De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 70: The Incorruptibility of the Human Soul

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...to tell the white man, you know, about this big stone coming out of the sky burning, and they thought it was some kind of Indian fable. But now they can actually state the landscape, you know, aerial and so on. They can see the effect of this, huh? It had been passed down, you know, from father to son, you know, and they're sorry about this huge stone. So maybe those, you know, stars up there are really, what, big rocks on fire, right? And sometimes they fall and so on. Well, Aristotle saw that if the sun was really a stone on fire, it would have been consumed long ago, right, huh? You see? And they say that Weizsacher there, the pupil of Heisenberg, is the man who, you know, in the 20th century there, explained how the sun can put forth so much energy, right? And yet last for so long, right? But something much different from ordinary, what, fire. It's not like the great fire of London that went on for some time. Days or weeks, I guess, the other great fire of London that destroyed London in the reading of Charles II, you know? You're not that famous, you know, what is it? Was it Defoe Wright, the famous story there, describing it, you know? But that was quite a thing, you know? And it was Wren who rebuilt all the churches there, you know? You know, St. Paul's and so on. But I mean, the point is, I mean, the sun is putting out so much, it can't be ordinary fires. It must be some kind of different thing, you know? Not since Aristotle was, you know, suddenly on the right track, you know? So don't worry too much about this. But anyway, given even that the soul was composed from matter and form, as some say, right, huh? Still would be necessary to lay it down to be incorruptible. For there is not found corruption except where there is found, what, contrariety. Now, if you remember our study there, the first book of natural hearing, right? Changes between, what? Contraries, right? The wet dries out, and the dry is moistened, huh? And the hard is softened, and the soft is hardened, and so on. Generations and corruptions are from contraries and are into contraries, huh? Whence the celestial bodies, because they do not have a matter subject to contrariety, are incorruptible, right? Okay? But in the understanding soul, there is not able to be any contrariety. For it receives according to the way of its own existence. But the things that are received in it are received without, what? Contrariety. And, of course, the sign of this is that even the, what? Definitions of contraries in the understanding are not contrary. Right. So notice, huh? If there's health in my body, that excludes sickness in my body. Right. And if there's sickness in my body, that excludes the health opposed to that, right? If I have normal blood pressure, there can't be abnormal blood pressure at the same time, anyway. And vice versa, right? But in my understanding of abnormal blood pressure, or high blood pressure, right, is my understanding of what? Normal blood pressure, right? And in general, there's the same knowledge of what? Contraries, huh? So my knowledge of virtue doesn't exclude from me a knowledge of vice. In fact, I can know vice better if I know what virtue is. Right. And I can know falsity better, falsity better, because I know the truth, right? And I know what ignorance is, because I know what knowledge is, huh? And then the very definition of ignorance is that it's a lack of, what? Knowledge, right? But in reality, in things and matter, one contrary excludes the, what? Other, right? Yeah. So if corruption is from contraries, right? And even contraries are not contrary in the soul, right? It's not going to be corrupted by its, what? Contrary. But there's one knowledge of contraries, huh? You know, if you read Plato's work there, the symposium, right, huh? At the end of the symposium, and everybody's kind of, you know, snoozing under the table there because of what they've drunk, huh? The only people who are still awake are Socrates and the two poets, huh? And one is a great comic poet, Aristophanes, and the other is a tragic poet, and whose honor was the symposium, huh? Antiphana. And the last bit of conversation one here is, before the poets pass out, is Socrates is saying, if you guys knew what you were doing, huh, you could write both tragedy and comedy. Aristophanes could write not only comedy, but also tragedies, and vice versa. Now, we know that Shakespeare could write both, what, tragedy and comedy, and both of them very well. And we've lost the comic work of Homer, right? The Margites, there's a few quotes we have from the Margites. But Aristotle says that the Margites is to comedy what the Iliad is to tragedy, right? So Homer, maybe like Shakespeare, knows what he's doing. He could write both, you know, tragedy and comedy, right? But the lesser poets, like Moliere, just write comedy, right? And it's like with an actor, you know, like an actor like Ellen Guinness, right? And he played very good comic roles, huh? But he played a number of, what, tragic roles, huh? Tunes of glory and so on. So he played that cardinal, right? So that's where he got interested in the church and became a Catholic, finally. And he converted, you know? He had to study the church in order to play this role of a cardinal there during the, he has it during the communist period, you know? And so he started to study the church and he, yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, it's