De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 82: Hope as a Theological Virtue: Definition and Distinctions

Transcript
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Yeah, it doesn't give a reference to the way he says this, huh? Yeah. Okay, it's in his commentary in the third book of the De Celo or De Celo Mundo. He doesn't give a reference. That the forms of the elements, right, on account of the imperfection, are in between substantial forms and accidental forms. Well, as Thomas will say, that's impossible, but anyway. And therefore they receive more and less, right, which a substantial form cannot. And therefore they are reduced in the mixture to a middle, huh, to a mean. And there is, what, put together or blown together from them one form, huh? But Thomas says, this is even more possible, right? For the substantial being of each thing consists in something indivisible. And every addition or subtraction varies the, what, species just as in numbers, as is said in the eighth book of wisdom there, metaphysics. Once it is impossible that the substantial, the any substantial form receives more or, what, less, huh? So I can't, in that sense, be more a man than you, or less a man than you, right? That's really the way in which we're equal. Nor is it less impossible that there be some middle between, what, substance and accident. That's a complete, what, exhaustive division, right? Because a substance is a thing that exists not in another. An accident is a thing that exists in another, right? So you either exist in another or you don't. There's no other term, right? Right. And therefore it ought to be said, according to the philosopher in the first book on generation, encryption, that the forms of the elements, right, do not remain in the mixed body and act, but only in, what, their power in some way, right? For the qualities, the proper qualities of the elements, although, what, in a less vivid form, right, in a reduced form, right, in which there is the, what, power of the elementary forms. And this quality of mixture is a proper disposition for the form, the substantial form of a mixed body, as an example, the form of the stone, or of some, what, soul, right, huh? So he's talking about that mixture of the, the quality of the mixture, right? You heat a man up too much, cool him down too much, you finish him off, right? Mm-hmm. So there has to be a body that's not too hot and not too cold, huh? Mm-hmm. Not too dry and not too wet, huh? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You become as wet as this water here, you'd be finished, right? You become dry as a piece of paper you're on, you're going to be dead too, right? Mm-hmm. Okay? So that just understands what a mixture is there, huh? So, want to talk a little bit about hope here? Yeah, that's good. What do you want to stop now, because you had some question there about, you know, getting to dinner or something, or what the avid wants you to do or something? What do you want me to stop? No, that's covered, the class stops at 10 to 5. Okay, we'll stop at 10 to 5, okay. Okay, okay. Okay, okay. Okay, okay. Now, I had time to get thinking there a little bit, you know, about the theological virtue of hope, which to some extent, I think, is a neglected child, right? Yeah, I'm sorry. You know, it's kind of commonplace about children, you know, that they get three children, and the middle one gets kind of neglected. Yeah. Because one is, well, he's the firstborn, the oldest, you know, and then the youngest one gets his attention, because the youngest, right, the one in the middle doesn't know what to do, right? Yeah, yeah. I think there's some truth to that, but I wouldn't want to exaggerate too much, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think faith gets a lot of emphasis, because it's the first of the theological virtues, right, and presupposed to the rest, and charity is the greatest of them, right, and the culmination, right? But hope in the middle gets kind of what? True truth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what struck me when I went back to and looked at the catechism of the Catholic Church, right, that when they take up faith, hope, and charity, and get to hope in particular, that the first paragraph there, in a way, contains a definition of what hope is. And it seems to me that you could distinguish six parts of that definition, six parts, at least, for discussion, right, that there are six stops you should make, right, to note distinctly the definition, huh? Okay, sure. And you know the way Thomas, when he takes up, say, a famous definition that he accepts, like, the definition of eternity from Bhaiti is the definition of person, right, huh? You know, sometimes you have an article, or more than one, and one objection will attack one part of the definition, another one, another one, right? And maybe you have, you know, four parts of the definition of four objections, one attacking each part, right? And it focuses your mind, like nothing else will, upon every part of the definition, right? Okay? And if you look at the question on the definition, say, of law, Thomas is developing a definition of law that has about four parts, right? And he has an article on each part of the definition, right? So, you get used to stopping and pausing with the definition and unfolding it, you know? When I worked on the definition of comedy, they were trying to complete the last part of the footage, right? I had to emphasize each part of the definition there. Now, in the first paragraph there, on hope, it gives what I think is a kind of a definition of hope, huh? And the first part of the definition is that hope is a theological virtue, okay? And, of course, the theological virtues are unique in that they have God in himself, God, as an object, right, huh? Okay? And, you know, the common thing we learned, you know, from Aristotle in the study of the soul and we learned from Aristotle in the study of human virtue is that we distinguish powers or habits, virtues, by their acts, huh? And we distinguish acts by their, what, objects, huh? And ultimately, therefore, it's by their