Ethics
Lecture 7: The Three Goods of Man and Their Hierarchy

Transcript
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A beautiful example of that in Vatican II there in the Cindy Verbum there. We're talking about sacred scripture, sacred tradition, the magisterium of the church. These three, no one can stand alone. You know, three. Beautiful example of that. Now another way we approach this is by starting off with kind of the common thought that everybody has about what the the goal of life is, right? Everybody wants to live well, right? Live well, do well. Okay? So, we start off with this idea here that the end of life, the end of man, is to live well. Everybody eating it to live well, right? People say to me sometimes, Perquist, what have you been doing? I say, why have you been living it up? Hey! What have you been doing? Oh, I've been reading the trees on the Trinity. Huh? Huh? Yeah, yeah, that's really living it up. That's really alive. What now? When's a man living well? He's living the life of a client? No, that's when you're in your deathbed maybe there, right? And you're like, Yasserifah. I guess he's coming out. Yeah, he's saying he's on his way out. I don't know. Anyway, you know, he's a man living well and still in the life of a client? No. How about if he's living the life of a beast? Is that for a man to be living well? Is it? Aristotle says it'd be strange if man would choose a life of something other than himself, right? So you come down to the third possibility, the life of a man or the life of what? Reason, right? So if you see that to live well, but for a man to live well, it can't be simply this life or this life, right? Therefore, it must be this, right? Then you're back to the idea that it's the life according to reason, right? And done well, right? Okay? It's another way of approaching it, kind of, by an either-or argument, right? But starting from this idea that people have in general, that happiness is to live well, to do well, right? Okay? And then say, okay, but now, what do you mean? The life of a plant? You know? If I'm just growing, is that living well, right? Or if I'm just sensing and emoting, is that living well for a man? But if neither one of those is sufficient answer, you're going to have to go to this, right? So it's the life according to reason, huh? Let's come back again to this division of all the goods of man, right? And we mentioned how in the Apology of Socrates, right? Apology is not really a translation of the Greek word apologia. Apologia is a term in the courtroom, right? And then what you have in the courtroom is categoria, which is accusation, right? And then apologia, which is your legal defense in the courtroom, huh? But anyway, in the Apology of Socrates, which is probably the most read work of all works, huh? In philosophy, introduction. introduction. philosophy especially. Socrates has a defense of his life, right? His life where he goes around and examines men, right? But then he goes on further to say that he's been examining his fellow Athenians especially about the good things in life, right? And as we mentioned before, Socrates at that point touches upon the distinction of all the goods of men, right? And the Greeks usually divided all human goods into three. Okay? And three is all there is. Now, the Greeks usually called these the goods of the soul which could also be called the goods of reason involving reason, right? The goods of reason or what involves reason. People today might call them the spiritual goods, right? I'm using the word spirit instead of the word soul, right? But that's one kind of good. The goods of the body like health and strength and the beauty of the body and so on. And then the exterior goods or the outside goods, right? So all your possessions, your clothing, your house, your books, food and so on. Now, Aristotle in the most explicitly, I think, in the seventh book of the politics touches upon the same division, right? And Aristotle points out in the seventh book of the politics that everybody knows to some extent that there are these three kinds of goods. And secondly, everybody agrees that we need some of all of them. Okay? But the disagreement between the philosophers like Socrates and the Athenians, men in general, is which goods are what? Better. And Socrates says in the Apology, he's trying to convince the Athenians, right? That the goods of the soul are much better than these other goods, right? While the Athenians are living as if the goods of the body and the exterior goods are the greatest goods in life, huh? And so, when I teach this, I often ask the students, now, do the Americans agree with Socrates or with the Athenians? What do you think? And suddenly, they act as if they agree with the what? Athenians, right? Now, this is no little disagreement. It's a disagreement now about which goods are better. But among all the goods in the life, right? It's going to influence the whole of life which goods you think are better. Now, as we pointed out before, everybody knows you need some of all of these, right? But if you think the goods of the body and the exterior goods are the better goods, then your life will be one of trying to get as much as possible of the better things of life, right? And be satisfied with the minimum necessary, right? To acquire these things or to preserve these things down here. On the other hand, if you think the goods of the soul are much better than the goods of the body, the exterior goods, then your life will be one of trying to get as much as possible of the goods of the soul and being satisfied with the minimum necessary of the goods of the body and the exterior or outside goods. Okay? Your whole life is going to be weighed differently. So