De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 66: The Subsistence of Animal Souls and the Distinction Between Sensing and Understanding

Transcript
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You know, he wasn't quick enough to think of it, you know, because he lost his watch when he fell with the rocks, you know, so his joke was always, Brother Edmund had stolen his watch, you know, because they're the best of friends he's taking. But that was kind of a thing, yeah. So we'll take a little break here before we look at this Article 3. Hi, Sue Mir. I think God, he could come out in the hall if he had a little break, you know, when he said, OK, children, he'd say, come on back. He could do that, though, you know. How could he have so much authority? Nobody seemed to mind him saying that. Let's look at Article 3, yeah? Now, apparently some of the Platonists, and Plato himself, thought that the souls of the beasts were also subsistent, right? OK. So why would anybody think this? Well, to the third article now, one proceeds thus. It seems that the souls of brute animals, the beasts, are subsistent, huh? For man comes together in genus with the other animals. But the soul of man is something subsisting, right? Therefore the souls of the other animals are subsisting. So it's kind of putting the souls all kind of on the same level, right, huh? So if our soul is subsistent, why not the souls of the animals, right? OK. Moreover, the senses have themselves to the sensible things, just as the understanding to the, what, understandables. But the understanding understands understandables without the body, right? Therefore also the senses grasp sensible things without the body, huh? But the souls of the brute animals are sensing, huh? Therefore they are subsisting for a like reason by which the, what, soul of man, right? Which is understanding is subsistent. Third argument, moreover, the soul of brute animals moves the body, right? But the body does not move, but is moved, huh? It's not a mover, but it moves. Therefore the soul of the animal has some operation without the body, right? Namely it's a mover. That's one way to play the argument, right? If the soul moves the body, it does something without the body, right? The soul does not the mover, but the soul is the move. I mean, excuse me, the body is not the mover, but it's the move, right? But the soul is the mover, so it has the operation of moving things without the body, right? OK. Now he's going to solve that by the third book on the soul, and the second and first by the second book on the soul. But against this is what is said in the book of, what, church dogmas, huh? Now Thomas often refers to that, and I guess it's in the patologia, right? But it's probably a little bit like the books we have sometimes, you know, they have a kind of a summary, right? Not a summary, but a collection of texts from the consuls and so on, like the ingredient symbol or, right? OK. So I have some of those books in my house, you know, and you've probably seen some of them. This book comes from Gennadius and Massusensis. Yeah. So it comes maybe from... Falsely Assured to Augustine. Yeah, yeah. By Gennadius. OK. So, I mean, some are taken from church councils and the popes, and some are taken from the church fathers. You've probably seen those ones. Oh, yeah, yeah. The ingredient or something. So this is some book that Thomas said maybe we don't have in that form, but it's things like that, you know? OK. We believe only man has a, what? Substantivum, a subsisting or a substantial soul. A soul that is, you know, able to exist by itself. But the souls of the animals are not, what? Subsistent, huh? Mm-hmm. OK. I answered, ought to be said, that the ancient philosophers made no distinction between sense and, what? Understanding, right? In the modern scientists, there's something like that, too. And they attributed both to a bodily principle, as has been said, huh? OK. Now, Plato, in a way, goes to the opposite extreme, right? Plato distinguished, however, between the understanding and sense. But he attributed both to a, what? Incorporeal beginning or principle. Mm-hmm. Laying down that just as to understand, so also to sense belongs to the soul by itself. If that were true, then we'd follow from this, that also the souls of the brute animals are, what? Subsistent, right? OK. Now, it's interesting, huh? You know how truth is in between two extremes, huh? I've been teaching the Phaedo, right, of Plato there. And I think I mentioned this before, but there's two very probable opinions about what the soul is. And one is the opinion of Socrates there in the Phaedo, that the soul is an immaterial substance, distinct from the body, a complete substance in its own right, and so on. And then there's this other opinion, which is brought in by Simmias, that the soul is the form of the body, but kind of an accidental form. It's the harmony of the body, right, the organization