Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 19: Truth: Easy and Difficult for Man

Transcript
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Let's go back here now to the first reading here of book two. So we've seen why Aristotle doesn't ask, you know, does truth exist, right? Because then you'd be thinking you don't know what you do now. And why he doesn't ask, can man know truth, right? But he begins with this question you might say, he doesn't ask as a question, but is truth easy for man, you know, or difficult for man? And he says, in one way it's difficult, in another, what, easy. Now he mentions difficult first, right? But he also says easy, right? Now he's going to go into both of those, right, in what follows, but there'll be a little different emphasis of what he does in both. As far as truth being easy for man, he wants to show the ways in which it is easy for man, okay? As if that's more in doubt. I mean, truth is easy for man? Well, yeah, in some ways it is. Well, tell me how it's easy, right? Okay? But now, as far as the difficulty of truth, he's not too much concerned with showing how it's difficult, or that it's difficult. But what is the cause of the difficulty? You know? You see? Okay? So he says, the sign is that no one is able to grasp it worthily, nor do all fail to hit it. But everyone says something about the world. That's what I was saying here. This is the first way that truth is easy. You can't go through life without seeing some truth, however small and minor it might be. Even if you make me down on hamburgers all day long, right? You're going to see something about, some truth about the hamburger that it shrinks in size when you cook it or something, right? You see? You can't avoid that. Okay? And you might add, well, what you happen to see, because you fry hamburgers, right? And what I happen to see, because I groom horses, might not be the same thing, right? But you can't avoid truth entirely, right? Okay? So that sense is easy, right? Everybody is going to see some little bit of the truth, however it's small, right? Whatever it might be about, okay? Now the second way in the third paragraph, and this is the sense now in which not even just some little bit of truth, but even a large amount of truth is easy for man. And although one man adds little or nothing to the truth, something great comes to be from all gathered together, okay? Now on Saturday morning, sometimes my mother's trying to get my brothers and I to help out with some of the housework or whatever it was. And her saying was, her proverb was, many hands make light work, right? Okay? So in some sense, right, it would be difficult maybe for me to lift this table by myself, right? But if we all got around this table and we all lifted together, it would be what? Easy, right? So in some sense, even a large amount of truth is what? Easy through the efforts of what? Many, huh? Okay? And this is the way, you know, the arts and the sciences all grew, right? You saw something, right? And you told me about it. And I saw something and you listened to the two of us and put it together, right? And so, you know, if I discovered, say, one theorem in geometry, but there's a hundred guys doing geometry and each guy discovers one theorem, then all of a sudden you get a hundred theorems. Or, you know, people are always putting out these cookbooks, huh? There was some guy on TV there who put out a cookbook. Well, people, you know, you tell you, sit in your aunt's best cook, you know, your mother's, whatever it is, your grandmother's best recipe, right? You put all these together, you've got a really nice book of time-tested recipes, huh? And every family probably has one grandmother or one aunt or somebody who had some real dish that they all talked about, right? And so that's all she did, right? My wife has some aunt who always makes the same kind of cookies, you know. And they're good, they're very good, though, they're very good. But it's the same thing all the time. But, so she's not, you know, court nominally or cook or anything like that, right? But she does one thing very well. Someone else does one thing very well, right? Okay? You're bound to do something well. Obviously, all, right? Tires felices or something. But through the efforts of many, a large amount is easy. The second way, truth is easy, right? Now, the third way is different from the first. Thus, if it seems to be, as we say proverbially, who misses the door? In this way, it will be easy. Now, apparently, this is a Greek proverb, huh? You walk down the Greek city and you can see the doors, right? These famous houses. But what's behind the door? You don't know, right? But everybody sees the door, okay? Well, the door is the beginning, the introduction, right? Okay? So there's some part of the truth that everybody sees, right? So everybody, for example, sees that the whole is more than a, what? Part, right? And if someone says, I don't see that, well, we'll give him part of the celery this week, right? And part of the car that he bought, right? And part of the meal that he ordered and so on, right? And he'll scream and rave and rant and so on, right? Because he knows that's not the, yeah, okay? He paid for more than a part of his meal. Paid for more than a part of his car, right? For more than a part of his salary. I think I am, right? See? So, notice what I was saying here, huh? If you want to distinguish the first and the third thing he says about easy. There's one part of the truth that everyone sees. Like the whole is more than a part, right? Okay. Now, in addition to that, you might say, right? Because of your