De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 35: Transition from Sense to Reason in Aristotle's De Anima

Transcript
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Okay? Now, starting in chapter 3 here, we'll look at the first part today. Actually, in Thomas, it occupies, what, four lexios, right? And the first lexio goes down to 304, where the second lexio begins, number 5, and then 318, the sixth lexio begins. Now, chapter 3 is the chapter now which is going to make the transition from the sense world, or the senses, and even the inward senses, to what? Reason, right? And to see, in a preliminary way, that reason is something different from the senses, even these inward senses. And then, in chapter 4, he's going to begin to talk about that next part, about the reason or the understanding, starting in chapter 4 there, 322 there on page 36. So chapter 3 is a chapter, you might say, of going from the study of the senses, which in a way he's concluded here in chapter 2, right? It's like he's giving up along there, right? The last sentence we just looked at before the break here. Concerning the principle, therefore, by which we say an animal is sensitive, let it be termed in this way. Now, what he's going to do here in chapter 3 is to distinguish the senses from reason, and then, starting in next time, we'll be starting in 304 next time, he's going to be talking about the difference between image and opinion, right? Or between imagining and thinking, right? But he's going to bring out there later on what imagining is, right? What the image is. So he's going to, in a sense, although he's in a way concluding the consideration of the, what, senses, he's going to nevertheless illuminate something more about the senses. Now, he begins here, chapter 3, by recalling something which we didn't see very much, but in book 1, right? In book 1, after the premium, which we looked at, Aristotle goes through the opinions of his predecessors. And they seem to investigate life from two things, huh? They start off with the idea that life involves something like self-motion, right? Okay? And without distinguishing between sense and understanding, they saw the living things as having some kind of, what, knowing, right? Okay? They didn't clearly distinguish between sensing and, let's say, understanding. And so Aristotle will go through, huh, their opinions about the soul, but those opinions were a result of looking for the cause of sensing or knowing, in general, right? And moving oneself from one way to another, right? So they were looking for life, really, in the middle there. They weren't looking at plant life, in particular, were they? And they weren't looking at, or not yet, anyway, distinguish the higher life that man has through reason and understanding, because they had not yet seen that as something higher than the senses, huh? Okay. But, this, in a way, is reflected, as you mentioned before, in the Latin word for soul, anima, once we get the word, what? Animal. Yeah. Now, why is the animal, of course, man is an animal, in a broad sense, right? Why is it that the animal is named from anima, and the plant is left out, in the word here, huh? Now, we could, but in English, and sometimes you see this, we could speak of animate matter, and animate matter means simply what? Living matter, right, huh? Kind of a synonym, not, okay? But, literally, animate matter means what? Matter that has a soul. And, of course, it would speak of the plant as being alive, right? Okay. But, as Aristotle says in the first book, and elsewhere, life in the plants is what? Hidden, right? It's not so clear when a plant is alive, or dead, or its life is not that clear. So, investigated, huh? The soul more through what the animal does than what the plant does, right? Okay. I often point to something you find very common in Shakespeare, and some of the poets, too. The comparison between sleep and death, huh? Have you seen that comparison? It runs all the way through Shakespeare. There's countless allusions of that, huh? Sleep is called the counterfeit of death, right? Sleep, though, eve of death, huh? Okay? Now, in sleep, the vegetative powers, huh? Like digestion or growing, they can be active, right? Okay? But sleep is an inactivity of what? Yeah. I don't seem to be sensing my surroundings, right? If I start sensing my surroundings, I've woken up, right? Yeah, okay. So, my sensing is no longer there, and when I'm sleeping, I'm no longer what? Yeah. I can take you, you know, to Homer, but to other poets, but Shakespeare is very clear. He's always making that comparison, right? But in David's speech, we say that, right? You know, he's dead to sleep, right? He's that expression, huh? You know the famous scene there in Shakespeare's Henry IV, you know? Where Henry IV is, what, is on his deathbed, right, then? And Prince Hal comes in, and he thinks his father has died, right, then? And there the crown is next