a good actor. I mean, the Supreme actor can play both a tragic role and a comic role, right? And my brother Mark and I taught together in California there. We go down sometimes to the artist workshop there in San Francisco, right? Which has a core of professional actors, right? Actresses and then they, you know, flow in with more, you know, temporary too. But I saw the same actor play a comic role in The Alchemist of Ben Johnson. And then he's playing King Lear later on. Wow. And I think he failed in the role of King Lear because he made King Lear too, what? Comic? Yeah, too senile, right? Oh. I mean, he's a little senile there, right? Yeah. Making him too senile, he becomes a comic character. And therefore he's not really as tragic as he needs to be for the drama. Yeah. So maybe coming out of playing The Alchemist, yeah, he didn't quite get into the tragic role. I mean, it always kind of sticks in my mind. But, yeah, like goodness would do that, right? You know, he plays both roles well. But that's what a good poet does, right? He can write both tragedy and comedy, right? There's the same knowledge, right? Of opposites, huh? Well, that shows in a sense that the understanding soul has no contrary, huh? But corruption as such is from your contrary. So the soul is not going to be corrupted as such, right? Okay. It is impossible, therefore, that the understanding soul be corruptible. He also gives, in the last paragraph here, a sign of this, huh? That's very interesting to come and think about here. And, again, going back to the Phaedo, right? But let me explain that after I look at the sign here. One is also able to take a sign of this thing from this, that each thing naturally, in its own way, desires to be. But the desire in knowing things follows upon their, what? Knowledge. The senses, however, do not know existence except as it's here and now, right? But the understanding grasps existence absolutely and according to all time. Once everyone having understanding naturally desires to be forever, huh? The animal fights to be here and now, but he doesn't apprehend existence absolutely and according to all time. And then he reasons that the natural desire is not able to be, what? Empty, right? Empty, right? Nature does nothing in vain. Therefore, every understanding substance is, what, incruptable, right? Now, remember how Aristotle, at the beginning of the metaphysics there, we looked at the premium to wisdom, but he begins with the famous statement, all men by nature desire to know, or can be translated, all men by nature desire to understand. And the first thing we say about that statement, if you recall, when we talk about it, is what does it mean? And secondly, is it true, right? And of course, Aristotle himself gives a sign that it's true, the fact that we all use our senses sometimes just to sense something, not always to do or make something. And another sign is that we all like stories, to some extent, as a child and throughout life. But we want to know what happens in the Little Red Riding Room when she gets to her grandmother's house, not because you're going to make her do something about this, right? But simply because our wonder has been aroused. But then the third question that we ask about that first sentence is, why does Aristotle begin with that, right? And one reason why he begins with that is to show the goodness, the true goodness of knowledge, that it's something naturally desired. Now, the fact that something is desired is a sign that it's good. But it's not a necessary sign that it's good, because sometimes we desire something that in fact is bad, right? But if something is naturally desired, right, that's a sign that it's naturally good, and therefore truly good. So that's a very important thing. But another reason that Thomas touches upon the commentary is that Aristotle is going to be talking here about wisdom, and someone might say, well, is wisdom in any way obtainable by man, right? Or does that entirely escape man's power or ability, yeah? But if he has a natural desire for wisdom, right, it must be in some way, what? Possible, huh? Okay. And this, as Einstein says, is the fundamental principle underlying all natural philosophy, he says from the Greeks, right, through his own works, huh? That nature does nothing in vain, right? That nature doesn't give us, therefore, a desire for something impossible, because it would serve no purpose. But you can see in the natural desires, like hunger and thirst and reproducing and so on, we don't always get food, or the animals don't always get food, right? They don't always get water or drink, right? They don't always succeed in reproducing. But it's not impossible to find food, right? If it was impossible to find any food on this earth or any water, if it was impossible to reproduce, then nature would not have given the animal these desires, because it would serve no purpose, huh? And so the fact that we have a natural desire to be forever is a sign that we will be forever, our soul, huh? Now, it's kind of interesting because in the Theodon, Socrates, as I mentioned before, he has given three arguments for the immortalized human soul, right? When he first starts to discuss this. And everybody seems to be satisfied except Simeas and Sibeth, right? They're kind of over in the corner there, kind of talking. And Socrates says, he notices them, he says, you're still thinking about this or are you talking about something else now, you know? And so we're still thinking about Socrates' arguments, right? And Socrates