way to translate this, you'll find that in these powers of the soul sometimes, that we have the same name sometimes, we use the same word sometimes, for the ability or the power, and for the, what? Act of that power. Take, for example, the word understanding, right? Is understanding an act or a power? Or is it used for both, at times? Both in Psalms. So we say that, you know, an essay of human understanding there, by Locke, he's talking about this faculty or this power that man has, huh? That understanding is being used for the power. Well, we can also use the word understanding for an act of that power. Well, the Greek word, if you look at the dictionary there, aesthesis here, occurs in both those first two paragraphs, it can be translated by sensing, right? Which is the act of senses, or by the word, what? Sense, meaning the power itself. Okay? And so, I would translate just the reverse of the way he translated these two paragraphs. All right. I would say, instead of saying sense, meaning the power, occurs in being moved and suffering, I would say that, what? Sensing, right? See? Sensing is being moved. Right? Okay? Now, I'll show you, make it to the second paragraph. He translated it by sensation there, which is the act. And Thomas, if you've seen his commentary, and Meribiki in his translation, takes it to be the, what? Power of sense. But we'll come back to that. So, I would translate this as, sensing occurs in being moved and suffering, right? For it seems to be a certain alteration. Now, later on, he'll say, it's not really alteration, or if you call it an alteration, it's really using the word in a different, what? Sense, huh? Now, in alteration, when you're acted upon by something, you are, what? Changed, huh? Like when the hard becomes soft, right? Or the soft becomes hard. Or the hot becomes cold, or the cold becomes hot, right? Okay? But he's saying, sensing is something, seems to be. At least we're in alteration, right? But he's going to qualify that as he goes on, huh? Some of us say that like suffers from like, huh? How this is possible, and how impossible, we have said in our general works on acting and suffering, on acting upon undergoing. He's referring back to the book called, A Generation and Corruption, huh? Okay? But the truth that he shows there, in general, we saw in particular, in the previous, what? Study of the, the living soul, right? The plant soul, the reproducing soul, right? Remember when he said, you know, is food like or unlike the fed? And he says, well, some say it's like the fed. Otherwise, you wouldn't have more of the same, right? You'd have, you know, a little bit of carrot here, a little bit of broccoli here, and so on, right? You've got to grow by addition of like to like, it seems, huh? And yet, unless you're a cannibal, what you eat is unlike your self, right? Okay? So he's saying that food, in the beginning, is unlike the fed, but in the end, it is what? Yeah. And that's true, isn't it? See? So when one thing acts upon another, right? It acts upon something that is other, that itself is contrary, in a sense. Like the hard acts upon the soft, or the hot upon the cold, right? But if it transforms that thing, and makes it like itself, then in the end, it is what? Like that. Okay? Because when God acts upon the soul, right, huh? Of the sinner, right? The sinner is unlike God, right? Yeah. But, as he acts upon him, the sinner becomes eventually, what? Like God, right? Huh? That's kind of a universal principle there, right? Okay? Every agent makes something like itself, in the end. But in the beginning, it is unlike itself. Now, 171 here, I need a little bit of background to understand what he's referring to here. He's dealing with a mistake, in a way, made by his predecessors, and kind of the one that stands out in his thinking is Empedocles, right? Now, Empedocles, if you may recall from that frame that we had of him, about knowing, he says, by earth we know earth, and by water we know water, and by air we know air, and by fire we know fire, and by love we know love, and by hate we know hate. It's because we have these things in us, right? It's because we're composed of these things that we, what? Know them, right? Okay? Now, as we mentioned a bit in studying that fragment, there is an element of truth in what Empedocles is saying, and that is that knowing takes place, yeah, and because the known is in some way in the, what? Knower, right? So if I know you gentlemen, and I recognize you and I come here every Wednesday, right? Well then, and I come here, and I come here, and I come here, Your shape and your color and so on, right? I've got them in my head now. I recognize you, right? Uh-huh. Okay. But perhaps where Empedocles goes astray is in what way is the thing known in the knower, right? And he's thinking of it too much in the way something is in matter. As if the soul knows things outside of itself because it's composed of those things. Because it has earth, air, fire, water, love and hate in itself. That's why it knows these things. Aristotle often points out a difficulty in another position of Empedocles in this because Empedocles made their interesting statement that there's no hate in God, which is, you know, very good in its own way, right? You know, as you know, John says God is law, right? There's no hate in God. And Empedocles says there's no hate in God, see? But then you put that together, what he says about how we know. If there's no hate in God, then God wouldn't know what? Hate. And therefore we know something God doesn't know. Which for all the great Greek philosophers have asserted to say, we know something God doesn't know. Okay? So, Empedocles sees