De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 129: Reason's Rule Over the Emotions: Paternal vs. Despotic Rule

Transcript
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There's like an animal you've kept caged up all these years and you can't quite trust it, you know. You know, you can't quite trust an animal. Because, you know, you read the newspaper sometime, you know, somebody's had to pet some kind of animal and then all of a sudden they attack a child or something, you know. There's something like that, right? It's like you can never wholly trust your lower self. The second, it should be said that as the philosopher says in the first book of the politics, one can contemplate or look at in the animal two kinds of rule, right? This is kind of marvelous that Aristotle says this, huh? Yeah. And one is the despotic rule and the other is the, what? Political rule, huh? Aristotle says that the soul dominates the body by despotic rule. But the understanding, right, dominates or rules the appetite by a political and kingly rule, huh? Okay. Now, sometimes Aristotle states it simply like this, he says, and it's a very clear way of stating the question because in Greek society, in a Greek household, you always had, what, the father, and maybe the father had a son, and the father had, what, slave. Yeah, so he's both a father and a master, right? Yeah. Okay. And that's what you see in St. Paul's epistles when he's giving domestic instructions, right? He'll give instructions about husband and wife, instructions about father and son, and master and slave, too. Because that's what a Greek household didn't have, huh? And, you know, if you've read the Odyssey, you see this, right? The Odyssey. Odysseus is coming back home after, what, 10, 20 years, I guess it is. And so he's got a wife there, right, who's been faithful to him, huh? Though she has many suitors. And he has a son, right? And he has a faithful servant or slave, right? A dog. Emaeus. Emaeus, huh? Emaeus, huh? Faithful swineher, right? Yeah. Okay? And so, oh, you know. So you have the three relations there, right? Husband and wife, husband and son, I mean, father and son, and master and slain for a servant, huh? Mm-hmm. Okay? So that's where you get the terms, you know, liberal education and servile education. Yeah. People don't realize how it arises, huh? But Aristotle says in the metaphysics there that just as we say, you know, in society that the slave is what? For the sake of his master, right? Yeah. Not for his own sake. Mm-hmm. While the free man, as opposed to the slave, it's for his own sake. So by certain likeness to that, huh? Yeah. We call a knowledge that is not for its own sake, servile or slavish. And a knowledge that's for its own sake, liberal or free, huh? Okay? So that's a common analogy, huh? Mm-hmm. And it's the metaphysics there that we're showing that the end of liberal education is wisdom. The beginning is the liberal arts, huh? Yeah. Okay? So liberal arts are the beginning of liberal education, and wisdom is the end, and geometry, and Euclid, and so on, and natural philosophy, and so on, are in the middle, right? So, but he uses this likeness, a likeness to this here, because he asks sometimes, should reason rule the emotions, say? That's, you kind of know that it should, but he asks, should reason rule the emotions as a master rules the slave, or as the, what? The father rules the son, right? Okay? Now, what's the difference between those two rules, right? Well, there's a number of differences, huh? One difference is in the end or purpose, huh? The master rules the slave, not for the good of the slave, but for his own good. But the father rules the son for the good of the son. Okay? But a second thing is, the slave has nothing to say about what he's going to do or not do. Well, the son has, what, something to say about what he's going to do in life, etc., right? So, there's a real difference in the rule there, right? Now, sometimes, you know, a father might try to force his son into being what he is, if he's a lawyer, if he's a doctor, whatever it is. He's a general, he might want to be a soldier. But maybe the son is not really suited to what the father is, right? You see? So, if the father were to try to, what, force the son to be in the same profession he was in, when it's wholly unsuitable to the son, right? Well, then he'd be treating him like a, what, a slave in a sense, right? He's not ruling him for the good, you see? So, you have to listen to some extent to where the interests and inclinations are of the son. You give him some direction, right? You don't let him just run wild, obviously. But it's a different thing, you know? I remember my father, you know. My father was a businessman, right? But he kind of saw we were interested in other things, maybe being in business, you know. But I remember telling me this story of one of his business friends. I'm not sure if I told you this story. But this businessman had quite hopes for his son, right? So we're in Minnesota, right? So he got his son out here to a prestigious college after Amherst, I guess it was, right? It's hard