says, well, then come and, you know, share with us what you're thinking about them. And they come in with some objections, right? And then Socrates' arguments don't seem so good. And then they get to kind of a discouragement to the friends of Socrates there in a kind of almost despair, right? And Socrates has to lead them out of that despair, right? Before he can take up the objections of Simeas and Sibeth. But around that time, Socrates says, now, if something else occurs to you, you know, if you have something in your mind where it doesn't seem that argument is good, now bring it out, you know, and we'll talk about it, see? He's encouraging them, in other words, to do what Simeas and Sibeth are doing. And he says, don't love me more than the truth. See? He says, if you take my advice, he says, you'll love Socrates a little, but the truth much more. Now, he had the same thing later on in the first book of Nicomachean Ethics, where Estelle is going to object to some things the Platonists say. And he begins by saying that these men are my friends. But then he says, but truth is a greater friend, huh? And it would be impious, right? To prefer your friends to the, what? Truth, right? It's kind of interesting to use the word impious, right? Because then he sees truth as tied with God, right? So in a way, to be preferring your friends to the truth is to be preferring your friends to God, right? And Thomas Aquinas says, you know, this is interesting that he takes this objection or this, you know, mentions this because he doesn't do so in other books where he attacks Plato. And Thomas says, well, he does so in Nicomachean Ethics because friendship is such an important thing in human life. In fact, two of the ten books in Nicomachean Ethics are devoted to, what? Friendship, right? So that's why his particular reference there, right? To say, you know, it seems to be against friendship to attack your friends' opinions, right? So Aristotle takes it up. Well, it's very pickling in the great dialogue there, the Phaedo, because this is the dialogue where Socrates is going to die. This is his last day in prison. He's going to die today. And Socrates is convinced that the human soul survives dead. Now, if you think that Socrates' arguments are not so good, but you're the friend of Socrates, right? You might think in your mind, well, I don't want to disturb him now, right? If he thinks that the human soul is going to survive death, he's going to face death bravely, even with a certain boldness, right? Right. But if he loses confidence in his own arguments, he's going to be very, you know, disturbed, right? It's coming death. So you might not defend what you think the truth is out of friendship for what? Socrates, right? And Socrates is urging them if they have objections to the arguments, like Simeas and Sibas do, right? If any of the rest have, to bring them up, right? We'll discuss them, right? But then he also says, you know, that not only do they have their friendship for Socrates, it might make them hesitate, right? But maybe he, Socrates, is not examining this as carefully as he wants to. I mean, as he should, rather. Because Socrates wants to think, obviously, his soul is going to survive death, right? Now, some might say, you know, well, Socrates is only looking at what would support the thought that the human soul survives death, right? Because he wants that to be true, right? and he's not examining the arguments on his side, like, you know, that Simeas and Sibas are trying to bring out. This is an example of what? Wishful thinking, right? Okay? Like Shakespeare says there in Henry IV, right? That wish was father to the thought. Okay? But in a way, Thomas here is turning the thing on them, right? And saying that this desire that we have to be forever, right, is not so much a reason for questioning our arguments for the immortality of the soul, but really, the fact that that desire is a natural desire, right, is a sign of the truth. That's what you were saying, right? That's kind of subtle, you know, you're taking what the opponent might think as an objection or at least a reason for questioning your thinking, right? Like when you say something that's too good to be true, you want to be true, but you know, it's too good to be true. Okay? But here he's saying, well, no, no, the fact that this desire is something natural, right, and natural desires are not in vain, is a sign of the truth of what the other arguments are showing. Question? Oh, yeah. I'm sorry about that. But, um, uh, Okay, so it's a natural desire of man to live beyond death or to live eternally. But what I'm just wondering, Doctor, is one of the things about natural desire, how it won't be an unnatural, how do we know it's a natural desire? Sorry, it's sort of boringly obvious, but... Well, natural means, of course, inborn, right? Inborn. Yeah. But the point is, you see, not only man, but all things trying to be, right? Sure. So, you know, if you ever try to kill an animal, right? The animal fights, right, for its life, huh? And what's the old Aesop's Fable there, you know, where the little animal was being chased by the big animal? Yeah. And the little animal got away. The other animals were laughing at the big animal. The big animal said, well, it's one thing to be running for your dinner. Another thing to be running for your life. But both of them are, in some way, pursuing what? Existence, right, huh? Yeah, yeah. Okay? But then he points out a difference, you see, where he points out, first of all, that those things that know, right, their