of the body. And perhaps modern biologists, although they wouldn't use the word soul, they would attribute the living of the living body, right, it's being alive, to the organization, the harmony of the body and so on, right? Now, as I mentioned before, as we saw in the definition of the soul, there's a part of the truth in both of those opinions. The soul is something substantial, as Plato saw, but it's not a complete substance. The soul is a form, like the other opinion said, but not an accidental form. The truth about the soul is that it's a substantial form of the body. So there's an element of truth in both of these positions. Now, Socrates, on the basis of his opinion, reasons that the soul existed before the body, and it would exist after the body. Thinking of the soul as being in the body, something like a man in a room. Or a man, the soul is somehow imprisoned in the body, right? And then at death, it's freed from its prison. Well, in that case, you know, you exist in the body, you exist before you're in the body or in the prison, and afterwards, right? Just like I exist before I come into this room, and after I leave this room, I continue to exist, I think I do anyway. Okay? But, Simeon thinks that if the soul, what? is the harm in the body, the organization of the body, it doesn't exist before the body, and it won't exist after the body. The truth is in between those two. Which Aristotle finally saw. That the soul doesn't exist before the body, but it does exist, the human soul, as I say, it does exist after the body, right? Okay? And that's tied up with the element of truth in both cases, huh? Because the soul is subsistent, then it can exist after the body, right? But because it's the form of the body, the soul is created for this body. And therefore, God doesn't create the soul until there's a body for it. That's why your mother and father are important, right? See? Because they provide, in a sense, the body for your soul. Okay? So the soul doesn't exist before the body because it's going to be the form of a body. And so it's naturally created by God when the body's ready for it. But because it's subsistent, it can exist after the body. So the truth is neither what Simmias says, that the soul existed neither before or after the body, the human soul, that is to say, or what Socrates says, that existed before and after. The truth is it didn't exist before, but it will exist after. And likewise, the truth, more fundamentally, about what the soul is, is a substantial form of the body, right? It agrees with Plato and the soul being something substantial. It agrees with Simmias that it's a form. It disagrees with Plato that it's a complete immaterial substance, right? Like an angel imprisoned in the body. And it differs from what? The idea that the soul is an accidental form of the body. So Aristotle takes the part of truth in both, huh? That's kind of a marvelous thing to see that. But here, in a sense, you see something like that, too, because you have the people who would say the human soul is not immortal, right? And then you have the other side that says not only is the human soul immortal, but the souls of the animals are immortal, too. What's your name, Orange? The name of that cat, right? I was reading one of my student papers here this morning there, correcting some paper over the course, and I think this person thinks that the animals go to heaven, too, you know? And so I had to write in the writing to say, pets, dogs and cats do not go to heaven. Just in case I first thought and seen from the text that they were thinking of that, you know? You know, the old answer you're supposed to give as a parent to your child, you know, when the cat dies or the dog dies, you know, and the child says, will my dog or my cat be in heaven? And the answer is, if your dog or your cat is necessary for your happiness, your dog or your cat will be there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear your answer. Yeah. That's the proper answer to give the child, right? You can understand that the dog and cat will be quite unimportant in the next world. Yeah. Another claim is that St. Theo claims, said something somewhere about animals being in heaven. I told her I'd chill in the text. Did Aristotle have the Catholic conception of the soul coming from God? Yeah, yeah. He says in the generation of animals that the human soul doesn't come from the parents. Wow. And he knew that the human soul didn't exist before the body either. Yeah. See, but he knew it was going to exist afterwards, huh? That's incredible. Yeah. One thing that's good about Aristotle's time is that he comes before Christianity, right? Sure, yeah, right. And he comes before, he's not really influenced by the Jews either, right? Right, right. So you can see that human reason, without the faith, could arrive at these truths, right? Yeah. And you can see something of the divine providence there, huh? Yeah. See? I think Augustine, some