to get into, right? So, first year at Amherst, the kid, of course, flunked out. And he not only was not, you know, caliber for that institution, but he wasn't really, you know, suitable for college at all. And the father finally saw this, right? So he might have had some hopes, you know, he's going to send him to some fancy college, you know. Who knows other plans he had beyond that, right? But here the guy's not even fit for the fancy college that fit for any college, apparently. So the son comes back, and my father's friend asked him, his friend, what do you really want? He could say he wanted a gasoline station. He wanted to run a gasoline station. So his father had lots of money, right? So he buys him, you know, he says, I want a gasoline station, right? You see? But I think my father was telling me, you know, like, you know, that man was, in a sense, what a father was supposed to do, right? Yeah. I mean, you might have hopes that your son would be something higher than that, you know, like you are or something like that, but maybe your son isn't, you know. So you have to kind of, you know, consult his inclinations and consult his abilities and so on, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. So, um, how should reason rule the emotions? That's the question Aristotle raises, right? Should it be like a master rules a slave, or like the father rules a son, huh? Well, actually, when reason rules the emotions, it should be for the good of the emotions, huh? But it's not like the emotions have nothing to say, huh? And, uh, so you don't, you don't, uh, to some extent you consult the inclination of your own emotions, huh? But within reason, right? Even for the good of reason, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know yourself, I mean, uh, uh, might be some, some day or, or some time of some day when I normally study, but I just emotionally I'm not in the mood for this, right? Well, maybe I should, maybe I shouldn't force myself, right? Maybe I'm not going to accomplish myself if I force myself, right? So I knew I needed some kind of diversion or something, right? Or some kind of relaxation, right? Um, much less, probably the baseball game or something, right? It really kind of could the other night, huh? You know, it was, it was the, um, last, um, well, yeah, Boston's behind, 3-2, I think it was. And then the enemy there in, I don't know, the ninth inning or something, they had two more runs, so it's 5-2, right? Now Boston is up, 5-2 the game. And, uh, you know, I said, they're going to come back now, you know, this is the last half of the ninth, last chance. Wow. Well, they managed to get two guys on base, but they had two outs. Oh, wow. And so, now the fifth guy's up their bat, see? And it goes, it goes to 3-2, the count. Oh, boy. See? See, anyway. Boston's great at this, go ahead and write. Yeah. Oh, he knocked the ball out of the ballpark. Oh, wow. Yeah. So, three runs come in. Now, now it's tied 5-5, see? And, uh, then, so it goes into the tenth inning, they stop the enemy there in the, the Baltimore was, the first half, right, of the tenth, and then, I think it must have been the first guy up or something like that in the second half of the tenth, bottom of the tenth. And, uh, hold on, thanks. No way. So, everybody, bye. I'm excited to see. So my wife turned on the thing last night to see this game. They wanted to win one more game again in the playoffs already. And Baltimore, the plan is to win Baltimore again. First inning, Baltimore's up. They scored seven runs. No. They must have really, you know, they really came back, right? And they never had to catch up with them, right? But you've got seven runs the first, you know? And it's kind of funny because they were recounting it in the evening sports, because of where it was. And they kind of showed that first half of the first inning. But they split up the camera, you see? So we gave it, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, this sort of stuff. Yeah. So you might listen to your emotions a bit, right? Sure. You see? And I remember one, it's kind of funny, you know, someone saying to me years ago, sometimes you're kind of, you know, distracted, so you turn the TV on or something like that, right? Well, of course, it's so stupid, the TV, which most of the time, right? He says that I get up and I turn it off before the program is finished. Well, there's a little bit of frustration because you didn't see the whole thing, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's kind of six of one, half it does the other, right? It's kind of a stupid story where it is, you see? But if you don't see the finale, you see, the emotions get kind of, you know? So, you have to, to some extent, what? Listen to your emotions, inclinations, and what they're capable of, right? Okay? And that's a little bit like you listen to your son and what his inclinations are and what his things are. Okay? Now, it's a little bit different, the analogy here, but, because here he's not going to talk about, he's not talking about how we should be with emotions, but he's saying, how does reason rule my hand, huh? You see? I see, my hand's automatic, you see? If I want to move my hand out, you know, to here, it doesn't resist me at all, right? It doesn't have to resist me at all, right? You see? You know? So, it's kind of a despotic rule over my hand, huh? You do this and the hand doesn't have anything to say about the, it's going to move there, right? But that's not the kind of rule I can have over my, what, emotions, huh? Right. You see? So, I say, don't get angry, don't be afraid, you see? Well, it's just not like that, huh? You see? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, the soldier may feel, you know, some fear going into battle, right, huh? Right. Even though he's got his anger somewhat under control, right, huh? This is actually interesting, because this came up in another context. Does St. Thomas develop that aspect of the question of the emotions needing to be listened to, to a certain extent? Yeah, he's following up with Aristotle. Aristotle is his teacher, his master, right? Well, excuse me, it just seems so, like, how does it reconcile this whole father-son relation with, you know, the saints doing all these, exercising that violence over themselves, which seems, you know, kind of despotic? Well, Chris, there, you know, when you say the kingdom of heaven is taken by violence and so on, right? Right. They may be doing something that's above the human mode, right? Okay. See? Yeah. And when Thomas, for example, divides the books of Scripture, I don't know if you've ever seen the commendation and partition of the sacred Scripture. According to Weiss's cycle, this is the opening lectures that Thomas would give. He's beginning, like, the term, he's going to lecture in the Scriptures. Yeah. And so it's appropriate to commend, obviously, what you're going to be studying, right, the Scriptures, and divide them, right? It's very interesting the way he divides them, but he's talking about the Proverbs, right? Yeah. Ecclesiastism, and then I guess the song of the song, I think that's the way it goes. Yeah. And he speaks of three kinds of virtue from the ancient fathers, huh? But he says the book of Proverbs is ordered to living in this world, right, and using the goods of this world, right, but using them moderately and reasonably, right, okay? So he calls kind of the political virtues, huh? Yeah. Virtues of man in society. But he says the ecclesiastis, you know, the one, the vanity of vanities and all is vanity. Yeah. Ecclesiastis is ordered to a kind of contempt, right? Yeah. Even of this moderate use of these, huh? You see? Yeah. Even the moderate eating of candy or the moderate drinking of wine or whatever it might be, right? Yeah. So you're going to give up even these, now you're not going away from evil things, but you're going to give up lesser goods in order to pursue greater goods, right? Sure. And so the soul is kind of being purged of these things, right? Yeah. And then finally you have maybe the Song of Songs, the virtues of the soul is now purged of its attachment to the, what, earth. See, you read St. John the Cross, you know, and he speaks of someone being held down to the earth even by a little thread, right? Sure. You read how it is, and, but what you call the dark night of the soul is sort of a thing because there you're obviously in that second stage, right? You're turning away even from the, what, moderate and reasonable use of these goods, right? You're holding them in a kind of a contempt, right? Almost like St. Paul says he accounts everything... Loss. Yeah, it's really, I guess the word is stronger, so it's like manure, okay, and some of that sort, you know, in order to win the law of Christ, huh? Yeah. And we read this fall there, the, this, the bar, the autobiography of St. Margaret and Mary on the Cope, right? Mm-hmm. And Christ is immediately directing her, right? Mm-hmm. And, and so you read about saints, you know, where they would, you know, mix ashes with their food so they're getting no, no, uh, uh, delight from their food at all, right? Mm-hmm. And, uh, but that's kind of, uh, above the human mold, right? Okay. Okay. That's what Aristotle calls heroic virtue, right? In the seventh book of, of the Nicomachean Ethics, um, he's already finished the consideration of the human virtues on books two through six. But in the seventh book, he talks about, uh, something, uh, instead of talking about human virtues of human vices, he talks about vices that are, that are bestial, you know? Oh. That, that are human vices. Uh-huh. That is so, so repulsive, right? And he talks about, what? Heroic virtues, right? Okay. Now, of course, a hero, interesting the word he uses it, because a hero, in Greek mythology, was a man who's, one of whose parents was a god or a goddess, right? Mm-hmm. And the other one named, what? More loyal. Yeah, yeah. So, he's talking about, um, something on the level of, say, the gifts of the Holy Spirit. You know, Thomas, where he called Aristotle's silver lord virtues, uh, but something above the human thing, right? Just like the bestial vices are below even human vices, huh? You see? And, uh, uh, Aristotle