De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 51: Potency and Actuality: Understanding Through Contraries

Transcript
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I've got to be careful now, you know, the difference between a privation and a, what, negation, different senses of the words there. For some what knows these by their contraries, and now something that's puzzled people a lot, but it's got a very subtle explanation of it. For what knows must be in potency, and one contrary must be in it. Now, he's hitting at the fact that our mind understands, in a way, in part at least, potency or ability, because our mind is in what? Potency for contraries or opposites. So, in a way, you can say it's in ability for the affirmative and the lack of it, too. Well, let's take time for any strict sense, huh? Reason is able to know and to be mistaken. Like the slave boy in the dialogue, right? He's first mistaken as to how to double a square, right? He needs to double the side, right? Later on, he comes to know, that's mistaken, right? And he comes to know that the diagonal would be the side of a square place in the big hand. So, our reason, in a way, is a little bit like the matter, as we were saying before, portion, okay? And so, our reason, to some extent, understands potency by the fact that it itself is in potency, right? Two contraries, right? Okay? She loves me. She loves me not, right? She has a flower and you pluck the petals, right? You know, she loves me, she loves me not, right? The guy's not sure, right? His mind is capable of thinking that she loves him and also, I don't think she does love me. No, she does love me. Going back, right? You see? But that's a mind that's like our mind, that's like matter, that's like what? Potency ability, right? And now he hints at the divine mind again, right? But if in something there is not a contrary among the causes, if there's a mind that is not in potency, right? This knows itself, and it is an act and it is entirely separate from matter, right? The divine mind is pure act. It's never in any kind of potency, right? And because it's completely immaterial, it's completely understandable, and it knows itself, right? And when we finally, you know, understand so far as we can, even in this life, God's understanding, what you find out is that God understands himself, right? And understands himself as much as he's understandable. And in understanding himself, he understands everything else. Because he's the cause of everything else, huh? Okay? So he's hinting at God, right, huh? See? But our mind is like matter in a sense, right? It's capable of what? Opposites, right, huh? And so we kind of know potency from our mind. And that's why I teach even about matter sometimes, you know. That comparison I make, you know, when Aristotle is making the critique of Plato, confusing matter and lack of form, and I say, oh, that's a little bit like confusing the mind and its ignorance. The ability to know with ignorance, right? The mind knows, in a way, potency through the fact that it itself is in potency. And recognize that sometimes it is this and sometimes it's that, right? Sometimes I think she loves me, sometimes I think she doesn't love me, right? You know? Like that terrible determination in a fellow, right? She thinks she's faithful, she thinks she's not faithful, right? You know? You know? People have this doubt about people sometimes, right? But the rich girl, does he love me or does he love me for my money, you know? You know? You can have this kind of a thing, you know, huh? And spouses are often looking for this assurance that this other spouse really loves them, right? And so the mind realizes its, what? Its potency for opposites, for contraries, huh? That's part of, you know, it helps it to understand potency a little bit better, right? So I found always that comparison between the mind and matter very useful. Of course, Aristotle used it earlier in the fifth chapter, huh? We'll come back and just tie up the end here, chapter six, but in a way it's good. So you don't get up and go to mass on Sunday morning because it interferes with your sleeping. It's in some way it's bad. What is good is in some way bad, right? And they say, you know, if somebody annoys you, you know, murder them, right? It's rid of an annoyance, right? So even horrible things like murdering somebody are in some very diminished sense of good, right? You see? The man who robs the bank, right? He's doing something unjust, so something bad to rob the bank, right? But in some way it's good, right? You increase the money in your pocket if you don't get caught anyway, you see? So we're always doing something bad because in some diminished way, right? It's good. Or we're not doing something good because in some qualified way it's bad, right? There's nothing so good in this world that doesn't prevent you from doing something else. It has some little bit of goodness