De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 109: The Agent Intellect, Universals, and the Danger of Imagination

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And this belongs to the acting of one understanding insofar as it is, what, immaterial, huh? So you have to have something one here in comparison to the many images, right, in order to separate out something one that's common to those many, huh? That's where Aristotle, in the order of learning, you know, he says, sensing comes first, and then memory, whereby you retain something which you sensed, right? Right? And then he has a beautiful military thing, you know, where the troops are retreating from the enemy, and one guy turns around and makes a stop and stands there, right? And then encourages the other ones to turn around and join them, right? So in one of these things you sense, it doesn't just go in one ear and out the other, as we say, but it makes a stop inside, right? And then another image of a similar thing stops, right? And you gather together many images of the same sort of thing, and then you have an experience of something, right? Okay? So experience is something, in a sense, a bringing together many memories of the same thing. And then the acting upon understanding can separate out what they have in common, huh? And that's the beginning of understanding for the possible understanding, right? And so in order to make one, something one out of many, the acting upon understanding, the agent intellect, would have to be something one itself, right? It's one power that I have. But it doesn't mean that your agent intellect and my agent intellect would have to be one and the same individual power. Do you see that? To get the soldier to stop, do you have to stop and think? Stop instead of, you know, constantly? Well, no, but, you know, but it's, yeah, in a sense, it's like that, huh? But it's just kind of a very vivid image that our style uses drawn from Homer, right? I found, like, one of Shakespeare's plays, one of the history plays, one of the battle scenes where somebody turns around, makes a stop, and the other guy comes, and I say, okay, now we've got the Shakespearean quote that corresponds to the Homeric quote, huh? But that is very, you know, you know, Aristotle's not beyond a very concrete image there, you know, to help you understand what's taking place there. I have trouble sometimes. Nothing stops. Well, so you have to be slower, see, you know? Don't be cheats up quickly. Thank you. Well, sometimes when Thomas has a series of arguments, you know, if you read them too quickly, you know, you forget the first argument before you go on to the second one, right? You know, we read one argument and kind of think about it a while and wait until it calms down in your head, and then, you know, then go back and now look at the second argument, right? You see? And it's kind of, even in terms of memory, that's good, I think. If you want to memorize, say, a Shakespearean sonnet, you want to memorize a couple of lines and then wait until they settle down in your memory, and then add a couple more lines to that, and each time you go back, you start from the beginning, and you can't try to, you know, give them all together, you know? Unless you have one of these photographic memories, huh? I was reading Basel's famous life of Samuel Johnson. He must have had a photographic memory, huh? He's a little boy, you know, and they gave him, you know, a poem, you know, to just keep busy, to memorize this long poem, you know, and then the mother went upstairs, and I'm like that, and, you know, and, mama, you know? Have you done that? Yeah. Takes it all from memory, right? Oh, right. I had a guy like that in high school that had a memory like that, huh? And you could give him a, you know, a long poem like this, you know, a couple pages like that, and he'd read her once. Close it. Set it for me. All right. Yeah, because, you know, at these parties, you know, where there'd be a lot of girls, you know, and you'd introduce them, you know, and you'd turn their name once, you know, you'd remember all those names, right? So you can go around, you know, hi, Mary Jane, hi, hi, you know, and they'd go for that, you know? So we had a little envious of these guys. But you can see how good that would be for a politician, huh? It was the, I forget the name of the guy who was the big manager for Roosevelt there, you know, but I guess he'd have these little prompt things, you know, so you'd know the names of all these people down below, and he'd walk down there, you know, hi, Joe, hi, Bill, you know? You know, and you kind of get a call, you know, everybody's looking at you, you know, so you feel kind of good about the big guy recognizing you, you know? It's like, uh... I think I should be quoting because, uh, in the writing manual at St. Thomas Aquinas College, even though he had his photographic memory, he says anything that's written hastily is generally not worth reading. Yeah, yeah. So he must have thought, too, along with that. Who, who? Samuel Johnson. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. A student comes in before class today, you know, and he has one of these little drinks, you know, I know what it is, and I say, what are you drinking at all? I don't know, he says. So I go to see, I'm Johnson, he said, you know, if a man doesn't think about what he eats and drinks, he says, he's not apt to think about anything else. So I'll put that guy in his place. Okay. No, but if the, before you understand, you have to gather the images, it seems like you would have to have some common idea already in order to recognize... Well, it's not really distinct yet, though, see? Yeah, so, I mean, there's already the influence of reason there, though, in gathering these, what they call the particular reason, huh? You know? But it's, it's, um... You haven't really separated out that thing distinctly from them yet. Of course, you see this in all the dialogues of Plato there, because when Socrates asks somebody what something is, they'll start off and give, what? Not a definition, they'll be able to say what they have in common, but they'll, they'll, you know, get examples of it, huh? So if you ask a little boy, what is a nose? You know, he's a nose, there's a nose, there's a nose, and they'll point him out, you know? You already see a little bit of the influence of reason there, right? That's where Aristotle sees experience as something more human than bestial, right, huh? You know? Why, why sensing, you know, the beast can have as well as us, and even memory, you know? But experience there seems like kind of a bringing together there, right? Okay? Okay. So, um... Third? The third one, huh? This is the one now about the fact that we all share in this common understanding of the, uh, what they call the axioms in philosophy sometimes, but the statements that are, what? Known to themselves by all men. And, uh, how do you explain that, see? Well, to the third, it should be said that all things which are of one species, of one particular kind of thing, they come together in the action following upon the nature of that species, that particular kind of thing. And consequently, they agree in their, what? Power, right, huh? In the power which is a principle of action. Not that it be the same in number and all, right? But the same in, what? Kind, or same in particular kind, huh? But to know the first things understandable is an action following upon the, what? Human species, huh? Particular kind of thing we are. In other words, it's natural according to our, what? Common nature, right? And therefore we all share in it, huh? Whence is necessary that all men come together in the power which is a beginning of this action. And this is the power of the, what? Acting upon understanding, huh? It's not however necessary that it be the same in number and all, huh? But it must be the same in what kind, huh? It's necessary therefore that from one beginning it be derived, no, no. You see what he's saying? That behind this, right, or before this, right, is the father of lights, as we are invoking today, huh? And thus that communication of men, that coming together of men, in the first things understood, shows the unity also of a, what? Separated intellect, right? Which Plato compares to the, what? Sun, right? Not however the unity of the acting upon understanding which Aristotle compares to the, what? Light, huh? Okay. And let's take those two texts we're working with in Scripture, right? In St. John, for example, in the first chapter of John, we talk about the beginning was the Word and the Word was God and so on, right? And then eventually say, and this was the light, what? The light in Zerui-Mak. coming into this world, right? Okay. Now there you have one light, huh? The word of that is a might to all men, right? Okay. But now when you speak of the Father of Lights and every perfect gift, right? Every perfect giving and so on is from above, right? Coming down, right? From the Father of Lights, huh? Well, there you're touching upon the fact that He has given each one of us, right? The light of reason, huh? Which is a power of our soul, right? The power to make what understandable, what is imagined, right? The power to make universal what is in the image, right? And therefore understandable, right? And from that we have this common what understanding of the axioms, huh? So there is the light which is a gift given to us, right? As our own, what? Our own soul has given us, right? Which has this natural power in it. And then there's a light which is behind all those, right? The light which, what? Enlightens all men coming into this world, huh? You see that? So Thomas is not denying that there's an element of truth in saying that there is a, what? One substance, right? Maybe the divine substance itself, right? That is the source of all the light in all of our minds, right? Okay? But from this one source, there's been