De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 85: The Whole Soul in Each Part of the Body

Transcript
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Again, he and Aristotle themselves might have been mistaken about what light is, huh? Because light is not a body, right? Now, do you know the reason why Aristotle said light is not a body? I think I mentioned that before, but... Yeah, it had to do with the speed, he didn't... Yeah, yeah. Aristotle would be this. If illumination would get light over the sky, huh? Well, if illumination is a local motion, right? It's spreading through space like matter does, right? Then it takes time, huh? Okay? If the sky, for example, when the sun comes out, if the sky is illuminated, right, by some very subtle body, huh? Spreading out, you know, from the sun across the sky, huh? Then it's going to take time. And that's certain. That is that statement, huh? Okay. Then he argued, does not take time. Okay? Therefore, it's not a local motion, huh? But the minor premise here, if it is true, then you could say with necessity, right? That the illumination is not a local motion there. It's not a body traveling along. But we now know that Aristotle and Thomas Thauly, and maybe the other men, too, were mistaken about this, right? We now know that light travels across, like what, 186,000 miles per second, huh? Okay? But it takes a very ingenious experimental apparatus to actually detect that, you see? Now, Thomas is, I think, sometimes is aware of these, the weakness of the army in some sense, huh? Because he does say explicitly when Aristotle's talking about the star. He says, the star is incorruptible. Well, as long as men can remember, they're always there. And so that's a probable reason, at least, to say that they're incorruptible, huh? They don't seem to be diminished or anything like that. And Thomas says, well, it is possible that the time it takes them to corrupt is longer than the life of a man, even the life of many generations of men, right? So, it's just in here, right? I think, you know, if you confronted Thomas, you know, and said, well, isn't it possible, you know, that light would travel at a speed so great that you would not be detected with the ordinary eyes? Well, I mean, not that far, right? It's kind of amazing, though, huh? Yeah. I think, you know, when you have all these cell phones, all these means of communication between people now, and we can watch what's going on, you know, from millions of miles away, huh? If you told the ancients that, they would say, you know, well, you know, take tissue, take tissue, and there is a ball. There's lots, right, huh? Okay. And third, a second, because the fifth essence, meaning the, what, the heavenly bodies, does not enter in, in a material way, into the composition of a mixed body, since it is an optimal according to the old sciences, as I mentioned already. But also because the soul is immediately united to the body as formed to matter. That's the argument I insist upon, huh? That's the main one, huh? Okay. Now, he replies to that objection from Augustine, that Augustine is speaking about the soul insofar as it moves the body, huh? Once he uses the word administration. And it is true, Thomas says, that the more gross parts of the body are moved through more subtle ones. Just like we'd say that the electrical impulse, right, which is something material, the electrodes are material, are going to get the muscles to contract or something, right? And the muscles contract, you're going to move the bones, huh? Okay? So the more gross thing, the bones are moved by the muscles, the muscles are moved by electrical impulse or something of this sort. Right. So the more subtle ones, you see? That's what he says Augustine is talking about, you know, if you look at the whole text. And the first tool of the moving power is the spirit, as Aristotle says in the book about the cause and the motion of animals. But spirit there, I say, if you want to try to put it in something like what we think today, it's a very fine body, like we think of electricity as something very fine, huh? But you know how electricity can go through a piece of metal or something, right? It seems almost to not be a body, doesn't it? Oh, yeah. Very fine, very... Down to the second objection that says when you lose that subtle body, we'd say when your brain's dead, you know, your soul probably is gone. Well, Thomas says to the second, it ought to be said that when the spirit is subtracted, the union of the soul to the body fails, not because that was the medium holding it together, but because you've taken away the disposition through which the body is disposed for such a union. It's no longer a suitable body for such a union, huh? But nevertheless, the spirit could be a middle in moving, right? As the first tool of motion, huh? Now, the third objection is a little bit different, you know, saying that you should have something in between things so far distant, right? And he says, Granted that the soul is distant from the body in many things, if the conditions of both are considered by themselves. Whence, he says, if both of them had being separately, if they were like, in other words, the quantitative parts, right? Parts that can exist, right? By themselves, huh? It would be necessary that there be many intermediary to a divine. But insofar as the soul is the form of the body, huh? It does not have being by itself apart from the being of the body. The body, as we saw before, shares in the existence of the soul, but not completely, right? And that's why the soul has certain abilities that are not in the, what, body, huh? Like the ability to understand and the ability to choose. Which is, in that matter, any form, if it be considered as act, has