De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 39: Composition, Parts, and God's Simplicity

Transcript
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We also speak of the cause as what? Underlying. You hear this phrase, the underlying cause, right? So, what does it mean to understand an effect? It means to know the cause that is said to stand under that, right? What does it mean to understand a word? You see, we speak as if the name was placed upon something. Even in Latin they'll say that, huh? The infusitio nominis, the placing upon the name, right? And even English will speak of putting a label upon something, putting a name upon it, right? Placing a name upon it. So, the thing named is said to stand under the name, right? So, to understand the name is to what? Know the meaning or the thing that stands under that name. And the English word for cause we mentioned before, that Shakespeare puns on a couple times at least, is the word ground, right? Ground, of course, stands under other things, huh? So, it's a marvelous word, the English word, understanding, huh? So, different languages sometimes and different words have something very good about them. You have to kind of, at least, come and buy the word itself. You can go to the language where it's most revealing. So, in the beginning of 319 there, on page 34 in the first line there in 35, he's saying that the senses are hardly ever deceived about their own proper or private sensibles, huh? Because that's what they're, what? Designed to know, right? But about the accidental sensibles, they're sometimes deceived, huh? But most commonly, if they're deceived at all, they're deceived as regards the, what? Common sensibles, huh? And that's interesting, huh? Let me just compare it to private and common here. Because sometimes when they compare reason to the senses, they'll say, if reason knows something immediately, it's pretty sure about it. But if it knows or has to know one thing to another, it's more apt to be, what? Mistaken, right? And the more things to which you have to come know something, the more possibility of, what? A mistake, right? A chain is no stronger than it's, what? I guess that's the problem with computers now. You see, they're getting so complicated, right? That if one thing goes wrong, you know, everything can be, what? Effective, right? And you almost have to install the whole program again, because something has slipped out of the place, you see? But there's something like that here, see? Because the senses know the common sensibles, not by discourse, but in a way, it knows the common sensibles as a modification of the proper sensibles. So I know the surface of the desk and the shape of the desk through the color of the desk, right? That the color is spread out, right? It ends here and there and so on, right? So it's not really that the senses are reasoning from one together, right? Coming in one together, but it's something like that, right? And so the fact that you're more deceived about the common sensibles than about the private sensibles, right? It's like the fact that reason is more deceived about those things it has to reason to from other things than those things it knows without having to use in the whole, okay? So one would not be so easily deceived that a whole is more than a part, right? But there are theorems in geometry where a student might be deceived, huh? You might say, you know, if a rectangle has more perimeter, does it have more area? Of course, right? Now if you know my favorite theorem there, book 5, and I mean, proposition 5 and book 2, right? And you can have less perimeter and more area, right? But it would seem to most people, maybe everybody in the beginning, that if you have more perimeter, if you use more fence, you must have enclosed more area. And they say the old crooked geometers, you know, in the old days, they'd sell land by perimeter. So they gave you a piece of land that has more perimeter and you think you're getting more land, right? You don't know in geometry. And he's getting more land, even though he's getting less perimeter. It's amazing, isn't it? Yeah. So you have, let's say, 5 by 5, and the perimeter is, what, 20, and the area is 25, and you have, take an obvious example here, 2 by 10, and the perimeter is, what, more than 20 is 24, but the area is only, what, 20. So I have more area, 25 is more area than 20, but down here the perimeter is, what, 10 to 24. So with more fence, I have less, what, area of land, less area. But one might easily be deceived about this before his studies jump, you know? You might think if you, you know, I've got more fence than you, I should have imposed more land than you did. What's that famous example, you know, there's a Russian story where the guy is given the offer, he can have all the land, he can run around in the course of the day, yeah? And of course he gets greedy, you know, so he runs more than he has stamina, and he just gets back, you know, and of course he collapses and dies. So it's got a moral to the story, right? I mean, suppose you were told, right? You know, as much land as you can run around. Well, some of you might run at the same speed longer and yet get less land