De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 133: Fallacies of Speech and the Distinction Between Simply and In Some Respect

Transcript
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What all desire, right? What all want. And some might say, but don't some people want bad things, right? They might say, well then, what everybody wants is not always good, therefore this is not convertible, right? But as I mentioned before, Plato and Aristotle, the chief philosophers, Thomas and Albert the Great, the great philosophers, or even Dionysius, right, the great theologians, and Augustus and so on, they will see that the good is defined at first by desire, right? Well, how can you see that definition, right, in the light of the fact that people sometimes want something bad, even bad for them, right? Well, it's because you're defining, as you do, a definition, what belongs to something as such, right? And you don't desire something as bad, right, but as good in some way, okay? So just like if someone said, you know, well, I've known some squares that are green, or I've known some squares that are green, so why don't you, you know, put green in the definition of square? Well, you say, well, that could happen that a square is green, but it doesn't belong to the square as such to be green. So it's accidental to that, right? Heidegger says philosophy speaks Greek, you know? Well, it might be that the greatest philosophers were Greek-speaking, right? And the chief philosophers are Greek, like Plato and Aristotle. But does that belong to philosophy as such? Does a philosopher's lover of wisdom as such speak Greek? No. It belongs to the lover of wisdom as such to love wisdom, right? The philosopher, but not to be Greek, and that's, since it might be an important accident, but, right? Okay. Okay, now the second fallacy outside of speech is a fallacy of simply and not simply, simply in some respect. And, you know, I would take a very simple example in class, but Aristotle is an even simple example in some ways. He says, are you a white man or a black man? And you'd say, you're a white man, right? And I look into your eye, and what color do I see? Black or brown there, right? See? So the white man is black in his eye, right? See? Now, vice versa, we had a black man here. He's white in his eyes, and he had a part of his eyes, huh? But you call a man a white man or a black man simply without qualification by reason of the color of his what? Skin, which kind of is most of the outer part of his body, right? Okay? And you wouldn't call him red if his skin wasn't red, right? You'd say he's red in his tongue, or brown in my eyes, or maybe black in the center of my eyes, or something like that. Do you see? Mm-hmm. I always take the example. You know, I'll ask a girl in class, and I'll say, do you know my brother Mark? And she'll say, no. I said, I heard what she said. He doesn't know my brother Mark. Yeah? I say, do you know what a man is? Do you know what a brother is? Yeah. That's who my brother Mark is. So you do know my brother Mark. Now, has she really been refuted or contradicted to herself? No. No. Because she's saying, really, simply, she doesn't know my brother Mark. Mm-hmm. Right? But in some very qualified and perfect way, in knowing what a man is, or knowing what a brother is, she in some way knows my brother Mark, and every other man that's a brother in the world. Do you see? Mm-hmm. Okay. I'll take another simple example of that. Suppose we had a knock on the door over there, right? And I said, do you know who's knocking at the door? And you'd say, no, right? You open the door and maybe it's your mother. Or maybe it's the abbot or somebody, right? I said, you don't even know your own mother, huh? You said you didn't know who's knocking at the door. It's your mother knocking at the door. I said, well, are you proven now you don't know your mother? Not simply. Yeah. I said, but in some way, your mother's unknown to you, right? Right. You see? Some way. You'd say your mother as the person knocking at the door is not known to you, right? Okay. The abbot or somebody that's knocking on the door is not known to you, right? You see the way it goes? So? So is that the... Now, I say, why do people rob the bank? It's bad to rob the bank, right? It must be good in some way. You see? I say, is it good or bad to murder somebody and annoy you? Well, usually the students will answer, no, it's not. It's bad to... No. But it removes annoyance from your life, right? You see? So I said, you're making this mistake all day long because you're often doing something bad because in some limited way it's good. Or you're not doing what is good because in some way it's bad, right? As I mentioned before, there's nothing so good that doing it doesn't prevent you from doing something else, right? Yeah. Which might even be good or something else, so it prevents you from doing something good. Therefore, it's in some way bad. This is a very common what? Mistake, right? And you find this in the Meno of Plato there, right? And people say, you know, can you know what you don't know? And you apply it to a question, right? A student asks a question. Does he know what he doesn't know? In a certain way. See? See, if he doesn't know what he's asking for, then how can I help him, right? Yeah. See, we pay guys to look for the cause of cancer or something else, right? Mm-hmm. Do they know what they're looking for? Hmm. In a certain way. If they didn't know in some way, what would we be paying them, right? Yeah. But if they knew simply, right, the cause, then you wouldn't have to do any research or investigation, right? Right. See the distinction a little bit, don't we? Sure. I think so. Yeah, yeah. Now, Thomas is