De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 101: Spiritual Reception and the Hierarchy of the Five Senses

Transcript
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The marble does have your shape as its own shape now, you see? Now, I in some way must receive your shape in my eye, otherwise I would not recognize you, right? And say, oh, I know that person, see? Okay? But my eye receives your shape without it becoming the shape of my eye. Nor is there some piece inside me of flesh, I think, or a bone that has now been chiseled out, right, in the way that your shape would have been chiseled out in marble by Michelangelo. Do you see? So I'm receiving your shape now, not as my shape, but as your shape, while retaining, right, the shape I had. And that's what they call an immaterial or spiritual reception. And this is a distinction that Thomas is making, huh? But to some extent he's going to see, as you go down, say, from the eye and then the ear and then the sense of smell and then down to taste and touch, you have less of a spiritual reception, right? And more aspect of a material reception, huh? But we'll see how he explains this. So after he introduces two kinds of reception, he gives an example, notice, of the second reception as the form of color in the eye, right? Which does not, through this, become colored, right? Now he says, to the operation of sins in general, is required some kind of a spiritual reception for change. In which the, what? Intention of the sensible form, not its reality, comes about in the organ of sense. A kind of likeness, you might say, of it, huh? The intention? Yeah. There was intention there for a reception that is less than fully, what? Real, you might say, right? In the sense that it becomes your shape, right? Okay. Contrast with that. Otherwise, he says, if only this natural, or what we sometimes call material reception, suffice for sensing, all natural bodies would sense when they were altered, right? Right. See? So they'll pour water on the stove every morning and put out for tea. Would be feeling the, what? Heat of the stove, right? You see? So it's receiving in that way. That obviously is not sufficient, then, for sensing, is it? You can't receive the quality of another as your own, right? According to its natural existence. So the intention is only used for the immaterial way. Yeah. There has to be some kind of an immaterial or spiritual reception, as he calls it here, in order to be receiving the way sensing does, right? The other kind of reception is really another kind of reception. It's not the reception that is sensing. Mm-hmm. Okay? So the way in which the marble receives your shape, when Michelangelo chips you out and stacks you out of marble, is not a way of receiving your shape whereby the marble would know your shape, right? Okay? Okay. And the way that the water in the stove receives the heat of the stove is not the way in which you would know, right, or feel the warmth of the stove, huh? See? But if I put my hand on the stove, or like my cat back home when I was a kid, I smelled something on the stove that smelled pretty good, right? And jumped on the stove and got her paws kind of singed on the stove and never, as they say later, tried to ever do that again. Yeah. That cat was receiving the heat in a different way than the meat up there on the stove, huh? Yeah. See? He was receiving that as the quality of something other than itself, right? Yeah. See? Okay? So you have to have something that's immaterial or spiritual reception. In all of those ones. Yeah, yeah. What Thomas says here now in the next paragraph, and this may be that Aristotle, or Thomas himself, thought that the reception in sight is even more spiritual than it is, huh? See? We're a little more aware of the fact of photons and photons, what, hitting the optic nerves and so on, right? Oh. You see? Yeah. But nevertheless, despite that, the sense of sight still does in some way seem more spiritual. Yeah. Than the other, what, senses. Yeah, yeah. And a sign of that is our transferring the word seeing to understanding, huh? Yeah. Which is altogether immaterial. Yeah. But in some senses, there is found a spiritual immutation or reception only as in sight, huh? Okay? So, although we might not want to go all the way with Thomas there and say this is a immutatio spiritualis tantum, right? Right. Right. We might want to say that it has more of this than the other ones, right? That the order might be the same here. In some of them, however, with a spiritual immutation or changing, there's also a natural one, right? And he says, either on the part of the object only, right? Which would make it less so than, what, the next one, or also on the part of the organ. And what does all this mean here? He says, On the part of the object there is found a natural change according to place in sound, right? Which is the object of hearing, huh? For sound is caused from some, what, percussion, right? And commotion of the air, right? Let me say something like that