of the church fathers, they speak of divine providence. In regard to the Jews who are not converted. And he said that the Jews who are not converted and who are opposed, you know, in many cases, violently to the Christian church, they were witnesses to the authenticity of the Old Testament, right? And the prophetic books, right? From which the Christians would reason, huh? That, you know, the fulfillment of these prophecies is in Christ, right? But the pagans, you know, if the Jews had all been converted, right? Then the pagans would say, well, you guys must have, you know, forged these documents, because how could Isaiah or somebody have spoken of the passion of Christ, you know, all these years before, right? You see? You know, you must have forged those books in order to bolster your religion or something, right? Sure, yeah. But here are the violent enemies of the Christians, the ones who are stirring up troubles for Paul, as you see in the Acts of the Apostles, right? They are witnesses to the authenticity of the very books in which the Christians reason, right? So you see something in divine providence that, not that it was, you know, good that the Jews were not all converted, but that God brought out, even of that, something good in the conversion of the pagans, you see? And the same way here, you know, people sometimes, when you oppose homosexuality or something like that, right, you know, people say, well, you're opposed to that because you're a Christian or you're a Catholic or something, right? And we say, no, no, no, reason would tell you this is bad, right? And you have the famous text of Plato there in the laws, right, where he proposes, the Athenian stranger, right, he proposes a law against homosexuality, right? Wow. And the reason for it is that it's against nature. Wow. You see? But Plato is not a Christian, right? Uh-huh. You see? And that's kind of marvelous, right? Uh-huh. Or, you know, the work in logic there, the isogogae that we use, which is written by Porphyry, right? It's an introduction to the categories of Aristotle and it's necessary for understanding definition and division and demonstration. Well, Porphyry was violently anti-Christian. And St. Augustine, you know, talks about in the city of God, I guess some of the Christian emperors burn some of his books because he wrote these, you know, treatises against Christianity, right? But the isogogae is something that Albert the Great paraphrases, you know. Kajit has a commentary on. Thomas uses it in the, what, Sumacanian Gentiles to show things about God and so on. Yeah. But it shows, you know, that this doctrine is independent of, what, Christianity, right? Yeah. See? That the pagan Greek and the, my evidence, and the Christians, they all see the isogogae as fundamental. So, it's not because I'm a Catholic that I think the isogogae or the teaching of the isogogae is important, right? And it's not saying, not just because I'm a Catholic, right? See? And the same with homosexuality. It's not just because I'm a Catholic that I'm opposed to this because the church says it's wrong to practice these sort of things, right? I mean, here's Plato, this pagan, you know, his last work as it's regarded, the laws, right? You know, living in a society where this is a vice, you know, quite tolerated and so on, right? But now the Athenian stranger is proposing a law against it. It's against nature. Contrafusi, no? You know? The same way when Aristotle talks about adultery, right? In Nicomachean Ethics. For him, adultery is what? Oh, he's wrong. You know? And, you know, the farce going on down south, there was an Alabama there, the judge put up the Statue of the Ten Commandments and they're making him, trying to get him to take it out of the room, you know? Like the fact that adultery is something that don't give a man who, you know, from the faith would know this, right? Yeah, right. See? But Aristotle gives us a pretty clear example, right? You know, something that's always wrong. Mm-hmm. You know? And Aristotle always chooses examples very clearly, huh? And in the topics, you know, he's talking about honoring your father and mother. Mm-hmm. And he says, now, this is not a question, you know, this is not a delictal question. You know, whether one should honor your father and mother. He says, this is someone that says you shouldn't honor your father and mother. He doesn't need an argument, he needs punishment. Yeah. He's not a question. He needs punishment. That's the fourth commandment there, right? Mm-hmm. But I see the fact that Aristotle is uninfluenced by Christianity is that shows us that reason can arrive to understand, huh? That you should honor your father and mother and that avoid adultery and so on, right? So, Plato then, what? Although he distinguished between understanding and sense, he didn't, what, think of the sensing as being something necessarily bodily, right? And therefore, that the sensing soul as well as