going to, what, apply that here, right? Sure. Okay. Let's take one a little closer to this, huh? In the, you might remember at the beginning of the Dianima, Aristotle said that one knowledge is better than another because it is about a better thing, right? Oh, yeah. Or because it's more certain, right? Okay. But now, suppose one knowledge, suppose A is about a better thing than B, but B knows its object, right? Better. See? Which is better knowledge. Is it better to know well a lesser thing or to know less a better thing? The latter? Right. The latter? Yeah, yeah. Aristotle doesn't, in the Dianima there, solve, or see which is a more important thing, right? But he does in the beginning of parts of animals, huh? Okay. He has a beautiful little sign of the truth of it, huh? He says, you know, even an imperfect knowledge of a better thing is better, right? Than a perfect knowledge of a lesser thing. Just as a glimpse, he says, of those we love, right? Is more than a leisurely view of those who don't care about. So I just take the example of the guy who works in the office there and he's got this boss over there, you know, who he can see all day long. In fact, he doesn't dare look up at him too much, but he can see him all day long. And maybe he can see through the window his girlfriend across the way or something like that. That means more to him to see that little glimpse, right? Of her than this leisurely view of this ogre that is his boss. You see? You know, sometimes we, you know, we talk to a friend on the telephone, right? And we can't talk to him very long, he's a short thing, but it means more to us, right, than a long conversation with somebody who you have no particular interest in, right? Or no particular you're attaching to, right? So, yeah, that's clear. Yeah. All right. See, it's the kind of distinction he's making, right? Yeah. Okay. So, one considers something such simplicitare, right, insofar as it is according to, what, itself such, right? So, where is this now? Is this in the... Same texture, right? I see. as it is by itself such, secundum quid, when it's called such with respect to another. If, therefore, he says, the understanding and the will are considered secundum se, right, by themselves, thus the understanding is found to be more eminent. Now, you have to know that the power is through their objects, right? And this, he says, appears from a comparison of their objects to each other. For the object of the understanding is more simple and more absolute than the object of the will. For the object of the understanding is the very definition of the desirable good. But the, what, good, which is desirable, whose definition is in the understanding is the object of the will. But as something is more simple and more, what, abstract, in that way it is in itself more noble and, what, higher. And, therefore, the object of the understanding is higher than the object of the will. Since, therefore, the proper definition of a power is according to its order to its object, it follows that by itself and simply, the understanding is higher and more noble than the will. Now, that's a little bit hard for you to understand that reason, huh? But, God is the most, what? Low, high. Yeah, he's also the simplest thing there is, right? Okay, right. Sure. And the higher thing contains what the lower does, but in a simpler, what, way, huh? Right. Okay? And, just if you compare, you know, the, a bit, the understanding there with the senses, huh? I can see a line to some extent, right? And I can imagine a line, huh? Right. But the understanding, guess what? What's the object of the understanding? The universal of a line? Or the... Yeah, the what it is. The what it is, yeah. Okay? So, the understanding knows the, what it is of a line, right? Right. What it is to be a line, huh? Yeah. And you see how that's more simple and more abstract than a line, isn't it? A lot, yes. Yeah. Right. And, you know, since I ask people, you know, and you can speak of two lines here, right? And you say which one is longer, which one is shorter, or the equal, and so on, right? Yeah. But you talk about what a line is, how long is what a line is? Uh-huh. See? Uh-huh. It's something more abstract than a line, right? Uh-huh. See? But yet you, what? You're understanding, you're knowing more of this thing when you know what a line is. Yeah. Than when you, you know, sense or picture it, huh? Sure. And so it'd be more simple what a line is. Sure. Than a line, right? Yeah. Okay? Now, you see this also in the fine arts. Now, in Aristotle, in the book called The Poetics, when he compares tragedy and the epic, right, and he asks, which is a higher form of fiction, tragedy or epic, huh? Because they both represent men who are greater than us in some way. Yeah. And they both arouse, what? And they both arouse, what? Pity and fear, right? And purge these to some extent and so on. But the tragedy does it in a simpler way, right? In a more condensed way, huh? The epic is spread out, right, huh? Mm-hmm. True enough. So when I read a tragedy of Sophocles, who's the greatest of the Greek tragedies, I can sit down and read a tragedy of Sophocles in an hour or so, you know? Like to read through the Iliad would take me, you know, quite a lot, much longer time, huh? So the one, in a simpler and more abstract way, I will say, gets what? It says more, right, huh? It accomplishes the same thing, but with fewer means, huh? You see something of a perfection of the simple there. We were talking before of how the, you know, square, you know, contains more area for the same perimeter, right? And it's like the wise man saying more with, what, fewer words, huh? Okay? In the Marietta edition here, it has a little footnote there on