De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 111: Eternity, Time, and the Divine Now

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always other in some way, right? It's always moving forward, you might say. So, or the now of time is always feeding, right? We can never hold on to it. So as I say to the students, you know, a lot of times some nice moment of your life is something which I wish this could last, you know, but you know it can't last, you can't hold on to it, right? That's why we're always told by our parents as children, you know, all good things must come to an end. Time to go to bed. Is it? Okay. So, in order to negate the fleeting character of the now of time, right? You never possess it, right? He adds the word, what? Possession, right? Which separates the eternal now, which stands still from the, what? Now of time that's always other, huh? The divine now, the eternal now, is always the same. Why the now of time in one sense is always other as to where it is, huh? Do you see that? Yeah. So that's the third negation, right? You might say that's involved in this great definition, huh? Now, I said, suppose you could stop or freeze the now of time, right? You can't do that, huh? But in the fairy tales, that sometimes takes place, you know, where it's the birthday of the beautiful princess, huh? And the fairy godmother comes there and blesses them and everything, and so on. And then she's like, the witch, you know, and you cast a spell upon everybody, and everybody's frozen there. You've seen those. And I can still remember the pictures in the childhood books there, you know, where the servant's being in the jail like that, he's frozen like that, you know? And the princess, of course, is asleep until, what, the Prince Charming shows up and kisses her and then everybody comes back, you know, alive, huh? But I said, if you could freeze the now of time, how much life would you have in the now? See? You can't play a game in the now, can you? You can't eat your dinner in the now, right? You can't drink a beer in the now, right? You can't really think in the now, right? You have practically no life at all. See? So, the eternal now, though, there's a perfection, the fullness of life in the eternal now, right? So, when he asks perfecta, right, he's in a way negating the defect of life that there is in the now, right? When he says possession, he's negating the, what, the fleeting and always other character of the now, huh? So, in a way, there's like four negations here in the definition of eternity, which is the one of the great, this is the one of the great weight is, right, in the fifth book of the Consolation of Philosophy, huh? But Thomas takes over this definition, you can read right here in this same prima pars, right? Antigal trinity. So, you have two negations of life in time and two negations of life as it is in the now or two negations of what you find in the now of time, huh? So, I was trying to emphasize here, there's almost like four negations there, huh? But it's kind of beautiful to see, too, how if you ask, which is more like eternity, life in the now or life in time, huh? Well, if you talk about a life that has no before and after, then life in the now is more like eternity, right, huh? But, if you're talking about perfect in the full life, huh? Well, then we have a fuller life in time than we have in the now, right? So, it's beautiful to see how in one way life in time is more like eternity and in another way life in the, what? Now is more like eternity, huh? But what you have is perfect life all at once in God, huh? That's absolutely marvelous to see that, huh? And the beatific vision there, which will require another light from the Father of Light, huh? And more light than I can cast upon anything here. But eternal life for us is a partaking of the divine eternal life, huh? And then we share, huh? There'll be all at once. There won't be any before and after in that vision of God. When you see God face to face, when you see God as He is, huh? There won't be any before and after any change in that vision, huh? And but that's going to be the fullness of life, huh? But there'll be the feeling of that flow you were talking about. There won't be anything like that. There'll be the understanding that we have with the flow. Is that what you mean? But no, I say the seeing God as He is, the seeing of God face to face, there'll be no before and after in that vision. It'll be all at once, it'll be a perfect life, huh? It won't move. Won't move, no? No, no. Yeah, like a temple, you know, that speaks of a pillar there, right? You never go out again. And that's kind of marvelous to think about that. I was reading there a little bit about, you know, in the day Potencia there about the, you know, Thomas Kahn and Augustine's explanation of the morning and the evening, right? You know how Augustine takes morning and evening to refer to two knowledges of the angel, right? And the evening knowledge of the angel is the knowledge of the angel's natural knowledge, right? And the morning knowledge of the angel is the knowledge he has by seeing God face to face, huh? And of course, the reason why you call one morning, one evening is because morning is the beginning, right? And of course, everything is, the beginning is God, right? So you see things in morning knowledge and see things in the beginning of things, which is