De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 98: Three Souls, Five Powers, and Four Grades of Life

Transcript
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the other, right? So it doesn't constitute a separate step up, right, in life. But why do you have only three souls? Well, sometimes they do so in terms of the idea we all have when we think about the soul. We think of the soul as something kind of above the merely material, right? And there seems to be three distinct ways of rising above matter. And the plant's soul seems to rise above matter the least, because it uses the qualities of matter in order to perfect its operations and so on. But it has a certain order that matter doesn't have. It can grow up and go down, right? It can move itself to some extent in growth and so on. But then when you get sensation, you're getting something that seems much more immaterial than the digestion does, right? Or even the reproduction or growing is. But then you get to reason that's entirely immaterial. It doesn't even have a body organ, huh? So there are three kinds of what? Rising above mere matter, right? Rising above non-living matter, huh? Three distinct ways. The ability to move from place to place doesn't seem to be that characteristic of rising above matter, huh? As an automobile shows, huh? But anyway, let's see how he says here. And the diversity, and the reason for this diversity, he says, because diverse souls, like I was just saying, are distinguished according as in diverse ways, the operation of the soul rises above, right? Huh? The operation of bodily, a mere bodily nature. Huh? And of course, Aristotle, you know, with the old, um, uh, chemistry of earth, air, fire, and water, right? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. These bodies, when you left them by themselves, they either went up or went down. Uh-huh. And the heavy bodies would go down, uh-huh. Like the earth and the, uh, water and the light ones, the air and the fire would go up, huh? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And it seems to be determined to one or the other. Yeah. But, um, the tree grows, what? Down and up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it seems to transcend in some way the limitation of, what? The non-living matter, huh? It's just material. Hmm. Let's say what Thomas develops this. For the whole of bodily nature, huh? The living body nature is subject to the soul, right? And it's compared to it in two ways as, what? Matter and as, what? Tool, right? Okay. Now he says, there's a certain operation of the soul which so much exceeds bodily nature that is not even, what? Exercised through a bodily organ. And that's what we said about the reason, huh? The understanding, the universal reason. And we'll come back to that when we study those powers again. And such is the operation of the, what? Reasonable soul, right? The rational soul. The understanding soul, huh? Okay. So there's an operation, understanding and also willing, for that matter, that transcend the body, right? They're not in the body, right? Right? They very much rise above the sun, huh? Okay. Now he says, there is, however, another operation of the soul below that, huh? Which, to be sure, takes place through a body organ. Not, however, through some bodily quality. And such is the operation of the sensing soul. Because although cold, hot and cold, wet and dry, dry, and other qualities, bodily qualities of these sorts, are required for the operation of the sense, nonetheless, is not by the power of such qualities that the operation of the sensing soul proceeds. But they're required only for a well-disposed, what? Organ, huh? Okay? Now, as other ways, you can kind of see that, huh? You know, if I can remember, you people recognize you. It's because I've seen your face, your shape, right? Your color, right? Cutting your beard and so on. And I have your shape and color now inside my, what? Sense memory here, huh? Right? But if you cut open my head, do you think you'd find, you know, a little statue of each of you? No. It seems to be somewhat immaterial, right? The way it's there, huh? It's not a piece of bone or flesh or any sort of blood, right? It's chiseled out in your shape, isn't it, huh? So it seems to be more immaterial than what the plant has. The plant doesn't recede in that way, huh? And we also sometimes point out, you know, how a stock example is that of the man in the shower, right? When he first gets into the shower, the water feels what? Oh, it feels hot. Yeah, it feels hotter. Yeah, yeah. After he's been in there for a while, it doesn't feel as hot, right? And then he turns up the heat a little bit, see? But what has happened, huh? See? Well, when he first was in the shower, he was receiving the heat or feeling the heat of the water, not as his own bodily heat, right? But as the heat of the, what? Water itself, right? But as that starts to become the temperature of his own body, then he doesn't sense it so much anymore, does he? See? Mm-hmm. So there's two kinds of exceptions going on there, right? One is receiving the heat of the water as the heat of the water, right? The water's hot. The other is receiving it like anybody who sees heat, right? Where