De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 58: The Order of Powers in the Soul and Four Senses of Priority

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You know? But, you know, they do this all the time with beer, right? You know, somebody would say, well, Budweiser tastes better than Millers, right? So they give him a glass of Budweiser's and Millers, you know, and he doesn't know which one is which. So how, you know, it's kind of a Socratic test there, you know, huh? You see? But if I can't tell them apart, how can I say that one is better than the other, right? But the reverse is not necessarily true, right? If I can tell apart these two beers, right, I may not yet be able to judge which is better, right? But I certainly can't judge that one is better without knowing the difference between them, you see? So anyway, going back to what I was saying, reason is apt to distinguish between the matter and the form of something, right? So if you take a piece of clay and you mold it into a sphere and then you mold it into a cylinder and change its shape, right? Reason begins to see the distinction between the matter and the form, right? Okay? Or if my body is sometimes healthy and sometimes sick, right? Then I distinguish between my body and its health, right? If the same man is sometimes good and sometimes bad, right? And sometimes virtuous and sometimes vicious, right? Well, then can the man be the same as his virtue? So we distinguish between the form and what has the form, right? Now you see, we name things as we know them, right? So we have a different way than expressing the form and what has the form, right? So you have health and healthy or virtue and virtuous, right? So Socrates is not virtue, but he might be, what, virtuous, right? That's why they puzzled over the Blessed Virgin there, right? What did she say to the young lady? I am the Immaculate Conception. And of course, the priest or the rector was, you know, what did she say? See? She didn't say, I am Immaculate Conceived, right? But she said, I am the Immaculate Conception, right? There's some special reason why she said that, right? And I'm not sure that we fully understand yet why she said that, you know? You see? But then, but it puzzled, you know, obviously the man, right? Because it seemed incorrect, right? The way of speaking, right? You see? Okay? So So we have these two words, right? These two kinds of words, right? Right through all these things, right? Healthy and health. Since they call it health the abstract word, right? And health the concrete, right? But it's a difference between the word that names the form itself and the word that names what has the form, right? Okay? That's why you can say that my body is healthy. But you can't say my body is health. Because the form and what has the form are not the same thing, right? Well, see, now do we have other names that come to talk about God? See, we have the words good and goodness now, right? Which word are we going to use for God? Well, if we say he is good, and he is good, right? I mean, Christ says that in the gospel there, right? Why call me good? God alone is good, right? God most of all is good, right? Okay? But that word seems to what? Signify as what has goodness, right? And therefore seems to indicate a distinction between the haver and the had, right? And in God there is no distinction, right? But in creatures, where our knowledge begins, right? And where our knowledge is adapted to knowing, right? What has the goodness is not the goodness, huh? Now, you see, you know, if man had wisdom, but he was not wise for the wisdom that he has, he wouldn't have any perfection really by that, would he? Right? Right? What good would it be to have wisdom and not be wise? What good would it be to your body to have health and not be healthy? See? It's like it's in your pocket or something. So, if God is not wise and good and just, what perfection would he have, right? But in using those words, we seem to, what? Admit composition to God, right? Okay? So then we turn around and say, well, but there's really no distinction between God and his goodness, right? Or God and his wisdom, or God and his justice, right? So, in order to bring out the distinction, we say, God is wisdom itself. God is ipsa bonitas, goodness itself, huh? God is justice itself. God is love, as St. John says, right? See? You can't say that you and I are love, right? You can't say that my will is love. You can say my will loves, right? But we say God loves us, right? He has love for us. But now we seem to be introducing a composition, right? So, no way of speaking can be adequate to talking about God. So, I mean, Thomas often quotes Danisius there saying, you know, we can affirm and deny it, right? And I see, you say, well, is that a contradiction? Well, no, because you don't affirm it and deny it for the same reason, right? So, you say, God is goodness itself, or God is justice itself, or God is love. God is wisdom, right? Ego sapientia, I am wisdom. To bring out that God is altogether simple, right? The way that he has these things, right? But we say that God is just, and God is good, and God is wise. Indicate that he's, what? Truly perfect through his goodness and through his wisdom and so on, right? And not just that and by which, huh? That's why there's always some negation there in our knowledge, right? You guys have to negate the imperfection in the way we know God, right? In this life. Now, when we become separated from our body or separated soul, we'll see like the angels kind of, is that right? Yeah, yeah. We know in a different way, right? We won't turn to images, right? Because we'll be free from our body, right? Yeah. So that's how our will is fixed, in good or evil, because we see everything and... Yeah, we won't be in time anymore either, see? That's where our will will be, because we're frozen, so to speak, right? Oh, no, no, no. We won't be subject to this. change anymore so long as man is in time right he can change from good to bad or from bad to good right yeah so we never despair of