knowing is going to influence this desire for it to be, right? But those that have only sensation, they know existence only here and now, huh? And so they fight for the existence here and now that they have. But man, having understanding, right, he understands existence in a more abstract way, a more absolute way, right? And he perceives existence over a course of time, right? Right. And even, you know, like you said in the dianima there, man is the animal who has a sense of time, right? He doesn't just live in the here and now. And I know myself, I mean, a lot of things, you know, right here and now, I mean, you know, one sentence here, you know, by itself doesn't make a great deal. You know, why not enjoy some candy or some wine or something like that? But, you know, as these senses are joined together and you start to understand things and see things you didn't see before, you know, and you see it, you're starting to live in time now, right? You're seeing this as part of a, what, of a larger picture, right? You see? So because man understands existence spread out in this way, right, then the desire that all these things have to be, right, is going to be in man a desire for what? Existence forever, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And as it falls upon their knowing, right? Right. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, when the animal sees the, I used to watch the cat in the backyard sometimes. 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Okay, okay. Although it can also be understood part of it in terms of the body, where we have something in common with the beast, right? So to the first it should be said that Solomon brings in that reason from the person of the, what, incipientium, right? The foolish, right? I think I mentioned how the Latin word for wisdom is taken from the word to savor. Sapida, sapientia, comes from sapora. When Thomas says sapientia, can I get the knowledge of the word sapida scientia, savory knowledge, right? And I think I was bringing in the words there of Shakespeare there, the magnatexio there, positum. You know, when Romeo is going to foolishly take his own life, right? And he has kind of the metaphor that he's like a ship captain who's going to run his ship on the rocks, right? And he says, come, bitter conduct, come, unsavory guide. So he's calling his own reason bitter and, what, unsavory. And I was contrasting that with Thomas' words there in the Adorote de Vote, dulce sapere, right? He wants to savor sweetly our Lord in the, what, Eucharist, right? But there you have the opposite, right? That wisdom is, say, what? Is something sweet, huh? And savory, right? Savory, right? It's knowledge to be savory, right? It's not soda pop. It's like wine. It's to be savory, huh? In vino veritas, right? In wine, there's truth, huh? But there's no truth in soda pop, huh? You see? You don't savor that. But wine, you let it roll in the sides of your mouth and breathe in, you know, and really, you know, savor it, huh? But it's also sweet knowledge, huh? There's no bitterness to it, as Thomas says, according to the sabiential books. Right, sip it. Foolishness is insipid, right? You know? It's not tasteless, huh? It's not savor, huh? So, this is said from the person of, what? The incipientium, the foolish, right? There you see that word, huh? Incipientium, huh? Modern philosophy is very insipid. Yeah, it's not savor at all. As expressed in wisdom, too, huh? When, therefore, it is said that man and the other animals, right, have a like beginning of generation, it is true as far as the, what? Body is concerned, right? For in like manner, all the animals are made from the earth, as you read in scripture there. But not, however, as regards the soul. For the soul of the beast is produced from some bodily, what? Power, right? But the human soul from, what? God, huh? And to signify this, it is said in the book of Genesis, as far as the other animals, that the earth produced a living, what? Soul, right? But as far as man is said, that he, what, breathed into his face the breath of life, huh? Now, Aristotle, as I mentioned in the book on the generation of animals, right, he explicitly says that the rational soul doesn't come from the, what, parents and the bodily generation. The body is being prepared by your mother and father, but not the, what, soul, right, huh? That's where you get this interesting objection later on, you know, about, in the case of an adulterous generation of somebody, right, or some other, you know, illicit generation there. Why is God cooperating by creating a soul, right? Well, he's cooperating with what is natural in the act, even in the adulterous pair, or in the fornicating pair, whatever it is, right, or even the rape, or whatever it is, might be, you know? He cooperates with nature there, right? He's not cooperating with the sinner's disorder, you know? But, I'm not concerned with that question right now, but I mean, it follows the fact that he, what, creates the soul when there's a body prepared by the parents, right? That's a suitable subject for the soul. So, scripture expresses that, right, by the fact that God breathes, right, into his face the spirit of life. And therefore, he concludes, Ecclesiastes, that the dust returns to the earth, whence it was, dust thou art, and the dust thou shalt return, right? That's, it said even of us on Ash Wednesday, right? So that's since we're like the beast, huh? And the spirit returns to God who, what? Gave it. Who gave it, yeah. Similarly, the process is the process