De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 155: The Order of Knowledge and Self-Knowledge in the Human Mind

Transcript
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Now, in some cases, there's no order between objects known, right? Like, for example, I know what a triangle is, and I know what tragedy is. First, I'll define tragedy for me, right? But my knowledge of one doesn't help me to the other, does it? But now, what about my knowledge of what a square is, and my knowledge of what a cube is? Well, I can know what a square is without knowing what a cube is, but not vice versa. So it's an order among them, right? Okay? And in geometry, or in any science, reasoned out of knowledge, when you know a couple of statements and you put them together and draw a conclusion, right? Well, they're both in the order now of objects known, aren't they? The premises or statements you put together were known, right? And then you put them together, you do the conclusion, and the conclusion now became known, right? Okay? But I came to know the conclusion through the premises, right? So the conclusion is known because of the premises. So the premises then are what? More known, right? Okay? But you talk about my knowing geometry now habitually, right? I have a certain habit of geometry, so when I want to think about the triangle and the parallelogram, I tend to some extent anyway to think about these things and demonstrate some of these things, right? Is it by knowing what that habit is that I know these theorems of geometry? No. It's not a cause, it's not in the order of objects known there, is it? No. No. See? So I know the conclusions through knowing the premises. I don't know the conclusions through knowing what the habit of geometry is. You see that? Yeah. Okay? But in the same way, if I say, you say the same thing about my mind, right? Okay? Do I know the conclusions of geometry through my mind? Well, I know the conclusions of geometry through my mind in the sense of through an ability to know, right? But do I know the conclusions of geometry through knowing what my mind is as an object? No. And, you know, up at the trivia in the school, we give them Euclid, you know, to learn some Euclid, right? Some professors are more enthusiastic. You know, one summer I said, I'll teach little children, some other little children around the neighborhood, geometry, right? So we sat out under the trees and the boys persisted, but the girls wanted to go in and make cookies, so let them go in and make cookies instead. Okay? But even, you know, children, you know, science can take an interest in geometry, right? Sure. And learning, right? But they're not yet ready to understand what reason really is. But that's not what we suppose to, right? They will be using their reason, right? Sure. They have the ability to understand, right? Which is their reason, right? So by their ability to understand, you can say they understand geometry, right? But it's not by understanding what the ability to understand is that they understand geometry. It's not by the ability to understand as an object to be understood, right? That they understand what a triangle is or what a quadrilateral is or square is, right? My little children came home from kindergarten now and they have a piece of paper with a circle on it and a triangle and a square. And I tell you what this is. This is a circle. This is a square, right? Well, they're using their mind to some extent to know this, right? But not as an object known, right? You see the idea? So it's not in the same order, right? Okay. In the order of objects known, right? But with the word beginning, you know, this is the beginning you know first. You know other beginnings. By likeness, that first meaning, huh? And the further you go in these meanings, the more distant you become from the first meaning, huh? So Aristotle begins from the point is the beginning of the line, or the line here is the beginning of the table, right? And then he goes to where you might begin, right? Because you might begin where it's most handy for you to begin, right? Because you're not sitting at the beginning of the table, right? At a table. But then he goes to the sense in which the foundation of a house is the beginning of a house. And the keel is the foundation of a boat, and so on. And then he goes to the sense in which, what, the mover or the maker is the beginning of things. But notice, the mover or maker is not in the things that he moves or makes, is he? So you're moving much further away than the foundation of the house, right? Okay. And then he goes to the beginning in knowledge, right? That's the fifth sense, right? So, I mean, he's moving further and further away from that first sense, but it's a likeness all the way up. The beginning in our knowledge, huh? See, what we call the definitions and the axioms and postulates of geometry, they're the beginning of geometry, just like this is the beginning of the table here. There's some likeness there, right? But proportional likeness. And just as the table begins here and goes down there, so