this is no little disagreement, is it? And secondly, you could say that as regards the very end and purpose and meaning there for human life, since the end is always better than what is for the sake of the end, if you think the goods of the body and exterior goods are better than the goods of the soul, then your end or goal in life will be somewhere down here, to be the wealthiest man, or to be the most beautiful woman or something, right? Okay? But you're going to look for the end or purpose of life somewhere among the better goods, right? Because the end is always better than what is for the sake of the end. But if you think the goods of the soul are much better than the goods of the body and exterior goods, then you will try to what? You'll look for the end or purpose of life somewhere among the goods of the soul, right? And that's why Aristotle, who agrees with Socrates, right, the goods of the soul are much better, after he goes through all the goods of the soul, as to all the moral virtues, right, and the virtues of reason, then in the tenth and last book, Nicomache in Ethics, he asks, which of these virtues is the greatest, right? And then he's going to determine more fully exactly what the end and goal of man is, okay? Now, you can see from Socrates or from Aristotle that the philosophers do talk about all the goods of man in general, right? They don't talk about all the goods of man in particular because the carpenter would talk more about the chair, right, and the cook more about dinner, right, and maybe the coach more about the athletic ability and the doctor more about health and so on, right? But the philosopher does talk about all of the goods of man in general, right, and does point out that we need some of all of them, right, and does point out that everybody is to some extent aware of them, right, okay? And I was using a very simple example there of a saying, as a child, early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. There's a sign there, you know, how even as a child we were, in a way, made aware of these goods, right? Because health is a preeminent good of the body, right? Wealth is an excellence of exterior goods, and wisdom is one of the greatest, but not the greatest good of the soul, right? Thomas has an interesting application of this when he's talking about the six articles on the humanity of Christ, which you can divide in at least two ways. But the way the articles are divided in the Te Deum, right, where you have, you know, incarnation first, right, and then you have his death on the cross, opening up the glories of heaven, right, but then you have a few mysteries concerning that. The descent into hell, right, the resurrection, and then the ascension, right? And Thomas sees a certain connection between the three, because when he descended down to hell, meaning down to the patriarchs and so on, he gave them the, what, the good of the soul. The resurrection is getting back to your, what, body, and then the ascension is going to a good place, right? That's the exterior. So you have the three goods there, right, huh? Okay? That's a very, you know, impressive example of their application of this doctrine, huh? But as I say, it goes all the way back to your childhood. Relief to bed, relief to rise, makes man healthy, wealthy and wise, right? Whether the kind of wrote that is saying that this is good for the whole of human life. Now, does the medical art, as such, talk about this division? And which is better? Does the carpenter talk about this division? Does the carpenter talk about this division? Does the carpenter talk about this division? Does the carpenter talk about this division? Does the carpenter talk about this division? Does the carpenter talk about this division? Does the carpenter talk about this division? Does the carpenter talk about this division? Does the carpenter talk about this division? Does the carpenter talk about this division? Does the carpenter talk about this division? If you pick up a book in Carpentry, you know, they'll say, no, this is a division of all the goods of man. Now, is there a reason why the moral or political philosopher gives this division explicitly, right? And raises the question, right? Do we need all three of them? Yes. You know? But then the question, which is better, and why is these better, and so on, right? Is there a reason why the moral and political philosopher should talk about all the goods of man? He talks in particular about the goods of the soul, right? The moral virtues and the virtues of reason. But why should the man who talks about those talk about also all of the goods in general and ask the question, which are better? But also because what's most fundamental in ethics and practical philosophy is the ender purpose of man, the ender purpose of human life. And all of these goods are necessary for the ender purpose of man. They all contribute in some way to the ender goal of life, right? So, the philosopher, I mean the practical philosopher now, the moral and political philosopher, this is chiefly about the ender purpose of man. And that's why it belongs to him and not to the carpenter, because the chair is not the ender purpose of the whole human life. And the health of the body is not the ender purpose of the whole human life. But the man who does talk about the ender purpose of human life will talk about all of the goods of man in general, although not about all of them in particular. Okay? You see the same way he does that? Okay? And this is a certain likeness to wisdom. You know, after too long we'll be looking a little bit at wisdom itself, right? And wisdom is chiefly about God, chiefly about the first cause. But you'll find out that wisdom is also about all