of life as far as the body, to which pertains what is said in Ecclesiastes, likewise, or in the same manner, all breathe, right? And wind and so on, air in our nostrils and so on. But there is not a similar process as regards the soul, because man understands and the brute beastly animals do not. Whence it is false what is said, that man has no more than the, what, beast, huh? And therefore, there's a similar dissolution as far as the body, but not as far as the, what, soul, huh? That first objection is really based upon not reading the scripture carefully enough, right? But it's important. And he puts the objection first, because it seems to come from scripture itself, right? Okay. Now, the second objection was dealing with the fact that the human soul is what created, right? And therefore, it's from nothing, huh? To second now to be said, that to be able to be created, something is said, not through a passive power, but only through the active power of the creator, who is able to produce something from nothing. Thus, when it is said that something can be turned into nothing, it does not imply in the creature an ability to not be, but only in the creature, right? An ability or power to this that it could, what? If God wanted to, he could, what? Not continue to flow in existence to the thing, right? Right. But something is said to be corruptible through this, that there is in it a, what? Power. A ability to not be, huh? Okay. So, you know, take that simple example I had before, the clay in the shape of a sphere, it has an ability to be a cube, right? Right. And if that ability to be a cube or to be actualized, it would cease to be a sphere, right? Right. But something that is form-only has no ability to be anything else that it is. So there's not any corruptibility in it, huh? Although God could, what? Could annihilate the thing, right? But he would not do that. But that's something taken up in question 104. What you're saying that a thing is corruptible or incorruptible by reason of it having in itself an ability not to be, or not having such an ability, right? Something is said to be corruptible through this, that there's in it a potency to not be, huh? Yeah. Okay. And that's why material things are corruptible, right? Okay. As I say to the students sometimes, in my body I have an enemy. In my body there's something that's able to be a lion. And they fed me to the lions, that I'd become a lion, right? Okay? Right. So it's in me, something in me, this composite of matter and form here, namely matter, right, that is able to be something other than a man. Do you see that? Yeah. In the healthy body, right, there's something that's able to be, other than healthy, right? But in something that is... form only, there's no ability to be anything else than it is. So there's in it no passive ability, right? Not to be, right? It could only cease to be if God was to cease to what? Cause its existence, right? And it would be kind of amazing to think about that. It would be much more clear to us in heaven. It's the absolute dependence upon God, right? And how foolish, right, it is to what? Revolt from God, right? I just remember the text there from Sartre, you know, with the students a little bit. And, you know, using Sartre to exemplify the modern exaggerated love of freedom, right? And Jean-Paul Sartre is saying existentialism is not atheistic in the sense that it would exhaust itself in trying to prove that God doesn't exist. It's atheistic in the sense that it makes no difference to us whether he does or does not. I said to the students, I could see someone being maybe in some doubt as to whether God exists, right? For someone to say, it's going to make no difference to how I live whether he does or does not exist. You know? Shows kind of the will asserting itself, right? And what he does complete independence on. Yeah. You can will anything, he says, you know? Yeah. Provided it's in the name of freedom, right? Yeah. And of course, this particular passage that I was using with the students comes from this essay, you know, and as we put in that volume of Kauffman, you know, you know, existentialism from Dostoevsky to what? Sartre, right? It's very appropriate that it starts with Dostoevsky because the young man in Crime and Punishment, right? He wants to, in a sense, assert his true freedom by murdering some old lady, right? To show that he's not in any way subject even to the law, right? That he's completely free. That's kind of a perverse idea of thinking freedom as some kind of absolute thing, right? Right. And if I'm under the law, well, then I'm not completely free. Am I? I'm kind of constrained by the law, right? And not so long ago, I saw some movie there where it was on TV or something where these two kids had done the same thing, you know? Committed a murder, right? Not because they had anything to gain from it, but just to what? To find their freedom. Kind of assert their freedom, their independence, their I can do anything I want to do. Wow. See how kind of crazy this thinking is, huh? A lack of thinking. Okay. But I say when you realize how utterly dependent we are upon God, huh? The Lord is king and splendor robed, you know? Because the top house is stronger, you know, than the ways and so on, right? Then it says holiness befits his house, right? Okay. Now the third objection, huh? The third objection I was based upon the fact that we never in this life understand without, what, imagining. And so long as our soul is in our body, huh, it's naturally turned towards the material. Yeah. So