to him, right? But now he's, what, succeeded in the crown, right? So he takes the crown and walks into the room, you know, meditating upon, you know, the crown and how it's worn his father down and his responsibility now to take it over, right? Well, the father wakes up, right? Where's the crown? Couldn't wait till I died! And it's a very, very good father-son scene, you know, that there are two or three of these ones between the king and Prince Hal. They're really marvelous to understand, you know, father and son, you know, and, you know, Hal, pressing, excusing himself, you know, and convincing his father that he wasn't, you know, happy that his father died, now I have the crown, you see? But the point is, now, his father was asleep, and he took him to be, what, dead? Dead, yeah, you see? Because when you're asleep, you're not moving around like a man, you know, there's no sign of life in that way, and you don't seem to be, what, sensing, right? You see? But, you know, most people, you know, I think we're digesting our food when we're asleep, right? And maybe we're growing in some sense, too, and so on, huh? If you're a week of tempest there, where the brother is tempted there, you know, to kill his brother, right? He succeeds in his throne, but the brother is, what, laying on the ground, sleeping, right? And he says, well, look at him, you know? I can't remember the exact words of Shakespeare, but I mean, you know, kill him when you can be king. He's telling daddy to do that, and, but he's, he'll be like when he's, he looks like from already, you know? In all kinds of delusions, in other words, in Shakespeare, there's a likeness there between death and, what? Sleep, right? Now, you know how in Scripture, of course, they use the word sleep with the, it's tied up with the belief in the, what, resurrection, right, huh? So we're said to fall asleep when we die, huh? Kind of a metaphor, right? But it's a metaphor that we use more than other people do, right, as Christians, because we believe in the resurrection, and that we will rise as easily through the power of God as a man does when we shake him and wake him up, huh? Okay? So, I'm getting you a mani dexu here, a paraposita, a mani dexu by opposites here, right, huh? But sleep, it seems like death, right, but sleep is a, what, removal, right, of these things that characterize the animal, at least the higher animals, sensing and knowing in some way, and walking around and moving around from one place to another, okay? So, I was kind of recalling that thing. Since, however, men mostly define the soul by two differences, huh? By its self-motion, by its moving from one place to another, right? And by knowing, you could say, but he uses more particular words here, right? By understanding and discerning, while understanding and judging seem to be like a certain sensing, huh? For in both of these, the soul discerns and knows being. So, the senses in some way discriminate, right? The tastes of things, huh? The colors of things, right? The sounds of things, right? And they seem to, in some way, judge that this is different from that, right? There's a man who's tasting wine, you know, he's judging the wine, in a sense, by taste, huh? Okay? But for the ancients, huh? They didn't, what, see these as being, what? Really different, huh? Okay? And you find that same problem in the English empiricists, huh? They don't clearly see the difference between sensing, or at least imagining, and, what, thinking, huh? Now, what's the Greek word there that the author here translates by judging, huh? Well, it could be, but it's not that particular one. I think it's fronain, huh? Okay? So, he translates it understanding and judging. The Greek words are knowing, which is the Greek word that's usually translated to understand, by intelligere in Latin, right? And fronain, huh? Which is the word tied up with to be wise, maybe in a practical sense, right? But Aristotle always ties up the idea of wisdom and, what, judgment, right? That the wise man is able to, what, judge, right? Okay? This will come back more clearly at the beginning of the fourth chapter there, right? If you look just for a second at the beginning of page 36, about that part of the soul by which the soul both knows and judges. But Thomas takes knows there in the sense of, what, grasp, right? Okay? Now, this is kind of a common thing here, a common distinction that Thomas makes in knowing, but it's already in Aristotle, that knowing involves two things, grasping and judging. Now, perhaps it's easiest to see that distinction there in this way in regard to reason. When you read an author, right, it's one thing to grasp what he means or what he's saying. It's another thing to judge whether what he says is true or false, right? And sometimes we use the word understanding, right, like he does here, and we do science in English. Sometimes we use the word understanding for what? Grasping, right? Okay? Do