describes some of the barbarians, you know, just do revolting things, huh? So this is, that's not human vices, this is, this is below even, in fact, it's below even human vices, and, uh, and, uh, so Don Luceno's almost into that, into bestial vices of what I can, if the stories you hear are true, you know, but, uh, you know, enjoying watching something torn apart by vicious dogs, and, you know, all kinds of horrible things like that, but, um, not just good to human vices, like fornication, something like that, but something really perverse, uh, terribly perverse. But then the opposite side of that is that you have these virtues that are really, uh, higher than any, what, normal human virtue. Sure. That's one of the reasons why you don't call the gifts of the Holy Spirit virtues, and there's something above the virtue. The virtue is more in a human mode, the way it operates, huh? So the, the basic sense of this, of listening to the emotions is, uh, the sense of, uh, determining what they're capable of. Yeah, yeah, he's talking here more about, about the, the human rule over the emotions, right, rather than something superhuman, right? Something, yeah. So in other words, for the, for the ruler to understand those that he's ruling, so he won't break them, but actually help them. Yeah. Let's just go back to Thomas' words now, right? Okay. He just quoted Aristotle, right? Aristotle is distinguished between the rule of the soul over the body, right? Or my arm here, my hand, right? And the rule of, uh, reason over my, what, desires, right? Yeah. And the one he compares to a despotic rule and the other to a political or a kingly rule. Yeah. Now Thomas explains. Yeah. Yeah. A despotic rule is called that by which one rules over slaves or servants. A service in Latin can mean slave or a servant, right? Who do not have any ability of resisting in any way to the command of the one giving precepts there. Because they have nothing of their own, right? But a political and regal rules to mark the father, right? And that's the one by which one rules over the free, right? Who, although they are subject to the rule of the one presiding, right? Nevertheless, they have something of their own in which they are able to resist the command of the one. Thus, therefore, he says, the soul is said to dominate the body by a despotic principality, right? Or rule. Because the members of the body in no way are able to resist the command of the soul, right? Yeah. But immediately, for the desire of the soul is moved the hand and the foot. And each member that is act be moved by a voluntary motion. But the intellect or reason is said to rule the irascible and cubiscible by political rule, right? Okay? To mark that of a father, which is able to, what? Resist the command of reason, huh? For the sense desire, he says, is apt to be moved not only by instinct or by the estimative power in the other animals, right? And the cogitative in man, which universal reason directs, but also is apt to be moved by the, what? Imagination and by sense. Once we experience the irascible and cubiscible as, what? Fighting against reason, right? Through this, that we either, what? Sense or we imagine something pleasant, right? That reason prohibits, right? Or something sad that reason, what? Commands, huh? Okay? And thus, through this, that the irascible and cubiscible, in some way, what? Reason. There's not excluded that, in some other way, they, what? Obey it, right? Yeah. Okay? Now, Thomas has an interesting thing there in the, I think, in secundi secundi there, where he's talking about intemperance, right? And he calls it a childish advice, huh? And that's something, you know, for an insult and all to the advice, right? But, he's, again, seeing an analogy here, right? If you don't correct the child, right, when he's young and small, right? But let him have his way in everything, eventually he gets so strong-willed that you can't control the child anymore, huh? Okay? Remember my mother saying that when little you know, huh? Well, but now you're under your parents, right? But, if they can't rule you, you know, you may come under the police, right? That put the fear of something into us. The fear of the police or something. But, notice what Thomas calls it, then, a childish advice, right? He's comparing, he's saying in a way that the concupisal appetite, right, especially in these pleasant things, right, is to reason something like the child is to the parents, right? So, if the parents can't say no to the child, right, and enforce that, huh? Especially when they're very young, then the child will get stronger and stronger as inclinations, and to get to a point where it's impossible for the parents to control the child, and the child may even strike the parents, or go out from there, right? In the same way, if I don't say no to my desire to eat candy like my brother Richard was telling me, then, my desire for what is pleasing to my senses gets so strong, that when something unlawful, when it only sticks in, comes up, it won't obey me, see? It's not strong enough, huh? And it's a little bit like, you know, in Plato's analogy