than someone else, right? Who knows geometry? I mean, you and I were equally fast, let's say, as runners, huh? And you got more land, you ran less than me, there must be something crooked here. No. I got the land I ran around in less time, going at the same speed, you know? But you took more time, right? Who could that be? They said even some of the ship pilots in the old days, they would estimate the size of an island and how long it took to sail around it, right? Of course, in those days, they were afraid to leave the land very much because they did not have any navigation. Well, that's kind of absurd because they're in and out, and you know, like the fjords or something, right? And so it takes you long to get around this island, therefore it must be bigger than that island, but it ain't necessarily so. Now notice, if the senses are deceived, especially as regards the common sensibles, less so by the accidental sensibles, and least or not at all the private sensibles, then in this imagining that follows upon sense, right, and the senses move this within, you'll be deceived in the same way, but even what? More so, because your emotion is what? Weaker, right? Okay? Now that's what he's thinking of there. He's thinking of the fact that when I look at you, and I see your shape and your color and so on, but now when I close my eyes, you're no longer acting upon my eyes, but I still see you and your color and your shape. Isn't that true? But it's not quite as, what? Vivid or, you see? So there's more possibility of, what? Deception. And especially if I walk away for a while. When I was a little boy there in grade school, I remember we'd walk home from grade school on several blocks, and I used to play a game, I remember, and you'd, what? Stop in front of a house, and you'd have, what? A few seconds to look at the house, right? You had to close your eyes, and the other kids would, what? Ask you. How many windows does it have? Does it have shutters? And they go through these things, right? And you would be often mistaken as to what you had, what? Just seen. Yeah, yeah. But you have some impression of that house left in you once you close your eyes. But it's kind of, what? Weak, huh? And the further you get away from it, the weaker it becomes, huh? As I mentioned how Hume thinks that, what, thoughts are faded sensations. He's really thinking of what? Imagining, right? You see, he's back in the confusion of thinking that thought is a kind of, what, sensing, but a kind of inward sensing, huh? So it's faded senses. It puts the senses down, it puts the reason down kind of a low level, right? Faded, dull senses, huh? Okay. But the motion, top of page 35 now, but the motion coming to be from the act of the sense will differ. The motion will differ from these three sensings. And the first sensation being present is true, but the others may be false both in the presence and in the absence of sensation. And mostly when the sensible is far away. If, therefore, nothing else has the above-mentioned characteristics except imagining, well, this is what was said. Imagination would be emotion coming to be from sense according to act, huh? He's kind of coming back to the definition of what imagining is, right? Through this property of it, right? That it's weaker, right? And more easily deceived, right? By the, what? In the absence of sensing, right? So I'm looking at that house, I'm not so easily deceived as to how many windows there are, and that's a common sensible, right? If I close my eyes, I am, what? More easily deceived, huh? May a fortiori if I, if the image, you know, lingers for a day or so, right? When I recall what I saw, I often, what? Discover falsity in my image if I go back to the, what? Original, huh? Of course, you notice something like that in memorizing something, huh? I'll memorize things like a passage in Shakespeare and so on, and, you know, recite it more or less perfectly, and then maybe I don't think about it for a while, and it gets fake, and then I start to play with the, the words, and I end up getting things a little bit, what? Wrong. And then I go back and look at the text again, and I say, gee whiz, I'm imagining Shakespeare to have said it a little differently than he did, huh? I find that happen all the time, right? A very common thing, right? Now in 3.20, he's explaining, um, the Greek word there, huh? I was looking at the Greek dictionary there, you know, phos is kind of a contraction of faus, huh? Which has the idea of light, huh? And you get the verb form for fantasia, and the first meaning of it is to bring to light, huh? I think in English, too, we'll say, you know, that appears to be so, that seems to be so, right? We'll use a word that seems to be tied up with, what? The I, right? And the I is the most, what? Spiritual of the senses, and seems to be the closest to, what? Imagining, huh? We generally think of an image as being something more, what? Like a picture, than we do of anything else, huh? Although it's not really limited to that sense, huh? But it seems more spiritual. And Shakespeare says, you know, my eye has played the painter. Interesting metaphor, right? You know, his eye has painted the beloved. But notice, the