a man so long as he's still alive right even though he might be doubtful about his salvation right huh but see the angels their their mind was fully formed when they were created right so when they chose their choice was forever yeah kind of a frightening thing to think about right yeah right yeah you know see but we kind of dilly-dally you know and kind of you know wishy-washy back and forth but yet there'll be some types of change won't there because we'll be able to acquire knowledge in the next life right we'll learn new things and go to higher angels communicate knowledge yeah but we won't we won't be uh you know learning essential things you know our mind will be uh satisfied as far as what it naturally desires to know ah accidental yeah but to be kind of secondary in that way you know not really retain perfection of the mind right speaking of accidental and secondary i wonder if i could just i i have i have a much more mundane question than yours brother but this is something that purpose i wanted about oh for about uh 20 years or so and that is um something like 20 years ago and i'll understand if you laugh or smile or whatever when i say this but you know this this book by uh robert persig zen in the art motorcycle maintenance that uh well my question for you is um uh can you i mean can you in any you know kind of fairly simple way you know gain traction on what's wrong with it because the um i found it very compelling and interesting again something like 20 years ago and it's been quite a few years since i've looked at it at all yeah but um it nevertheless remains for example i had a long conversation with a professor probably no the so-called professor at secret heart university i was taking a philosophy class there and this book is his life he's a professor at a catholic university yeah yeah and i knew that there's something deeply and terribly wrong that that could be the case but i didn't have at hand you know an argument and i and i in brief talking to him about it he said well part of the thing about the book is that you know it's unassailable by any argument or something like that and the guy with the my opinion that i just totally lost his reason and he looks kind of spooky but in any case can you can you give me even like a cocktail party you know catchy sentence to say about it because or i don't know i mean maybe it's not something you had occasion to look at but i don't read all the book i never read the book you know so i can't really i just i've seen it in people talking about it it's on and around it it happened to be what got me sort of interested in philosophy and then i quickly found that what was being taught was what i read in the book and i kind of threw up my hands about the whole thing yeah so it's like you know when you read something like heidic or somebody you know that basically doesn't make sense right yeah yeah yeah but it's hard to get any traction on criticizing yeah yeah but i mean but i mean if you can't understand what the man is saying you know yeah you can't uh uh uh judge they can judge nothing yeah yeah nothing to judge right yeah i think that's what turns a lot of people off from philosophy they take these intro courses and none of these guys make any sense yeah yeah yeah and their revulsion is actually a healthy reaction in a while yeah yeah yeah the incoherence of what's being taught yeah yeah yeah i just remember that even from 20 years ago i thought i have such a stupid way of thinking yeah yeah well there's a lot of that speaking themselves wise they become like foolish or something like that all right i want this dr burke i have a different question that i'm dying to ask in all seriousness i'll understand if you smile but i've been thinking about this for over 25 years it has to do with food it has to do with modern processing of food it has to do with at what point do we process and abuse our food where it becomes a non-food i suppose you get particularized by asking addressing is a hostess twinkie food or is it i mean it's funny how they they have these cheeses they don't even say it's a food they say it's a food product you ever notice that and it gets even funny because then they say it's a non-dairy food product so in all seriousness i wonder you know sometimes about of course that has real practical implications as far as what one eats okay you know it seems to go to and i um maybe this is closer to the you know standard philosophy playbook or something but i never quite understood the real answer to the riddle which philosopher was it he's got the wooden boat he takes the one plank and puts it over here and it's still a wooden boat it's just missing a plank he takes another plank and at some point there's like half a boat here and half a boat there but where's the boat and then who was that uh maybe it's not a standard philosophy illustration i thought it was from someone but it seems similar with the twinkie where you start with i don't know what the wrong thrill is i think there's some cornmeal you know at what point the cornmeal no longer cornmeal because it's been so denatured that's the part of what i think about how much of our food is denatured it's no longer no longer has its proper nature it's been it's sort of like help me out here at any point well no i mean there's uh that's very uh involved those things about the food you know the thing i i noticed you know that um that in some of the uh supermarkets now you know they have a better bread now than used to have years ago oh sure and one thing i noticed about certain kinds of bread i don't know going back to my my toaster you know yeah um um my wife brought home this uh it's called italian boule boule and and um and uh you just you slice a long thing and piece of it just put in this because it's a long toaster and uh uh uh when i first had it i had to put up a nine you see see why if you had some of this you know cheap white american bread you know which you don't use in the house 100 bread yeah yeah you'd probably put on three or four right yeah yeah i'd like to know something's there