today, maybe more. Sophisticated, right? According to alteration, however, in, what? In the smell, huh? Of something, huh? Which is the object of the sense of smell. For it is necessary through the, what, heart to alter in some way the body, huh? In order that it might, what, give forth a, what, odor, right, huh? Yeah. Okay. My wife and I went to 730 Mass there in the parish there on Sunday. And we were leaving the church and we had all these, you know, pancakes and sausages and stuff. Well, I guess the kids downstairs, they were trying to raise some money for their trip to Boston, right? Okay. And so, um... Smell it all during that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's good because it's good up there, you see. But that's, there's an alteration going on down there, right, huh? Yeah. It's because you start cooking these things, right? People start, what, smelling them, right? Yeah. This guy I worked with in the, I told you about in the package store, huh? He used to have a custom that on, like Labor Day, you know, he'd invite all his sons or daughters and their families, you know, for breakfast at his place, huh? And he made the breakfast on the grill outdoors, huh? And, of course, these guys, you know, they like to have grilling. So he's up, you know, at 6 in the morning like that, and this is going, oh, the neighbor would have to smell this, you know, sausages and bacon or whatever he's got there and eggs. And the neighbors, you know, you know, they're trying to get their extra sleep there on the Labor Day or something, and they're being woken up by this, huh? But that happens to you in the house, too. Somebody, you know, somebody's upstairs, something like that, and somebody downstairs starts to cook, and all of a sudden, you know, they wake up, you know, and try to get into the good thing, yeah. If your pastor was smart, he would have had the pancake breakfast on the morning that they had the homily on transubstantiation. That would have really helped him and then it's conveying them. Yeah. I believe maybe some of them else. Okay. Yeah. So it's really the heat that, that the body has to be, have some heat to emit this odor, and the more intense the heat, the more intense the heat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a bit, you know, exaggerated, but there's some alteration taking place, right? You see? Even when the food, what? You know, smells in the refrigerator or something like that, right? When it's corrupting, right? Right. But that's a kind of cooking or a kind of alteration of it, isn't it? Oh, some alteration. Yeah, yeah, yeah. See? So in the case of a sound, it's something less intrinsic. It's like a locomotion, huh? A disturbance of the air, right? Sure. Okay? And of course, it travels much faster. But the alteration, when something's being cooked or when it's corrupting or something, you know, heating up, huh? The alteration process itself is part of the, emits the odor. Yeah, I was talking to somebody yesterday and she was, you know, talking about how she had shared, you know, apartment with some girls, right? And I was mentioning how when I was a bachelor, you know, I lived up on Cedar Street there and we had, you know, rooms, separate rooms, but we had a common kitchen, huh? And so we share a common refrigerator. It was always somebody's thing gets pushed to the back of the refrigerator and starts to crop, huh? And then everybody down the kitchen now and everybody, you know, to get out of the refrigerator and find the thing that's, you know, but it's changing. It's being altered, right? That thing. It's undergoing its alteration and it's making its presence known to you, right? And so it's sitting at the back of the glass, she said, yes. You know, so I have to leave the girls, but not just the guys. I mean, it's just... But even in the family house, if you've got the refrigerator really kind of stocked, you know, you can't forget you had something in there, right? And by the time you find it again, it's not usable, really. It's not edible, see? So he's taking those two senses, right? That there is a natural change, right? Right. On the side of the object itself, huh? Right. Okay? Producing the sound or giving rise to this odor, right? And smell, right? But now, in the other two, it's on the side of the organ, right? And I was giving that example, you know, where your very flesh is receiving in a material way when you're in the shower there, or when I go out into the ocean, right? And the same with the tongue. For he says, in the part of the organ, there's a natural change in touch and taste. For the hand touching the hot thing, right, is itself becoming hot, huh? And the tongue is being, what? Moistened, right? Through the moistness or the humidity of the, what? Flavors, huh? Okay? And so you notice that sometimes your inside tongue gets dry, you know? Especially if you've got a clogged up nose like I do, and you tend to be breathing, you know, something through your mouth, right? You end up with kind of a dry mouth, and... But