abstraction, huh? Mm-hmm. He's talking about formal abstraction, right? Where what is abstracted is more like the form, huh? Mm-hmm. And of course, the what it is and form are almost the same thing. When Aristotle defines that kind of clause, he defines in terms of the what it is. Mm-hmm. The definition of what was to be, okay? So this is why he's saying that the, in a sense, the object of the understanding of the will, they're both transcendentals, right? But the understanding is more simple and more abstract in a formal sense, because of what it is of these things. Mm-hmm. And therefore, he says, the object of the understanding is higher than the object of the will. And since, therefore, the proper definition of a power or ability, as we've seen before, is according to the order that it has to its object, it follows that by itself and simply the understanding is a higher and more noble than the will. But now, as you say, always distinguish, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Say, quindam quid altamur. Mm-hmm. And in comparison to another, the will is sometimes found to be higher than the understanding. Mm-hmm. Okay? From this, that the object of the will is found in a higher thing than the object of the understanding. Yeah. Just as if we said that hearing is, in some way, sequinam quid, more noble than sight, insofar as something of which there's a sound is more noble than something which there's color. Although color is more noble and simpler than sound, huh? Mm-hmm. Okay? Now, no, it sounded, I think it's very interesting because I remember a conversation one time and they're praying in their wisdom with one of my lady students, you know, and Aristotle was talking about, you know, how we delight in our senses for their own sake, huh? And then he says, and especially the sense of sight, because that most of all makes us know, huh? Yeah. And so I was saying, you know, if you ask most men, you know, would you rather be blind or deaf? Oh. Obviously, you wouldn't want to be either one. But would it be worse to be blind or to be deaf? Most men would say it's worse to be what? Blind. Blind, yeah. So you kind of said, they put in the eyes above the ears, right? Yeah. Well, this young lady objected. Yeah. She'd rather be blind than deaf, right? Mm-hmm. Well, she played the organ. And she was very much into music of Bach and other good music. And for her, it's even worse, right? Yeah. Okay? But, more interesting than that, see, I always maintain that music is a higher thing than painting. Right. See? And I've had some arguments with some of my colleagues and so on. But I think I'm right that music is higher than, what, painting, right? Yeah. So, she was using that against my meditating that the eye is, what, superior to the ear, right? Mm-hmm. Well, if you consider the eye and the ear, the eye is a much more, what, spiritual sense, isn't it, than the ear, huh? Much finer, you might say, color and light, huh? Mm-hmm. And it's not, well, the ear is, you know, the sound is a much more gross thing than color or light, huh? Mm-hmm. And, of course, which is more like the understanding, which we admit is higher. Yeah. That's why we borrow the words from the sense of sight. Sure. We borrow the word to see. I see that, yeah. See? For understanding. And we, you're light, huh? And what did it, you know, I was quoting those beautiful words there, I stuck them in our prayer one time, do you remember? Father of lights, you know? Lighten us, huh? You know, we said every perfect gift, you know, St. James, was it? Comes down, huh? St. James, wasn't it? Yeah. Coming down from the Father of lights, see? And, uh, it doesn't say the Father of sound, so it's all kind of, you know? Now, as you're talking about light here in the higher thing than the light of the eye, but it shows you that the eye is more like these higher things. Yeah. Okay. And, uh, when the great St. Paul there describes the Beatty Vision, right, or St. John does, St. John says, um, we will be like him because we will see him as he is, right? It doesn't say we'll hear him as he is. He borrows the word from the saint. St. Paul describes the Vedic vision as seeing God face to face. Not hearing God. Yeah, and we call it the beatific hearing, right? So I would argue from these that the sense of sight is higher than the sense of hearing, right? And yet I would say it's better to hear Mozart than to see Da Vinci or some other paintings, right? I'm just curious, isn't it? The music is really a higher art, right? Yeah. But then I would say, you know, secundum quid, right? Yeah, yeah. In some way, right? Isn't basic reasons music affects the soul more than the people? Yeah, and because of the excellence in music, right? And it's really, I mean, I would say in some ways even music is more beautiful than Shakespeare, right? Mozart's music, you know? I think extremely. When Aristotle's talking about the beautiful there in the last books, I think it's the 13th book, maybe the 13th book of Wisdom there, I use that passage in my article in comedy, but he's saying that, you know, the main kinds of the beautiful are the order, symmetry, right? Okay. Moderation, which the mathematical sciences, he says, especially show, he says. Of course, music is more mathematical than fiction, huh? Sure. But they have that beauty of it. And, you know, in heaven, right, as Thomas says, there will be loud school colleagues, there will be vocal praise of God in heaven, there will be music, right? Because we're going to have our bodies, right? Yeah. You know? But not going to be, you know, putting on plays and fiction, I would say. It's true. You know? It's kind of striking, you know, of how, you know, the two main forms of fiction are, what, tragedy and