De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 50: The Two Acts of Reason and Understanding the Undivided

Transcript
================================================================================

But when the soul is separated from the body, right, then the soul is going to understand in a way more like the way the angels understand. It's going to understand itself, then, not by this long drawn-out discourse. It's going to understand itself to itself, right? Because once the soul is separated from the body, then the soul is actually, what, understandable. And therefore the soul will understand in a way a bit like the way the angels understand. But they naturally understand themselves first, right? Right, the soul is one of the last things that the soul understands in this life. It's very difficult to understand what the soul is, huh? And we'll come back to that by just kind of anticipating it, right? When Thomas says, you know, that last thing there, 340, that little paragraph there, when he talks about the passive mind, pathetikos, in Greek they translate there as concern about getting across the idea. He's talking about the one that is, what, receiving in a material organ, right? He's talking about what sometimes Thomas will call a particular reason, right? Or the cogitative power, right? But this is part of the brain, right? The part that knows the singular under the universal. And he wants to touch upon the fact that, so long as the soul is in the body, it doesn't, what, understand without turning to an image. And so even after you know the definition of square, when you think about what a square is, you imagine a square, right? But you understand that what it is, of the square, right? Why is it that when you've already actualized the understanding, isn't that enough? Well, it's because of what the object itself is, see? That the object of our reason is that what it is is something sensed or imagined. The object is not a form in a separate world by itself, right? If there was this world of forms that Plato spoke about, right, then you could understand them without turning to the images. But given that this is not something existing by itself, but it's the what it is of a specific sensed or imagined, huh? You have to imagine such a thing, right, in order to understand the what it is of it. And that's, as I say, a matter of experience, too, right? Okay, so let's take a little break now before we go into the next chapter here. We'll get a little bit of chapter 6 now. We can go through this a little bit. Where he's talking now more in detail about the operations now of the undergoing understanding, right? And if you've seen Aristotle, not Aristotle, but Thomas' premium to logic, at the beginning of the posterior analytics, I don't know if you looked at that before, or he did logic, but, you know, if you recall what he does there, he distinguishes three acts of reason that logic is directing, right? And he goes back to this text here, for the first two of those three, right? Okay. Now myself, I like to call these acts understanding what a thing is, understanding what something is. Sometimes Thomas calls it simple grasping, right? And then, the second act is understanding the true or the false, okay? So this is like the first act of reason, and this is like the second act, huh? So, to some extent, I understand what a man is, right? To some extent, I understand what an animal is, huh? To some extent, I understand what a stone is, right? And those are the three examples of this act, right? But I also understand the statement that man is a, what, animal, right? Or man is not a stone, right? And thereof, I'm just saying something true, right? But Thomas usually calls that, you know, kind of a, I guess I'll speak here, you know, putting together there, right? Or if I understand what it means, at least to say that man is stone, or man is not an animal, I understand something, what, false, right? Okay? But true and false there is found, really, in the, what, statements, right? So it's these two acts that Aristotle is going to be talking about here, and when Thomas is talking about logic, huh, he distinguishes these two acts referring back to this particular chapter, and then he adds a third act called, what, reasoning, right? Okay? And so, in logic, you study especially definition, which helps you understand what a thing is, huh, you don't know what it is, right? And statement, which is necessary to understand the true or the false, because it's only in statements that you find the true or the false, huh? And then reasoning, where you start to put together at least two statements, and, what, reason out a third statement, that's it, huh? Okay? Aristotle doesn't talk about reasoning here, right? Because you're concerned more with the acts that are more, what, natural, right? Yeah, okay? But this act here is more an act of reason, as reason, right? One and two, the same as grasping and judging, one and two? Well, you've got to be careful about that, because in logic, the logic of the second act, so-called, it doesn't go beyond understanding the true or the false, right? And when it comes to the question of, now, how do you judge whether the statement is true or