geometry begins with the axioms and the postulates and goes all the way down to the Pythagorean theorem and beyond, right? And so, you know, sometimes we use the expression, pursue a line of thought, right? See? It goes all the way back to the first meaning, right? That, you know, the point is where the emotion begins and you go down the line, right? The line of thought, right? So we understand those senses of beginning that are even immaterial by a likeness back to the beginning that is sensible. And it's usually tied up in these words with the continuous and time and the common sensibles, right? You talk about act. As Aristotle will point out in the Ninth Book of Wisdom, the first meaning of act is motion. And yet it's the least actual things almost except for prime matter. When I was in Quebec, you know, if you go to the movie theater, in those days you still have the news, you know, the news wheel. But in the French theaters say, Les actualités! This is actual, what's going on, right? You see? So you go all the way from motion to God, who is pure act, right? And where the act is moved, you see, in the study of Book IX, it's carried over, huh? It's carried over from motion to form, huh? It's carried over from motion to operations, and so on. You can see that when Shakespeare defined reason as the ability for large discourse looking before and after. Discourse comes in the Latin word for running, huh? So we speak of reason as going from one thing to another, huh? So it's something like motion, right, in reason. But it's not exactly the same thing, right? I can go from here to Mars now, probably, too, right now, in my mind, right? Talking about Mars and the red planet and so on. The canals on Mars, you know? When I first saw those canals, they thought, you know, they look at the canals. They had their first telescopes, you know. Oh, this is civilization, right? It's what the Egyptians had and Mesopotamia had, right? Irrigation, huh? They're hoping to find water up there, you know? Well, you better stop, too. I don't do more. I don't do more. That's a wonderful principle, though, in kind of which each thing more so, right? You know, I imagine, you know, I told you this story about Hillary, St. Hilary of Poitiers. He was a pagan philosopher, right? Greek philosopher, right? And then he converted, right? He was a great defender of the divinity and so on. Thomas quotes Hillary the most after Augustine, right? But anyway, if you read Hillary's book there, he describes how he came in, the occasion of where he's coming in, right? And he picked up the Bible, see? He ran across the Bible. He opened it up and he read, you know, Moses there talking to God and, you know, I have to tell them who sent me. What's your name? And he says, I am who am. And he was struck by that, see? And this was a motive of credibility for him as a philosopher, right? Okay? But when Aristotle talks about being there in the second book of wisdom and truth, right? He says that the order in being and the order in truth is the same. And then he brings in this principle, pocter quad unum quad quae hilum magis. And then he shows that the cause is more, what? True than the effect, right? So if Aristotle had picked up, you know, the Old Testament had read, I am who am. In the New Testament, I am the way, the truth, truth itself, then he would have seen the connection right away. That the one who is, who is, is truth itself, right? He has the fullness of both, right? There would have been a motive of credibility for Aristotle, right? Aristotle, like all the great Greek philosophers, and they all agree, the greatest, the Greek philosophers, that either God alone should be said to be wise, right? Or only God in the full sense, you know? So that if one could partake of the wisdom of God, that would be superior to the wisdom we could get by our natural reason. And that's how when Thomas takes up, you know, the nature of theology there in the first question, the Sumo, and the first questions there after the prologue to the sentences of Lombard, he'll say that it's wisdom, right? And wisdom in a higher sense, even than the wisdom that we call metaphysics or first philosophy, because you're partaking in God's own wisdom. And Aristotle says either God alone should be said to be wise, right? Or only God in the full sense. But the other gets it said before him, right? You know, Plato's last work, The Laws, you know, begins with him saying, Protagoras says that man is a measure of all things. So he says, no, no, no. God is the measure of all things, you know? I think that's very well said, huh? And Boethius, he makes use of that in the Constellation of Philosophy. But Heraclitus had said similar things, right? He says, as a child is to a man, so is a man to God. As an ape is to a man, so is a man to God. So in comparison to the ape, man is wise, huh? Homo sapiens. It should be popular in terms of the wise ape. But compared to God, man is an ape. So you see that idea of the inferiority of man's wisdom, huh? And when you go back to Pythagoras, you're supposed to have coined the word