if I took a piece of candy or a cloth jar or something like that, and I started licking it, right? Then my tongue would become, what? Moist, just as the lifesaver word is, is what? Becoming liquid, huh? As I suck it, huh? He seems to understand here, though, that the moisture is coming from the flavor itself? Yeah, or the object, yeah. Instead of the... But we would understand it's really just activating our... Yeah, yeah, again, it may be a little more complicated than he sees, right? Okay. But he says the organ of smell, or hearing, right, are changed by no natural mutation in sensing except, what? Kind of perotidance, huh? So in a sense, he's classifying the senses, what? He's saying the sense of sight is most spiritual, right? Okay. Than hearing and smell, right? And least touch and, what? Taste, right? But notice how also touch and taste seem to be more limited in their object, you know, because it's immediate contact with the thing, right? Right. And the idea, of course, taste is very much something, what? Almost within you, right? Yeah. And Thomas will come back to this if you look at his commentary on the Psalms there, because one of the Psalms says, taste and see how sweet is the Lord, right? Well, it doesn't mean taste in the sense of the sense of taste, right? But there's a reason why you use the word taste there, right? Because taste is something interior within you, right? And so one who's tasted the sweetness of the Lord is experiencing something within himself, right, huh? That is pleasant, huh? Okay. So he says, sight, which is without a natural undergoing or change, either of organ or object, is most spiritual, right? As I say, now that may not be entirely true, but it's certainly more so, right? Okay, the order here, I think, would be the same. And it's more perfect among the senses, certainly in terms of his clarity, huh? And, of course, Thomas points out how sometimes when something is clear to the other senses, we say, see, right? And I say, like if we're in the kitchen and I'm talking about now, taste this. And I taste it, you know? I say, now, if you have a little bit of this, you know? Now, he says, oh, I see what you mean, you know? You see? I'm talking about, it's clear to my sense of taste, the point you're making, huh? But, see, I see that, right? See? Or sometimes if you're pointing something out in a class of music appreciation, you play something and then you say, well, he's not really playing that piece very well, see? Well, that sounds okay to me, you know? I say, okay, now listen to Vadira Skoda playing that same thing. Oh, oh, now I see, yeah, now I see what you're talking about, right? See? But I'm knowing it, not by my sense of sight, but by my hearing, huh? Just, you know, right? And, but the fact that we borrow the word see is because of the clarity of it, huh? Okay? But then vice versa, we also carry the word over to the higher things, huh? Yeah. Okay? And so even the Vedic vision we speak of is seeing God face to face, huh? So it's more perfect among the senses, certainly in terms of its clarity, and it's more common, right? I think by community or he means that its object is more common because we know things at a distance and all our knowledge is the sun, the moon, and the stars, right? All this depends upon, what, the sense of sight, huh? We don't hear things as far away as we hear, as we can see, right? And after this comes hearing, right? Well, you know things at a greater distance, then you do olfactus, or smell, right? So you notice if you're working in your house, something like that, and you go bang, bang, and you can hear it ricocheting out the neighbor's house right that way, see? But the smell in the kitchen doesn't go right to the neighbor's house right away, or as quickly, huh? So after this comes hearing, and then olfactus, which have a natural change on the side of the object, huh? But in the case of the sense of hearing, it was a locomotion, right? And locomotion is, what, more perfect and naturally before the motion of alteration. This is proved in the Eighth Book of the, what, physics, huh? And one reason why they say the locomotion is more perfect is that the object that's being moved from one place to another is already complete, huh? But the object that's being altered is being changed inwardly, right? To something which may be better, but it's on the way to being perfected. But touchy says in taste sunt maxime materialis, huh? Okay? About which distinction one will speak later, huh? Now, one important distinction that people point out is, when you talk about the beautiful, right? We use the word beautiful with regard to the object of the sight sometimes, especially, the beautiful is that which pleases when seen. We also use beautiful with reference to, what, the music of Mozart or something like this, the Baroque music, right? Okay? Why, do we say that the food is beautiful? See? Not if we mean it tastes good, right? Right. We say, this is good, huh? Yeah. See? And it smells good, tastes good, right? You see? So