God himself, huh? But the evening is at the end, right? Tending towards darkness, and that's the creature, right? Because left to himself, the creature tends towards darkness, huh? But the angels that are saved, they go back to what? God, they refer everything back to God, and so they receive the vision of God, they go from evening to morning, huh? See? But, having an interesting objection there, which kind of struck me the way Thomas handles it, and the idea as well, scripture says that evening, you know, and morning is one day, right? Huh? As if the angel has at the same time morning and evening knowledge, right? And the objection is saying, this is impossible, right? You know, how can you have both of them at the same time, huh? And Thomas says, well, if you had two understandable forms, huh, of the same kind, you couldn't be in perfect act by both of them, huh? But if there's an order among them, right, then you can be in act with regard to both and he says that the evening knowledge of the angel is like a disposition for the what? Morning knowledge, huh? Okay? And so the angel at the same time sees God face to face and at the same time he sees things by his what? Natural knowledge, huh? That's kind of marvelous, huh? Just like in Christ, huh? Christ is seeing God face to face, he has a vision from the moment of his incarnation, right? But he also has what? Many other kinds of knowledge at the same time, huh? You can even wonder when he sees a centurion, you know, that's kind of marvelous, huh? A lot of times you just think of, you know, once you have the vision, all this natural knowledge we have is like nothing compared to that, and that's true. But still I have that natural knowledge there, huh? But it will be like a what? Disposition and subordinate to this other knowledge which is the culmination of that, huh? It's kind of interesting because does the supernatural desire eliminate the natural desire? And I was thinking of the comparison there between the desires of the true philosopher and and then the desires of the Christian, you know, how are they connected, See? How is that natural wonder, that inborn desire, right, to see the cause, right, which led Aristotle, you know, to try to understand the first cause, that is God, right, so far as possible, right, huh? How is that natural desire to know the cause, huh? Which leads us to try to know the cause, right, and to know the cause of the cause, right? Nobody's going to know the first cause. How is that related to this desire to see God face to face, to see him as he is, huh? Those two desires in conflict, or is one really kind of a disposition for the other and perfecting the other, huh? What do you think? It perfects it because you see the cause. Yeah, it's not opposed to it, huh? And one is like a disposition for the other, right? Just like, you know, when they talk about Pius XII and that famous encyclical, what was it, on church art and so on? What's it called? I can't remember the name right now. But when they talk about the love of the beautiful, right, huh? You see? Even the love of the beautiful that you have in beautiful church music, right? You know, Augustine says, you know, in the Confessions there, too late have I come to know thee, thou ancient beauty, right? So there's the love of the beautiful, if it's truly beautiful, even these sensitive things, that kind of disposition for the love of the beautiful, which is God himself, huh? It seems to me that it is, huh? I always remarked that particular scene there in the life of St. Gertrude the Great, huh, you know? She's a Benedictine, more or less, and she's called Benedictine. And she's out in the, the Benedictines are very good in their gardens, right? The gardens are beautiful to the eyes, right? To the senses, right? And she's out in the garden there, you know, and admiring the beauty of the garden. And she says, all that's missing here is someone to share this with. That's when Christ appears to her. That's really kind of striking, you know? But you can see that that love of the beautiful, in a way, is disposing, huh? In the way that the great Plato teaches us in the symposium, right? Where Socrates is giving me, you know, when he's talking about the love of the beautiful, and then he talks about the lesser love matters, right? And then he goes to the greater love matters, right? And then he talks about the ascent, you know, from the love of the beautiful in a bodily way, right? And then to the love of the spiritual beauty, right? And all the way up to the love of the beautiful itself, right? And then he says, and once the soul gets there, right? You know, then he sees that it's completely happy, right? Okay. So, in that sense, you can say that the love of the beautiful is disposing for these higher things, huh? You see? But, you know, the danger is that you may, what? Rest in the lower, right? You see? And so you have to, you know, when the angels went from, it's kind of beautiful, evening, the evening, you see, left to itself is going to tend to the darkness, right? That's what happened to the angels that fell, right? They didn't refer back their natural beauty back to God, right? See? By those who did, went from evening to morning, huh? Now, we'll have something with this in the next life, too, right? We'll have something of an evening and morning knowledge, and that will be our disposition to how... Yeah, the