false, right? Well, in some cases, you judge it by your senses, huh? Yeah. Okay. So, purpose is standing, purpose is not standing. The logic of the second act would tell you one of those statements is true and that it is false. It can't both be true, it can't both be false. But the logic of the second act would tell you that the statement purposed is standing and the statement purposed is not standing, if you mean the same thing by purposed and both, and by standing, that they are contradictory statements, right? They can't both be true and they can't both be false. But one must be true and the other must be false, right? That's all the logic of the second act would tell you, right? In order to know which is true, purpose is standing and purpose is not standing, I'd have to use my senses, huh? To look at it, right? Okay? Now, some statements, huh? Like to say the statement, no odd number is even, right? The logic of the second act would tell you the contradictory of that is, some odd number is even. Okay? The logic of the second act would tell you the universal negative and the particular affirmative of the same subject and predicate cannot both be true. They cannot both be false. One must be true and the other must be false. Now, in this case, how do you know that no odd number is even as a true one of the two? You know the other definition. Yeah, yeah. That presupposes the first act, right? Okay? Yeah. Okay? Now, we come to this one, huh? That, let's say that the interior angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, right? Yeah. Okay? And the interior angles of a triangle are not equal to two right angles, right? Again, you can get contradictory statements, right? And the logic of the second act tells you these two statements cannot both be true, they cannot both be false. But one must be true and the other is false. But how would you know which is what? You have to reason it out. Yeah. You wouldn't know it by sense. You wouldn't know it simply by understanding the terms, right? But you'd have to reason it out, right? Mm-hmm. Right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, there's three ways you might judge, right? And, you know, when you need logic, you know, to use your senses, you should do that without logic. Logic, right? But you might need logic sometimes to define something, right? So, for example, I know, because I'm a wise man, as Bwetis would say, I'm wise in geometry, I know that every perfect number is a composite number, right? But I couldn't know that before I had learned the definition of composite number and the definition of what? Perfect number, right? Okay? So, that's obvious, Bwetis says, to the wise, right? I mean, man has some knowledge in that science of definitions and so on, huh? But most of these things you have to judge by reasoning, right? So, it's really in reasoning that in logic comes up judgment most of all, huh? Yeah. Okay? So, but there are some things, you see, that we naturally come to understand what they are. Like, we naturally come to understand what a whole is and what a part is. And we naturally come to understand and know, right? Judgment say, that a whole is more than a part, huh? As I always joke there, if anybody says he doesn't know that, we'll give him a part of his salary this week, right? And a part of the meal he ordered and a part of the car he bought. But he doesn't see any difference, he's a part of the whole. He'll scream and wave and rant. It shows that he's, you know, saying things that he doesn't really think. Okay? And, uh, you can say anything, you know, want to the words, right? There's a certain freedom of expression. If I can express things that I don't think. That's all right, you know? I don't exist, you know? I don't really think that. I can't really think that. I can say it. I'm a chair. I can say these things, right? There's a certain freedom I can. And not everything I can say can I think, as Aristotle pointed out in the fourth book of Wisdom, right? So Aristotle's concerned with these two acts, because to some extent they can be natural, and he's a natural philosophy, right? Okay? But where you have to maybe think out a definition and think out a conclusion, this is more appropriate for logic to go into those details, huh? So he's not concerned so much with reasoning, huh? Reasoning is more an act of reason as reason, right? Why these can be an act of reason as a kind of nature, okay? The moderns are very confused about that. I think I mentioned that before, right? They don't see this distinction between, they don't understand, they misunderstand the distinction between nature and reason, and nature and the will. They think the distinction between nature and reason, or nature and the will is like the distinction between, say, a dog and a cat, right? Two different animals, right? But it's more like the distinction between two and three. Three has what two has, but something more. Three, what is three? Is three a third one, or is three two plus one? Yeah, choosing those two, right? Well, Aristotle and Thomas think that three is two plus one. The moderns think that three is a third one, so it doesn't have any two in it. It's a third one. That's not even what three is, is it? No, three is two