in the life. So everything good can be seen as what? Preventing you from doing something else that's good. In different ways it's bad. See? And there's all kinds of bad things, you know? Get rid of you, I can get a promotion or something. I can take over your position, you know? Two businessmen went out there, hunting there when I was a young boy. They tripped and the gun went off and one guy got killed and the other guy came back and it's going to be his position. Could have been an accident. Who knows? I don't know what happened out in the woods, you know? But out of the last judgment, I guess. But there was a lot of suspicions about this, right? So even, you know, what's that famous movie that Allen Guinness plays in where he bumps off everybody to hurt the money finally, you know? He finally gets caught at the end, but it's kind of ironic that he gets caught. But kind of clever the way he keeps knocking them off, right? One of them is a woman suffragette, you know, and she's going up in the balloon, you know, and spreading her feminist, you know, for us. So I shot my earl into the sky. I'd worry about it. I know not. Get rid of her. Another guy's in love with a girl and they go out in the boat there, you know, and they kind of put the anchor down, right? And they're kind of making out there and so on. And he cuts it and they drift down and go over to the mill. So it's all these clever things, you know? You know, and then you have to see the movie sometime, but it's good. So, I mean, even things like murder, you know, I mean, can be seen as what? It's a way of getting power or getting something like that, huh? So we're always making that mistake of choosing what is bad because in some diminished way it's good, or not doing what is good because in some diminished way, right? So, is studying good, I tell the students? Yeah, that's how you come to know. It's good to know, isn't it? But it prevents you from going to a pizza party. It prevents you from sleeping. It prevents you from... So no matter how good the thing is, right, you can see in some ways bad. You see in that great dialogue, the Mino, huh? Mino makes that mistake of simply in some way, right? Because he says to Socrates, Socrates wants the two of them to put their heads together and try to investigate what they don't know, maybe what virtue is, right? And he says, well, how can you aim at what you don't know? Filling station, you say, how do you get there? What's he going to say? How do you get there? Buddy, I can't tell you how to get there if you don't tell me where you're trying to go, right? So how can there be an art, like logic or logistic, too? How can there be these two arts that direct us to knowing what we don't know? And Socrates, in trying to reply to the problem, makes the same kind of mistake, but in a little different manner. Amen. Amen. Socrates is claiming that the, what, in the way, in the conversation with the slave boy, that this conversation is revealing that the slave boy knew already, right, how to, what, double a square, when actually he was mistaken to begin with, right, he didn't know. But he was able to know. But is that to know? So, all these things the student is in school to learn, you know, does he know them already? No. But in some way you can say, right? But a lot of times when you ask the student, you say, if you know the length and the width of a rectangle, you know how to multiply, do you know the area? And they'll say, yeah. But before you multiply them, you don't know the area, do you? See? But because you're able to know it, they want to say that you know it, right? And a practical man would like these distinctions, right? You know the length, but you know the area. That's it. That's insane, right? You know, I bet he would say that, you know. You're going to get your kumling, you know, or claim the words, right? But no, if you know the length and the width, you're able to know the area, right? And that's not to know the area, is it? That's not. I mean, it's hard for people to see that, right? You know, I was telling the students, take an example. Say, if you have a man and woman, if you have a baby, you're able to have a baby, right? But if you tell the priest who's going to marry you that you have a baby, you mean to me that the man's potent woman's friend now, right? You're going to be misunderstood, right? I say, some people do have a baby, they want to get married, but that's to actually have one. It's not to be able to have one. So, I mean, I think people have a hard time understanding this kind of distinction that's being overlooked in this fallacy, right? Let alone, you know, they can be taken up, right? See, in a way, when Descartes said that the clear and the distinct is more, what, known, right? He was confusing what is more known, haplos, simply, and what is more known to us, right? See, he'll mix in the two up, right? In the first time, you know, he has no way of speaking