De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 31: The Soul-Spirit Distinction and Interior Sensing

Transcript
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It says in something else I was reading, and I went back to this text here in the first epistle of the Corinthians, in the second chapter towards the end there. I don't know what words you're familiar with in English, but he's talking about how we're saying spiritual things to those who are spiritual. And in the Latin translation, then it says the animalis autum homo, right? The animalis homo. Animalis homo. How would you translate that into English? The animalis homo. Homo means man at first. How do you translate that? Maybe natural man or something. I think I translate it as natural man, yeah. But you look at it, you might be trying to translate the animalis, the animal man, right? Yeah. Okay. So he says, St. Paul, the animalis homo, right? Yeah. Does not receive, right, the things of the Spirit of God, right? For it is foolishness to him, right? And he is not able to know it, right, huh? Because these things are judged or examined spiritually, huh? Okay. Of course, the word spiritually is pneuma, tikosa, okay? With a word for spirit. And then he goes on to say that the spiritual man judges all things, right? But he's judged by no one else, huh? Okay? Now, what do you think the Greek word is here that's translated by animalis? Sikikos, right? Yeah. In other words, we tend to forget in English sometimes that anima, right? Yeah. Anima is a Latin word for soul, right? So these are called sometimes the dianima, these three books of our style, like getting it by the Latin title, but it's about the soul. Now, the Greek word for animal, right, would be, I suppose, zoon, or something like that, which is more derived from the word for life, huh? We get the word zoology, right? The study of animals, huh? But the, as I say, the Greek word corresponding to this is psukikasa, which is taken from the Greek word for the soul, right? Spukikasa, huh? Okay? So it's saying literally the souled man, right? Or the soulish, or the souly man, how do you want to make that into an adjective, right? Yeah. Okay? And you kind of lose sometimes the flavor when you translate that, if you translate it in English, as the animal man, right? Because you're thinking of him, although it might be not necessarily false to the meaning of it, exactly, you know? You're thinking of animal without reference to soul at first, right? Yeah. But here it's soul, see? Okay? Now, this is one of several places, or many places, I think, where Thomas has to, what, in his commentary, distinguish between the, what, soul and spirit, right? Oh, yeah. Okay? And how do you think he goes about that, right? Why does St. Paul, in a sense, call this kind of man, who doesn't understand spiritual things, and for whom these things are foolish, right? Yeah. Why does he call him the souled? Sure. S-O-U-L-E-D, if I can make a word out of it, right? The, why does he call him that? But Thomas goes back to the fact that the soul is, what, the form of the body, right? And, of course, if the soul had no powers that were of the body and in the body, it would just be a, what, spirit, right? Like an angel, right? Okay? So, he's thinking of the fact that the, this kind of man is concentrated, both in his judgment and in his desire, on his bodily powers, huh? Okay? I just read you a little bit from Thomas' commentary. He's starting to explain the words. Where, first, he says, it should be considered, which, what man is called animalis, huh? It should therefore be considered that the soul is the form of the, what, body. It goes back to the very definition of the soul. Whence, those powers are property of the soul, which are the acts of bodily organs, namely the, what, sensitive powers. Those men, therefore, are called animalis, huh, I'm using the plural, who follow these powers, right? Among which, he says, is the vis apprehensiva, the knowing or grasping power, right? And the appetitiva, the desiring power, right? And therefore, a man can be said to be animalis in two ways. In one way, in reference to the knowing power. And the, and this one is said to be animalis, huh, by his sense, huh, who, as it's said in the gloss, huh, judges about God, huh, either according to the, what, images of bodies, huh, or the letter of the law, right? Or by philosophical reasons, right? Trying to, but by philosophy, by reason alone, right? Trying to judge these higher things, which are taken according to sensitive, what, powers, right? So they're judging by their senses of what they can imagine, right? Or, even in the case of philosophy, by a knowledge that is derived from the senses, and it's not adequate to judging these more spiritual things about God, huh? In another way, he says, huh, a man is called animalis, huh, soul, huh, in reference to his desiring power, a man who is attracted to or affected to only those things which are according to sense desires. And such a life is called animalis, huh? So it's not likely false if you understand an animal life, in a sense, a bestial life, in a sense, but you kind of lose the frequency there of understanding the word anima or soul, right? And such a life is called animal, animalis, who, as it's said in the gloss, follows a dissolute, lascivious, right, a soul, okay, because the spirit ruling does not contain these things within the limits of their natural order, okay? Okay, now I'll just skip over some of this. Now, later on, you see, he says the spiritual man judges of all things, huh, and he's going to have two meanings of that corresponding to the two meanings of the animal one, huh? So he says that the spiritual