the fact that you have the beautiful with the sense of sight and the sense of hearing is a sign of there being more spiritual. Because beauty is a more, what, spiritual object, right? A less material object, because the beautiful, again, is for its own sake, huh? By what you smell and taste and so on, it's not going to eat. It's something more that addresses itself to your bodily need, huh? Of course, it's very striking when you compare a man with the other animals, because the other animals don't seem to delight much in the, what, beauty of something, huh? So I played Mozart for the cat, and the cat didn't seem to appreciate this, right? But if I tried to cook something on the stove, right, the cat would be out there looking for a handout, huh? And if I even go and get some sandwich meat from the refrigerator, Tabitha especially would be there right next to you, you know? You couldn't, she'd be sound asleep all the way through the Mozart symphony, but it meant you go out in the kitchen there and you, you know, wrap them on those pieces of paper, she's right there. So again, you can see in the fact that we speak of the beautiful own of respect to the object of sight and hearing, and the fact that the other animals don't appreciate those things, that this is something higher, right, and more spiritual than what the other senses do, huh? And the virtue we talk about there in ethics there, moderation or temperance, huh, is concerned especially with touch and taste, huh? Okay, and especially touch, huh? And Stalin gives the groom on there, right, who wished he had the dick of a, what, giraffe or something like that, you know, so he has, you feel it going down his food all the way down. It's kind of an exaggeration. It's kind of gross in a sense this person is, see. So, but those pleasures of touch and taste are ones that we have in common with the other animals. We may have them in a more refined way, you know, we have haute cuisine and so on, but I found my cats kind of like sirloin, you know. They know the difference between sirloin and the stuff they usually get. When I was, we had our first cat there, you know, we didn't know much about cats. And of course, the cat got its food mainly from the table. Then you tried to feed that cat, you know, canned cat food. They dropped their nose at it, see. And this guy worked out at the grocery store, you know. He said, well, you made a mistake, see. You start them out on what? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, the cans. And then once in a while, as a creature, you give them something from the table, you know, but you don't start them out on that stuff because they won't, you know, eat that cat food, huh? See. And so they have some appreciation of good food, at least good meat. One thing we noticed in our academy a little, because we give milk, but sometimes there's some cream or whipped cream left over, and you know what I do is put it in the cat's bowl, and she would lap that thing, the whole wall would be, you know, spattered, you know. Yeah, for a little bit of cream there and milk, huh, see. So they have some appreciation of these things, see. So the pleasures of touch and taste, and even smell to some extent, we share with the other animals. But smell, especially for them, is, you know, to food, right? But, practical thing. But the pleasures of the beautiful, they don't. What? Share with us, huh? I mentioned, you know, this article by Dr. Osterly there, the Towards an Evaluation of Music, right? And he was talking there about the fine arts, like painting, music, and so on. I think he made a good point, I often repeat. He says that these are too high for the animals, huh, and too low for the angels. Ah, really? Yeah, see, because the angels don't have senses, right? And the other animals have senses, but they don't seem to use their senses except for the practical. They don't have any appreciation of the beautiful as such, huh? So man's appreciation of the beautiful in painting, and statues, and architecture, right? And of music, you know? That is kind of a stepping stone to the higher life, huh? And if a person doesn't enjoy, huh, the beautiful in painting, and sculpture, and architecture, and the beautiful in music, how's he going to rise up to the philosophical life, right? To the life of the mind, huh? I had never really known a philosopher who didn't appreciate, you know, good music, or good painting, and, you know? But someone can appreciate, you know, good music, or good painting, or good sculpture, and not want to be a philosopher, right? Because it's too intellectual for them, or something, right? But the other point that I think Osterly made very well, too, was he said that the fine arts are what are most pleasingly proportioned to man. Who is it? Osterly. John Osterly, in this article that appeared in the Thomist years ago, called Towards an Evaluation of Music, huh? This is the article where he talks about the excellence of the music of the 18th century as compared to the 19th century, the