given to each one of us, right? A share, you might say, in that light, huh? And that is the acting upon understanding, huh? Which as to all compares to light, huh? You see that, huh? Okay? When you're saying prayers, angels strengthen the lights of all minds. So then, yeah. And the angels, too, have something to do with that. Yeah, yeah. And the light of their mind, which is greater than the light of our mind, by far, that also has come down from the Father of what? Of light. So I know she quoted that passage, part of that passage in the Eucharistic, too. Oh. And because it's kind of appropriate, you know, how the Pope has kind of expanded the Rochie a bit there with the... Mysteries of Light. The Mysteries of Light, he calls them, right? And one of them is the, what? Institution. The Eucharist, yeah. Yeah. So it's appropriate that we refer to the Father of Light serum. Yeah, okay. You know? So the light of the angelic mind, right, is derived from the Father of Lights, too. Okay? So... And all an angel has to do is will it to strengthen the light of our mind. If he wills it, we have it. Our intellect is... Yeah. Now, of course, the devils don't do that, right? See, they don't... They want it to deceive us, right? So the devils work through the imagination, huh? Because imagination is a great source of error. Yeah, yeah. And Thomas often gives, you know, false imagination as the first cause of error, almost on the side of our knowing powers. Pride's on the side of the will, but on the side of the knowing powers, it's false imagination. And that means what? Imagining something other than it is, right, which can be found even in those things that can be imagined, right? But a fortiori, imagination is a cause of deception when you try to imagine that which cannot be, what? Imagined, huh? Okay? Okay? So this is the danger, huh? You can see it even in logic. I know this is a tradition. The moderns can't understand the, what? Universal, right? And they want to substitute for the universal class, huh? If you read the modern magicians, right? What's the difference between a class and a universal? Yeah. The universal is something one set of many, right? Okay? While the class is the, what? Collection of many individuals or many particulars, huh? What's the difference between, let's say, mankind and man, huh? Say, I'm a man, and you are a man, right? And every individual in the world is a man, right? Every individual human being, right? But am I a mankind? Say, a mankind, you're thinking more of the collection of all men, right? Okay? You know, don't be like people say, we're a church. I don't like that expression. Usually for other reasons. But I'm not church. I'm a member of the church. I'm a part of the church, I hope, right? Okay? You could, I could say, I am a Catholic. I am a, what? Christian, right? But I am a church? No. See, church is a collection, you know. It's got a lot of unity to church, right? He talks a lot about that in the encyclical, too. But church is not a universal set of each one of us, huh? Okay? So, but notice, a multitude is more able to be, what? Imagined, huh? When Aristotle talks about the word genus in genos, there in Greek, and porphyry in the Isagoge, you know, following Aristotle. And there are two meanings of genus prior to the logical meaning. And one meaning of genus is a multitude of men who have descended from one man, okay? And another meaning of genus is the one man from whom a whole, what, multitude have descended, huh? Okay? So if you look at me and all my grandchildren now, right? See? Why am I the genus of all those? I was telling you, I was in church one time, and I had a bunch of the grandchildren with me, and this guy I used to work with in the package store, you know, he says, you know, you're responsible for all this, he says. So, one sense, you know, would be this multitude of people that are descended from me, right? Okay? And then the one man from whom this multitude has descended, huh? And neither one of those meanings is the logical meaning of genus, huh? But they have some likeness, both meanings, right? Like the one man from whom many men have descended, the genus is something one, right? Okay? But it's not, you know, one in the sense of an individual, right? Okay? And like the multitude, the universal extends to many things, right? But it's a set of them, right? Rather than a, what, collection of them, huh? Okay? So the logicians, huh? I mean, the modern logicians, a lot of people, they want to resolve to the imagination in understanding the universal. And then they get into all kinds of, what, problems, huh? They want to use circles, right? And things of this sort, right? Yeah. That's different than if they were just using it as a help, like a man of Dexium. Yeah, yeah. But they're kind of, we try to resolve to the imagination, you see. And you find this in the great dialogue in Plato called the Parmenides there, where Parmenides is talking to this young guy named Socrates. And