one judges all things, and he is judged by no one, where first it should be seen what man is called spiritualis, huh, and it should be noted that we are accustomed to name or to call spirits the incorporeal substances, meaning the, what, angels, huh, okay? I mean, God himself, for that matter. Because, therefore, there is some part of the soul, which we haven't studied yet, but we're approaching it here in Book 3, because there is some part of the soul which is not the act of some, what, bodily organ, right, namely the understanding part, right, comprehending both the understanding and the, what, will, which is the rational desire. Messiah. This part of the soul is called the, what, spirit of man, right? Which nevertheless is illuminated or enlightened according to the understanding by the Spirit of God and inflamed by the Spirit of God according to its affection and its, what, will, right? Therefore, a man is said to be spiritual in two ways. In one way, on the side of the understanding, the reason, right? The Spirit of God enlightening that understanding. And according to this, the gloss says that a man is spiritual, right, who is subject to the Spirit of God and who most certainly and faithfully knows spiritual things. Another way, on the side of the, what? The will. The Spirit of God inflaming that will. And this way is said in the gloss that the spiritual life is one in which the, when having the Spirit of God has a rectified soul, okay, and so on. That's kind of interesting there to see. You know, I meant a lot upon those words of Mary there in the Magnificat, huh? But she says, my soul magnifies the Lord, huh? And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. And I'm not altogether sure as to why they use the word soul there and the word, what? Spirit, right, huh? But one way of understanding it, now it's not necessarily the only way or the best way, but she's magnifying the Lord by giving birth to the word made flesh, huh? And it's her soul, in a sense, that gives birth, right? Because obviously the organs of reproduction, right, the organs of birth, are bodily things, huh? And those powers, huh? So my soul magnifies the Lord, giving birth to him, right, conceiving him in her womb and so on. But in her intellect and will, she's rejoicing in what? God, huh? With those powers that are not in her body, right, but are powers of her soul, insofar as it is not entirely immersed in the body, transcends the body. And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, right? See? That those powers that are in the body, as such, cannot rejoice in God my Savior, right? There can be an overflowing, right? You know, like, you know, from the higher powers the lower powers, and sometimes, you know, you know, the lower powers are stimulated by good church music or something, you know, and it affects the higher powers. But as such, directly, only the intellect and the will can have God as a, what, object, right? And after those virtues that are called theological, that have God in himself as their object, faith, hope, and charity, they're only in the, what, the spirit, right? In the understanding as faith is, or in the will, as hope and, uh, and charity are, huh? It's kind of interesting, I just, I read another text, so I just went back and looked at this text again, I said to you, uh, his explanation of, you know, psukikas, the soul of man, right, huh? The ani maurus homo, you know, he goes all the way back to the definition of the soul as the form of the body, you know, you see? And, uh, in some sense it's more proper to the soul to be, what, uh, the form of the body, right, in the ansa, and, uh, our souls kind of, you know, as the Arab philosophy says, it's on the horizon between the material world and the, what, the immaterial world, huh? And so we have some powers that transcend, uh, the body, huh? And, uh, the other powers that are in the body. But if we didn't have those powers that were in the body, we wouldn't be a soul at all. We'd be an angel. We're not simply an angel, uh, you know, in a body, but we're the soul, the form of that body. So let's turn now to book three. And in this first chapter here, Aristotle is with some probability, but not with any maybe complete certitude, is saying that there is perhaps no other sense, outward sense, besides the five that we've studied, the sense of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. And he's going to give a kind of reasons for that, but not altogether necessary reasons, huh? And base somewhat upon the theory of the four, what, elements, right? Okay. And he's also going to clear up a possible confusion that there's not another outward sense that knows the, what, common sensibles. Okay. Common sensibles are known by the senses that we have already distinguished the five, huh? Okay. And it's in the second chapter he's going to begin to look for, what, some kind of interior, inward sense of powers, huh? And we'll see how he starts to approach that, huh? Okay. So at the beginning of book three, chapter one, he says, that therefore there is not a sense other than the five, I mean these, sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. And we look just at the part on sight, right? A little bit on touch, huh? But he's gone through all five of them. Someone might believe from the following, and perhaps using the word believe there to indicate that his argument here is not going to be altogether, what? Necessary, right? Okay. And he starts with the sense of touch, as if the sense of touch knows every, what, touchable or tangible quality, huh? Okay. And he's kind of going to, what, argue from part to part. Well, if that's true, that the sense of touch knows everything