the understanding soul could have an operation, right? That's incorporeal. But I see, here, again, you see the truth is in between two extremes. One would say that no soul is what survives death, right? Okay. And the other one would say not only does our soul, but the soul of orange and so on. Well, these cats and dogs do, huh? But Aristotle laid down that only, what, to understand among the works of the soul is exercise without a bodily organ. But to sense, and consequently, the operations of the sensing soul manifestly happened with some, what, change of the body, right? Just as in seeing, huh? The pupil is changed in some way by the form of color, right? And the same appears in others. And thus it is manifest that the sensing soul does not have some operation by itself, right? But every operation of the sensing soul is of the, what, composite, right? The conjoint, huh? From which it remains, or follows, that the souls of the brute animals do not do anything by themselves, and therefore they are not, what, that since they do not do anything by themselves, they are not, what, subsistent, right? And then he states the same principle we saw in the previous article. Similitaire, huh? As each thing has being, so it has operation, right? So if the souls of the animals, the beasts, were subsistent, right? Then they would have an operation not just in the body, right? But they don't have such an operation. Therefore, they are not subsistent. There you're reasoning correctly, I think, from the negation of the consequent, right? Now, as far as the first argument is concerned, the first argument said that why shouldn't it be the same in all souls, right? Well, as you know, some things pertain to the genus and some pertain to the species, right? So he says, to the first, therefore, it should be said that man, although he comes together in genus with other animals, he differs in species, huh, in particular. And the difference of species is intended according to the difference of form. Okay, when you talk about the genus and the difference, say, if you say man is a rational animal and the genus is animal, animal is taken from what's material in man and rational from the form. nor he says it's necessary that every difference of form makes a difference of what? Genus, right? When you still have a common what it is in general and differ what? In particular, right? If it's clear enough, huh? When Thomas talks about the division of soul into the understanding soul and the sensing soul and the feeding or reproducing soul, I think it's the ultimate thing, he sometimes calls that a division of a, what? Potessive whole, right? In other words, the whole power of the soul is found in the understanding soul, right? The animal has something of that power, but not all of it. And finally, the last thing, the feeding and reproducing soul, the plant soul, has only some of what the animal has, right? Okay. Now, the second argument was saying, well, the sense is to the sensible as the understanding is to the understandable, right? What Thomas says, well, in proportion, there's always, what? Some likeness, but there can be some, what? Difference, right? So he says, the sensing power in some way is to the sensibles as the understanding power is to the understandables. Insofar as both are in, what? Potency to their objects, right? Remember how Aristotle said that sensing in a way is an undergoing? Remember that? That the senses sense by undergoing something, by receiving something, and then when he got to the understanding or reason, he says that understanding also is a kind of undergoing, right? Okay. So neither one of these powers acts upon its object, but the object in some way acts upon it, huh? But nevertheless, in some way, they are dissimilar, right? Insofar as the, what? Sense power undergoes, huh? From the sensible, with some bodily change, right? And the sign of this is that the, what? Excellence is the, what? The very powerful sensibles, they corrupt the sense, huh? So if you look at too bright a light, you're kind of, what? Blinded. And you could be permanently blinded if you get to looking at a bright light, huh? In the same way I mentioned how people, you know, who expose to large sounds, they become deaf to that sound. Like the men down in the factory there, they're always mentioning bang, bang, bang, and to me it's hurting my ears, you know, and how can they stand this, you know, and they don't hear that anymore. And they say to young kids, you know, they listen to these rock bands, you know, and especially the ear that's on that side, they're actually getting deaf, you know. I mean, the doctors, the medical doctors are concerned about their loss of hearing, right? Or I mentioned how they talk about how men tend to burn out their sense of taste more than women do, right? Because we tend to put more salt and pepper. I do more than my wife does, you know, you know, sort of stuff and hot stuff, you know. So that you're