philosopher. You know, they wanted to call him wise because of his great discoveries, like the Pythagorean theorem and so on. He said, don't call me wise. God alone is wise. What shall we call you? We'll call me a lover of wisdom. We've got to call me something. So there's a humility there in the origin of the word philosopher. But you see that same humility in the great philosophers like Heraclitus and Empedocles, you see, and Empedocles. And, you know, they'll say, you know, stick by me and you'll learn not more than mortal wisdom is capable of. You know? And that humility was lost, you see, in the modern philosophers. Especially as they moved away from Christianity, they became, you know... Well, I mean, you know, Hegel puts, you know, philosophy above theology, right? Theology is kind of poetry, you know. And Feuerbach, who comes right after Hegel, he has this first little work called The Essence of Christianity, where he argues, you know, that that's just a poetic way of saying, you know, that man is God. And his arguments are very weak for that, right? And then Marx takes over, and Engels takes over. So you have a real pride there in these guys. The best you can say for them is they're not lukewarm like a lot of people in the modern world. I mean, they go all the way, you know, and try to replace God with man, you know. There's a tremendous difference between the modern philosophers there and the ancients, you know. But sometimes they seem to give themselves away, you know, like... I always quote these words of Jean-Paul Sartre, you know, the atheistic existentialist, where he says, we're not atheistic in the sense that we would exhaust ourselves by trying to prove he doesn't exist. You know, it's even harder, obviously, to try to prove he doesn't exist, right? Than prove that he does exist. But re-theistic in the sense it makes no difference to us whether he does or does not exist. That to me seems kind of crazy, you know, huh? I can see a person having some doubt about the existence of God, but to say it makes no difference whether he does or does not seems to me like it's will, right? And Marx, when he's identifying man with God for a block in his preface to his doctoral thesis, he says Prometheus, you know, he takes Prometheus as a symbol. And Prometheus is not in doubt in Zeus. He's revolted against God, and now he's being punished, right? But he's, you know, the first martyr of philosophy, Prometheus. But in a sense, he's almost saying, you know, that it's voluntaristic, huh? I will not serve, you know? In sooth, I hate all the gods, he quotes, you know, the words of Prometheus there in Aeschylus. It's kind of funny, you know, there's a publishing firm called Prometheus Books, and sometimes I get there, you know, unsolicited, you know, like all these things coming in the office every week, you know? It's kind of funny, you know, there are all these rationalist books, you know, but they take Prometheus as their symbol, right? And I think Shelley did too, huh? Shelley. Shelley's, you know, very perverse, huh? He's an atheist, an English poet. Yeah. Can you go back, I think, quite good, on your Aristotle's terse, you know, version of the Proctor-Claude quote there. How do students render it? I don't think we'll just... Yeah, okay, I'll expand it here, as I say. Yeah, I actually put it in this form, I expand it in this form, I say. When the saint longs to two things, right? But to one of them, because of the other. Okay? That's the thing. Okay? Then, one of them is the cause that belongs to the other, right? Then, it being the same thing, belongs more to the cause, right? Okay? Now, let's say, I always go through a simple example, right? wet the set of water and the... Sugar and the coffee. Yeah, yeah, it's a good kind of idea, simple ideas, right? Okay? Yeah. Okay? But now, let's say, let's take an example here from love, right? Okay? Sometimes we love somebody because we love somebody else. So, I mean, if I love someone who has children, right? Right. I'm going to have some love for his children. children, right? But because of him, right? Right. Now, if I love your children because I love you, whom do I love more? Yeah. Or take charity now, right? Charity in the strict sense. You're supposed to love your neighbor as well as God, right? But you love your neighbor because of God, right? Because of God. Yeah. So whom do you love more? Yeah. You see? Now, as I say, when our child is in logic, he's talking about the premises of a syllogism and the conclusion of a syllogism, right? You argue that the premises must be more known to us than the what? Conclusion, right? But notice, again, known is being said here of the premises and the conclusion, but the conclusion is known because of the premises. Therefore, the premises are what? More known, right? It would make any sense if they were not more known that you'd use them to prove the conclusion. Sure. And that would be saying that they're equally unknown from the premises. And then when you get into ethics, right, and you talk about the good especially, and then you say, if I desire this for the sake of that, then this is desirable because that's desirable, right? And therefore, which is more desirable? The end, right? If the end was not more desirable than the means, you wouldn't be desiring the means for the sake of the end, would you? Sure. The same thing with the mover, right? You see? If you say, I can do it with a kid sometimes, you know, kind of play with a stick or something else. Who's moving that, right? You know? You see? That piece of chocolate. Who's moving that piece of chocolate? Hmm? Is it me or this eraser? Yeah. But the eraser's moving it because it's being moved by me. Right. So who's more than a mover? You're more than a mover. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. And my favorite example is I say, you know, you stand on the edge of the cliff there and I take a pull and it gets you back and off you go, right? Okay. And I didn't even touch the guy. I didn't even touch the guy, right? You know? You should chop up the pole. That's the one that pushed him over, right? Yeah. But notice, huh? We're both movers, right? But the pole pushes you off only because of me, right? So I'm more responsible than the pole, right? If you have a train, right, the engine is pulling a bunch of, you know, wagons. Well, the one wagon is pulling the wagon behind it, right? But it's doing so only because it's being moved by the engine, right? So the engine is more a mover than the rest of the wagons that move only so far as they are moved, right? Mm-hmm. You see? So you can apply it in every science, right? To natural philosophy, you talk about the mover, right? That's just one place we do it. In logic, when you talk about more known and less known, right? In ethics, especially when you talk about what's more desirable and so on, right? There's a lot of applications to it. It's a very important, very important principle. We're the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. God, our enlightenment. Guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds or to illumine our images and arouse us to consider more quickly. St. Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Pray for us. And help us to understand what you're written. In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. The third one proceeds thus. It seems that the understanding does not know its own act. It happens to, I think, therefore I am. That is properly known, which is the object of the knowing power. But the act differs from the, what? Object. Therefore, the understanding does not know its own act. Just like the eye doesn't know seeing, but it knows color, which is its object, huh? And the ear here is not its hearing, but sound, its object. So he's saying the understanding then knows its object and not its act, the jigs to say. Moreover, whatever is known is known by some act. If, therefore, the understanding knows its own act, and by some act it knows that. And again, that act by another act. Therefore, this will go on forever, which seems impossible. But I don't see a difficulty in knowing what a triangle is and knowing that I know what a triangle is and knowing that I know what a triangle is. It's just that I want to continue forever because it's kind of not that much to be known. Moreover, just as the sense has itself to its own act, so the understanding. But the sense does not sense its own act, but this pertains or belongs to the common sense, as is said in the book about the soul. Therefore, neither does the understanding understand its own act. Of course, if the understanding didn't know its own act, there would be no logic. I would be free to that. Because the understanding can think about its own act that there can arise the art called logic. And that's why when I take the words of the seven wise men of Greece, know thyself, right? I say, well, that's addressed to man, right? The one who's able to know himself but doesn't know himself. But you could say in particular it's directed more to the soul than to the body because the soul can know what a soul is but the body doesn't know what a body is. But then, in a very special way, it's directed to reason itself because reason can know what reason is as well as know the other parts of us. But no other part knows itself. Anger doesn't know what anger is. The hand doesn't know what a hand is. The will doesn't know what the will is. But reason can know what reason is. But against this is what Augustine says in the tenth book about the Trinity. I understand myself to understand. I answer it should be said that as has been said before, each thing is known according as it is in act. But the last perfection of the understanding is its operation. For this is not an action tending towards another. It's not a making, which is a perfecting of the thing, what? Made, right? Which is a perfection of the thing done as building as a, what? Perfecting of the thing made. But it remains in the one doing as its perfection and act, as is said in the ninth book of the metaphysics. That's why Karl Marx is in a, and Engel's in a real difficulty when they make the highest thing in man is