right you know we burned up you know you see that's right but um i know people you know who make their own bread too you know and uh and uh and uh but this this you know there's joey remarkable america you get all these other things but the basic things like bread you can't cook good bread here right and uh probably even these uh uh stick blows you get over in france originally are better than what our stick blows are but they're they're imitating some of these things and they're getting better at them you know but they usually charge much more for them yeah that's true you know but but but the taste of the bread is much better you know and um my father-in-law has been dead not many years you know but one part of his life he was a baker right and he used to court his wife that way he'd come you know babies have already hours and so and he'd come by and he'd drop some little putties off the house there you know they'd be in power with the whole family obviously you know but but he used to make you know uh especially you know maybe sunday morning when he's home you know he's a working man really but he'd make some bread right you know and maybe after mass we'd stop by and get a loaf of his bread you know and we started consuming that my wife and i and the kids you know yeah i was the whole loaf way home you know it's so good you know it's that fresh fresh bread you know and uh so um but uh there's one colleague of mine there used to mark how his father you know thoughts a little of our ordinary american bread you know Okay. So, everybody here? Yes. Let's say our little prayer. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor. Pray for us. And help us to understand all that you've written. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. So, in these last two chapters, Thomas informs us that Aristotle's going to talk about the order, right, among the powers, huh? Now, order, as you know, means what? Before and after, right? And what sense of before and after is Aristotle bringing out the order among these powers? Is it before in time or before in being? Or before in the... Discourse of reason or before in goodness? It's before goodness or being. Okay. Which is it? With the nutritive soul, or to put it in English, the feeding soul, right? Is that before the other in goodness or in being? It seems like both. In being? Yeah, yeah. I notice he's going to say, he's going to say that the feeding soul, right? Or the feeding power, if you wish, right? Nutritive, huh? These are... Feeding is more concrete, though. The nutritive, right? But it's referring to that. You could say the feeding soul is before the sensing soul. Okay? Or the feeding powers, maybe. So you say it's there. The feeding powers are before the sense powers. What does that mean, huh? It means that you can have the feeding powers, huh? Powers of feeding and growing and reproduction, right? Without having the sense powers in bodies, right? And that's obvious in the case of the fact that the plants, right? Have the power to, what? Grow and reproduce themselves, nourish themselves, huh? But they don't have the sense powers, right? But the animals, huh? Have, what? The sense powers in addition, right? But they couldn't be without being able to, what? Nourish themselves, huh? And if they couldn't reproduce themselves, right? They would, what? Cease to be, too, right? But notice, the sensing soul has what the feeding soul has and something more in addition. So the feeding soul has only a part of what the sensing soul has. But which is better? The part or the whole? The whole. The whole, yeah. So the sensing soul is better than the feeding soul, right? Okay? And the sense powers are higher powers than the, what? Powers of feeding, right? And more material and so on. But Aristotle here is talking about the order in being, right? Yeah. He's saying how the feeding soul, or the feeding powers, can be without the sensing powers, but not vice versa. Okay? And then you can say also that the sensing soul, or the sensing powers, right, is before the understanding soul, right? The thinking soul, huh? Again, the understanding soul is better than the sensing soul, right? But you can have, in bodies, huh? You can have the sensing powers without having the ability to understand. And the other animals have the sensing powers without the ability to understand the infertile. But the understanding soul, as we saw before, its object is that what it is, is something sensed or imagined. So the understanding soul is not without the sensing soul, but the reverse is possible, right? And again, the understanding soul is to the sensing soul, like a whole is to, what? Hearts, huh? Sometimes, you know, Thomas will speak of the soul as a potestative whole, right? Meaning what? It's got all these powers, right? But you have the fullness of the power in the understanding soul. You have a part of that, right, in the sensing soul, and a part of that in the, what, feeding soul, right? Okay, in the vegetative soul, if you want to call it that, right? Okay, now, in addition to that, he's going to point out one more thing, right? That among the sense powers, huh? The sense of touch is before the senses that know things at a distance, right? Okay? Now, the sense of taste is sort of in between, but to some extent, the sense of taste is a... Touch. Touching power, yeah, it involves contact. He's saying the touching powers, therefore, right, are before the eyes and the ears and the smell, the senses that know things at a distance through a medium like air or water, something like that. So, the sense of touch is before the senses that know things at a distance through an exterior medium. Again, what you're saying there is that the sense of touch can be without those other senses, those higher senses that are called sometimes, huh? So, in these lowly forms of life that don't move from one place to another, these lowly forms of animal life, huh? That are attached to the floor of the ocean, and their food comes to them, right, with the movement of the waters, huh? Well, they seem to have the