you understand what I said? We say, right, huh? Well, he misunderstood what I said, right? Okay? So it's one thing to grasp or understand what I'm saying. It's another thing to what? Judge it to be true or false, right? Okay? And because the wise man, most of all, is able to judge, huh? Which is the perfection of knowing? Grasping or judging? Judging. Yeah, yeah. So judging is especially attributed to the wise man. In the Latin text, if I read a chapter that I mentioned, it'll say, sapere, right? The savior, right? To judge, you know? We get the word sapientia. And this word uses here, a phoneme is taken for practical wisdom, right? Phonisi, son. He's the man of good judgment, right? My mother used to tell, I guess, my father was a young executive, huh? The big boss would call my father and the other young executive and ask them their opinion about something, right? And what the company should do, and so on. And the other guy would tell him right away what he thought the company should do, and my father says, I'll tell you tomorrow. And he'd always follow my father's advice. But a man of good sense, a man of good, what? Judgment, right, huh? Huh? Okay? Notice we speak of a man of good judgment as a man of good sense. You can see all this similarity between the senses and reason, right? And then I carefully decide. So, if wisdom is the highest perfection of reason, then judging, which is the perfection of knowing, is going to characterize the wise man, huh? So we speak of Solomon as what? He had a judge, right? Whose baby is it, right? He did it very well, right? You know the story, right? Okay. But you have to grasp or understand before you can what? Share it, yeah? Okay. Now, you've heard my complaint about the modern philosophers, right? They have a, in many cases, a very obscure way of speaking, right? So, you're never quite sure that you grasp what they mean. And I always joke about this one colleague that I had out at St. Mary's, where I talked for three years. When I came out there, he was trying to find out what Heidegger meant by being. Three years later, when I left, he was still trying to find out. But I say, it's all wrong there, the proportion, right? Yeah. You should spend most of your time trying to judge whether what somebody says is true or false, rather than, what does he mean? And if the man speaks so obscurely, right, that you're not quite sure what he means, how can you judge it, right? Now, someone comes out, like ladies, and says, why is the beginning of all things? I think I understand what he's saying. And now I can start to discuss, you know, and to try to judge, is that true or false, right? Well, they don't understand what he's saying. I can't judge, right? Ophilis estenalus autos, true or false. You don't understand what I'm saying, right? I'll say it in English. A friend is another self. false. Yeah, see? Okay. So, Tamas will often distinguish between those two. Judging there means the separating of the true from the false by some beginning in our knowledge. So that's the definition of judging. At least for a reason. It's separating the true from the false by some beginning in our knowledge. So, when Berkwist is standing, when Berkwist is not standing, they can't both be true, can they both be false? One must be true and the other must be false, right? But seeing the opposition of those two statements and how they're opposed, such that they can't both be true, they can't both be false, you grasp kind of clearly what I'm saying. Berkwist is standing, right? Berkwist is not standing. But now the next point is how do you judge that? How do you separate the true from the false? In this case, you go back to your what? Senses. Yeah. Which is the very beginning of our knowledge, right? Okay. But now, say, if I'm in geometry, right, I might go back just to what? The axioms of the postulates, right? And I think I'll mention that theorem there, number six, right? Where it goes back to the whole was more than the part, right? So you can judge it by that. An obtuse angle is more than an acute angle. Now how do you judge that now? Because I'm going to say the opposite now, right? An obtuse angle is not greater than an acute angle. How do you judge this now? By going back all the way to senses, or might you go back to something after that, but still beginning? Meaning, that was the word, definition. Not necessarily the word, but the thing, right? Go back to the definition of obtuse angle, right, and acute angle, and maybe the right angle, right? And, if you recall, the definition of right angle is not 90 degrees, as much as you said. I said, why divide the circle into 360 parts depending on what the right angle is? It would make more sense to say that the right angle is a fourth of a circle, right? But the actual definition of the right angle is what? A straight line meets a straight line and makes what? Equal angles those angles are called what? Right