Love & Friendship
Lecture 3: Love as Undergoing and the Conformity of the Heart

Transcript
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My son's going to take the wine glass and go down there. I'll take the wine glass and she walks away. No kidding. Yeah. In such a sense desire, he says, in the beast, right? But nevertheless in men, this partakes to some extent of freedom, insofar as it can obey, what, reason, right? There is, moreover, another desirer, fouling upon the grasp of the one desiring by free judgment. The reason why reason has free judgment is because it knows it's universal. And there's nothing so good in this world that reason can't find some reason to regard it as bad because it always prevents you from doing something else that's good, right? So I can see it as bad, right? So getting up and going to Mass on Sunday prevents me from sleeping another hour, right? So it's bad, right? So you have this ability, right, to judge things even other than they are, right? To judge the good as bad and the bad as good, huh? Like the witches say in Macbeth, right? Fair as foul, foul as fair, hover through the fog and filthy air. In such as reasonable or understandable desire, which is called willing, huh? So he's distinguishing three kinds here, right? In each of these desires, that is called love, which is the beginning, right, of a motion tending towards the end-loved. In natural desire, the beginning of this motion is the connaturality, huh, of the one desiring to that to which it tends, which can be called natural love, right, huh? Which is the plant loving or liking, right? This. And in the old physics there, just as the connaturality of a heavy body to the middle place is through heaviness and can be called naturally natural love, right? And likewise, the fitting of the sense desire or the will to some good, that is, the agreement of the good, is called sense love or understandable or reasonable love. Sense love, therefore, is in sense desire as understandable love as in understandable desire. And I use the reason why it pertains to the concupiscible rather than to the irascible. And it pertains to the concupiscible because it is said with respect to good absolutely, not by reference to the difficulty, right, which is the object of the irascible, right? So if there's no difficulty in getting what I want, you know, if there's a bowl of peanuts there, right, or a bowl of candy, whatever else that I like, huh, you know, and just reach over and, you know, no irascible emotion at all, right, huh, okay? But if you're pulling the bowl away from me, right, like you've had enough purpose, right? I might get a little angry at you, you see, you know, because you're now an impediment and a difficulty in the way of my getting what I want, huh? You see? Okay? And so Aristotle says the animals, they fight over food, right? If you throw a piece of meat out there between two dogs, you might have a fight, huh? Okay? Just one dog, no, you're going to need the meat, right? Well, there's another dog there who wants a piece of meat, too, but now it's going to be difficult to get that piece of meat, huh? See? So they fight over food and sex, he says, huh? They love fighting over partners there in the animal world, huh? Okay? But there's some kind of difficulty in getting what you want or avoiding what you want to avoid, right? And then you have the irascible emotions, arising, huh? And it pertains to the concupiscible because it is said with respect to good absolutely, not by reference to the, what? Difficult, which is the object of the, what? Irascible, right? Okay? You can see where the theological virtue of hope is named from, what? And the original name of the emotion down in, what? The Thumas, right? Because you're dealing here with a good that is, what? Difficult, huh? Okay? Take that down. Our charity is more named from love, right? Okay? Not naming the difficulty, right? Now, the first objection was like I took it to be, right? I was talking about the love of wisdom, right? Well, that's not... I had an emotion, right? I told you a funny story when I was in college. I used to always syllogize, right? And I could, huh? And so this little Polish professor of philosophy there was a little bit frustrated with me. So one day he said to me in class, you know, in front of the whole class, Mr. Berkwist, he said, do you have an emotional attachment to the syllogism? And I just laughed and said, well, I could have an emotional attachment to a girl, but hardly an emotional attachment to the syllogism. But my reason respects the syllogism because it's an argument which the conclusion follows necessarily. And that's why it gives you so much difficulty. I didn't add that. I could have, right? But the same way, you know, I mean, the love of wisdom is not, what, an emotion, right? Okay? And the same way the love of God is primarily an act of the will. It's not a, what, emotion. And I can remember sitting in grade school in church there and listening to the priest the sermon, talk about the love of God, right, huh? When I heard the word love, I thought of girls. And what does this mean, the love of God, right, huh? You see? And so I'm having a little difficulty there distinguishing between the