sense of touch. If you stick a pen in them, they attack as if they were in pain, right? And if something edible comes in contact, they will take it in and so on, right? But the higher animals, their food doesn't come to them. The cat has to go, what, hunting its food, right? And, therefore, it needs those senses whereby you can know something at a distance, huh? The sense of smell, right? It's amazing how insects and vultures and even dogs and so on have a sense of smell that directs them to something that is dead or something that's edible, right? And, of course, the eyes and the ears are important, right? So, those that have eyes and ears or a sense of smell, they have those senses that know things at a medium. They also have a sense of touch, but not everything has a sense of touch as, what, the other senses, huh? So, getting a sense of touch is before in being, huh? And you can lose your other senses. I can go blind and deaf and be like a Helen Keller or somebody, you know? And yet, you need a sense of, what, touch. If that goes, then really the animal is, what, dead, right, huh? So, you have one, two, three, four, at least four here, huh? Befores, right? That, um, I'm not going to be made explicit in these last two chapters, huh? But, as we said before, before and after is what is meant by order, right? So, Thomas says he's talking now about the order among these power, right? But, order in the second sense of before. If you want to say order in the sense of better, well, then you can say reverse, maybe, huh? Those that have the higher senses. are better than those that just have the sense of touch. And the understanding soul is better than the sensing soul, and the sensing soul is better than the feeding soul or the plant soul, right? Okay? So in the first paragraph, he's talking about the beforeness, the priority. People are always talking about getting your priorities straight now, you know, but it means you're before, right? The things you put before others, right? What they don't realize, though, is what? That getting your priorities straight involves more than one sense of prior or before, right? I mean, if I say, you know, I've got so much money that I earn, and I'm going to buy Shakespeare before I buy, let's say, comic books, right? Well, that sense of before is what? Well, it's better to have an edition of Shakespeare than to have some comic books, right? Okay? But if I say I'm going to feed my family before I buy Shakespeare, right, that's before now in the sense of what? Being, right? In other words, I've got to have this first. I've got to, you know, have something to live on, right, before I can use my money for the higher things and the better things, right? You see? So it's better to, what, read Shakespeare than to eat. But it's more necessary to, what, eat than to read Shakespeare, right? So if you can't eat the Shakespeare value, you'd better buy the food before you buy the Shakespeare. See? So people don't stop and realize when they say priorities, they're using, of course, an obscure Latin word, right, or origin, or Latin origin for the common everyday word of before, right? And they don't realize that there's more than one sense of what? Before, right? Our children are going to go to grade school before they go to college, right? Does that mean that a grade school education is better than a college education? No, but you have to have that before in maybe the first sense and maybe in the second sense, right? Maybe in the third sense, right? But not in the fourth sense, right? So they'll realize how many things are involved. So he says it is necessary, therefore, for everything that lives and has a soul to have the, what, feeding soul, right? The nutritive soul, right? From generation to their, what, destruction. For it is necessary for what comes to be to have growth, right? And then maturity, and then finally, what? Shrinking, huh? Diminition, right? Well, these are impossible without, what, food, right? But you could also say that without food, you can't stay in being, right? So this kind of soul or this kind of powers that are involved in that kind of soul are before in being the other kinds of soul and other kinds of power. It is necessary, therefore, that the feeding power is in all things being born and diminishing. But it is not necessary that sense be in all living things, huh? And notice again, that word necessary usually is tied up with that second sense of before, right? You may recall the contrast between necessary and before in the premium to wisdom. And Aristotle is showing that wisdom is the most divine knowledge. And he ends up by saying, every other knowledge is more necessary than wisdom, but none is better. Yeah. I sometimes, I tell you what I say to the students there, huh? I say, which is better, to breathe or to philosophize? I told you this before, right? And of course, I know what they're going to answer, to breathe, right? Okay? And then I say to them now, why do you say that it's better to breathe than to philosophize? And usually the reason they'll give is that if you're not breathing, you won't be doing anything else, right? Yeah. But I say, you've just shown me that breathing is more necessary than philosophizing. You've shown that you can breathe without philosophizing. But you can't philosophize without breathing, right? So you've shown me that breathing is before philosophizing in the second sense of before. Yeah. It can be without the other, but not face-to-face. You haven't shown me it's before in the fourth sense of before. That it's better. You've committed the most common mistake the father of logic says that we make. Mistake for mixing up senses of the same word, right? But isn't that, is that, it's not correct to say that breathing is before philosophizing? In the second sense it is. Sure, but that's correct though, isn't it? That's correct, yeah. But they're concluding, the question wasn't which is more necessary, the question was which is better, right? Breathing or philosophizing, right? And they are showing me, they're claiming that