angles. That's the definition of right angle. The definition of tooth angle and acute angle in Book 1 of Euclid is through the definition of what? Right angle. And a tooth angle is an angle what? Greater than a right angle. An acute angle is an angle what? Less than. So those definitions of right angle and a tooth angle and acute angle, they are beginnings of geometry, right? The first thing you have in geometry, in fact, is the what? Definitions, right? Okay? So, it's by going back to some beginning of knowledge, in this case the definitions of obtuse and acute angle, which I would judge that an obtuse angle is more than the right angle. Right angle, right? Right angle, right? You see that? Now, if someone's asking you, are all right angles equal? You see? You see? You see? You see? You see? You see? By knowing what a right angle is? Yeah. Okay. But how do you know, if you laid this line upon this line, and this line upon that line, that the two lines would coincide? And if they coincide, it would be obvious that they're equal, right? But how do you know that they couldn't, you know, come off like that? Because if they didn't, plus it would be equal to the greater. Or probably it would be equal to the whole. Yeah, yeah. What you'd say is to give these some names here. Let's use A, B, C, and then D here, right? Okay. So, if this is the right angle, ADC is going to be equal to what? CDB, right? Okay. And since... Actually, I got the wrong way there. I said that twice. Okay. AEC has to be equal to CEB, because they're right angles, right? Okay. But CEB is going to be greater than DEB because the whole is more than the what? Part. See? Now, going back to the beginning, which is not a posture, this is a posture, going back to the beginning before that, which is what? But the axiom is that the whole is more than the part, right? So, if AEC is equal to CEB, and CEB is greater than DEB, because the whole is greater than the part, then AEC must be greater than DEB, right? And then, therefore, AED must be much greater than DEB, right? As you can say, right? But it's also equal, because this is the right angle, too. You can't both be equal and greater than that, right? You can't both be equal and unequal. That goes back to what axiom? The axiom is quite pre-hand. Yeah, the axiom is it. The same thing cannot both be, and not be at the same time, in the same way, right? See? So, when we judge, we separate the true from the false by some beginning and out, right? It might be a definition, it might be an axiom, right? Ultimately, all our judgments go back to our senses, and that's why we express our judgments by using the word sense. That makes sense, it doesn't make sense. Nonsense. So, okay? Okay? So, these two things, right? Involved in knowing, right? So, now, before arguing against this mistake, he's saying, in his first paragraph, that the ancients indeed say judging and sensing are the same, right? He's using judging there for the name, for the act of reason, and he's quoting, you know, somewhat, what, briefly there, right? For in men, as Empedicius says, skill is increased with what is present, and elsewhere, whence for them, judging always presents something different. In the context, I guess, what Empedicius is saying is that when your environment changes, right, your thinking changes. And, see, what they don't see is that reason yet is something immaterial, right? For the philosophers before, at least, Anaxagoras, right? They were materialists, okay? So that everything that was, was a body or something in a body, right? And so they didn't really see the difference between the senses, which are something bodily, and reason, which is not a body, okay? And so they thought of reason being acted upon in the same way that the senses acted upon by their environment, and so when the things are different, then they act, what, differently, huh? And then he quotes Homer, but as Thomas points out in the commentary in the translating or follows Thomas, he just quotes the beginning of the phrase from Homer because it's a phrase everybody would know among the Greeks, right? But as Thomas mentions, and Boethius in his translation gives the whole verse because we're not familiar with the Latins. For the mind of earthly men is such as the day the Father of men and gods may bring forth, the Son itself would change their thinking, right? So as they quote this other thing from Homer, you know, where that guy gets hit on the head, right? And he lay there thinking of the thoughts. My brother Mark, you know, made a joke about this. Brother Mark used to go mountain climbing with this Christian brother there, Brother Edmund, who'd gone to the vault and who I was talking with there. And they were climbing one time, and Brother Edmund and my brother slept, and he fell and hit himself on the rocks and so on and was knocked unconscious, huh? And Brother Edmund was trying to get down to my brother Mark and