De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 89: Powers of the Soul Distinguished by Acts and Objects

Transcript
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Involves what? Complexion. Yeah, composition, right? Not simplicity. So the stone is simpler than the tree, and the tree is simpler than the dog, and the dog is simpler than you and I. But we're more perfect than the dog, so the order is just the reverse. And so you have to negate that in here, right? You have to see that God is altogether simple, but universally perfect. And that's why he's going to be so interesting to see as he is. Okay. I was mentioning that thing from the letter of John Paul II when he was studying at the Angelic Film, right? He was kind of discovering Thomas, huh? And that Thomas could be so simple compared to the other authors he was reading. You know, the guys he was reading those phenomenologists, they're not very simple at all to read. But Thomas seemed so profound, nevertheless, you know, that you could have that perfection of thought and yet express so simply. Yeah, I was thinking of what you said about it last week. And if John Paul, being in a communist country, as a bishop, were to write as clearly as Thomas, he'd probably be in a gulag by the age of 40. Yeah. So maybe that was out of self-defense that he looked abstractly and people that understood the faith had to, like parables, kind of delve into it and the communists would be like, well, forget it, you know, it's like you can't kind of slip by. But a lot of times, people in their training, you know, they get a kind of complicated way of speaking that really doesn't help understanding and gets in the way of it, huh? Yeah. I know when they tell a joke there, Ron MacArthur's wife, you know, Ron MacArthur's wife, you know, had to study under Deconic, you know, and he was married at the time, see, because he was a little older. And Ron MacArthur's wife happened to run into Charles Deconic and she just asked, you know, how her husband was doing, right? And Deconic says, much better now, he says. He's asking simple questions. You see? The questions were getting simpler, but what? More simple. Better. Better. You see? You'll see that, huh? You'll see, you know, plainly Aristotle, they ask the question, in a very simple way, but they're very profound. It's very rude to the things, huh? As Aristotle says in the ethics there, Plato was right. He used to ask, he says, are we on the way from the beginnings, he says, or are we on the way to the beginnings? What a marvelous question that is. He used to stop and think about it. Are we on the way from the beginnings, right? Or are we on the way to the beginnings? And Heisenberg said, the Greeks taught us how to ask questions of principle. And this is the most powerful tool that you have in Western thought, the ability to ask a question of principle. A question that, what? Influences all kinds of things, right? It's a central question, huh? Heisenberg said he could see it. Max Planck, you know, he was the father of modern physics, the man who proposed a quantum hypothesis in December of 1900. He had been trained to read the Greeks to ask the, what? That's the right question. And Heisenberg, in his own account there, he and Niels Bohr were trying to figure out this quantum phenomena, and they would spend all day, you know, talking about it, and they'd almost end up in despair, right? And he said, I'd go for a walk in the park, and we'd say to myself, can nature be as absurd as it seems to us in these experiments? And then finally, they got on each other's nerves. And so Niels Bohr went off to go skiing, and Heisenberg stayed in Copenhagen, and they both worked out a solution independently of each other. But he describes when he did it, and he was, what? Alone by himself, and he suddenly asked the right question. Because as he says in the Gifford Lectures, asking the right question is often to go more than halfway to the truth, huh? And once he asked the right question, he almost had the answer like that, huh? He came back and he started calculating to see if the numbers were correct, and he was so nervous, you know, he was making stupid mistakes, and then he calmed down and started calculating. They were thinking about perfect. They just, you know. And so there's a simplicity that, what? Involves, what? Perfection, huh? Do you remember where Plato said that about the question of are we on the way from the beginnings or to the beginning? No, Aristotle reports it in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics. Oh, okay. It's kind of, you know, Plato was what? Right, you know, you know, to ask this question. I said so well. Aristotle was supposed to set up a plaque, incidentally, to Plato's memory, huh? And the plaque says, Plato, he says, the first man to show by word and by example that the happy life is a virtuous life. Other men had talked about this but hadn't showed it in their life, right? Other men had shown it in their life but hadn't taught it but he's the first man to teach by word and example that the virtuous life is a happy life, huh? Now, the second objection is that as a power is superior so it's more united, huh? But the understanding so excels over their forms in power. Therefore, not to have what? Most of all, one power. And Thomas says, to the second it should be said that a united power is superior if it extends to equal things, huh? But a, what? Multiplied power is superior if, what? More things are subjected