love that is an emotion and the love that is an act of the, what, will, right? And sometimes you're not too sure, you know, what your love is. You might have a little bit of both loves in some cases, right? Okay? When Augustine and Thomas talk about music, huh? Kind of interesting, right? You know? Does music move you to the love of God, huh? See? Is it moving kind of the will through the emotions or what is it doing, right? It's not always clear what it's doing, huh? Some ambiguity. But that's one of the distinctions of the kinds of love that we'll meet that are on the article, so. He's already touched upon it here, huh? So, you see, we use, we name first the emotions and then we carry the word over and place it upon the acts of the will by reason of a certain likeness that they have to the emotions. But you drop out the bodily aspect of the emotion because the will, like the reason, is immaterial. But the emotions we have, in a way, in common with the beasts, although maybe in a higher way, huh? By the will, we have in common with the guardian angels, as we spoke earlier, in God himself, right? So the love of wisdom, then, is not an emotion, but it's the act of the will that is like love, right? It is the emotion. So it's called a love. Of course, in Greek, you know, you've got to be careful because in Greek you have more than one word for love, right? And so, in English we don't have as many words for these things, right? You know, the famous book of C.S. Lewis there, The Four Loves, you may have seen that. And he's talking about four different words in Greek, huh? Phileia and Storgeia and Eros and so on, right? And Agapeia, okay? But in our translations of the Bible, you'll find, you know, these different words translated with the same word may be love, right? In some cases, the word might be, you know, Agapeia, it might be Eros. The second objection was the one from Augustine, where Augustine seems to be saying that love is all these things, right? Well, it's all these things in the sense that it's the cause of them all, right? To the second, it should be said that love is said to be fear, joy, desire, and sadness. Not essentially as the same thing, right? But as their, what? Cause, right? That's easy enough to see. And it's natural love, huh? To the third, it should be said that natural love is not only in the powers of the living soul, as I say, the plant soul, but in all powers of the soul, right? They all have a natural inclination to something. And also in all parts of the body. And generally in all things, because as Dionysius says in the fourth chapter about the divine names, the beautiful and good is lovable for all, since each thing has connaturality to that which is suitable to it according to its nature. So in a sense of time, What I'm doing here in the first article is determining whether the emotion, to begin with, of love, belongs in this group of emotions, or in this group of emotions, right? And the answer is that it belongs to this first group, right? Because it regards the good without qualification, absolutely. In order to be among this group, we would have to regard some difficulty in getting what is good, or some difficulty in avoiding what is bad, or some difficulty in getting rid of what is bad already forced upon you, right? Okay? So hope and despair arise when there's a difficulty in getting the good that you want to, and fear or boldness arise when there's a difficulty in the way of avoiding what is bad, right? And anger when there's a difficulty in getting rid of what is harmful, right? So if a mosquito lands in my finger and starts eating me, I go, you know? They don't make it hate me, you know? See? But if you're standing on my feet, you're a bully, and you're standing on my feet, you know, causing a deep breath of pain in my feet, and I say, you know, you're on my feet, and you say, so what? But, you know, it's a little difficult to hear, right? You know? And this calls probably for somewhat anger, right? Of course, you see anger in our Lord, right? When he chases the money changes on the temple, right? In Mozart's music, you'll see that representing, you know, maybe the sadness and the anger trying to get rid of the cause of the sadness, right? Maybe he's succeeding or not succeeding, you know? But very beautiful when he does it, huh? Mozart represents anger mainly in the D minor concerto and the C minor concerto, right? But you have it in the opera stuma. There's a beautiful letter from Mozart to his father where he's describing his imitation of anger in the abduction from this radio. And he says that a man who gets angry like Osmond does in the opera, he kind of loses control of himself, right? He says, the music must represent this, he says, but not in a way that is displeasing to the ears. Or in other words, ceasing to be music. Music for Mozart has got to be pleasing to the ears, right? Of course, even the representation of sadness in Mozart is pleasing to the ears. And you hear it, huh? Interesting. Okay, I think we should stop here because it's about that much before 30. So, next time we'll begin. Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor. May we pray for us. And help us to understand all that you have written. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. Incidentally, I was reading Thomas there in the commentary on Matthew. You know, the people that rose from the dead after the resurrection, came down to the city and appeared. And Thomas, you know, touches upon the question now, did they die again? And then, you know, and Thomas said they didn't die. They went with Christ to heaven. But, he said, Lazarus died again. But the ones who rose from the dead were witnesses to his, what, resurrection. For you rise to die no more, right? And be, you know, no benefit to them to rise and have to die again, right? But not to have to die once. That's what I thought he said. And I was kind of surprised at that, you know. So, you mean body and soul? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think the church has ever, you know, decided that. It's a pleasant version of your body, you know. But I was kind of surprised at him saying that, you know. Kind of forgotten he said that. I know what the different church fathers, you know what Augustus is. I don't know what Augustus is or the other church fathers, but it would be kind of an interesting point. I think it's a kind of man, because how long is on Matthew? Yeah, yeah. Okay, look on page 11 now, your present reading. Everybody's got the text here. I have another one here. Okay, these are copies. All set. We had a lot of texts on love being an undergoing, right? And being wounded, right? And we tried to explain why love is still said to be a giving rather than a taking. What was the reason for saying that? It didn't mean that in what? In contrast to knowing? Yeah, it said knowing is a taking, right? A grasping, yeah, you know? Like understanding is a grasping. And knowing, loving, is a giving, right? But why should love be said to be a giving, at least for us, if when you start to love somebody or something, your heart is being moved by the goodness of that object? Because that's receiving, right? Okay? So why do we say that? Because that's commonly said, right? We speak of giving your love to someone or something, right? My heart's not in it. Or I left my heart in San Francisco, right? So the heart is where your treasure is. Or it says, there you're, excuse me, where you're, yeah, yeah. Where your treasure is, there your heart shall be, right? Yeah. Why do we say that? In the fact, did you say, in the fact of our love that we want to give back? Well, other things that we give, good things we give to someone, it's just because we love them, right? But why is the loving itself said to be a giving? The desire, pursuing it? No. I thought initially, I thought it was just the contrast. Well, it's a contrast that Aristotle has in the sixth book of wisdom between the good and the true, right? That the true is primarily in the mind. And so learning, as you know, is a business of trying to get things into your head. Okay? And that's why that little image of Augustine, you know, trying to understand the Trinity, right? It's like trying to put the ocean into that little hole. Trying to get this thing into your mind, your little cramped mind there. But love, the good rather, is in things. And we're pointing out how there's the same knowledge of contraries, right? And even the knowledge of the bad is good. Okay? But there's not the same love of the good and the bad. And the love of the bad makes you bad. Because you're going out to the thing as it is in itself. So that's why the love is said to be a giving. Because its object is in things rather than the reverse. Okay? But nevertheless, our love, originally, is an undergoing. It's a result, and especially emotions, but even the will. It's being what? Moved by the object in some way, right? It's undergoing something, right? That's why you had all those texts. And then the text for the wound of love, right? Because very much as you're being wounded, you're being acted upon, right? You're undergoing. And we speak of the wound of love, both in romantic love and in the love of charity, right? With the saints. So these all point to the fact that love is acted upon. The heart is acted upon by its object. And in general, you can say that's true about all the emotions. The object acts upon the power, originally. You may do something afterwards because of that, actively. But because you've been acted on already. That's what's true about God, right? God's love is the cause of the good in creatures, huh? But our love is aroused by the good in creatures, or the good in God himself. Second objection. Moreover, love is a certain union or binding, according to Augustine, the book about the Trinity. So they even speak sometimes of the Holy Spirit, being a kind of bond between the two persons of the Father and the Son, right? But union or binding is not an undergoing, but more a, what? Relation, right? Therefore, love is not an undergoing. Further, Damascene, St. John Damascene, says in the second book, the Philia Orthodox, I guess, huh? That undergoing is a, what? Motion, huh? Love, however, does not... It does not imply the movement of the desiring power, which is desire, but the origin of this motion. As he said before, right, love gives rise to desire or wanting when the object you love is not had, right? Love gives rise to joy or pleasure when the object you love is possessed by you or had by you or gotten by you, right? So pleasure seems to be kind of resting in the object, say, but desire seems to be a pursuit of the object. And that's why in Latin, you know, where I translate desire and power, the Latin word is appetitus, right? In appetitus, we get our word appetite. It could name, first of all, the desire itself, right? But then also it's used in Latin to name the ability to desire, the power to desire, right? But that power, which we might call popularly the heart, if you want to do it, go on to a better name, it's named from desire, right? The act which is most like what? Motion. Remember the famous words of Shakespeare there in Taurus and Cressida? Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs, right? So if you want somebody's attention, you'll wait, right? At the train station or something, you know, here we are. If you don't want people to notice you, you don't move, huh? Maybe they'll pass you by, huh? So the act that is most like motion gives its name to the power. And something like that would reason, huh? Because reason is like emotion of the reason, huh? Okay? Therefore, love is not an undergoing. But against this is what the philosopher says, huh? In the Eighth Book of the Nicomachean Ethics, that love is an undergoing, huh? Okay? Now, it's interesting, the words we use in English, huh? Undergoing and the growth of that is what? Act, move on? And etymologically, these words have got the idea of above and below, right? You know, if we pick a fight with the guy sitting next to you in the bar, right? You both stand up. You look at that like him. Now you're thinking twice, I think this is a good idea, right? Okay? I've given you an example here by a little nephew at a time. He's a big boy. He's a married guy, buddy. He's a little guy, huh? He would build something up in the family room there. Playroom and he'd... He was taller than him, he'd go, Oh, oh, oh, oh! But if it was lower than him, he'd knock him over and laugh. So it's sad that you act upon something, right? And you know how much easier it is to hammer something like this than to hammer things into a ceiling, you know? Okay? Well, there's a word in English, too, you know, like, what is Mark Anthony saying? You know, obviously... Well, this is what he wore. What Caesar wore. The day he overcame the nervii, right? It doesn't say we're overcome, right? You're above, okay? So, these are relatives, right, huh? Okay? Interesting words, huh? In Latin, they'll have axio and passio. It won't have that above and below etymology that our words have. And neither in Greek, they have poien and pascain, you know? I answer that it should be said that undergoing is the effect of the agent in what is acted upon, huh? A natural agent, however, brings about a two-fold effect in what is acted upon. For first, it gives the form, and second, it gives the motion that follows upon the form. And he takes the example here from the ancient physics, huh? As the generator gives weight to the body, which is like the form, huh? And then the motion following it where it falls to the ground, right? Okay? And the weight itself, which is the source of the motion to a natural place, huh? The place that fits it. On account of the weight, is able in some way to be called natural love, huh? And notice there's a certain likeness that Thomas sees there, right? Because of its weight, And then there's a certain likeness that Thomas sees there, right? And then there's a certain likeness that Thomas sees there, right? And then there's a certain likeness that Thomas sees there, right? The body will what? Fall to a lower place, right? And because of its weight, it will rest once it gets to that place. The same way, by reason of the love in my heart, right? I will what? Move towards the good, I don't have it, and I will rest in the good, right? Thou hast made us for thyself, and thy hearts are restless until they rest in thee, right? Yeah, use a comparison of weight, too. Thus also, he says, the desirable itself gives to the desiring power first a certain adaptation, or fitting with it, which is the agreeableness of the desire, desirable. So in a sense, what the good is doing, the desirable is doing, is conforming your heart to itself, right? And from that conformity of the heart with its object, there follows movement to the desirable, right? And so there's a kind of circularity, right, in this, huh? That the desirable acts upon my heart, conforming to it, then I go out seeking that desirable thing, right? And so what was the beginning, we're coming back to it again, huh? That's like a circle, right? There's a circle in knowing, too, huh? Like Aristotle said and Einstein both said, huh? You know, knowledge begins in the senses, and you come back to the senses in the end to judge what you're thinking. So it's the beginning and the end is a kind of circle. There's something like that in love, right? It starts in the desirable, acting upon my heart, and my heart goes out after it. For the desirable moves the desiring power, putting itself in the other's aim. And the desiring power tends towards really achieving the desirable, so that there is the end of the motion, where was its beginning. So we compare it to a circle, because in a circle, the beginning is also the end. Why in a straight line, the beginning of the line is not the end, huh? So this is often used as comparison to the circle. You find that in Naximander, the second thinker we have, among the natural philosophers. What is the beginning of things, he says, is also the end. And of course, the early Greek thinkers are materialists, right? But they're thinking of what we say. Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return, right? Okay, so he came from dust, and we'll turn back to dust, right? Okay? But then later on, you realize that God is the beginning of things, although not the sense of matter, but the sense of the maker, right? He's also the end, but in the sense of the good, the purpose, right? So I'm the alpha and the omega, right? So reality is basically what? Circular. Because the beginning is also the, what? End, huh? It's better to have a beginning and end in the sense of God, than the sense of, what? Matter. Because then your end means your destruction, right? Rather than your purpose. The first change, therefore, of the desiring power, by the desirable, is called love, which is nothing other than the, what? Agreement with it of the desirable. It's a conformity, right? Of the heart with the subject. That's what it is. That's what love is. And from this agreement, huh? This conformity, or agreement of the heart with the subject, there follows movement to the desirable, if you don't have it, which is desire, huh? Or wanting, to use the English word, right? And then last, rest, which is what? Joy, huh? Okay? And notice how we sometimes speak there, going back to that natural love you talked about, huh? Sometimes you try and put something into a hole, or skew something in, and it's not, doesn't fit, you know? If you try and put, like, say, a square peg into a round hole, right? We might very well say, even the practical man, it doesn't want to go, right? You've heard, you said it probably yourself at some time, right? Why doesn't it want to go? to go, see? Well, because it doesn't fit that hole, right? It's not conformed to that hole, right? So, the, while you're putting the square peg in a square hole, right, it's conformed to that, and it wants to go, right? Okay? So, when your heart is conformed to the object, then it wants that object, yeah? And when it gets it, then it rejoices, huh? Okay? So, that's what love basically is, the conformity of the heart with its object. Therefore, since love consists in a certain change of the desiring power by the desirable, now, a lot of times, as I say, I substitute, you know, the word heart for desiring power a little more colloquial, right? But desiring power there is kind of an attempt to put the Latin word of pity to us, right? Not to name the desire like it sometimes does, but more to name the, what, desiring power, that's the Latin word. Therefore, since love consists in a certain change of the desiring power by the desirable, it is manifest that love is an undergoing, most properly as it is in the concupiscible, right, the emotions, right? But in a more general sense, and by an extended name, as it is in even the, what, will, right? Okay? So, when I begin to, what, love wisdom, my heart is conformed in some way to, what, wisdom. And I've quoted, I think, the words of a German poet, the Goethe, we are shaped and fashioned by what we love, huh? Very well said, huh? The conformity means you've been shaped in some way by the thing, huh? Now, the first objection was taken from the text of Dionysius, where he speaks of love as being a virtue, which seems to be, what, excellence of power, right, huh? And power seems to be a thing that acts upon things, you know, a mover, right? He says, to the first objection, it should be said that because virtue signifies the origin of motion or action, therefore love, insofar as it is the source of the desiring power's movement, is called virtue by Dionysius, right? Okay? In other words, after my heart has already been, what, formed, conformed to the object, right, then it's the source of my movement towards that object, right? Okay? But that comes there on, right? Do you think? That comes as an effect of the fact that my heart has already been acted upon by the object, right? So this use would be of an attribution, the effect of the fact? Oh, yeah, an effect that comes to it, yeah, yeah. But first that object impressed my heart, huh? It impressed me, it pressed upon me, right? And when something presses upon it, it tends to conform your heart to it, right? See? If the object made no impression upon your heart, then your heart has not been, what, conformed, right? When making cookies, you know, Christmas cookies, you know, it presses upon this, right? Okay? And that's why they use a very concrete image of the, what, the wax, right, which was very common in those days in letters, right? And you stamp the wax, right? So you press upon the wax your form, or the form of your seal, right? And that's what the good does upon the heart, right? Okay? If the heart, it all begins to like that thing, right? Okay? But you've got a hard heart. You can't get any impression upon, and the object