things, but in general, right? I see a connection between being about the first cause and talking about all things in general. Well, the first cause is the cause whose causality extends to all things, right? So it's appropriate that the science called wisdom, whose end or goal was to know the first cause, we need to know God, should talk also about all things in general, right? And no other science does that. You see? But there's something like that here, huh? Practical philosophy doesn't talk about the first cause. Wisdom does that. But it does talk about the, what, first good, the first cause, in the sense of end, of human life. It does talk about the end or purpose of man, the end or purpose of the whole human life. What happiness really is. What true happiness is, huh? And therefore, it should also talk about all of the goods of human life, at least in general. And about the distinction of them, and their order as to which are better and so on. You see? So it's appropriate that Socrates, in his defense of his life, right, and Socrates is a guy who kind of turned the philosopher's attentions to ethics and political philosophy, right? Not the first guy to do so, but I mean, there's kind of a emphasis upon him in Socrates, right? So if you read the dialogues of Plato, which are sometimes called the Socratic conversations, because in all of them, almost Socrates appears in verses of somebody, right? But there may be in practical philosophy, right? Things on virtue and things on courage and things on justice and so on, right? It's appropriate that Socrates should have emphasized on this distinction or division of all the goods of human life, right? And been involved in saying which are, what, better, right? Now, when you're faced with this disagreement between the Athenians and Socrates, it's no little disagreement, right? It's a disagreement about all the goods of human life. Okay. And because the disagreements which are better, it'll be a disagreement about the purpose of human life. Now, as we said before, there's a false solution to this. You could say, well, Sarketes, if you want those good so much, go for them, right? That's your thing. But we're interested in these things, so forget about that. We'll go for these, right? Well, the man who says that is saying, that these goods are better for Sarketes, right? Because he wants them more. But these goods here are better for most men, because that's what most men want more. And we excluded that by what syllogism? What kind of syllogism did we use to exclude that false solution to this disagreement? If none. Yeah, if then syllogism, yeah. And where do we syllogize from? That's what we learned in our study of the good. If things are not good because we desire them. Yeah. Then they're not more good or better because we want them more. And the antecedent, we showed before, right? Something is not good because you want it. Therefore, it's not better for you because you want it, what? More, right? Okay. See that? Okay. You realize the fourth argument is a very strong argument, huh? And I was making a simple comparison. If you see something that people would not disagree about at all, is something sweet because it's white? Well, no one would maintain that, right? Well, something is not sweet because it's white. Is it sweeter because it's whiter? No. No. And if someone is so stupid as to say something is sweeter the whiter it is, then he's forced to say that something is sweet because it's white. And that's obviously absurd, right? Okay. Now, it's not as obviously absurd to say that something is good because you want it. We did show that that is false, right? So once you know that something is not good because you want it, otherwise that last drink in the party would have been good for you, right? Even though it made you very sick, huh? Or it was good for that kid to drive his car a hundred miles an hour down the windy road, right? Into the tree. So once you realize something is not good because you want it, then it's not better because you want it more. Well, then you've got to give a reason for saying something is good, right? And you've got to give a reason for saying something is better. Now, we'll take a little break now? But we'll review the reasons and add another reason to the ones we did before, right? But once the Athenians are forced to give a reason, they can't give a reason. All the reasons seem to be on Socrates' side, right? And sometimes I try to help the students to give a reason to this side, right? One that they think is good, right? And I'll try to do two. Okay. Showed a couple ways we can reason that the goods of the soul are better than the things. But actually, what I did last time, if you recall, was I first of all contrasted the inside goods, right? With the outside goods, right? Okay. And by induction and by syllogism, we show that the inside goods, including both of these, are better than the outside goods. Now, what did we... What was the main syllogism there? Well, we have to give a reason for saying something is better, right? And the basic reason for saying something, the basic statement about the better, is that the end is always better than what it's for the sake of. Now, if we could show by induction that the exterior goods are for the sake of the inside goods, then you could syllogize, right? From these two statements. The outside goods are for the sake of the inside goods. And the end is always better than what it's for the sake of it. So if the inside is the end or purpose of the outside, then the inside must be better than the outside. But how can we show that the outside is for the sake of the inside? Well, again, by induction, right? Are your feet for the sake of your shoes? Are your