touchable, then it's a reasonable guess that the eye, the sight of the visible, knows everything, what, visible, right, huh? And the ear, likewise, huh? It's an argument from part to part, right, huh? Okay. And he's taking that the sense of touch knows all the touchable qualities, because those are the qualities of the elements, huh? And he seemed to know those, hot and cold, wet and dry, and so on, huh? Okay. For if we already have sense of all things which touch is a sense, for all the passions of the tangibles or touchables as tangible are sensible to us through touch, huh? I say he takes that because he takes, in that passage that our translator translated for us, right, that the sense of touch is about the basic, what, material qualities, huh? Okay. It is necessary, if indeed some sense is missing, for some sense or can also be missing in us. And whatever of these we sense when touching are sensible by touch, which we happen to have, huh? Now, how about the other senses, huh? Well, the other senses are the ones that know something through a, what, medium, right? And of the four elements, which ones can be mediums? Air and air. Yeah. And air is more for the ear, right? And water is what? Somewhat for the iron, because it's in iron. Yeah. Oh, okay. And one or the other for a smell. I'm not sure. I think you're definitely about that, huh? So, the senses that are through a medium, we seem to have all of them if they work through those, what, groups, huh? Whatever things we sense through a medium and not when touching, in fact, the simple elements, I mean such as by air or by water, are such that if through one we sense many sensibles differ from each other in kind, it is necessary for what has such a sense or being to be sensitive of both. If the organ is from air, and air is a medium of both sound and color. in color. If, however, more than this, both air and water are in media color, for both are transparent, what is either of these alone will sense through both, huh? Okay, now he's trying to argue here that, um, of the four basic elements, sight, I mean, uh, uh, air and water seem to be the organs, right? They're not something that's purely fire, or purely earth, huh? Okay? Although in a way they come in because the sense organs need some kind of warmth, right? So they all have fire, but fire doesn't distinguish one sense and the other, but this is the sense that's tied up with fire, right? That's made out of fire, huh? That seems to be made out of water or air, right? Earth doesn't seem to be characteristic of one unless you say that it pertains to touch, and so far as touch involves all the four. Sense organs are from two only of the simple elements, from air and from water. For the pupil in the eye, there is a water, the organ of hearing of air, the organ of smell from one or the other of these. But fire is either of none, right? There's no organ that seems to be smeared out of fire, or in some sense it's common to all, insofar as there is some need for, what, warmth or energy in all of these senses. For nothing without some kind of heat sensitive. But the earth is either of none, or most properly mixed in what? Touch, huh? The kind of used to point to the end there of King Lear there, when King Lear is holding the dead, what? Cordelia. Cordelia, yeah. Jesus, she's dead, dead is earth. It's interesting, right? Now sometimes, you know, we compare the soul to air, right? Sometimes you compare the soul to fire, like when a fellow comes in, you know, put out the light, and then put out the light, and that comparison he makes there. We saw a connection in likeness of fire to the soul earlier in studying the plant soul, right? And water has something to do with life, you know, although it doesn't usually seem to be the soul, water, right? But earth seems to be what? Yeah, yeah. She's dead. Dead is what? Earth, huh? Death thou art, and to death thou shalt return, huh? They say your fire, and to fire you shall return. Doesn't seem to be more, doesn't it? Your air, you know? Exhale, you know, give up the ghost, give up the air, huh? The air goes on, huh? But dust, huh? Earth, huh? Without water. No life there at all, huh? And so they didn't seem to characterize any sense organ as a whole, right? Although it might be involved in the most earthy of the senses, which is tantrum. Once it remained that no sense organ is outside of water and air, but some animals like you and me, and the cat around here, now have these, right? Therefore all the senses are had by the not imperfect, huh? Those who are not yet fully developed, that the dog doesn't see, I guess, for a few days, or that have mutilated, like the blind man or something else, right? Okay? For it appears that even the mole has eyes under its skin. Whence if there is no other body and no passion which is now the bodies here, not one sense would be missing, huh? Okay? So this is only maybe a probable argument, right? That we have all the senses. You know, the senses, huh? But let's say you want to push this argument as being necessary, right? You know, like the dog is supposed to hear things or smell things that you and I don't hear or smell. Even beings claim to smell things or hear things that I don't hear sometimes or smell, right? Now, right after that, he's going to exclude another possible mistake. Someone might say, well, couldn't there be another outward sense that knows not color or sound or smell or taste or flavor and so on, or tangible qualities, but knows the common sensibles, right? But if there was a sense that had the common sensibles, those five or six things, you mentioned six here, you notice, like the eye knows color, well then those common sensibles would be accidental to the