he almost fell too because it was a dangerous thing, right? I guess by the time he got down there, my brother had come too, you know? But he was a little broken up. And we always joked afterwards that if he had been alert enough at that moment, he would have pretended his philosophy to all change and it's different, right? He didn't have a taste of what it said here, you know? And, you know, he laid there thinking he had a thought after he got his head hit, right? He had a whole series of jokes about this because his shoulder was dislocated and so on and they had to bring in a helicopter in to get him off the mountain, right? And then, of course, the aftermath of that, of course, is that does the insurance pay for the helicopter? They eventually did but they had a fight, you know? Because another joke was, first of all, his watch got torn off as he fell, you know? So the other joke was that the brother had been taking his watch, you know? They were real good friends. It's funny. But knowing this thing, you know, this scene in Homey, where the guy gets hit there in the ground and taking other thoughts, right? As if the thought is something that is what the result of being acted upon in a material way, you know? And so in 295, he gives, as I was anticipating there, as Thomas points out in the commentary, the reason why they, in a sense, don't see such a difference as Aristotle would between reason and the senses because they still think of everything as being bodily, right? And so the reason would be just another bodily sense, in a way. For all these thinkers assume understanding to be bodily like sensing, and that like is sensed and judged by like as we determine the first arguments. Now, we had that fragment back in our study of Empedocles, if you recall. He says, by what? Earth we know, earth. By water, water. By air, air. By fire, fire. And by love, love. And by hate, hate. We know these things because we have them inside of us, right? And as we pointed out at that time when we studied that, there is an element of truth in Petticole's thinking, huh? And that is that the known must in some way be in the knower before he can what? What, huh? And even this word grasp implies that, right? Because I'm grasping the piece of chalk, right? And the piece of chalk is what? In my hand now, right? See? I can't grasp the center of this table right now. I'd have to cut out the center of it in order to grasp it, right? So when you know something, you have it inside you in some way, huh? And sometimes, you know, you should say you're looking to somebody's eye there, you know, you can see yourself in somebody's eye. So it's a thing known as in the knower, right? It's very obvious. But isn't this true, huh? If you remember somebody, huh? That you've seen before, don't you have their shape and their color and so on, color, inside your head in some way? And didn't you get their shape and their color and so on through your eye? Okay. But in what way exactly is the known inside the knower? Empedocles seems to have understood this in a somewhat material way, huh? And that has obvious difficulties if you stop and think about it because then this chair would know a solid metal is because it has metal in it. And that chair over there would know what wood is because it has wood in it, huh? And Goliath, you know, when he got that stone, was it, in his forehead, he would know better what a stone is, because, you know, you have rocks in your head, you know, you know what a rock is, huh? So, Aristotle began to see that it's true that the thing known must be in the knower before it's known, but it's not in there in this material way, in some immaterial way. Now, even the senses is a kind of immateriality, as we see it in the way they receive, but nevertheless, they receive in a body organ. And until the great Anaxagoras comes along, the Greeks didn't really see that there was anything other than material things or bodies. And one of the most fundamental places where I like to point out that common opinion is in Book 4 of Natural Hearing, Book 4 of the so-called Physics, where when Aristotle's taking up place and he says that it's a common opinion that whatever is must be somewhere in some place, right? If it isn't somewhere, it doesn't exist. If you go out and talk to the man in the street, I bet you'd find that same opinion today. Whatever it is must be somewhere. If it isn't somewhere, it doesn't exist. But to be in some place is really a property of bodies, huh? So even in elementary CCD, people are like, well, where is God, right? The sisters would never know exactly how to answer the question, right? But, you know, God or the angels are not in place, huh? Not contained by some place, because they're not bodies, right? So the man who says whatever is must be somewhere contained in some place, and if it isn't contained in some place, it doesn't exist, they're identifying what is with what? What is