plus one. So it has two in it, in a way, right? But it's not just the two, right? So it's like distinguishing between man and animal, right? Man is an animal, too, though, see? But he's not just an animal. And I always quote my mother there, right, huh? She was disturbed when I would say man is an animal. It seemed to bother her by saying that. And I said, well, mother, I don't mean that he's just an animal. Well, okay, she says, right? Okay? You see that? So what you have to understand is that man is an animal with reason. He's not just an animal. And so when you distinguish the beast and the man, the beast is just an animal. Nothing substantially more than that, right? But man is something very much more than just an animal, right? But he has the animal, right? In the same way, reason and will are a nature, but something more than just a nature. But they are a nature, too. And that's why they understand some things naturally, the reason does. And the will naturally wills some things. The will naturally wills to be happy, huh? The will naturally wills the good, although we can often be mistaken as to what is good or what is bad, right? But we naturally will the good, huh? And there's some things you naturally understand, you see? And what happened with the moderns is that they misunderstood the distinction, right? So they didn't see that the reason of the will could, what, know anything naturally or will anything naturally. And therefore, reason can never really know anything. Everything has to be, what, reasoned to, right? But there's nothing to reason to from it, because that's got to be reason to, too. You see? So it's just arbitrary whatever you take as your premises, huh? And the same way you know, you know, you can will anything, even as an end, huh? There are some things that you can actually will. That's one of the greatest misunderstandings that you find in the moderns. So what is it, that reason and will are violence? Well, see, it's... What? Reason and will are violent acts, the sense of violent versus... No, no, not violent as opposed, but there's something in addition to nature, right? Nature is determined to one, right? Why reason, in many things, can reason to opposites, right? Yeah, but for the modern to say that... Well, they would make an absolute distinction between reason and nature. They would say the distinction between reason and nature as, like, the distinction between a dog and a cat. They're two different animals, right? Mm-hmm. And so you would not say that a cat is, what, a dog plus something else in addition, right? Would you? No. But you would say, is that the kind of distinction there is between two and three? Is three in no way got two in it? Yeah, it does. Yeah. It's got two plus one, right? Mm-hmm. You see? Three is not just a third one, is it? That's why they're understanding reason and will, see? That they're nothing but what they have in addition to nature, as if, which would be like saying that three is nothing more than what? There's nothing but that third one, right? Rather than that it's two plus one. Yeah. It's a very, it's a difficult thing to understand, right? But you realize that there's a tremendous mistake that the moderns made when they did that. So you can see in Sartre, right, that the will, right, it naturally wills nothing, see? I see, what's good in Sartre and the existentialists is that they defend the freedom of our will, right? But part of their defense is to deny, right, that the will is determined in any way. If you're, you're, uh... of being dishonest, right, to say that the will did not freely, right, will whatever it wills. Of course, we're always trying to deny our more responsibility for the bad actually did, right? And all the bad things that I've done, right, I'd like to deny that I freely did them. But then they go to the opposite extreme of saying that there's nothing that we, what, that are determined to will, right, that we naturally will. You see, the big difference there is that nature is determined to one of two opposites. But in choosing, you're not limited to one of two opposites, are you? I can choose to drink this water or not to drink this water, right? And I'm not determined to do one or the other, right? Now, if I get kind of dry in the mouth, I'm going to be more inclined to choose to drink it than not, right? But if I ever want to find myself, I might. You see? You see the idea? But is my will, does my will choose, for example, between happiness and misery? Yeah, it's naturally determined to what will happiness, right? Now, by the choices I make in life, they may lead to happiness, they may lead to misery, right? But choice is always of the, what? The means, right? So, Sartre is denying that man wills anything naturally. Everything he wills, he wills by choice. Now, if you take Mill, John Stuart Mill, for example, in the essay on Liberty, right? He talks about, you know, freedom of thought and that sort of stuff, right? For him, reason is never determined to any statement, okay? It's always open to discussion and, you know, we always got to keep an open mind, etc. Because someone else may come up with some reason not to think the opposite of what we think today, right? See? So there's nothing