can't get any impression upon your heart. Your heart is slow to be impressed, and therefore slow to what? Love, huh? Now the same thing in the second objection, that the union, that relation, is something that follows, again, upon the what? Love, right? To the second it should be said, that union pertains to love, insofar as the lover, through the agreement of his heart, right? Through the agreement of his desiring power, has himself to what is loved, as to himself, or to something of himself, that pertains to him now. And thus it is clear that love is not the relation itself of union, but that union follows upon what? love, huh? Whence also Dionysius says that love is a power that unites, huh? Because we're united because we love each other, right? Okay? But I'm in some sense united with even wisdom, which doesn't love me, but because I love it, right? I'm attached to it, right? Okay? Whence also Dionysius says that love is a power that unites. And the philosopher says in the second book of the politics that union is the work of love, right? The second effect of love, huh? Thomas would have a lot more to say about union when he talks about the first effect of love, where the union is the effect of love, right? We make a lot more distinctions, but... Now the third objection was talking about what? Isn't desire the motion of the heart? Okay? To the third it should be said that love, although it does not name the motion of the desiring power tending towards the desirable, it names nevertheless the motion of the desiring power by which it is changed by the what? Desirable, right? So that the desirable is agreeable with it. Okay? And it's just a little bit like if I was to say, you know, is my glass here the mover or the moved? Yeah. It's causing the paper to move across the table, right? But it's originally being moved by my hand, right? So it's a moved mover, right? But it may not be in time necessarily, but in causality, the moved mover is moved before it moves another thing. It's able to move another only because it's being moved itself, right? So my love would be giving rise to a desire for candy or whatever it is because the candy had already impressed itself upon my heart, see? And so I like candy, right? And then I moved to get some candy. We all have our weaknesses. Okay? So you're all convinced that love is undergoing now? Okay? Now notice, the first two articles here, and especially the second article here, is really bringing out the nature of love, right? Okay? Now in the next two articles, he's going to be dividing love in two ways, right? And the first division is really the distinction between the love, which is an emotion, and the love, which is a what? Act of the will, right? Okay? And then he's going to give another division of love into what's called in Latin the amor concupiscentia and the amor amicitia, yeah? But the love of wishing well and the love of wanting, they sometimes translate those as, huh? Okay? And he might give the division into sense love and chosen love or the emotion and the act of the will first, because the second division pertains more to the will. And once you understand, really, what the emotions are and how the emotions follow upon the senses, and that's why the other animals even have emotions, right? You begin to realize that the senses have a very contracted knowledge of the good. The only way my senses know good and bad is by what is agreeable to my senses, pleasing to my senses, or disagreeable to my senses, painful to my senses, right? And going back to the good now, right? If all my senses know the good as, is what is agreeable to my senses, and you'll be talking about... but my pleasure. And so, if I'm pursuing my pleasure, am I loving you in the sense of wishing well to you? No. At best, you might be the good, I want to please me. In which case, you wouldn't have that love of wishing well, really, in the emotions as such. So it may be that he gives this distinction first, right? Because the second distinction, right? It's really almost like a subdivision of the love, which can be in the new will. You could have maybe something of the love of wanting, you know, in the sense love, but it wouldn't be divided in the sense love, but a second division, because it doesn't really have that love of wishing well. Okay? Kind of a subtle thing, right? So there may be a reason why he gives these two divisions, in the order that he does. Okay? Do you see what I'm saying? Because the first is the distinction between the love, which falls upon the senses, the sense love, what you could call the emotions, or in Latin they call them the passions, right? And the love, which is an act of the will. And the love, which is an act of the will, can be either of two kinds. But maybe that love, which is the emotion, is only one of those two kinds, huh? So that second division is more like a, what, subdivision of the love, which is the will, huh? Although it has some application, one may be one of them, to the love that is the emotions, huh? So let's look a little bit at the readings here, from the great poet here. You should know these are by Shakespeare, right? I don't bother to write the name Shakespeare, right? To say the truth, huh? Reason and love