you become hot yourself, huh? Okay? And when I go swimming in the ocean there in the summer, you know, and it's kind of cold, you first step in, I have to kind of, you know, gradually customize myself to it, you know? It's like I'm going to have a heart attack. He's running, running like that. You see? Um, sometimes you get these little kids there. I remember my friend, Ryan Monroe, he'd be down at the beach there and some kid's going to kind of splash you, you know, and he splashed me, I hold your head in the water, he'd say. But after you've been in the water for a while, it doesn't feel so what? Cold, right, huh? And people say, oh, it feels wonderful once you get in there. That's what they're always saying to you, right, huh? See? But in a sense, your body is gradually being what? Accustomed to it, right? That's actually the big part that gets accustomed to it that I can really jump in all the way, you see? But again, I'm not feeling the cold as much as I did first, right? Because it's become, what? The coldness of my body, just like of anybody, right? But the way that the senses are receiving is something different, huh? Than the way that matter receives, huh? And it's receiving the coldness of the water more in the way of sensing it, in the beginning and later on, where it doesn't sense the coldness of the water so much, okay? So he's going to reverse order that I did, right? He's starting from the most immaterial and working way down, huh? Because our soul, in some ways, is most known to us, huh? Now, the lowest of the operations of the soul are those that take place through a bodily organ and in virtue of some bodily quality, huh? And you can see that even in digestion, right, huh? You know, that there's chemicals in my body, right? They're breaking the food down in my stomach or cold and wherever it is down there, right? And you could probably imitate those, what? Chemicals, right? In the non-living world, right? And break food down by means of them, huh? Although they're being organized in a way that's unique to the living thing. So there you're much closer to matter in what way matter is. But nevertheless, it goes above the operation of body nature, because the emotions of bodies, non-living bodies, are from an exterior, what? Principle or source, huh? But these operations of the plant are from an intrinsic principle. And this is common to all the operations of the soul, for everything that has a soul in some way who is itself. And such is the operation of the, what? Living soul, huh? The vegetable soul. I think that's the idea of living in Latin. For digestion, for example, and those things which follow upon it come about instrumentally through the action of heat. We could say other chemicals, you know, more sophisticated chemistry than he has, right? As is said in the third book of the soul, right? The second book of the soul. So Rastal would say, is it the soul digesting the food or fire digesting the food, huh? We'd say fire as a tool of that soul or that power of the soul. Okay? And of course, the way Rastal was struck by is the way in which fire in the inanimate world just kind of burns so long as there is material there to burn, right? You see? Well, in the case of a living thing, you digest the thing and you arrange it, you know, and fill out your body that way, huh? So it's like the chemicals are, what, in the service of that soul and that power of that soul. So that's the reason why you have three souls. They're distinguished by, what, the thought that a soul is something that in a way is immaterial or in some way it's rising above matter, huh? Everybody has a notion about the soul, right? That's why they're so kind of surprised when you speak of the plant that's having a soul, huh? See? And I'm down there at Spaggs with my wife or something and looking at all these plants and everyone's got a soul, Rosalie, you know? You must think you're cuckoo, you know? It's like talking about a soul. Well, but it makes more sense to talk about a soul when you talk about an animal, right? But especially when you talk about man, right? That's because you're thinking of the soul as being something that, what, is rising above matter in some way, a little bit. Distinguishing these things from something that is merely immaterial, huh? Okay? We sometimes attribute it to the cat a personality, right, of some sort. Even though it's not a person in the, in the sense of, the definition of a person, right? But, uh, uh, Tabitha, after breakfast, would always, what, want to go outside and hunt her. And Moppen wanted to go and sit in the window there and watch the world go by. But people like that, right? You know, the go-getters, doers, and so on. People want to see that. The, uh, what the priest said today, Master, he said, uh, there seem to be three kinds of people, right, huh? You know, maybe you've heard this before. Those who make things happen, right? And then those who watch things happen. And those who ask, why did that happen? I don't know exactly what point you're going to make of this, but. But yet, there's kind of the differences between the cats, right? You know, the one who's writing, right away, she'd make the door. Wait for you to open the door, did she go