De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 59: Touch as the Foundational Sense and Animal Life

Transcript
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Okay, so it'd be out of your senses, it'd be out of your mind. So he says, it is not possible that a body have a soul and a discerning mind, a judging mind, while not having sense, not being stationary, but still, what, general, right? Now, as Thomas says, there's some question about what this next part of the text there refers to, you know, and Thomas considers, is he thinking about the heavenly bodies, or is he thinking about these bodies that the Platonists laid down, right? Okay, and a little bit like the way Shakespeare presents Ariel there in the Tempest, this air-like creature, right? Okay, which they thought were kind of like eternal things, right? They didn't die, they're immortal, huh? But indeed, neither the ungenerable, for who I would not have sensation, for it is better either for the soul or for the body, but now it is neither, right? For the soul will not understand more in not having the senses, for the body will be none the more through that. Therefore, no non-stationary body has soul without sense, huh? Let's leave that as being somewhat obscure, what I was actually referring to there, huh? But if, in fact, it has sense, it is necessary for the body to be simple or mixed, but it is not possible that it be simple, for it will not have touch, but it is necessary to have this, huh? Okay. Now he's going to go on and talk a little bit about how the sense of touch is before the senses in known through an exterior medium, right? That one can have the sense of touch without having the sense of sight or smell or something, right? But not, what, vice versa, right, huh? Okay. And one can be deprived of the higher senses, right? And still have the sense of touch, yeah? But if an animal is deprived of the sense of touch, it's going to involve its, what, death, right, huh? Sense of touch is that basic sense, huh? Well, Aristotle sees a connection here that if you heat a man up too much, right, cool him down too much, you finish off the man, right, huh? Okay. And you hit him with something hard, right, finish the man off, right? So the very life of the animal depends upon what? A certain mean, yeah, of tangible qualities, right? Like hot and cold, right, huh? He'd kill a man if he'd get him too hot, right? Put him in a furnace, right? But put him in a cooler, right? He's going to die too, right? You see? So he's going to point out here that the sense of touch is tied up with those qualities that are basic to our very life, right? Why, if I eat something, you know, or smell something that's very pungent and strong, it might permanently or temporarily affect my sense, right, but not kill me, right? Or if you make sounds too loud, you can, what, make my ear deaf, right? Or if you, you know, shine light in my face too long, you know, where they torture guys during the Spanish Civil War, you know, you prop the eye open with a toothpick, you know, and you shine a light in there until the guy goes blind, huh? You see? But that happens up in the mountains too, right, where the sunlight is up there and a man is left up there without maybe, you know, any protection of the eyes and the sun eventually, what, could blind the eyes, right? But it doesn't kill you, right? But you give a man too much heat, you destroy not just the sense of touch, but you destroy the man himself, right? So he's pointing out how the sense of touch is what's most basic here, huh? For since the animal is a in-souled body, a body that has a soul, right? I think we mentioned before how the Latin-derived word animal comes from what? Anima meaning soul, right? And we still even call living matter animate matter, right? Meaning matter that has a soul. For since the animal is an in-souled body, and every body is tangible, right? Well, the tangible is what is sensible by touch. It is also necessary for the body of the animal to be tactile if the animal is to be saved. For the other senses, the higher senses, sense through something, what? Different through some kind of a, what, exterior medium there, right, huh? Smell, sight, and hearing, right? But being touched, if it will not have sense, it will not be able to flee something and grasp others, huh? So you can't, what, get out of the fire, right? You don't have a sense of touch, right? You just, you know, you float on the fireplace and you just lay there and burn. Have the end of you, right? So it's kind of a necessity, right, to have the sense of touch for the animal to survive, right? Because the sense of touch is a, what, sense of those qualities that are able to, what, destroy the animal, right? Whence also, he says, taste, huh? Taste is sort of in between, huh? It's like a certain touch, huh? Taste, in a way, is in between the sense of touch, right? And the senses of the exterior, right? It's like the sense of touch insofar as you need, what, contact, right, huh? And it's a more intrinsic thing in that sense, huh? Thomas has a long discussion of taste there when he's explaining the words in the Psalms, you know. Taste and see how sweet is the Lord, right? I don't know why they use the word taste there rather than, you know, hear. There's