a great distance from matter, which is being in, what, potency or an ability only. Okay, we'll go on to Article 8 here, or maybe we'll take a break after you go through the objections or something here. Okay, that's a little longer article, so go on for a little bit before we take our break. Now, this is an interesting article, and you find Thomas, you know, talking about this in many other works, too. But as you'll see in the said contra there, it comes from the text of Augustine, right? And I don't know where our style explicitly says this, although I think you would agree with that, huh? But look at the said contra just a moment to realize where this is coming from. But against this is what Augustine says in the sixth book about the Trinity, that the soul in every body is both the whole of the soul in the whole body, and in each of its parts, the whole soul is. Okay? So that's Augustine that says that, huh? And you have to admire Augustine that he saw that, huh? It's really kind of amazing, huh? I mean, Augustine is remarkable because he doesn't seem to be, you know, he knows the paginness to some extent, but maybe kind of secondhand, you know? He doesn't even know Aristotle, Hardy at all, if you have paginated with him. But he has such a profound understanding you have to admire Augustine very much. Okay, so let's look at the objections to that. It seems that the soul is not whole in each part of the body, huh? For the philosopher says in the book about the cause and emotion of animals, it's not necessary that in each part of the body be the soul, but that it exists in a certain, what? Starting point for the body. In that, at once they are apt to make, what? Their own motion through nature, huh? I translate that very well. But the soul is present in that part from which motion originates, huh? Okay? Now, this is my thing like Aristotle is disagreeing with what Augustine is saying, right? But again, this is going to be talking about the soul insofar as it's the mover of the body. And the thing that Augustine is saying is about the soul insofar as it is the form of the body. Incidentally, when you study the Incarnation in the Athanasian Creed, which is one of the main creeds that's in your official list of creeds, in the Athanasian Creed, it says nothing is more like the union of the word and human nature than the union of the soul and the body. And why does he say that? And Thomas, when he explains it, he says, well, it doesn't mean that the divine nature is, like the heretics say, the form of the body, right? There was this misunderstanding of the text of St. John, and the word was made flesh, where he took only the body aspect from us and not our human soul. And in place of the human soul, he had the divine word. That doesn't mean that at all, no. But what way is the union of the word and flesh, the word of human nature, unlike the union of the soul and the body? Well, Thomas develops that, you'll see in the fourth volume, the Subacondra Gentiles, for example. But that the body is not only the subject of the soul, but it's also the, what, the tools of the soul. And they are tools that are joined to the one having the tool, as opposed to the hammer or the saw, which the tool is not really part of me. And so the human nature in Christ is joined to his divinity as a tool. That's very important to see that, because that means that this human nature has a power to redeem us, etc., due to its being joined to the divinity of Christ as a, what, joined tool. So you have to spell this out. George Stowell compares that sometimes, and he'll see that the soul is to the body like an art is to its tools. And not just any art can use just any tools. And so not just any soul can be in any body. Moreover, the soul is in the body, of which it is an act, but it is the act of a, what, body composed of tools. That's organic means. Therefore, it is not except in the body composed of tools. But not each part of the body of man is a, what, body that is composed of tools, or that is a tool. Therefore, the soul is not in each part of the body. There is reasoning from the definition of the soul, right? It's the first act of an actual body composed of tools. Therefore, how can it be in every part of the body, right? But not every part of the body is a tool, although maybe a part of the tool. It's not a body composed of tools. Also, okay. Moreover, in the second book about the soul, this proportion that Aristotle has there, that just as a part of the soul is to a part of the body, as the ability to see to the eye, so the whole soul to the, what, whole body of the animal. This is a proportion Aristotle uses, right? That the soul is to the body, as the ability to see is to the eye. If the eye says we're an animal, the ability to see would be its soul. So it's manifesting what the soul is by a very interesting proportion. It helps us to understand what it is. So he's saying, but if the whole soul was in each part of the body, it would follow that each part of the body is an animal. So Thomas is going to have to understand some distinction of the way in which the soul was in the body as a whole and the way the soul is in each part of the body without denying that the whole soul is in each part of the body. That's a very subtle thing, right? St. Thomas has got to understand, in the face of these objections, how the human soul, right, can be in the whole body of us, right, and in each part of us in not exactly the same way because only the whole body is an animal, right? And each part is not an animal, right? And notice the word animal comes with the word soul, doesn't it? Yeah. So he's got to see some difference between the way the soul is in the whole body and the way it is in each part. Without denying what Augustine