painter there is in between the, what? The person, and what's stored now inside, right? That's kind of a metaphor. What's actually taking place is that the senses are being moved by the exterior object, and they move something further within. And they move it in a way like the way they've been moved. Except that the motion they communicate to something within is weaker than their own motion. And therefore, it's faded, as Hume says, and therefore you're more apt to, what? Be deceived, huh? Okay? And so I know some people look at a text, you know, they often, what? I know some church, you know, when they get up to read sometimes, you know, a person who's not a professor, they often, you know, they're kind of afraid to look up in the audience for fear that they're going to lose their place, right? You see? And sometimes people, you know, they can't, when they look up and they recite the words that they've just seen, they, what, have something out of place or, you know, not exactly right, huh? Sometimes it's funny and it's an intentional mistake, but you do have that, huh? But if they just, you know, read it, you know, using their senses, they wouldn't make quite so many mistakes, but they seem to write, you know, not even see altogether what they're reading, you find that, huh? They make a mistake in reading it, huh? Now, in the last paragraph, he's talking about how the other animals, especially, but also men sometimes, live and act on these images, huh? The animals, because they have nothing better, in a sense, than the images to go by, and men, when their reason is what? Eclipsed, huh? And he'll talk about how reason is eclipsed a bit there, but this will come up again later on in the, after he takes up reason, huh? And because what remains is also similar to the sensations, animals do many things according to these images, just as they do many things according to their, what, senses, right? Some, because they do not have understanding or reason, like the beasts, right? Some, like men, because the understanding is eclipsed by passion, by some strong, what, emotion or feeling, right? Or disease, right? Like in the madmen, right? Or sleep, right, huh? Some people sometimes do in sleep what they wouldn't do when they're awake, right? Because their reason seems to be, what? Eclipsed, right? They don't have the full use of reason there in their dreams, huh? So you see the way Shakespeare presents Othello there when he kills his wife, you know, huh? Or the way he presents Romeo when he comes back to take his life, right? They seem to be, what, dominated by their imagination, right? Because their reason has been, what, eclipsed by, what, in this case, passion, right, huh? Okay? When you read about these, you know, sick people that do these horrible things in the newspaper and so on, they're diseased, right, huh? Or then people in sleep sometimes do things, right? Okay? But they wouldn't do awake, huh? But again, there's reasons eclipsed in one of these ways. So when they talk about, what, the means of persuasion there in Frederick, huh? And Aristotle distinguishes three means of persuasion, but the most important is what? The image, right? Of the speaker, huh? The second is the way he moves the emotions, right? Prejudices of his audience. And the third and least important is the arguments or apparent arguments he gives. And so if you read Othello, Iago's persuasion of Othello, right? And follows those three means of persuasion. And because he projects a certain image of himself, right? Othello trusts him and trusts his judgment, right? And then he's more apt to, you know, be suspicious of his wife because he sees Iago, huh? A very careful man who doesn't like the state of his suspicions, right? You know, and who hates to say anything bad about other people, right? But all these things, you see. And, uh... Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. In the same way with Mark Anthony's speech there. I had a student in class yesterday. His name was Mark Anthony. Oh, yeah. There's two names, yeah. I was telling you how my father had said when he came to the hospital, what, my brother Mark, let's call him Marcus Aurelius. Well, Mark had stuck to not the Aurelius, but when I was in grade school there, we used to play with a boy that would come in the summer and visit his grandmother. His name was Marcus Aurelius, so we were kind of an interesting name. This guy, Mark Anthony, I couldn't help but think of the Roman plays and Plutarch and so on. So his definition of imagination is that last line in 319? Yeah, yeah. And that's kind of said before that, but he's coming back to it there, right? It's a motion made by the sense and act, he says. But you've got to realize what he's talking about there, right? He's talking about what you can experience now if you look intensely at me or something else in this room, or look at Brother Charbel over there or something, right? And you close your eyes and I still see him, but not as clearly as I see him and open my eyes. But he continues there inside me, right? But in a somewhat, you know, faded compared to the way I see him with my eyes open. So my eyes have been moved by his picture there, and then the eye