as Aristotle taught us there in the third book about the soul, the proper object of our understanding or reason is of what it is, is something sensed or imagined, huh? What it is especially of a natural thing or of a mathematical thing. But notice, even in understanding what something is, the understanding of what it is is not in the body, right? It's not in the imagination. Because the image is always of what? The singular, right, huh? And the image is always something continuous, huh? But the universal is not in the continuous and it's separated from the continuous. But what you also learn in the Dianima is that something has to be separated from matter to be, what, actually understandable. So when the soul is separated from the body, then the soul will be, what, understandable to itself. And then the soul will understand in a way like the angels understand. Even though it's not angels, we'll find out in the next article. See? So that the way of understanding when the soul is separated from the body is different than the way of understanding when it's, what, in the body. But in both cases, the understanding is not in the body. But so long as the soul is in the body, it's naturally turned towards the body. And so it's understanding of what it is of something sensed or imagined by the body. But because its understanding is not in the body, its existence is not just in the body. And therefore it can exist without the body. And when it's separated from the body, then its natural way of understanding would be to turn towards, what, the immaterial things. And see, Plato thought, if you read The Republic, and if you ever had a chance to read The Republic, but he speaks of philosophy as a, what, turning around to the soul, right? And the Greek word has got the idea of turning around, but a kind of going up, you know? See? Like you see, if I was, you know, start to stand up here and turn around at the same time as I start to stand up, so by the time I'm standing up, I'm facing the opposite direction of you people. And I've gone up, right? It's a, it's a, what? I think the Greek word is a panodos, a going up, a road up, a road going up, right? And going up from the material world up to the immaterial world, right? And that's a going up, right? And that's what Plato says, philosophy is everything, public. It's a turning of the soul around from the material world up towards the immaterial world, right? Well, first out, in a way, that's what philosophy is, too, in the sense that he's studying everything ultimately for the sake of studying wisdom, right? And wisdom, you're eventually going to know the immaterial things, right? But in this life, you're going to know the immaterial things through the material things, right? Not knowing them directly, but through the material things, huh? And this is the way we know God in this life, right? You know, the famous text there that the church uses all the time is from chapter 1, verse 20 there of the epistle to the Romans, right? Where it says, you know, that the invisible things of God are known through the things that have been seen, right? That's one of the official texts the church uses in the Vatican 1 when it's maintaining that natural reason, right, human reason, even without the faith, right, can know something about God, right? And St. Paul there is talking about the Greeks. Sure. And so, but notice, you're knowing the immaterial through the material, right? But when the soul is separated from the body, then it will be turned directly towards the immaterial. And even the soul itself will know itself through itself, rather than this roundabout way, knowing the soul through its powers, and its powers through its acts, and its acts through its object, and so on. The soul will know itself directly, right? And then it will be turned up towards the angels. And the angel will explain to you that he's not God, as I said last time. See? Okay? And a fortiori, if you receive the eternal life there, the divine vision, right? You'll be seeing God, what? Face to face, right? But now, as St. Paul says, we see him darkly through a mirror, right? Okay? So you know God partly by the, what? By the likeness of these things to him, right? You know him partly as a cause of these things. But ultimately, we have to negate the imperfection of the likeness, and we have to negate the deficiency there of the effect from the cause, right? So, let's read, again, the reply to the objection. To the third, it should be said that to understand with an image is the proper operation of the soul, according as it is united to the, what? Body, right? And that's... It's kind of natural, because if the soul didn't need the body to get its fundamental ideas, it wouldn't be joined to the body, right? It would not serve any purpose. But separated from the soul, it has another way of understanding, similar to the other substances that are separated from bodies, similar to the angels, right? As will below become more, what, clear. We'll get to that eventually. Question 89, huh? And he says, another way of understanding, it doesn't mean that the understanding in this life is not immaterial, it is. Even in this life, we understand the act of understanding is not in the body, okay? And if it were in the body, it wouldn't be a knowledge of the, what, universal. It would be a knowledge of the singular. And it wouldn't be open to knowing all material things like it is. But the soul naturally turns to the body, right? As a kind of foundation for what it's understanding, huh? Because it's understanding