other senses. But that isn't true, as he goes on to point out, huh? So I know, for example, the shape of this table, I know the what? The length of this table in a way through what? Color, right? And I know the shape of it through hardness, right? And the length of it in a way through hardness, huh? So that the common sensibles are not accidental to the senses that we already know, huh? And therefore you don't have another sense that would have the common sensibles as its own object, right? Then the common sensibles would be to the eye eye and the sense of touch and so on, like sweet is to the eye, huh? And I see some desserts and say, gee, that looks sweet, you know, I'm not going to chop. When I was in Quebec, you know, we'd go by the bakery there, you know, and I don't know, French must have a sweet tooth or something, and you see these cakes in there, you know, and they look just, you know, all this, you know, disgustingly sweet, you know. And he goes, who could eat that, you know, but we hadn't tasted the thing, right? You're just looking at it, you know. But the eye doesn't really know the sweetness of it, huh? It's still accidental to it, huh? And you're kind of guessing, you know, how it's going to taste, but because you have a remembrance of tasting things that look like that, huh? But this is not the way the eye or the sense of touch knows what? The shape of this table, right? I see the shape of this table in a way that I don't see the sweetness of the chocolate cake or whatever it is. Do you see that? Mm-hmm. Okay? That my eye doesn't as such know the sweetness, huh? And therefore, if the kid put, you know, salt in the sugar bowl, and I had a cherry to my coffee or something, which I don't, but if I did, my eye would be completely deceived, right? And I wouldn't until I tasted it and said, oh my gosh, you put salt in the sugar bowl, right? But the eye would be deceived because it doesn't know that, huh? For neither can there be some proper organ of the common sensibles, which we sense by each sense accidentally, like motion, standing, standing in the sense there, rest, shape, or figure, magnitude, number, and notice he adds the word one here, right, huh? But that's kind of the first meaning of one for us is the continuous, huh? This is, I would say, one piece of chalk, right, huh? But if I broke this in half, I'd say it's, what, two pieces, right? You know, Socrates joke all the time when he asks somebody for a definition. He's looking for one thing, a definition, and they give him many examples, and he always jokes, you know, I guess there was a Greek joke, you know, and you pass somebody a plate, and you drop it, and it breaks. I asked for only one thing, and he gave me many. But I mean, notice, once the plate is broken, and you've got all these pieces there, you don't have one thing anymore, you've got many things, right? But so long as it's continuous, this is one glass. There's sometimes, you know, Aristotle points out different ways that we think that the infinite exists in some way, right? But one way, and the most basic way for a number, is that it arises from the division of the, what, continuous, huh? And therefore, you know, you get to study the Trinity, for example, later on. You'll see how careful Thomas is when you talk about three persons, huh? That that number three is not an ordinary number three, huh? Because number, in the ordinary sense, arises from the division of the continuous, and there's nothing continuous in God. He's not continuous. He's altogether simple, right? So what does three mean there, huh? We won't be studying the Trinity today, but it's not the three that we talked about when I was in grade school, right? Okay? Well, we were originally in class, we did, but not the ordinary three we talked about in mathematics, huh? But there's another kind of infinity, huh, that Aristotle says comes from the mind, huh? And it's a bill to the mind to say something is itself, right? And so I can say that Socrates is what? Socrates, huh? And now that one man appears twice in the, what, statement. And I can say that the statement Socrates is Socrates is Socrates, huh? And I can say that this whole thing is itself, right? You can always say something is itself, right? So, how many Socrates can I get? Yeah, yeah. But that's a purely, what, mental infinity, huh? While the Greeks, when they studied number, they were talking about a multitude that arises from a division of the continuous. This doesn't arise from a division of the, what, continuous, huh? It's a purely mental thing, huh? We didn't have the foundation things in that way. I can do that with God. It's like, God is God. And the statement God is God is a statement God is God. And the statement God is God is God is God is, in fact, the statement God is God is God. And I could have as many gods as a Hindu scholar or something else, right, huh? But it's a purely, what, mental thing, huh? The kind of was pointing that out, huh, because... You've heard of Brady Russell's objection to the axiom that the whole was more than the part. What he did was, was to take numbers, and he, for him, you know, one across the number. He says you take all the numbers, right? And you dub each one of them. And so, you've got 2, 4, 6, 8, 10. You can always have an even number for every, what, number. I can go on forever in the series of all the numbers, right? Yeah. And I can go on forever matching them with an even number. Therefore, the even numbers are equal to all the numbers. Oh. And therefore, a part of all the numbers, right? The even numbers are equal to all the numbers. Oh. So, that's Brady Russell's reputation of the axiom that the whole is more than the part, huh? Well, of