De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 47: Undergoing, Immateriality, and the Object of Understanding

Transcript
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things that are only, what? Potentially understandable. Things that are singular, right? Okay? But I say we'll be talking about that next time, in the next chapter, but I think something of these difficulties, they're kind of resolved in this part here. I mean, the two difficulties are raised, and he gives answers. But as you think about it more and more, you start to see, hey, there's another piece here in the jigsaw puzzle. And that's partly because of the fact that he's disagreed with Plato, right? If there was a world of universal forms, as well as a sensible world, right? Then the sensible world and the individuals could act directly upon the senses as they do, and the world of forms could in some way act upon, maybe, our reason directly. But if that doesn't exist, right, and things are universal only in the undergoing, then you need some ability to separate the universal from the singular. an ability to make actually understandable, and immaterial and universal, something that's only potentially so. But that's more explicit, as I say, for the next chapter. Yeah. Maybe this, right? Yeah. Could I get it right there? So, in 331 and 332 now, he's going to raise two objections, huh? And then he's going to give a certain reply to both, okay? And the first objection, he's saying, but if the mind is simple, right? If the reason or the understanding is simple, right? And impassable, it's not a body that can be, what? Altered or something, right? And has nothing in common with anything. It has none of these, what? Material natures, right? In it, huh? Which is something like what Anxagra said about the greater mind. It's not mixed with anything else, right? Someone will be at a loss about how it will understand if understanding is, as we said, some kind of suffering or undergoing. For a thing seems to act while another suffers and undergo insofar as there is something common, present in, what? Both, huh? See? He's looking back at the study of material things, right? And two material bodies, one acts upon the other, right? And it couldn't if they weren't both, what? Material, right? Okay. So, if the understanding of the reason, as we said in the first part of this chapter, has no material nature at all, how can it be acted upon by a, what? Material body, right? Okay? And especially, how can it be acted upon in the way that one material body acts upon another material body, yeah? Okay. Now, he's going to give a reply to this, right? Somewhat, huh? But also, in a sense, maybe it leaves you a little bit the idea that there is a little problem there, right? About how a material body can act upon something, what? Immaterial, huh? Yeah. Notice, one body can act upon another body because they're both material. And if I take, you know, if I had a, I want to say you had a cookie press, right? You're hitting the dough there, right? Okay? And they come and contact the two bodies, and one is harder than the other, and one is softer, right? So the one acts upon the other, right? And imprints its shape upon it, right? Like in the old days, when they'd stamp the wax with the thing, right? Okay. Well, how can a material body and an immaterial thing even come in contact? They don't have, an immaterial thing doesn't have any, what, surface, huh? Otherwise, it'd be like a body with a surface, huh? You see? This is a problem, right? Okay. Now, you'll see that he'll reply to it, but more in terms of the fact that the word suffering or undergoing, which is the word I use, has more than one meaning, right? And the way that reason or the understanding undergoes is not the way matter undergoes, right? And it's not even the way exactly the senses undergo, but it's more like it, right? So that's going to be part of the answer, but still there's a little bit of a problem there, maybe remaining, right? It's not fully cleared up until he brings out that there must be something active in the soul in addition to, what, the senses, huh? In order for reason to be acted upon by the, what, universal. Because what is in the senses or in the imagination even is not actually universal and therefore not actually understandable. And therefore not actually, what? Able to act upon the, what, reason, right? Okay. And when it's actually understandable, then already it's, in a way, what? Immaterial, right? Okay. Now, now the second part here, the difficulty is not really just with the mind itself, how is it understandable, but going back to something that was texted upon me talking about the senses and something that it said about reason here, and it'll come out later in this, the end of the whole section here on the senses and the reason, that the soul is in some way all things, remember that thing we were going to anticipate? because it senses and it understands, right? And when you're actually sensing or understanding in a way you are, what you sense and what you understand, okay? Now, let's manifest this just a bit with reason, huh? What has the nature of a dog? A dog. Okay. What has the nature of a cat? Yeah. Now, when I have in my mind or reason a definition of what a dog is or the definition of what a cat is, I have the nature of a dog or cat in me, right? Yeah. So in some way I'm