it, but he'll speak of what is more known by nature, not being the same as what is more known to us, right? And then you'll call what's more known to nature more known haplos, right? Or some pichidaire that's in Latin, right? It's a quid, to us, right? So, it's interesting now that Descartes is being deceived by that kind of mistake about the natural road, right? And in the Mino there, Mino and Socrates are deceived by that same kind of mistake about the road of reason. That's reason, right? We study it in logic, and then when Descartes gets down to the private roads, he makes the same mistake again. Because the road of geometry is the best haplos, right? But it's not the best very science, see? Aristotle sees the same distinction in political philosophy, right? He speaks of the best government haplos, right? Then the best government for most men, and the best government for these people. And those three may not be the same at all, right? So, the best government haplos would require most unusual circumstances that one would, Aristotle says, karayuke according to a prayer or a wish. What is haplos? Simply without qualifications, right? And then he talks, he says, you have to talk about the government that's best for most men, considering the, for example, most men are capable, right? But even that you can't always do, because the people might be very primitive, right? Or very, very, very disordered, and so on, right? And you might have to have some kind of a strong government or something, right? You know? It would be the best for them, right? Um, so, Aristotle talks there about, about the democracy and autograph and so on, and how the men are in some way equal, then haplos, they're equal, right? See, or in some way they're unequal, then haplos, they're unequal. It's the same kind, so. It's amazing how much, that's only one of the 13 kinds of mistakes, common, commonly made, Aristotle speaks of in the physical reputations, and those are all the kinds of mistakes that are made. Does that have, um, more than one sense, simply, in some respect? Well, in many ways it can be, in some, in some way, you know. Um, uh, Aristotle gives, gives, in the rhetoric, I think I've mentioned that before, in the rhetoric he gives, he gives a very, um, interesting example of this. That the likely man to commit a crime is unlikely to have committed it. And the argument is that, um, it's likely that a man who commits a crime, like murder or robbery, it's unlikely he wants to be caught, right? But the likely man to have committed a crime is the one that everybody would suspect, right? And therefore, the likely man to have committed a crime is the one that would probably get caught, right? It happens all the time, right? So it's unlikely that the likely man to have done it has done it. But, well, you know, if that argument was good, then all of these detectives, you know, who right away, you know, look for leads as to who might have done it, right? Someone who, you know, had the, the, uh, antagonist towards this person, or, you know, split the gain from his, you know, had the opportunity, et cetera, et cetera, you know, they do, right? They don't, you know, when a murder's been committed, they don't go looking at every citizen in the city, do they? But the ones who are likely to have done it, right? The likely man to have done the crime is the likely one to have done it. But it's only in some way it's unlikely he would do it. It's a very limited way, right? So if I take out a huge, you know, insurance of my wife, and then she suddenly dies, I'd like you to have done it, right? You know? You see? Right? There's a certain number of ways that are in a certain way. Yeah, Aristotle speaks there of, you know, it might be audible in some country to eat your parents or something, right? That's audible. Very much. It's the quid, right? Yeah. It's amazing how common this kind of mistake is, right? Most people don't even recognize that kind of mistake, though, when this is being done. It seems to me what we've learned today was one key word. But in Greek here, they do have a word for thought, too, noema, in the Greek text there, noema. So Aristotle's saying, you know, that the truth, the true and the false is in a, what, in one place it says sunthesis, a putting together of noematona, of thoughts, right? And in the other place, it's a sumploke, noematon, an intertwining of thoughts, huh? But it's interesting that St. John, of course, uses the word logos rather than the word, what, noema, right? Yeah. Thought. Thought. And so he moves us from the, what, sensible to what is only understandable. It's kind of beautiful the way he does that, huh? It's interesting, you know, when Thomas is talking about the incarnation and how it was appropriate that the second person of the Blessed Trinity became man rather than the Father, I would say, or the, what, Holy Spirit, right? Mm-hmm. And he speaks of certain likeness between