comedy, and they both really fit the fallen state of man. You know, comedy is always making fun of man because we're kind of ridiculous, you know, in the way we act now because of the fall. But also there's something tragic, you know, and, you know, and death and so on. Death is the main, you know, punishment, you might say, of the, at least outward punishment of these things, right? And so, you know, this tragic aspect of our life is something that wouldn't have been there if we hadn't fallen. Yeah. Right. And so tragedy and comedy are kind of witnesses, these are the main forms of fiction, they're witnesses to the fact that man has fallen now, you see? And I was reading, last night I just kind of been reading, reading Sophocles' Tragedies. That's really marvelous. Have you ever read Ajax? I've read Ajax, no. But you know what the fall is, huh? The sin, it's mainly the sin of pride. Right, yeah. You know, you'll be like the gods, nothing good in you and so on. Well, the downfall of Ajax, of course, is because Athena has turned against him, huh? Oh, yeah. And what's he done to offend the goddess, huh? To spurn her love or something? Well, it's very interesting. Colchus, you know, the prophet, you know, reveals what happened. And Ajax was leaving home to go fight in the Trojan War, right, huh? Oh, okay. And his father, you know, very proud of this great son, you know, war going off and so on. And he says, he wants him to succeed, you know. But to succeed, he says, with God's help. That's what the father tells him, right? And Ajax says, well, even a worthless man could succeed with God's help, right? Oh. You know, I'm going to succeed without it. Wow. Well, that's Hubbard, right? That's when he prides, see? I believe. And then, when he's in the battle there, you know, he comes down to the gods and gods just to help their favorites, right? Sure. And he says, you know, I don't need your fault, you know, you see? Oh, no. Okay? And so, it's his pride, in a sense, that his, what, downfall, see? And so, even this pagan, you know, some people have to have some understanding of the people of pride, and you don't say, you know, I'm going to succeed without God's help. I don't need God's help. Yeah, you don't want to say that. It's like one of the experimental scientists in modern times, you know. They ask him about God, right? And he says, I don't need that hypothesis. He's made it real. It sounds like Ajax, I don't need that hypothesis. Yeah. You know? No. I don't even got to explain the universe. Yeah. And, anyway, coming back to what I was saying now, you see, I think music is higher than painting as an art, you see? And so, you know, it attracts my attention much more than a painting does. But, I still maintain that haplos, simpliciter, haplos is a Greek word, simpliciter, the eye is higher faculty than the what? Than the year, right, huh? And, you know, you think of, you know, Augustine is a passage similar to Augustine. I remember seeing years ago where some things you would like to have seen, you know? Because one of them was Rome in all his glory. But to see Christ in the flesh, she speaks of, right? Okay. And you think of seeing Christ in the flesh, like, well, we'll see him, right? Occasionally somebody does see him in this world, but very exalted saints. Or to see the Blessed Virgin, right, huh? And you know how the, some of the saints who saw the Blessed Virgin, you know, oh, she's much more beautiful than the paintings he represented to me, you know? I remember one of them saying that, you know, in the Lourdes or one of those places, you know? Oh, yeah. That's kind of interesting, right, huh? Mm-hmm. But, would you want, would you more want to see the face of Christ or hear the voice of Christ? I suppose they're both going to be very interesting. Oh, that's... You know? But, anyway. I have a question. You said this before, I don't remember your explanation about, um, if you have a blind man and a deaf man, the wise one is going to be the blind man. And why is that something about... Well, I think, I think the reason why the, you mean the prophets are represented as well? Well, I, in particular, because of what you said about how, um, we understand, we know most, mostly by sight, does, how is it that a blind man, I guess, yeah, like his prophets or... You see, we're talking about our natural knowledge, right? Yeah. If, if you got stranded on an island like Robinson Crusoe, right? Yeah. Um, would you be able to explore that island and come to know that island better through your eyes or through your ears? Your eyes. Yeah. Yeah. So the eye, in that sense, would, would, would, would, would, you'd learn more from it, right? Yeah. Okay. In a practical way. And, of course, you know, if you think of the sun, moon, the stars, all that, the strong and all that stuff, all of that depends upon the eye, right? Sight alone. The ears don't hear nothing about the stars. You can't smell them. You can't, you know, touch them, you know? At least we couldn't, though, very recently. Okay. Um, but the eye, you know, you know, really makes you know more than anything else, right? Sure. So if you see it, the senses are, are knowing powers, right? The eye seems to, to, to know, to make us know more than the ear does, huh? Clearly, yeah. And, of course, you point out, too, that when something is, is clear to the other senses, they'll use the word see, right? You know, if I was showing you something, right? Mm-hmm. You know, I mean, if I, you're tasting something, you know, and I, and you see. And you see the difference? Do you know? Oh, yeah, we did say that. Yeah. You see, because if the eye is, it is more clear to the other senses, huh? Yeah. And just like when I, when I, when I feel the shape of