supernatural vision of God, seeing God face to face, is not going to simply eliminate our natural knowledge, huh? See? But I will still know the Pythagorean theorem in the way I know it even in this life, huh? And that would interfere with my seeing God as he is face to face, huh? And seeing God face to face is going to perfect my knowledge of Euclidean geometry. It's not going to destroy that. See? And of course, you know, everything that you naturally desire to know, you will know also in the scientific vision, right? We'll all know the Pythagorean theorem. I would think so, yeah. Yeah. I understand you. Good. And I don't know how to sing, carry a tune, you know? It's a hard time doing. You know? Thomas is very explicit about that, huh? That there will be laus folkalis in heaven, right? You know? Oh, yeah. We'll be praising God, you know? But primarily, everything will be the vision, right? You know? Of God. And it's going to be the whole reward, so to speak. And all determined on our knowledge as we interior knowledge of God as we went at the moment of our death, in a sense. Well, it's going to depend upon how much we love God, you see, because this is, you know, metaphorically, it's said to be a marriage, right? Mm-hmm. You know? So, you know, the intimacy of marriage in the first sense is really kind of superficial in the first being of superficial, right? Mm-hmm. It's nothing like when God unites himself with our mind, huh? See? Mm-hmm. So we're going to see God not through a created understandable form, right? But through God being joined to our mind, huh? Mm-hmm. Okay? So we're going to see God by God, huh? You know? That's really intimate, right? You know? Mm-hmm. You know? I mean, this marriage is bodies are what? You may see, we use the word intimacy, but I mean, bodies are only in contact at their surfaces, right? Yeah. You know? And so, God is not going to unite himself to a soul that doesn't, what, love him, huh? in the way that one should love God by charity, huh? Mm-hmm. And so, that might be the main thing, right, huh? You see? The more intensely you love God, the more he will unite himself with you. That's why I said interior notch. I'm trying to express that interior, the love combination. I don't know how to do that. Yeah, but see, even in human marriage, if you take the first meaning of the word, right, huh? You know? It would be unnatural to one to unite yourself with someone you didn't love and didn't love you, right? You know? You see? So, there has to be this love between us and God before we have this union, right? But also the idea, you know, if the bride before the wedding breaks out in a rash or something, you know, and she's disfigured in some way, you know, I mean, she'd almost want to delay the marriage, right? So she would look, you know, and our radiance, huh? And that's the way the soul is, I guess, in purgatory, right? You know, you want to be purged. You know, you want to have the boils and the, I think I've got a bug bite up here. You want to have these defects in you, right? These stains in you or so on, right? You want to be purged in them. You want to be cleansed, you know? It's like, you know, you want to be at your best before you go into the bride or the groom or whatever it is. Right? You know? So the infant who dies after being baptized, he would be just predestined to a lower beatitude? Well, it depends upon, um, no, we don't know. Maybe he hasn't sinned as much as we have. He hasn't sinned at all. He's not purged. Yeah, I mean, it's his soul, I mean, it's, you know, quite innocent, huh? After being baptized, huh? Mm-hmm. And we get our bodies back in time, right? Well, that's for sure it'd be time in the ordinary sense that we mean it now. There'll be motion. Yeah, but it won't be, you know, even the Apocalypse speaks of, you know, it proclaims the end of time, right? So, see, now we're kind of dominated by our body, right? And even our thinking seems to be in time because of the images and so on, right? And there'll be just the reverse, huh? The body will be conformed all together to the glorified soul, right? So, there won't be time in any timely manner. Yeah, I've talked kind of, I've always talked about, like our evening knowledge would still have this time factor, but the beatific vision there would be no time with the scene in God, we'd see it all at once, but we'd still have this same knowledge we have in this life where there is a before and after, like we'll be able to talk again. yeah. So it would be to the sun and the moon and the stars, right? Right. Time that way. Yeah. I don't know, I think charity is an interesting thing to think about, huh? Yeah. You have to admire what he is, you know, some of these things that he does there. The Constellation of Philosophy is kind of filled with little gems in it that you see appear here. Here and there, in the medieval writers, Thomas, of course, takes over a lot. But at that same time, you see, he has to understand the fact that, you know, he makes a comparison to the circle there, right? Where the points of the circle are the nows of time, right? And the center of the circle is the eternal now, which is not in that whole circle. The minor. So one of these is before or after another one, right? But they're all right across from the circle now. So they're all present to him. And of course, in order to understand that God can truly