man, who's an animal, with reason, huh? And the word was made flesh, right, became man. Well, logos, in Greek there, in St. John, this is for the second person, for the Son of God, is also the word for what? Reason. Reason, right? Okay. So the word of God and also reason. So you're kind of seeing in the word there kind of a link between the two, the appropriateness of the word becoming, what, man, huh? Okay? It kind of reminds me of a little thing I sometimes do when I'm comparing Pedocles and Anaxagoras and I say, whose guess is better that this mindless love and hate are the movers? Or a greater mind is the mover, right? And I say, well, which is more able to separate things, hate or mind? And I say to the students, was it hate that split the atom? See? It's really reason who figures out how to separate things, huh? And you know how reason even in mathematics, come back to these readings today, in mathematics it separates extension and number and things of this sort, shape from sensible matter, something that hate can't do. But the mind is a better separator than what? Than hate is, huh? Now, you might be able to argue that love unites things more than the mind does, right? Okay? But, Pedocles says that earth, air, fire and water, the four elements, are brought together to form flesh and blood and bones in different, what, ratios, huh? And, of course, the Greek word for ratio is what? Logos, the Latin word is ratio. We've taken over the Latin word ratio. But, Logos and ratio are also the word for reason in both languages. So, to put things together in a ratio seems to be more what mind does than what love does, huh? And sometimes I make the, you see this hypo-foodie word, you know, for a bartender's manual. His science, his nouns, right? You see, they call it mixology, right? But notice, it's named from what? You know, like biology, you know, from Logos, from reason there. And, you know, if a bartender's going to make a Manhattan, he's got to know that the ratio is what? Two to one, right? Or they make a stinger. The ratio is two to one. He doesn't have to love a Manhattan, or love a stinger. But his reason has to know what? That I got combined, the brandy, let's say, in the White Covenant ratio of two to one, right? Or the whiskey and the sweet vermouth in the ratio of two to one. And so, combined things in some ratio would seem to what? Make mind a better cause than love, right? But it's suggested by the fact that you have the same word. And it's not by chance that you have the same word for ratio and for reason in both Greek and Latin. As if it's reason that most of all knows the ratio of one thing to another, or the order of one thing to another, as Shakespeare says, huh? That's right. That's right. That's right. So I can just see this connection with the word Logos there, between the word of God and the word of God becoming man, which is an animal with reason. I see some connection there. But apart from that, the word Logos is much more concrete, because its first meaning is, what, something sensible, the spoken word. And by the word Noema seems to be kind of, what, more abstract. I was looking at Partridge this morning to see what he says about the word thought, right? And does the word thought really have any sensible origin? But it doesn't seem to have much, huh? But I guess the old phrase was, me thinks, me thinks. And it had sort of the meaning of, it seems to me, me thinks. Me thinks that's okay. But there you see kind of the likeness between, what, the origin of the word thought there, and the word, what, image or phantasm, what seems or appears, huh? And therefore, as he'll do here again in Chapter 8, he'll distinguish between the image and the, what, thought, right? Okay? As I mentioned before, in English too, we'll often say, you know, I think that's so, I imagine that's so. If they were almost the same thing, right? And they're not the same thing, to imagine and to think, or an image and a thought, but they're very much alike, so much people confuse the two. I mentioned John Locke, he used the word idea, he's not too sure whether he's talking about a thought or an image. He's kind of running the two together, huh? I get an idea, but it'd just be an image you've got. And we say to the students, huh? If the philosopher has an idea, it should be a thought. But if the girl says to the boy, don't get ideas, it's probably images, right? He's not doing too much thinking, see? So, I mean, the word idea there, I think, captures that thing. But if the word thought there, I think, you know, it seems so to me, right? It appears to me. It's almost the same thing, etymologically, as the Greek word there for the image, huh? Phantasm, it appears. Okay, we're in chapter 7 here, in the second paragraph there, 347, which corresponds from then on to the rest of chapter 7 to Thomas' 13th reading, huh? And in this 12th reading, rather, and the next chapter will be the 13th reading. Now, in