course, if you don't really have the same, what, 2 here, over here, we have a... The comic said, you know, I could do just 2. You can make 2 opposite every one of these, right? Okay? But notice, what you're doing is, is, is what, going back to this mental multiplication, right? It's not the same 2, right? You've got 2 2s, right? Or 4 2s, or 8 2s, or, you know, it can go on forever with just 2s. But it's not the same 2. Okay? Your head's kind of a sterile thing. So, if he has this 2 over here, outside of the 2 over here, it's not the same 2. But where is the multiplicity coming from? It's coming from the mind's ability to, what, come back upon itself. It's like when you say, you know, I know what a triangle is, and I know that I know what a triangle is, and I know that I know what a triangle is. I know that, too. And the mind can always come back upon itself. The mind never gives out, right? It's not a particularly fruitful infinity, but it's a characteristic of the mind to be able to do that, huh? I mean, the first thing that Annex Hegrius said about the mind is that it's, what, infinite, huh? Okay? But there are some infinities that are more fruitful than other ones, huh? I mentioned how Forbach, right, when he wrote The Essence of Christianity, Forbach is the thinker that comes between Hegel and Marx and Engels, right? And Marx and Engels, those young men, read Forbach with enthusiasm, huh? Well, Forbach says the essence of Christianity is not that God became man, but that man himself is God. And, of course, the syllogism, basically, that he has is that the mind of man is, what, infinite. And the theologians, you go to the theologians, saying the infinite is God, therefore man's mind is God, right? Well, I mean, there's all kinds of meanings of the word infinite, right? And he's got more than one kind of mistake there. He's got, you know, the fallacy of equivocation there. He's also got the fallacy of simply in some way, that God is simply in every way, infinite, our mind in just some way. But Brie's doing something like that, see? But he's taking a different two, right? But the mental multiplication of two, so... But I say, he kind of inflated him, he said, I can do that with just two alone, right? Because I can multiply two as much as I want to. Two is two, right? And two is two is the statement, two is two. And that whole statement is itself, and so on forever, right? So I can multiply twos as much as I want to, but I'm multiplying twos, right, mentally. Therefore, it's not the same two, huh? And therefore it's not that a part, it adds up to the whole, right? You know, some people try to understand the infinite number by this kind of mental thing, right? But then it's a different kind of number than you have arising from the division of the, what, continuous, huh? It's that number that arises from the division of the continuous that really was the subject of, what, rithmeticae in ancient times. Whence it is clear, he says at the bottom of verse 26, that it is impossible for there to be a proper sense of any of these, of these common sensibles. For if that was so, it would be thus, just as how we sense the sweet by sight, like I was mentioning earlier here in 271. This is because we happen to have the sense of both. Whenever they are come together, we know them. But if not, we would sense in no way except accidentally as the son of Kleon, right, huh? Which is altogether accidental to the senses, right? Not because he's the son of Kleon, but because he is white. What happens to the white to be the son of Kleon, huh? You notice what he's saying there, what he's reasoning there, right, huh? If the common sensibles were the object as such of some other sense besides these five, then to these five it would be altogether, what, accidental, right? Just as sweet as accidental now to the sense of sight. But that's not our experience of sensing, right? It's through color that I know, you know, the shape of this book, right, huh? Because the green goes this far and then stops, right, huh? Okay? The green is spread out, huh? He takes the famous example there of bile, okay? But I prefer the example of sugar and salt, huh? Okay? I think there's something interesting here about the fact that the common sensibles are known by more than one sense. Because this seems to me to be the fundamental example, and easiest to see, of the fact that it is possible, in our knowledge, right, for the same thing to be known in two different ways. So it's possible, for example, that shape could be known through color by the eye, and through hardness by the, what, hand, right? The surface of the table could be known through color by the eye, and by the sense of touch through hardness, huh? Okay. If you're taking steps, I could maybe count them right through my ears. And your feet hit the ground. But if I was watching you, I could see your feet hit in the ground, huh? So, that's an important fact of our knowledge, huh, that sometimes we know the same thing, right, in two different ways. Now, when Thomas Aquinas, for example, in my favorite book there, the Summa Contra Gentiles, I don't know if you've looked at the Summa Contra Gentiles, but it's divided a little bit differently than the Summa Theologiae, huh? And what's explicit in the Summa Contra Gentiles is that Thomas separates, huh, those things that can be known about God, etc., by reason as well as by faith, right, from those things that can be known about God only by, what? Faith, right, faith, right? And so the first three books of the Summa Contra Gentiles are about what can be known about God and himself, and God is the maker, and God is the end, and his providence, by reason as well as by faith. So, in all