some other sense, right? Whence also taste is like a certain touch, for it is a food, while food is a tangible body, right, huh? Nevertheless, the sense of, what, taste is a, what, a little more spiritual sense than the sense of touch, huh? It's interesting how we borrow the word taste there and we apply it to, what? To wisdom? Yeah, but even to, what, you know, appreciation of good music, right? Oh, yeah. You know, he's got good taste in music, right? He's got good taste in paintings or in architecture, something like that, right? Okay. We speak, you know, the, you know, wine taster, right? Having good judgment, right? Why is that, you think, huh? Well, it's because the sense of taste is a little more, what, spiritual, right? A little more concerned with knowing, right, than touch, huh? Okay? So it makes some sense for people to have a wine tasting where they taste different wines and they're trying to judge these wines and evaluate them and so on, huh? But to go around feeling things and judging them would be kind of ridiculous, I think, you know? I'm going to spend two hours here feeling things, you know? But it's kind of sophisticated to sit around, you know, taste wines and judge them and so on, huh? But sound and color and smell do not feed as such, right? The idea that food is, what, the warm and the dry and liquid is the wet and the cool, right? But those are sense qualities, huh? And they bring about neither growth nor diminution. Whence also is necessary for taste to be a certain touch because it is a sense of the tangible and the nutritive. These are, therefore, necessary things for the animals and it's apparent that an animal without touch is not possible, right? So you're seeing the necessity of touch there, right, for the very being of the animal. So when the cat back home there in St. Paul jumped on the stove one day, right, smelling something good cooking up there that my mother was cooking, right? She fell to the ground and got singed, you know? But, I mean, that was a sense of touch, right? It wasn't the sense of smell, right? Saving her life is a sense of touch, huh? See? That, too. Yeah. And we say just put our hand on something hot without realizing it. You know, than me. The other senses, over, are more for the sake of what? Well-being, right? For the sake of the good life, right? And are not in any chance kind of animal. But it's in those higher animals that move from one place to another, right? But in some, as it is necessary... there for them to be in the forward-moving ones. So the animal that moves from one place to another, right, to get its food and shelter and so on, it needs these senses like sight or hearing or smell so it can know things at a what? Distance, right, huh? Okay. For if it is to be saved, it must not only sense being touched, but also from afar, right? In the same way the animal that is, what, running to save its life too, right? You try to sneak up on these animals, right, and they, you know, you have to get on the, what, right side of them because there's a little bit of wind blowing from you towards them. They'll sniff you and they'll take panic and run off, right? You want them to see you? Sometimes they'll put on these disguises, you know, and sneak up to the animal, get close enough to shoot, right, huh? Okay. But the Indians were better at doing that than the white man, right, sneaking up on the animal. So they need those senses, right? So they can smell their enemy, right? Or see them or hear them, right? For if it is to be saved, it must not only sense being touched, but also from afar. But this would be if it is sensitive to a medium, huh? By that medium, suffering, meaning, in the extended sense, they're undergoing, and being moved by the sensible, by the animal itself by that, huh? So the color over there, in some sense, moves the, what, air, right? And the sound moves the air and eventually moves my ear, huh? So he describes, then, the order of the mover and the moved here, huh? The unmoved mover and the moved mover and the moved period, huh? And he's contrasting, you know, something like, you know, if I, it's a common example, always in the ancients, you know, of impressing something upon wax, right? You've seen them, how they would drip the wax in the letter and stamp it, right? But when you stamp the wax, does the shape go all the way through the wax? In the case of water, you know, hit the water and it spreads out a great distance, right? And air even more so, right? You know, if you're knocking something in your house like this, bang, bang, you're ricocheting off the neighbor's house, right? You see? So things like air or even water are mediums that you can propagate something through more easily, he's saying. Thus also an alteration, except that it alters while remaining in the same place. Just as if one would dip something into wax, the wax would be moved so far as the thing was dipped. Yet a stone would not be moved at all, but water even further. The air is moved and brings something about and suffers over the greatest distance. Then he alludes to this strange position of the Patonists, you know, that the way you see is by something going out from the eye to the object and then bouncing back to you, right? It's interesting, in daily speech