breathing is better, right? But the reason they gave me is that being, that breathing is before philosophizing in the second sense. That's not to show it's before in the fourth sense. See? It's like if someone said, you know, well, Chaucer came before Shakespeare, therefore he's better than Shakespeare, right? Well, he's before in the first sense of before. He's before in time, right? Does that mean before in the sense of better? No, see? You can't conclude because he's before in one sense, that he's therefore before in another sense, can you? That's like saying, you know, Chianti is a dry wine, what is dry is not wet, therefore Chianti is not wet, right? Or Roger Merris said 61 homens of the bat, the bat is a flying rodent, therefore it's 61 homens of the flying rodent. Flying mouse, as the Germans call it, the fly mouse. See? That's obviously a bad argument, right? Now, I say you can come back and say, well, if it's worse to stop breathing than to stop philosophizing, isn't the opposite of the worse better? That would be a stronger way to state your argument, huh? Okay? But, come back again, right? Usually the opposite of the worse is the better, right? And the opposite of the worst is the best, right? But there's an exception to that, right? And that is when the, what? Opposite of the, what? Worse is before in being, okay? Then it's, what? The worse is not the opposite of the, what? Better. You see? Now, can you illustrate that somehow? Okay, which is better, huh? Letters or words? Yeah, yeah. Of course, the reason for saying that is that letters are for the sake of words, right? Yes. And the end is always better, yeah. And the whole is always better than the part, yeah. Okay? But which is worse? To have no words or to have no letters? No letters. That's why. Yeah. Why? Because if you had no letters, you wouldn't have any words either. Yeah, okay. You see? Sure. So, letters are before words, right? In the sense of being, right? Letters can be without words. Right. But words do not be without, what? Letters, right? Right. Okay? So, to not have letters is worse than not to have words. Right. But words are still better than letters. So, the exception, you see? If I say to somebody, which is worse, to go blind or to go deaf? Right. And most people will say that's worse than to go blind. Right. than to go deaf, right? Well, then seeing must be better than hearing, right? Because the privation of seeing, namely blindness, is worse than the privation of hearing, deaf. Okay? But notice, there's no order of being there between seeing and hearing, right? I can see without hearing, and vice versa, right? Okay? But when the lesser, what's not so good, right, is before the greater in being, right, then the loss of the lesser is greater. It's like with the three theological virtues, right? Which one is the greatest? Love. Yeah. Love and charity is the greatest, right? And actually, hope is greater than what? Faith. Okay? But, which is worse, to lose charity or to lose hope? It's worse to lose hope. Yeah. And to lose faith is the worst of all. Because if you lose faith, you lose hope and charity, right? If you lose charity, you still could have hope, right? And maybe regain your charity, right? See? But if you lose faith, you've lost everything. You see the idea? Yeah. Which is better, I say, bricks or a brick house, a brick patio or something like that? You're going to pay more for a brick house than for a pile of bricks, right? Sure. See? So, a brick house is better, or a brick patio is better than bricks. Bricks are for the sake of brick houses and patios and so on, right? But what should be worse? To not have a brick patio or not to have bricks? See? Well, because bricks are before brick patio and being, to lose bricks would be to lose brick houses and brick patios too. So, when the lesser good is before the greater good in being, then the loss of the lesser good is worse than the loss of the greater good. You see? So, it's kind of a double whammy there to see the different senses of before, right? When they first argue, right, that breathing is better than philosophizing, they do so because if you're not breathing, you won't be doing anything else, right? In which case, they're showing that breathing is before philosophizing in the second sense of before. It can be without philosophizing but not vice versa. But it's obviously a mistake and way of thinking to say that because it's before in the second sense, therefore it's before in the fourth sense. Any more than to say because Chaucer's before Shakespeare in the first sense of before, therefore he's before him in the fourth sense, right? Or because you are before your parents in what? My knowledge, right? I know you before your parents, therefore you're before your parents in time, right? Right? Obviously, that's the most common mistake that the human mind makes. And the students make it all the time in that matter, right? But then I say, but you could state your argument more strongly, I tell them, right? By saying that the opposite, that the worst is the opposite of the what? Better, right? Okay? And that's probable, right? And that's true for the most part. But it's not always true, right? See? When the lesser good is before the greater good in being, right? Then the loss of the lesser good is worse than the loss of the what? Greater good, huh? I used to tell them, you know, I say, when I was a little boy, they used to ask us, you know, if eating too much candy or something, do you eat to live? Or do you live to eat, right? See? And, of course, the answer is supposed to be you're supposed to eat to live, right? So if eating is for the sake of living, then living is better than what? Eating. Eating, yeah. Now, some people might be, you know, might be confused about which is better, living or eating, right? But I say, I don't know anybody who thinks that they live for the sake of breathing. Do you live for the sake of breathing or do you breathe for the sake of living? Well, he was going to say that they live for the sake of breathing, right? So he might say they