becomes a moved mover. And that motion that it causes more within us, right, when it's actually moved itself, that's the original what? Imagining, right, then, okay? But because we can, to some extent, what, retain these images afterwards, right, we can also come back upon them and, what, manipulate them, right? And that's the way in which we sometimes use, in a different sense, the word imagination, okay? That would be another power? Yeah, yeah. I see, in Thomas, you see, you would have, to me, type of the common sense, this imagining him, but the preservation of these images is, say, what? Another, right? Power, right? And the reason why they think it's another power, the reason that Thomas gives, or Aristotle gives, goes back to the regular thinkers, is that what easily receives something in matter doesn't easily, it doesn't retain it well, right? And what retains something well doesn't easily receive, right? So we see this as requiring a different type of body, right, then? Easily receive these things and preserve them, right? If you look sometime at the Summa Theologiae, where Thomas considers this so, we'll see it taking up some questions, you know, about the inward senses and other things that Aristotle doesn't take up here explicitly, huh? We may do that sometime, okay? No, I'm not being deceived in the common senses. Where exactly is the deception? Like I say, you look bigger than the tree back there, isn't it? I mean, the colors that I'm getting from here in the tree are in that proportion, but that's what I really see them. Yeah. Is there a deception in the judgment or in the senses itself? Well, in a sense it appears that way to the senses, right? See, when I draw those lines there, right, doesn't the one below seem longer than the one above? But this is going to be even more to the, what? To imagining, huh? Because you're further removed from the thing, right? You think there's something else in us that is judging that, huh? You're talking about, you know, the statement you might make about that's another question, right? Okay? But then there would be reason being, what? Deceived by following the imagination. See, if my reason was to follow the way it seems to me, right? Then my reason could be deceived, but that would be the reason being deceived by the imagination. But the more you get removed from the senses, we can easily imagine things to be other than they are, huh? Involving, what? Maybe something of the images that we already have retained, right? That's using the word imagination in a somewhat different sense, huh? The size of the color, the white color of those two lines hasn't changed at all, even for my eyes. No, but if they were, if one of those is a yellow line, one is a blue line, your eyes probably wouldn't take, you know, confuse those two, right? The yellow would look like a yellow line, the blue would look like a blue line, right? When you get to the idea of the length, the common sensible, then you are more easily deceived. I mean, these whole, these optic illusions are all based on the common sensibles, aren't they? Because there are other ways they draw so that the line will appear bent when it's not bent, huh? I've seen these done, huh? Somebody's telling me if, you know, somebody sent them to the computer, a diagram there where it looks like it's, what, going around in a circle and it's not. So they see that motion and there's no motion, huh? So one, it seems to be true that these optical illusions are tied up with the common sensibles, that's kind of a confirmation of what Aristotle is saying, huh? And in a sense to deceive it as regards the private sensibles, you'd have to affect the organ or else put on, what, like in the Wizard of Oz, put on these green glasses or something, right? But then in a sense you're kind of, what, it's like changing the eye in a sense, right? So it doesn't really see things as they are. I know some of you get this beautiful fall foliage later on. Of course, it always looks better on a bright day in the fall foliage. But if I have my sunglasses on and I'm driving to school, it's much more brilliant than it is. It's beautiful. I just take it off. It's still beautiful, but it's not quite as beautiful. It kind of bothers me that my sunglasses shouldn't be able to do this for me. But I'm not going to start wearing special glasses just to make everything that work. I remember a guy, though, who was, he'd been a steady, you know, one of these several packs a day smoker, and he'd given up smoking, right? And I was, there was a bachelor and I was eating out in the restaurants with him and I was a bachelor. He was discovering the taste of all these foods again, right? You know, I forgot how this tasted, you know? Like it really had affected his sense of taste, all that smoking, yeah? And all of a sudden, you know, tasted these things. In the old days, when I taught at St. Mary's there, you know, he'd have these, some names, these Christian Brothers, they'd have these nice gifts with the Christian Brothers wines, you know? Of course, in those days, you know, there wasn't all this propaganda against smoking, you know, so smoking was very common. And often, you know, you'd be offered a