Socrates is trying to understand the universal, and he imagined the universal to be like a sail, you know? Yeah. These big sails that covers all of us, huh? Yeah. Well, of course, only part of the sail is on top of my head, and another part is on top of your head, another part on top of your head, right? Uh-huh. And that gets into all kinds of troubles, because universal, the whole of what's in the universal is found in each one of you, right? Oh, yeah. You see? So if we say man over all of us, huh, we don't have, I'm under, you know, rational and you're under animal or something, you know, and vice versa. No, the whole of this thing is set of each one of us, right? So you can't imagine like a sail where, you know, we're all covered, but each of us is only under one part of the sail, right? You see? So Socrates is resolving to the, what, imagination there, getting into all kinds of problems, huh? Mm-hmm. And I mentioned the difficulties there in Locke and Barclay, right? Locke is trying to, in the essay of human understanding, he's trying to understand the general idea of triangle, right? And there's a general idea of triangle, you know, equilateral, isosceles, or scalene, you know, right-angled, obtuse-angled, acute-angled, and he doesn't know what to say. Finian's up saying, well, it's all and none. But what his problem is, is that he's trying to imagine triangle in general. Now, can you imagine triangle in general? Now, any triangle you imagine would be an individual triangle, and therefore it'd be either equilateral or isosceles or scalene, right? Either right-angled or obtuse-angled or acute-angled and so on, right? You see? And so he's kind of thinking, well, what is this universal idea of triangle? Well, it's all of these things in some way, right? It's kind of like all these things, you know? And like you had, you know, all those images, you're trying to combine them together in one image, and of course you can't really, huh? And so you end up with something that's all and none of these things, a little bit like Alexander's view of matter, right? It's all and none of these things that it can be. And then Barclay, as I mentioned, comes along and says, I don't think that made any sense, you know. So Barclay concludes, we had no idea at all. But notice, he's resolving to the imagination. He can't understand the universal. And then A. Fortiori, you start to think about the angels, huh? Or think about God, huh? I was looking at the De Potencia there, the questiones disputate De Potencia of Thomas there. And they're getting into the fourth question there, where you're talking about Genesis, right, and the account of creation there and various interpretations of that and so on. And in Augustine, we have the most profound understanding, I guess, of these things. Then you have these people you know who are talking about, were the angels created before the material world, huh? And Thomas says, well, some of the Church Fathers say yes, but Augustine says no, they were created the same together. And Thomas thinks that, you know, because Basil or Greg Nazianzen have said this, you know, we're not going to say this is erroneous, right? But what Augustine says is erroneous, you know, you know, it's more reasonable, right? And he gives you a reason, right? But then he has a subsequent article. Could the angels, could God have created them before the material world? Was that possible, right? And one of the objectors, of course, is saying, no, this is impossible because it's commonly said that two angels aren't in the same place, right? So angels have got to be in a different place, right? And, well, you see, they're thinking of the angels as if they were bodies, right, huh? And a body must be, what, somewhere in some place, huh? And when Aristotle's in the fourth book of natural hearing, he's talking about place, right? He quotes the common opinion of the Greeks that whatever he is must be somewhere. And if it isn't somewhere, it doesn't exist, huh? So they're seeing to be in some place as a property of being as being, right? And therefore they're thinking that whatever he is must be a, what, body, huh? Or in a body, huh? And that's because we don't think without images, and images are always, what, extended, right? So we're apt to be deceived by the imagination and thinking that whatever he is must be a, what, a body. It must be extended, huh? Okay? And therefore, so long as you think of them in terms of what can be imagined, you're going to misunderstand the angels, misunderstand the soul. You're going to imagine the soul to be an air-like thing in the shape of a body, right? You're going to misunderstand God and so on, huh? But even those things that can be imagined, you can imagine them other than they are, huh? C.S. Lewis has some work someplace where he describes this little incident in his life where he went to visit, I don't know, some relative of his, some uncle, and some part of England he'd never been in, you know, and he