we speak that way, right? My eyes fell upon something, right? You know? Yeah. Yeah? My eyes focused on the thing, right? Somebody's giving you the evil eye, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Staring at you, you know? I was reading this biography of Pierce there, the biography of Solzhenitsyn, you know? Oh, wow. And he was describing the point where he was taken prisoner, made a prisoner, right? Because he had made some nasty remarks about Staline, et cetera, and so on. So he was sentenced for 10 years or so in the prisons and so on. And of course, you know, very humiliating, you know, when they examine you, when they first come in there, you're naked and so on. There's a huge portrait of Staline, you know, looking down upon you. Man's inhumanity, the man. Yeah, yeah. You really see it in Russia at those times, huh? Let's take our little break here now before we do the 13th chapter, okay? But it's kind of funny. One time I took a sabbatical there and I was studying, you know, the causes of mistakes and so on, right? And I was thinking, you know, and so on. And after a year of doing that, or a semester of doing that, I felt a little bit like this one guy I knew who was a friend of my brother Richard's. And he went in and got a medical degree and I got a... And he went into psychiatry, right, you know? And his impression was, you know, that everybody that he meets in society is just near to going over the edge, you know? Anybody's going to, you know, any day, you know, start acting very strangely. You know, but he has kind of that sense, you know, they're all kind of, you know, tottering, you know, on the edge of insanity. But I kind of reminded that guy, you know, because you get through studying the different causes of error and you see how easily the mind is deceived, right? See? Like my students here, you know, being deceived by the equivocation of these words. How easily the mind is deceived. You know, it's a little bit frightening, you know, to see the human condition, you see? And you can see how reasonable is the fear of mistake that Socrates has, right? Okay, let's look at this last chapter here now. Nothing too much new here, but anyway. He's attacking the Platonist position there that there are these, what, animals made out of fire or air, right? Okay? Shakespeare, as I say in the Tempest there, right, he has that creature called Ariel who's in the service of Prospero, right? And Ariel is a what? An air-like creature, huh? Okay? Well, the poet can do this, right? But can there be such a thing, huh? It is apparent, however, that it is not possible for the body of an animal to be simple, what the Greeks thought was simple anyway, as being fire or of air. Why? Because without touch it can have no other, what, sense, huh? For every ensouled thing is a tactile body, as was said. The others besides earth can become sense organs, but all bring about sensation by sensing through something different and through a medium, huh? Touch-over is by touching them, whence also it has this name. And indeed the other sense organs sense by touch but through something different. It seems that this sense alone is through itself. Whence no body of an animal would be from such elements. Because it couldn't have, what, that medium, that middle ground necessary for the sense of touch, huh? Nor indeed is something earthy. For touch is like the mean of all the tangibles, huh? And the organ is receptive not only of whatever are differences of earth, but also of hot and cold and all the other tangibles. And because of this we do not sense in the bones, right? Because the bones are too what? Hard. Hard, right, huh? And in hair, in other such parts, because they are too what? Earthy, right, huh? It's interesting. Remember the words of King Lear there when he's holding the dead Cordelia in his arms, right? She's dead. Dead is earth. And no plants have sense because of this, that they are of earth, huh? So this is a fairly simple chemistry, right, that Aristotle is using here, right? But the Greeks, from the time of Empedocles on, thought of the matter as being basically what? The fundamental kinds of matter are earth, air, fire, and water, right? And of course, earth seems to be the furthest from what? Life, right? Thus thou art, and to death thou shalt return. Okay, that's referring to death, right, huh? Why the soul, you know, if they think of the soul as being one of these elements, they would think of it usually as being, what, fire or what? Air, yeah. And so the common man and the poets, you know, represent the soul as being an air-like creature, right? And sometimes we compare the soul to, what, fire, huh? Like when Othello comes in, you know, to suffocate Desdemona, right? And he has the candle in his hand, right? And I don't remember the exact words, but, you know, if he puts out the candle, he can again, what? Light it. Light it, right? But if he puts out the life of Desdemona, he doesn't know whether it's that Promethean fire that can illumine here again. Really, really, very beautiful. words, but no one thinks of the soul as being what? Earth, right? And that's why, as they say, when King Neera holds the dead Croydina's arms, she's dead, he wouldn't say dead as fire, or dead as air, but she's dead, dead as