this chapter 7, or this 12th reading, Aristotle's going to compare reason with the, what, senses, huh? And he also touched, to some extent, upon the difference between them, but also the dependence of reason upon the senses, huh? And he's thinking of it, too, primarily in terms of the, what, a likeness to them in regard to the practical, in regard to the good, huh? Okay? But first of all, he recalls some things said about the sense and the sensible. So he says at the beginning of 347 there, the sensible appears to make the sensitive an act from being in potency. Now, the senses, as we saw before, are abilities that are acted upon by their object, huh? Okay? So, color acts upon the eye, or sound upon the ear, or flavor upon the tongue, and so on. And so, as a result of their acting upon the senses, the senses which are able to know come to, what, actually know, huh? As a result of being acted upon. Now, again he wants to point out that the senses are not being moved by their objects in the way that bodies or matter are altered, huh? And that's why he repeats here, for the sense does not, what, suffer in the original meaning of the word suffer, nor is it altered in the original meaning of the word altered, huh? Now, if you remember in natural philosophy back in the first book of natural hearing, when Aristotle was looking for a common thought shared by all his predecessors, and they all seemed to have this common thought about change, that change is by contraries, huh? Change is from one contrary to the other. And Heraclitus, if you recall, began that thought with the induction, right? It's the dry that, what, is moistened? It's the wet that dries out, huh? It's the hard that is softened, and the soft that is hardened. So you have a change between contraries, and they call it that an alteration. You lose the form or quality that you had, and acquire the, what, opposite one, right? But this is not really what the senses being moved is, huh? They're simply being, what, actualized, huh? They're not going from one contrary to, what, another contrary, huh? But they're going from ability to act, huh? They're able to receive the colors of things, the eye, right? And now it actually sees the colors of things, and therefore it sees the colors of things, huh? Whence, he says, this is another species of, what, motion, huh? I'm kind of interested in the way Aristotle speaks here, because, strictly speaking, he wouldn't consider sensing to be a form of, what, motion, huh? But when you get to the twelfth book, or, excuse me, the twelfth book, the ninth book of wisdom, which is a book where Aristotle talks about ability and act, it's the ninth book of wisdom. And he'll point out in that book that the word act seems to be first said of motion, and then thereon it's carried over to form. And it's not purely by chance that the word act is carried over from motion to form. In fact, there's a kind of, what, likeness there of ratios, huh? So just as the body, right, that is able to be in motion, right, is sometimes put into motion and moves, right? So likewise, the matter that is able to be formed in some way is sometimes, what, actually formed in that way, huh? So as the eyes are to seeing, not the eyes are, but as the body is to motion before it moves, so the matter is to, what, form before it's been, what, formed, huh? Okay? So there's a certain likeness there, huh, in these things, too, ability, in the thing that can be in motion with respect to the matter, huh? That's kind of fun on the distinction he makes, huh? But then he comes back, and he's going to distinguish between emotion in the strict sense and what they sometimes call an operation. Okay? Like the difference between walking home, take my standard example, and seeing, huh, or understanding, or loving, right? What is the difference between the two, see? Well, he'll call this an imperfect act, huh? And this down here, a perfect act. What does that mean? Well, when I'm walking home, have I walked home yet? No. As long as I'm walking home, the activity of walking home is incomplete, huh? And when I have walked home, am I walking home anymore? No. So, so long as I'm walking home, so long as I have that kind of activity, and I'm walking home, and I'm walking home, and I'm walking home, and I'm walking home, and I'm walking home, There's something incomplete about it. And grammar reflects that kind of activity. So we say, you know, I'm walking home, I have walked home, and they call it perfect, maybe, you're married, I have walked home. But notice, when I have walked home, the activity of walking home doesn't even exist anymore. So long as the activity of walking home exists, it's something incomplete, right? And when it's complete, it doesn't exist. So it's why it's very nature to be perfect or incomplete act. In the same way, building a house, right? When I'm building a house, the house has not been built yet, has it? And when the house