something of the truth of knowing, that knowing takes place by the known being in the knower, right? And that's why we say when we talk about our mind, can you grasp what I'm saying? If you can grasp what I'm saying, that means in some way you know what I say, right? But as the word grasp seems to indicate, when your mind grasps something, it's got that in itself, right? But in what way is the thing known in the knower? Well, Aristotle's going to bring this out more at the end of this book, that the thing known is in the knower in an immaterial way, not in the material way. But now he's bringing out a little different point. He wants to bring out that the sense powers originally have what they know only in ability. They don't actually contain in the beginning what they know. And therefore they have to be acted upon by their objects, and therefore they receive, in some sense, their object or a likeness of their object in some way, before they actually know. But if the senses were, like Empedocles said, right, knowing what's outside of them, because they're actually composed of these things, then they would always be knowing these things, because they're always actually composed of earth, air, fire, water, and love and hate. And furthermore, since that's what their sensing is, right, and that's what their senses would be, they'd know what the senses are too. Now does the eye know what an eye is? Or does the ear know what an ear is? No. So he's going to point out two difficulties, two falsehoods that seem to follow from his position. If knowing takes place, because the senses are actually composed of what they know, then the senses should know themselves, but they don't, and the senses should always know, and not have to have the thing they know be present, because they'd already have it, what, within them. Do you see the problem? Okay. Now, as I mentioned before here, this is the way Thomas understands the text there in 171, and I mentioned this before, that the word isasis in Greek, right, can mean either sense the power or sensing. Well, I would translate it in the first sentence of 171, isasis here, by what? Sense. There is a difficulty as to why sensing of the senses themselves does not come to be, right? Why the senses don't know themselves, right? Okay. Just as back in 170, I translate sense by sensing. Okay. Aristotle will raise the question later on, in the third book, we'll see, about where the senses sense their own sensing. Maybe he was thinking of that in the translation that he gives here, you know, what comes up in the third book here. But Thomas understands that, as Mirabaki translates it, as being the sense, right? Okay. Why the senses, why there's no sensing of the senses themselves? See? If, in other words, the senses are nothing other than a composition of earth, air, fire, water, and love and hate, right? And by having earth, air, fire, water, love and hate, we know these things. Then the senses, by that very fact, should know themselves. But they don't. See? We don't sense the eye, do we? You don't see the eye, do you? It's just in the mirror, of course. But the eye as a whole, you don't see it, right? You don't hear the ear, do you? You hear something other than the ear, right? You see something other than the eye, right? So that's one difficulty, one thing that seems to be false, right? That follows from the position of Empedocles, right? Now the second difficulty is, and why without what is outside, they do not bring about sensation. In other words, if I know earth, air, fire, water, and other things in the world around me, because I actually had them in me, I don't have to have these things present in order to know them. Okay? And that doesn't seem to be true, right? I can't see you, gentlemen, if you're not here. Okay? I can't see fire if there's no fire there in front of me, right? I can't see water unless I go out of your pool or I have to get my water glasses, right? Take away the water glass, I can't see water, right? I can't taste water. Of which things there is sensation in virtue of themselves and in virtue of the accidents in these. Thomas says, in truth, it's in virtue of the accidents in these things. We don't really sense the substance of these things. It's reason that he really knows the things themselves, right? But the early philosophers, as we'll see more again, they didn't really distinguish between sensing and what? and reason very well. Okay? The word sensation, isn't that kind of equivocal? Yeah. It can mean the power, too, sometimes. Perhaps, yeah. It's like the word sight in English sometimes. You know, sight can mean even the object, that you see, and the seeing of it, and maybe the power, too. Those are words that become equivocal by reason, right? So the conclusion from seeing those difficulties in the position of Empedocles is that the sensitive power is not an act to begin with, but it's only in what? Potency or ability, right? Whence it does not sense, right? Automatically by itself, right? Automatically by itself, right? And that's the comparison he makes. Just as what can be ignited does not ignite itself, to itself, without what can ignite. For it would ignite itself, and not one thing would need what is fire in actuality. So if the water here was hot to itself, it wouldn't need fire to become actually warm. It'd be actually warm to itself. But the fact that it needs the fire to become warm shows that the water is hot only in potency, or to use my word, in ability. Aristotle is saying the same thing. If the sense knew its object, through actually having it in itself already, being composed in a way of what it knows, it wouldn't need that exterior object to know