shoes for the sake of your feet? Are your glasses for the sake of the eyes? Are your eyes for the sake of the glasses? Am I for the sake of getting my car to school? Getting my car to the monastery? Or is the car for the sake of transporting my body, if he's moving my mind with it, to the monastery? And are you for the sake of taking notes, or are the notes for the sake of your mind? Well, you can see inductively that the outside is for the sake of the inside. Otherwise, it should be a mannequin, like down in the department store, right? For you, just by the clothing, right? Now, you might say there are some inside goods that seem to be for the sake of outside goods, like the art of carpentry, right? Just for the sake of chairs and tables and doors. But they, in turn, are for the sake of the, what? Body, right, huh? Are you there to hold down the chair until no one steals it? Or is the chair there to hold you up? Are you for the sake of keeping the money safe under the mattress? Or is the mattress there for the sake of giving you a good night's sleep? Okay? So, by induction, we see that the outside is for the sake of the inside. But the, and for the sake of which is always better. Therefore, the inside is better than the outside. So, we'll give third place, huh? Or to use Olympic theorem, we give the bronze medal to the outside goods, right? Okay? I'm not healthy for the sake of taking medicine, am I? Now, if I take medicine, it's for the sake of the health inside the body. Now, which is better, the goods of the soul or the goods of the body, right? Well, if you knew enough about the soul and the body, you'd realize that the soul is the end of the body. But that's a little hard to see. Well, we could argue, if you admit that man is better than a beast, then the goods that man has, that place him above the beast, are better than the goods he shares with the beast. Or if you admit that God is better than man, right? Then the more divine goods are going to have to be better than the goods he shares with what is below it. Okay? But notice, huh? You can now also argue from the end or purpose of man, right? Since the end or purpose of man is what is best, right? Which is closer to the end of man? The goods of the body, the goods of the soul. Well, if the end is the act with reason, according to human virtue, obviously, the goods of the soul are closer to the end. And therefore, they're better than the goods of the what? Body, right? The goods of the soul are involved in the very end of man, right? So the end is always better. So that's perhaps the strongest argument, right? Saying the goods of the soul should get the gold medal, and the goods of the body, the silver, okay? So Socrates is correct, and the Athenians are mistaken. No wonder they wanted to get rid of the guy. Because in a sense, he was examining them and showing them that their life is based on the state. Who wants to have a life based on the state? Now, can the Athenians give any reason for saying that the goods of the body, the exterior goods, are better than the goods of the soul? Sometimes I give the students this question. I say, which is better? Breathe, or to philosophize, which is better? And what answer do you think I get from breathe? They all say to breathe, right? And I say, okay. Of course, to breathe is something more bodily, right? Philosophize up here to the soul, right? Now you've got a good argument, right? We all agree, I say, that to breathe is better than to philosophize? Yeah, yeah. But now, why do you say that it's better? And of course, what they all say is, well, if you're not breathing, you won't be doing anything else. I say, true. But I've already gone through the senses of before in the 12th chapter, the categories. And they are showing now that to breathe is before to philosophize. And what sense of before? Leading to. Yeah. It can be without the other, but not vis-a-versa. It's before and being, right? That's the second sense Aristotle gives it before. One is before two. One can be without two, but two can't be without one. Okay? So you've shown that to breathe is before to philosophize in the sense that you can breathe without philosophizing, but not vis-a-versa. That's not to show that it's better. You're confusing the second and the fourth sense of before. Let me just recall those senses. Some of you, I think, I don't know if you all met them, or let's just recall the fourth senses of before. The first sense of before is in time. Okay? Today is before tomorrow, right? That's the first sense of before. Second sense of before is in being. And what does that mean? When something can be without something else, but not vis-a-versa. Aristotle's example is one is before two, right? Another example would be wood is before a wooden chair. Wood can be without a wooden chair. But a wooden chair can't be without wood. Third sense of before is in the discourse of reason, in our mouth, right? Then the fourth, the strangest sense, he says, is better, right? Before in wood is. Now, if someone says, Chaucer comes before Shakespeare, therefore Chaucer is better than Shakespeare. Or I'm older than you, therefore I'm better than you. Everybody recognizes that as the most common kind of mistake, mixing up two different senses of before, right? So because Chaucer is before Shakespeare in this sense of before, can you conclude he's before Shakespeare in this sense? No. What is before in time might be better, it might be lesser, right? So it's obviously a mistake in reasoning to say that because it's before in this sense, therefore it's before in this sense. Now, when you ask the students, why do you say that to breathe is better than to philosophize? And they show that you can't do anything else