sees and Thomas sees that the whole soul is in each part, too. But you've got to be very careful because when you say the whole soul is in each part, if you're thinking of whole in the first sense of whole, the quantitative whole, it doesn't make any sense. The whole length of the line is in each part of the line? Huh? The whole circle is in both what? Semi-circles? Wouldn't make any sense, right? For a quantitative whole to be in each of its parts. The whole. Wouldn't it? No. And the other problem would be if the whole is in one part, there's nothing left for the other parts. But then you're imagining the whole to be like a quantitative one. It's very subtle, very subtle. It's amazing. I mean, you have to admire Augustine here. I think I mentioned how I was looking at that treatise on Hope there. The Vatican, I mean, the Catechism of the Catholic Church. There's a very nice quote there from Augustine as to the desire for happiness being natural to man. And it's in all of us, a very nice little quote. Sometimes Augustine says things that are just so well said, you know, what does Aristotle say? There's some things we should try to say better than our predecessors, and some things we should try to say as well as they said. And so you find, you know, Augustine, like Shakespeare, people like that sometimes, saying something so well that you would despair of ever saying it better. And therefore, what you should do, or restrict yourself to, is trying to say it as well as they said it. Like Madura Skoda, you know, said to this pianist that was taking some liberties with Mozart, huh? He said, no, no. He says, we play it the way the master wrote it. That's it. You don't try to improve about Mozart. You try to play the music the way he would have played it, huh? Kind of marvelous thing. Moreover, all of the powers of the soul are founded in the nature of the soul, the essence of the soul. If, therefore, the whole soul is in each part of the body, it would follow that all the powers of the soul are in each part of the body. And thus, the ability to see would be in the ear, and the ability to hear would be in the eye. That's a nice objection, huh? Which is convenient, huh? Yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one. It's much stronger than that, right? It doesn't fit together, right? Moreover, if the whole soul was in each part of the body, each part of the body would immediately depend upon the soul. Therefore, one part would not depend upon another. Nor would one part be more principled than another, which is manifestly false, right? If they cut off my head, they'll face me off more than they cut off my arm, right? I might go out with my arm but hardly with my head, right? So one part is more principled, right? But it gets to all this, right? It's what Augustine says in the sixth book about the Trinity, that the soul is in what? In whatever body it's in. It is the whole soul that's in the whole body, and it's the whole soul that is in each part. That's absolutely incredible. Incredible Augustine to say that, huh? He should see that, huh? You take the other two great thinkers, you know, another thinker that Thomas uses a lot is Boethius, right? But Boethius was educated in the school of Alexandria there with Ammonius Hermes, huh? So he's really into the Greek philosophical tradition in a way that Augustine was not, huh? And Boethius is going to make, try to make available to the Latin-speaking world Oh, it's a very style. They did translate, you know, at least the logical works into Latin. But Augustine doesn't have that same formal training. He was trained in the school, in the rhetorical schools. He had that same, you know, really philosophical thing. But yet he, what, comes up with such subtle things as this, that he can see those things. That's amazing. You've got to realize that Augustine has a first-class mind, you know. But there's one account, I guess, of Augustine appearing to St. Thomas, right, in his lifetime. Oh, I've never heard that. Just as there was another one of St. Paul appearing to him. When Thomas was writing his commentaries, I guess, of Paul. Of course, the other brother was out in the hall and heard the conversation, heard the conversation like it was in there, you know. Thomas got to say, you never believe who I was talking to in there. But the conversation, the way it was reported, I don't know whether this is true or not, but Augustine and Thomas are kind of comparing each other to each other, right? Yeah. But Augustine was saying that you are superior to me because of your chastity, right? You know, because he had had his sinful life during the beginning. I'll say to one of my colleagues who was teaching the confessions in a course in Augustine Aquinas, I said, what do you think is St. Augustine's greatest work? And a lot of times people, you know, they're very familiar with the confessions, and it's a very good work for many reasons, or the sin of God or something of this sort. But to my knowledge, or other things on grace and so on are very important. You know, the church finally said, the mind of Augustine on grace is the mind of the church on grace. That's quite a boop. They're one of the popes in there. But to me, the book on the Trinity is the greatest work, huh? It's really tremendous. You know, Augustine is not quite, like Thomas, quite as formal in his writing as Thomas. So even though the book is about the Trinity, he started talking about the soul, he started talking about the Incarnation a lot in there, you know? But Thomas doesn't talk, maybe, the Trinity, about the Incarnation. Just about Trinity, right? So Augustine is not as orderly that way, you know, I'd say. But there are so many things in that work. It's really amazing. I think I mentioned that