of what it is, of something sensed or imagined, huh? And Aristotle makes the comparison there, right? Go back to the proportion there of the genesis. He's saying the reason is to the images, huh? Like the senses are to the exterior sensibles, huh? Okay. So, when I see you now, right? I see your color, I see your shape, right? What am I seeing? I'm seeing the color or the shape of something out there, right? Right. I'm seeing the color or the shape of you. I'm seeing the color or the shape of the desk out there. The fireplace and so on, right? Okay. And so, if you were to walk out of this room, I would be unable to see the color or the shape of you, right? Okay. But is my seeing the colored shape of you, is that seeing in you? No. It's in my eye, maybe even in my brain, right? Right. Okay. But I can't see the color or the shape of you without you being there, right? Well, reason's object there is the what it is of something sensed or imagined, huh? So, when I understand what a triangle is, I imagine a triangle, right? And what I'm understanding now is the what it is of what is imagined there, right? And that's why I don't understand the what it is of a triangle imagined without imagining a triangle, right? But does that mean that the understanding of what a triangle is, is in the image? No. Any more than my seeing your shape or color is in you. Okay. You see the proportion there, right? I just did, yeah. Yeah. Right. And so, just as you're leaving the room, it interferes with my seeing you, even though you are in no way the organ of my sight, right? Right. So, likewise, the interference of the images, by a blow on the brain or by alcohol going to the brain or, you know, blood clot or something there on the brain, right? Wouldn't interfere with my understanding of what it is. Because the image is no longer there, right? Okay. But the understanding is not in the brain. It's not in the image, huh? Okay. But that refers now to the way of understanding, right? It understands what it is of a triangle, the soul, turning towards the, what, imagined triangle, right? Because the soul is now in the body, right? But when the soul is no longer in the body, then it has no reason to turn, actually, to the body. But it itself will be understandable to itself, the soul, because it will be separated from matter. And we know already that something is understandable to the extent it's separated from matter. Then the soul will be turned up towards, what, the angelic hierarchies, right? And in the vision there, the eternal life, we'll be knowing God through God, right? God is joined to our reason, or our reason is joined to God, is that by which it understands, as well as what it understands. In your light we shall see light, as in the Psalms, huh? But in this life we know God through other things, huh? I'll tell you that interesting passage there, you know, in St. Gertrude, you know, in her kind of autobiography there. But she's always receiving visions, right? And it's like Dionysius explains, you know, these are images, right? Like you have in Isaiah, he has the vision of, and the vision that St. John has there in the apocalypse, right? Yeah. And so God is always instructing the great saint, Pertrude the Great, there with two images, right? Mm-hmm. And really, they're beautiful images about them, but they're very interesting. And at one point there she turns and says, well, why do you do this? And Pertrude says, well, it's natural for a human being to be led in this way. It's kind of marvelous because it's a thing Aristotle would say, you know, Thomas would say, you know, but here it's our original saying to the great saint, St. Gertrude, you know. I wish the Pope would get around to making her talk to the church, you know. I think she's as much as, you know, the Therese's and the St. Catherine, you know, she'd be in there. I've never read her work since. Yeah, yeah. Grace is supposed to say, if you want to know where I am, I'm in the heart of Gertrude, right? That's where he is. So it's very, very interesting. Didn't you say that no one at that time loved him more than she did? Yeah, that's very, very interesting. Should we take a little break? Yeah, we'll take a break for you. Look at the seventh article, right? Where's my water? To the seventh, thus one proceeds. It seems that the soul and the angel are of one, what, species, huh? A species is a what? A particular kind of thing under a genus, right? For each thing is ordered to its own end by the nature of its species, in which it has an inclination to its end. But the same is the end of the soul and the angel, namely eternal beatitude. Therefore they are one, what, species, huh? Second objection. Moreover, the ultimate specific difference is most noble, because it completes the definition of the species. But nothing is more noble in the angel and the soul than to be understanding, huh? Therefore, the angel and the soul come together in their ultimate specific difference. Therefore they are one species. Now, sometimes it's hard to tell when you come to a, what, a species that's what they call in logic a lowest species. A species that cannot be divided into different ones. Ah. And one thing that's kind of amazing, I think, when you think about, even in geometry, where the divisions are rather easy to understand, when you divide triangle into equilateralized sauces and scalene, are those lowest species or not? Or are there different kinds of equilateral triangle? Ah. What did you say? What did you say? What did you say? What did you say? What did you say?