it. It'd be like God, right? Anyway, but it does need that exterior object, right, in order to see it. Therefore it must be what? In ability, or in potency, to its what? Object, huh? Okay. Now, in the next paragraph, he's going to point out that although the sense is in ability to begin with, later on, it is in what? In act, right? And he refers, first of all, to the fact that we do use the word to sense in two ways. But since we say sensing in two ways, for we say that potentially hearing, or seeing, hears, or see, even should it chance to be sleeping, and also what is already, what? Actually sensing at work, huh? Sense would also be said in two ways. The one as in potency, the other as in act. Similarly also to the sensing, one being in potency, the other being in act. Notice what he's saying there, right? Interesting. You don't stop and think about this sometimes, you know? Sometimes we use the word to see to mean that you have the ability to see, okay? Sometimes we use the word to see to mean what? The act of seeing, right? Now, let me point it out. Suppose somebody is blind, right? Okay? And he's sitting there in a room and so on. And you want someone else to realize the person is blind, right? And she doesn't, you know, make a faux pas or something like this stuff, right? And you say he doesn't what? He doesn't see. What does it mean he doesn't see? He's unable to. Yeah, he's blind. He lacks the ability to see, right? Yeah. See? Okay. But now another time, you might be someplace, and someone doesn't recognize you, or they're on the other side of the room or something like that, right? You want their attention, and someone's saying, he doesn't see you, you know? Right. What do you mean by that? He's blind? No. You mean he doesn't, what? Have the act of seeing, right? Right. Okay. You see the idea? Yeah. So, Aristotle's pointing to the fact that we use the word to see and to sense in these two different ways, right? And therefore, sensing is not only, what? The ability, right? We're talking about. Well, but also, what? There's an act, right? Okay. Later on, a little bit later on, this page is going to take up the act of ability and be much more, what? Decisive on it, right? Because there's going to be two senses which we speak of ability. And two senses which we speak of sensing, right? But let's wait until we get to that point, right? Okay. But now he's pointing out that sensing seems to involve not only this being an ability that we saw in 171, but also some kind of what? Act of that ability, huh? Okay. First, therefore, let us speak in 173 now. First, therefore, let us speak as if suffering and being moved and being at work are the same. Now, that's interesting, the way he translates that word there, being at work, huh? Because that's very close to the way the Greek word is, huh? Energein, I think, is the word here. Yeah, energein, right? And energein, in Greek, I'll kind of emphasize it here. Today, it's the word ergon for kind of a work, right? Okay. But more generally speaking, energein has got the idea of to act, right? To be active, huh? Okay. Now, Aristotle is saying something kind of strange at first sight here. First, therefore, let us speak as if suffering and being moved and being actual, you might say, right? Or being an act are the same, huh? Well, in some way they are because motion is a what? A certain act. We saw that in the definition of motion back in natural philosophy. Though imperfect, right? As was said in a different work. In another work was said in the third book of natural hearing, right? The third book of the physics, right? Okay. Now, let's stop again on that, huh? It's interesting that grammatically, huh? When we name the act of the senses, right? We use a what? Active verb, right? Okay. So, to see and to be seen. Grammatically speaking, to hear and to be heard. Grammatically speaking, which is active and which is passive? Of course, it's active. Yeah. Yeah. And what is seen and what is heard? That's the object, right? Okay. So, we say of the object that it is seen or that it is heard, that it is smelled, right? Okay. It's tasted and so on, right? And we say of the power or the ability here, and then it sees and hears. Now, the grammar here might seem to possibly lead you astray, right? And there is, if you study the fallacies inside the language. In Aristotle, in the book on Sistema Refutations, where he distinguishes the fallacies, common fallacies, he distinguishes 13 different kinds, and six kinds are in speech, right? In language, the cause, and seven are outside of language, right? Okay. Or in things. And, you know, he begins with the fallacy of equivocation and the fallacy of amphibolity. Okay. And they're very similar in the sense that in equivocation or amphibolity, you have either a word, a name, or a speech that actually has many meanings. And you mix these up, right? Okay. Chianti is dry, but is dry, is not wet. Therefore, chianti is not wet. Okay. If that deceived you, it would be because the word dry actually has two different meanings. Okay. And you mix the two up, right? Okay. If I say, the Bible is the word of God, and the word of God is what? The son of God. Therefore, the Bible is the son of God. The word of God, that speech has two different meanings, huh? The son of God is the son of God, and the word of God, and the word of God, and the word of God, and the word of God, and the word of God, and the word of God, and the word of God, and the word of God, and the word of God, and the word of God, and the word of God, and the word of God, and the word of God, and the word of God. That book there is Aristotle's book. Aristotle's book is the book that Aristotle