has been built, I'm the one who's building it. So that kind of activity, which is most known to us, as Shakespeare says, things in motion, sooner you catch the eye, and whatnot stirs, you know, you wait to people and so on. And since now it starts with our senses, that's the act that's most known to us, when we first call it. But now you take an activity like seeing something, right? Well, when I am seeing you now, I'm seeing you now, have I seen you yet? Yeah. See? So that's a perfect act, huh? Yeah. When I'm seeing you, I have seen you. And when I understand what a triangle is, have I understood what a triangle is? Yeah. Yeah. And when I love you, have I loved you yet? Okay. So, he's making that distinction, or he's alluding to that distinction here, huh? But it's made most formally in the ninth book of the metaphysics, huh? The ninth book here of wisdom. How about distinguishing an operation from form, or would he? Well, he does that too. That's the first thing he does, right? He kind of distinguishes motion from form, but motion, you know, is going to include any kind of activity, you might say. Okay? And you can see that with words like action, activity, right? Even the word act itself, we don't usually think of form as being an act, do we? When you think of an act, you think of some kind of activity, some kind of action. So, that's a sign that act is first said of this sort of act, right? Okay? But instead of this, the way I saw it, it explains it in the ninth book, by reason of a certain, what? Likeness of ratios, huh? Like he compares, for example, he says, as the eye is, right? But it's closed, but it's not blind, right? It's actually seeing, right? You open your eyes, right? So, something like that is the wood, before it's been shaped into a statue, let's say, right? And then after it's been shaped, right? So, you have the ability to be moved, or the ability to do something, right? And the ability to be, what? Formed, right? Okay? Of course, blinding to those two, you have two acts, right? So, the ability to be formed is to, what? Actually being formed, right? Something like the ability to do something is to, what? Actually doing it, huh? Or vice versa. Take the universe. Take the universe. Take the state, right? So, walking, in a way, is the ability to walk. Something like being the Pietas is the marble before Mecloangel works on it, huh? So, if I sit and like this theorem, that's one way of seeing that the word is not being used, act and ability, purely equivocally here, huh? Okay? But, when he first makes that distinction, he's not concerned, really, with distinguishing between motion in the strict sense and operation, right? And that's why he sticks here, kind of in a loose way, right? To say that seeing and hearing and smell and tasting, they're another kind of motion, another, right? In the strict sense, if by motion you mean the semperfect act, they're not in motion at all, right? Okay? But they're more like motion than they're like, what? Form, right? Okay? Now, Thomas in the De Potencia has another way of connecting form with motion, and that is that form is the end result of some motion, right? Like my, what, shaping the wood, right? Results in a certain form in the wood, right? Okay? My stamping the metal results in a certain form. Or form is the, what, source of some kind of activity. So, after your mind has been formed, it can do things, huh? Okay? And after you see the form that completes your nature, you're able to do the activities of that nature. So, form is the end or the beginning of some kind of motion or operation, some kind of activity. So, again, it's not purely, what, equivocal, right? But in an operation, in a strict sense. In an act. Use that term, Thomas does, for a perfect act, perfect activity. Would then the, in that case, would it, like seeing form? So, the contrast he makes is that when I'm, when I'm walking home, I haven't walked home yet. And when I have walked home, when that activity has been, is complete, in a sense, it doesn't exist anymore. So, so long as I'm walking home, I haven't walked home yet. And once you can say, I have walked home, I have arrived, I'm no longer arriving, am I? So, whenever that kind of activity exists, it's by its very nature, what, expecting something further, huh? Yeah? When I'm coming into the room, I haven't come into the room yet, have I? When I'm building the house, I haven't built it yet. And learning is like that kind of an activity, huh? When I'm learning something, I haven't learned it yet. And when I have learned it, I'm no longer learning it, right? See? But understanding, huh? When I'm understanding something, I have understood it. When I'm hearing something, I have heard it, huh? When I'm loving someone or something, I have loved them, right? But as they say, grammar seems to reflect more, the more known type of, what, activity, which is motion, huh? The imperfect act. And the term operation