something with your eyes closed, you know, and so you kind of try to imagine the shape of the thing. Sure. You open up and it's kind of clear, you know, with the eye, you know, what the shape of the thing is, huh? More so than the thing. But nevertheless, there might be, you see, couldn't quit in some way, the ear might be, what? But higher. Higher. And when Aristotle, in the preeminent to wisdom there, they'll speak of the eye as, you know, we know more by the eye than the other sense. And I see it's a sense of discovery, as we're saying, if you're on that island. Okay. But the ear is a sense of, what, learning from another, right? Yeah. And Thomas is always confirming that, you know, quoting St. Paul, that fide, as he says, ex auditu, right? That's right. Faith is from hearing. That's right. Yeah. So, in some way, right, the ear might be, what, superior, right? Okay. It's more the sense of, you know, as far as learning from another, right? Could you say, then, that music is a vehicle for learning from another? Well, no, no, I was just saying, there's another way in which you might say that the ear is, what, more the sense of learning from another than the eye is. Yeah. I see. And you and I, we could sit here and close our eyes, and I could continue to instruct you, right? And so that you learn from another more by his... words then by his tape what when you listen to the tape yeah yeah yeah i don't see you okay yeah right at the edge of the film the words and the sounds right you'll get much out of it so in some way right the ear is you know but you just considered the eye and the ear as such right what's he saying right as such you know which makes you know more right you say you'd say the eye okay right and that's the reason why the understanding which knows more right yeah we borrow words from the eye and light and so on rather than from the ear okay so we just got i kind of interrupt there but but developing a little more than what thomas did there right because i remember you know maintaining with this young lady yeah that i was not contradicting myself in admitting that that uh music is higher than painting and yet saying that simply speaking the eye is higher than the what ear right right see because he couldn't have quit i'm saying the ear is better than the eye right yeah so he's saying here about about the will for as has been said above the action of the understanding consists in this that the uh definition you might say the thing understood is in the one understanding right but the act of the will is perfected in this that the will is inclined towards the thing itself as it is in itself or by itself and therefore the philosopher says in the sixth book of metaphysics that good and bad which are the objects of the will are in things huh and we talked about that before i think right yeah and that's why you can't love the good and the bad at the same time because in things they are exclude one another but true and false which are the objects of the understanding are primarily in the mind in our statements yeah when therefore the thing in which there is something good is more noble than the soul right in which there is the understood reason in comparison to such a thing the will is a higher is higher than the understanding because it's joining us to something greater than our mind right okay okay but when the thing in which there is something good is below the soul right then also in comparison to such a thing the understanding is higher than the will okay whence the love of god is better than the knowledge of god but contrary-wise the knowledge of bodily things is better than the love of them okay okay it's better to know what sense pleasure is than to love it okay better to know what food is than to love it okay simply simply nevertheless the understanding is more noble than the will for the reason we gave before huh yeah so you gotta be very careful when you talk about that right yeah see and some people make the the mistake of mixing up the simply in some respect right and because the will in some way is better than they say it's simply better right okay that's like saying you know that the stone um there's stones in my yard big rocks some of them yeah can't get out of the ground they're gonna outlast me you know and uh you know these great trees in california some of those go on hundreds of years right so in some ways they're better than me aren't they so couldn't quit yeah but you wouldn't say simply that the tree is better than a man would you or the stone is better than a man we wouldn't see you'd be you'd be mixing up simply in some way right yeah the two ones yeah okay um plato makes that or sarkis makes a mistake in the mino right because he's arguing that this that the uh what slave boy already knew how to double the square yeah because the way to double the square comes out of his what answers right yeah see but i think a simple example to illustrate the point if i knew the length and the width of this table right would i know the area in potential yeah yeah yeah so haplos is simply i wouldn't know it would i know if i had not multiplied the length by the width huh if you said this to the the practical man right who doesn't make these fancy distinctions yeah um if you don't like what you know the area you say you know i'm sure you'd say that yeah you see you see because it's so close right now yeah see yeah see but no strictly speaking yeah the man who knows the length and the width period is able to know the area yeah but to be able to know something is that to know it no no see then i have to say to my students i mean to give the benefit of the doubt uh they know all these things i'm going to teach them because giving them the benefit of the doubt