occupation or what you do or what you think about, right? You're bound to see some other little bit of the truth, right? It may not be the same bit that he sees or he sees, right? And then, through the efforts of many, even a large amount, right? Okay. So, you could order these if you wanted to and say the part of the truth that everyone sees, right? Is like the cornerstone of human knowledge of the truth, right? And then one adds to that cornerstone or foundation the bit of truth that one man sees, but not another man sees, right? But by bringing them together, then you build up the whole structure of the art of science on that foundation, huh? Do you see that? So, there are three different ways in which it's easy for man to know, what? Truth. There's some truth that's so easy that everyone sees it. And that's like the door, right? Everybody sees the door of the house, but doesn't see what goes further along inside. But in addition to that part of the truth that everybody sees, you're bound to see some other little part of the truth, depending upon your occupation and what you think about and so on. However small that little bit may be that you see that not everybody else sees, right? And then the third way to bring together those bits of truth that one man sees by himself, another man doesn't, we get a certain, what? Large amount of truth, right? Which might be called an art or a science. Do you see that? And notice in a way that Aristotle is adding another step to what he had in the premium, right? Because in the premium he spoke of sensing coming first, then memory, right? And then experience. And then he went kind of into art or science, right? Beating out this natural understanding, the doorway that everybody sees. So you could say natural understanding would come next, then reason out understanding, reason out knowledge, art, and science, and last of all, wisdom. Okay? Now, in the next little paragraph he's very brief about the difficulty of truth, right? Before he goes to the cause of difficulty. But to have the whole and be unable to have the part shows it's what? Difficulty, right? And that's true whether you're talking about a composed whole. So you can know water without knowing hydrogen and oxygen, right? Or a universal whole, right? You can know, what? Number without knowing all the different kinds of numbers or something, right? Or you can know virtue and not know the different kinds of virtue, right? But now in the last paragraph of this first part here, he's going to talk about the cause of the difficulty. This is a very important text, though it's very short. However, since difficulty is in two ways, perhaps the cause of this is not in things but in us. Now you've got to be careful there. You've got to be careful there. You've got to be careful there. You've got to be careful there. You've got to be careful there. You've got to be careful there. You've got to be careful there. First, I was saying that there's two causes of the difficulty of knowing. One is in us, the other is in the, what, things. That's an interesting distinction, right? And you can see it in other things. Thomas' commentary gives the example of a man trying to start a fire, right? Where he's got too little of a flame, or the thing he's trying to ignite is too, what, moist or not dry, right? You know, the wood is not dried out enough. Sometimes I say the difficulty of loving, right? Okay. Now we say I don't even want to love him. The difficulty is in him, right? He's not very lovable. But when you say it's difficult to love God, or it's difficult to love wisdom, right? Then the difficulty is where? In us, huh? Okay. So, it's easier for me to love, for example, the private good, than the, what, common good, right? Is that, so it's more difficult for me to love the common good than the private good. But is it cause that difficulty in me or in the thing? It's in me, huh? See? Because the common good is much better than the private good. And something is lovable, because it's good, right? So what's more lovable, but is better, is less love by me. Must be the defect in me, right? Or, when I was a child, at least, hope it's not true anymore, but, well, it's easier for me to love candy than the love of wisdom. But is candy as great a good as wisdom? Well, then, that's a defect in me, right, huh? So I love the sensible good, huh? The candy, right? More than the good that can't sense, which is much greater, right? So the defect is in me, right? But now, if I say it's difficult to love cancer, difficult to love rock and roll, to love these things, is that a defect in my heart? A defect in my heart to love these things? There, the difficulty is in the thing, right? You see that? So, Aristotle is making a similar distinction about knowing, right? He says, one thing can be more difficult to know than another, right? Either because of the weakness of our mind, or because of the defect of the thing itself. This is kind of hard to understand, right? He's going to make a comparison here, right? And the weakness in our part there to the bad and so on. But sometimes I try to take, you know, a little simpler, more partial example, but easier to see it first. I say, if you find the sinner easier to understand than the saint, and I think most people in our society find the sinner easier to understand than the saint, right? But the playboy is more understandable than the saint, huh? Is it difficult to understand the saint in him or in us? Well, actually, the saint is more reasonable than we are, right? And sometimes, you know, I say, now, I'm going to give you a dollar for every $20 you give me. And you say, well, you're