making, huh? Because is making a perfecting of the maker? Not as such, right? Making is essentially a perfecting of the, what? The thing made, yeah. If I make McDonald hamburgers, let's say, all my life, I'm not even learning how to make a McDonald hamburger, right? By making the McDonald hamburgers, right? And, but an act like understanding is a perfection of the, what? One understanding. So, man's last in is his greatest perfection. What has to be an act like understanding rather than an act like making houses or making McDonald hamburgers or making anything like that, huh? And you could say the making of a house is for the sake of the house. Making a McDonald hamburger is for the sake McDonald hamburgers, right? But the understanding is for its own sake. But it remains in the one doing as the perfection and act of it as is said in the ninth book of the metaphysics. This, therefore, is first what is understood about the understanding, namely its own what? Act of understanding, huh? Because that's its act, right? Something is known insofar as it's an act. But about this, diverse understandings have themselves in diverse ways. Intellectus there is taking the sense of the power of understanding, right? For there is one understanding, namely the divine understanding, which is its own what? Act of understanding. There's no what? Composition in God, right? So there's no distinction in God between his ability to understand, if you want to speak of that, and his actually understanding. They're one and the same. And thus in God is the same what understands itself to understand and what understands its own what? Essence or nature or substance. Because his very substance, his very nature, his very essence, is his what? Act of understanding, huh? There is, however, another understanding, another ability to understand, namely the angelic, which is not its own understanding, as has been said above in the Treatise on the Angels. But nevertheless, the first object of its act of understanding is its own what? Nature, huh? Its own essence, huh? Whence, although other is in the angel, by reason, that it understands itself to understand, and that it understands its own nature or essence, nevertheless, by one and the same act, it understands both. Because this, which is to understand its own, what? Nature essence, is the proper perfection of its own nature essence. But together and by one act, a thing is understood with its, what? Perfection. Now, finally, we come down to us. There is, however, another understanding, namely the human, which is neither its own, what? Act of understanding, its own to understand, nor is the, what? First object of its act of understanding, its own nature, but something, what? Outside. Namely the nature of a material thing, huh? So the child is thinking of his toy, right? And therefore, what is first known by the human understanding is an object of this sort. But what it is is something sensed or imagined, right? And secondarily is known, huh? The very act by which the object is known. And then by the act is known the, what? Understanding itself. That's the order Aristotle teaches us in the Dianima, right? We know the powers through the acts, and the acts through the, what? Object, right? So I understand what a triangle is before I understand that I understand what a triangle is. And I understand that I understand what a triangle is before I understand that I have the ability to understand. And I understand the ability to understand before I know that my soul is not entirely immersed in matter. Okay? And through its act is known the understanding itself, meaning the ability to understand, of which it is a perfection, the act of understanding. And therefore, the philosopher says, and that's the Dianima, that the objects are known before the acts and the acts before the, what? Powers, right? And something like that takes place in ethics, too, where you know the objects of the virtues before the act and the act before the, what? Virtue, right? Okay. So to eat moderately is more known to us than the virtue of moderation, right? Okay. Or to act bravely is more known to us than the virtue of courage, huh? So sometimes you don't know whether you have the virtue of courage until you get on the battlefield, right? And then you might find out. You read, you know, even the instructions sometimes to the troops there of George Washington, right? And how you assume you're all going to go forward, right? But if anybody should be so, you know, dastardly, you know, to retreat without orders, you'll be shocked, right? And they say that happens even, you know, in more modern times, right, huh? That your Marine officer is behind you there to shoot you if you don't go forward when you're told to go forward. So you might as well be a dead hero than a dead coward, right? So, we don't know how many men really have the virtue of courage, huh? Okay, now the first objection said that what you know is the object of the knowing power, huh? But the act is not the object. To the first, therefore, it should be said that the object of the understanding is