objects. And so the theological virtues have as their object, what, God himself, right? And maybe that's why we call them theological virtues, huh? Because when you study theology, you find out that the subject of theology is God. And if anything else is talked about in theology, it's in reference to God, huh? So to call these theological virtues, maybe, is not so much, although it's true that they're studied in theology, right, but because they have God himself as an object, huh? Anyway, hope is a theological virtue. That'd be like the genus, right, the definition, huh? Now, the second part, and I'd like to maybe make it shorter than they would, it's a theological virtue by which we desire, okay? And I'd like to stop there, you know, even before I say what you desire. Because there you see the difference between hope and faith and charity, right? Because charity is obviously a theological virtue by which we love, primarily, right? And faith is a theological virtue by which we believe, right? But hope, it says, is a theological virtue, is the theological virtue by which we desire. Okay? That's interesting, huh? Then the third part that I think you want to know distinctly is what you desire by this theological virtue. And in the catechism, or the Catholic Church there, it uses two speeches, huh? And they're not entirely synonymous, but they're connected, right? And they are the kingdom of heaven and eternal life, okay? And I appreciate them using both, right, huh? But eternal life is defined... in chapter 17 of saint john right where jesus christ says that eternal life is to know you the father right and him whom you have sent huh okay but the kingdom of heaven is defined by thomas as the ordered society right of those who see god right so seeing god as he is or seeing god face to face that's eternal life right okay and the kingdom of heaven is this is the ordered society of those who see god face to face to see him as he is right so those are not really saying all together different things right but i think the fact that uses both right allows your mind to make a lot of connections you would make otherwise and i was mentioning there during the break there that um when you go to to the summa theologiae thomas will speak of eternal life but also eternal beatitude right um which fits in very nicely with this eternal life but then as as we learn from augustine and thomas they always tie up the our father with hope so when augustine and thomas divide theology according to faith hope and charity they do the creed the our father and the commandments of love and the ten commandments um and later on in in the text here on hope it makes the connection between prayer and hope right and then especially between hope and the our father and it says explicitly that the our father by the our father is both expressed our hope and our hope is what nourished huh exercised by this huh and of course if you if you read uh augustine and thomas and the our father when they speak of the order the seven petitions the seven askings right uh we ask for what we desire and so augustine and thomas says you're being taught there both what to ask for but what to desire and by the order of the petitions the order which to desire these things huh so that fits in very well with hope being the theological ritual by which we desire the kingdom of heaven right and of course in the our father we say thy kingdom come right but since thy refers back to the one to whom we are praying and he's addressed as our father who art in heaven right you can very nicely tie with thy kingdom the kingdom of heaven right so i think it's beautiful that that it has that and and it illuminates the the connection later on between hope and the what our father right by using the word kingdom of heaven but it's not as if you're saying two different things all together by kingdom of heaven and eternal life huh eternal life is uh emphasizing right the life of the mind right in knowing god as he is face to face and seeing him as he is right okay but the kingdom of heaven it brings in the what the ordered society of those who are enjoying this this vision huh okay so that's the uh third part right it's the theological virtue by which we desire desire what the kingdom of heaven and eternal life right okay a very very rich text there okay now what's the fourth part of the definition huh well the fourth part is as our happiness huh now i think that's interesting that that's made explicit in in in the statement there in the catechism because it's great you're bringing out that you're desiring um the kingdom of heaven and eternal life not just as uh one even one of the greatest is not the greatest among the goods you want right but you're desiring it as your very end or purpose huh as your very what happiness huh okay so that's adding a precision right that's very important huh that's how you're desiring this right you're desiring it as your very end or purpose as your very happiness is your beatitude huh is your chief good right i mentioned how how thomas in in in the summa there in the sickening is a good day he refers sometimes to eternal life there sometimes to eternal beatitude right but beatitude names the what um the chief good of an intellectual creature huh okay and of course the the beatitudes as they're called right they're singled out right so you get down a couple paragraphs below that there's a number of paragraphs um he has two paragraphs connecting hope with scripture right and and one is you know the old testament how this is fulfillment of the other but then the second paragraph is on the new testament and the the things that are mostly emphasized there explicitly are the beatitudes and the our father the attitude at the beginning of that paragraph the our father at the end huh the our father you know expresses our hope and nourishes it right but the beatitudes at the beginning that's the beginning of the sermon on the mount right the attitudes are instructing us in hope right what we should desire that's what our beatitude is and something about how you get there right now so the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness right now the fifth and the sixth parts as i was mentioning the break there um from what i you know know about hope and i've heard all my life about hope i'd probably come up with something like the sixth part right but the fifth part is kind of interesting that they make this explicit huh the fifth part of the definition is trusting in the promises of christ okay of course the beatitudes is part of the promise right okay but he says trusting in the promises of christ okay that's the fifth part right so okay now the sixth part is the one i would think about more and relying not on our own strength right but on the grace of the holy spirit okay now one's always been taught that about the the hope right that you're you're you're you're not uh um in your own ability to get this right huh but in god's help right you're hoping for this um this good to his help right okay but um immediately following that in the same paragraph where you have that definition that i've been trying to break down you have two quotes that i was mentioning i think you're from saint paul but you know i can't remember the exact but one is connecting hope with the promises of christ and the other is connecting hope with the holy spirit and his grace right so you know it's very striking you know the use there huh they also have a quote it's either there in one of the later paragraphs connecting hope with what joy right huh remember that text i was talking to you about at the end of thessalonians huh um where he says rejoice always right and then he said uh pray always and then giving thanks always right and thomas says well how can you rejoice always it's pretty bad places he says well you can rejoice always in god right and god's goodness always anything that bothers it down here right but i was tying that up with the three theological virtues remember you know using that with the text from sing joyfully to the lord but if you stop and think you know thomas's reason there in regard to hope in particular um you could say that if you rejoice in god well that's a connection with all theological virtues because they're all about god right see so there's a reason to rejoice always because of all the theological virtues right but anyway there's a text in there which is dealing up with the connection between joy and hope in particular right i just can remember the latin of thomas spago dentis right you know okay um okay now um there's a um uh interesting use here it seems to me you can make of the third tool of dialectic now the third tool of dialectic is the tool of difference right finding differences the ability to find differences among things you The fourth tool is the ability to find, what, likeness, right? Now, Aristotle gives the various reasons for what the usefulness of dialectic. The first reason he gives that it's useful to exercise your mind. And when he gets down to the third and fourth tool, he says that the mind is exercised more in finding differences between things that are close together than between things that are far apart, right? Okay? When he gets down to the fourth tool of dialectic, he says, reasons exercise more in seeing the likeness between things that are further apart. So just the reverse, right? Okay? But it seems to me that it might be very interesting to compare three desires here, right? Okay? And the first desire is wonder. And the second desire is an actual desire for what? Happiness, huh? Okay? And the third desire is that sort of hope. Okay? And if you appreciate kind of the likeness of these things, right, then your mind's going to be exercising what is the difference between them, right? Now, what's kind of interesting about wonder, as Aristotle and Thomas and Plato and the Greeks point out, wonder is this natural desire to know, not for the sake of making or doing, right, but just for the sake of understanding. And therefore, it's a desire to know what and why, right? It's a desire to know the cause, huh? And as this desire develops, if the cause has a cause, it's a desire to know the cause of the cause, and therefore ultimately a desire to know the what? First cause. And to know the first cause is wisdom, so it's a desire for wisdom, right? Now, when you study the natural desire to happiness, you find out in the first book of the ethics that happiness is some kind of activity of man, right? And it's an activity in accordance with human virtue, which perfects our activity, right? And then after you go through all the virtues, you find out that it consists more in the activity of some virtues than others, because some virtues are better. And in the tenth book, Aristotle distinguishes the highest kind of happiness is the activity of reason in accordance with wisdom, and therefore really in knowing the first cause. Well now, because we're interesting, what is the difference between what? That wonder, the natural desire to know the cause, and the natural desire for happiness, huh? And incidentally, when they talk about happiness in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, they have a nice quote there from Augustine, huh? About how the desire for happiness is natural to all men. It's been placed in all men, right? So it's a natural desire there, right? As opposed to this supernatural thing, this hope, right? So what's the difference between wonder and the natural desire for happiness? Because wonder is ultimately a desire to know the first cause, right? To know the first cause is our ultimate happiness. So what's the difference, right? Where are you in, huh? But now, when you come to hope, and those are something supernatural, you can see that it's a, what? Desire for eternal life, which is to know God. And it's a desire of this as your happiness, right? So in a way, it's a desire for happiness, huh? Well, the text, you know, if you go on, if you read the whole text here on hope, it speaks of how hope is elevating that desire that we have for happiness, right? And elevating our hopes, huh? Okay, our natural hopes, huh? And there's a couple of places where it speaks of this, huh? So it's purifying, you might say, our desire for happiness, huh? From