crazy. I'm going to give you $20 for every dollar you give me. But, you know, you're trading some temporal thing for any terminal thing, right? I mean, that's more than $20. You know, somebody said, it's far more reasonable than giving $20 for every $1 bill, right? You know? So, the difficulty you have in understanding the saint, the difficulty you have in understanding somebody who's more reasonable than you are, the difficulty is in you. Because he's more understandable. But then, you know, it can take someone who's less reasonable than you, someone who's doing, what, crazy things they can read about in the newspaper every day. And it's hard to understand them, right? No. I was seeing an interview the other day with the, there's a new movie coming out. I guess, I don't know if it's on the theory yet, but from Germany, right? A movie on Hitler's life or something, or the last days of Hitler or something like that. And Charlie Rose was interviewing the producer where he was, and the guy who played Hitler in the movie, right? Of course, they did a lot of, you know, research for this. But, you know, you can't really understand Hitler, right? And it's evil, right? And Charlie Rose kept coming back, you know, with the act, you know, about, you know, you really got to understand Hitler now, you know? And the guy says, well, you get this thing. He said, what in the movie? He says, you get in there, and it's just an emptiness there, you know? You can't really understand the matter. Well, is the difficulty in you or Hitler? You know, what did, when I was seeing a sermon or a talk, where it was John Paul II, you know, called, you know, called Insane Ideology, whatever they had, right? It didn't make any sense, really. It's, it's, so someone who's much less reasonable than you are, it's hard for you to understand, too. Hitler is hard to understand. Even Mussolini found him hard to understand. He was first better, right? Well, then, you see, the cause of difficulty in understanding is, what, in that person, right? People, I can understand the best if people are just like me. They're not more reasonable than I am. They're not less reasonable than I am, see? But people who have a difficulty in understanding are those who are much more reasonable than me, the saints, and those who are much less reasonable than me, like Hitler and all these crazy people running around, huh? You see? But, you could say, the difficulty in understanding the saint, the cause of that difficulty, is in me. I'm not that reasonable. But the difficulty in understanding this unreasonable person is in, what? Him, right? He doesn't have much reason for what he does, huh? You've heard me talk about these simple examples in academic life, huh? Run into this guy, he's a historian, right? What's his specialty in history? Restoration England, did I take that example? Okay. He's devoted his life to the study of Restoration England, right? And I said to him, now, why, of all the periods of history, you know, would you want to devote your thinking and reading and research and so on to Restoration England? Well, I guess, when I was in college, I had a professor, and he gave a course in Restoration England. It was very interesting. I said, interested in him. Oh, okay. Now, is there a reason to devote your life to the study of Restoration England? It's something of a reason. But, I mean, is that the period of history that is really the most interesting or the most important or the most, you know, illuminating or the most, you know? When I was teaching out in California there, there was one guy, especially he deals with Arabic history, right? And apparently, this is before all, you know, this, right now, it's kind of, you know, fashionable, I'm supposed to get into these things. But he had to learn Arabic, right? It was just a very hard language, I guess, to learn, and so on. He didn't know what motivated him. He couldn't tell me. He couldn't explain. Well, he's hard to understand, these people, right? You see? Now, if I'm pursuing wisdom, I can tell you why I'm pursuing wisdom and why it's so important, you know? But these guys can't quite understand what they're doing, what they, you know. I've known a couple of guys who have mentioned Heidegger, you know. Heidegger doesn't make any sense anyway, you know. It's hard to understand how a man can devote his life, you know, his academic life, his mental life, to beating Heidegger, you know, or as much larger. But it's a difficulty in me or in this individual. You see what I mean? Whereas I was thinking now that when you're studying geometry, you're kind of in what's right on your level. When you're trying to study wisdom, much more difficult than geometry. Or natural philosophy, more difficult. But is the reason why natural philosophy is much more difficult than geometry? And wisdom, or first philosophy, is much more difficult. Is it the same? Or in the case of natural philosophy, is the cause of difficulty in the things themselves, huh? These things are hardly, what? Actual, huh? Well, in the case of, what? Divine things, they're most actual. They're most illuminating, but not... But to us, they're obscure, right? Because of the weakness of our, what? Mind, huh? So sometimes they compare it to the eye there, right? If I go into a dark room, right, it's hard to see things. Now, has it caused the difficulty of seeing them or the weakness of my eyes? No. It's a lack of light that there is in that dark room, huh? Because it's the light that makes things visible, huh? But now if I go out into the bright sunlight, you know, I'm kind of blinded, at least temporarily, right? Things