cigarette or something, they had one of these social things before dinner, and the market's always, you know, warning me, you know, my sense of taste, I won't be able to... But the smoking might affect that, see? The same way if you eat hot stuff, right? You see? I mean, you know, if I was eating a pepperoni pizza, I wouldn't ever serve a carboné sauvignon with that, because you couldn't taste it. A chianti could kind of cut through it, but a carboné sauvignon would be lost on pepperoni, and see if you had some kind of a hot, you know, Chinese dish or something, sorry. I don't know if you had some kind of a hot, you know? I don't know if you had some kind of a hot, you know? I don't know if you had some kind of a hot, you know? I don't know if you had some kind of a hot, you know? I don't know if you had some kind of a hot, you know? Your sense of taste is kind of ruined. Dr. Wollett there, who does some of the wine tastings, he was going to a real expensive wine tasting, he says, well, you pay $50, $100, something like that. And he was in a hurry in the hospital, and he drank a cup of hot coffee and burnt his tongue, and writes, oh, what am I going to do? I guess I can sniff the wine. But apart from those injuries like that, right, or if you're sick or something, right, your senses are not going to be deceived, hardly ever, or about their own proper object and private objects. Now, next time we'll start here with Chapter 4. The first reading there, Reading 7 of Thomas, is almost the first page, and then Reading 8 starts at 328 and goes over to 330. So I think two readings is, usually in most cases, enough to try to do it one session here, you know, make a break between the first and the second readings. But here he's going to begin to talk about, what, reason, right? Universal reason, right? And we'll see how he proceeds next time, right? You had another question? You said if you had a little time before, you wanted to talk about what is that now? Oh, yeah. It's just one thing that... So they knew so much of what Scripture is saying, right? Yeah, yeah. I was thinking about the Latin word composed, or composition. As you perhaps know, the third question in the Summa Theologiae is about the simplicity of God, right? But, like most things in theology, you proceed in the Via Negativa. So what Thomas is showing there is that God is not composed in any way, right? And what he does in the Question 3 is, the first six articles are dealing with six different kinds of composition found in the creature. And he gives reasons to negate each of these kinds of composition, okay? So the first article is God is not a body, right? Okay? He's not composed of quantity of parts. The second article is that God is not composed of body and soul, right? Or matter and form, right? There's no composition of matter and form in God. And the third article is that there's no composition in God of what? Nature of what he is and the individual, right? Or the subject. And the fourth article is there's no composition in God of substance and existence, right? And then the fifth one is there's no composition of genius and difference in God. God doesn't have any... That's more than mine, right? But there's no genus. God's not in any genus. He has any differences. And the sixth article is there's no composition of substance and what? Accident, right? And then the seventh article he shows universally there's no composition in God, right? Okay? Now, incidentally, if you ever read the Summa Cantu Gentiles the order is just the reverse. In the Summa Cantu Gentiles he shows in general that God is not composed and then he shows each of these particular kinds of composition. Well, there's one exception there but you have to look into that deep there right now. Okay, then the eighth article is that God doesn't enter into composition of anything else, right? Okay? Now, I was thinking about that and thinking about how similar this would be if you had a question whereby you'd show God has no parts and he's not a part of anything. Instead of saying God is, what, not composed and he doesn't enter into composition of anything. Right? Okay? Now, going back to what we were saying before that the names of what? The continuous or what is found in the continuous are carried over to other things that are not continuous. And I mentioned how the first meaning of beginning and the first meaning of end and the first meaning of before, right? Even the first meaning of part. They're all names of something continuous or something that is in the continuous. And then they're carried over to things that are not continuous. Now, I'll give you an example here. I'll take a simple example of body and soul if you ask somebody what are the parts of the word cat what do the average Christian say? C, A, and T. Yeah. And now if you ask them is there any other part besides those three? Obviously no, right? And you seem to be right because we take away the C, the A, and the T there's no part left, is there? So those are the only parts of it, right? Okay. Now, likewise you would say with the word dog, right? The parts of the word dog are D, O, and G, right? But then someone comes along and says, yeah, but what about the word