out to, to go for a morning hunt? You know, the active type, huh? The other one is like, you know, an old lady sitting in the thing there, sipping her tea or something, right? And watching the world go by and commenting on it and so on. I know, he doesn't mean to deny entirely that, uh, the genre of powers are important for distinguishing the souls, right? But the emphasis is upon a distinct, but, rising above matter, huh? And there seems to be only three ways there in which you rise above matter in a very distinctive way, huh? At least in the case of the plant soul, much more in the case of the animal soul, but most of all in the case of the human soul, okay? And, of course, that's distinguished in a sense, I mean, that's alluded to when we talk about plants and animals and men, right, huh? And I'm thinking of that a bit, huh? Now, he says, the genre of the powers of the soul are distinguished according to their objects, huh? Now, you could say by their acts and their acts by their objects, but they're ultimately by their objects. Now, he says, the higher a power is, huh? The more universal is the object that it, what, looks towards, huh? As has been said above. But the object of the operation of the soul can be considered in a three-fold order. Now, he's back to three, see? He's kind of sticking up on this. He's sticking up on five through three, right? Okay. For the object of some power of the soul is only the body united to the soul. And this genus of powers of the soul is called the, what, living powers, the plant powers. For the living power acts only in the body to which the soul is, what, united, huh? There is, however, another genus of powers of the soul which regards a more universal object, namely every sensible body, and not only the body joined to the soul. There is, however, another genus of powers of the soul that regards a still more universal object, not only sensible body, but universally every being, everything, huh? So he's thinking of the distinction between the senses now, right, huh? And the animals that have senses, they take into account other bodies, right? Other sensible bodies, they can sense things. And not only sense their own body, right? But they can sense bodies around them, right? See? But the tree doesn't seem to be aware of the bodies around it. It seems to have all its operations tied to its own body, huh? Sending its roots down or, you know, sending its shoots out and so on, huh? But then you get to man who has reason and understanding, and his object extends not only to all sensible bodies, but even to, what, the angels and God, right, huh? And truth and all these immaterial things. Now, he says what the last two have in common, from which it is clear that these two second genus of powers of the soul have an operation not only with respect to the thing that is joined to the soul, but also with respect to something extrinsic, okay? And that's going to give rise to a whole number of powers. For since the one operating is necessary for in some way that he be joined to the object about which he operates, it is necessary that that extrinsic thing, which is the object of the operation of the soul, be compared to the soul in two ways, huh? Okay, now what are those two ways, huh? In one way, according as it is apt to be joined to the soul and to be in the soul by its, what, likeness, huh? Okay, and also he's thinking out there, right? This is the contrast, first of all, between the knowing powers and the desiring powers, huh? But the knowing powers, in a way, arise from the exterior object coming into me in some way, right? So the color comes into my eye, right? Or the sound comes into my ear, right? Okay? And I can remember the colors and the sounds. I have a likeness, so the color and the sound contain my memory, right? But then if I sense, let's say, some good food, I'm hungry, right? Then by my desire, I tend to, what, go out to the thing itself, in itself, huh? Okay? That's a very important distinction which Aristotle first made and makes very explicitly in the end of the sixth book of wisdom, huh? The truth is primarily in the mind, but the good is in things, huh? Okay? And that's why they say in this life, anyway, the will is more proportioned to God than the reason, huh? Because reason is trying to put God into it, right? Why love is going into the object love, right? I left my heart in San Francisco, right? Well, everybody knows the famous story there, the little boy there trying to put the ocean into the little, what, hole in the beach, right? And Augustine says, you can't fit the ocean in there, and the little boy said, well, neither can you fit the Trinity into your mind, right? See? But notice, I can't put the ocean into me, but I can jump into the ocean, right? See? And knowing is like putting the ocean into me, right? But loving is like jumping into the ocean. So, the rest is something outside, right? But the knowing is more bringing the outside. inside. My love is going out. My heart goes out to you, we say, right? My heart goes out to those in need, and so on. So, let's go back and read that first part there, that sentence. Since the one operating must in some way be joined to its object about which he operates, it is