owns. So I have the book of Aristotle himself. Aristotle's book could mean the book owned by Aristotle or the book of which Aristotle is the author, right? And then you have the fallacies of, they call them composition or division, and the fallacy of accent, where either the speech or the word has many, what, meanings potentially, but actually it has only one, right? So a word can be pronounced different ways, sometimes, especially the written word, right? And you can see it in the student's paper sometimes, right? They're right. They did the wrong one because of the accent. But then the last fallacy he talks about is the fallacy of figure of diction. And this is, as Albert the Great at this point out, is kind of an imaginary multiplicity, right? Where a word, because of its ending, say, seems to be signifying something that it doesn't create. But here, you see, the word to see seems to, grammatically, right, indicate something that is active and acting upon something. And to be seen, something that is being, what? Acted upon or undergoing. But is that, in fact, so? When I hear a sound, right, is my ear acting upon that sound? Or is that sound acting upon my ear? Yeah, yeah. So, the grammatical ending, right, of to see and to be seen, or to hear and to be heard, the grammatical ending could deceive you. You can imagine seeing as being active rather than, what? Undergoing and being moved, right? That's where we speak some kind of English, huh? You're looking for something, you know, and finding my eyes fell upon it, right? You speak as something, somebody is casting an eye upon you, you know? Mm-hmm. You see? And those ways of speaking fit the grammatical form of the see, right? But really, do my eyes fall upon the object? Does the object more fall upon my eyes? Huh? Yeah, yeah. So, you see, that's one of the six kinds of fallacies in language, right? They call it figure addiction, right? Oh. That the ending of the word seems to make it seem to be something, lead us to imagining it to be something other than it does. Yeah. The same thing is true about love, right? I see. When I love something, am I acting upon what I love? I've already seen this thing one time, so I got in this office there. There's a quote from the preacher, a poet, a Gita, and it said that we are shaped and fashioned by what we love. Yeah. That's the way it is, right? Mm-hmm. We are shaped and fashioned by what we love. So they tell the students, they say, if you love beautiful things, then you are already, in a way, what? Beautiful. A little bit beautiful yourself, right? If you love lovely things, you're already a little bit wise. If you love foolishness, folly, you're already something of a fool. Mm-hmm. You know? So you're really, what? Shaped and fashioned by what you love, as Gita said. That's the mythology there, you know? Mm-hmm. Theorite of one, right? Theorite of one. And yet, as we saw in the definition of motion, motion is an act, although a, what? Imperfect act, right? So you don't want to be misled by saying that to see is basically, what? Acting upon the thing seen. That would be a mistake, right? But to see is in some way an act, right? Just like being moved, right? Undergoing is in some way an act, huh? That goes back to the definition, as he says, of another work. The definition of motion. Do you see that? Okay. Why would we, why would that be, that the grammar is almost the opposite? Well, that's an interesting question. There's not really one for the magician to answer, right? What the magician, you know, sees is that a way of deceiving somebody there, right? A way of being deceived, huh? Right, that, huh? Spiracy. But notice how it does show, I mean, at least one thing about this, that it's not as well known to us, right? That when I see somebody, they are acting upon my eyes, right? As when I'm being kicked by somebody, right? I'm being acted upon by them. See? That doesn't explain fully why this takes place, right? But the fact that it takes place more in this here, than in kicking and being kicked, right? Pushing and being pushed, right? It's more clear, right? Yeah. That you're being acted upon, right? You can stand, collect, and so on. Right? So don't be deceived by the figure of diction, huh? And 174 is talking about the fact that things that are undergoing and being moved, suffering, are being, what, acted upon by something else which is already in, what, act, right? So the water, say, which is being heated, right, is being heated by something that is already, what, hot like the fire. All things are or suffer, and are moved by what is productive, and it being an act. And then again, it comes back to the point you made before. Whence it is that it suffers as if by the like, and is as if by the unlike, as we said. It's unlike maybe in the beginning, right? But in the end, it's like, huh? For the unlike suffers, undergoes, it's acted upon, while the like has suffered, right? Do you see that? So you're making that point again. So he's going to be saying, about sensing and later on, about understanding, that in a way, sensing is becoming the thing sensed. And understanding, in a way, is becoming the thing understood. And that's because they're acted upon by their objects. And so in the end, if they're being acted upon by their objects, they are like their objects. So in a way, sensing is things sensed, and understanding is things understood. And that's why he'll say, later on in Book 3, after he's finished talking about sensing and understanding, He'll say, later on in Book 3, after he's finished talking about sensing and understanding. He'll say, later on in Book 3, after he's finished talking about sensing and understanding.