got into the car with the uncle and they're driving from the station, wherever it is, and C.S. Lewis is looking at the scenery and so on and says, you know, I never thought it was like this, you know, this part of England, you know, he thought it was another way and his uncle kind of tore into him, you know. What, right, but you had to think that, right? It was that way. Well, he's pictured it that way, huh? And haven't you always done that with places you've never been to sometimes or with some person you've never met, huh? You kind of picture them a certain way and then when you go to that place or you meet that person, you know, you're not the way you picture them at all. But what record you have? That's just your imagination. Imagining things without really having any reason to imagine them that way, huh? I kind of joked, you know, how when I was in high school, I thought how nice it would be to be in college, you know, and then I imagined college to be. I wasn't so nice as I thought I was going to be. And then I was in college, and I thought I imagined it would be so nice to be in graduate school, you know, and just concentrating on these things that I really was interested in, you know. But then graduate school wasn't quite like that, you see. You start to do some things you don't want to do, you know, and so on. So it would be really nice to be out teaching there, you know. Imagine where I'd like to be teaching, you know, and you're sitting around at noontime, you know, and all these interesting conversations going on, and so on. None of this comes, you know, this is really the way it is. And it was kind of funny Sunday there where I was at the house there, and I had the picture there of one of the crowds there in Baghdad when they were in Iraq, when the city's there, you know. Just looking at the faces, they don't look very reasonable, you know. And so I was kind of, you know, passing it around on the table there, you know, and Warren says, what record you had to assume that they were rational? Or anybody's rational for that matter, you know. No, I mean. We're constantly imagining things, or picturing them, other than they are, even though they could be imagined in some cases, right? But especially when you try to imagine something that cannot be imagined, you're going to be deceived ipso facto, by the very fact, if you try to understand by that which you can imagine. Well, it's kind of striking to see about the angels there, and they'd be distinct. Well, they wouldn't really be distinct, one angel from another, unless one was here and one was there, right? You know, if one wasn't here and one there, they'd just be all, you know. Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh therefore memory does not belong to the understanding part of the, what, soul, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh His big, you know, leather gloves like that, I just open the cage, watch the end, see, comes right out, you know, he does, this is my figure, cuts on my shoulder and so on, digs it nice, you know, stay at that, you know, place, yeah. More of our memory is of what? Past things, right? But the past is said according to some, what, determined time, huh? Some definite time. Memory, therefore, is knowing of something under some, what, determined time, which is to know something as here and, what, now. But this is not something that pertains to the understanding, which knows the universal, but to, what, the senses that know the, what, singular. Memory, therefore, is not in the understanding part, but only in the, what, sensing part, huh? Moreover, in memory are retained or conserved the species, the forms of things, which in act are not thought of. But this is not able to happen in the understanding, because the understanding comes to be an act, through this, that it is informed by the understandable form or species. But for the understanding to be an act is, for it to, what, understand an act. And thus, the understanding understands all things in act, of which it has the forms within itself. Therefore, memory is not in the understanding part. And that argument goes back to, what, the great philosopher Avicenna, right, huh? And Avicenna said we have these forms in our mind only when we're actually thinking about them, right? And so we're constantly being empty, you might say, huh? Okay? And we have to turn to the separated substance, in fact, right, to have these forms come in our mind again. But against all this is what Augustine says in the Tenth Book of the Trinity, that memory, understanding, and the will are one mind, huh? As we mentioned before, mind sometimes names the understanding or intellectual part of the soul, huh? Okay, and of course Augustine is going to see in those three the, what, image of the Trinity, yeah. Okay. Now, do you want to do a little break or do you want to go on to the... Yeah. Yeah. There it goes. I answer, it should be said that, since it is of the definition, you might say, of