that reason naturally, what, knows or understands. And in that case, every statement is in need of proof, right? In which case, no statement can really be known to be true, huh? Yeah. So these are very serious consequences. Now, when Aristotle distinguishes, you'll see that in the Ninth Book of Wisdom, when he distinguishes between the rational ability, right, and the natural ability, he's distinguishing between what is only a nature, right? And what is a reason or what is a will, huh? Which is not just a nature, right? But it has a nature, too. But nature is determined to one and two opposites, huh? And Shakespeare saw that, too, right? He said he understands nature so well. And in Coriolanus, you'll see that. You know, Ophidius, later on in the play, when he's reflecting on the downfall of Coriolanus, right, and so on. And he says that, huh? He's considering a number of possibilities, right? And one of them is that nature not being able to be more than one thing, he says. So, really, this distinction is the most fundamental thing, almost, the reason does, huh? And this distinction between nature and reason and nature and will, right, is extremely, what, fundamental to all of our thinking. And a little mistake, even a little mistake, in the beginning is going to be a great one in the end, huh? And so the misunderstanding of that distinction by modern philosophers has had absolutely tremendous consequences. We never know anything, right? We never will anything, naturally. Aristotle thought that the end of man is something natural, right? He is a natural end, and in a confused way, he naturally wills us, right? Okay, now that's a little bit here, just kind of in the background here. Why he's emphasizing these first two acts, right? Which could be, what, more part of natural understanding, right? Why reasoning is something that belongs to reason as reason, huh? Why reasoning is something that belongs to us, right? Why reasoning is something that belongs to us, right? That definition that Shakespeare gives of reason in education to use reason, that's a definition of reason as reason. And I think to some extent reason as reason is more known to us than reason as a what? As a nature. Just as the will as what? As will is more known to us than the will as a nature. And so, when I approach the will, I usually approach it as the ability to choose. And then later on you discover that the ability to choose wills some things, though, not by choice, but naturally. In the same way with reason. I mean, after all, reasoning is the act that is named for reason. It's the act most characteristic of reason. And when Shakespeare defines reason by discourse, well, discourse in Latin was used sometimes as a synonym for reasoning. You see that in some of the Latin magicians, right? It's the third act of reason, which Thomas calls reasoning, they'll sometimes call it discourses, right? But more generally, discourse can mean, what, knowing one thing to another thing. And that's not the way we know something natural, right? That's a more immediate thing, right? So, Shakespeare is defining reason as reason, but that's more known to us, huh? So, the ability to reason and the ability to choose, we could call these two abilities, right? But the ability to reason is not just an ability to reason. And the ability to what? Choose is not just an ability to choose, huh? It also involves naturally knowing some things, and the ability to reason, naturally knowing some things. And that's a very subtle thing that Aristotle and Thomas saw. And notice how a man, just to illustrate that again with numbers there, somebody might say, well, three is not two, because three, let's say, is half of six. And two is what? Half of four, right? So, same thing can't be half of four and half of six, can it? See? So, three can't be two. Well, okay, okay. It can't be just two. Does that mean that there's no two in three? Three is not two plus one, but just that third one. Do you see that? That's what the great Shakespeare says in the exhortation, right? About man and the beast there, right? What is a man if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep? A beast no more. See, notice those words. A beast no more. In the Eighth Book of Wisdom, Aristotle says there's some truth in what Plato said, that the natures of things are like numbers, huh? You know, numbers you add, you subtract the one, you have a different number, right? So, you take away reason from a man, and all you have is a beast. Take away sense from a beast, all you have is a plant. Take away life from a plant, all you have got left is a body, right? You see? But a body plus life is a plant, plus sense is a beast, plus reason is a man. So, a little bit like numbers. And that's why he uses that word no more, huh? I just want to make comparisons very explicitly to students, I used to say, if I wanted to reason the way Shakespeare does, with numbers, you'd say, what is a three if it be half a four? A two, no more. Right? That's the way he's reasoning, huh? Very, very clear, the reasoning, huh? But, so he begins in 341 here to distinguish these two acts, the first two acts there. And in a similar way that he does, you might notice in the beginning of the, what? The