are more visible. There's more light out here, but not to me, you know? You see? It's a different cause, huh? If things are visible because they're, what? Because of light. Then when there's more light, they're more visible. But because of the weakness of my eyes, they're less visible to me. They're hard to see, huh? When the dark room, the cause of difficulty is in the thing. And this will be important, I think, when you get to Aristotle's discussion of how discovery is made at the beginning of the third book. Because he's really talking there, I think, more about the way discovery is made in, say, natural philosophy or in wisdom, right, than in, what, geometry. Something that's appropriate in natural philosophy and something that's appropriate in wisdom. Because of the difficulties these things have for us, right? But kind of presuppose it, understanding a bit of this. This thing is preparing the way not only for that other thing of how the road in the science should be determined, but also something about how discovery is made, right? Now let's take, for example, cause and effect, right? Does the effect really illuminate the cause or does the cause illuminate the effect? Yeah, yeah. So the cause is brighter than the effect, right? More illuminating. And the cause of the cause is even more illuminating, right? So the first cause is the most illuminating thing there is. But the first cause is the most difficult for us to know. Is the cause the difficulty then in the thing? What is most enlightening is dark to us, is it difficult for us to know? So the cause of the difficulty in knowing the first cause, in knowing God, is in us. That's why Aristotle is saying the cause, the difficulty in knowing the truth, is more in us than in things. Because it was primarily in what? Things, right? Then the things that are more illuminating, we know more, right? But the things that are most illuminating, most enlightening, are what? For us to know, right? Okay, so the chief difficulty must be in us, right? Okay? Although in a science, like natural philosophy, it would be more in the thing, right? So he says, perhaps the cause of this is not in things, but in us, right? And then he makes a bit of comparison. Presumably Aristotle thought, I don't know how this is true in biology, but that the bat flies at night because the light of the sun during the day was too bright for it, right? For as the eyes of bats are towards the light of day, so is the understanding of our soul towards what are by nature the clearest of all. And see, Plato had used a somewhat similar example because he, in the Republic, he speaks of us as people born in a cave, right? With very little light. And someone escapes in the cave and he's the first blinding and he comes out, right? And so although things are more visible outside the cave than in the dark cave, to the men coming out of the cave, they're easier to see, they're easier to see in the cave than they are on the outside, huh? But of course that could, you know, could change his time, as you say, right? As your eyes adjust to it. So Aristotle takes a little stronger example than Plato, right? Where it seems to be innate, huh? The bat's difficulty of seeing during the day, right? Okay? So he says, as the eyes of the bat are at the light of day, the light of the day is too bright, even though things are more visible then, right? So the defect of the eyes of the bat, so is the eye of our soul, the understanding to the first causes, huh? The most enlightening things, huh? Now see what we bring out when you get to the ninth book there. Ability is knowable only through act, right? So act is more knowable than ability. And of course you eventually find out that God is pure act, right? So God is the most knowable thing there is. But not to us! That shows that the difficulty in knowing is chiefly in us, huh? Okay? But you get down to matter and motion, they're difficult to know because they're hardly, what, actual. And people try to, you know, put what's only an ability in matter actually in there, like Anne Xavier's tried to do. And you get problems doing that, I would say. But you can't get the idea of ability, huh? But the other difficulty is more than the thing. So, you know, if we want to put our mind here kind of on a diagram, you can say like this. Like you say, our reasoning, you might say, is much more proportioned to what we study in geometry. But wisdom is more above us and natural philosophy about things that kind of fall below, right? Yeah. But that's why I make this, that's hard to see, but it's very important to see. That's why I make this comparison, right? Of understanding other people, right? My old friend, Jim, friends, I used to like to say, women like to be told that you can't understand them. I don't know. But that could be a compliment, but you can't understand something, to what is or a insult, right? Take it a little safer territory. They say it's easiest to understand people who are neither more nor less reasonable than you are. To get somebody like a saint who's much more reasonable than you are and doesn't waste his time all the time like we do on stupid things and so on. He's really more understandable than we are. We're doing something more stupid than giving $20 bills or $1 bills. If they're more stupid, you know? How can we be so stupid? Why are you doing it that way? But it's also difficult to understand people who are less reasonable than you are. Their difficulty is in them, right? They're not going to be so stupid. They're not going to be so stupid. They're not going to be so stupid. They're not going to be so stupid. They're not going