to it, huh? So notice on the case of man, would it be better for man to have reason and not senses? Or to have senses and not reason? Well, the angel has reason, understanding, without senses, huh? But when you study the angels you realize that by their thoughts they know not only the universal but they also know the what? The singular. Singulars, yeah. But we, through our understanding, know the universal but not the singular. And we need to know the singular through the senses, huh? But the senses can't know the universal. So if the same power could know the universal and the singular like in the angels that would be superior, right? But to have what? not have one power that can know both it's better to have both powers so you can know both, right? You see? If I could hear you with my eyes I wouldn't need my ears, right? But it's better to have eyes and ears so I can see and hear you. You see that? Yeah. If I could see and taste the wine, right? With my eyes. But as it is, huh? I need both, huh? Now the fourth one, the third objection was based upon connection between operating and existing, right? But through one nature of the soul man has all of these, what? Grades of perfection, right? In some sense he has what the plant has, the animal has, and so on. So why shouldn't he have through his soul just one power? And Thomas points out that of one thing there is only one, what? Existence. Substantial existence that is to say, right? If he had more than one substantial existence there'd be a man and a dog and maybe something else, right? I can't be a man and a dog and a tree, can I? A man and a beast and a plant? No. There'd only be one thing, right? And so if I have something in common with the plant and something in common with the beast so that I exist in a way on all three levels, right? I nourish and reproduce, I sense, I understand, right? It has to be through, what? One soul that I do this, right? Otherwise, what would I be? I'd be a plant and I'd be a beast and I'd be a man. Wouldn't be one thing, would I? But one thing can have many operations, can't it? But it can't have many existences, right? So he says that one thing there is one substantial existence but there can be many operations, huh? And therefore, there's only one nature of the soul but there are many, what? Powers or abilities, huh? Next time, we'll be looking at the third article which is involving the things that we saw very explicitly in Aristotle. And then we'll try to look at the fourth article, too, that there's order among the powers, huh? We'll be looking at the third article, and we'll be looking at the third article, and we'll be looking at the third article, and we'll be looking at the third article, and we'll be looking at the third article, In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more quickly. St. Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, and help us to understand what you have written. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. So we're in this general question on the powers of the soul. And now, in question 77, article 3, something we learned in Aristotle, that the powers or abilities of the soul are distinguished by their acts, the differences in their acts, and the acts are distinguished by their objects. So that's what this first article is about. Then we'll take a little break and then we'll do the fourth article. Try to do two articles each time and then take a little break. And the logical place to take it, huh? To the third one proceeds thus. Thus, it seems that the powers, you can translate potencia powers or abilities, are not distinguished by their acts and their objects. For nothing is determined to its species, its particular kind of thing it is, to that which is, what, posterior or afterwards, huh? After the thing. Or which is extrinsic to it, huh? But the act is after the ability, huh? The object is, however, extrinsic, huh? Therefore, through these two things, huh? The acts and the objects, the powers are not distinguished. First, now we can say in English, secundum specium, huh? According to the species, according to the particular kind of thing they are, right? Okay? The species name is a particular kind of thing. And genus name is a, what? A general kind of thing, huh? Moreover, he says, the second objection. Contraries are what differ most of all, huh? So he sometimes defines contraries as the species furthest apart in the same genus, huh? So in the genus of color, right? Contraries are black and white, but are furthest apart, huh? Happened to be talking about that in natural philosophy today, and so I said, every woman is beautiful. Some women are beautiful. Some women are not beautiful. No woman is beautiful. Which statements are contraries? The first and the last. Yeah, see? So the one who says, every woman is beautiful, the one who says, no woman is beautiful, they're as far as you can be, right? That's what the idea of contraries is, huh? If, therefore, the powers are distinguished by their objects, or according to their objects, it would follow that they would not be the same power of contraries, huh? The same ability for contraries. That would seem to be the greatest difference you could have, right? Which is clearly false, huh? Almost in all cases. For example, the knowing power is the same knowing power for knowing both, what? White and black, huh? Which are contraries. And taste the same for the sweet and the, what? Snore. Bitter. Bitter, yeah, yeah. It's kind of interesting, you