keep little company together nowadays, huh? Okay, that's in one of the love and friendship romances of the Summer Night's Dream, huh? What kind of love are you talking about there, do you think? Want, design, love. Yeah, yeah. Not the love that follows upon reason, right? Okay? But the love that follows upon the, what? The senses, or maybe the imagination, right, huh? Okay? So, the beauty of a woman, say, appeals to our eyes, right? But maybe her charm, appeals to our imagination, right, huh? But the imagination is kind of like a sense of power, but internal sense, right? Okay? So, this romantic love that you're talking about here, is partly, what, a result of your eyes being pleased with this woman, right? And your imagination being charmed by her, right, huh? Okay? But in this kind of love called romantic, it's a matter of experience, they say, reason and love keep little company together nowadays, right? Okay? See, you're hitting upon a love there that is not primarily following upon reason, but following upon the emotion, I mean, the senses, or the imagination, right? You see that? But that's the love that is more known to us because it's closer to our senses and that's where our knowledge begins, right? And I think I've mentioned now, it was a little boy, being in church and hearing the priest talk about the love of God, and when I heard the word love, I thought, girls, and so, what does he mean, you know? I mean, I don't have that towards God, right? I don't feel about God the way I feel about this girl, right? And so sometimes you're stuck on that first meaning of love, which is the, what? Emotion, right? And I know when, you know, at marriages when they often have that text of St. Paul there, you know, about love. Well, he's talking about not the love which is an emotion. You wonder how it's to understand sometimes, you know, when they have that passage read them, you know, how great a thing love is. And he's talking about a love which is in the will there, and it's probably, you know, in Greek, probably agape or something, right? They have more distinct words in Latin, and in Greek, too, in this case, Greek for those things. Now, what do you think What kind of love is being talked here in this other passage in the Sermon Edge Dream. Lovers and madmen, huh? They've been put together, right? They have such seething brains, hot brains, huh? Such shaping fantasies. Now, fantasies means what? Imagination. It's a Greek word for imagination. And romantic love, if it's something, you know, a little different from just sexual attraction, romantic love is very much tied up with the, what? Imagination. Okay? So Shakespeare's hitting the nail on the head, you know, he says such shaping fantasies, huh? That apprehend more than cool reason ever comprehends. So reason is cool, right? Notice how we say when somebody is apt to get emotionally involved, you know, we say, keep your cool, right? What does that mean? That's your imagination. That's seething, right? Or your emotions, but it means reason itself, right? So here the imagination is apprehending something more than cool reason ever comprehends. And I mentioned how the word charm, right, when applied to a woman, it's a quality in a woman that is appealing to our imagination, right? As opposed to beauty might be appealing to our eyes, right? Okay? And it's interesting how the poet tries to be charming in his own way, right? But the charming way in which the poet writes means that he's writing in a way that appeals to our imagination more than to our senses or more than to our, what? Reason, right? And I think I quoted in here before, Keats, the romantic poet, where Keats says, you know, when the philosopher gets a hold of something, all the charm goes out of it. But the philosopher getting a hold of it with what? Cool reason, right? But the poet is getting at something that appeals to imagination that, what? Is more than reason comprehends, huh? You see? And if you try to say what charm is, you find it's a very hard thing to say, right? But sometimes, you know, we see it, you know, even like in a little girl, you know, some little girls are very charming, right? Really, really, really very charming. And you kind of recognize it when you see it, but you can't really define it very well, right? It's a very elusive thing, huh? Okay? In the same way, you know, when you read a really good author, you know, like Washington Irving, you know, or a poet, how very charming is the way they speak, huh? You know, all these nice young boys and girls are going to get old, you know, and die, you know, but there's no charm of what I'm saying, right? But Shakespeare says what? Golden lads and girls, all must, as chimney sweepers come to dust. It's a charm of what he says, right? What he says, huh? The art thy mother's glass, and she in thee calls back the love of thee for over brine. There's something charming about the way the poet writes, huh? Now, the lunatic, the lover. Now, lunatic is another word for the madman, right? The lunatic, the lover, and now he puts the poet in there, right? This is Shakespeare speaking now, huh? The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination, all compact, huh? So, in the sentence, he says, O me, what