act? How about the word God? Same letters, right? So isn't there something in the word cat besides the two letters? Is that a part of the word? But now, when you say there's something else which is not too hard to see in this case it's in order, right? The word of those. You seem to be using the word part in a different meaning, aren't you? Now, so the first meaning of the word part is the quantitative parts. So if I divide up this table into its parts, cut something up into parts, take the pie and cut it up, right? But these parts, they what? Come together, right? Have a common boundary. But now when you come to the letters and the order of the letters, do they meet at a common boundary? You can make the letters continuous if you want them to. You can, you know, right? Okay? That's a C, that's a T, right? The continuous. But is the order of the letters and the letters continuous? Now, what does the word composed mean? What's the etymology of the word composed? Placed together? Yeah, put together really, huh? Placed together, yeah. Composizio. When you speak of putting together something, what kind of parts are you first thinking of? Yeah, you're thinking of, of parts that can exist maybe independently one or the other, right? And you bring them together and you put them together, right? You've put together a lot of things in your life, right? And you buy something, you know, you've got this, all these parts and you've got these directions that you're supposed to try to follow, right? And I notice now in the, in spags and, you know, spags down there, places like that. Where they sell outdoor grills, right? And they have one price for an unassembled grill, another one. And, and having the experience trying to assemble all these grills before, you know, it's almost worth the difference in price to get an assembled grill than the other one, right? But you're putting together something in a kind of what? Continuous, or contiguous at least way, right? But now, is that the way you put together matter and form? You know, if I have rubber here, and I want a rubber ball, so I take some rubber and I take, you know, the spherical shape and I put them together, right? See? I'll see you next time. I'll see you next time. I'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Is a rubber ball put together from rubber and it's stood in shape? In a sense, if we say a rubber ball is composed of a rubber and a what? Shape, right? We're saying, what? It's put together from these, right? But if you stop and think about the original meaning of the word put together, it's tied up with the, what? Continuous, huh? Okay. And we could also speak, you know, in logic, you know, another sense of part. We could speak of, you know, when you define something, you put together the, what? Genus with the differences, huh? So when I define square as an equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral, I put the genus of, what? Square, which is quadrilateral, together with the differences, right? Okay. And notice that, you know, when they define the syllogism, they put positio in the definition, don't they? Speech in which some statements laid down, huh? Placed and other files necessarily because those laid down, huh? When I was, you know, reading Thomas' commentaries on the Epistles of St. Paul, right, huh? He happens to explain the word, what? Placed, right, huh? In there, huh? Kind of borrowed that, huh? Okay. Now, you know how in geometry you get a parallelogram, you can, what? Divide it into, what? Yeah. You could say you also, you want to, you could put together two triangles and make it, what? Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes you divide a circle into two semicircles, right? But you would put two semicircles together and make one, what? Two. Yeah. In other words, you could also have these semicircles by themselves, right? You have the triangles by themselves. And matter and form is not like that, right? So, I put them together, right? Okay. Now, that's good at what you asked about. If I put three and four together, what do you get? Seven. Seven, yeah. Yeah. Okay. But now, what does put together mean here, right? Mm-hmm. See? Is it more like putting together two continuous things, right? Or is it more like putting together matter and form, or genus and difference, which is it more like? It's more like manner and form. Yeah. This is important now to see. See, let's take a simple example. Let's take two here, right? Okay. Now, in two, you've got two ones, right? Yeah. Okay? Just like here, you've got two, what? Semicircles, right? Now, when you put these two together, what do you do? You put their, what? Boundaries here, right? Together, right? Yeah. You really, in a sense, become one boundary, right? Put them together. Okay. Okay. But, as you know, number is not continuous, right? So, you couldn't put the two ones together in the way you put together the two semicircles, could you? So, they had no common boundary, right? They had no boundary. No limit, right? It's like with, we saw back in our study of points, the continuous, right? And you put two points together, and you put two points together, and they remained two points. Now, if you put