categories there, right? The understanding of the undivided is in those about which there is no falsehood, huh? Okay? And you could also add, in a way, no truth in the strict sense, huh? In what there is both truth and falsity, there is right away some putting together of things understood. So, if you say to somebody, you know, um, I say to students, if I gave you a true-false exam, which I don't need to give, but that's it, I did, right? Okay. Man, true or false? Animal, true or false? To understand what a man is, but it doesn't seem to be true or false, right? Stone, true or false? So, when you put these together in the affirmative and negative statement, and you say that man is an animal, or if you say man is not an animal, right, then you have something true or what? False. And you say man, you say man is not a stone, huh? Okay, that's true, but if I put it together and said man is a stone, then it would be, what? False, right? Okay? Now, I say to students sometimes, when I talk about truth and falsity, where do you find truth? Where do you find truth, in general? Where do you find it? Stay in the sea. Yeah, yeah. But you got to name up to it, you say, well, if you dig down the ground, would you find some truth? You know, you might find gold, you might find iron, right? But which country in the world has more truth in its soil than, you know? Sometimes you have more iron in the soil, or more oil or something, right? Which country has the most truth in its soil? Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Put the other thing on that boat. I say, you go swimming in the ocean there, right, or in the lake, you know, you happen to, you know, sometimes a shark, sometimes a bit of truth, a bit of falsehood up there, you know, you see? I go flying through the sky, you know, you see a little bit of truth going live. But it seems anywhere you look in the material world, right, you don't find any truth, right, or falsehood. And then sometimes I tell them, you know, you find truth in the same place, you find falsehood, in general, in the same place. And it's in these, what, statements, right? And this is part of the reason, as Thomas mentions here, why Aristotle says in the sixth book of wisdom, truth and falsity are more in the mind than in the things, right? Because the statement is more in the mind, right, than in the, what, things, right? Okay? And that's why you have to form a statement in a way to know the true or the false, huh? Now, in forming a statement, it doesn't tell you whether the statement is true or false, right? But in forming a statement, you are forming something that's either true or, what, false, huh? So, he's distinguishing, then, between understanding a bit like this and understanding something that is true or, what, false, huh? Two different acts of reason, right? And he has a kind of an interesting comparison, huh, of that second act to the position of, what, Empedocles, right? Empedocles says, huh? Just as Empedocles says. And Empedocles has this idea, you know, that there's a mindless love bringing things together, right? And in the beginning, you had all these crazy things that were not united. In which way, the heads of many without nicks are germinated, and so on, right? And you had teeth without jaws, and jaws without teeth, and so on, right? And then later on, Aphrodite, or love, or friendship, as it's sometimes translated, brought these together, right, huh? Okay. But in the case of this, it's the mind bringing together man and animal, or man and stone in a, what, statement, right? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. He takes, again, the famous example from Greek geometry, one of the greatest discoveries in Greek geometry, that the diameter of a square is, what, incommensable with the side of the square, right? That no matter how small you take a line to measure the side of a square and the diagonal, you never find a line that measures both. I would say today maybe it goes evenly into both, right? That's kind of an amazing discovery, right, no? Okay? Now, he points out that in, what, in the statement, you also involve, what, time here, right? Either, not just the present, like in these ones here, right? Because you might put it in the past or the future, right? You might say, Berkowitz is standing, or Berkowitz was standing, or Berkowitz will be standing, right, huh? Okay? Now, if you study that part of logic that's about the statement, Aristotle will distinguish, you know, first of all, the noun and the verb, right? And the verb always signifies with, what, time, right, huh? So, time is over there. But here, you're kind of, what? That's present or future. It's, you can't say one or the other, right? It's kind of, what, timeless, huh? Eternal, right, huh? That's why Thomas sometimes says, God's knowledge is a little bit more like this act, than this act here, right? Because his knowledge is, what, eternal, huh? So, he talks a little about time there next, huh? But he goes on to say, but the false is always in what is put together, right? For even if one says white is not white, not white is put together with white, huh? One can call these division as well. Now, when Thomas refers to the second act, he usually calls