know, because Socrates, in the dialogue called the Protagoras, right? He wants to reason from the proposition or the statement that something is only one contrary. And, of course, sometimes people want to say there's two contraries to sweet. Sour and bitter, huh? But really, I think it's bitter that's the contrary. It's furthest apart from sweet, huh? Right, right. See? But sour is maybe next to bitter, so. But it's not really the contrary. So that's an interesting objection. Moreover, the cause being removed, the effect is removed, huh? If, therefore, the difference of powers was from the difference of objects, the same object would not be able to pertain to diverse powers. But this is clearly what? False. For the same thing is known by the knowing power and desired by the, what? Desiring power, huh? Of course, remember Aristotle talking about how, what is the mover in animals, huh? And how you're moved by knowledge and by desire, huh? But then he kind of reduces them to one because the thing known is desired. So this is taking that kind of thing, huh? Where I smell the good food, right? And I desire that food then, right? So it's the same object that I smell and I desire. So if a difference of objects gives a difference of power, the same object should give you the same, what? Power, right? But obviously, the ability to sense and the ability to desire are not the same, what? Power, huh? Interesting objection, huh? Moreover, that which is per se, as such, that causes something, in all things causes that same thing. But some diverse objects, right, which pertain to diverse powers, belong also to some one power, as, for example, sound and what color. They belong or pertain to two different sense powers, to sight and to sense of hearing, which are diverse powers. And nevertheless, they belong to one power, the common or the central sense, huh? And you remember that from the Dianima, huh? Aristotle, in the beginning of the third book there, he argues that we sense not only the difference between, let's say, white and black, or between sweet and bitter, but we sense the difference between white and sweet. But the eye can't do that, because it doesn't know both, right? The eye knows white, but doesn't know sweet. And the sense of taste knows sweet, but doesn't know white. And therefore, there must be a, what? Internal sense, huh? Where the private senses, the outward senses, come back to a common center. He calls that the common sense, huh? I sometimes call it the central sense, because of the equivocation there of common sense in English. And incidentally, that was a good example of how sometimes what we know by inward experience and what we know by outward experience is the same thing, huh? We might know by inward experience that we sense not only the difference between white and black, or between sweet and bitter, but we sense the difference between white and sweet, and therefore we know they come back to a common center. But maybe when they, you know, do anatomy or something like that, right? They might find that the outward senses come back to a common center, huh? And then you'd know by outward experience what you know by what? Inward experience, huh? That the outward senses are joined to the inward, to a common center, huh? But there are some things, right, we know by outward experience, we don't know by inward experience. Like when we map the parts of the brain or something of that sort, or attempt to map the parts of the brain, it's very confusing. But other things we might know only by inward experience. If, for example, our reason and our will are not bodies, we'll never know them except by what? Inward experience, huh? I'll never find a choice as you cut up the brain. There's a, oh, there's a choice. I cut into a choice there. But if choice is something, an act that is not in the body, and if understanding is an act that's not in the body, like we have reasoned before and we're reasoned again here, when you come to take up those things, then they are known only by what? Inward experience, huh? But it shouldn't shock you necessarily that something can be known in diverse ways by two different things, huh? We're just reading a fragment today in class there from Empedocles, huh? He's talking about the road from the senses into reason. But he singles out the sense of sight and the sense of touch. And the sense of sight among all the senses has a certain clarity that the other senses have. So it has some excellence over the other senses, where Bobby might mention that sense in particular. But the sense of, and there's the sense of distance on it, the sense of sight. Much more distant than the sound is, huh? All of our astronomy is based upon eyesight, in a way. But the sense of touch excels the other senses in terms of certitude. And for a Christian, we always take the example of the Doubting Thomas, huh? Unless I put my finger in his eyes, he's not going to believe. And sometimes the Apostles are in doubt. Are they seeing a ghost, huh? And Christ, you know, will eat and, you know, you can feel that he has flesh and blood, right? And so you're more sure about that. But those two senses together have an excellence that none of the other senses have, too. Because they're the only senses whereby we know the shape of an object. So I can see the shape of this glass, and I could, just feeling it, huh, know the shape. But hearing and smell and taste, huh, don't know. Taste is a touch, yeah, but not just the taste doesn't tell