know the past now, that the past can be present to him in his knowledge, he has to follow Aristotle, right? Who says that the way we know doesn't have to be the way things are in order for there to be true knowledge. It's kind of subtle, as I mentioned, I think, before to you, but in the beginning of the fifth book of the Constellation of Philosophy, we're going to take this out. Although he, Bwethius, announced himself as a member of the Academy, which would be fatal school, the Lady of Wisdom, who he's having the dialogue with, who's consoling him, the Lady of Wisdom introduces Aristotle to be in the fifth book as her true follower. And it is a kind of subtle way of the great Bwethius to indicate he's got to follow Aristotle now, right? Otherwise he can't understand the divine, what, true knowledge, huh? And we have just kind of, as I tell students sometimes, we have kind of just a very shadow of this when we talk about the past now, right? When I know the past now, right? When the past is present to me in a way, isn't it, again, huh? It's not a sight thing. And is there any falsity in the past being present to me now? No. Right? Those two articles you're reading there, I can remember them now, right? Is that, you know? Mm-hmm. Aristotle says the falsehood would come as if I attributed the way I know, or when I know, or how I know, to the thing itself, right, huh? If I know the past now, it must be now. Otherwise my knowing is false, no? So really, you know, Aristotle discovered that, huh? He was the wit. And all the rest of us, the dimwits, have to learn from him. Yes, huh? There's two. I just remembered that little thing on the Holy Father on his Eucharist encyclical, reemphasizing the holy sacrifice of the mass making present, the sacrifice on Calvary. Yeah. And that's sort of a unique thing. I can't remember how he had this really neat phrase about it. But anyhow, that's kind of... Yeah, he warns about, you know, reducing it to a kind of a community banquet or something, a community meal, you see. Right. And, but that's easy to do because the difficulty of understanding the Eucharist. Right. You know, Aristotle's the wit by it, and we're seeing it. Yeah. Right, right there? Yeah. Somebody thinks that he was the only one. Yeah. But as you read the dialogues of Plato carefully, you realize how much he learned from Plato, too, huh? Mm-hmm. Um, hmm. It's kind of funny, you know, you know, you know what Plato's name means? Broad name. Broad, you know, their plateau, right? There's one, all these kind of funny legends, you know, but that Plato was a good wrestler, you know, and he beat everybody, you know. So, finally, you know, something else to do, but also. A lot of things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's talking there, you know. And I don't know the truth to that. I mean, it's just kind of amusing, you know, some of these, yeah, you know, how many stories to believe, you know, but it's kind of interesting things. But sometimes people do, you know, I mean, they do so well. So then they say, well, I've done this, you know, I mean, it's going beating them into the ground all the time and also going to the challenge here, you know. But you know how Socrates uses that image there of the wrestler, huh, in some of the dialogues. I forget which dialogue it is now, where I guess the Greeks, you know, were pretty much given to this wrestler, and they almost asked you to strip down, you know, and show your muscles and that sort of thing. And you compare what Socrates, in a sense, is doing in these conversations, you know, where you've got to kind of show your mind, and what do you think, you know, and then, you know, you're going to get tossed or something like that. And it's, there's something to be said of that, huh? Uh-huh. There's something to be said of that. Yeah. One of the students at TAC, when he was preparing for classes, he would say, I'm loaded up my ammunition. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm so shitting on that. It's the way he was in class. We're shitting. But Shakespeare, and as you like it, uses that thing of wrestling, too, huh? Because Rosalind falls in love with Oliver when, or Lando, right there, when he tosses the wrestler, right, huh? And then she loses to it, you know, huh? You've fought well, huh? And you've overthrown more than... And then when she goes back, and she's talking to her cousin, you know, and, you know, the idea of wrestling with your affections, right, huh? She has something like that there in the, is it, Jacob, right, huh? Wrestling with the... Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm not very sure I fully understood that, I may have seen it. I mean, I think it's interesting to see that, huh? Yeah. You know? I was mentioning that thing earlier that I read by John Paul II there back in 84, was it 86, something? 