necessary that the extrinsic thing, the outside thing, which is the object of the operation of the soul, is necessary to be compared to the soul in two ways, right? In one way, as it is apt to be joined to the soul and to be in the soul, right? To its likeness, huh? And as far as this is concerned, there are two general powers, but these are the two knowing powers, right? To wit, the sensing power, right? With respect to an object which is less common, namely the sensible body, and the understanding power, with respect to an object which is most common, which is being, what? Universally speaking, huh? In another way, according as the soul itself is inclined and tends towards the exterior thing. And according to this comparison, there are also two genera of powers of the soul. One, the desiring power, by which the soul is compared to the extrinsic thing as to an end, huh? Which is first in intention, huh? And the other, the power which is motive according to place, insofar as the soul is compared to an exterior thing, as to the limit of its operation and motion. For falling upon something being desired and intended, every animal, what? Is moved, right? towards that, huh? Okay? So that's kind of interesting, huh? He distinguishes, what? Those four of the five genera of powers, right? By taking into account that you know something, your object is more universal than just your own body, right? Well, the living powers are just in your own body, right? But the other powers, in some way regard, not only your own body, but even sensible, but something outside of you, right, huh? Okay? More universally, the reason than the, than the sensism. So, but once he has that, then he speaks of a two-fold, what? Connection, right? Either you try to, what? Bring the exterior thing into you, right? To know it, or you desire it and go out for it. That's an interesting way, the way Thomas approaches that, huh? And you see what he's talking about, the angels, you know, and he showed the angels have understanding first, right? But by understanding, things outside the angel are in the angel, right? But now is there also a way in which the angels do it to things outside of them? Well, that's through will, right? So he's got will as well as what? Understanding, huh? So if I'm going to have a full, you might say, connection, something outside of me, right? I've got to be able to bring something outside of me, into me in some way, right? And I've got to be able to go out to it, right? Okay? And I bring it into me by my senses or by my reason, huh? Okay? I go out to it by desiring it, right? And by moving to get it. Yeah? It just reminds me of my nephew, he's five years old at the time, and I was going up to visit my brother, a friend of mine from Ghana, a black guy from Ghana, and this nephew, Jack, had never seen a black man before. Yeah. So he walks into the house, and Jack, you know, he's a real smart kid, I know. As soon as he was in the house, Jack was like, only about two feet away, he was just like, he was making all kinds of funny noises because his senses were taking in this, you know, this different smell, and also he was just, you know, never saw a black person before, so you could see him thinking, and his mother was saying, are you okay, Jack? Because Jack was kind of like, you know, and you could just sense all these different things going on, sense, intellectual, and probably saying, oh, gosh, what the heck is going on? So you take it for granted, but I guess in that situation, you just see something new in a lot of different ways, and you just, you know, it's kind of interesting, all these different powers working at the same time. Yeah. We see a child with a toy, right? I mean, the toy acts upon his senses first, right? And then he reaches out for it, you know, his hand and eye coordination, right? Mm-hmm. He wants it in some way, right? He wants to pick it up. Right. Thank God this guy had, this guy, this friend of mine had a real big smile, Francis, on his face, so it was a real good impression for him, first impression, as opposed to one that usually isn't, so. My mother came from a small town in Minnesota, there weren't any blacks and down, I guess, and we went down to the big cities, you know, with the little boy one time, and a black child came along, right, and he says, go home and wash your face. Yeah. He didn't say face, he said face. Maybe it's your face. He said, go home and wash your face. Yeah. And, uh, it ends up, those funny stories of somebody trying to, you know, you know, scrub, you know, the black guy, make him white and clean, you know, and probably kill the poor guy and get him white. Okay. So this is something, um, of universal importance, huh? Um, the first talk I ever gave out, St. uh, out at Thomas Aquinas College was on the, the contrariety of love and knowledge, huh? They're not contraries in a strict sense, but there's a kind of a contrariety in the way they work, huh? And it's because, you know, um, you see reflected in things like, like to grasp, right? That's perfection of knowing, huh? To be able to grasp something. But grasping doesn't seem to perfect love, right? Love is more a, what? Giving, right, huh? Okay. So in a sense, the contrast between