two points together, they would coincide in just one point, right? Right? But you can't put two semicircles together, and you still have the two semicircles, but you have also this one, what? Circle. We can talk about it as being one thing, one circle, right? But here, the two ones, if you try to see them as coming together in this way, they're never going to become one, are they? All they're going to be is, what? Two ones. There'll never be one, two, but always two ones. The comic, as I've already seen, is McMaster Lectures, they're called, because he gave a master university to one of these Canadian universities, but there's the Hall of Universe here, isn't that? But one of them is about numbers, right? There, you know, and there's a quote from the Rock of Dish, you can't make one out of two, and so on. See? But here's the way you can make one out of two, right? It doesn't matter in form or one, man. But if you imagine, huh, the only way of, what, putting together things, of becoming one, of two becoming one, is this way here, then these could never become one, could they? They always remain two ones, and never one two, see? And they say the computer, right, and the calculating machines, are based upon regarding two as two ones, and never one two. Just so many units, right? Okay? But, if you look upon the one as something able to be two, right, but it becomes actually two through the addition of one, right, then that one is like what? Act to ability, like form to matter, right? And Plato, before Aristotle, and Aristotle in the Eighth Book of Wisdom, he assimilates definitions to numbers. Remember that? And we saw an example of that in Shakespeare, huh? He says, what is a man, right? If his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed. A beast, well, more or less, is set first in what? Number, right? Okay? And so, Aristotle in the Eighth Book there, following the great Plato, his teacher, 20 years, I was looking at this passage of the Sophists there just this morning, because I was thinking about this opinion, this idea that imagining his opinion with sensation, and they said, well, Plato says in the Sophists, I was looking at the passage in the Sophists, and Plato's talking about how a logos, that is true or false, that is a noun, a verb, right? The basic things Aristotle is saying in the Periodeus, right? You realize how much Aristotle learned from Plato, right? Okay? But the connection that's made in the Eighth Book is that just as if you add or subtract one from a number, you have a different number, right? So, the natures of things are like that a bit, huh? So, a body plus life equals a what? A plant, right? And if you add to body and life sensation, you now have a what? Animal. And if you add to body and life and sensation reason, now you have a man, right? And you take away from a man reason, and you have nothing more than a what? Animal. What is a man if it's chief good and marked it with time you put to sleep and feed? He beats no more, right? See? Back there. And you might say, what is an animal if it has no sensation? If it doesn't sense? A plant, no more, right? What is a plant if it has no life? A body, no more. See? So, it's like body was what? One, and this was two, and this was three, and this was what? Four. They say the natures of things, which are expressed by their definitions, are like numbers, right? You add or subtract one, right? Now, I said this to the students, you don't have to make it through them, I said. The way Shakespeare's reasoning, in a sense, is to say, what is a four if it be half a six? A three, no more, right? What is a three if it be half a four? A two, no more, right? If they have reason or to use reason, it's something that is either what man is or it's a property of man, right? So, if man has no good greater than the beast, right, there's no more than the beast, right? And so it's based upon proportion. Half of eight is to four, as half of six is to three. So if you switch that and say, well, what is four if it would be half of six? More than three. So say the chief good of man is to man, as the chief good of the beast is to the beast, right? So if man is nothing more than the chief good of the beast, to sleep and feed like Muppet, then man is no more than the beast, right? So you're looking at the idea that one is able to be a two by the addition of one, and that ability is made actual by the addition of one. So that's like matter in form, right? Rubber is able to be a rubber ball, which you have to add, what? That's the word add. You have to add a form of a certain kind to it, and then it becomes actually a what? A rubber ball, right? Okay, you see that? So in that sense, you're understanding the order there in number, right? Rather than it just being a collection of ones that are independent of each other. Therefore, you're seeing the one that's added to two as actualizing what one is able to be, right? And once you have a two, then the two is able to be a what? Three, right? And three is able to be four. But it's actually four through receiving what? That next one, right? Okay? Then you start to think of number as something which is what? One thing, right? Okay? Rather than simply