84, 86, wasn't it, too? It's the anniversary of Augustine's conversion, but, you know, he spends a little time in the life of Augustine there, as seen in the Confessions and so on, huh? But there's a kind of a wrestling going on there, you might say, huh? And I remember Paul VI talking about the Confessions and how, there's something very interesting about these accounts of conversion, right? Yeah. You know, I got through reading Pierce's book there, you know, the literary converts, kind of interesting book, you know, and you could, of course, you know, go into the sources that he has and even go more into details of how these people were converted. But it's kind of interesting just to read about these, and quite a few of them, and my wife's reading it, and she enjoys it, too, so it's interesting, I don't know, what leads them in, you know? Now, the Guinness even appears in there, right? You know? Because he's a convert, huh? They tell the story about making the movie when he was playing a priest? Yeah, yeah, that was part of it, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, the story they told was, I guess, he was, he was hurrying to one of the scenes for the film, you know, and he hit on the priestly thing, right? The priestly robe, so he was not a priest. And this little French boy runs up to him, you know, and kind of grabs his hand and tells him, you know, or tells his little childish things, you know, and then runs off, you know? And he was struck by the little child's confidence in him as a priest, you know, that, you know, something you could trust, you know? Yeah. And then I guess when he was playing the card or something, he must have, you know, did some study for the role, so. Oh, oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, oh, yeah, I think his son became a convert first, and he was looking for a school, and I guess he was late in making application for one of these private schools, and so he had to get into the Catholic school. And, well, I think it was him, maybe it was mixed up with something else in this, one of the stories there. Or maybe it was somebody else, you know, because the headmaster says, you know, you know, we have some boys who are not Catholic here, and, you know, fine, you know, but let me warn you that a lot of them have become converts. And they do, you know, it's like how THC happens, you know? Sometimes, you know, you know, because you have a few people who are not Catholic. The Son, the Holy Spirit, the Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, a July doctor. Pray for us. Help us to understand what you've written. So up to Article 7 and Question 79, if I remember rightly. Yes. I was so rudely interrupted by exams in the purgatory. You're correcting them. You're all done now. Yeah, yeah. Any choice of quotes for us? Well, there was a nice, you know, I tell you about this common fallacy, where they mix up the different senses of end. Well, in the introduction to philosophy, the last part of the course that we've done, the Phaedo, and so the Phaedo's on the final exam. In the Phaedo there, there's a discussion where Socrates talks about how the philosophers should be willing to die. Mm-hmm. And that's where he gives the famous definition of philosophy is melite fanatu, the practice or exercise and death, right? And Socrates says, well, when the philosopher is pursuing moral virtue, then he's resisting the inclination to the body. So he's sort of separating his soul from his body. Mm-hmm. Sometimes in Christian asceticism, you know, they'll speak of mortification, right? And what does the word actually mean, mortification? To make dead. Yeah, yeah. See? And what they're referring to is kind of the separation, right, of the soul from the body. The soul is kind of, you're dying to yourself, they say sometimes, right? Mm-hmm. I think mortification is very much like what Socrates is arguing there, right? Then he argues from the mind. And of course, usually I talk about how, I quote my mother, you know, who said, I think concentration is really important for a student. Oh, right. My mother used to say, she did about the college, and that was her idea, right? Well, concentration is the opposite of what? Distraction, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the mind is concentrating deeply upon something. Uh-huh. It seems to withdraw from the body, which is the great source of distraction, huh? Oh, yeah. We're distracted by what's going on in our body, or we're distracted by noise that's coming through our body, right, through our ears and so on, right? Mm-hmm. And then Socrates has another argument there in terms of the forms, right, huh? Oh. See, the forms, the soul is turning away from the material world. Yeah. I'm trying to know the forms. So that's the way Socrates shows that philosophy is a practice of death, huh? So as one student says, well, the philosophy is interested in the end of life. Mm-hmm. Because you talk about that in ethics, right? The end of life, huh? Of course, the end of life is death, right? Therefore, death is very central to the consideration of the philosopher, huh? So you always get somebody in one of those courses that, on that very same word, you know, gets fouled up, huh? Mm-hmm. Just like the word derived from the negative, endless, or infinite, huh? They always mix those up, too, huh? Like Vorabach did, and like Melisius did. Mm-hmm. And so on, students will do. Okay. Article 7, huh? To the seventh, it proceeds thus. It seems that the understanding memory, or intellectual memory, and the intellect itself, or the understanding, are other powers, right? And, of course, Augustine here gave rise to this thought a lot, huh, when he talked about the memory, and the intelligence, and the will. For Augustine says in the 10th book about the Trinity, he places in the mind, and mind now, of course, is about the spiritual part of the soul, right? Memory, intelligence, and will, right? But