Baroque, and the classical periods as opposed to the Romantic period, and he thought, you know, it came after that. And usually people, when they talk about the greatest composers, they all speak of Bach, or Mozart, or, you know, and also more and more of these composers than the other ones. But anyway, he makes some interesting points in there about the fine arts, though, and this is, I think, one good point, that these are what are most pleasingly proportioned to man because they involve his reason and his senses, huh? Right? Yeah. And man is a creature of soul and body, right? By the pleasures of the table, and sleep, and sex, and so on, these are more bodily pleasures that we share with the beasts, huh? And then these pleasures of understanding, right? These are pleasures we share with the angels and God, huh? Yeah. I think I mentioned how, you know, and I teach ethics sometimes, and to get a little bit of the modern way of thinking there, we read sometimes John Stuart Mill, right, who's one of the famous utilitarians, right? There's a whole series of utilitarian philosophers, and for them, the whole basis of good is pleasure, right? Okay? And Mill, of course, has to answer the objections against this position, and one objection is, well, your philosophy is a philosophy for pigs, right? That's what the pig does for us, you know, pleasure, right? Well, Mill has an answer to that, he says, you're the pig, he says, because you think that man has no pleasures that the beast doesn't have, okay? See? You say, in making pleasure the end of life, you're doing what a beast does, huh? And therefore, you have a beastly philosophy, okay? And Mill tries to answer by saying, well, no, you're the beast, you see, because you're saying that man has only the pleasures in common with the beast. There aren't some pleasures that man has that the beast doesn't have, right? And then Mill, you see, he's in the empiricist tradition, you know, where experience is almost everything, right? And so Mill says, now, those who have tasted the lower pleasures and the higher pleasures, right, they say the higher pleasures are greater. And even, you know, play to an Aristotle, right, huh? We'll say that they are so, right, huh? Okay? And I talk about, you know, how man can't live without some kind of pleasure, huh? And therefore, if man can't taste these higher pleasures, he tends to go to excess in the, what, lower ones, right? But they don't really satisfy so much. So, but I sometimes correct or go a little beyond Mill and say, they're not just human and beastly pleasures, there's what? Well, angelic pleasures, human pleasures, and beastly pleasures, right? And the beastly pleasures are the pleasures we have in common with the beasts. The angelic pleasures are the pleasures that we have in common with the angels. And the human pleasures are like the pleasures of the fine arts and fiction and so on, right? The pleasures which Austerlis says, well, I think, are too high for the beast, because they don't have reason and so on. And they're too low for the angels, who are purely spiritual beings, huh? And, you know, if you come back to these, you can make some other observations. You can say, well, the pleasures we share with the beast, we have in a somewhat higher way. So we have the pleasures, you know, of old cuisine, you know, and wine, and, you know, this sort of stuff, right, huh? But the pleasures of understanding we have in an inferior way to the angels, huh? You see? And, but the pleasures of the fine arts and fiction and so on, pleasures of painting and music and fiction, these are the pleasures that are most proportioned to man because they involve his, what? Soul and body, reason and, what? Senses, huh? His emotions and so on. And that's why you can enjoy them probably longer, you see, than the bodily pleasures, in one hand, or the pleasures of understanding, right? You see? So it's easier for, say, me to go to the opera and spend two or three hours watching and hearing a Mozart opera, right? And to sit down for two or three hours, study, you know, study these things, right? You get kind of fatigued after a while, you see? And in the same way with the bodily pleasures there, as my brother Mark used to say, you know, it's the first beer that tastes good, the second one doesn't taste very good. In fact, it's just the first sip he says it tastes good. So, I mean, there's kind of a diminishing return, right? As your hunger or thirst is satisfied, these things don't give us much pleasure anymore. So, in fact, they eventually give us pain, or, you know, like if people eat too much at things, You know, it's uncomfortable. So I caught the law of diminishing returns when you're pursuing bodily pleasures, right? But the pleasures of music or painting or something like that, right? See, one can spend a long time in an art museum, right? If he sits down, you don't think you're too tired walking around, right? See, he could spend a long time in the, you know, you know, in London there at the National Gallery, right? Or