something very, what, common, huh? Very general. So, to wit, being, and what? Truth, right? Under which is grasped even the very act of what? Understanding, huh? Of course, you see when the Greeks said you can't get something out of nothing. How universal is something? Is there anything that doesn't come under something? So you're distinguishing between something and nothing, right? But anything that is comes under something, right? So there's something kind of infinite about our, what? Mind, huh? Because in knowing the difference between something and nothing, in a way, it's, what? In general, open to knowing anything, huh? And so the first thing, you know, that we find Heraclitus saying about the mind is that it's infinite. And in the great fragment from Anaxagra, it's the first guy to really get into the mind. The first thing he says about the mind is that it's, what, infinite, right? And as I always say to the student, now when he says the mind is infinite, does he mean like materialists were saying that air was infinite? It's infinite in what? Extent, huh? Well, he goes on to say later on that the mind's the thinnest of things. So it's not infinite in the sense that it's, what, spread out like that. No, no. But it's infinite in its, what, object, right? So it's not limited to color like the eye is or to sound like the ear, but it can know color and sound, but it's not even limited to the sensible because it knows the difference between something and, what, nothing. But then the second thing that Anaxagra says is that the mind is, what, self-ruling, huh? And I say, well, what's the connection between the first thing he says, that it's infinite, and the second thing he says, it's self-ruling? Well, it couldn't be self-ruling if it was not self-knowing. So there's a connection between self-knowing and self-ruling, on the one hand. But likewise, huh? If the mind is unlimited, in a way, infinite in its ability to know, and that's shown mainly by its knowing universal, I mean, I even know that no odd number is even, right? An odd number covers an infinity. I'm thinking, in a way, in a general way, about infinity of things here when I say no odd number is even, huh? But if the mind is infinite in its object in some way, then it can know not only other things, but even know, what, itself, right? So the connection between the mind then being infinite and its ability to know, and its being self-knowing, and then between its being self-knowing and its being self-ruling, huh? So that's quite an interesting fragment there we have. It says a lot of other things, too, about the mind. We did that, didn't we, one time, or what? I thought we did that one time, didn't we? With some of you, anyone? Did there's some of those fragments? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. We did that. That was kind of a big fragment, DK-12, you know, where he says all these different things about the mind. Yeah, we went through that. So let's go back to the reply here. The object of the understanding is something common, namely... being or thing or something, and true, under which is comprehended also the very act of understanding, once the understanding is able to know its own act, but not first, not first, because neither is the first object of understanding in the present state of things, just any being or true, right? But being and true considered in what? Material things, huh? That's very important what he's saying there, huh? From which it goes to a knowledge of all other things. And that's what he's saying there, huh? Being and truth considered in material things, huh? And I always go, to try to kind of explain that a bit, go back to the observation of Aristotle in the fourth book of Natural Hearing, where he says that it's a common opinion among the Greek philosophers before him that whatever is must be somewhere. And if it isn't somewhere, it doesn't exist, right? So they're identifying what is with what is in place, right? And what is not in place is not. What to be in place is a property of actual bodies, huh? So they're identifying what is basically substance with bodies, huh? Okay? And that's kind of the common thought of men even today, right? And even, you know, you talk to Catholics or Christians sometimes, they have a hard time seeing that, huh? I think about my soul being separated from my body, right? Is my body going to be here and my soul over there? Or is my body going to be in some place, some gray somewhere, I guess? But my soul, will that be in some other place? Won't be in place, huh? But the point is, when you think, you always use these images, and the images are continuous, so you think that everything is continuous, and therefore in some place. And you can't imagine not being in place. But neither God nor the angels are in place, huh? And when my soul is separated from my body, it won't be in place. I find it very hard at first to think about, huh? And so in a way, in a way, in wisdom, where you want to talk about being as common to bodies and to angels and to immaterial things, right? You have to, in a way, ascend from the