the dross of where we seek happiness sometimes, where it's not to be found, right? Or in things that are going to really diminish our ultimate happiness, right? And so I think it would be very interesting just to compare those three desires, right? Compare wonder, the natural desire to know why, and what and why to know the cause. And the natural desire for happiness, right? How do they differ? They seem to leave the same place, right? And then this hope, right, huh? Which is, in a sense, a desire for happiness, too, right? And seeing this happiness in knowing God. I think it's kind of exercising the mind there to see the thing, huh? One just seems to be a beginning and happiness and an end, and hope is like a middle. Yeah. I say, if our happiness is ultimately to know God, right, huh? And desire, and wonder, when it's developed, it's ultimately a desire to know the first cause. It seems to be almost the same, right, huh? You see? I'm not sure I really see the distinction on this one. Yeah, yeah. So, but we've got to call it a halt, so next week we'll go on to articles. In the name of the Father, Father, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, orden and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor. Pray for us. And help us to understand what you've written. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. They did the regular reading from Hebrews today, but the ultimate reading, you know, is from Book of Wisdom, Chapter 7 there, so. Yes, verses, what is 7, 10, 15 through 16, so. Let's see what they thought was appropriate for Thomas' feast. The article 5 here, whether the understanding soul is suitably united to such a body as it is, or whether it's unsuitably divided or united to such a body. Well, first you're going to object, right? To the fifth one proceeds thus. It seems that the understanding soul is not suitably united to such a body as it is. The first objection. For matter ought to be proportioned to form. They're kind of relative to each other. But the understanding soul is an incorruptible form. Therefore, is not suitably joined to a corruptible body. Well, I could agree with that, couldn't you? Or is it Thomas is talking there about St. Paul, you know, he's talking about don't weep like the pagans who have no hope. But Thomas in the commentary says that you can be sad about the death of somebody. And one of the reasons is because his body is, what, corrupting. His body is... But another reason to be sad is that you know, this is a punishment for sin. And then, of course, it makes you think of your own death and so on. So. Moreover, the understanding soul is a form, most of all, immaterial. Every form is something other than matter. But this soul is most of all material because it rises above activity that's in the body. A sign of which he says is that it has an operation, namely understanding, but also you could say willing to, in which bodily matter does not communicate or has no sharing. But insofar as your body is more subtle, means more, what, thin or finer, so it has less of matter. Therefore, the soul ought to be joined to the most subtle, the most finest, thinnest body, namely fire in the older opinion. Yeah. So just like as you go from the four elements, from Mother Earth to water to air to fire, you seem to get something finer and thinner. Yeah. And a lot of times you think of air almost as being immaterial, maybe for its area and fire. So if the soul is the most immaterial body, or excuse me, the most immaterial form, they're not to be joined to a body that is... Um... Less material, less gross. It's something like in modern science. I have a book in my office there written by perhaps the greatest French physicist of the 20th century, the father of wave mechanics, Louis Dubreuil. And the title of the book is La Lumière et la Materie. But in English, matter and light. That's interesting, matter and light. Because a physicist would often say that light is something, material has particles, but here you have matter and light. You think of light as kind of a less material matter. So it's contrasting matter and light. Just like sometimes we contrast matter and energy. Energy is something material the way the physicist looks at it, but that's something of what's behind this objection. You'd better have a body of light than a body of matter, because your soul is most immaterial. Moreover, since the form is the beginning or the source of the species, specific nature, from one form there ought not to come about diverse forms. But the understanding soul is one form. Therefore, it ought not to be united to a body that is put together from parts of dissimilar or unlike species or character. Because I have a body and soul, one type of thing, to correspond to the soul, which is just one form. Moreover, what is receptive or more perfect form ought to be more perfect. But the understanding soul is the most perfect of all souls. Since, therefore, the bodies of other animals have naturally, you might say, inserted in them clothing, such as the dog over there doesn't need to put a coat on when he goes outside. And they have, like the horse says, something in place of shoes. They don't have to have shoes and so on. And they also have their weapons naturally given to them as teeth and horns and so on, nails. Therefore, it seems that the understanding soul ought not to be joined to an imperfect body that is lacking in all these days. But against this is what the philosopher says in the second book about the soul. That the soul is the act, he actually says it's the first act, of a natural body composed of tools, an organic body that means composed of tools, having life in potency, meaning the operations of life. Now, let's look at Thomas' reply to this. I answer, it ought to be said, that since the form is not an account of matter, but rather matters an account of form, Aristotle manifests that in an interesting way, in a very proportional way, in the second book of natural hearing. And he compares three arts that you find all the way through human industry. You have the art that uses the product, you have the art that forms the