eyes hath love put in my hand, that have no correspondence with to sight? And, of course, when Aristotle talks about the poet in the book on the poetic art, he says no one, or Plato said before Aristotle, no one can be a poet until he's been, what, moved by love, right, huh? And Shakespeare says no one can be a poet until he's dipped his pen in love's scythe, right? And Kierkegaard says, you know, men become poets, the woman they didn't get. So let's see what's the example of Beatrice, right, there, in Dante's Divine Comedy, right? But Aristotle also compares the poet a little bit to the, what, madman, right? Because when he's writing and entering into the characters he's writing about, he seems to be, what, not himself anymore, right? And I tell you that story of Charles Dickens, you know, his daughter, when she was little. She was sick one time, and they let her, you know, kind of... ...favor, you know, to kind of rest on the sofa in the room where Dickens was working on one of his novels. Of course, he kind of forgets that she's there, right? He's working now. And he'd get up from the desk and go to the mirror. And all of a sudden, he'd take on one of these faggings, one of these characters, you know? They'd go back and he'd break again, you know? But he's temporarily, what? Not himself anymore, right? And he's like a madman who thinks he's Napoleon or somebody else for the moment, right? You know, I remember a Catholic who was playing Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, right? You know, and, you know, but on the stage, he really hates the Christians, you know? He was a Catholic, you know? But he's so much into the role of Shylock, huh? So Aristotle says, to be, you know, a poet, you have to either be mad or else be euplastas, you know? Easily moldable, right? You can take on. And that's what he'd say, you know, as Keats himself said, huh? That the poet should have no personality at all, right? He can take on all personalities, huh? They say, Alec Guinness, the only great actor, you know, he would walk down the streets of London, you know? And imitate the person in front of him, you know, whoever he happened to be, you know? He just... So, in these first two readings from Shakespeare, he's talking about a love that is kind of contrasted with, what? Reason, right? A love that doesn't seem to be fallen upon the imagination, but more upon the senses or actually the imagination, right? Okay? Now, in this scene here in Hamlet, you may know how Hamlet has seen the ghost of his father, right? And his father told him how he had been killed by his uncle, right? He poured, what? Poison in his ear. You know the story. Now, do you believe a ghost, you see? Or is the devil impersonating your father? What do you do, you see? Well, the actors show up at the Elsinore, the castle of Elsinore, right? And Hamlet has a thought, it strikes, right? I'll have the actors put on a scene where a man kills somebody by pouring this, you know? And so on. In other words, the very crime described by the ghost, right? I'll put that. And we'll watch how the king reacts to that, right? Because if he's really done it and done it that way and doesn't know anybody knows it, and all of a sudden it's representing the stage, he might give himself away. And Hamlet doesn't want to just trust himself to observe the king, but he wants, what, Horatio? Because Horatio is an extremely close friend of Hamlet, right? It's a one-to-one, you know? And in these particular words, Hamlet is speaking about why he chose Hamlet as his, what, friend, right? Okay? Now notice this term I have here, sense love and chosen love, right? And the Latin word, alexio, sometimes used to name the love which is an act of the will, etymologically it comes from the word alexio, which is choice, right? And you'll see Shakespeare using the word choice here, and election, which is another synonym for choice, huh? So Hamlet says, Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice, Now is the soul of a little boy or girl, a little tiny one, mistress of her choice? No. Because the reason is not developed, right? When I was little, they used to say seven is the age of reason, but maybe it's later now these days. But I mean, you know, the little child doesn't really have the, what, use of reason that makes them entirely responsible for what they do or don't do, right? So he says, Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice, and when was that? When it could have been distinguished, right? See the differences among men, and consequently to say which man was better to have as a friend, right? Okay? Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice and could have been distinguished, her election, huh? Her choice, has sealed thee for herself, right? Firm thing, huh? Now what was it that he saw in this man, huh? For thou hast been as one in suffering all that suffers nothing, right? A man that can stand up in adversity, right, huh? Most men go to pieces, right, under adversity, okay? Here's a man in suffering all that suffers nothing, right? Here's a man in suffering all that suffers nothing, right? Here's a man in suffering all that suffers nothing, right? Here's a man in suffering all that suffers nothing, right?