it composition or division, right? It always kind of bothers me because composition and division has so many other meanings, even in logic, right? Okay? But he'll speak of this as, what, composition, and this as, what, division, right? But making an affirmative statement was kind of putting together and saying one is the other, and then negative one would say one is not the other, kind of like dividing the two, right, huh? Okay? But I usually call this second act understanding the true or the, what, false, right? And notice you can understand that a statement, even that it's either true or false, without knowing which it is, right? President Bush is sitting, now. I understand that, don't you? But I don't know whether it's true or false, right? But he goes on to point out, but there's not only true or false when you say that... I don't know whether it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that it's true or false when you say that to distinguish three fundamental meanings of the word one right in describing in particular this first act but you're always understanding something that is one now that's kind of interesting thought that you can't understand many things you only understand one thing and if you understand many things uh actually at the same time they'd have to become in some way but so when i understand a man let's say and uh i can't at the same time understand what stone when i'm understanding what a man is i'm not understanding what a stone is and vice versa but when i make a statement i say man is not a stone then i made something one in a way out of man and stone and i can understand that together right of course then you syllogize later on you reason from two premises you have to understand the two premises but together right so the mind has made something one out of the two premises it's made a what syllogism right so um i want to syllogize that no man is a mother right and i syllogize from the statement that um every what every mother is a woman let's say and no man is a well if i understood the first statement every mother is a woman and then i stopped understanding that and i started to understand the statement no man is a woman could i syllogize that no man is a mother i have to in a way understand at the same time that every mother is a woman and no man is a woman right so the reason right is making something one out of those two statements huh so making one what syllogism right but seeing a certain order a unity of order among those two statements huh so reason has to what understand can only understand what is one what is before true now um we didn't do all book one of of natural hearing there but uh there is a um strange position there in book one which is the position of parmenides and of releases right and they're denying any multiplicity in the world and they're saying that being or what is is one okay and aristotle of course says well this is really absurd but um he says to them what do you mean by the word being right do you mean substance or do you mean quantity or do you mean quality right and uh they go on to say that being is what spherical or something like permanity says right or that it's what infinite like melissa says so they seem to be admitting that it's what something like quantity right but quantity can't be without substance so you got multiplicity there right okay what a thing is that substance is not its size right there's some distinction there he also attacks it by looking at the predicate here he says what do you mean by one do you mean he says the continuous let me speak of one line right or one circle well if you mean the continuous well then you've got what some multiplicity there because you have part outside of part and so on right so it's not all together one is it okay and then he talks about well another meaning of one is what what's holding indivisible like the point then do you mean it's a point well then it's a point it's not what unlimited is it and go on forever like lisa says right it's not spherical like permanity says so he argues against them right so they deserve to their position and he gets the third meaning of of one which is uh things that have the same what definition right one definition well he comes back to the same three senses of one here it's kind of interesting that he does that huh so when the soul understands the continuous huh is it taking the continuous as actually divided or is actually what something one let's say i understand a straight line right okay am i taking the straight line as something one when i understand it or am i dividing it and understanding this half and understanding that half what do i do it understanding the same thing one yeah yeah but if i divided it and understood this half and then as to that half there'd be two understandings right okay so i'm not taking that middle one there as dividing into two right but if anything that's what unifying it right continuous is that who's what limit is one right the same way if i'm understanding a circle let's say right um if you had you know these two if i'm understanding this this whole circle by one understanding i'm taking it as what undivided right and not seeing that thing as divided into two different parts if i