both a dog and a cat. Right? So, in the same way, right, in sensing, what has the color red, right, is red, right? It has the color, yeah, that little thing there is red, huh? But, when I see the color red, I have the color red in my eye, right? So in a way my eye is the color red, huh? And the color green, and so on, when I actually, what, sense, huh? So in a way, the soul, by sensing and understanding, as you'll say, later on there, is in a way all things, huh? And that's why in some ways here's more like God, right? than anything else in the material world, because that in some ways is all things. Just like, you know, when Thomas interprets God's words to Moses or Abraham, you know, I will show you every good, Thomas says, that is myself. You know, in some simple way, he's everything, huh? Okay. Now, if the understanding in act is the understandable in act if they're the same, right? Why isn't that everything that's understandable, why doesn't it also understand? This is the problem he's touched upon, right? If the understanding is able to understand, right? If, when it actually understands, it is the understandable, right? Then there seems to be a kind of unity there between what understands and the understandable. And then, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, Well, why not, then, why doesn't everything that's understandable also understand? It's kind of a strange problem, you know, but it's an interesting problem, right? And now tied in with this also is how the soul or how the reason itself understands itself, right? If it understands itself and it becomes understandable, right, why doesn't everything else understand itself when it becomes understandable? Why isn't understanding found everywhere? Moreover, he says in 332 there, someone will be at a loss as to whether mind, reason, understanding, is itself intelligible or understandable, right? For either mind will be present in the other understandables, right? Other things, because whatever is understandable will be, what, also understanding. Because the understanding and the understandable are the same. For either the mind will be present in the other understandables, if it is not itself understandable, due to something else, while the understandable is something one in species or in kind. Or else it will have something mixed with it, which something makes it understandable just like the other understandables. And he's going to reply to these objections, huh? And now to the first one, he's going to point out that the word suffering, right, has more than one meaning. As I mentioned before, the English word suffering seems to be stuck on its first what? Meaning, right? Now, in Greek, the first meaning of or the first meaning of in Latin, which they translated, is suffering, right? So, we speak of the passion of our Lord, right? That means his suffering, right? Is being acutipied in a way that is contrary to his nature, right? That is destructive, in fact, of his nature, right? Now, you can see a little bit how the word passion, not only in Latin, but even in English, was applied to other things. We speak of the passions of the soul. Sometimes you call the emotions, passions, or passionate, right? Now, why do we call them passions? Are they always a suffering? Well, in this kind of clever dialogue between Benedict and Beatrice there in the play, which of my good qualities did you first suffer love? And he says, well, it's a good epithet, huh? Suffer love, right? Because against his will, he loves it, right? Okay? So, in a way, he's been acted upon. His heart has been what? Acted upon, right? Despite himself, he can't help but what? Love it, right? But is this being acted upon contrary to your nature? Not necessarily, right? Okay? So, there is a little bit with the Latin word passion, as it's coming to English, right? We speak of the passion of our Lord. That corresponds to the first meaning of passio in Latin, which, and the first meaning of the Greek word, passien there, which he translates by what? Suffering, right? That does catch the first meaning. But as they say, both in Greek and in Latin, the word was carried over, right? To receiving something that is not destructive of your nature. And then, finally, even to receiving something that is not only not destructive of your nature, but is actually fulfilling you, perfecting you, right? Okay? But when you translate the word suffering, you can't see that in the English word, because the English word suffering is stuck on the, what? First meaning, right? I think I explained it a bit, right? This is part of the problem with translation, right? That words, and all key words, in fact, in philosophy, they have many meanings, right? And sometimes, in one language, a word has acquired many meanings, and now when that word is used in that language, and now you've got to translate it, and maybe you have a word in English that corresponds to one or two or something of the meanings, but not to all of them, then you have a little, what? Impossibility, right? Of really translating fully, right? Now, I told you the way I kind of tried to translate this, instead of translating it suffering, I translated it undergoing, right? And undergoing means that you're, what, being acted upon, right? Undergoing is almost a synonym of being acted upon, right? But I think, to some extent, undergoing still has a little