it? Body, right? And that's important later on, you know, when you get to wisdom and you find out that wisdom is about what is. And sometimes Thomas following Avicenna says that being or what is is what our mind first understands. But as he explains in some other texts, what's first understood by our mind is being as it's considered in sensible or material things. So... And going back to what we learned the other time there, our style has given you a reason why we have many senses, and it's given you a reason in the sense of an indoor purpose, an indoor purpose in regard to the good of the mind and the reason. The reason has a difficulty separating things that are never separated in our experience. Well, the same way here, huh? If in our experience, what is, is always a body, right? We have a hard time separating what is from the body, right? We tend to identify the two, huh? Kajitian has the phrase of that first being to understand, as in Latin, he says it's ends, which is a Latin word for being, right? Ends concretum. Ends concretum, right? In quiditate sensibility. Okay? It's being, right, concretely in what it is of something sensible. Okay? It kind of says it's being considered in material things, right? So, you can see that in the common opinion, whatever it is must be somewhere. It's being considered in the common opinion. It's being considered in the common opinion. It's being considered in the common opinion. It's being considered in the common opinion. And so they identify, you know, substance with body. And those are the only substances that are manifest to us in the beginning. What is that the definition of the being? Well, this is the being that our mind first understands, right? Okay. It's not this being that is the subject of wisdom, right? It's not until you realize that there are some immaterial things, like the unmoved mover, right? And the unmoved mover is not a body, like a reason at the end of the eight books of natural hearing. Or is there a reason here that the reason is not material? Not until you know that there is something immaterial that you would have any reason to separate being from body. So this is the object of grasping? Well, we'll see more clearly when you get into the consideration of reason. But what you're going to find out is that the proper or private object of reason, right? Okay. Of our reason is that what it is is something you can sense or imagine. Yeah. And therefore, we don't really know that what it is is something you can't sense or imagine. Yeah. Although we can know some things about it, right? Yeah. By negation and by analogy and emulation of these things, right? Yeah. Um... Of course, that's why even when we talk about God, as Thomas points out, we have these concrete and abstract words. So we can say God is good, and we can say God is goodness itself. But why do we have those two words? It's because our mind is naturally adapted to knowing that what it is is something that can be sensed or imagined, and those things are composed of matter and form. So when you speak of the form by itself, it doesn't seem to be what is, but that by which something is something. Therefore, our way of speaking breaks down when we talk about God, right? Because if we said that God is good, we might seem to be saying God has goodness, and implying some distinction between the have and the had, as if God was not as goodness, as if God was not altogether simple. But if we said that God is goodness itself, which we do say, right? And you might seem to be saying, right? So he's that by which something is good, but he's not good himself. See? Notice the word healthy and health, right? Is my body health? You could say my body maybe has health, right? But my body is not health, is it? So when you say my body is healthy, you're saying that there's some distinction between my body and health, right? My body has health, right? Okay? Now, is health itself healthy? Health is that by which something is healthy. So this way of speaking reflects the fact that what it is as something sensible or imaginable is the proper object of our mind. And in those things, the form, and what has the form, are not the same. So therefore, our very way of speaking, which affects our way of understanding, is not adequate to expressing God. Because God is good, but there's no composition between God and his goodness. He is his goodness. And so we have to say both of God, realizing how both ways of speaking fall short. He really is good. You know, when our Lord, speaking of one of the Gospels there, I don't know which one it is now, where, you know, they're praising him for what? Blessed is, yeah, blessed is the womb, the porgain, and so on. And speaking of these things as good, and he says, right, call me good, right? God alone is good, right? So, that's a very strong way of speaking, right? God alone is good. So good can very much be said of God, right? But it's the way of