particular to the general, huh? And you see it very clearly in the book referred to here, in the ninth book of wisdom, huh? Because the ninth book of wisdom is about ability and act. And in the first part of the, of the three parts of that book, Aristotle talks about act and ability as they're tied to motion and therefore to material things. And it's time for the second part that he begins to rise above that, huh? And shows act insofar, and considers act insofar as it can be found even in immaterial things, as well as material things, huh? And then in the third part of that book, he brings out the order which enables us to see that the first cause, namely God, will be pure act, huh? But notice, huh, this goes from the first to the second part, right? He's ascending from, what, being in the sense of act and ability, considered in material things, huh? Okay? That's very important, huh? Now, a lot of these, um, bad Thomists, you know, they'll quote, uh, Thomas, who often quotes Avicenna, the first thing our mind understands is being, huh? But they identify that being that we first understand with the subject of wisdom, which is being as being, right? But in the beginning, the beginning, the being we really know in the beginning is being considered in, what, material things, huh? And it's not until we have some kind of, of, uh, proof, huh, that there exists something that is not material, right, that our mind would begin to separate being from, uh, body, huh? Or to separate substance from body and see that substance is something more universal. And eventually to see that these immaterial substances are more substances in a way than the bodies are. But in the beginning, we identify what is with what is in place. Okay? Is that what they call that, that, that mistaken idea that the first object to be, uh, of our minds? Is that, is that generalized being? Is that what they call the intuition of being? Is it? Well, it could be, yeah. I mean, you gotta say, when you say that the first thing understood by our mind is being, uh, that something is, um, it's not that very universal understanding of being that's common to us and the angels, or to bodies and angels, but it's, as he says, being considered in what? Material things, uh, right? Cardinal Cajetan, you know, the one who has the commentary on the Summa there, you know? Uh, his, his, uh, phrase is, at first being understood is, ends concretum, in quiditate sensibile, right? So it's being concretely in a, what? But what it is is something sensible, huh? And, uh, they say, you just go back to that, to that, uh, book four, Aristotle's Natural Hearing, where he says that the Greeks before him, that was a common opinion, right? Whatever he is, must be somewhere. It's in some place. If it isn't somewhere, doesn't, what? Exist, huh? So it's very hard for us to rise above images, huh? And, uh, when you try to, yes? Did Joe Song fall into that snare among his other eras, or? He might have, yeah. I can't remember whether he did or not, but, uh, that's kind of a common thing, though, people will, you know, quote Thomas, or a lot of times he'll quote, uh, have a son who says that being is what we first understand, huh? And, uh, but here he's more precise, right, where he's saying, huh? Um, what is first understood by us, um, uh, is not just any being or a true, but being and true considered in material things, huh? And you see that reflected, too, in our, in our, um, in our statements, huh? About being, because they have a noun and a verb, right? And a verb signifies with time, either past or present of future. So we're thinking of everything as being continuous like a body, therefore in place, and being in, what? Time, huh? And then I think it's the, the work is the one on sense and the sensible, those, those little particular works that Aristotle has following upon the book on the soul, where he says, you know, because we don't think without images, right? We always think with the continuous and in time, huh? And so when we finally come to understand so far as we can say God, we have to very much, uh, know him negatively in this life, right? So we say God is not a body, right? Or when you look at the definition of eternity, huh? Uh, the definition of eternity, um, involves, um, perhaps two negations of what's in the definition of time, and two negations, uh, about the, the now of time. And the definition of eternity is totesimo, right? At perfecta possessio, vitae in terminabilis, right? The all at once, you could say, huh? And perfect possession of unending life. Now, the life of a man, or the life of a dog, or the life of a tree is in time. It's measured by time, right? And it has a beginning in time, and it has an end in time, right? Why the life of God has no beginning and no end, huh? So you negate the beginning and the end that life in time has when you speak of the divine life, which is an eternity. And that's put out by interminabilis, right? The interminabilis, right? The interminabilis, right? The interminabilis, right? The interminabilis, right? The interminabilis, right? The interminabilis,