if you were in Paris, you know, or at the Uffizi, you know? Actually, you could spend hours in those places, right? And if you sat down so you didn't get bodily tired, you could go on enjoying these paintings, huh? Have you ever been in the Sistine Chapel there, huh? Yeah. You can sit down, you know, and just stay there a long time looking at these paintings, huh? The only thing that gets in your way is people building around, you know? It's always somebody comes in and says, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh It didn't come out that way, yeah. But, so anyway, that corresponds to what Thomas is saying here, right? That sight and hearing are more spiritual than, what? Smell, right? And smell is sort of in between, right? That and the Lord wants them. So if you go around and you smell the flowers, right? That's like in between, you know, enjoying the beautiful and what you see in here, right? Enjoying food, because the flowers is kind of what? It's not really worth eating exactly, right? And my daughter's very good at this thing, you know, you see my daughter, you know, she's kind of a gardener and so on. And she would walk into a picture of a little thing like that, you know, she'd probably look like that, you know, see, you know, just getting the scent of these things, huh? And then she worked at this famous place there down in Connecticut for a little bit, Logies. There's all kinds of plants, huh? And you go in there, you know, and you have all these plants that have the smell of different things, you know, lemon and apricot and so on. You know how they speak about wine, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, actually, there are all these kinds of plants that have, what, you know, here's a plant that smells like strawberry, here's one that smells like lemon, here's one that smells like lime, you know. Here's one that smells like licorice, you know. So it's kind of interesting just to sniff those things. You don't want to really eat the flower, right? So it's more spiritual than eating or something like that, see? And so it's sort of in between, right? But yet smell, of course, is very much associated with eating food and drinking and so on. And so it's not as spiritual as sight and hearing, huh? But Thomas, you know, when he talks there, he says that the pleasures of the senses, right, that are not opposed to the state of the blessed soul, right, you know, in the resurrection, those will be there, right? So there won't be the pleasures of reproduction or the pleasures of eating or sleeping, right, which are more tied up with the sense of touch and taste and smell. But there will be the pleasure of what? Seeing the beautiful saints, right, and the beautiful world around us, huh? And Thomas says there will be laus vocalis, huh, vocal praise of God, huh, right? I just sang a quote there from Job, there were all the stars of heaven, meaning the angels sing, right? It's kind of striking there, huh? So there will be, but again, it's a sign that those pleasures of the beautiful are not incompatible with heaven, right? Right, see? And these saints who have had the, you know, the vision of the blessed virgin, right? Yeah. And they say, she's far more beautiful than the painters that represented her, that's what they say, right? Yeah, yeah, see? Or motherly, like the visionaries would say. Yeah. She's just a mother, she's so much a mother, you just can't imagine her. But she's very beautiful, though, right? Yeah, right. You know? But a kind of beauty that would not arouse or lust or anything like that, you see? Right. It's a very spiritual beauty, huh? But extremely beautiful. So, I think you've got to bear those things in mind, and you see that, but Thomas here may not have everything exactly down in details, and may not realize that seeing maybe is not as immaterial or spiritual as they thought, right? There still is that same order, I think you could say, going from sight and hearing, and then to smell, and then down to taste and touch, huh? Yeah. Okay? Yeah. In a sense, to raise somebody up to enjoy or take pleasure in philosophizing or in theology, they've got, in a sense, to go from the pleasures of the table to the pleasures of the fine arts to the pleasures of, what? Understanding, huh? You see? And it's different, right, huh? St. Teresa of Avila says in her autobiography that when she saw the glorified body of Jesus Christ, he had to show her just his hand first. Yeah. He had to proportion her to it. Yeah, yeah. And then he could show her more and more. And he said, if this seems weird to you, I said, you don't know how beautiful the glorified body is. You know, he said something on the other side. Yeah, just looking at his hand is just a, if you put her in a rapture, just looking at his hand, you know, you'd think, hmm, you know, so what, a hand, you know? Yeah, and then she says, well, if you're thinking that, you haven't seen what I've seen. But, you know, you talk about the fine arts, you know, having worked in a museum and that