product, and you have the art that prepares the raw materials. You see that triple art again and again in different lines of industry. So my father's company made farm wagons. So they practiced the art of forming the product. But there are companies that made steel for my father's company. There are lumber yards and so on that prepared wood for his farm wagons. But, no, it's the art of making farm wagons. There's a third art, which is the art of using the farm wagon on the farm. Now, if you examine those three arts, which art commands which art? Using command all the other ones underneath. Yeah, the art that uses the product commands the art that forms the product. But, likewise, the art that forms the product commands the arts that prepare the raw materials. Sure. So the steel company doesn't tell my father's company how to make a farm wagon, or how thick the steel should be underneath it, or how thick the boards, the lumber yard doesn't tell them that. But my father tells the steel company what kind of steel, what size, or what shape he wants. And the same way he tells the lumber yards. And, likewise, the art that uses the product and sees that the product works well, or, in some cases, that there's some defect, they command the art that forms the product. In the case of a farm wagon, you get out on the farm, and the farmland is hilly, and there's gulls, and so on, and the farm wagon actually bends like that. Well, if you don't have enough steel underneath, it might just snap, and then the farmer's going to be all mad, and so on. So you might discover a defect in the construction of the thing, and then you go back and redesign it. My father's engineer used to say sometimes, when he was making a product that, we had some interesting ideas, but now we'll see if they're any good. Yeah. And they'd take it out, they'd make something according to his blueprint, but then they'd go out to this kind of experimental farm, and test the product. It's the same way, like Detroit, might recall a whole bunch of automobiles are doing this fairly often. And so in the use of it, you see the defect. Yeah. So you have a proportion there. The art that uses the product is to the art that forms it, as the art that forms it is to the one that prepares the raw materials. But since the use is the end of the formed product, you can see why the art that uses the product commands the art that forms it. But then likewise, by analogy, the art that forms the product is to the art that prepares the raw materials in the same relation. Because the raw materials are for the sake of the finished product. So matter is for the sake of form, just as the formed product is for the sake of the use. But generally you can say that ability is for the sake of act. And so since matter is something in ability, and through the form it's an act, then matters for the sake of form. So you're starting out with that starting point. as has been had before, seen before. According to the order of nature, has the lowest place, the lowest grade, among understanding substances. So much so that it does not have naturally, within itself, a knowledge of the truth, as the angels. The angels, when you study them, their mind is filled with forms. It's like you possess all the arts and sciences actually in your mind. That's where the angel is created. Like I mentioned how my son Marcus one day, my little boy, said, why couldn't we be born knowing everything we need to know? I said, you want to be born an angel. I said, you know, see? But our mind is compared by the philosopher to a blank tablet, blank page that had been written on it at first. But our mind is not created knowing these things and filled with forms. But it's necessary that it gather from divisible things by way of the senses. As Dionysius says, but Aristotle verses this before in the seventh chapter about the divine names. But nature does not fail, huh? Not lacking in necessary things. Whence it is necessary that the understanding soul not only have the power of understanding, but also have the power of sensing. Because the mind is going to, what? Get its basic thoughts through the senses as at least an instrument of the active understanding. So it's got to have senses. But the action of the senses is not without an instrument that is a body. Without a body instrument. It is necessary, therefore, that the understanding soul be joined to such a body as is suitable to be a, what? Organ of the senses. Okay? That's the first step he's saying, huh? Our understanding soul is the lowest of all understanding substances. In the beginning, we know nothing, but we're able to know something. We're not born with or created with our mind formed. So we have to get our basic ideas through the senses. And that's why our reason, or our understanding soul is naturally joined to a body so we can get those knowledge through the senses. And the senses, of course, are, as he says, a bodily knowing power. Okay? But now he says, among all the senses, the most fundamental one is the sense of touch. All the other senses are founded on touch. And a sign of that is that you have touch even in your eye. If you stick me with a pen, I'm going to be feeling pain. You stick me with a pen in my ear or something, or my tongue. Well, the sense of touch is the fundamental sense. It's the most necessary sense. But now, what's required for the sense of touch? For the organ of touch is required that it be a kind of mean between contraries, which are hot and cold and wet and dry and things of this sort. So if the body was too hot or too cold, it wouldn't be a suitable body to have sensation. So it has to be kind of a mean between these things, like hot and cold, wet and dry, and so on, which the sense of touch grasps. And that's why, as we were saying before, when you studied the sense of touch a bit there in the Dianima, it's not possible for the sense of touch or for the flesh to be entirely lacking in what hot and cold and wet and dry. But it tries to have something of that by having a constant body temperature and having a temperature that's in between something too hot or too cold. And so you go into