what? Earth, you know? So without touch no other sense can be. In this sense, organ is not of earth, nor of any one of the elements, but it involves a what? A mixture of them, right? To get this kind of a mean or middle between extremes, huh? It is apparent, therefore, that necessarily, being deprived of this sense alone, animals die, huh? For it is not possible to have this not being an animal, nor is it necessary now, right? So you're talking about that sense of what can be without others and not vice versa. Nor is it necessary being an animal to have any other sense except what? this, huh? And because of this, the other sensibles, being excessive, do not destroy the animal, like color and sound and smell, but only the, what? Sense orb and the sense power, right? See? So, you know, if you left my eyes open and just, you know, looked at the light, I'd eventually go, what? Blind, right? That's why your eyes are always blinking, right? But if, you know, you taped open my eyes, you know, torturing me like during the Spanish Civil War there, you know? Well, I would eventually go blind, right? But it wouldn't kill me, would it? See? And they say, you know, these young kids, you know, listen to all this crazy music, you know? Well, the ear that's there goes what? Death. Goes deaf and doesn't hear the sounds, huh? I used to, my brother Mark and I used to hear Mark, we worked in the factory there in the summer. And, you know, you work with one of these guys that I've been working on every 20, 30 years, and they're bang, bang, and ooh! You know, hearing that sound. And you think, how can that guy stand that? Well, he doesn't hear that sound anymore. His ear has been, what? Blind. Yeah, he doesn't hear it. And they always say, you know, that a woman's sense of taste or smell is better than a man because the man tend to put too much salt or pepper or mustard or whatever it is, and they burn out their sense of taste, you know? And even, you know, I've been in wine tasting, you know, they say sometimes a woman has to get better, you know, her senses are more sensitive to these things, probably because she works in the kitchen, but also because she doesn't maybe, you know, do the excessive things that a kid does, you know? And to season your food too highly or something, right? And I know if you go to these, some of these Chinese restaurants, you get a hot meal, you know, the really hot meal, right? I remember one time, I got the lunch with my wife and I said, oh, yeah, I'll try the hot thing, you know, and after about four or five bites, I couldn't taste anything more. Just a burning sensation about all there was. And it describes people eating the Indian food there, you know, someone was, I was talking to somebody one time, we were out to dinner there at some conference, and we were talking about England, you know, and, you know, I had heard people say, you know, a place to eat in England is to eat in the Indian restaurants, right? The English restaurants are no good. But anyway, he was describing, you know, these two guys out there, you know, having a contest who could eat the hottest food, you know, and they're just pouring sweat down like that, you know? He says, that's not my idea of how to enjoy a meal, right? But you can see with those kind of excessive things, right, that you're going to, what, burn out the sense organs and maybe not be able to taste things, right? And I guess even maybe things like maybe smoking affected the, like, sense of taste. I remember this one guy I used to eat dinner with sometimes, and he finally gave up smoking, right, you know, and then his senses were kind of gradually coming back, you know. He's discovering the taste of everything again. It's like a kid for the first time, you know, like for years, he wasn't tasting things because of the smoking. I don't know. But I mean, so anyway, I say men tend to, you know, but it doesn't kill you, right? You see? And, okay. And because of this, the other sensibles being excessive do not destroy the animal, but only the sense organ, the sense power. If not accidentally, they might, right? As when, together with the sound, there is a great, what, impulse and a blow, right, huh? Okay, then it could destroy you, right, huh? Okay, or when the air itself is corrupted and so on, huh? And a flavor insofar as it happens at one the same time to be tangible destroys in virtue of this. But the excess of the tangibles of hot or cold or heart kills the animal. For every excess of the sensible kills the sense organ. You remember how Aristotle made use of that fact to give a sign of the difference between the understanding and what? The senses, right? That the senses are our bodies, right? And these bodies are what? Affected by what? Excess of object. But with the understanding, if you think about something very understandable, like God, for example, right, then you come down to lesser things like the triangle, you can understand them, what? Better, right, huh? See? But when you taste something, you know, very hot and something like that, then you can't taste anything else, right? With pizza, my opinion is that pepperoni is the sole pizza, okay? But if you have a lot of pepperoni, see, on the pizza, it kind of destroys your sense of taste at least temporarily, right? So