live for the sake of eating, but not breathing, right? So breathing is for the sake of living, and the end is always better, right? Then living is better than breathing, right? So whether your end in life is to eat or to philosophize, your end is something other than breathing, right? So breathing is a means to something else, and the end is always better than the means. So you see, our fundamental is that text and the categories of the senses of before, and the students are mixing up. The second and the fourth sense, when they first argue, right, that breathing is better because if you're not breathing, you won't be doing anything else. That's true. But that's the reason to say it's before in the second sense, not that it's before in the fourth sense. And so they're making what they call the fallacy of equivocation, right? But it's a mistake from not distinguishing two different senses of a word and thinking that where there's one word, there's one what? Meaning, yeah, yeah. But then, as I say, when you try to strengthen their argument and say, hey, but the opposite of the worse is better, right? Because that's a probability, right? And for the most part, you know, we can argue, right? If blindness is worse than deafness, right? Then to see is better than to hear, right? Okay? If to murder a man is worse than to kill a cat around here, right? Well, then a man must be better than a cat, right? But notice, between the man and the cat, there's no order of being, is there? Okay? Now, it's the same way here. If someone said to you, which is better, plants or animals? Are animals for the sake of plants or are plants for the sake of animals? Plants for the sake of animals. Yeah. It says in the Bible there, right? Yeah. You know, he's appointed the plants not only for us, but for the other animals, right? Yeah. So the animal is better than the plant, right? Yeah. And we saw that the animal is what? More of a whole, right? And the whole is better than the part. But, which would be worse? To have no animals or to have no plants? To have no plants. Yeah. If you have no plants, you're not going to have any animals either. Right? See? So, because plants are before animals in, what, being, right? If all animal life, in some sense, depends upon plants, either immediately or, you know, through animals that eventually do, you have plants, right? Then the plants can be without the animals but not vice versa. Therefore, the loss of plants, huh, would be worse, right? It could still be vegetarians, you know. We'll have our steak, but you can be vegetarians, you can survive, right? Let's see. Do you see that? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Cool. So it's kind of striking, as they say, the metaphysics there. I mean, there's how so much awareness, you know. Ends up, you know, the premium there to wisdom, and he says, you know, every other knowledge then is more necessary than wisdom, but none is better. It's better than all the rest. But, you know, hunting, the art of hunting and the art of farming are more necessary than wisdom, huh? Okay? Necessities before and being. Yeah. And transiting. Yeah. Eating is before philosophizing in the second sense, right? But philosophizing is better, right? Yeah. So when people talk about their priorities, they've got to take into account really more than one sense of before, right? See? In other words, if I have so much money that I make a month or my salary or whatever it is, right, I'm going to buy the necessities of life for myself and my family, right? Before I buy those things that are not necessary to live with, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. My children are starving and freezing. I'm not going to buy them philosophy books or even one of the Goose Ryan books, right? I'm going to buy them food and clothing, right? You see? But then there are other things, right, where I have a certain amount of money, apart from the necessities of life, right? And now I can buy what? I'm going to buy a novel or buy the Bible first, right? I'm going to buy a comic book or Shakespeare first, right? Well, neither one is the necessities of life, right? So there I'm going to buy what's before in the sense of what? Being, right? If I go into the record shop there, I'm going to buy some CDs, right? I'm going to buy Mozart before I buy Beethoven, right? I got all Mozart, then I might start to buy some Beethoven, but buy the Mozart before, right? But there I'm just considering which is better, right? You see? But when I buy the food before the Mozart or the food before the Shakespeare, then I'm looking at another sense of before there, right? I have to feed myself and my family before I can introduce them to Shakespeare and Mozart and the higher things, right? You see? And even the missionary, right, huh? You see? He might feed the people before he, what? Instructs them, right, huh? Mother Teresa there, she picks somebody up on the streets there, right? And she might feed the person before she talks to them about God, right? You see? Okay? If somebody goes unconscious, you try to revive them, you know, start philosophizing with them, do you? You see? So it's kind of funny. You know, at first I think we're the naive one when we say that to philosophize is better than to breathe, right? As if we didn't know that you have to breathe or to philosophize, right? You see? But they're actually making the most common mistake, huh? Aristotle calls it the most democratic mistake. Demiocitas in the physical refutations, right? This one for mixing up the sense of the word. I told you, you know, how they mix up the word, the two senses of end, huh? End in the sense of destruction, right? Mm-hmm. I tell you about this, I think I told you about the one before where a student was arguing, you know, that nature cannot be acting for an end because then all things would come to an end and all things have not come to an end. Therefore, nature is not acting for an end, right? Mm-hmm. Well, on one of the recent exams there, the student had, we'd been comparing the goods of the soul, the goods