the ocean, let's say, on a summer day, you first find the water may be too cold, you have to adjust to it a bit. But after your body adjusts to that temperature, you don't feel the coldness so much. Or vice versa, you go into a hot shower and you feel the warmth of the water. But after you're in there a while, you might turn up a little bit, the heat. Because you're now starting to receive the heat as your own. And you don't really know it or perceive it so much. So you can't be entirely free of these things, but you've got to strike a kind of balance between the two. And to me, there's something like that in the way your skin is. Because if you press your skin here against, let's say, the table here, you kind of indent the skin, but then it comes back to the shape it had. So it's not like water that can't hold a shape, but it's not like metal where you'd have to permanently indent it in order to make it conform to that. So it's kind of a mean between the soft and the hard, and between the hot and the cold and so on. So it's kind of a mean between the contraries. And that's why the body, in a way, is naturally corruptible because something is corrupted by its, what, contrary. Whence the more the organ of touch is reduced to a certain equality of complexion between these things, the more you'll be perceptive. But the understanding soul has most completely the sensing power because what is of the inferior is more perfect and superior, as Dionysius says in the book about divine names. So he's saying it's especially important that the human body be a suitable thing for perfection of touch. And you can see that man is much more sensitive in his sense of touch than even the cat or the dog or these other animals that don't have the same kind of skin we have and don't we have fur and so on. Man's more sensitive. What's it, can you explain his reason again here, this quia quote, this principle? Unde quanto or where? The quia quote est inferioris. Oh, because what is of the lower exists more perfectly in the superior, as Dionysius says. Well, just take an example of that. You and I have emotions but so does the dog. Yeah. But our emotions are more elevated than the emotions of the dog or the cat and our emotions can be much richer, you might say. Oh, yeah, I understand. You see? Yeah. Okay. We all teach you to compare blood with sap in the tree. They're kind of similar because the sap is, the fluid there in the tree is transporting materials and so on and blood does the same thing but blood does a lot of things in addition to what sap can do. You see that superiority. Or like I was saying about the higher kind of friendship, if you and I have a friendship based on human virtue because we're both courageous or we're both wise or something of this sort, you will also be more pleasant to be with and you will be also more useful to me, if you're a courageous man or a wise man, because we're alike in something that is naturally pleasing. And obviously a courageous man is more useful to you than a coward. And so in the higher friendship you have what the lower friendships have, pleasure and usefulness, but in a much higher way. In a sense that will determine our friendship with God and heaven, our virtues, right? We'll take them with us, those powers. Yeah, some of them, yeah. We'll take faith and hope to help you replace by the vision, but charity will be more perfect up there. Whence it is necessary that the body to which the understanding soul is united be a mixed body, so it can have that be a mean between the different extremes of me. hot and cold and wet and dry, which among all the other bodies is more reduced to a kind of equality, he says, of complexion, meaning that the hot and the cold and the wet and the dry is reduced to a kind of mean, huh? And you kind of see Shakespeare eluding to that at the end of Judas the Caesar, when the enemy proclaims a kind of eulogy over the body of the fallen Brutus, this was a man, right? And he talks about how well the elements were mixed in him, that all the world, nature might stand up and say to all the world, this was a man. But notice, when you get some component of you to excess, like say if I'm irascible, right? I seem to be like a snarling dog, don't I? Or if I'm too much into the concupiscence, I look like a pig or something. I become like one of the animals that has one of these things to a kind of excess compared to us. Now Samuel Johnson suddenly has to chop your head off in conversation, and so his friends called him a bear, bee, you know? So he has something, these various names we give of animals to people sometimes, that they kind of depart from that mean between these extremes. Complexion? I have no idea what it is. Well, that means a combination of qualities, right? Yeah. But one is kind of reduced, as he says, to a certain equality or mean. So you only have one thing excelling in the man. In other words, sometimes you have a man, say, as I was giving the example, saying the man who's irascible. Right. And, you know, there are people who can't control their anger, and they go so far as to, you know, beat their wife, let's say, on a regular basis. Or there, there's a boy at trial now, 18 years old there, who stabbed eight times the teacher in the school there, and I found he had some argument about what he was wearing to school. He wasn't obeying the school rules about wearing a hood or something, I don't know. But somebody can't control their anger. And that would be one extreme. But if you had somebody at the opposite extreme who let everybody walk over them, that wouldn't be good either. They'd never stood up for anything. So what you want to get is a balance of these bodily qualities. And that's what he's talking about, that complexion there, is if they've been reduced to a kind of equality, and no one of them being excessive. Thank you. An account of this, man, among the other animals, is of a better sense of touch. And this is an interesting statement that Aristotle made before him. And among men, those who are of better touch are of better understanding. A sign of which is that the soft and flesh are well apt in the