if I drink, you know, say a wine, I could drink a fine wine with pizza, right? Because it wouldn't be able to taste the, what? The wine, see? Or even if I have, you know, I'm not going to drink carboné sauvignon with spaghetti with that tomato sauce, you know, because even that's too strong. You need a chianti or something, you know, that kind of has a strong pickling flavor, right? To balance it, right? The carboné sauvignon, you won't be able to taste it, right? Because, you know, you're being kind of, what, burnt out, right? See? But when you understand something very understandable, you can turn to something less understandable and appreciate it more, right? And I see that, you know, how, you know, men like Charles de Connick or Monsignor Dion and so on, they would have good judgment, you know, about literature or about things of that sort, right? And they're not impeded from their consideration of God that they can come down and understand these things that are much less understandable, right? But they can understand them better because they thought about God, right? You see? But when you get something very strong in taste, like the pepperoni pizza or the sauce or a fortiori, this Chinese food, I mean, this, you know, hot stuff in an Indian restaurant, you know, the three stars where it is, then you're prevented from tasting other things. See that? And that's a sign that there's something bodily there in the sense organs, but that the reason is immaterial, that it's not affected in the way a body would be affected by a very strong object of itself. I like that with love too, isn't it, huh? If you love God, then you can love your neighbor better, right? So if you love something very lovable, like God is most lovable, right? You can love these less lovable things too, like your neighbor better, right? You're not prevented, huh? Whence also the tangible destroys the touch, but the animal is defined by this. For it was shown that it is impossible for there to be an animal without touch. Whence the excess of the tangible destroys not only the sense organ, but also the animal, because it's necessary to have this alone. The animal, however, has the other senses, as was said, not for the sake of being, but for the sake of what? Well-being, right, huh? Although he did say before, for the animals that move from one place to another, they need these ones to be too, though, huh? Okay? Since it is in air or water, or generally since it is in the transparent that we might see, taste due to the pleasure and the painful that it might sense this in food and desire and be moved. So to some extent we have the sense of taste for the good life, right? De fortiori, we have the sense of sight and hearing and so on. I noticed that Thomas in the Summa Contra Gentiles, he says that in the next life there will be the pleasure of the senses that is not incompatible with that life, right? There won't be the pleasure of eating or reproducing, right? Because we'll all be immortal then, right? But there will be the pleasure of the senses that is not incompatible with that life, right? The pleasure of seeing something beautiful with your eyes, because the world will be beautiful, right, and the bodies of the saints will be beautiful, right? And there will be, what, laus vocalis, he says, vocal praise of God, right? So there will be beautiful music for the, what, ear, right? But it's kind of interesting, right, that you have those pleasures, that won't be the greatest pleasures of heaven, but in the higher senses. He kind of gave a very, though, interesting talk there, you know, one time at Assumption in the old days. Stadio Erbusum, it's called. I sit there forever. But he's talking about the importance of the sense of touch, nevertheless, in our life. And one thing he pointed out about the sense of touch, see, if you compare it with the eye, right? The sense of touch is a sense of what? Certitude, huh? Okay? And, you know, kind of a classical example, you know, for a Christian is that of the doubting Thomas, right, huh? That unless you can put his fingers, right, in the side of the lancement, right, and his fingers in the nail holes and so on, he's not going to believe, right, huh? So he's going to trust his sense of touch more than his sense of what? Sight, right? Okay. And, you know, sometimes, I always think of, when I was a little boy there, he used to have these fountain pens, you know, and people would have to have a little bottle of ink and so on. And these things would get spilled, as you know, and so on. And he used to have this little piece of metal, it looks like a pool of ink, you know? And you'd come in and you'd put it on top of your mother's white linen, and, you know, and you'd go, ah, and you'd just come in and so on. But once you put your finger down in the thing, right, you realize that you've been, what? Deceived, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But you trust your sense of what? Touch, right? More than your sense of what? Sight. Of sight, huh? So it's a sense of certitude, right? And the old expression there, the touchstone of certitude, huh? Okay. But it's also the sense of the, what? Interior. A sense of the, what? Inside, right, huh? Okay. And I think I was mentioning how Thomas, in the commentary