to be so stupid. They're not going to be so stupid. They're not going to be so stupid. They're not going to be so stupid. And you get, you know, especially down to people who are doing these senseless things you read about in the newspaper all the time, they don't have much reason for what they're doing. You see? They don't. Do they? So if a man doesn't have much reason for what he's doing, then that he's difficult to understand what he does, that the cause of the difficulty of understanding is in him, it's true, right? Even for himself. Yeah, yeah. He can't understand himself. But he's really miserable. Yeah. So that's kind of a little parallel to what we're saying here, right? It's interesting, you know, if you read Barclay, you know, like to knock around a little bit, George Barclay, you know, and his work, The Principles of, I would say, from my understanding. Somebody said the cause of difficulties in us are in things, you know, he says, but I think it's because we insist upon the wrong principles. But he kind of dismisses us all. So this is extremely, extremely profound, what Aristotle's saying, you know. Bishop Barclay. Yeah, he came to Rhode Island for a while, you know. There's some commemoration over down there. I see when I go down there, go down swimming down there, go by the sparking place. Okay. So what Aristotle's done, huh? As far as truth being easy, he's emphasized especially the ways in which it is easy, right? Because someone might first think, well, it's not easy. Well, yeah, but in some way it is, right? And notice how Aristotle has respect there for our appetite, too, huh? Because if all you saw was a difficulty of knowing, you might, what, despair of ever knowing, right? On the other hand, if all you saw was easy and it's a difficulty, you would not be careful enough, right? And, of course, the more difficult it is, the more careful the mind has to be, huh? There's the famous words of Augustine there about the Trinity, you know, that I can't repeat the exact one. And the place says three things about it, and that nowhere is knowledge acquired with more difficulty, right? Nor is it more, what, fruitful what you get, right? Or more dangerous to make a mistake, right? But that's, in general, you know, you can say when the difficulty's in us, you know, you've got to especially be careful. Now, in this last paragraph, Aristotle's going to talk about how one man is helped by another man towards the truth, huh? Huh? Okay? It is just, he says, to be thankful, not only to those whose positions one shares, huh? I should be thankful to those men from whom I've gotten some part of the truth, right? But also to those who have spoken more superficially. For these also have contributed something in that they have exercised our habit, huh? Trying to refute them, right? And that's why the great Augustine says, you know, that heretics are necessary for theology to develop. So you look at the titles of Augustine's works and the other Church Fathers, and you see so many contra, contra, contra, contra, right? Because this man denied that article of faith or made this mistake. Augustine was forced to defend that article of the faith, right? And he advanced, right? So even from those who spoke heretically, let alone superficially, he, what, benefited, right? Um, but he, for it's the only one, is thankful to those of whom one has gotten some, what, part of the truth, huh? So, where does he take an example of how one is dependent upon others, right? Well, he takes it from the art of music. And you ask yourself, why does he do that? Why does he take an example of the great musician here, dependent upon other men, right? Why? Why? Well, if anything is inspired by the muses, it's what's named from the muses, huh? Music, right? And, um, this would seem to be something that you can't learn from another man, right? Something kind of, like, spontaneous, right, huh? What did Mozart say? If melodies don't come to you like piddling comes to the cow, he says, you shouldn't be a musician. Right. It's such a natural thing, right? So, if even the great musician depends upon other musicians, right, and should be thankful for the help he got from them, then even more so in the other arts or sciences, where one is more, what, able to be taught, right? Aristotle says in the book on the poetic art, huh, that you can't teach another man to make good metaphors, huh? It's more like a natural gift, right? So, you know, but you see in Mozart, you know, a natural gift even more so than in Shakespeare, right, because Mozart was writing great music before Shakespeare was writing great plays, right? So, it seems, you know, more a natural gift in Mozart, huh? So, um, you know, you know Wagner's judgment about Mozart, huh? Mozart was above all the masters in all the arts and in all the ages, you know? But you see this child prodigy and you see, well, this is a natural gift, right? So, he doesn't depend upon anybody else, does he? Well, no, just a minute now. I'll come to Mozart, but let's take ourself's example, right? Now, Timotheus was a famous musician, and he was, I guess, the favorite musician of Alexander the Great, huh? And, uh, dried in there in his ode on the feast of St. Cecilia, who was a paganist in music. He, he represents, you know, Timotheus, the former, in front of Alexander, and first of all, he plays some martial music, you know, and Alexander, you know, is like back in battle, almost like he's, you know, and he starts playing some romantic music, and he's fawning on the woman next to him, you know, and so on. But, uh, Timotheus was, you know, the great physician of the time, right? For