giving and taking corresponds to the, what? Contrast between knowing and loving, huh? But see, when I grasp something or take it, I contain it, right, in my hand. But when I give, something goes out to me, right? And that's the way love is, huh? And so love is said to be, what, in the thing loved, huh? I left my heart in San Francisco, the popular song says, right? Christ says, where your treasure is, there your heart shall be, right? Augustine says in his Latin there that the soul is more ubi amat qua manimat, huh? It's more who it loves than who it animates, huh? See? Um, but also, you know, if you don't want to do something, you see, my heart's not in it. See? My heart's not in it. Yeah. That's the way we speak, huh? Mm-hmm. And I would say to them, you know, um, it's always bad to lose your mind. Mm-hmm. It's not always bad to lose your heart. Mm-hmm. But the only way you lose it, do I? Mm-hmm. You see? Okay? So there's a kind of contrariety in the way these two work, right? And this is a two-fold, uh, relation that Thomas is saying, which you have next to your thing, right? One whereby it comes into you, right? At least the likeness that it comes into you, right? And that's the knowing powers, huh? And they can be divided into two, the sensing and the understanding powers. But then you have these other powers whereby you, you, uh, tend to read something outside of yourself by desire, right? And actually acquiring it by, what, locomotion, huh? It's interesting, we have that two-fold, you know, connection with something outside of us, huh? Yeah. Because they say that's, you know, the reason they give why the will is more proportioned to God, especially in this life, right? Than reason is, huh? Because you're trying to put God into your mind, your low mind, right? You see? Which is not adequate to holding Him, so to speak, right? But in the case of loving, your heart's going out into God, huh? Okay? Okay. And, uh, that's why even, even, uh, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, In the case of faith there, right? The reason is moved by the will. If the will is more proportioned to God in this life anyway. And that's also why you can, what, love God in himself, huh? But you don't know himself in this life, huh? It's only when he comes into your mind. It's that by which you understand as well as what you understand. So that's a very, very, very important contrast to the answer. When you always make that qualification of in this life, so it does change in the next life? Well, in the next life when you see God as he is face to face, then you will love him more than you could love him in this life. Okay. And that's perhaps the meaning, you know, of the words of Christ there, you know, he talks about the great John the Baptist, right? But he who is least in heaven is greater than him. What does that mean? Well, as long as St. John the Baptist is still in this world, right, huh? He doesn't see God as he is, huh? Yeah. And therefore he doesn't have the amount of love of God that the lowest saint has in seeing God as he is, huh? Oh, yeah. But once he gets to heaven and he sees, you know, the vision that's appropriate to him for his love of God, then he will love God more than he loved him in this life, huh? Okay. You know, what Scripture says, you know, God would be all in all things, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah, don't be blessed, right, huh? You know? He'd be kind of, um, uh, that's supposed to be, you're going to be preoccupied with God in the next world. Completely preoccupied, right? You know? Very interesting to see that. Yeah. Um, yeah. You know, I was just talking to students, you know, even the metaphors. Shakespeare, I was quoting them, well, in the logic class is the fun of it, I say. Shakespeare says, uh, lovers and madmen have such seething brains, huh? Such shaping fantasies that apprehend more than cool reason ever comprehends, huh? When we say keep your cool, we're usually thinking of your reason, right? Keep your cool. So, um, in a hot day, it always makes some kind of a bad joke about logic keeping us cool, see? But why do you think of love as hot and reason as cold, huh? Mm-hmm. You see? Because hot and cold are contrary, aren't they, huh? But of course, the hot thing tends to expand or flow, right? You see? And that's what love does, right? It goes out to things, to other people and everything, right? See? So it overflows, so to speak, the heart, huh? Like the hot thing on the stove, you know, it overflows, you know? That's where the heart goes, see, huh? My heart goes out to you, we say, right? You know, especially when you see someone in need or something like that, right? Or some misfortune, you know? My heart goes out to you, right? You know, simply as somebody who's lost somebody or something. Your heart goes out to that, right? See? Why the cold is kind of contracted into itself, right? And so we use the word concentrate for the mind, huh? In the case of the mind, distraction is the impediment to deep thinking, isn't it? The talkful says we live in the age of distraction, and my students are very distracted. But concentration, right? Concentric, right? Like the mind is, what? Kind of retreating into