did divide into different parts then i could understand this part and understand that part right but actually i take it as one continuous thing when i understand it by one understanding right but if i divided it then i could understand each part separately right and the same when i understand a man and his bodily nature there um am i dividing his liver from his heart and his legs from his arms and so on right i could understand and think about his liver alone right and think about his heart to think about his bones and think about his arm and think about his leg right and think about his nose and right but then i would be what have many understandings right because i've divided the man right okay so the greek word is made a little more ambiguous than the english word sense over the undivided right is twofold either in potency or an act nothing prevents understanding the undivided whenever one understands a link for it is undivided in act right and then one understands it in an undivided time for the time is divided and undivided similarly to the link when it what it considers then in each half is not to be said for if it be not divided it is not except in potency however if it understands and divides it actually into two halves right it divides also the time at the same time right then it's just as the links. Yet if it's from both, but also the time of both. So that's what he's saying there, basically, huh? When I divide the continuous, right, and understand the parts individually, then I don't understand them at the same time, do I? Right? Just like when I was talking about the human body, you say, okay, now we're going to talk about the human organs. First, I'm going to talk about the heart, and then I start to talk about the heart all by itself, right? And describe the heart, and then I talk about the liver, and I talk about the lungs, right? Then I have many, what, understandings, right? Because I've actually divided the body, right? Okay? When I understand the human body as a whole, then I understand it as something, what, organized and something one, right? Okay? Now he goes to one in definition next, huh? Rather than to the point, huh? What is not according to quantity undivided, but in species, it understands at an undivided time, and by an undivided part of the soul, huh? It understands them accidentally, however, and not as these things, that by which it understands, the time which it understands, and divided, but as the undivided. For even in these, there's something undivided, but perhaps not separable. So he's kind of comparing it to the other thing there, huh? But let's take it a little bit different here, huh? When you talk about what a line is, let's stay fairly close to the fifth example, but more to the second kind, how long is what a line is? Well, it doesn't matter. Does it have anything? Yeah, but it's not determined, uh, what a line is. How long is what a line is? It just is like. You know, it's kind of strange, isn't it, right? Yeah. Because if what a line is were a line, right, then you could divide it, right? And then, this part of what a line is would not be what a line is. Yeah, yeah. But yet, part of a line is just as much a line as a whole line, isn't it? Yeah, okay. If you know from the study that we made the continuous, continuous is divisible forever, right? But, um, now this line here, of course, is longer than these lines here, right? But is this whole line more a line than this line here? This line is longer than that line, right? But is this more a line than that? It seems that equally what a line is, right? And there you see what a line is seems very much, but, even more indivisible than a line, right? First I was saying, you understand a line, you think about this line in indivisible time, right? You think about the line as a whole, right? If you think about, you know, this half of the line, and then you think about that half of the line, then you're not thinking about them at the same time, are you? It's different ones, right? And there's something that makes this line one, which is the fact that the end of one part is the beginning of this part, right? So it's continuous, right? But what a line is seems even more, what? One, right? Because what a line is, is found equally in each part of the line, huh? So if you understand this in indivisible time, when you take it as a whole, right? Before it's your, you understand this in indivisible time, you understand what something is, huh? But I think what's kind of interesting about this example is, you know, later on, you know, you get these more difficult questions about the soul, and Thomas will teach more explicitly in other works, that the whole soul is in each part of the body, right? Not its whole power, but as far as the substance is concerned, it's in each part, right? Well, of course, this is true in general about substance, right? The substance, when you first distinguish substance from quantity and quality, substance corresponds to the question, what it is, and quantity to how big it is, huh? And quality to how it is, huh? And what it is seems to be what? The same in the whole in each of the parts. Is what a line is found in the whole line? Yeah. Because the whole line wouldn't be