unless you're breathing. They've shown that to breathe is before philosophizing in this sense here. I can breathe without philosophizing. I can't philosophize without breathing. And they're concluding that because it's before in being, therefore it's before in what? That's obviously the most common kind of fallacy in thinking. The fallacy of the provocation. A mistake from mixing up different senses of the same word. You see? So the argument breaks down. Notice, the basic reason for saying something is better is that it's... The end is better than what is for the sake of the end, okay? You know, take something like breathing, right? You know, is breathing the purpose of life? Now, when I was in grade school, you know, the sisters used to ask us, you know, do you live to eat or do you eat to live? And some people seem to be a little mixed up on this subject. See? So some people, you know, are in a mistaken position of thinking that they live to eat, right? But I don't know anybody who thinks that he lives to breathe, see? Breathing is one of the most necessary things, right, that you do in life, right? Is that your end or purpose? No. You breathe so you can do something else, right? Play football or eat or philosophize that, you know, see? So to breathe is before most other things in life in this second sense, isn't it? But nobody thinks of it as being as in their purpose. Do I philosophize so I can breathe? Do I eat dinner so I can breathe? Do I play football so I can breathe? I breathe so I can do these other things, right? So they're better than to breathe, right? Even though to breathe is more, what? Necessary, right? And Aristotle will show us, you know, how wisdom is the best knowledge. Knowledge, he says, every other knowledge is more necessary, but none is better. You see? You see the difference between those, huh? Now, they're pretty frustrated by showing the fallacy in their argument, huh? Well, then I come back and I try to strengthen their argument, right? And like we did before when we talked about opposites, right? He asked them that isn't the better the opposite of the worse. That seems at least probably, right? The better is the opposite of the worse. That seems to be true, right? Now, which is worse? I say now, huh? Let me help you to argue a bit. Which is worse? To stop philosophizing or to stop... Which will be worse for Mr. Breakfast in the next hour? To stop philosophizing or to stop breathing? Yeah, see? Now, that's your purpose, right? Because you're saying, to stop breathing is worse than to stop philosophizing, right? But the better is the opposite of the worse. Therefore, to breathe must be better than to philosophize. Since the opposite of breathing, stopping it, is worse, right? I say, well, now there you go, now it's got some probability, right? It's not just a fallacy of equivocation. Reasoning from one sense of before to another sense of before, which is obviously a mistake in thinking, right? But, is this proposition here, which is highly probable, is it a bit of any exceptions? Yes, one very important exception, right? And that is that when one thing is before another in being, then the loss of that is worse. Okay? Even though it's not, what? Better, right? Okay? So, if I stop breathing, I stop philosophizing and all the rest, right? Because to breathe is before to philosophize and all the other activities of life, right? In being, right? So, to take away that, well, all those things, right? Is water better than a plant? No. Water is for the sake of the plant, right? Okay? And life as we know it is, you know... The material world is not without water, right? So water can be without life, but life cannot be without water, right? You're trying to find water up on Mars, right? Does that make water better? No. If water is for the sake of life, right, then life is better than water. But the loss of water would be worse than the loss of life, because if you lose water, you lose life too. Or if you lose life, you still have water, right? Okay? So when something is before something else in being, then the loss of it is worse, right? Even though it's not better. So that's obviously the case here with breathing, right? So that's the exception to go here, so... That's about the best they can come up with, you see, but I may help them with that. But even that is a defect, right? I'll take an example. Which is better? Bricks or a brick wall? Yeah. The bricks are the sake of the brick wall, the brick house, or the brick patio or something like that, right? And that's why you'll pay more for a brick wall than for a pile of bricks, right? But which is worse? Do I have a brick wall or do I have no bricks? No bricks. Yeah, yeah. Because bricks are before brick wall, brick house, brick patio in being, right? So the loss of bricks involves the loss of brick walls, brick houses, brick patio, right? But that doesn't make the bricks better than that. So, you see, there is an exception to the rule that the opposite of the worse is better, right? And that is when something is before the things in being, right? Then the loss of that is worse, right? Than the loss of the better. So at that point, the only thing that remains is, if all the argument is on Socrates' side, right, and only defective arguments can be given on the other side, so that Socrates is obviously correct and the Indians are wrong, but you might say, well, why is everybody mistaken? You see? Why do people think that the lesser goods are better? Or why do people want more, the lesser goods? Because if good is the cause of desire, right, presumably the greater good should be wanted more, right? This is like the problem we raised before. If good is a cause of desire, why are sometimes even bad