the chapters in those three books, huh, Thomas will give reasons taken from philosophy for what is being said, and then he'll, what, quote sacred scripture in confirmation of the same thing. But then when he gets to the fourth book, right, where he takes up the Trinity and the Incarnation and things of that sort, then he doesn't do that. Because here he's dealing with things that can be known only by faith, huh, okay? So that's an important thing to realize, but, I mean, that's a difficult thing to see, the thing about faith and reason, right? But you should begin with this example that we have here, the common sensibles, right? It's possible to know shape by the eye, and it's possible to know that same shape by the touch, huh? But they don't know the same thing in the same way, but they do know the same thing, huh, okay? You know, the crazy argument you get nowadays, and you get into debates about abortion and things of this sort, huh? They say, well, that's a religious thing, right? Because the magisterium of the church has condemned abortion and contraception and things of this sort, and therefore this is, you know, you're imposing your religion upon me or something if you try to enact this in law or something like that, right? But, I mean, it's like they're assuming that if religion or if the church has something to say about this, which is nothing to say, you know, about whether water is H2O, right? They don't think the church is ever pronounced on that or ever will, do you think? You know? So that's a matter of science, see, and reason, but whatever the church has pronounced on or pronounces on, that is ipso facto by that very fact, right? A matter of faith and not of philosophy or reason, right? Well, that's ridiculous, right? It is possible that the same thing, right, can be known in different ways, huh? And when you have two different ways of knowing, they probably will not overlap entirely. That wouldn't make any sense, would it? I mean, there's some things that the eye knows that the sense of touch doesn't know, like the color of the object, right? There's something that the sense of touch knows, like the hardness of the table, right? That the eye doesn't know, right? But what it knows primarily, it knows something else, huh? Do you see that? Okay. I'm going to see the example of this later on here, in the study of living things, because Aristotle, from inward experience, in this next chapter we'll see, he's going to be reasoning, from inward experience, that the five outward senses come back to a common, what? Center. Okay? He's going to reason from things that we experience within ourselves, right? But they must come back to a common sense. Let's see the way he reasons there. Now, when somebody takes a part, right? You know, it doesn't animate a human being, right? He might find that the eyes and the ears and maybe the senses and nerves in some way go back to the brain or something, right? Okay? And you'd be knowing the same thing, but in a, what? Different way, right? And, but it's not, at the same time, surprising also that there'd be some things known by inward experience that are not known at all by, what? Outward experience. And vice versa, that there are some things known by anatomy and outward experience that are not known at all by, what? Inward experience, huh? Maybe some things that they, they, they try to cooperate the two, you know? And if they stimulate this part of the brain and say, well, what are you, oh, I'm experiencing sweetness or I'm experiencing red or something, you know? You see what I mean? You know, or, you know, if there's an injury, you know, to one part of the brain and someone can't talk anymore or something, you know, then they start to tie up, right? Certain things, huh? So, when Aristotle, you know, reasons too, you know, that the earth, for example, is a sphere, right? Well, he reasoned partly because of the nature of earth, right? To seek the center. But he also reasoned for the fact that the earth, when it comes between the sun and the moon, it casts a circular, what? Shadow upon the moon, right? So, it's kind of a more mathematical way of showing it, huh? So, it's possible in, even within, you know, the study of natural things, that the same thing, like the suricity of the earth, right, might be known, right, by a more natural middle term and by a more mathematical term, right? So, there's going to be many important examples, starting from, what, this example of the common sensibles, right? That the same thing can be known, sometimes, by two different kinds of knowledge, right? Okay? That's the first example, right? The last one is faith and reason, right? But the other one's in between, right? And we'll see one here now. I think it's very striking, you know, that from inward experience, we can deduce, right, that the outward senses come back to a common center. There's some kind of knowing in us, which he's going to point out in the next chapter, which reveals to us, and which we couldn't have, unless the senses came back to a common center, but that might possibly be known by anatomy to some extent. Oh, sorry. Okay. And sometimes, too, you know, you wonder, is it possible to give sometimes more than one reason for the same statement? That's kind of interesting, right? But there's more than one reason for that statement. There's more than one reason why we should come into philosophy from its natural beginnings, if you recall. There's reasons for that, right? And one reason is going to be that we, what, understand the thing best if we follow it from its beginning, right? But another thing might be is that we acquire what is not natural to what is natural. It's kind of interesting, right? And reason, right? Might see the truth of some statement from different reasons, huh? You can see that if you read, you know, Euclid, you know, or look at Heath's notes and so on, right? Sometimes it'll give you a, what? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the theorem that interior angles are trying to do right angles, so after you know the parallel theorems, you can do that. But when I first learned it, maybe not through Euclid, I would draw a straight line through the vertex here, parallel to the, what, opposite side, and then by the parallel theorems, you know, these two angles are equal. And then by the parallel theorems, you know, these two angles are equal. Suppose everybody in the world spoke English, everybody, every country, every place. Wouldn't English seem to be the natural way of speaking? You could hardly separate the idea of language from that of what? English, right? To speak and speak English would mean the same thing. But when we travel around and have experience of people speaking in French and German and God knows what other languages, right, out there, then it becomes what? Clear, right, huh? The distinction there between language and English, right, huh? Or between what is natural, huh, and to speak English, huh? I always tell the story, you know, when I was in high school. I was in a French class, and one day in class, this kid was having a hard time learning any French. He said, oh, the French kids have learned this, he said. We all know how about it. And there was probably some little French kid over there who said, oh, the English have learned this, you know. I guess it's harder for French to learn English than for English to learn French, they said. But anyway, the point is, English, if it's your native language, right, huh? English seems the, what? Natural way of, what? Speaking, right? And French, the other language, seems kind of, what? Artificial, right, huh? And, and, uh, I remember my, uh, French teacher there, you know, was talking about this or that, uh, French idiom. You know what an idiom is? It comes in the Greek word, idios, huh? Private, huh? A way of speaking that is private to French, and not, you know, the way of speaking in English, huh? He explained the idiom and said, I said, don't fight it, he said. Just accept it. That's the way he said it in French, huh? But, and you can see, you know, um, how, um, it, it, it seems, you know, a natural way of speaking that, that way it's idiomatic to French, but they would see the same thing in certain ways of speaking in, uh, English, huh? It's the ways of expressing yourself, huh? We're talking about that, those words in scripture there, you know, where, in Greek, they say, um, I am, right? And of course, sometimes Thomas will say, you know, Christ is saying that, I am, I am, who is? But, um, what would he say in English? How would he say that, see? Yeah, it's me, it's me, it's me, you know? So, now they say, I am, I am. I would say that like a long, you know? Who's there? I am. You see? Um, so, um, it's good that the German poet said, you don't really understand your own language until you learn another language, huh? And I suppose part of the meaning of that is you don't realize what's peculiar about your language, what's idiomatic about your language, until you see, right, somebody else's, huh? And, uh, you know how we put the adjective before the noun, and Latin or Greek, they might put the adjective after the noun, huh? And they say, well, it's kind of arbitrary about where they put the adjective before after the noun, right? And it might seem natural, right, to put the adjective before the noun, would you say? Huh? Man-white? Sounds like, huh? I'm a man-white? An awkward, unnatural way of speaking, they say, but it's really time to put it. Arbitrary, huh? Now, the old, the old phrase, custom broadens, and they pun that nowadays, you know, people eat too much when they travel sometimes, like a beer, but what is the original meaning of custom broadens, huh? I mean, excuse me, I don't mean custom, travel broadens, what is the original meaning of that, travel broadens? Experience. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes on the shore, right, huh? And that's forget the famous words of Brave New World, right, huh? Which, what's his name borrowed for his novel, right, huh? Okay. I mean, notice, huh? If the only man that this young woman has known is her father, and he's more or less an old man, right, huh? That's part of our understanding what a man is. You see? Doesn't really separate man from old man, right, huh? You see? Just like Abinie before they had children or something, right? You know, a little baby or a little boy or a little girl's life, right, huh? You see? You associate man with, you know, somebody in their prime, right? Or a woman in their prime, right? Okay? You see that? So she's struck by that, see? This concrete experience. So, this is a more general principle that I think, huh? That, uh, is the other five in this particular reason, huh? But our reason would have a hard time, huh? Separating the common sensibles, right? And defining them, right, without the private sensibles, huh? If we had only one sense, huh? But the fact that we know shape and surface without color by touch, right? And without hardness by sight enables us to separate them from both hardness and what color, right? But if we had only one sense, like the sense of sight, we'd have a hard time in our thinking separating a surface from what? Color, right, huh? Making sense to us, huh? It would seem to be part of what a surface is, is to be colored. To be, to have length and width, and to be colored. We don't realize how difficult it is for our mind