of the body, and outside goods and the disagreement between Socrates and the Athenians. And eventually we reasoned that the inside goods, the goods of the body and the goods of the soul are better than the outside goods because the outside goods are for the sake of the inside goods and the end is better. And then we argue that the goods of the soul are better than the goods of the body because they're closer to the end of man, which is the act with reason according to virtue and so on. Mm-hmm. Well, this guy, Chris, is understanding end in the sense of what? End of time, right? You know, because at the end. So he's saying that the goods of the soul are better because they come later in time, later in life. Mm-hmm. Well, then death would be the best thing in life because that comes right at the end of life, right? You see? There's no reason to say it's better, right? That it comes later in life, right? You see? That's not the end that is the reason we're saying something is better, right? It's end in the sense of that for the sake of which. Sure. But it's a common mistake. The students are making it all the time, you see, and about these fundamental things, huh? Now, 286, he says, but it is not necessary. That's what got me going there, huh? The word necessary, right, huh? But it is not necessary that sense be an all living thing, huh? But that's not to deny that to have sense in addition to feeding and growing and reproducing is better, right, than to just have what the plant has, right? But he's talking now about the order in what? Being, right, huh? But it is not necessary that sense be an all living things. For that of which the body is simple cannot have touch. Aristotle will often point that out. In the case of touch, as opposed to eye, say, huh? Or the tongue, huh? My tongue, for example, is not sugary or bitter or salty, right? If my tongue was sugary, would I be able to taste everything? I'll taste sugary, right? If my eye, you know, had a green fluid in there, like in the Wizard of Oz, everything would look green, right? But the eye, the fluid in there can be lacking any color, right? The tongue can be lacking any taste really. But can the organ of touch, excuse me, can the body be without anything hot or cold or any warmth? No. Or hardness and softness, right? So the sense of touch has to be kind of a, what? A mean between hot and cold, right? Between hard and soft, right? And therefore you can sense things better that are, what? Not the same as your body, right? So when I get into the shower, and I have the water on there, I feel the warmth of the water more when I first get in, right? And after I've been in there for a while, and my body's been changed itself, so my body's become warmer, I don't feel the warmth as much, do I? Then maybe I turn the hot water on even more or something like that, right? You see that? You go into the ocean, excuse me, you go into the ocean, you know, it's kind of cold at first, right? You go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean, you go into the ocean. Yeah. And it's kind of dense and then it's kind of what? Puffs on it. Yeah, yeah. If my hand was like whipped cream or something like that, it wouldn't do that, right? But if my hand was like glass or something like that, you know, or stone, you'd have to, you know, it wouldn't give way at all. If it did, you wouldn't come back, right? See, it's kind of a mean between hard and soft there, hot and cold. So, and part of the thing that you notice in the higher animals, and especially man, who has the best sense of touch, is that he has this more or less constant body temperature. Okay. For some of the lower forms of life, you know, they don't have this constant body temperature. So they don't have as good a, what, sensing of hot and cold as we do, right? Not as sensitive to it as we are. Yeah. So Aristotle is saying that a simple body, and of course, for the Greeks, the simple bodies were earth, air, fire, and water, right? And things like fire would be, what, excessively hot, right? They wouldn't have that mean between the qualities that's necessary for the sense of touch. So he'll, many times in here, say that a simple body couldn't have sense, right? And that's against the position of Plato and the Platonists who spoke of their being. Creatures like Ariel there in Shakespeare, right? These kind of air, air daimons, you know, that they speak of. Tom is always quoting Apuleius or somebody, talking about them. But they were kind of immortal animals made out of air. And there might be some other ones made out of fire or something. But if you're made out of some extreme like that, you couldn't have the, what, sense of touch, huh? Which requires kind of a mean between these qualities, huh? Okay, got another question? Would you like a mean? Would you like a mean? Would you like a mean? Would you like a mean? Would you like a mean? Would you like a mean? Would you like a mean? Would you like a mean? Or if you get something really bad in your eye, you want to... No, no, no, no. Maybe just tired or something, you know, too much reading or too much looking at the computer or something. Yeah, okay. You need one of these? No, it's okay. But it's not necessary that sense be in all living things, for that of which the body is simple cannot have touch. Nor is it possible that anything be an animal without this. So we define what an animal is as opposed to a plant. That it have, what? Sense, right? No, whatever is not receptive of the species of the form without the matter. Well, we already saw that as being characteristic even of the senses, huh? That, take my example again, even there in the shower, right? I know the warmth of the water, I feel the warmth of the water more when I first get in than after I've been in there for a while, right? So that when the warmth of the water is received as the warmth of my own body, I don't perceive it. The same way out there in the ocean, right? When the coldness of the water there in the ocean, right? When that becomes the temperature of my own body, to some extent, huh? I don't