would then include not only the form that you acquire, but the acquisition itself? Is that how it's different? No, no, as I say, you have to see it as different from form, right? Form is going to be a principle of that, right? See? So that's why he speaks of the senses and the reason, huh? That when the reason or the senses, what, right, what they receive is as a, what? Form. And having received that form, then they can see or sense, right? Right and understand, huh? So the form is a principle, right? Of that, huh? So the eye, you can say, sees through what it has received. Now, incidentally, there's a very subtle difference there, you see, you've got to be very careful about the words, huh? When you say, for example, talking about the first kind of activity, if I, let's say, kick you, I hit you, in a way, my kicking and my hitting, that's between me and you, right? It comes between me and you, right? If I hit you, okay? Now, grammatically, you might be deceived here, right? When you say that, I see you, or I love you, you see? And grammatically, it seems the same, right, as I kick you, I hit you, right? And I don't know, the grammarian might just call you the object there, right, of seeing or loving, like you are the object of my kicking or my hitting, right? Okay. But actually, it's not to seeing or loving, originally, that we're, what, united, right? But to the fact that you have acted upon my senses, or acted upon my heart, huh? Oh, yes. So, before I see the color, the color has to have acted upon my eye. So, the color, in a sense, has been already in some way united to my eye, right? It makes it possible my, what, seeing it, right? In the same way with love, because the ability to love there is also an ability that is acted upon by its, what, object, right? You see? And, of course, even in mythology, you know, the idea of Cupid having the arrow there, right? You see? Or even, you know, Teresa of Avala, or Teresa of Desir, right? They receive an increase of love under the effect of being wounded, right? But they're being acted upon by the, what, object, right? It's very interesting, this one way of speaking there, even of, more maybe in romantic love, but I think it's the same thing, basically. You know, you made a big impression upon her. There's nothing in that sense, right? Okay? Okay. In a sense, you've made an impression upon somebody's heart, right? And that's why they're starting to like you, because you've made an impression upon their heart. So the object, in a way, acts upon the power in the case of the loving and the, what, sensing, right? And the result of its acting upon it and being united with it is that you love or that you see. So in a sense, the love is not what's originally united me with you. But because you've made an impression on my heart that this activity called love proceeds, right? And because the color that I see, it's a hard object here. Because the color is already acting upon my eye in some way, the result of the color acting upon my eye is that I see. So seeing proceeds from the union of my eye and the color in some way. You know? And love from the union between the object and my heart, huh? Okay? But in case of kicking, this is a transitive action, right? So I'm going out to you. And so my kicking is what's uniting me with you, huh? My hitting you, right? You see that? You have no contact, in other words, before I kick you, hit you, see? But you and I already have some contact before I see you. Because you've acted upon my eye, right? Your color, your shape, your size, right? Private and common sensibles, they've acted upon my eye. That's a very, very subtle thing here. Now, in 348, he's going to say some things about sensing, in particular, in regard to the good and the bad. He's going to compare reason with the senses, but you have to see also the differences between the two, right? So he says, The sensing, therefore, is similar to saying or thinking alone, but when there is pleasure or pain, it pursues or avoids as if affirming or denying. Now, he says, as if, right? What does that mean, huh? Well, he's saying that when the senses, right, perceive some object, right, that comes first, right? And if that object is agreeable to the, what, senses, right, then secondly, there comes a sensation of what? Pleasure, right? Okay. If that object that you sense is disagreeable, huh, doesn't fit the senses, then there arises a sensation of what? Pain, right? And that feeling of pleasure or pain is, in the sensible order, something like reason, right, when it affirms, this is good, this is bad, okay? And when reason says this is good, then you tend to pursue that object, right? When reason says this is bad, right, then you tend to avoid that object or turn away from it, right? Well, he says, in the case of the senses, when the senses sense something, it's a little more complicated, right, they have to sense it, and then they don't say, this is good or this