if Timotheus had not been, we should not have much of our music, right? But if there had been no Freinus, who was some much lesser composer, right, there would have been no, what? Timotheus. Now, in the case of Mozart, Mozart is, what, probably the greatest composer, and certainly far greater, say, than, than Haydn, right? No one would put Haydn on the same level with, what, Mozart, right? And, uh, you know the time when, when Haydn pronounced Mozart the greatest composer? You know, the occasion for that? Well, it's when he heard these, these, these quartets of Mozart, right? And, uh, he might have, you know, actually, you know, they could get together and say, and play these in the evening together, right? But, uh, he went to, to Mozart's father, and he says, as an honest man, you know, before God and man, your son is the greatest composer known to me, either in person or, you know, from his studies. And Mozart, you know, when he heard this, you know, from his father, then he went and he dedicated these quartets to Haydn, right? And, uh, so the, the sixth, they're called today, the Haydn quartets, but they're written by Mozart, right? Six ones dedicated to him. But, uh, we also have the words of Mozart, you know. Um, I had to dedicate them to Haydn because he taught me how to write the quartet, huh? Uh, see? And Einstein, not, not Alfred, but the cousin there, Alfred Einstein, written a famous book on Mozart, speaks of the influence of the so-called Russian quartets of, of Haydn, which gave a, kind of an equal play to all the instruments. That was one of the tremendous influences upon Mozart, right? So it would not have been, maybe, these quartets that were so great, you know, that they forced, um, Haydn to acknowledge Mozart's, you know, being supreme musician of all time, perhaps. Uh, but there wouldn't have been them without those Russian quartets of Haydn, huh? You see? And, you know, if you listen to Mozart's, you know, piano concertos, which are one of his greatest accomplishments, but the first piano concertos are imitations of Johann Christian Bach, the Catholic son of Johann Sebastian Bach, right? So he's, he's, he's, you know, imitating him and taking his pieces and making concertos out of them, right? So maybe there wouldn't have been a Mozart without JC Bach and, you know, and of course Mozart had a great respect for Johann Sebastian Bach, too, when he discovered him, and Haydn and Handel, too, and so on. But Mozart himself said in his words, it wasn't not a, you know, you say my music comes easy to me, but he says there's not a master in the art of music before me because it works like I haven't studied, you know? And he described Mozart going up, you know, and discovering the manuscripts of Bach, you know, and he had one of the four all around him, you know, and he said, he's going to learn something from these, he said, right? You know? And he described Mozart, you know, when time is some place and, you know, he heard some music, but he went, what is that? He said, you know, and he's overcome with it, you know? And you can see how he was influenced by that, even in his masses. So, even though Mozart was undoubtedly a child, probably he had had these natural gifts, right? And therefore, if anybody doesn't depend upon his predecessors or other men for perfectionist art, but Mozart himself is, would have been a Mozart without, Haydn without, can you see? Okay? So it has been the same, he says, with those speaking about the truth. And, you know, as I go back and I read, you know, the dialogues of Plato, I'm struck by how much Aristotle got from Plato. And, of course, he wouldn't have spent 20 years in the school of Plato. I don't know anybody who spends 20 years in somebody's school, do you? He came at the age of 17, he left at the age of 37, because Plato died. There's nobody to succeed, you know, a play like that in the school. But, you know, 20 years there in the school of Plato, right? Aristotle got a tremendous amount from him, right? And I noticed, you know, when I started, you know, teaching the first book of natural hearing and so on, and reading these Greek fragments and so on, even from those guys, he realized how much Aristotle had gotten on it. And so, but some people he's getting a bit of the truth from, and others, he's, what, thinking they're mistaken, but even in reasoning against their mistakes, he is, what, profiting from that, huh? And the same as I said is true in theology, as Augustine says, huh? It's necessary for heresies to be, so that theology would develop, huh? And certainly in the patristic period, and even in the great councils, right, and the great development of theology, the sacraments, say, and Trent and so on, this is the result of heresies and so on, and people denying things. And so, in some sense, they're useful, right? So in some sense, we're indebted to them. So it has been the same with those speaking about the truth, for we have received certain positions from some, while others were the causes of those coming to be, huh? This is part of, you know, the consideration of how a man is towards truth, how he's helped by other men, right, in coming to know truth, huh? That's the fairest out of an essential part. No man's an island to himself, right? But he's helped both by those he got a part of the truth from, and by those he disagreed with, but developed his thinking in refuting, you know, what they said, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. That's a pretty impressive reading, huh? Sure, but an awful lot in there to, what, to think about, huh? So we're going to stop around for a few years? Yeah, sure. Yeah.