kind of losing your sense of taste there a bit, huh? But it's just the opposite in the intellect. But in the understanding, this is not happening. For the understanding, in understanding the things that are the greatest understandables, it turns, it's more able to understand the, what? Lesser things, huh? And that's been my experience, right? If I go and I study the treatise on the Trinity here, right, huh? This is something that I can't fully understand. It's something very understandable, though, huh? And then when I turn down these lesser things, they seem so, what? Easy, right, huh? Or take an example from the students there at TAC, you know. I mean, the first time you do Euclid, you know, it seems quite difficult, right? But then you go on to these higher, more difficult kinds of math, you come back to that, oh, that's so easy, you know. See, I understand something, you know. And I know myself, if I go from, say, plain geometry to solid geometry, solid geometry is more difficult, right? But after I've worked in solid geometry, I come back, oh, plain geometry is so easy, it's all plain, it's all explained. You see? So you understand something very understandable, and you can understand something less understandable, right? That's where all the good philosophers I've known have appreciated Mozart now, see? But Mozart's music, of course, is representing something that's understandable by participation, because the emotions partake of reason, huh? But they can understand the less understandable for having understood the more understandable, see? But I can't, what, taste the more moderately flavored something, because I've, what, had... Something spicier. Spicier, yeah, see? Like pepperoni, I mean, pizza to me, I always say, you know, pepperoni is the soul of pizza, right? So, but if I have a pepperoni thing, or if I have spaghetti with a tomato sauce, right, I'm not going to drink a carboné sauvignon with that, because I couldn't taste it, see? If I drink a wine at all, it'd have to be a Chianti, something that's rather strong in its, and pickling in its flavor, right? See? So, but when people go to a wine tasting, something like that, right, they don't want hot tamales or something, you know, when they're tasting the wine, they want something very plain, like bread, white bread, you know, something like that, something that doesn't have a very strong, what, flavor, huh? You kind of maybe cleanse your mouth with some bread or something, right? You don't want something really potent, huh? Because that's going to, what, interfere with your tasting, huh? See? Mm-hmm. But with the case of reason, when reason considers something very understandable, like God, or the angels, then it can turn to the lesser things and understand them, what? Better, huh? So it's not, it shows it's not bodily in the way the sense organs are. There's no organ there being destroyed or incapacitated, right, by the greatness of the object, okay? Now notice, like we've said many times, you've got to proportion it, right? You can say that the sensible is to the senses, but the understandable is to the understanding. And the thing about likeness is, and especially the likeness of things that are far apart, like in a proportion, is you have to see in what way they are like, okay? I always give a simple example of that, huh? I'd say, start with mathematics. Four is to six as two is to three, okay? Would you all agree that four is to six as two is to three? Okay? Now someone came back and said, now, two to three, that's the ratio of an even number to an odd number, right? Right? Therefore, four to six is the ratio of an even number to an odd number. What'd you say? That's not, that's not the proportion. Yeah, you've misunderstood the likeness here, right? See? Four is to six as two is to three, not in being a, what, ratio of an even number to an odd number. That's not where the likeness consists, right? Right. The likeness consists in the fact that four is the same, what, parts of six, that two is a three. And for those who, all right, may have heard of these, say, just imagine two, four as being two twos, and six as being three twos, right? Yeah. Well, four is the same parts, right? A six, and two is a three, right? Okay. So, you have to, in seeing proportion, seeing what, you have to see what, The way they are what? Alight. Remember when we were talking about the first matter? And we said, the first matter is to man and dog. Like, let's say, clay is to sphere and cube. Okay? Well, now, clay is an actual substance. And sphere and cube are something accidental, right? Two accidents are two different shapes. So man and dog are two accidents, and the first matter is an actual substance? Is that where the likeness consists? No. Because man and dog are two actual substances, not two accidents. And the first matter is not an actual substance, but it's substance and what? Ability. So at first, what is a substance and ability? An actual