bit of the original meaning there, that you're being acted upon in a way that is harmful to you, okay? And you can see that a little bit when we speak of, I'm under the weather, see? What does it mean to say you're under the weather? What's the original meaning of that? It means that the elements have acted upon you in a way that's made you kind of, what? Sick, right? I'm under the weather. That means it's a little bit sick, isn't it? So I've been acted upon in a way that's harmful. Or when we say about somebody that he's undergone a lot in life, right? Does that mean he's had a hell of a good time, or what? No. We're thinking that he's, what, suffered many things in his life, right? He's undergone an awful lot. You hear people saying that, don't you? Say it. So, undergoing, to some extent, has something to be a suffering, right? But, to some extent, it's not as tied to that first meaning. And, in many cases, you see undergoing as a synonym for what? Being acted upon. And you can be acted upon something in a way that's not harmful to you, right? And even to be acted upon something in a way that is fulfilling you. And I mentioned how Gabriel Marcel criticizes Jean-Paul Sartre for seeing all undergoing as, what, destructive of one's integrity, of one's freedom, of one's something. And, you know, I think he's right to criticize Sartre there, right? That he's tied to that meaning of undergoing, right? Which is harmful to one, but if you don't allow any seating, how could there even be, what, friendship, right? Let alone father and child, or teacher and student, or all of this would be, what, imposing yourself upon somebody, right? Right? Okay? No, so the word impose, probably, you know, in English, that first meaning is something bad, right? If I impose myself upon you, I'm kind of forcing myself upon you in a way that is not respectful of you and your nature and so on, right? You see? But he sees all acting upon another person, right? As, what, imposing yourself upon them and therefore to be, what, rejected. Well, then you'd have to give up father and son, or teacher and student, or even friends, right? Because friends act upon each other in many ways, huh? And, you know, sometimes one friend is down the dumps, or one friend is upset, or one friend is in need, and the other friend acts upon them in a way that improves them, right? And vice versa, when the other friend is down, right? So you need friends, among other reasons. So, um, once you do it on, you know, it's because those who are, can't move the word, right? They're stuck in the first meaning of the word, and they can't, what, carry it over, right? Okay? I used to sometimes peddle with the word loss, right? Is it, is loss something good or not? What would you say? No, it says, it's, it's, it's, you know, loss. Okay, and I'd say, but, um, it's always bad, I say, to lose your mind. Okay, I'd say, you know, it's always bad to lose your heart. Okay, I'd say, you know, it's always bad to lose your heart. Okay, I'd say, you know, it's always bad to lose your heart. Okay, I'd say, you know, it's always bad to lose your heart. Okay, I'd say, you know, it's always bad to lose your heart. Okay, I'd say, you know, it's always bad to lose your heart. Okay, I'd say, you know, it's bad to lose your heart. Okay, I'd say, you know, it's bad to lose your heart. Okay, I'd say, you know, it's bad to lose your heart. Okay, I'd say, you know, it's bad to lose your heart. I said, it depends upon to whom you lose it. Right? Okay. So, notice, if you lose your heart to God, let's say, this is not a loss, really. This is a, what? A gain, right? But notice how far you move from a loss, that kind of a bad sense, right, to something that's really a gain. You're being perfected by loving God, right, huh? You're being fulfilled, huh? Your heart was made for this, right? And so, likewise, when the senses receive their object, unless they're too strong for the sense to break it down, right? I mean, if you taste something that ruins your taste buds, you can't taste anything from then on, right? That would be suffering, right? You know? But if you receive something with your senses so that you know it, that's a fulfillment of the senses, right? They're for the sake of seeing and hearing and smelling and tasting these things around us, right? And so, when you receive these things in a way that you can know them, right? That's a, what? That's a gain for the senses, right? By receiving that, huh? See? And if what's your, this is the way the, what, reason receives, huh? Because it can't be corrupted like a body of organ can be corrupted, right? So it's receiving, it's undergoing, is really a, what? Perfecting of it, huh? It's a little bit hard to see that, but the word suffering that the translator has here, because although it captures the first meaning of the word in Greek or in Latin, in Greek here, the word is kind of stuck in English there, right? You see that? Okay. I think I mentioned another example of that same thing, but it's kind of appropriate, too. But the Greek word dunamis, right? Well, the first sense of dunamis in Greek is an active power, right? The ability to move other things, huh? To change other things, huh? And you can see that in the English words derived from dunamis, like dynamo, right? An active thing, or dynamite, right? Okay? Now, sometimes they translate, that's not easy