feel the coldness so much, right? So really what's involved in knowing is receiving, right, the form of another, what you call species here, right? Not as your own, but as what? Other, right? Receiving the warmth of the water as the warmth of the water, not of your own body. When I see, you know, some color, I see the red there. I'm receiving the red of that object, not as the color of my own body, right? But as the color of that body out there, okay? So not everything has sensation, especially not a simple body, right? But any body that's not able to receive the species or form without the matter cannot, what, sense, huh? But it is necessary that the animal has sense, and he's going to show this first of all in regard to the higher senses, if nature does nothing in, what, vain, huh? Now, we saw before that nature, what, acts for an end, huh? And he studied the four kinds of causes falling upon that, huh? Of course, you find the same statement in the first rule of reasoning there in Sir Isaac Newton, right? Nature does nothing in vain, huh? For all things which are by nature are for the sake of something, or there will be something, what, fouling upon those things which are for the sake of something. If, therefore, now he's thinking of the higher animals, the animals that move from one place to another. If, therefore, every forward-moving body, every body that moves from one place to another, did not have sense, they would be destroyed and not arrive at the end, which is the work of nature. For how will it feed, right? How will the lion feed, say, if it doesn't, what, see the giraffe or whatever it is, right, that's going to eat, right? How could it chase it, right, and run it down and grab it, right? Well, to those stationary animals, those animals that seem to be like plants that are affixed to the floor of the ocean, they don't need the sense of, what, seeing or hearing or smelling, right? Because their food comes to them, right? What advantage that they have, right? It comes to them with the movement of the, what, of the water in the ocean there, huh? But the lamb is not going to come to the lion, right? The sheep is not going to come to the fox, right? The fox has got to go in pursuit of it. And therefore, he needs these senses that are the senses of distance, huh? Now, in 388, huh, he's coming to, now, this third order here, that the, uh, a second order got on the border, that the sensing soul is before the understanding soul, right? Of course, we saw that in our study of the, in our study of the understanding soul, that the object of the understanding soul is the what it is, huh? Of something sensed or imagined, huh? The what it is, especially if a natural or mathematical thing, huh? So you don't have, in, uh, these mortal bodies and so on, mortal things, an understanding without having, what? Senses, huh? Okay? It's not possible that a body have a soul and a discerning mind, huh? Now, this, again, is referring to the, what? Uh, rational mind, huh? Okay. So the Greek word there is nun, the genitive of mind, nous, huh, understanding. Kritikon, right? Okay? The, um, actually, that's the Greek word for what? Judging, huh? Which you could translate, maybe, as discerning, too, huh? Uh, what's the definition of judging, huh? You get that definition? It's, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, would it be the act of, um, deciding the true or the false? Yeah, yeah. But very often we use the word separating there in defining it, right? Okay. So you say judging is the separating of the true from the false by some beginning in our knowledge, huh? Okay. Okay? Or the separating of the good from the bad, right? By some measure, some beginning in our knowledge, huh? So, you're sitting, you're not sitting. Your sitting is true, you're not sitting is false, right? I'm separating the true from the false by some beginning. What beginning is it that I'm separating them by in this case? What's the beginning of our knowledge? Oh, yeah, the senses. Yeah, yeah, see? So it's by my senses that I'm separating the true statement, you are sitting, from the false one, that you are not sitting now. Okay? But when I separate, when I say now, um, no odd number is even, some odd number is even. Which is the true, which is the false one. Maybe based on the definition, the beginning. Yeah. But I mean, I would separate no, odd number is even, that's true. Some odd number is even, that's false, right? I separated the true from the false. But here, the beginning would be maybe the definitions of odd and even, right? If an even number is a number divisible into, uh, two equal parts, right? And an odd number is a number not divisible into equal parts, right? Then by, those definitions which are beginnings in my knowledge, right? Not the very first beginning, right? But they're beginning in geometry or in the science of numbers, right? Then I judge that no odd number is what? Even, right? Okay. Or when I say, for example, that all right angles are equal, right? Or if I said, an obtuse angle is greater than a, what? Acute angle, right? I go back to the definition of obtuse, right? Acute angle. So, in general, that's what judgment is, right? It's a separating of the true from the false by some beginning in our knowledge, right? Okay? Maybe going back to the beginning of that science, huh? Ultimately, we go all the way back to what our sense is because that's the very first beginning of our knowledge. And that's why we express our judgments using the word sense. Nonsense! That doesn't make sense. See? Or that does make sense, right? Right? And a man of good judgment is a, what? Sensible man, right? A man of good sense, right? Good judgment. Okay? Because we judge or separate the true from the false by some beginning in our knowledge. And the very first beginning in our knowledge is the sense of some. And that's why, you know, in a dream, right, we tend to very often be deceived in a dream. Right? Oh, yeah. Because we're cut off from our senses, huh? Yeah, yeah. Shakespeare says, Awake your senses that you made a better judge.