mind we see. Something a quote from Aristotle in the second book about the soul. So they used to say, Thomas and Aristotle, that if you have a good imagination, you'll have a good mind in some way. A good mathematical mind. But if you have a good sense of touch, you'll have a good mind, period. And he kind of gave a famous talk there, actually an assumption there, one of the mentors of this is the way back when the school was much smaller, called Sadio Ergo Summa, kind of reply to Descartes. But where he talks about the importance of the sense of touch and how it's kind of neglected in favor of the sense of sight to the sense of the imagination. That we have kind of a visual civilization. And he talked about how the sense of touch is the source, really, of the most basic ideas. That's where we get the idea of good, really, is from the sense of touch, originally. And where we get the idea of nature and substance. And even our idea of sympathy is tied up with the sense of touch. Did you ever see that movie that Orson Welles played in there? Was it the Set in Viander after the war? And Third Man is a call or something like that. It's got kind of a very famous thing. But his old friend drops in, who's played by Joseph Cotton, and he's contacted by the police because they think Orson Welles has been making money, diluting medicines, and selling them on the black market. And people are dying because they're getting improperly things. And Joseph Cotton, though he's been a friend of Orson Welles, he feels he has to cooperate with the police to try to locate him. But in this one scene, they go up on this kind of a merry-go-round, like a big Ferris field, these little wagons. And you look way, way down, and he sees these little specks down there. And Orson Welles says, you know, just think of that, you know, about those people, that's $10,000. $10,000. But you're way up high, and you don't feel anything, but you feel these little specks going around down there. You know, feeling no more than we feel, maybe, say, for an ant, when we step on an ant. You don't really feel much for the ant's suffering or something. And it's kind of looking at human beings like that, you know, at a distance, visual. So, that's interesting, the importance of the sense of touch there for the mind. So he's referring to that, then, and the kind of body you have to have that would make you have a sense of touch that is better. As you go up in the animal kingdom, I think you can see this. Now, what is it, I guess the three-blooded, the two-chamber heart, two-chamber heart, doesn't really have constant body temperature like we do. And the three-chambered heart, I think, is in between. It has a little bit of it. But just take that one example of the man who's having a four-chamber heart enables him to have a constant body temperature. How important is that for the sense of touch, to have a constant body temperature? Oh, very, I guess. Yeah. If you're going up and down the temperature, you wouldn't really perceive hot and cold like you do when your body stays at a kind of mean between the hot and the cold. And then you perceive what is hotter or colder than you. Oh, that's kind of interesting. That's part of the reason, then, why man's body is naturally corruptible, because a thing is corrupted by its contrary, or if it's composed of contraries. And the sense of touch requires that balance of contraries. So you have to have a corruptible body to have a good sense of touch, and you have a good sense of touch to serve your mind. Although what Thomas will say, in the original state of man, God added to our natural body something that makes it even more appropriate to our soul, namely, that it could go on forever without dying. And that's what we're promised also in heaven after the resurrection. The body will be so disposed that it will not, you know, if it's supernatural means, it will not be corruptible anymore, which will be nice. It will also be at the 3 to 3, right? Somewhere around there. Your body is supposed to be at its best, huh? Now, with this sense of touch, I'd always hear that Christ suffered most because he was the perfect man, he had the greatest, almost perfect sense of touch. Yes, he would suffer more, yeah. That's precisely right. His body would have to be the body most suitable to the human mind or reason, as far as its sense organs are concerned, and therefore the sense of touch would have to be more, what, sensitive than other men, and therefore capable of suffering more through his passion and death. Okay, in a related way, then, would his five external senses, his sense memory, and his imagination be the most perfect, too, therefore? Yeah, they would be more perfect. Yeah, they'd be. So he was the most intelligent man ever. Sure, sure, sure. And all those senses were the most, he had the best sight, he had the best hearing? Perhaps, yeah, yeah, yeah. I never understood that before. I kept saying, what's his sense of touch? Yeah. I was better at that, I never understood that. Now, he's going to reply to the first objection that the, why is this immortal soul, this immortal form, joined to a corruptible body? Well, he kind of answered that, in a way. To the first, therefore, it ought to be said that someone, perhaps, would want to avoid this objection. Thank you. or to evade it, to this, that the body of man before sin was what? Incorruptible. But this answer does not seem to be sufficient, because the body of man before sin was immortal, truly, but not through what? Not by nature, but through a gift of the divine grace. Sometimes they call it pretty natural gift, but it's something more than that nature. Otherwise, if it was natural, it's immortality, it would not be taken away by sin, just as neither was the immortality of the demons taken away by sin. And therefore, it ought to be said otherwise, that there's found in matter a twofold condition, one which is chosen in order that it might be suitable to form, and the other which follows the necessity of some prior disposition. And he takes a very interesting example to show that. This is a common one we give. Just as the artist, to