to word dunamis, the dunamis of the soul, right? The various powers of the soul they translate, huh? And so, they'll translate it by potencia, let's say, in Latin. And sometimes they'll translate it in English by the word, what, power, right? So, you may see, you know, a treatise of Thomas on the potentias of the soul, translated, you know, on the powers of the soul, right? Okay? But the word power in English seems to be tied or stuck, like the word suffering, to the first meaning, right? Okay? So, if I get in the ring with Cassius Clay, I take my typical example, he's in the hell of me. He seems to be powerful, and I don't seem to be, what, powerful at all. I'm weak, you see, and I'm being, you know, smashed around by him, right? Yeah. So, but sometimes I would translate the word, dunamis of potency, by the word, what, ability, right? Okay? Now, the word ability, maybe it's not as exact as the first meaning of the word in Latin, huh? Although, I think even the word ability, we think of the active first, right? So, when the pianist sits down and he plays the piano marvelously, we think of the pianist as having the ability, not the piano. But you could say the piano is able to be played, right? The keys don't stick, you know, you see? And Berkwist, you could also say, is what? We'd say Cassius Clay has all the ability at first, because you're thinking the ability to do what? Hit the other guy, you know, real hard and so on, right? And Berkwist apparently has no ability, but we could say Berkwist is able to be hit, though. He's able to be beaten, he's able to be smashed. And we do need to be able, in that sense, for something that is, what, able to be acted upon, as in the reverse, huh? So, we say, breakable, beatable, meltable, and so on, right? Okay? It's the same kind of maker, right? So, when they translate it by power, like, it's a little bit like translating the Greek word here by suffering, right? You could translate it into an English word that corresponds to the first meaning of the word in Greek, but seems to be, what? Not carried over to the later meanings of the word in Greek. But the word ability is more carried over, right? The word undergoing, I think, is more carried over than the word suffering. It's a problem we have a little bit with translations, you know? Okay? Sometimes there's no word at all, right? So he says, indeed suffering, and of course this makes sense more than the Greek, huh? But I would say, indeed undergoing, according to something common was distinguished earlier, right? We see that the mind is somehow in potency to the understandables, right? But before it understands, it is nothing in act, huh? Well, he's referring back to what he said when he talked about the senses, right? That the senses undergo in a way that is not, what? Contrary to their nature, or need not be contrary to their nature, right? Where undergoing simply means to what? We see something, right? And in this case, to receive something that is actually, what? Perfecting you, huh? You see that? Okay? But before it receives any of these things, it's none of them in act, huh? Just as the clay, before it receives the shape of a sphere or a cube, right? There's none of these in act, right? But when the clay receives the shape of a sphere or a cube, it loses the shape it has. The senses are not doing that, right? And even more so, the reason is not losing the shape it had, if it did have a shape, right? It's none of these things in act before it receives them. And so it compares it to a writing tablet, to a piece of paper, to a slate or something, to a blackboard, before something has been written upon it, right? So I often make a joke about that. I come to class and I race the boards. That's the way the human mind is in the beginning, you know? It's like a blank tablet, but it still gets written. And gradually, it gets written upon it. This is just what happens in the case of the, what? Mind, huh? In a way that solves the objection, right? Because you're saying it doesn't receive in the way that another body receives the actions of a body, right? But there's still a little problem in there. Why or how is it that a material thing can act upon an immaterial thing? Because the material thing is not actually understandable. And so what makes something that is not actually understandable to be actually understandable? Well, that's another ability of man, which is going to call the act of understanding the next part, right? So there's going to be, you know, more illumination upon this, right? But the first part is to realize that it's undergoing. It's a different sense of undergoing, even from that of the senses, but especially from that of, what? Matter, right? But it can't undergo without having something able to act upon it in a way that matter cannot act upon something. And that's not yet been clarified, right? Okay. Do you declare, huh? Do you want to say? So in 334 now, he's talking, first of all, about how the reason itself becomes understandable, right? And sometimes they compare our reason in the order of understandables to what? First matter in the order of the material world, huh? It's only something, potentially, huh? Inability understandable. And it doesn't become actually understandable itself until it understands something else. And then it becomes actually understandable when it becomes actually