phrase that Augustine has, too. Where he talks about, you know, nothing is more fruitful than to understand something about the Trinity. And nothing is more dangerous than to make a mistake about the Trinity. That's terrible, huh? But he talks about those who have an immature and perverse love of reason. That's really, you know, that's really profound, huh? Because as a teacher, I'm always trying to get the students to use their reason and to love reason and so on. But you see, you know, in a lot of rations and people like that, a kind of immature and perverse love of reason. And Augustine sees that defect, huh? That is very common in universities. Very common. But I mean, something kind of, you know, Augustine, with the brevity of wisdom there, he'll say these things, and you have to say, well, what would it mean, you know, the opposite, to have a mature and rectified love of reason? I think you do see it in, say, something like Aristotle, a mature and rectified love of reason, but involves things like recognizing the great weakness of reason, and therefore the need of all kinds of, what, props and supports, you might say, for reason, huh? But anyway, it's interesting, I think, that this is the quote from which we get the cigarette. You want to take a little break before we look at the body of the article? Or how do you want to do? Sure. Is that appropriate thing? And then we'll look at the body of the article, which has got a lot of holes and parts to it. Okay, I answer, it ought to be said, that just as has already been said in other places here, if the soul was united to the body only as a mover, it could be said that it was not in every part of the body, but in one part only, right, to which the others are moved. But, because the soul is united to the body as a form, it's necessary, as Augustine says, that it be in the whole and in each part of the body. Now he says, it is not an accidental form of the body, but a substantial form. Now he's going to bring out another difference here between the substantial form, right, and the accidental form. The substantial form is not only a perfection of the whole, but of each, what, part, huh? For since the whole consists of its parts, the form of the whole, which does not give existence to each of the parts of the body, is a form which is the, what, composition and the order, huh? Like the form of a house, huh? So the order arrangement of a house as a whole, is that found in each part of the house? No, see? Is even the order arrangement of the chair, you see, is that found in each part? No. Now, you know, I mentioned the opinion of Sibius, he brings in there, the fetal, right, so the soul is the harmony of the body, right? But that's a very common opinion, that the soul is, what, the harmony of the body, or it's the order of the body, or the arrangement of the body, huh? And although the modern scientists would not use the word soul, right, but if you asked him, why is this body alive and that body's not alive, well, it's the arrangement of the matter, really. And the arrangement of the matter as a whole is found in the whole and not in the parts. Just like my automobile engine out there, to imagine the human body to be kind of a machine like the engine of my automobile out there. And the whole engine's got a certain arrangement, right? That's found in the whole engine, but not in each part, is it? Right? So they're misunderstanding the kind of form the soul is. The order of the engine, right, the arrangement of the engine, is an accidental form. It doesn't give the parts of the automobile their existence, right? If I replaced the radiator, the carburetor, or one of these other parts, right? That could be just by itself, right? And you put them together, and then you get the thing to run, huh? That's the way they understand man, right? Okay? But that's to understand the soul to be an accidental form. Yes, most of all, through knowing the human soul, though, we know it can't be an accidental form. Because if we're an accidental form, we have no activity except that in the body. But when he talked about the reason and the will, too, we have acts like understanding and willing that are not in the body. The soul, he says, is the substantial form. Whence it is necessary that it be a form and an act, not only of the whole, but of each part. And therefore, when the soul recedes, something is not said to be an animal or a man, except equivocally. Notice the difference between saying a white man or a black man, right? When I say white man or black man, I add something to man, right? But they're still man, right? Okay, white man and black man, both a bit. What about dead man? Use the adjective dead man. Is a dead man a man? No. But grammatically, dead man is the same as what? White man. You've got a noun modified by an adjective, right? But the adjective white or black doesn't really change the meaning of man, huh? A white man and a black man are not man in two different senses of the word. They're accidentally different, right? But not in what it is to be a man. But a white man and a dead man, they're not man in the same sense. And so called dead man a man is to use the word man in a equivocal sense. It's something of the shape, right? The same, he says, is true of the parts, right? The hand or the eye of a dead man is not really the same as the eye of the, what? Living man. Because it no longer has the operation of an eye. Which is to see, right? He gives that sign from the philosopher. A sign of which is that no part of the body has its own. 