to separate those, huh? Now, you see that in the other kind of abstraction, too, that when you separate the universal from the singular, huh? Or the general from the particular, you have to have seen more than one particular, right? So, I mean, if the only quadrupeds we saw were the dog, we kind of, what, identify quadruped with dog, huh? When you have a dog and a cat and a horse and so on, right? Then you separate, right? Quadruped, huh? Mm-hmm. Okay. I suppose that the sun seems kind of unique, huh? It's bigger than the stars, apparently, right? It's brighter than the moon and so on, right? The sun seems kind of, what, unique. One of a kind. And so we're not so happy to separate out, maybe, but, uh, universal or the general from the particular there, because we experienced only one, what, particular, right? You know, if, if I was a black man in, in darkest Africa at one time, to be black would seem to be what? To be part of what it is to be a human being, right? Uh, my mother came from a small town in Minnesota, there are no blacks in town, right? And she tells a story, you know, of, of one of the women there going down to the big city with her little boy, you know, walking down the street, and along comes a black boy, and he, and he says, um, go home and wash your face. He didn't see his face. Go home and wash your face. And you've heard these stories, you know, people, in the old days, you know, they keep getting a black man the first time and putting him in the tub and trying to clean him up, you know? He's so dirty. Poor man, I mean, he'd be killed there, being scrummed and scrummed and scrummed and scrummed. I mean, those are obvious, you know, confusions, but I mean, they show, you know, how kind of weak our mind is, in a sense, huh? It's a camp to separate them, huh? If you run into, what is it, the old story? One-eyed, two-eyes, and three-eyes? If you run into three-eyed people on some other planet, or one-eyed people, we might, you know, but I don't see any reason to change. Or a three-legged man somewhere or something, I don't know. You see? So, in general, our mind has a difficulty then, right? Separating, right? And when you talk about custom there, Aristotle says that men like to proceed in the way to which they are accustomed. Wisdom, we'll see that in the second book of Wisdom. And so men who are accustomed to a certain way of thinking, that seems to them the only way of what? Thinking, huh? And as a college professor, you know, if you get on one of these committees, and there's some question or problem that comes up before the committee, and you've got an economics professor, and a math professor, and a sociology professor, and a philosophy professor, they're going to approach the same, you know, problem in a different way. I remember going to one of these committees, you know, and sociologists trying to express it. I said, suppose you're doing like a word count of Thomas or something, you know? And my attitude says, what the hell did I have you do with a word count of Thomas for? Maybe something a sociologist does, some kind of a thing, you know? But, you know, you talk to experimental scientists, you know, and they're looking for some kind of experimental proof or something, you know? And it's not going to be known in that way. I like to take it as one of my favorite gripping boys, you know, they're very evident scientists. In fact, I've used some books sometimes, and I've taught philosophy of science. I think I've mentioned this book before. Claude Bernard, you know him? A sort of famous physiologist of the 19th century there in France, and made many important discoveries in some of them. And he wrote a book, among other books, called An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, right? It's a famous book. It was written around the 1860s, I think. And it's still reprinted, huh? The edition I had came from Harvard. You know, it resonated with English, of course, and everything. So it's still being reprinted. It's still a classic, huh? And Bernard didn't think that biology was sufficiently, what? It was scientific in the middle of the 19th century. And so he wrote this book, An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine. And the book has three parts, huh? And the first part is a general description of the experimental method. The second part is talking about the experimental method in biology in particular. And the third part is examples from his own research as a physiologist, exemplifying the experimental method in biology. Now, if you go back to that first part there, he has a very good understanding, in many ways, of the experimental method and so on. But when he compares experimental science with philosophy and theology, right, it's almost laughable, the distinction, right? He says, he sees them as having something of the experimental methods, like diminution of the whole method. So what the experimental scientist says, he's got an idea, which we call an hypothesis, right? That's the first thing he has. The second thing is deduction, right? He deduces the consequences of the idea. He makes predictions on the base of the idea, right? And third, he goes out to see if those predictions, in fact, take place or not, right? Either confirming his idea or ridiculous, right? That's three components of his idea, right? Now, the philosopher has just two of those. He has an idea, and he reasons, right? But then everybody talks about checks it. And then the theologian just has ideas as you can think as you can reason. So, I mean, here's a man who's so immersed in this kind of thinking, right, that it's the only way of completely thinking about anything, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.