you that. And notice how important the shape of an object is for knowing it. When we identify most things in the world around us, more by their shape than by their, what, color, huh? And this desk might have the same color as that chair over there, but I know that's a chair, and this is a table because of its shape, huh? And you people are, I guess, human beings by your shape, huh? That scene in Romeo and Juliet there, you know, where Romeo's getting all worked up like, you know, he's lost his reason, and Fr. Lawrence says, you know, I mean, you've got the shape of a man, you know. He's not acting like a man, like a rational animal, you're acting like a beast, huh? But I just mention that because there's some things that sight knows that touch doesn't know. Like touch doesn't know color, I can't feel the color. But other things, like I can feel the coolness of the water here, let's say, and I can't really see the coolness, can I? Oh, no. But then as far as the shape, both sight and touch know that, huh? And it's like that with inward experience of life and outward. There are some things we know by inward experience that we don't know at all by outward experience of life, and vice versa. But some things maybe we know by both. An example of that is that the outward senses come back to a common, what, center. And that's what he's saying here now, huh, in this objection here. Here you have two senses distinguished, huh, by sound and color, and then you have this other power that knows both of these. So how is this, say, what, basis for distinguishing things, huh? When sometimes the same objects, sound and color, right, lead to a distinction of two powers, other times they're being known by the same power. What does that do to the claim that it's by their objects we should distinguish these things? So these are interesting, what? Objections. Objections, yeah. The second objection there, you have objects that are very far apart because they're contraries, huh? And contraries in some way where they're most different, at least in the same genus. So here are contrary objects that don't distinguish powers, and then you have other ones where you have the same object, and yet you have different powers. Because you have the same object being known and being, what, desired or loved, huh? And yet the heart and the mind, they're not the same power. And the same way down here, this other objection. We seem to have both, huh? Now, but against all this, huh, is that posterior things are distinguished by things that are prior or before. But the philosopher, and this is again Antonia Messia, right? Capital P, meaning Aristotle. But the philosopher says in the second book about the soul, that the acts are before the powers and the, what? Yeah, the acts and the operations are before the powers by, what? According to reason. Yeah, according to definition, you might say, huh? And still further before these are the, what? Opposita, right? The objects, huh? Okay. Therefore, the powers are distinguished by their acts and their objects, huh? That's the first part of the article here, huh? We're talking about how three is enough today in philosophy of nature. And I said, you'll find very often, huh, how three is enough. This is the way we usually divide the articles of Thomas, don't we? The objections, you know? Including the set contra, and then the body of the article, right? The response. And then the third part, the, what? Reply to the objections, huh? And that's why you have in the question, you know, is disputate. You have many more objections, of course, on both sides, huh? Then you have the body of the article, and then the reply to the objections. Naturally, it falls into these three parts. I answer, it ought to be said, that power or ability, according as it is a power or ability, is ordered to enact, huh? Now, let's talk a moment on the word potentia. Just, just, uh, problems of translation here. The Greek word that potentia translates is dunamis, huh? In Latin, you translate that by potentia. Now, in English, we sometimes translate that by the word, what? Potentia. Yeah, but sometimes, but in this context, by the term power, right? Okay, okay, so, um, you often see an English translation, maybe you have in some of the English translations you have before, the powers of the soul, isn't that the word they use? Mm-hmm. Huh? Mm-hmm. Okay. Now, um, when you get to studying the word, uh, dunamis in Greek or potentia in Latin, uh, in the ninth book of wisdom, Aristotle will distinguish between two kinds of powers, huh? Okay, okay, and one you could call, first, the ability to act upon another, huh? But you might call it the active ability or power, huh? And then, the ability to be acted upon, you could say it, by another, or you could use, instead of be acted upon, the ability to undergo, huh? Okay? Now, in Greek, huh, the word for both of these would be dunamis in some, and the, uh, Latin word would be potentia. Now, sometimes in English we translate dunamis in potentia not by abilities as I have done here, but by the word power that you may be having in translation. Now, when Aristotle explains this word ability, he points out that it's a word equivocal by reason, and that there's an order among the meanings. And which do you think is the first meaning of dunamis? What's the first meaning of potentia? Is it the ability to act upon another, or the ability to undergo, which is it? To act. To act upon. Yeah, yeah. And then it's carried over to the