there to the man and the horse, because the first time a man gets on a horse, you know, I guess he tries to throw you off, huh? And you can give up. But if you keep on coming back on top of the horse, eventually you can maybe tame the horse, huh? And the horse will obey you, huh? But if you don't tame the horse, you know, he's, you know, speak to the guy who's on the horse, and he gets thrown off, and his foot is still in the thing, and he's going bouncing over the road there, you know, as the horse goes running down, and that's it, huh? So again, Aristotle's very insistent in the Nicomachean Ethics upon the importance of experience, huh? Experience. And you can kind of see, you know, when you go into houses there, that one, where the students, not students, but the children have been ruled in the way they should be ruled, right? They're actually happier, right? So it's good to see they're good, huh? And they're not as run down, huh? Yeah. Emotionally, huh? Yeah. In the same way with an individual himself, right? Yeah. If you don't control your emotions, they're going to make life miserable for you. Right. And, you know, when Hamlet says to Horatio, right, you know, Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice and could have been distinguished, for election has sealed thee for herself, for thou hast been as one suffering all that suffers nothing, a man that fortunes buffets and rewards as tame with equal things, and blessed are they whose blood and judgment, it's reason and emotion, right? I say, well, come in, though, they're not a pipe for fortune to play what stops you please, huh? Give me that man, he says, that is not passion's slave, huh? Okay? Because that's just the opposite, right? The emotions should not be the slave of reason, right? But, I mean, they should be ruled this other way. But when reason is the slave of the emotions, then you really have, what, complete disorder, right? You see? But notice what he's saying there, right, huh? A man who's on an even keel, right? He doesn't get overly excited when good fortune happens or go crazy when bad fortune happens, huh? They made a study of these people in Canada who won the big money, and they found almost all of them were less happy or more miserable now than before they won the money. They always went crazy, you know, with divorce and all kinds of crazy things, you know, and just made a mess of their lives. Because other people, when bad things happened, they didn't want to kill themselves, they want to, you know, you have the building, jump off, you know, and so on. I remember a girl when I was in San Francisco, she was in high school, you know, and one girl got trapped by her state boyfriend, she was up in the roof of the school, going to jump off, and they finally found the boyfriend and talked her into coming down. But people just go crazy, right, when good or bad happens like that. But, you know, in those plays of Shakespeare, you know, where they have a lot of emotion, like the Italian ones, Romeo and Juliet and Othello, right, huh? But there's that great emphasis upon fortune, huh? And fortune's fool, is what Romeo says, huh? It's like you're the plaything of fortune, right? You're up and you're down one day, another day, you know? Depending on what happens, huh? You see? And it's not good, right? But Aristotle insists, as I say, upon the importance of experience that these emotions, by denial and by, you know, restraining them, right, and so on, we can learn to some extent to, what, control them, right? And I remember, like, a student told me one time, I guess when he first came to Assumption College, right, he hit stage fright and he kept in speak, you know? And so, he took a speech course, right? Where he had to get up in front of the class, you know? And, you know, the way the thing was taught in his time, anyway, you know, he might be called upon spontaneously today to give a speech in front of the class on some topic that you have that chance to repair, right? Yeah. Well, by taking that course, and by forcing himself, you know, into those situations, huh, he learned how to, what, control his fear and he ended up, you know, running for office and conducted through it in the class office and so on, right? But, uh, uh, that's just some example there, right? It's a bad experience that some people have learned to, what, control their, their, uh, fear in these cases, right? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Some women are more given to fear than men, usually, you know, and they're afraid to go down in the basement when it's dark, some women, you know, something like that. But then maybe they get over that a little bit, you know, they get a little bit older and more mature, how do they learn how to control that fear, huh? Kind of funny, because, you know, some horrible, fearful movie, a woman can't watch it by themselves especially, right? I remember they used to have the free films there in the summer sometimes, excuse me, where I live, right, in the Dean Park there, right, you know, so you can bring a blanket and watch a movie. And they had that one about the stealing of the Russian airplane and so on. So I went there, the kids were little, you know, and my daughter's grabbing my arms all the way, you know, the boys are there, they're enjoying it, you know, but my daughter's. It's kind of funny. But, I mean, but you see, you know, they started, you know, gradually learning to control their fear, you know, and, you know. So what was the movie? Oh, it's the one about, uh. Stealing the Russian airplane? It's the one where there was a special Russian airplane they were going to try to steal, yeah. Spitfire, what was it called? It's got some name like that, Foxfire or something like that, I forget. Oh, oh. It's just, uh, but, uh. Kind of like a spun-up. Yeah. But I know people, you know, were given to anger who learned to control their anger, huh? Mm-hmm. There's still, you know, possibility of it rising up, you know, but they learned to control it in the course of time, huh? I remember reading about a Hollywood actor, I guess, who was an alcoholic, right? Mm-hmm. Of course, you start to, you do that sort of stuff, right? Mm-hmm. Then you kind of sit down, you want to sniff the wine, you want to talk about it, you know, and compare wine and so on. Mm-hmm. And that's actually worked for him to cure him of his excessive drinking, huh? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's obviously letting your appetite or something to say about what you do, you know? I see, yeah. Yeah, but there might be some people who could do that at all. They have to go on the total abstinence, I mean, the, the, uh, alcoholic synonymous thing, you know? But, uh, you know, people who kind of really were alcoholics, you know, who actually, so it did stop, you know? It's kind of amazing to see that. Yeah, it is, yeah. Yeah, yeah. My father-in-law was, uh, he had a smoking, right? Mm-hmm. He was quite a smoker. And, uh, for about a year afterwards, he was chewing gum all the time. Mm-hmm. And he'd say, do you want to stick with gum? I said, oh, yeah, I'll, I'll join you. Mm-hmm. You know? That's about a year, he didn't need the gum anymore, right? But, that's sort of, you know. Just, just, you know? Yeah. Except for the mouth, yeah. I could probably put a toothpick in the mouth, you know? Mm-hmm. I, uh, my brother Richard claims, you know, a guy who couldn't study without putting a toothpick in his mouth, huh? Got used to it. Mm-hmm. So, so. I mean, since you've seen these things, but I think if you go to, to, um, if you consider, um, music, say, in, in, in fiction, right, um, in the light of this, right, say, does good music and even good fiction have a role to play in the rule of reason over the, what, emotions, huh? Yes. And, in particular, a, what, a, a paternal, or kingly rule over them, rather than a despotic one, huh? Mm-hmm. Because it's something appealing to the senses and the emotions of music. Mm-hmm. But, nevertheless, it is, what, uh, it's moving the emotions in a reasonable way, huh? So, when I first read Austro's essay there, you know, I think I mentioned that before, um, towards an evaluation of music, the period of the Tolmast years ago, and I read it when I was in high school because my brother Richard had it, he was studying under him at the time. And, uh, you know, he's speaking about the excellence of the music of the 18th century as opposed to the music of the Romantic period and, unfortunately, the later periods. And how, you know, the music of the 18th century, among other things, it represents the emotions, right, in a, what, yeah, being subject to reason, not by a despotic rule, but by a, what, political or paternal rule, huh? Yeah. Um, you see, and it's very interesting music, and Mozart's music, you know, you can see this very much, like, when he's representing sadness and like that, you know, and the way he's calming it down, you know, and so on. It's really kind of amazing to see that, huh? In those cases, in some way, I understood this, huh? Mm-hmm. Um, but, um, if you read Aristotle in the 8th book of Politics, and he talks about the role of music in education, huh? Um, Father Boulay, one of them, they studied one of the four teachers of, four teachers of my life, and, um, he made a collection of things in the Church Fathers and others about the importance of music, huh? And when Thomas talks about music, you know, he's very insistent, huh? Nothing so changes the soul of man, he says, is music, huh? Oh. So it's very important, huh? And most people, you know, think you can let your kids listen to any kind of music, huh? And they do, and it just, you know, it's terrible the effect that it has on them, huh? Mm-hmm. So, you're interviewing one of these, these rock stars on TV, you know, I didn't see it, but somebody told me about it, and, uh, he says, well, it's all about sex, you know, that's what music is all about. That's what their minds are. I've heard it, yeah. But that's what it is, you know, if you see them jumping around, you know, it's, it's, it's, oh, you know, just, uh, incredibly bad stuff to listen to, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, music is, is the most persuasive thing there is. You