they're able to know it right you see right right but just anyone so i'd say because somebody's able to know something he knows it would you he knows it in the ability you can see it in the qualified sense right right you wouldn't say he knows it simply yeah not as such no no not simply okay um okay let's go back to the objections now the good is the the good in the end is the object of the will right yeah now to the first therefore it should be said that the definition of cause is taken in comparison of one thing to another and in such a comparison the definition of the good principally is found and that's what he's saying there right you know the first definition of good is the good is what all want but later on we define the good what is the good chiefly as what is perfective of another in the manner of an end and in the name of a cause that's the sake of which so in some sense um if you compare it to the cause in such a comparison he says the definition of good is found more principle or chief but true is said more absolutely right absolutely in thomas means as opposed to what relative right and it signifies the very definition of the good huh whence the good is a certain truth huh but again the true is also a certain good right this is something you talk about how the will and the reason can influence each other right okay because um the good is something understandable right and to understand is something good right so they have a mutual influence upon each other um but again the truth is something good huh according as the understanding is a certain thing and the true is its end and among other ends this end is more what excellent to know the truth just as the understanding is among the other powers now in the summa kind gentiles he's more develops this because he points out that the first act of um the understanding or the first act of the will cannot be its own act and it's i have to understand something before i can understand my understanding yeah is it and so the first thing i understand is not my understanding right right just like is the first letter you write a letter about something in a letter is the first letter that's written about what is in some other letter no no you see the first letter that was ever written is about something that was never in a letter right and so the first thing understood is never your understanding but you understand what a square is and then you understand what a square is see okay yeah i see you before i know that i see you yeah i know that i see you before i know that i know that i see you certainly talk about that kind of sterile infinity and go on you know but when i say the truth about the will i have to will some good right some in before i can will my willing do you see i wouldn't huh see unless i love god i wouldn't love my loving of god mm-hmm you see i'm a philosopher right right okay that means i love wisdom right okay and i love wisdom because i realize what a great good wisdom is huh okay but now if wisdom is as great a good as it is yes then isn't it good also to love them then isn't it good also to love them then isn't it good also to love them then isn't it good also to love them So I can now love not only wisdom, but I can love my love of wisdom, right? You see? But that can't be what I love first, my love of wisdom. So yeah, I have to love wisdom first, right? Now, the same way here. If I truly love God, right? I know how good God is and how much I should love him, right? Then I see that not only is God good, but it's good that I love God. My love of God is something good too, right? And now I might love my love of God. You can love charity by charity, right? But that can't be the first thing to love by charity. Right. You see the idea? Okay. Now the first thing that the will loves is the, what, last end. So the first thing the will loves cannot be its own act. And therefore, the last end, which is the best thing, can't be an act of the will. It must be an act of the reason. I'm sorry, can you say that last thing? I say, the last end, right? Right. Is the first thing the will wills. Although it wills in a kind of confusion, right? Right. The desire to be happy, right? It doesn't know exactly what happiness consists in, right? Sure. With a refrigerator with soda or whatever it is, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. But, the first thing the will wills cannot be its own act. It's got to be something other than its own act, right? Okay. Because, I mean... See, just like the first thing you understand cannot be your understanding. The first thing you know is not that you know. Mm-hmm. See, I have to know what a triangle is before I can know what a triangle is, right? Yeah. Then I can know that I know what a triangle is. And I can know that I know that a triangle is. And I can go on, you know. But the first thing I know cannot be my knowing, can it? Any more than the first thing I write is something that was found on a piece of paper. Right? I can copy something on some other piece of paper, but, you know, the first thing I write is not copying what's on a piece of paper. And so, likewise, the first thing I love is not my love. It's not the act of my will, right? See? I have to love God before I can love my love of God. I have to love wisdom before I can love the love of wisdom. Okay? So, the first thing the will wills is the end, the last end. Because it wills everything else in order to hold that end. Yeah. So, the first thing it wills, which is the last end, is not its own act. So, its own act cannot be the last end. So, it has to be the act of the reason rather than the act of the will that's the last end. So, in other words, when Scripture says that eternal life is to know. Yeah. Yeah, it's saying to know, yeah. To be to envision, right? Now, you know that whole big debate in spirituality about that and the Franciscans. Yeah. Then what's the error, what they call the voluntists or whatever, the Franciscans? Well, see, you don't put the will above reason as a faculty, right? But you can say now that God in himself, right, is a much greater thing than my vision of God, right? Yeah. You see? And that when I love God in himself, I'm going out in my will into God, right? Yeah. Okay? Beyond the intellect. Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm loving God in himself, right? Right. And God in himself is something more than my partaking in God and my vision of God, right? Okay. Okay? In that sense, the love is something greater, right? Okay. Okay. So, but like, you know, the comparison there, you know, when, what's her name? I guess I was in St. Therese of the Seer, right? Mm-hmm. You know, she describes in her, I don't know if you read her autobiography or whatever. Sure. When she saw the ocean the first time, you know, and, you know, the ocean would be kind of like a metaphor for the divine. Yeah. You see? And so, going back to Augustine's thing, you know, the little boy trying to put the ocean into the whole thing. You can't put the ocean in there. He's a little boy, right? Yeah. But I can jump into the ocean, right? Yeah. See? Well, putting the ocean into the hole was like putting God into my mind, right? Yep. And my mind can never completely comprehend God in the vision, right? I never go, I never know God as much as he's knowable, right? Yeah. See? Because he's instantly knowable. And so it's like putting the ocean into me, into the hole, and I can't do that, you see? Adequately, huh? Just, you know, partially, right? Mm-hmm. But I can jump into the ocean, right? Mm-hmm. And that's like the will, because the will goes into the thing, right? Mm-hmm. In that sense, the will is hard. It's the same way as he says right here. It's like let them quit, right? So it's, with that, with sort of that debate, it's just a matter of perspective of what whatever that they're looking at it, or? Well, no, I see, you could say, you could say, my end, my end, huh? My last end is to see God as he is, face to face, huh? Okay? But I can't rest in that as if that's the end-all, the be-all, right? My vision of God, right, huh? That's my ultimate good, yeah, yeah. But the goodness of God is something much greater than mine, see? Right. So, therefore, I will, I will, what? Praise God, right, huh? You know? Glorify and thank him in heaven, huh? And that very much brings in the will now. Now, as I refer this back, you know, what does it say there in the apocalypse, the book of Revelation there, you know, they kind of made a song out of it, I mean, it's in church sometimes, where the saints, what, throw down their crowns, you know, remember that one? You know? Well, that's really a big division, right? And referring it back to God, huh? Okay, you see? So, when you see God as he is, you realize that he's more than you could ever, what, fully understand, right, huh? Yeah, right? You see? You know that the prayer of Thomas there, that the Pope quoted twice there in the Eucharistic document? It says, Adoro te devotee latens deitas, quae sutis figuris verilitas, tivisee cormeum totum samsicet, quae te contemplans totum deficit, right? Now, there are the word heart, sometimes we use the word heart, you know, to include the reason as well as the will, right? But they both, but they both, what, you know, you know, prayer, I'm not talking about it. No, I'm sorry. You know, adoro te devotee latens deitas, quae sutis figuris verilitas, tivisee cormeum totum, samsicet, right? Mm-hmm. Quae? Quae te contemplans, right? Mm-hmm. Totum deficit. Okay. As if my whole, what, heart and my whole will, also my whole reason, right? Mm-hmm. Um, can't exhaust his, what? Yeah. His, uh, goodness, his, uh, it's like it says in the Psalms there, you know, praise God as much as you can because you're always going to be, what? You can't praise him enough, right? Mm-hmm. Or put it another way, you can't praise him too much, right? Yeah. Or it's like the saints say, you know, um, can you love God too much? Can you know God too much? Well, you can never know God too much. Mm-hmm. And, any further ado, you can never love God too well or too much, huh? Mm-hmm. You love God too much, you know? Can't say that. Can't say that, right? You see, so that, um, uh, you see, the measure of love is to love God without measure, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You see, that, um, uh, you see, that, that Psalm, that's 62, to me, I've been thinking of Psalm 62 a lot in terms of the definition of hope that we had in the... Catechism? In Vatican, in the, yeah, in the New Catechism, right? You remember how the New Catechism, it spoke of the beatific vision both as, what, eternal life, right, and the kingdom, right? The kingdom, okay, yeah. You see? And, of course, in other words, this is the fullness of life, but it's also, what, being a part of the kingdom, right? Yeah. And, of course, um, both of those in the Psalm, right? That is the English translation that I learned when I was younger. O God, you are my God whom I seek. For you, my flesh pines, and my soul thirsts. Like the earth, parched, lifeless, and without water. That's if I gaze towards you in the sanctuary to see your power and glory, right? Those are the two things that double there, right? They're like the parched earth, lifeless. So you're looking upon God there that you're seeking as the fullness of life, the fountain of life, right? But then at the same time it says to see your power and glory. That's the kingdom, right? Now Thomas defines the kingdom