memory, to conserve the species of things which are not grasped in act, this should first be considered, huh? Whether the understandable forms or species are able to be conserved thus in the understanding. For Avicenna, who's an eminent philosopher among the Mahometans, and one that Thomas, you know, often quotes with great respect, but many times also disagrees with, Avicenna posited or laid down that this was, what, impossible, right? Now, in the sensitive part, like we were seeing earlier when we were studying the inward senses, he said that this happened as regards some powers insofar as they are acts of, what, body organs, in which can be preserved some species without there being actually, what, grasped, right? So, for him, right, these things like memory, sense memory, he calls that the treasure, right? And we have your treasure of these forms, right, reserved, right? You can take one out when you want to imagine it or something, right, huh? But you don't have any such bodily organ for the mind, huh? In the understanding of her, which lacks a bodily organ, nothing exists in it except in a, what, understandable way. Whence he thought it was necessary, right, to be understood and act that whose likeness exists in the understanding, huh? Thus, according to him, thus, therefore, according to him, as soon as someone, what, ceases in act to think about some things, there ceases to be the form or the species of that thing in the, what, understanding, huh? Okay. But it's necessary if, again, he wants to understand that thing, that he turn himself towards the, what, active understanding, which for him is a separated, what, substance, right, which he laid down to be a separate substance, so that from it there might flow understandable forms into the possible understanding, the one that understands. And from the exercise in use, practice of converting itself to the agent-elect, there is left, according to him, a certain, what, ability, a certain disposition, right, in the possible intellect to turn itself to the agent-elect, which he said was the habit of, what, science, huh? Well, Aristotle, you know, and Thomas would say, no, the habit of science is the understandable forms, right, preserved in the mind, right, you're not actually using them, right, and it's nothing other than a certain, what, ordering of these understandable forms in the mind. So he says, according, therefore, to this position, nothing is preserved or conserved in the understanding part that is not actually, what, understood. Whence one could not posit memory in the understanding part in this way, huh? But this opinion, Thomas says, is clearly and manifestly repugnant to the words of Aristotle, huh? For Aristotle says in the third book about the soul, huh? And notice the way Thomas besieges it, right? He's first going to, in this paragraph, he's going to say it's repugnant to the words of Aristotle, you know, and then he's going to say in the next paragraph it's repugnant to, what, reason, right? Yeah. So, notice, huh? What does Augustine always say? You must believe to understand, right, huh? Yeah, yeah. But notice Thomas says, what, respect for the philosophers, as he calls them, right? You know? It's like when I read Euclid, right? I'm pretty sure he's going to demonstrate what he says, proposes, right? And I believe him, right? You know? But, you know, the end is not to believe, but to know, right, huh? You know? But belief comes before understanding, huh? For the most part, huh? You know, if you didn't have that belief in modern science, modern science would completely break down. Yeah. You don't realize that, huh? You know? There's more belief in modern science than in, you know, modern philosophical circles, right? But if you came into class and say, you know, and everybody, you know, tell me what you think about, this atom or this thing, you know? You'd have to be chaos, you know? You know, as chaotic a world as you have in the world of philosophy. Yeah. You've heard my famous division of all thinkers, right? It's not my division, I shouldn't say. It's first given by Hesiod, at least the first man I've heard of giving it, right? Oh, yeah. And Aristotle quotes it in the, what, first book on the Nicomachean Ethics, right, huh? Where Aristotle says, you know, quoting Hesiod, right, the great poet, you know, best of all is a man who can understand these things by himself, right? Come to know these things all by himself, right? Can discover them himself. Next, he says, is the man who can learn them from the man who discovered them, right? But he who can either discover himself or learn them from another is a useless white, is the old translation of the English, right? And Thomas, you know, with his charitable way of speaking, says, useless as far as the acquisition of knowledge is concerned, Thomas says. So, you find that three-fold division in the great Hesiod, the great poet, and then Aristotle takes it over, you know, and accepts it, huh? And Thomas says.