know, someone's humming a melody, you know, you find somebody else will pick it up automatically in the room. Yeah, just, uh, very, very, uh, powerful. Shakespeare has a really strong statement about how powerful music is. You see how well the Nazis use it, you know, in a persuasive way. You once mentioned that Father Belay's collection seems to be lost. Yeah, it is. I don't know where it is. Do you have a lesser collection? I know we have a couple of articles here from, I think, some of the Valians that Father Anthony left us. But, um, like these collections from Shakespeare, references or something. Yeah. I think Thomas is there. Yeah, some of the references there to Thomas, yeah, music. Yeah, like some point I wrote about the Nicholas. There's one there, I think, in the Gospels in Matthew when Christ is saying, you played this and you didn't dance. And he talks about that, a couple of that, yeah. They're very short passages, you know, but, uh. And, uh, Plato and Aristotle thought music was a very important part of education, you know. And it's, uh, in a sense you really try to educate the emotions, huh. But then when you get to, um, even, you know, tragedy, when Aristotle defines tragedy, the definition is got catharsis, huh, which means purification, purgation in a way, of the emotions, huh. It's a purification and purgation of pity and fear, huh. And, and, uh, when you talk about comedy, that's purging certain emotions, too, like elancholy, getting rid of that, you know, and so on. So, but that's a medical term originally, but then it has a moral term, huh. That's why you speak of purgatory, right? Mm-hmm. The Greeks will speak, you know, the catharsis of the body, which the medical doctor is doing, right? Yeah. And then they'll speak of the catharsis of the emotions. Socrates, in his dialogues, is talking about catharsis of reason. Got a mistake, you know, he's gonna lead you to see that you're mistaken and free you from that bad mistake that's dominating your thinking, huh. So, no, no, so when you read this second, by the second objection, you realize a little bit that Thomas is not naive as to how, if you read his commentary on St. Paul, you see he's not naive as to the, what, that emotions don't obey reason like my hand obeys me, right? Yeah. You see? Yeah. And, or when he talks about, you know, intemperance being a childish advice, right, he sees the importance of the early upbringing. When Aristotle was talking there in the Nicomachean Ethics, he says, it makes a great deal of difference, he says, how someone is brought up, he says, or rather, all the difference. Mm-hmm. He's extremely strong about that, huh? Yeah. So, if you had not been brought up well by your parents in some way, it's almost impossible for you to, you know, be moral in these things, you know, which is pretty difficult. Okay. It's not supposed to reply to your objection, I'm going to give a short break here. Yeah. Let's go look at the third objection again here. The third objection is a little different now. That was simply saying, why is it that the senses don't obey reason, right? And the sense desire can to some extent, right? And he says, well, the exterior senses need for their acts the exterior sensible, right? Of which they are changed. And the presence of such thing is not in the power of reason, right? I want to taste wine now. There's no wine, there's just water. But the interior powers, both the appetitive ones as well as the apprehensive ones, he's thinking of what? Things like the imagination, right? Do not need exterior things. And therefore they are subject to the command of reason. So if you have dirty thoughts in your imagination, you can maybe imagine something else, right? Which can not only, what, instigate or mitigate the affections of the sensing power, but also to form the images of the, what, imagining power. Now, I think I mentioned this before, but it's relevant here again. In the first question of the Summa here, the first question of the Prima Partis, when Thomas talks about the necessity of theology and the subject of theology and then the method of theology and so on. And, you know, there's an article there where he asks about the, what, metaphor, right? And who does the sacred scriptures use metaphors? And we've talked about that, I think, before. He also raises that question in the sentences, huh? And he gives somewhat the same reasons in both places, but I think there are some reasons given in sentences that aren't given here, right? And it's one reason he gives for using the metaphors is that even the imagination of man should be subject to God. You see? And so the metaphors, right, are sacred scriptures. You have a certain appeal to the imagination, huh? It's accessible to the imagination, huh? So now the imagination is being brought into the service of what? God, huh? Okay. Now that's the kind of universal principle that Thomas will give, right? So if you went to church, let's say, and you genuflect, right, huh? Okay. Even your knees, so to speak, or your legs, right, are being brought into the service of God, right? And that's kind of a separate reason