type of thing, you know, and just the people that are predominantly, this might sound prejudiced, but anti-Christ, you know, pro-do-what-you-want, very liberal, you know, it seems like the fine arts are, you know, at least the art as opposed to music, at least that's the aspect I've seen. It seems to be, you know, contorted by those that are perpetuating, as opposed to bringing us closer to the divine being, they're taking us further away from them. Yeah, yeah. So why is that? Well, see, that's why I say, you read Austerlis yesterday there, and he'll tell you why the music of the 18th century is much better to listen to than the music of the Romantic period, no? Because the Romantic period would not believe in the subordination of the emotions to reason. But that would be a common theme there in the music of the 18th century, huh? But actually, emotions, representation is much more beautiful, because reason introduces what is most essential to beauty, order and symmetry and moderation, huh? Those are the main forms of the beautiful. Just like we say, the poet says, shall I compare thee to a summer's day, they are more lovely and more temperate, huh? See, so temperance is something that comes from reason, moderating things, huh? Okay, now he's going to reply to the, um, just to read the last sentence in the Bible article. Yeah, that's right. But touch and taste, we said, are most material, huh? About whose distinction in particular we'll speak later here, and this will be in response to the third and fourth objections, right? Okay, and hence it is that the other three senses do not come about through a conjoined medium, huh? Okay? Because sense of touch, you see, is embedded, you might say, in the, what, skin, right? And the skin is the medium to which you touch, right? But in the case of sight and hearing and smell, you go through, what, air or water in some cases. Lest some natural transmutation arrive at the organ, as happens in these two senses of taste and, what, touch, huh? Now, the first objection was saying, well, isn't sensing, uh, knowing accidents, huh? Well, that's true, but not all accidents, right? And Thomas will answer that, huh? Because not all accidents... First, it should be said that now all accidents have a power of what? Changing something, as such. But only qualities of the third species, and that's what characterizes them. So my being a just man or an unjust man, as such doesn't affect your senses or act upon your senses at all, right? And my having the ability to walk, does that affect your senses? No. No, unless I kick you. Yeah. And again, the shape of the thing doesn't act upon you if it doesn't have any color or anything, right? And therefore only these qualities, the qualities of the third species of quality, are object of the senses. Because as is said in the seventh book of the physics, according to the same things the sense is altered, according to which inanimate bodies are what? Altered, huh? So, these sense qualities seem especially tied up with what? Motion or change, huh? And the side of that is that when you get into a science like, say, pure mathematics, huh? When pure mathematics, you abstract quantity and figure a shape from any kind of, what, sensible matter, right? And then there's nothing referring to motion or change, huh? If I had a lead sphere in my head, ooh, I'd have a hard time holding it up like Atlas, right? But your medical sphere would not in any way affect me, would it, huh? If I walked through a moist sphere, I'd get all, you know, cool and refreshed, you know? You've got these things in Disneyland, you know, where they cool you off, you know, you walk through a misty thing, right? But if I could walk through a geometrical sphere, I'd get neither wetness nor dryness, right, huh? So there's nothing that's going to act upon my senses. So the fact that you have no motion, really, no change, really, no alteration in these mathematical things, right, is a sign that that's tied up with the sense qualities. And you have no sense qualities in pure math. So a geometrical sphere has no color and has no sound and no smell. It's neither heavy or light or anything else that you first change. That's why, you know, to some extent, the modern scientists and those who study nature mathematically, right, and apply something mathematical in the actual world, they're accustomed to think that there are no sense qualities in the world. You'll find that in the modern philosophers sometimes and in the modern scientists even, right? And you see it in some of the ancient Greeks, too, who are into the mathematical science of nature, like Demarbitus. Sense qualities don't seem to be real, right? Can I just think about that? Perhaps, perhaps, yeah. We don't have that many direct quotes. But you have in the quotes that we have from Demarbitus, who is somewhat into the mathematical science of nature. Do every one of these sense qualities act on one of the five exterior senses? Yeah. Not only. It has to. If it says sense quality of the third kind, it