other, huh? But, the English word power seems to be stuck on the first meaning. And you can see, in a way, in the English words derived from the Latin or the Greek word, that they have a sense more of the active one. So, dunamis is where you get the word, what? Dynamic, dynamite. See? And words like potent, huh? You see? A potent medicine is the one that reacts upon you, right? Okay. Okay, so you can see in the carryover of the word, the transliteration, rather, of it, in English, that you think of the first sentence right away, huh? Yeah. Now, the problem I find with translating it by power is that power doesn't seem to have been moved to the second sentence at all. Yeah. But I think that the English word ability has been, to some extent, moved, huh? Now, the homely examples I give in class are these ones. I'm lecturing on this. I said, if Burkus gets into the boxing ring with Cassius Clay, it's not going to last too long. It's probably going to be called very shortly by the, you know, referee, you want to call him. Burkus is not getting any blows in at all. He's just being pummeled by the other guy. And so Burkus seems to be lacking in ability for this sport, huh? And all the ability seems to be in the other guy, huh? Mm-hmm. But, you're thinking now, what, the ability to act upon it, huh? Burkus has no ability there for this, huh? Mm-hmm. But, you could say that Burkus is beatable, that Burkus is breakable, that Burkus is bustable, right? You do use the word able there, right? Instead of Burkus, huh? But is he able in this sense here? He's got a blow again, see? But he is able by some ability, huh? And there you see kind of the second meaning of ability. In the same way we speak of a building as being, what, burnable, huh? Oh, yeah. Or the dish there is breakable. By what ability is it breakable? By an ability to be acted upon. When I say the wood is burnable, or the house is burnable, I mean it's able to be acted upon by the fire in this way. It's able to undergo something, yeah. Would an example of this be, let's say, someone who is able to be acted upon as like a student, but as they're open to being acted upon, they can eventually go from two to one and be eventually, you know, able to act upon another? Yeah, yeah, to some extent that's true, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay, just like we're generated now by our parents, but then later on we can generate someone ourselves, right? Okay, now, I'm not saying, yeah, I'm just using the expression of a student who's able to move himself, but at first you have to be moved by the teacher, right? But that would run you, yeah, okay. So, you can see there's a little problem in translating it, huh? I mean, it's common, you'll see me some days using the word power when I'm reading the translation here, the powers of the soul, but as we'll find out, and as it'll already appear a bit in this body of this article, the powers of the soul, some are an ability to act upon something, and some are more an ability to be, what, acted upon, huh? Okay, and the senses, huh? My eye doesn't act upon the colors in this room, but the colors in this room, the lights in this room, they act upon my, what, eye, right? And my ear doesn't act upon the sound, but the sound acts upon my ear, and maybe it would actually, what, deafen me if I, the sounds are too loud, huh? See? And the same way when I taste something, if it's strong and hot or something, it kind of overcomes my sense of taste for a while. So, and again, the heart, when you study the heart and the ability to desire, it is originally a power that is, what, acted upon, huh? By its object, huh? It's moved by its object, huh? Okay? So, sometimes, um, you have to either, uh, use the word ability, or else you have to try to extend the word power, which is not to lend itself to much of that in English. Okay? I think I mentioned that problem again in the translation there, in the Dianna there, when we were studying, uh, the word, uh, passio in Latin there, and passion means originally, like in the passion of our Lord, right? It means suffering, huh? But the word suffering in English, which would be the translation of passio, if you speak of the passion of our Lord, huh? The little, you're kind of taking the Latin word over there when you say passion of our Lord, but the native English word would be, what? The suffering of our Lord, huh? But then later on, in the Latin word and in the Greek word, how we speak of sensing as being a passio, see? Well, then you're dropping part of the original meaning of suffering, you're keeping the idea that you're being acted upon, but you drop the idea that it's something painful and contrary to your, what? Well-being, huh? And then eventually our style says that understanding is an under, is a, what? Suffering, right? But again, the English word suffering is stuck on the first meaning, you see? And so you may recall, those of you who had me talking about those things earlier in the time I said in the Danima, that I sometimes translate it not by the word suffering, but by the word undergoing, huh? And it's not quite as striking, maybe, as a Greek word, because undergoing is not as strikingly something bad like suffering is at first, huh? But nevertheless, in English, you can only say that I'm under the weather. You mean that I've been acted upon by the weather in a way that's harmful to me, that sickened me in some way, huh? And when we say about somebody, you know, who's had a rough time in life, we