on the Psalms there, he's talking about the words there, taste and see how sweet is the Lord, right? He's talking about taste insofar as it's a kind of touch, right? And this is said, of course, metaphorically, but the idea that you're knowing God, what? Inwardly, right, huh? Rather than outwardly. Like you tend to know through the eyes or the, what? Ears, huh? So it's the sense of the assertitude and the sense of the interior. And therefore, it's the sense of what? Nature, right? Okay. And also, it's the sense of the, what? Good, right? That's where you first get the idea of good, after the sense of texture. And it's interesting that things like the good in nature that the moderns don't want to talk about, it's because it kind of tied up with the, what? I, right? And with the imagination, which are more mathematical, right? But it's also the sense of what? Sympathy. Or the sense of, what? Pity, huh? Okay. It's interesting how we speak of that, right? Yeah. You know, we're touched with somebody's, what? Misfortune. Right, sure. And I always remember what DeConnick said at one time when you see this famous movie there. What's the one? The one that's set in Vienna there after the war? And that Orson Welles played in and Joseph Cotton and so on. The Third Man. Yeah, The Third Man, yeah. Kind of a haunting movie, you know. But this man is making money out of diluting medicines, right, after the war, right? And people are dying and so on, right? And his old friend, Joseph Cotton, shows up and he begins to realize what Orson Welles is doing, right? And eventually, you know, he cooperates with the authorities, right? Yeah. But they're up to one of these merry-go-round things, you know, these enclosed things that go around like this, you know. And they're looking way way down, the people down in this little, you know, special and done, you know. He says, you know, that's so much money, you know? Oh, wow. But, you know, it's the eyes are looking down for a great distance, right? Oh, yeah. And you're kind of cut off with these people, right? And they're just, as you can see, a number today or something, you know? Sure. There's still specks there from them all, so. But the sense of touch there is where the sense of sympathy, right? So there's a lot to be said for the sense of touch, nevertheless, huh? Interesting, you know, how they find, too, you know, the sense of, in the hospitals, they found out, you know, sometimes that the babies, you know, whose mothers had died or something like that, the baby wasn't developing physically. They've got to be held by the nurses and hugged, you know? And they don't even, you know, develop emotionally, but they don't even develop physically without this kind of, what, of hug, you know? Yeah, yeah. So, let's kind of a brief look at the Dianimo there of Aristotle. We didn't see everything, but I think the next thing to do is to go to the Summa Theologiae now, and to the Prima Pars. And the part I want to read is starting with, what, question 75 and going through, what, 89, right? Okay. And we'll try to do at least two articles each time, maybe, you know? So question 75, I think, has seven articles. You might be looking at the first three articles at least, right? Okay. Okay, but we'll try to go at least to the first two of those, you know? And we're going to meet a lot of the things we saw in here before, but Thomas also asks a lot of other things that Aristotle doesn't explicitly ask here, right? Okay. Okay? So, I think it's good to see, this is the Prima Pars now, this is part of the Summa Theologiae. I think it's good to see the soul, you know, again, some of these things again, and see some other things that don't go out. And as Thomas wrote the Summa, you know, for beginners, in a way. And so, it's a little easier to read in some ways than within the Diyama, and that form has come down to us. But it's good to see this. This is kind of the gateway to eventually understanding the angels, and then ultimately understanding God, right? As Thomas says, I studied the body so I can study the soul. And I studied the soul so I can study the angels. And I studied the angels so I can study God. And I don't say that for anything else. That's it. You know? So, it might be good for us being so central. But this is also central for ethics and for, what, moral theology, right? And central for understanding literature and understanding rhetoric and so on, and logic and so on. In fact, as Aristotle says, that the knowledge of the soul is not only desirable in itself because of what the soul is, but it seems to contribute to all of our knowledge in some way. So, it's good that we study the soul some more. Okay? Notice how the higher senses of the sense of touch, in particular, I mean, excuse me, the sense of sight and the sense of hearing are the senses of the, what, beautiful, right? So, you know, if the food is well prepared, I say, hmm, this is good. But I don't say, this is beautiful, do I? Or even the sense of smell, you might say, ah, it smells good, you know? I don't say it smells beautiful, though, do I? See? But when I hear the music of Mozart, ah, that's beautiful. See? Or I see the beautiful painting, you know, the beautiful fall foliage or something, beautiful sunset, right? You know? You know?