the form of a saw, he chooses an iron matter, apt to what? Cutting hard things. But that the teeth of the saw can become, what? Dull, right? And that they can rust, follows the necessity of matter. So sometimes, some of the other top examples is that, that you might use wood to build a house, because of the availability of it, and the fact that you can cut it, and shape it, and so on. But the fact that wood can burn, it's not what you choose it. You don't choose wood to build your house out of, because it's able to burn, do you? No. You choose it for some other reason, huh? So what makes the wood, in some ways suitable for building a house, makes it also subject to fire. The same way, why do we make the window out of glass, or something like that, rather than out of, what, iron, or something? Because glass can shatter, in a way iron would not shatter. But, you make it out of glass, obviously, to let the light in, to see out, and so on. But you've got to have a material, that has those qualities, that's also going to be, more fragile, than, an opaque, thing like iron. Thus, therefore, a body is due to the understanding soul, that is of equal complexion, that is of a certain mean, between sense qualities. But from this, it follows that, with the necessity of matter, that something be, what, corruptible. But if someone says, that God was able to, what, avoid this necessity, it ought to be said, that in the constitution, of natural things, one does not consider, what God is able to do, but what is suitable, to the natures of things, as Augustine says, in his commentary, in the second, book of Genesis, to the letter. But God, nevertheless, provided a, what, remedy, against death, through the gift of, what, grace. Now, the second objection, that this human soul, is the form, that's most immaterial, therefore, that I have, a matter that is less material. And of course, in the ancient, chemistry there, earth was the most material, thing, and then, water, and then, air, and then, fire. And, you know, one reason why we borrow the word for air, like spirit or breath, to talk about, not only the soul sometimes, to talk about the angels or God, to think God is a spirit, is because that's a matter, that seems less material. And therefore, the word is more easily transferred to something, and it's all together immaterial. So why don't you have a body then, that's less material? Just like going back to Louis de Broglie there, matter and might, why not make us out of light? Maybe if we were made out of light, we wouldn't be able to, what, have a sense of touch. And therefore, we wouldn't have a body that's suitable for an understanding soul, a body that will produce images and so on, that can be used to get our basic ideas. To the second, it should be said, that the understanding soul, that a body is not owed to the understanding soul, on account of the operational understanding by itself, but on account of the sensitive power, which requires a body, which requires an organ that is equally complexed, we'll say. And therefore, it is necessary that the understanding soul be joined to such a body, and not to a simple element, which have a kind of extreme of dryness, or an extreme of odd, or something else, or to a mixed body, in which fire exceeds according to quantity, because it could not be of an equal complexion, cannot be used to a mean, on account of the exceeding active power of the fire. But nevertheless, this body, equally complexed, has some dignity, insofar as it is remote from the contraries, it has a kind of mean between them, and doesn't seem to be exactly one or the other, right? In which it's in some way, like the celestial bodies that they thought had, what, no contrariety in them, huh? Yeah. Does that equitable complexion have something of, I thought it was more, like the body has the tools to receive, like it has eyes, the tools to receive the power of sight from the soul, the soul. Yeah. No, it's thinking more of the fact that the contrary qualities you find in matter, like hot and cold and wet and dry, you can't have any one of these to excess. You have to reduce them to a kind of equality, so to speak. Yeah, I can see that on the sense of toughness. And therefore, you can't have an altogether simple body, because that would have one or two of those qualities in a kind of excess, and therefore would not be a body suitable to the sense of touch, which is a fundamental sense. You know, that's what Sarah Stahl would reject the idea, you sometimes have in the platonists, that there are air-like animals. Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. And, you know, Shakespeare presents an air-like thing there, with Ariel there, in the final dialogue, The Tempest. But there, he has a little hard time sympathizing with these human beings, because he's so... and their grossness. But the fairy says there, in the other play there, that you'll purge your mortal grossness, that you'll go like a fire, you know, according to the fairies, who are very fine and thin in their matter. But the point is, if you had a body of air, you wouldn't be able to have a body that is suitable for the sense of touch. Now, the third argument was that it ought to have a body that doesn't have diverse parts, because the soul is one form, and so on. He says, to the third it should be said that the parts of an animal, as eye, hand, flesh, and bone, and other things of this art, are not strictly speaking in a species of some genus, but the whole animal is in the species, say, species of, in the species, say, a substance or a man. And therefore, it cannot be said, properly speaking, that they are a diverse species, but that they are of diverse disposition. And this belongs to the understanding soul, because although it is one in what it is, in its nature, its essence, nevertheless, an account of its perfection, its multiple, in its, what, power, and therefore, for diverse operations, it needs diverse dispositions in the parts of the body to which it is united. An account of this, we see that there is more diversity of parts in animals, in perfect animals, than in imperfect one. And, and, and, and,