is bad, but they, what, they either sense it as suitable to the sense organ or as, what, unsuitable and opposed to it in some way, right? And therefore, there arises secondarily pleasure or pain, and that's the way the senses know good and what? Bad, huh, bad, okay? Why reason doesn't have to perceive, what, pleasure or pain to say this is good or this is bad, right, huh? Okay, it sees, you know, pleasure and pain in reference to good or bad, but it understands good and bad universally, and you can see reasons why something is good or bad apart from pleasure or pain. But the senses don't know good or bad universally, but the senses don't know good or bad universally, they know it only as, what, agreeable or disagreeable to the senses, and therefore as pleasure or pain, okay? I often come back to this text when I'm in ethics, and in ethics, you know, usually we do Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics to get the truth, obviously, but we read John Stuart Mill, because that's where the kids are coming from, that's kind of the dominant thinking, not just at Mill, but, you know, the general, the English moral philosophers about good and bad, right? Well, basically, what Mill is saying is that the only criterion of good and bad is, what, pleasure and pain. And he may, you know, say the greater pleasure, the greater number or something, but basically it's pleasure and pain are the criterion of good and bad. Well, the stock objection to Mill is, well, this is a philosophy for beasts, for animals, not for human beings, right? Right? See? And Mill gives, I think, a good reply to this, but not altogether sufficient reply. See? He tries to turn the tables on those who accuse him of having a beastly ethics, a beastly philosophy, see? Where there's no criterion of good and bad except pleasure and pain, which is all the beast has, you see? That's the only criterion the beast has, because that's the only criterion the senses have. And the reply that Mill gives is this, he says, you are the beast, he says, right? Because you're thinking that man has no pleasures or pains other than what the beast has, right? Okay? See? But there are these, what, higher human pleasures, right? Okay? And he says those who have experienced the animal pleasures and then these higher human pleasures, they all prefer the higher human pleasures. It's those who have only experienced the animal pleasures that think they're the greatest thing in the world. Okay? Now, there's some truth in what he's saying, huh? And usually I try to go a little bit further, and I think I maybe mentioned this to you before, but I'll say it again there. I say, Mill is right there, huh? In saying there are pleasures that man has that the beasts do not have, huh? Okay? So, um, but really, he should just distinguish between beastly pleasures and human pleasures. He should distinguish between beastly pleasures and human pleasures and angelic pleasures. Okay? Now, this is the distinction, you know. The beastly pleasures are the pleasures that man shares with the beast, huh? So, the pleasures of eating and drinking, huh? And reproduction and sleep and so on, right? Okay? Ah, getting comfortable, right? We see a cat, you know, as a way of finding a comfortable place to rest itself in the house, huh? Sometimes it's annoying, so... People at the house, okay? Now, the angelic pleasures are the pleasures of what? Understanding. Okay? Now, the difference between man and the angels and man and the beast in those two regards is that man has the beastly pleasures in a more refined way than the beast has, huh? So, we cook our food and sometimes season it in the French, you know, have these wine sauces and so on, right, huh? Okay? But basically, they're pleasures we share with the beast, huh? Although it's more refined, huh? The, um, Tabitha had a great cat, we had it, gone now. Anyway, Tabitha, you know, if we're having steak tonight, I'd say, Tabitha, we're having steak tonight. And you're invited, I said. To get a little hand out, you know, with my hand there, she goes around the table or something like that. And it seems to me, you know, that Tabitha really, you know, understood what I was saying, you know? It's like a good night, you know? Hang around the table, you see? And, uh, but I put a little salt and pepper maybe on my steak or some, you know, sauce or something, right? That, that, that, that Tabitha just wouldn't do without, right? But basically, we're, we're sharing the same pleasure. I mean, it's not common, Tabitha, not, see? Now, the angelic pleasures, as they say, are the pleasures of understanding, right? But as you know, man has an overshadowed understanding and reason rather than understanding. So, we partake of these pleasures of the angels, but imperfectly, right? Because you don't understand very much compared to what they understand. So, they're, have the pleasures of understanding much greater than we have, huh? Okay?