it's manifest that memory is a different power from the will, so likewise it is other from the, what, intellect, huh? I think a lot of times people are reading Augustine, and he seems to be saying that memory, and understanding, and will is going to have the image of the Trinity in these three. Yeah. And they seem to be three different, what, powers in Augustine's position, huh? Yeah. So maybe he gives rise to this article, huh? I know a man who's writing a doctoral thesis in Augustine, something named Augustine, and he seems to be under the impression, you know, that for Augustine, memory is a separate faculty from the understanding or reason. Yeah. And, of course, in the will, too, but, okay? Now, Thomas will deny it, that's really what Augustine says, huh? Yeah. And he'll, we'll see that in reply to that first. But, but Augustine seems to be, in a sense, of the misreading of Augustine, maybe, misunderstanding of Augustine gives rise to this question, right? Sure. Okay. Okay. For breakfast? Yeah. I just want to hear, though, about the fact that the word, the translation, it's the word mente. Mente in its translation in English, they use, oh, okay. In English, they give soul, and in the Latin, it's mente. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think the word, if you translate mente in English by mind, it has too narrow a sense, I think, huh? Oh, I do. Yeah. And see, in English, we use the word mind sometimes as a synonym for the understanding or the reason, right? Yeah. Now, sometimes, you see, in psychology, it's only used the word mind. It used to be a psychological column in the newspaper called mirror of your mind. Oh. But as far as I can figure out, what I mean by mind is anything going on within you of which you're conscious. Right. So it might involve even the emotions and the will as well as the reason, right? But I think Augustine uses the word mind sometimes for the soul, but in particular, what we call the spirit sometimes, right? Okay. The soul insofar as it, what? Transcends matter. Okay. The soul insofar as it has powers in common with the angels and God, right? Insofar as it has understanding and will and so on, right? So he's talking about that, the soul. So it's not altogether a bad translation, but mens is, you know, almost like a synonym for a spirit to assist. So as to why, you know, St. Thomas, or if he's just quoting Augustine, they're using mens instead of some form of animus? I mean, I just expected animus to be there. That's all. Yeah, I know. It is mente, yeah. But, you know, even Aristotle uses the word intellect as a word to name the, what? The, uh... That whole part of the soul that is immaterial and doesn't have bodily organs. It's more than the intellect. Yeah, yeah. All right. Okay. All right, thank you. And that's, of course, where you find the image of the Trinity, right? Right, in this recursive part. Yeah, of man's soul. Okay. Now, the second argument here. Moreover, there's the same reason for the distinction of the, uh, powers of the sense part and the intellectual part. But memory and the sense part is a different power from the sense, huh? As has been said above. Okay, you remember the reason Thomas gave for that, right? That the power which is apt to, what? Receive easily, right? When you immediately sense, is not apt to, what? Retain, right? The moist receives more easily, but the dry, what? Retains, huh? I sometimes quote that word of Heraclitus. The dry soul is wisest and best, huh? Okay, I was making a joke about when I had to have my drink here. The dry soul is wisest and best. What does he mean by that, huh? If not the soul, then what? Yeah, retains what it is heard, right? What's worth retaining, anyway. Okay. If that soul is dry, the wet soul, maybe, is what? Loses, doesn't hold anything, huh? Okay. So, God is very quiet, yes, again? Yeah. That's the way of my understanding that phrase, I guess. I mean, it's another meaning of it, too, but... In other words, it was tied up with the bodily nature of, what? The sense powers, huh? And his understanding of those bodily powers, that's not the same power that can easily receive something, and it's something that can, what, retain, right? Because the moist and the soft, right, easily receives, but doesn't retain, huh? Just like in the making of a statue, right? If I have a piece of clay, I can easily, what? Or dough, even, right? I can easily mold it into some shape, right? Right. But that can easily lose its shape, too, can't it? By the pie toss there, you know, it's, what? It's hard to put a shape into marble or something hard like that, but it, what? It stays there. It stays there, right? Yeah. So this is saying, you know, that it's in kind of an analogy here, right? That there's a likeness there between the memory or the sense powers and intellectual powers. So if memory is distinct from the sensing powers, right? The one that knows something in its presence, right? Then the same thing up in the intellectual thing, right? It's separate powers, huh? Okay? Moreover, according to Augustine, memory, understanding, and will are equal to each other, huh? Very concrete way of speaking, huh? And one of them arises from another. But this is not able to be if memory were the same, what? Power with the understanding, huh? It is not, therefore, the same power, huh? Remember when Aristotle said that imagining is, what? Emotion made by