say, he's undergone an awful lot, right? You mean he's been acted upon in a way that is, what? It's bad, right, huh? To be acted upon, huh? You don't mean that he has, what, seen all these beautiful paintings there in the National Gallery in London, or he's understood, you know, Thomas Aquinas, right? Now he's undergone a lot. Yeah. I told you about this one guy who was teaching philosophy there in the University of Colorado, someplace, my brother knew him. He's describing, you know, the look upon the student's face, you know, when you're teaching them. Why are you doing this to me? You know, like you're acting upon them in a way that you're torturing them. So, in those two words, in the word suffering and in the word power, which you use to translate these Greek or Latin words, they seem, the English word, to be stuck on the first meaning, huh? And not move. So, sometimes I'll go from suffering to the word undergoing, huh? To translate, huh? Because undergoing, that word is moved more in English than the word suffering has. And sometimes instead of saying power, I'll say ability, because the word ability there has to some extent been moved in English. At least we do speak of burnable, breakable, beatable, bustable, right? Say, corruptible, and so on, right? So, we do use the word able, right? And by what ability are you able to be breakable or burnable, right? Well, it's ability, obviously, in the second sense, right? So, it lends itself something to that, huh? Now, also, you can see that the word ability, huh? The first sentence of Thomas 2, huh? That ability as an ability is an ability for something, right? And it's an ability for some, what? Act, huh? Okay? And, as I often say, how do you know that you even have an ability? When you wake up in the morning, how do you know you're able to see? It's by seeing. Yeah, yeah. Because some people have gone blind, right? In their sleep, huh? And they wake up the next day, and they're blind, huh? Terrible thing. So, it's only by seeing that you know you have the ability to see. You know, sometimes people get injured, and their eyes are covered up with these patches and so on, right? And now is the day or time when they're going to take the patch off and see if you can see anything, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And this is a dramatic, you know, tense moment, right? You see? Okay. So you only know that you have an ability through the act, which it is an ability. So it's the very nature of an ability to be an ability for something. Whence, he says, the definition of an ability must be taken from the act to which it is ordered. So you can follow this through. We could say that we know that we have an ability by the act for which it is an ability, that we have that act. And if we distinguish between the ability to walk and the ability to see, it's because walking and seeing are not the same thing, right? And one doesn't come under the other. And of course, you have to distinguish things to begin to define them. So the ratio, the definition of the thing is through what? The act for which it is an ability. I know I have the ability to walk because I walk, right? And you know I have the ability to walk because you see me walking, huh? You know someone has the ability to play the piano because you see them or hear them playing the piano. And you distinguish their ability to play the piano from their ability to walk, right? By the difference between playing the piano and walking, huh? Well, that's what Aristotle is saying, that therefore the act is before the ability, not in existence, right? You might have eyes before you see. In fact, I think you would, right? You've got to have, what, the ability to digest before you digest, right? But the ability is an ability for something. That's the very nature, right, huh? And so when you want to define these things and say what their nature is, you have to say what their ability for. And therefore what their ability for, the act, is going to be before them in definition. Before them in our, what? Knowledge, right? Even if the ability happens to be before in, what? Existence, right? So I have to have the ability to be angry before I become actually angry, right? Sometimes, you know, people are kind of perverse, you know, the way they are. And they want to get somebody, you know, riled up. They want to get somebody angry, right? And so on. And so, in a sense, they've never seen this person being angry. They want to see. See? But again, you know, if they succeed in making the person angry and they show their anger and so on, well, then it's clear they do have the ability to be angry. I don't know how many times I heard, and I was in England, you know, the execution, they call it, murder, whatever you want to call it, of Charles I, right? And he had to step out there and basically his head chopped off. He wanted to, you know, wear something warm so he wouldn't be, what? Shaking because of the cold. Because he didn't want people to think he was afraid when he was, what? Shivering because of the cold, see? Okay? Thank you. But you know this through the, what? Act, right? You make a mistake of man. Is he shivering or is he afraid? Yeah. Did he shiver? No, because he had something warm on. So he didn't show any fear, huh? Yeah. Cruisome stories there. He's being a tarot about them. Okay. So he says, the very nature, therefore, you can say, of an ability to be an ability for something, right? That's what he means when he says that an