signifying. Good signifies, not goodness, but what has goodness. And therefore, the way of speaking there seems to indicate some distinction between the have and the have. And so, in order to avoid this understanding, we go on to show, as Thomas does, if you look at the Summa Concentilis, or Theology, Theology, that not only is God good, but he's goodness itself. There's no distinction between, no real distinction in God, between God and his goodness. There's not just that by which something is good. See, goodness seems to signify that by which the good are good. Like, health is that by which the healthy are healthy. Color is that which the color is colored. But color is not color. In the case of God, we have to say both, right? But realizing that both ways of speaking fall short of this, huh? We're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves, right, huh? But it's interesting, huh, that Thomas, going all the way back to the third book on the soul, and understanding that the private object of our reason is that what it is is something sensed or imagined, where form and what has the form are always in some way distinct, right? Its way of speaking reflects that way of what? Understanding it. And therefore, that way of understanding and that way of speaking is not adequate to understanding and speaking about God, right? And therefore, we, as he says, I think he's quoting Dionysius there, that we can affirm and deny, right, these words of God, right? See? So we can say that God is good because he really is good. He alone is good in a way, as our Lord teaches us there in the Gospel, right? We can deny that God is good as far as the way the word signifies, right? Because it signifies what has goodness, right? And that implies some distinction between the have and the had, and there's no distinction in God at all between him and his goodness. He's altogether simple. There's no composition at all in God, huh? Like St. Teresa of Avila says, God is altogether simple. And the closer you get to God, she says, the simpler you become. It's beautifully said, right, huh? But Thomas, that's the first thing he shows about God after his existence, right? You know, question two of the prima paris is about the existence of God. Question three is the simplicity of God. All together simple, huh? Christel in the fifth book of Wisdom talks about the simplicity, right? The first cause. All together simple. No composition there. But then if you want to talk about the truth there that there's no distinction in God, between God and his goodness, then we say God is what? Ipsa bonitas, huh? He's goodness itself, right? Okay? And there we affirm bonitas, or goodness of God. God is goodness, huh? But then, some might say, yeah, but goodness signifies is that by which something is good. But is God just that by which things are good? Isn't he good himself? Well, we negate, then, the imperfection of that way of speaking. But we can affirm that God is good as himself because of his simplicity, right? So, I mean, most people who don't know this, they can't understand even the way we are forced to use words in theology and the truth and the limitation of those words, huh? But Thomas understands it very clearly because he was taught by Verstappen, you know? I told you that the famous dinner there, they had the famous dinner in honor to Connick and Demolion, and these two guys taught at Laval, right? And Demolion used to teach a semester at Laval, and the other semester he'd teach at the Institute of Catholic, huh? And I guess his grandfather was, Demolion's grandfather was a philosopher, and I guess he met Nietzsche, you know? Oh. Nietzsche come down that area, come, mild man, and guide Nietzsche, you know? But, kind of crazy. But anyway, so they were honoring them, and so after, you know, all these allotatory speeches and so on, you know, they had a reply like you do with these things, and so Demolion got to speak first, and he says, I'll thank them, you know, for all their kind words and so on, but he said, you shouldn't have been praising me, though. You should have been praising Thomas Aquinas. See? But then it's finally Dichonix time to get up, you know, and he had to top him. And he says, well, it's always very good what he said, you know, but he should have been praising Thomas, he should have been praising Aristotle. So, but Thomas' understanding, then, what Aristotle would teach you later on, when you get into the reason, could then see how we can, as Dichonix says, affirm and deny these words of Christ, or I mean of God, rather, because of the way they, what, signify, right? But another way we can affirm them of God, right? Okay. Of course, the modern thinkers are like the ancients, aren't they? Because they generally think of the brain as being the, what, organ of thought, right? So for them, the mind or reason seems to be a, what, body, right? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.