a line without what a line is, right? But each part of the line is what a line is too, right? Or that's what a line is, right? That's very important when you study the Eucharist, huh? In the Eucharist, right? When you break the host, right? The quantity which is left over from the bread, right? You're having a part of that quantity, right? But the whole Christ is found in each fragment of the host. No matter how far you break it down, right? That's hard to understand a little bit, huh? But Christ is there, not according to what? Perimodum substansi would say, in a manner of what it is. And you see a little bit of anticipation of that, because what a line is, is found equally, no matter how many times you divide the line. You see? It's not that the part has what a line is. Only in part, right? It's not that the whole line, right? That's what a line is, and then the parts don't really have what a line is. But each part has what a line is, huh? How many times you divide it, huh? Now, the most interesting part comes down, 344, when it comes down to the point, right? Okay? Because the point is in no way divisible, right? Unlike the line, right? The line can be undivided, but it's able to be divided, right? Okay? When you understand the whole line, you take it as undivided in act, right? Even though it's able to be divided, huh? Okay? And when you understand, let's say, what a square is, it's an equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral. You're understanding all that together, right? But nevertheless, you could understand quadrilateral by itself, right? Or equilateral by itself, or right-angled by itself, right? But in the case of the point, it doesn't have any parts to begin with, right? Okay? But he points out that the point is understood by what? Negation, right? And sometimes by comparison to what can be divided, huh? So the point in Euclid is defined as what? That which has no parts. It's defined negatively, right? And of course, Thomas at this point alludes to the fact that when we start to know God or even the angels, who are very simple, right? Not in the same way the point is, but they're very simple. We also know them negatively, right? So when Thomas is in the Summa Theologiae, when he's proceeding in the natural light of reason there, he shows that there's an unmoved mover, right? You see? And that involves negation, doesn't it? Unmoved mover. And then when he asks, what is the unmoved mover? He begins by showing that he's altogether, what? Simple, right? It's question three of the Summa. But when you go through the question on the simplicity of God, God, it's all via negativa. There's no composition of quantitative parts in God, right? There's no composition of matter and form, right? There's no composition of genus and difference in God, right? No composition of substance and accident, right? No composition of what a thing is and the thing, right? It's individual and a thing. No distinction there in God. There's no distinction between what God is and his existence, right? But it's all via negationis, right? Okay? As opposed to the beatific vision, where you'll see God as he is, right? You know, in St. John, the famous text the Church uses all the time, and it's from the first epistle of St. John, I think it's chapter, what, 3, verse 2? Something like that. That when he appears, we shall be like him, right? You know? It's the one where he's talking about where the sons of God are the techna, children of God. And when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is, right? Okay? So the Church has two ways, the Scripture has two ways of talking about that vision. One is to see him as he is. The other is to see him, what, face to face, right? The more metaphorical way of saying it, but you're talking about that direct knowledge of God, right? But in this life, we know more what God is, what? Not, right? And what he is, right? And like Darnitius says, and Tom is following him, kind of the last thing in our knowledge of God in this life is that everything we said about him falls short, right? You know? Everything is not adequate to understanding him, right? You see? But that's the anticipation of this via negative in theology, even in geometry, when we define the point as that which has no what parts, huh? As if what is the proper object of our reason as we learned back in the previous reading last week is that what it is of a thing sensed or imagined, right? And you can't really sense or imagine the point. You have to sense or imagine something that has some what extension, right? So that what is indivisible, we tend to know negatively. We know the composed before the what? Simple, right? And he says something like that is the way the soul knows evil or black, huh? It knows them by the what? In part by the negation of the good, right? Okay? So the evil always involves some kind of what? Lack of something you should have, huh? And therefore in your understanding of blindness, let's say, which is something bad, is sight, right? Okay, so he compares that way of knowing the bad and the thing that is lacking a little bit to the way we know the what? The point, huh? By negation of having what? Parts, huh? Parts, huh? Parts, huh? Parts, huh? Parts, huh?