things desired, right? We had to bring in the fact that there's something that comes between the good or the bad and us, and that's the sense of the reason, right? But now, which of these goods is more known to us? The goods of the body and the exterior goods, right? So that could explain why the lesser goods are desired more, right? Because they're more known, okay? But if you say the Athenians are correct, and Socrates is mistaken, right? You couldn't explain why Socrates should want the lesser goods more, because there's so many less known to Socrates even than the what? Than the what? Exterior goods, right? Socrates was a boy before he was a man, right? And he knew the goods of the body and the exterior goods before he knew the ones. The baby cries when he's sick first, you know? Got a pin in him, not because he's ignorant or has no virtue or something like that, right? You know, even our Lord in the parables will use what? You know, the kingdom of heaven is like a man who found a treasure, right, in the field. He went and sold everything he had, bought the field and so on, right? He'll make a comparison to the lesser goods, right? Okay? He'll eat and drink with me in the kingdom, right? I was reading Thomas there today in the Summa Concentiles where he talked to heretics, you know, so he'll be eating and drinking and so on and so forth and he doesn't understand these texts, right? But you'll eat and drink at my table with me, right? He says that in the Gospels, right? So he even speaks of the Gospels, right? So he even speaks of the Gospels. So he even speaks of the Gospels. So he even speaks of the Gospels. So he even speaks of the Gospels. So he even speaks of the Gospels. So he even speaks of the Gospels. So he even speaks of the Gospels. Lesser-known goods, but the greater goods, right? Under the likeness of the goods, they're more known to us. Thomas, you know, called communion, o sacrum convivio, o sacred banquet, right? Or he called, to be the vision, the ineffable banquet, huh? The inexpressible banquet, right? You think you've got a good banquet, wait, you see this one? But, you know, those things are more known to us, right? So Aristotle says in the famous text there in the fourth book of Natural Hero, that when he's trying to define place, right, in natural philosophy, and he says, now the definition of place, he says, first of all, tell you what place is. That's what you expect the definition, right? And it should explain the things we say about place, right? And it should solve the difficulties we have about place, right? And it should even make it clear why people have thought otherwise about it. Well, if you say that Socrates is correct, right, as to which goods are better, and the things are mistaken, you should be able to explain why it's possible that people should love more the lesser goods. And the answer could be that they're more, what? More known, right? And in fact, you could say in the beginning, the goods of the soul are unknown, right? Okay? So it's not surprising that the goods that are known are loved, and the ones that are unknown are not loved. But the goods that are more known are more loved, and the goods that are hardly known are less loved, right? Okay? Why did Romeo love Rosalind more than Juliet? Didn't he love Juliet at all? And Juliet apparently is much more beautiful than Rosalind. Huh? Didn't know her, never met her. Yeah, yeah, he went to the house of the capitalist there to get a glimpse of Rosalind, and ha, we saw Juliet, and we never hear any more about Rosalind. Much of the, she'd read the, I mean, that's the amazing there of Father... Lawrence. Lawrence, yeah. But you see, an explanation of that, right? He loved the lesser good, not the greater good at all, right? But it's not because Rosalind was more beautiful, but because he knew Rosalind and didn't know Juliet, huh? So we can explain why, right? We can explain why most men, like boys, right, could love the lesser good more. Because they know those goods more. Or they know them, don't know them. But if you say that Socrates is wrong and mistaken, how would you explain this, right? Why does he love those hardly known goods, those lesser goods, more, right? Couldn't hardly say that, but he knows them more. No, he knows the goods of the body, and the outsideness more. I can remember as a boy there, you know, on Christmas Eve there, you know, and we opened our presents on Christmas Eve, and all these presents around the Christmas tree there, and one of my aunts used to come down and visit us, and my father and my mother would be in there talking with aunts so-and-so, you know, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We want to get to the presents at home, you know? Be patient, you know? So was I anxious for the goods of the soul then, huh? No, his exterior goods, you know, his toys, his things are wrapped up in the things, all right, huh? See? So, you know? So I wanted these goods long before, I wanted candy long before I wanted wisdom, you know? I'd go down to town, you know, my mother, you know, and now if you, you know, don't give me a lot of problems here, be patient, you know, we'll stop at the candy store on the way. Okay, so I'd give you a little goods, you know? Didn't say, you know, if you're good, I'd give you a little wisdom at the end of the day. That would have been anything to me, you know? You know, I'd say that you'd get to, you know, stop and you'd have to pick out some candy, you know? And then, yeah, that's worthwhile, behaving yourself as a, yeah. See? See? So you can hardly explain, why do I love wisdom? I think I love wisdom now more than candy. But what explains this, you see? That wisdom is more known to me than candy? Thank you.