ability, according as it is an ability, is ordered to somewhat act. Whence is necessary that the definition of an ability be taken from the act to which it is ordered. And consequently, that the definition of the ability, the understanding of it, be diversified as the, what? Definition or the understanding of the act of it is diversified, huh? Okay? And that's part of the thing, right? That the ability is going to be distinguished by the acts. But now he goes to the second thing, but the acts are going to be distinguished by the objects, right? Okay? So I might distinguish the ability to see and the ability to hear by the distinction between seeing and hearing, right? But seeing and hearing are both sensing, and so how would I distinguish between seeing and hearing? Well, seeing is sensing color, and hearing is sensing, what? Sound. So by color and sound, I distinguish between seeing and hearing, and by seeing and hearing, I distinguish between the ability to see and the ability to hear. Make sense? And this is what Aristotle had already shown in the second book about the soul, huh? But now he's going to give a reason here for this, huh? For he says every act is either of a, what? Active ability, right? Potentia active, right? And that's the ability to, what? Act upon something, or also maybe the ability to do something, right? And the, what? Passive ability. Yeah. Okay. And that's the ability to, what? To be acted upon, right? Or the ability to undergo, huh? And as I mentioned before, the great Plato had already in the dialogue called the Sophist, huh? It said that being is what can act upon something, or be acted upon, huh? It seemed kind of the universality of that distinction, huh? And incidentally, this is one way you could divide the powers or abilities of the soul, huh? Are they an active one, right? Or a passive one, huh? Do they act upon their object, huh? Or does their object act upon them, huh? Now, if you stop and think about it, it's got to be one or the other, because if this object neither acted upon the ability, nor the ability acted upon it, they really would not be connected in any way. Do you see? So the ability to digest, right, is an ability that acts upon its object. So you put some food in my mouth, and I chomp, chomp, chomp, and I start to act upon it, right? And then after I swallow it, I got all kinds of things in here that act upon it, what? It's more breaking it down, right, huh? So the ability to digest is an ability that acts upon its object. But the ability to hear is an ability that is what? Passive. Yeah, that's acted upon by its object sound, huh? Okay? So every ability of the soul is one or the other of those, huh? In the intellectual part of the soul, there is an active ability, huh? The act of understanding, and a, what? Passive ability, right? The ability to understand, huh? So he says every action is either of an active ability or of a passive one. Now he says an object is compared to the act of a passive ability as a, what? Beginning and moving cause, huh? For color, insofar as it moves sight, is a beginning of what? Vision. Okay? Now notice, huh? The ability for emotions is of that same kind, huh? You insult me, right? And you move me to what? Maybe anger, right? Okay? You show me the instruments of torture, right? I gave him a gun at me and something, and you move me to what? Fear, right? You tell me something bad has happened to those I love, and you move me to what? Sadness. Sadness, yeah. See? So the object of sadness or the object of fear, the object of anger is what moves us to anger or fear or sadness. He just won the sweepstakes, huh? Hundred million dollars, huh? Or a million dollars, let's say. You know? If somebody says, oh boy, he's all joyful, right? See, he's moved to joy because of the, what? Good thing that... It's happened, huh? You see? Though they say most of those people end up more miserable than they were when they started off. They did a survey in Canada, I think. People who won large sums of money. And most of them were better off before they won it than afterwards. They went crazy, they had divorces, all kinds of problems in their life. Because they didn't know how to handle this money, they couldn't handle it, and so on, huh? And I was working at the shipping dock one time, one summer, you know. The guy was not a college guy. But anyway, one day out of the blue he just kind of asked me, what do I do if I won some lottery thing, you know? I said, well, I'd find a nice quiet place and do some studying. I said, what would you do if you won the lottery? He said, well, I'd get a harem, he says. A harem, a harem. So he would have been worse off, you see. If he had won than before, right? He'd go crazy, right? I mean, maybe, yeah. They did a similar study with a lot of your superstars coming out of college, and they signed these big multi-million contracts, and all of a sudden, you know, they're getting in all kinds of problems, drugs, this and that. And they say, well, they had those problems before. They might have had them a little bit, if at all. But a lot of times, this money is just, it's just, I don't know. Unless they're really, you know, mature, they just can't handle it. So, notice, in the case of a passive power, like the ability to hear, right? Or the ability to feel anger and so on, you're moved by the object, huh? Okay, the object's like a mover. He gives the example there of color moving the eye, like I was giving the example sound, huh? But to the act of an