the sense in act? Then there's going to be some, what? Difference between the mover and the moved, huh? Okay? Or if my reason moves my will, right? To love something by its consideration of the goodness of it, huh? There must be distinct powers, huh? So if one of these arises from another, there must be distinct powers, right? Okay? I don't see how Thomas solves that, huh? But against all this, huh? Of the notion or definition of memory is that it be a treasure house, right? Or a place that considers species or forms. But the philosopher attributes this to the understanding in the third book about the soul. He says that the soul is the place of the forms of Plato. And in particular, the understanding, right? It's the place of the forms. As for Aristotle, the universals don't exist in the world by themselves, right? Universal only in the mind. And so the soul, in its mind, or reason, rather, understanding, retains the forms. So it's not a separate faculty, huh? Therefore, in the understanding part, memory is not another power or ability from the understanding. I answer it should be said, that has been said above, the powers of the soul are distinguished by diverse, what? Yeah, by diverse notions of their objects, right? Or definitions of their objects, huh? Okay? In that the definition or reason of each power consists in being in order to that to which it is said, which is its object, huh? Okay? That sounds a little abstract when you say it like that, but he's saying what? But the definition, you might say, huh, of the seeing power, the power of seeing, consists in its being, what, ordered to its object, right? Which is, what, color, right? Okay? And the digestive power, right, has relation to, what, food, huh? Okay? And each power, right, is in reference to its, what, object, huh? Yeah, okay. Now, sometimes you'll say, you know, the powers are distinguished by their acts, and the acts by their what? Yeah, yeah. Now, I explained that definition of reason by Shakespeare. He says its ability for a large discourse, looking before and after. And I ask, what does it mean to speak of a large discourse? There's various meanings it has. But the first meaning I always give is in terms of the, what? Yeah, what the discourse is about, right? And it can be about the large in two different senses of large, huh? It can be about the universal, which is said of many things, and therefore, as it were, covers a large area, right? Or it can be about the large in the sense of the great, right? And large in that second sense is opposed to small in the phrase small talk, right? So you speak of small talk. The talk is being called small because of its object, what you're talking about. You're talking about little, unimportant things, right? Okay? So small talk can be understood, as we all understand, I think. That's what we mean by small talk, don't we? Yeah. Then large discourse can be suddenly taken to mean a discourse about the, what? Large, huh? So that kind of comes first to mind when I say that, huh? And as I explained to the students, the discourse of the philosopher is larger than that of other men. Is what? Larger than that of other men. In the sense that the discourse of the philosopher is more, what? Universal than that of other men. And he discourses about the greatest things, like the soul, and ultimately about the universe, and even about God himself, right? Okay? And of course, the discourse of the wise man, huh? The metaphysician, the first philosopher, is the largest of all. Because his discourse is about what is said of all things, right? See? Now, the moral philosopher considers all human goods, but not all things, right? But the wise man considers, what? What is said of all things, namely being in one, huh? And he considers the largest thing in the second sense, too, because he considers the first causes, right? The angels and ultimately God himself, huh? So his discourse is the largest of all. Now, it has been said above that if some power, according to its proper definition, is ordered to some object, according to the common definition of the object, that power will not be diversified according to diversities or particular differences. Now, what does that mean? Well, he shows an example here. As the seeing power, which regards as its own object, regards its own object according to the definition of what? Color, right? It's not diversified through the diversity of what? White and black, which are particular what? Colors, right? But now the understanding regards its object according to the common notion of what? Being, right? To be or not to be, huh? Extends to all things in that sense, right? In that the understanding, the possible understanding, what I call the, what? Undergoing understanding, right? Is quo est omni a fiori, Rastal's phrase. That by which it is able to come to be all things, right? Okay? Why the acting upon understanding is that which is able to make all things, right? Okay? Whence, according to no difference of beings, is the, what? Difference of the, is there diversified any difference? You might say, I almost say it twice, the possible understanding, huh? It has no what? Or maybe it's habit, you can take difference in habit too there, huh? But the possible understanding, the undergoing understanding, is not diversified by any difference according to beings, right? 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