from the fact that the exterior also kind of stimulates the interior, right? So my genuflecting kind of stimulates my humility or something within me, right, huh? Sure. Okay? Again, when you're hearing beautiful church music or something like that, right, huh? You see? Your ear, in a way, is being brought into the service of what? God. You're looking at the statue of Mary or something or the icon or something of that sort, right? But if it's important that your knee be brought into subjection to God, how much more so your imagination, which is a much higher faculty, right? Sure. But, again, the fact that the imagination often leads us astray, both into errors and into sin, right, means that we have to kind of train that, you see? And to some extent, you know, good fiction does that in one way, right? You know, there's something very healthy about Shakespeare's, you know. How would you think about the fact that young, vibrant people grow old? How would you say that in poetry? You know, all these nice, young, fresh people out there are going to all die. How would you say that? Shakespeare says, Golden lads and girls, almost as chimney sweepers, come to dust. Oh, man. Well, it's beautiful, you know. Gold and lads and girls, almost as chimney sweepers, come to dust. You've got the gold and the dust. It's very appealing to the imagination, huh? See? And the scripture, you know, the metaphors are not trying to, you know, please the imagination so much as the poetic ones are, but they do have some appeal to them, right? And then they, what, kind of lift the mind up, huh? You know, the fire, for example, is a metaphor for what? Well, it's a metaphor for the divine nature, huh? And then it's a metaphor for what? The Trinity. And then it's a metaphor for God giving us faith, hope, and charity. I've seen all those in the Church Fathers and Thomas and so on, huh? You see? In other words, fire, let's say, by its, what, simplicity, right? It represents the simplicity of God, right? By its light, the divine mind, huh? By its ability to transform things, the divine power and so on, right? Okay? But sometimes they use fire as a metaphor for the, what, the Trinity, huh? And they say, from fire precedes two things, light and warmth, huh? From the Father precedes the Son, who's light, and the Holy Spirit, who's warmth, huh? See? Or sometimes they'll say, you know, that the fire or the sun, right? It's like fire. The sun enlightens the earth before it warms it. And so God enlightens us by faith before we can, what, be warm with the love of Him, right? You see? So it's not that appeals to imagination, those things, but you're being, what? You use the imagination now to raise your mind to these things in some way, huh? And so it's important, you know, that the imagination be brought into the service of reason and even in the service of the faith, huh? And you can see the terrible thing when the reverse takes place, right? Mm-hmm. You know? You also, when I was a little kid, you always hear, I don't mind, it's a devil's workshop. Mm-hmm. But it's imagination, you know, this. Yeah. Imagine bad things to do, right? You know? The way kids get into trouble all the time, huh? And because their imagination was not preoccupied with Homer or Shakespeare or, you know, or even, you know, C.S. Lewis's things or even the good old fairy tales, you know? They had to have their imaginations absorbed with that than what they get from the pornographic literature now, you know? Let's take a short break and then look at the 83, Article 1. Mm-hmm. Okay. I'm really interested in this question, but I know it comes in metaphysics, but it's possible that I have a preview of it. The question of one and how we use the term for God, is there anything you could give as a preview to that at all? So we're going to need to wait and be patient. Well, see, one means, again, it seems to be the one that's the beginning of number, right? Okay. And the one that is convertible to being. And Chris Thomas will ask, what's the difference in meaning between being and one? Well, one doesn't add any reality to being, but what it adds is a negation, undivided, undivided being. So when Thomas takes up God being one, he's got to go back to what is shown before, that God is the maximum being, right? I am who I am, right? Mm-hmm. And then that he's all together, what? Simple, right? Mm-hmm. So in no way is he divisible, right? Yeah. So he's most one. If you look here at the sum, right, just look back here for the one on the one there. Yeah, I was actually reading it, and I wasn't getting too quick. Especially in... You know, see, he first asks whether... He takes up some general questions about the one, right? Whether one adds something upon being, right? For example, you've got to go back to what it adds. What negation, what division is negating, right? And then later on, he says that God is one, he will say. Now, what do we mean when we say one convertible with being? What do we mean by that? Well, convertible in logic means A and B are said to be convertible if every A is a B and every B is A, okay? Now, it's very scalable for a...