substance is an actual substance and accidents. I don't see the likeness at first, right? Okay? The likeness consists in this. That just as the clay is able to be a sphere or a cube, but not at the same time, right? And when it's actually one, it's able to be the other, right? So the first matter is able to be a man or a dog, right? But not at the same time, right? And when it's a man, it's still able to be a dog, but if it becomes a dog, it seems to be a man, right? Okay? So the likeness consists in the fact that the first is to the second has ability as to act, right? And, but there are all kinds of differences between these things, right? But the likeness is not in that, huh? So the same way in this case here, you can say, the sense is to sensibles as the understanding is to, what? Understandables, huh? Right? Makes sense, right? Okay? And part of the likeness consists in the fact that the senses are at first in potency, right, to the sensible. And they're able to receive, huh? Okay? And the understanding at first is like a tablet, which nothing's written. It's in potency to the understandables, right? Okay? But nevertheless, there are, what? Differences between them, right? Because the senses receive the sensibles in a bodily organ, right? The understanding doesn't receive the understandables in a bodily organ. And so in that respect, they're not alike, huh? So always in understanding a proportion, you have to understand in what way they're alike, huh? That's why Plato says himself, huh? That likeness is a, what? Dangerous thing, huh? It's a slippery thing, huh? Same thing, you try to understand in metaphor, right? Call Christ the, what? Lion of the tribe of Judah? In some way, the lion's like Christ, isn't he? But then, you know, Paul says, you know, the devil was like a lion going about, seeking whom he made devour, right? Well, sometimes we call the lion the king of the beasts, huh? And Christ is a king! So in a very distant way, the lion's like Christ, huh? And that's why even, what, C.S. Lewis there, was it? You know, in the tales there, it takes that simple kind of Christ, Aslan, right? Yeah. The lion, right, huh? But then the lion is also, what, like the cat, sometimes cruel, right? Mm-hmm. To his victim and so on, right? And in that sense, it's not like Christ, huh? Okay. So something could be like something in one way and unlike in another way, and you have to understand the, what, way in which it is like it, huh? Mm-hmm. So you're not supposed to have a stony heart, right? Mm-hmm. But the Lord is my rock. Mm-hmm. You see? Now, the third objection was the one based on the fact that the soul moves the body, right? Now, we studied that in the third book, right, after we studied the understanding. Can I finish the second one, the little thing about there's a way to understand the body. Oh, oh, oh, okay. If in understanding the body is fatigued, this is by accident, right? Not that the understanding itself is fatigued, but that the organs have supplied the object, right? Yeah, okay. The images, huh? Insofar as the understanding needs the operation of the sensing powers through which, what, images are prepared for it, huh? Yeah, okay. And so, of course, the imagination, in thinking, in a way, is a slave of reason, huh? It's there to assist the reason, right? And so the imagination becomes tired because of the body organ, right? Yeah, that makes sense. Then you sit down, you read a little Shakespeare, and refresh your imagination that way. Right? Okay. Now, to the third, it should be said that the vis motive on the moving power is twofold. The one that commands motion is the appetitive power. And this operation, the sensing soul, is not without the body, for the anger and joy and all the passions or emotions are with some kind of, what, bodily change, huh? And that's why we, in English, we sometimes call the emotions, what? Emotions because of the motion of the body there. We call them feelings, right? Because there's something sensible, huh? Another emotic power is the one carrying out the motion. And that's obviously bodily, right? To which the members are rendered suitable to obey an appetite, whose action is not to move but to be moved. Whence it is clear that to move is not an act of the sensing soul without the body. What moves the body of the animal is the emotions, right? Anger, right? Or hunger or something of this sort, right? But the anger, the hunger are something clearly, what? Bodily, right? And so, you know, you're kind of aware of yourself. You're getting angry or something like that. Or if you're afraid or something, right? You know, the body change, right? Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, right? So you just pick up the cat there, you know, and the dog comes around and you can feel the cat's body, the little kid, you know, you know, feeling that fear. You can feel that, you know, that they're, you know, from my shoulder. But there's a bodily change going on, right? So the emotions are something, what? Bodily, right? But there's something, but the emotions are something that rise above the ordinary conditions of matter, they involve a sensing soul, at least, huh? Now man also has emotions, right? And there's something bodily, huh? So why the will falls upon reason, and that's, as we'll see later on, he takes it up, that's something immaterial too, the will. So choice is going to be an act that is not in the body, but the emotions or the feelings are in the body. So we have emotions in common with the animals, although they're higher in us than in them, and we have will in common with God and, you know what, angels, right? So metaphorically, though, C.S. Lewis calls the love of the angels, it's ferocious. So let's stop here now, because next time we'll try to look at the fourth article and, if possible, the fifth article, right? You can't do too much more than that, huh? There's a question for you, if I could focus on something a little different. I was reading some spiritual author, and he made a general statement that I really kind of wondered about, but he said that the ancient philosophers, freaks, I guess, didn't have an understanding of humility, that humility really is more of a Christian thing. Yeah. Even on a natural level, is that true? They didn't really... No, they had some understanding of humility. Notice, the guy who coined the word philosopher, according to the legend anyway, was Pythagoras, right? Yeah. And Pythagoras had made these wonderful discoveries, like the Pythagorean theorem and other things. Yeah, that's true, right, right. And people wanted to call him wise, right? That's right. And Pythagoras says, don't call me wise, God alone is wise, huh? Well, what shall we call you? We gotta call you something. I've got to call me something, call me a lover of wisdom. So, in the origin of that word, lover of wisdom, a philosopher, is not only the love of wisdom, which is in the etymology of the word, right? But in this account of the origin of the word, is also humility that man's wisdom is not like that of God, right? Yeah, I understand. Now, you go to Heraclitus, who was the teacher of Plato, taught Cratulis, and Heraclitus says, as an ape is to a man, so is man to God, huh? Yeah. And he says that the ape is ugly in comparison to man, man, you know, and is inferior to man, and now so man is like an ape in comparison to God. And then there's another proportion, Heraclitus, where he says, as the boy, the child, is to the man, so the man is to God, right? Well, there's a certain kind of natural humility there, right? Yeah, right. And then you see, you know, Socrates the same way. Socrates, when he talks in the Apology and so on, talks about how he got into this examining. Well, the oracle Delphi had said, right, that no one is wiser than Socrates, right? How can I be considered wiser than other men when I'm so ignorant, right? And then you realize that maybe the oracle meant he's not wise, like God is wise, right? But wise may be in the way a man could be wise, knowing that he doesn't know, right? Yeah. And so there you have that humility. And then when Aristotle is talking about wisdom there in the premium to wisdom, which we looked at, and he says that either God alone should be said to be wise, right, or God most of all, right, that we're either shouldn't be said to be wise at all or else wise in some imperfect way, right? And so all of the Greek philosophers, the great ones, like Heraclitus and what's his name? And Exegos, the guy who kind of inspired that first argument for the Immortale, you know, he speaks of the greater mind, right, behind the natural world. So that's the greater mind, you know. The lesser mind is obviously ours, right? And the greater mind is responsible for the order of the natural world, the cosmos. So all the great Greek philosophers thought that God's wisdom is far superior to ours, right? So humility there is really what, placing yourself under God, right? Under God like men too, but primarily under God, right? And when Aristotle talks about certain errors, you know, he attributes them, you know, to pride sometimes, a lazoneia, which is the word that, I was looking at the text there the other day because we got to talk about it, look at the text there in St. John there, you know, where everything in the world is what? The epithumia, sarcos, which they translate the lust of the flesh, right? The epithumia there is that desire of the flesh. Then the epithumia althomo, the lust of the eyes, right? The avarice. So, and then the alazoneia, it says, they try to, you know, life, but they translate that as pride of life, but alazoneia is really the basic form of pride, right? Boastfulness, right? See? And Aristotle, when he's talking in the rhetoric there, right, he says that some men who possess political rhetoric, they think they're politically wise, right? Partly through lack of education, he says, and