what? Kind of a bringing together of many things, right? Which can't, you know, be put together because they don't have any in common. But boundaries or limits or surfaces. So it's a real species of what? Quantity, how much, huh? How many species, huh? But apparently in the computer or in these calculating machines, the number is treated simply as what? A bunch of ones. That's all it is, you know. You wouldn't think of numbers. I remember Brother Mark saying that, you know, if that's all the number was, you know, they wouldn't see any significance in three or seven or ten or twelve or whatever it might be, right? Or a hundred or something, right? You kind of see that, you know, the way we get numbers by counting, right? Because there's an order there, right? You're not seeing these ones as all on the same level, right? Just a collection of ones, right? You're seeing the next one as what? Actualizing something in the previous one, huh? But here, you see, I'm kind of reversing the analogy there of Plato and Aristotle, right? The natures of things are like numbers, huh? And the addition or subtraction of one gives you a different number, right? And the addition or subtraction of life or sensation or reason or subtraction of these things gives you a different kind of, what? A thing, huh? It still seems like that... I'm not saying a number is as much as it is, you know. It may not inform, right? But there is that idea of ability to enact there. And you have to think of the idea that, in a strict sense, when is something able, you know, to be something, right? And when Aristotle talks about ability to enact, he says that, in a strict sense, you're able to be something when you're one step away from it, huh? Okay? So if I'm climbing up the stairs, and I can only climb one step at a time, because it's a tall step, right, huh? Well, I'm not able to be on the second step until I'm already on the first step, right? I'm not able to be on the third step until I'm on the second one, right? The same way in reasoning, right, huh? You know? If in reasoning, let's say, A is obvious, but to A you can prove B, right? Okay? And to B you can prove C, and to C you can prove D. When are you able to know C? When you know A? Well, in some remote way you might say this, right? But strictly speaking, I'm not able to know C until I know what? B, right? When am I able to know D? Not strictly speaking until I know what? C, right? Okay? So, you know, is a student who's never studied any geometry, is he able to know solid geometry? Not strictly speaking, right? You see? So, we've got to make plain geometry a prerequisite, if they'd say in college, for the solid geometry course. So, is two able to be four, huh? Well, not in a strict sense, right? Two is able to be three, and three is able to be four, right? So, two is one step away from being three. It would be three, but it would be actually three, then one. So, that one is like a four, making it to be actually, what? Three, right? But you have to see these, this is a certain, what? Order, right? You see that there's an order there of ability and, what? Act, right? And then you see the numbers having more unity than we'd have if it's just a collection of things in a room, so to speak, you know, plumped together. In thinking of it that way, it seems you could say the triangle triangle is able to be the parallelogram by the addition of the other triangle, and therefore you'd say the other triangle is like the form. It seems that there's a different, couldn't you say, you could, I mean, you could say it's like the form in that way. Yeah, but see, you see, in the case of the two triangles there, they can come together, right? In the first sense of coming together, you know? And the first sense of coming together is where their extremities touch, right? Or become one, right? And then the numbers don't have any. Yeah. So that's the same reason, though, for the same matter, or for that matter, I should say, matter and form can't come together in that way either. But within our matter, you remember the question Aristotle raised back when we talked about the unity of the body and soul, right? And it's not a problem for Aristotle in the way it is for the others, huh? Because the others see the body and the soul, they see them as distinct at all, they see them as two different substances, right? Like a man and his car, right? And if there's no reason why man can't go in the car or leave the car, right? You get this idea of the transmigration of souls, right? But if the soul is to the body as form is to matter, you can understand both the unity of man and why this transmigration of one soul to another body does make sense really, you know? Because this soul is the act of this body and so on. And this kind of soul, right, is the act of this kind of body. So, but Plato can't really understand the unity of man, huh? If he thinks of the soul as a complete substance in itself, and the body is a complete substance in itself, huh? Then the man would be like the body would say, the ghost in the machine, right? That's their expression, huh? You see? But it's like, you know, they could be said about better positions, like the sailor in the boat, huh?