itself, huh? St. Thomas at the beginning of the day, Hedda Mahdi was, right? He has a quote from these sapiential books. And the sapiential book says, run into your house and play with your thoughts. And Thomas says, well, that's the mind, what? Kind of withdrawing into itself, right? And meditating on these things, right? Like Mary kept these things in her heart, right? She had thought about them, huh? Okay? And, well, he compares it to play, because play is pleasant and chosen for its own sake, right? And that's the way the life of the mind is, huh? But notice the way of speaking. Run into your house there, like, you know, close the door, right? And then you think about these things, huh? You know, you try to find a, you know, quiet place to think, huh? Without distraction, huh? Soundproof your door, the way Dichotic used to do, right? He couldn't hear you, he knocked the door. Yeah. It's interesting, though, that love is kind of equated with just kind of doing things sometimes that don't make sense, you know? Yeah. And at the same time, you know, we always talk about love is not an emotion, even though some people say it is. Yeah. Love is a choice. So there's this kind of, like, dual kind of definition going for love that can kind of, you know, at one time it's an emotion, it's just, you know, you do something that doesn't make sense. And another time it's, no, it's not an emotion. When you get married to somebody, you say, I love you, it's a choice, it's not a feeling, so it's kind of interesting. Yeah. You're still kind of going outside yourself, you see. Ecstasy, you know, is one of the effects of love you'll find out when you do that. Love and friendship, you know? But ecstasy is to stand outside yourself, huh? And that's what we see about somebody, you know, they're very concerned about somebody else, you know? They're beside themselves, right? No longer, you're outside yourself, you're beside yourself, right? Yeah. But that doesn't describe the mind in that way, right? The mind is more concentrated in itself, huh? What did you say about love and heat, love and the warmth, that sense, why? Well, no, I'm saying the hot expands, right, huh? Hot expands, yeah. This is a metaphor, obviously. Sure, right. It overflows, right, huh? See? Why the cold kind of concentrates, right? Yeah. Okay. In itself, see? And so, when you think deeply, you're concentrating, right? Kind of drawing within yourself, huh? And your body actually becomes maybe cold, huh? Don't you think? And I was at Laval there, we would have classes maybe until five or six, right? You go out in the cold weather in Quebec, whoa! And you go up to the swimming pool there, and you pay ten cents, and you get a hot shower, and you take a swim, and then have a hot shower. You come out, you're feeling ready, you know? You can bear that cold weather up there in Quebec, right? But your body temperature seems to go down just sitting there, you know? In a classroom, you know? You know, late afternoon, huh? Yeah, do not. So, I mean, there's a kind of contrariety, you know? That the metaphor is even expressive, hot and cold. Yeah, okay. Sure. Yeah. Now, the third distinction is between the, what they usually call the grades of life, but he calls it here, the modi, huh? The ways of living. Which I distinguish, he says, according to the grades of life, huh? For there are some living things in which there is only the, what? Living powers, as in the plans, huh? There are some in which, with the living powers, there's also the sensing powers, at least the sense of touch, as Aristotle would say, but not that which is motive according to place. As these immobile animals like the, what? Conchilia. That's the, what? Clams? What? Any sort of shell, shell animals? There are some which, above this, have motive according to place, right? As the perfect animals, which need many things for their life, right? And therefore, they need motion that they might seek the things at a distance that are necessary for their life, huh? And finally, there are some living things in which, with these, there is, what? Understanding, as in men. And then he gives the explanation of why that corresponds to only four of the powers, right? These four grades of life. The desiring does not constitute some extra grade of living, because in whatever things there is sense, there is also, what? Desire, right? As it said in the second book about the soul. And so that solves the first two objections, because the first objection was saying that there's only three souls, right? Yeah. The second objection says there's only four grades of life, right? Well, three and four don't agree with five, right? Yeah. But now we see why there's four grades of life. Yeah, it's going out there. Yeah, isn't it funny? Out of the South. Yeah. You can see why there's only four grades of life, although there are, what, five general powers, huh? Because there's one of the five that always goes with one of the other ones, huh? And the more difficult reason why there's only three souls, right? Because they distinguish them by their rising above the mere proporeal nature, huh? And three kind of distinct ways that you can rise above that, huh? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.