what? Understanding, right? Well, of course, that's going to give rise to the other side of the problem there. If it becomes actually understandable when it becomes actually understanding, so that the understanding in act is the understandable in act, why don't other things, when they become understandable, also actually understand? Very, very interesting objection Aristotle has there, huh? And it is itself understandable, just as are the understandables, huh? For in what is without matter, the understanding and the thing being understood are the same. For speculative science and what is thus known are the same, huh? The speculative science is the science that is concerned simply with understanding, right? Speculative is a Latin word for looking, huh? Check the Greek here. Hegar episteme, he theoreticae, right? So you see now I translate these, right? We speak of theoretical philosophy, and we'll speak in Latin of speculative philosophy. Well, I translate that as looking philosophy. People say, well, you don't understand what you mean if you say looking. I use the word theoretical or speculative. But theoretical is just the Greek word for what? Looking, theoria. And speculative is the Latin word for looking, right? Looking means trying to see, but trying to see in the sense of to understand, right? So we call philosophy theoretical when the end of it is just to understand, as opposed to practical philosophy like ethics, where the end is to do something. In Latin they translate that by speculative, huh? Well, when you put these words into English, you see, speculative today means usually what? Guessing, right? You know? Speculating on the stock market or something like that, right? Well, I mean, geometry is a part of speculative philosophy, but it's not guessing. It's understanding, right, things necessarily. So speculative in English doesn't actually capture what speculative means in Latin. And theoretical means kind of some kind of, you know, you know, I mean, actually it goes to the real world, kind of a theoretical construct, right? Well, the actual word, looking at, theoria, looking at, it's very concrete in some sense, right? They're looking at something, right? And that's a beautiful word, you know, for Euclid's things there. Theorems, right? I like that word, huh? A theorem is something to look at. Just like a sunset is something to look at. Or a beautiful rainbow is something to look at, right? Or a beautiful painting is something to look at, huh? But these are something to look at with your mind or your reason, huh? By the painting or this thing, it's something to look at with your eyes, right? You ever read the thing of Buegis there, the Consolation of Philosophy? Well, you know, Lady Wisdom comes down to console him, right? Sophia, of course, or Sapientia in Latin. It's feminine, right? So, Wisdom, he's in prison there, right? And falsely accused, and so on. And Lady Wisdom comes down to console him. And so it's written in the form of a dialogue between Wethius and Lady Wisdom, right? And a beautiful dialogue, huh? And as the commentator says there, the suit of St. Thomas, you know, women are better at consoling than men, right? They represents Wisdom against Lady, right? Well, there's all kinds of symbolism in the clothing of Lady Wisdom, huh? But, you know, you'll see on here the letter Theta, huh? And then the letter Pi, huh? Okay? Well, Theta means what? Theoretical Philosophy, Pi, Pico Philosophy. And Theoria is higher on her clothing than Pi, right? But her gowns are, what? Kind of torn, right? And the symbolism of that is that men, in grabbing for Wisdom or Truth, have, what? Dismemorant, right? Like the great pedigree says, you know, men seeing a part of the truth, they boast they seeing the whole. So they've kind of divided it up and torn and lacerated. So her gowns are a little bit torn, right, and so on. But the words theoretic or theory in English don't really teach you that concrete meaning, huh? Of looking at, huh? So he translates it by a lot of respectative, but I would translate it simply as looking, episteme, right? Looking reasoned out knowledge. But it's no one of the same. That is rising then to the other side of the problem here. One must look into the cause of not always understanding. Now, the average dimmer like me, reading that would probably say, well, he's asking now what he's talked about before, that reason doesn't always actually understand. Sometimes it's, what, understanding ability. But actually what he's talking about here, as Thomas explains, is why it is that the understandable doesn't always understand. Now, why is that so? See? If the, let's face a problem here one more, formally, the understanding is the understandable. If what understands is what is understood, right? And what understands obviously understands, right? Why is it that what is understood doesn't always understand? What understands is what is understood. The answer to that. The pencil is understandable, but it doesn't have the faculty to understand. Okay, that would be one way of answering in a kind of simple way, right? No? Okay. Does that really show answer the problem completely? Because there you're talking about the ability to understand, right? Right. But here we're talking about actually understanding, right? So what actually understands, right? That's something more than just the ability to understand. Right. And