of God as the ordered society of those who see God, right? You see? It's kind of interesting the way in that psalm the two ways of speaking that you have in the baptism, right? That this is eternal life and this is the kingdom, right? You see? Are both there, right? Eternal life and the kingdom. Yeah. Now in the Our Father we use just one of those. We say that kingdom come, right? You see? But the reason why we say that kingdom come in some ways is because this is not the private good of Dwayne Burkwist or you, right? But this is the, what? Common good of the whole church, huh? Okay? And that's why they say the kingdom of God is the ordered society of those who see God, right? So you're not just praying for yourself but praying for the whole church, don't you say? That kingdom come. That's why you say Our Father rather than My Father and so on. But then it goes on, you see, and it says, With riches of a banquet shall my soul be filled and with exalted lips my mouth shall praise you. In other words, you won't stop with the banquet, which is the, what? Vision of God, right? You see what you call the banquet there, right? With the abundance of life there and so on. But also it says, with a banquet you don't just have one person. That would make sense to have a banquet of one person, right? So it's the whole church that is at this banquet, huh? This wedding feast as it's called in the parables, huh? But you don't stop there, right? But you refer back, right? Your own blessedness to the glory of God. In other words, your beatitude will glorify God. Yeah. And therefore you don't stop with your own beatitude, right? And that makes sense anyhow, because the will follows the intellect. Yeah. Anyhow, understanding. And you glorify God, and you will thank God, right? You see? Yeah. And you realize how perfectly gratuitous this was on his part, huh? You had no claim on his, what? His creation, his providence, or his salvation, right? It was completely uncalled for. So to speak, right? You know? But most fitting that he would do this to him, right? Mm-hmm. But entirely, he had no claim upon him, justice or anything like that. Right, right. You know? I got this. Can you hear me? Okay. Let's look at the reply here to the other objections. We've got a few minutes here. Yeah, yep. Okay. The second objection was saying that more were natural things are found to proceed from the imperfect to the perfect. And this also appears in the powers of the soul. So you seem to go from the sense to the understanding, which is higher, right? And you go from the understanding to the will, so aren't the will higher then, right? Okay. Notice what Thomas answers, huh? To the second, it should be said that that which is before in generation and time is imperfect, huh? It's potency or ability is imperfect, right? Because in one and the same thing, ability or potency in time, we see it's act, right? In imperfection, perfection. But that which is before simply and according to the order of nature is more perfect. In this sense, act is before what? Potency. And in this way, the understanding is before the will as the mover to the what? Moved, huh? And the active to the passive. Because it's the good as known by reason that moves the will, right? So the mover is always higher than the what? Moved, huh? For the good understood, he says, moves the will, huh? Okay. In the case, when you go from the senses, you see, to reason, huh? If you remember our study, the senses and even the imagination, the images, don't move reason until they've been, what? Enlightened by the act of understanding, right? And so it's not that the lower is the principal agent, right? It's the act of understanding. The agent, like this is called, right? You remember how Aristotle reasoned in the third book, huh? He argued that if the undergoing understanding is immaterial, right? And incorruptible and so on, then even more so is the act of understanding because the mover is always higher than the moved, huh? And so the understanding, then, moves the will, huh? And moves it as an end moves, right? The will moves the reason as an efficient cause, huh? But the end is the highest of all causes. Okay, now the third objection is the way it was solved in the second part of the article there because that's the one arguing that the will in comparison to that which is above the soul, huh? So in that respect, in some way, then, the will is higher for the virtue of charity is that by which we love God who's above us, huh? Thank you. So we have two more articles to do on this question, huh? Yeah. I mentioned some of you. Did you? Me. Yeah. Oh, yours. Okay. Next week I can't be here because I'm going down for the baptism of Lucie Marie. That's wonderful. Lucie Marie. Lucie Marie, that's my son Paul and his wife Elizabeth's fourth loan. Very good. Once, right? Where then? They're down in bourbon country there in Kentucky. They're at Fort Knox there, right? So we go down. Most of bourbon is made in the country, right? Oh, that's right. We visit a bourbon place when you're down there, you know? Kind of fun to see the way they make these things. Yeah. It's kind of funny how the county's dry, but they make bourbon there. Oh, right. I think the place they make Jack Daniels, too, is dry, you know? Yeah, okay. It's kind of funny. You think it'd be rip-roaring place, you know? It's not done at all. It's kind of funny. There are pockets around the country, you know, where everyone told me we were driving out to Minnesota and driving across New York State, and we had just picked out arbitrarily a place to stop, you know, to have a... there's a place to stop, there's a place to stop, there's a place to stop, you know, there's a place to stop, there's a place to stop,