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However, everything that retains its species, its nature, retains the operation of that specific nature. So Aristotle says that the eye of a dead man is called an eye, just like the eye of a statue. It's eye being used equivalently, right? And the eye of the dead man, in a way, doesn't see any more than the eye of the what? Statue sees, right? But an act is in that which is the act, which is necessary that the soul be in the whole body, in each part of it. Now, he's going to go into a discussion of wholes and parts here. In different meanings of whole and part, in some meanings maybe we haven't met before, and that the whole is in each part of it, can be considered thus. For since a whole is what is divided into parts, according to a three-fold division, there is a, what, three-fold totality. Now, you're going to meet in this text, a number of meanings of whole and part, and it's something like the text that Aristotle has in the fifth book of Wisdom, where he takes up whole and part, right? But the four senses of whole and part that he gives in the fifth book of Wisdom, three of them are found here, right? One of them is not found here. And there's a sense of whole and part here that's not in Aristotle, right? Because it's kind of in between two kinds that he talks about. So he leaves that to a more subtle consideration of whole and part. Let me explain just very briefly the text of metaphysics, that's more basic than this, and see what Thomas is doing there. Usually, in a introductory logic course, I just distinguish two kinds of whole, two meanings of the word whole. And they are the composed whole, which Thomas often calls the integral whole, and then the universal whole. Now, the original meaning of the word whole is the composed whole. We speak of the composed whole, as the word composed means in Latin. It's a whole that is put together from its parts, okay? But it's not set of its parts, okay? But not set of its parts, okay? So the word cat, for example, is put together from the letters C, A, and T. And is the word cat set of the letters C? Or the chair you're sitting on is put together from the legs and the back of the seat? And is the seat a chair? Is the back a chair? Is it a leg a chair? No. But the chair is put together from those parts, right? Okay. Now, by kind of proportion analogy, we say sometimes the general is to the particular, like a whole list of parts. So we might say that odd number and even number are particular kinds of what? Number, right? Okay. Now, number is set of odd number. Number is set of what? Even number, right? Or we might say that a dog and a cat and a horse are particular kinds of what? Animal, right? So animal can be divided to dog and cat and so on. Just like the chair can be divided to the legs and the back and so on. But it's not really a whole and part in the same sense, is it? So the universe as a whole is just the reverse. You could say it's set of each part, but not put together from them. So animal is set of dog and cat and horse. Okay. But is animal in general composed of dog, cat, and horse? Well, if animal in general was composed of dog, cat, and horse, then to say that a dog is an animal would be to say a dog is something composed of cat, horse, and animal. But notice how we speak of the particulars under the general. And the word particular comes from the word part, doesn't it? So we see it as being something like the part of. So they call it the universal whole in the subject parts of, as opposed to the composing parts of the post whole. That's really the first distinction to see among wholes of the parts of. Distinction between the composed whole and the universal whole. Now, usually what I do in logic is I go through every art and science, starting from the nose all the way up the top, and point out that in every science, we divide a composed whole into its parts, and we divide a universal whole into its parts. Okay? So you take any one you want to, but let's say you divide sentence into a noun and verb, an adjective and adverb, right? Which kind of division is that? Yeah. Because a noun is not a sentence. A verb is not a sentence, right? But the sentence is composed of these, right? But if you divide sentence into statement, question, command, it's a big division, right? Okay? But take any sex. Take chemistry, right? The chemist divides atom into a nucleus, electronic shell. What kind of division is that? Yeah. Or if he divides it into protons and neutrons, electrons, right? Okay? Well, you look at the periodic table. You have all these elements divided. What kind of division is that? Yeah. Because the hydrogen atom is an atom. The oxygen atom is an atom, right? But a proton is not an atom. Electron is not an atom, right? So every science divides these two ways. When Aristotle was in logic even, he studied the statement, huh? He divides the statement into noun and verb, right? The subject, predicate, copula. It's the first kind of division. He divides the statement into affirmative and negative. Second kind, right? See? The affirmative statement by itself is a statement. Negative one is. But the noun and the verb are not, right? So in every art or science, we divide them, right? If you're in theology, you divide what? Sacrament into the matter and form of sacrament. Okay? What kind of division is that? Yeah, yeah. So water is not the sacrament of baptism, is it? In the words, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, that's not the sacrament of baptism. You've got to be pouring the water and saying the words, right? But if I divide sacrament into the seven, what division is that? Yeah, yeah. So if you go through the different arts or sciences, in the science of political philosophy, you divide government into the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. What kind of division is that? Component? Yeah. Doing it by itself is that, huh? You heard what, was it, Andrew Jackson does?