of course, it's interesting that in God, you know, there's no real ability to understand separate from his actual understanding, right? Otherwise, God would be composed, he would be, not pure act, right? So if you look at just the actual understanding, that is the understandable. So why isn't the understandable actually understanding? If what is actually understanding is the understandable, why isn't the understandable not always actually understanding? It's not kind of a problem, right? If you're sitting inside, you know. Right. Well, notice, huh? In the case of our reason, huh? Its object, as we saw in the previous part here, the object of our reason, what is understood, is what it is, right? Of something sensed or imagined, right? But, it's got to be separated from those things in order to be actually understandable. It's got to become, therefore, in a way, immaterial before it's actually understandable. By those things that are being understood, in this case, that cat that walks around here, he's material. And that chair that's understood, that triangle, it's in some way material, huh? It's in the continuous at least, right? Okay. And, as such, it's not actually understandable. So, the material thing cannot, what? Actually understand. It's not actually the same as understanding until it becomes immaterial. But, the thing in itself doesn't become, what? Immaterial. It becomes immaterial only in the mind, huh? Now, notice what he says here about that, huh? One must look in, this is the bottom of page 37 now, 335. One must look into the cause of not always understanding, as they say. This gentleman here would probably think, you know, you're talking about, why is it that the reason doesn't always understand, right? But, actually, Thomas says in the context there, that he's referring to, why is it that the understandable doesn't always understand, huh? Well, he says, it's because in these things that we're talking about, huh? These sensible and imaginable things. Among things having matter, right? Each is among the understandables only in, what? Potency, right? I prefer the word understandable to intelligible English, right? Okay? So, they're understandable only in potency. Whence the mind will not be present in these, because as we saw, the understanding is, what? Immaterial, right? For the mind is a potency of such things. It's an ability to receive these things without their, what? Matter, right? Because it itself is without, what? Matter, huh? I don't know if the translation is exactly right. It's a little confusing there. Um... Um... Let me just try to read the Greek here. Kind of a little transition. Uh... In those things having matter, right? In potency, is each of the things understandable? Okay? The understandable... Um... What has matter is not understandable in act, he's saying, right? Okay? So that to such things, there will not belong, nous, that's the ability to understand, right? For... The noose, the understanding, the reason, is an ability, a dunamis, he says, without matter, right? It's an ability without matter of such things. And to that, he says, belongs the what? Understandable. I don't know why you write that in brackets there, having matter. I don't know where he gets that. It's not in the Greek, anyway. Okay. So he's saying that these material things that are, in a way, understood, right? They're not actually understandable until what it is of them has been, what? Separated from their individual matter, right? And then it's actually understandable, right? But then it becomes one with something that is actually, what? Immaterial, right? So that's the reason why the understandable, these understandables, right, don't understand. But in the case of the angels, and of God, is to make an allusion to that, right? They're understandable in act, in their very nature, because their very nature is immaterial. What you begin to see here, is that something is understandable, to the extent that it is separated from what matter. So the more immaterial a thing is, the more it's understandable. And something that is actually immaterial, is not true of the dog or the cat. So the actual material, like the angels or God, is actually, what? Understandable. So everything that is understandable in that way, understands. But these material things are not, in their material nature, actually understandable. They're only able to get understood. And they become actually understandable only when what they are is separated by the act of understanding. It won't be in the next chapter, right? And therefore they become one, only with something that is already material, maybe understanding. But wouldn't that mean that the angels and God would be equivalently intelligible? And aren't they both equivalently immaterial? Well, they're understandable in different ways, right? But we have to get into the differences right now with them, right? Okay? But as far as being actually understandable, that's true about both of them. Even though God is much more understandable than the angels are. But not to us. That's a famous distinction Aristotle makes, you know, that what is more known to us is less known, huh? And what is more known by nature, or noble even, is less known to us, right? Because of the weakness of our mind, huh? Okay? I noticed we didn't talk about that last sentence in the previous part there. But it's relevant to