will act on one of the five exteriors. Yeah, so color acts upon the eye and sound upon the ear, right? Okay. The smell of the thing. I've been trying to figure out this third species. Yeah. Okay. Now, what about the so-called common sensibles, right? Why are they said to be sensible per se, unlike the accidental sensibles? Well, he says, It ought to be said that magnitude and figure and other things of this sort, which are called common sensibles, are, in a way, in between, a middle between the things which are sensible per achedens and the sensibilia propria, the ones that are private to one sense or another, what they're called the sense qualities, right? Okay? Which are the object of the senses. For the proper sensibles or the private sensibles, first and through themselves change the sense, since they are qualities that alter things. But the common sensibles are all reduced to quantity. And as regards magnitude and number, it's clear that they are, in fact, species of quantity. But figure or shape is a quality about quantity, since the ratio or definition of figure is in the, what, limitation of a magnitude, huh? That's how you could define the figure, right? What is contained by limit or limits, huh? Motion and rest are sensed according as their subject in one way or many ways, according as the subject in one way or many ways, has itself according to the magnitude of the subject as in growth or of local distance, as regards the emotion of growth and locomotion, are also according to sensible qualities as in the motion of alteration. And thus to sense motion and rest is, in a way, to sense the one and the, what, many. Because the thing that's at rest remains the same, right? One and the same. And the thing that is moving or changing is, what, like a number, right? It's multiplied, huh? It's other, always. But quantity is the proximate subject of the altering quality, as surface is the subject in which color is spread over. And therefore, the common sensibles do not move the senses primo and per se, right? Notice he's the word primo there, right? But by reason of the sensible quality, as the surface, a reason of the color. Nevertheless, they are not sensible as parachidens, because these sensible things cause some diversity in the change of the sense. For in another way, the sense is moved by a large surface and by a small, because also whiteness itself is said to be large or small, point of subject, and therefore is divided according to its own subject. You know that yourself. You've been out in the summer and you have a big white house or a big white wall, and you're kind of blinded by it, right? Well, if you had a little small one, it wouldn't affect the senses so much, right? So in that sense, the common sensibles do affect the senses, don't they? The same way motion does, right? Shakespeare says, Things in motion, the sooner catch the eye than what not stirs. So the common sensibles do make a difference as such as regards the way the senses are, what? Moved, huh? The accidental sensible in no way. That's like beauty in that, right? Beauty, the sensible for accident. No, I don't think beauty would be an accidental sensible, because the beautiful is that which pleases when seen or heard. Okay? So it's not a... Sensibilia per accident is not beauty? No, no. It'd be like sugar or salt is accidental to what? The eye is not affected by sugar or salt as such, right? Right. But it's affected by the color or by the taste of the sugar or the salt, right? Yeah. See? It's not insofar as it's salt, but insofar as it's salty, right? Yeah. Not insofar as it's sugar, it affects my tongue, right? But insofar as it is, what? Sweet, right? Yeah. Okay. Okay? Okay. You can see this, you know, when they try to make imitation, you know, something, right? Usually they don't get as good as original flavor. I mean, they're not that clever, you know? Yeah. But they do make some things that do taste, right? Yeah. And, you know, these fancy jelly beans, you know, there's 49 flavors, right? And there's a popcorn jelly bean, which I think is kind of good, you know, myself. My son, Marcus, he thinks it's not a proper taste to having a jelly bean. Yeah, right. But there's, you know, like a buttered popcorn taste, and there's the one that's got a caramel corn, right? Yeah. And, you know, there's coffee, you know, all these different types of ones, you know? Uh-huh. And licorice, yeah. And it's kind of interesting to taste, what's that flavor you're tasting, right? See? But, uh... I got you. You see? Yeah. So, um, it's, uh, sugar as such is not acting upon my senses, huh? Right. But the sweet as such is affecting my sense of taste, huh? Uh-huh. Or the color of white is, huh? Uh-huh. That's why I could be deceived by the accidental sensible to thinking that, you know, if this is a sugar bowl, and you put salt in there instead of sugar, I could easily, you know, take salt and put it in my coffee or something, you see? Um, I put sugar on, huh? Um, um, okay. Or somebody, you know, you know, you know.