active power, right? The object is compared as a, what? Limit and end, huh? Just as the object of the ability to grow, huh? Virtue is sometimes used in the sense of, not a virtue, but a power or ability, right? So, the ability to grow is a, what? An ability that is active, huh? You're building up, just like a carpenter is building up a house or something. So, the object of the growing power, the ability to grow, is perfect quantity, right? Okay, complete quantity for your type of animal or plant, okay? Which is the end of growth, huh? Interesting the way we carry over the words from growth to the mind, huh? I was thinking it was at St. Paul there, is it in the Colossians, I think? You might use that word, you know, growth is applied to the mind, huh? But you find the Greek philosophers saying that learning causes the mind to grow. Oh, right. Okay, but you've got to be careful, that's kind of a, you know, it's like saying food for thought and that sort of thing, huh? We do say that, yeah. Okay. So, notice what he's proceeding there, he's taking the two kinds of ability there are and how the object is related to them, right? And he says, in this case, the object of the impassive power is like a, what? A moving cause, huh? The mover, right? At the beginning, huh? It can be easy to find the mover as whence first there is a beginning of motion and so on. But here, it's related more as the, what? End or limit, okay? So just like the end or limit of house building is a house, right? The product, huh? Or the end of growing is the, what? Animal or plant in the size and height and so on. That's more or less the height or size of that type of animal or plant, huh? Okay. Then he puts those two together, right? From these two things, he says, an act receives its, what? Specific nature, right? Namely, from its beginning and from its end or turn. And Thomas, again, very simply says, for califaxio, right? Heating something, right? Differs from, what? Cooling something, right? Refrigerating it. As the former is from, what? The hot is from something active to something hot, right? So when I'm, what? Put the water on the stove and the stove is hot, right? The heating proceeds from the heat of the stove, right? And it ends in, what? The heat of the water, right? And that one, he says, cooling, begins in something cold and proceeds to the, what? Cold. So I put the bottle of wine in the refrigerator, if it's a white wine, and it's cold in there. And the cold, what? The cooling begins in something cold, the refrigerator, and it ends up making the, what? Cold. Yeah, yeah. So that's why you distinguish acts, don't you, right? By their beginning and by their end, huh? Whence it is necessary that powers or abilities be diversified according to their acts and their objects. Now he's putting it all together, right? Because we saw in the first part of this first paragraph that the abilities are an ability for some act, therefore they're distinguished by the act which is an ability, right? And now we see that the acts are, what? Distinguished by their beginning or end, their object, right? And therefore it's necessary, therefore, that the powers or abilities be diversified according to their acts and their, what? Objects, huh? But in a certain order, right? Maybe by the acts immediately, and since the acts are distinguished by the objects, they're ultimately distinguished by their, what? Object, right? Yeah. Okay? Mm-hmm. So I might distinguish between the reason and the will by reasoning or understanding on the one hand, and by loving or desiring or choosing, right? On the other hand, I might distinguish them by truth and by, what? Goodness or something, huh? Whatever are their objects. Okay. Now, in the second paragraph, in the way my text is dividing away with the next part now, he's going to give some more subtle distinctions here about what we mean, right? By saying that they're distinguished by their objects, huh? What sort of differences among the objects, right, are going to give rights to different powers? But nevertheless, it should be considered that those things which are, what? Perachidans, right? Those things, to translate a little in English, by happening, huh? Do not diversify something in, what? Species or kind, huh? For example, because color happens to the animal, right? We do not diversify the species of animals by difference of color, but by difference of that which belongs to the animal as such, to a difference of the, what? Sensing soul, huh? Which sometimes is found with reason, as in man, and sometimes without reason, as in the cats around here. Okay? The dog, huh? Whence rational and irrational are differences, they're divisive of animal, constituting diverse species of it, huh? Now, just like, you know, when we talk about triangle, huh? In geometry, I'm going to use an example here. Do you distinguish kinds of triangles by red, white, and blue to be patriotic? No. Because we'd say red, white, and blue are accidental, right? They happen to triangle, right? But, if you go and examine, inwardly, what the very nature of triangle is, that's a plain figure contained by three straight lines, huh? You could divide triangle by equilateral, isosceles, and scalene, huh? Because those are different ways of being, what? Three sides, huh? So the three sides are three lines, and those lines can be equal or unequal, right? So you have the two possibilities, equilateral, isosceles, scalene, huh? And so they would give you different kinds of triangles.