this here, too. After you distinguished, in 329 and 330, the object, the last sentence there in 330, generally, therefore, as things are separable from matter, thus also are they things which concern the mind. And that's the reason why looking philosophy is divided into natural philosophy, mathematical philosophy, and metaphysics are wisdom, huh? Because these things are all, what, diversely separable from matter, right? Natural things cannot be understood without matter in the ordinary sense. You have to bring matter in, at least in a general way, in understanding what they are, sensible matter. The mathematical things are found in matter, but they can be understood without that sensible matter, but not without this extension, this kind of understandable matter, as Aristotle calls it, but kind of an imaginable matter. But the things studied in metaphysics involve, what, no matter at all, right? You see? So that's why there's three parts of looking philosophy, as he'll show in the Sixth Book of Wisdom, huh? But you begin to see this already, the distinction between natural philosophy and mathematics. So because the moderns have not seen that, they don't see the basis for the distinction of the three parts of looking philosophy. What you learn from this, you see, is kind of a gateway to understanding the angels and God, because you see here the connection between immateriality and understanding. Understandability, huh? That something has to be separated from matter to be actually understandable. And as things are diversely separated from matter, they're understandable in different ways, huh? It reminds me a little bit of what, you know, Heisenberg said, you know, when he's talking about, even within the domain of, you know, Heisenberg's a great physicist, right? Next to Einstein, some people say he's next to Einstein. But Heisenberg says, you know, that when you go into a new area of physics, you know, when you go from Newtonian mechanics, let's say, to quantum theory, you have to learn a new meaning of the word understanding. Interesting way of putting it, right? But in a way, the other side of the coin is, these things are understandable in a different way. But looking back, they're not just looking at that. You say that within physics, right? Within the physical sciences, there's only one part of natural science, huh? But if you stand back and look at the whole of looking philosophy, you could say that, well, the things studied in natural philosophy and the things studied in mathematics and the things studied in wisdom are understandable in a different way, right? So that in a way, understanding means something different, see? Because understanding a man, let's say, or a dog or a tree involves matter in some way, at least in general. You can't really understand man without flesh and blood and bones and tree without bark and zylo and flow and whatever else is in there. And, but understanding, you know, a geometrical sphere or a geometrical cube is not understood with any of that kind of sensible matter, at least, right? But it's not understandable without extension, huh? But now when you try to understand God or an angel, they're understood even without, what, extension, huh? That's very difficult for us, right? And we more understand that they're not continuous than what they are in a positive sense, huh? 2.35 is, what do we have to do with just two meanings of the word understandable? One in the sense of understandable that is able to be understood and understandable as... No, no, he's asking there why it is that if what, if understanding an act is in some way being the understandable, right? Sorry, what's that? If understanding, in a way, is being the understandable, right? Just like sensing is being the sensible. Then why is it that what is understandable doesn't always understand? If they seem to be the same, right? You don't see. Well, you know, when you get to study, you know, the angels and God, you find out that they're both, what, immaterial, and you realize they're both actually, what, understandable, right? And they both, what, understand. In those cases, the understandable does understand, right? But when you talk about understanding material things, right? Material things are in some way understandable, but they don't understand it. The paradox there is that in order to become actually understandable, they have to be made in a way, what? Immaterial, right? And that's why he's going to talk about the act of understanding. What makes what is able to be understandable actually understandable, right? And therefore, he's going to compare the act of understanding, analogously, to light, right? Because in a way, light makes things that have color actually visible, right? And without light, the colors of the things in this room are not actually, what, visible. They're visible only in, what, potency or an ability, right? And without the act of understanding, which is like a spiritual light, right? In a material light, these sensible and imaginable things, right? But what it is, if it's sensible and imaginable things, are not actually, what? Understandable. So he compares it to light, right? This is the light which enlightens every man who comes into the world, right? But this light that is the agent intellect, as it's sometimes called, the act of understanding, is kind of a partaking of the divine light, right?