partly through alazoneia and other human causes, he says, that's human in the sense of, you know, the defects of man, huh? So, they see pride there as a, what, cause of error, right? Did he ever talk about an opposite virtue? Well, the opposite of alazoneia would be humility, right? Right, right. But does he ever talk about that specifically? Oh. Well, you see, it's not when the virtue is taken up in the Nicomachean Ethics, huh? It's not? No. And Thomas Aquinas gives a reason why he doesn't take it up there. Oh, uh-huh. And the reason is that Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics is giving the virtues whereby a man is well disposed to living in the city, right? Why humility is primarily through reference to what? To God. Oh, okay. Okay? Okay. So, Aristotle is taking the virtues whereby a man is well disposed to living in the city, like courage whereby he defends the city, and moderation where he doesn't rape the woman and get drunk all the time and other things are going to further his duties. Sure. And where he has friendliness and, you know, justice and so on, right? Yeah. But humility is better with respect to God, right? Yeah. But as far as the philosophical life is concerned, we begin to realize how you need the humility of the slave boys, I say, right? Uh-huh. In the dialogue, huh? Where Socrates shows him that he's mistaken, and Socrates goes on to teach him this, you know? But most men, you know, they're shown to be mistaken, and then you get out of pride to get angry, right, huh? But I say, you need the humility of the slave boy to be a philosopher. And, yeah, I was mistaken about that, I guess, yeah. You know, at least you've got to be able to, you know, admit that you're mistaken, and otherwise you're going to go on with your errors, right? Yeah. You know, out of pride, huh? Yeah. Now, a related one to this, another generality I once heard, said that the ancients, a concept of a merciful God would be completely foreign to them. And I kind of wondered about that. A merciful God? Yeah. I mean, for the Greeks, you mean, or? Right, right. In other words, did Aristotle and his thoughts of God, did he ever come to any idea? Or is that just beyond, does that need good revelation? Oh, God, Lord. No, I don't know. You know, I don't have any, offhand, any explicit discussion of the mercy and justice of God, you know. Yeah. I was thinking about this the other day, though. You know, that distinction between thanking and praising, you know? There's a lot of distinction in those two. Like I was saying in the psalm, the interest gates of thanksgiving is of course of the praise. Cool. Now, I was thinking, in the next world, right, when we're in heaven, assuming we get there, will we be thanking God more for his mercy or for his justice, do you think? It seems to be mercy. Yeah, we're going to be thanking him more for his mercy, right? Right. Okay. But now, some people are going to be punished, right? And, you know, the devil and those who follow the devil in some way, right? Now, are we going to be thanking God for punishing the wicked? Is it more of praise? Yeah, I was wondering, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that, that, that, if you take these two attributes of God, the fowl and all his works, mercy and justice, right? Well, it seemed to me maybe we'd be thanking him more for his mercy than his justice. Yeah. See? He forgave me my sins, et cetera, you know? And he became man and died for me and all those sort of things, which is mercy, right? But as far as he's punishing the unrepentant, then it seems to me we'd be more, what, praising him for his justice, right? It's kind of interesting. Mm-hmm. It's kind of struck me that that's, it would seem more appropriate to, you know, to thank him for his mercy than his justice, right? But to praise him that he's so just, right? Mm-hmm. Because if you thank him for punishing the wicked, it's something kind of strange, isn't it, a little bit? Right. You know? But you realize that, that, I think some people have a hard time understanding hell and these sort of things, right, huh? Sure. And what they don't realize is, is that God is just as well as merciful, right? Right. And therefore what we, that we praise him for his justice, huh? You know? It may seem to be said for that, huh? You know? I'm more sure about the first one, you know? Yeah. And I mean, you could thank somebody for justice, too. I mean, you couldn't do that, right? But, uh, uh, well, it seems to be more appropriate, in a way, to praise him for his justice, huh? Mm-hmm. And referring to justice, I read something that really struck me as strange in St. Thomas. In a sense. And he says that we can never repair our parents because they gave us his body, gave us life. Yeah, yeah. More than... And he says that we can never repair our parents And he says that we can never repair our parents because of his life. And he says that we can never repair our parents