Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 23: Custom, Method, and the Proper Way of Proceeding

Transcript
================================================================================

Nine angels here now? Four? Four? Eight? Nine? Nine choirs of angels? Are they waiting for somebody? Let's hear our little prayer then. In the name of the Father and the Son and the 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. Amen. And help us to understand all that you have written. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. We've got to look at this fifth reading here now in the second book. And it's kind of as a preface there, it asks the question, which is stronger in our thinking, for the most part? Custom or argument, huh? That would be a custom. Yeah, yeah. And even when I ask this over in the college age, you get the answer. Custom, nobody says argument, huh? And perhaps you could give a little bit of the reason why custom is so strong. In three points about custom that kind of go in a certain order, you'll see. One reason why custom tends to be stronger than argument is it gets a head start, right? That custom acts upon your mind from the time you're born. And some say when you're still in the womb, huh? And why argument doesn't begin to influence your reason until quite a few years on, right? Secondly, custom produces a habit or disposition. And habit, as you know, is sometimes called a second nature. So what you're accustomed to think seems naturally what? True. True. Well, it's not naturally true. And how you think, right, seems a natural way of what? Thinking, huh? And finally, when one does begin to use his reason, he takes as a starting point something customary. And therefore, you make the customary kind of a principle of your thinking. And that is the third way that custom becomes so, what, strong, huh? Okay? Can you explain that one more? The third thing? Yeah. Yeah. When people are asked a question, you know, if you ask people a question in class, something like that, they'll very often, you'll see, develop again something they've customarily heard, right? Oh, okay. See, something they've customarily said about these things, right? Okay, like we've seen Aristotle. Yeah. So that having already accepted something because of custom and because it seems natural now, then they proceed from that, huh? Like you proceed from what you naturally know. And that will strengthen the force of custom, using it to judge other things, huh? You're seeing it now as a principle and not just as true, right? But as a starting point for other things. So, there's a great danger, right, for the mind in custom, right? If you're accustomed to think something that is false, or you're accustomed to thinking in a certain way that it's not appropriate to think about this subject or matter, huh? Then it's going to be very harmful to the good of the mind, huh? Okay? Now, we mentioned how Thomas Aquinas refers to the great force of custom in what you think there in the Summa Contra Gentiles. And how custom can make something false seem true, but also something true that needs proof to seem obvious, huh? And not need any kind of proof, huh? But now in his fifth reading, Aristotle is talking about the influence of custom, not upon what we think or assent to so much as to how we think, right? Yeah. And how we want to proceed and how we expect the professor or the author of reading to proceed in these matters, huh? So, let's look at the text again of Aristotle. He says, Listening happens in agreement with custom. We expect things to be said in the way we are accustomed to. And whatever is outside of this does not seem similar, but harder to know and strange because of its unfamiliarity. For the familiar is well known or seems to be well known. And he says, The great strength of familiarity is shown by the laws in which mythical and childish things prevail against our, what? Knowledge of them, right? And so when you travel around the world, you find very strange things sometimes in the laws. And the citizens say, Why don't you do it that way? And you're kind of surprised by that, huh? Or just take an example from church law. I remember the time when we went from Latin into the vernacular. And I remember reading, I worked at my aunt's house, happened to be at our aunt's house, and she had some, you know, Sancti messenger, some little kind of popular religious publication. And somebody's writing in, right? Saying that all these years she'd been defending, you know, the use of Latin in the Mass is essential to the Mass against her Protestant neighbors. And now the whole ground would have been cut out from under her, right? Well, you're so accustomed to the Mass being in Latin that it seems there has to be, what? In Latin, huh? And all of a sudden, it's not Latin anymore, right? And of course, as a matter of fact, the Mass might have been said in Greek or in Aramaic, huh? Before it was said in Latin, right? But if you're accustomed to hearing it only in Latin, that seems to be the only, what? Way, right? Yeah. If you had lived, you know, in one place where only one language was spoken, that would have seemed the natural way of, what? Speaking of. And I told you that joke of my children there when they studied Latin, right? They come home and say, Daddy, you know? What was the greatest accomplishment of the Romans? And I'm scratching my head, it's like, what is the greatest accomplishment of the Romans? They spoke Latin. So, it just kind of seems a natural way of speaking, you know, Latin. How could anybody, you know, it's not a natural way to speak, that's artificial, right? But, I remember my French teacher, you know, when he explained a French idiom, and he'd say, now, don't fight it, he says, just accept it. That's the way they say it. But it doesn't make any sense, you know? That's the way he's speaking, huh? But there you see it, the force of custom. So, Aristotle now begins to exemplify this, huh? In the third paragraph. And as Thomas explains in his commentary, this can come both from custom, as Aristotle's emphasizing here, but also sometimes from individual, what? Inclination. Okay. Thus, some men will not accept what is said if one does not speak mathematically. Now, if you know the history of Greek thought, you recognize how influential Pythagoras was, huh? And Plato himself was greatly influenced by the Pythagoreans, as you can see in the dialogue called the Timaeus, huh? And, you know, when you're reading Aristotle's account of the Greek philosophers in the first book of Wisdom, and he says, you know, and this is the way the translation will go, for the moderns, everything seems to be mathematical. Of course, when we'd first read that in English, you know, we'd say moderns, you think of the moderns, and that's obviously a relative term, right? There's some of the modern philosophers, they all want to speak mathematically. But this has come to dominate the Greek thinking at that time. And if you go back to the beginning of modern philosophy, I mean, it really gets going in the 17th century, huh? People like Descartes, who's called in the history books, the father of modern philosophy, huh? So although there's anticipations in the 14th and 15th and 16th centuries, it really gets going in the 17th century. But the philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries before Kant, right, are usually divided in history books into the rationalists, like Descartes and Spinoza and Leibniz, huh? And then the, what, empiricists, like the English empiricists, Bacon and Locke and Barclay and Hume and so on. And the rationalists are rationalists in the sense of what? Mathematical, right? Like Leibniz is one of the fathers of Calcutta's, and Descartes made important contributions to math, and Spinoza's major work, you know, is called Ethica Mori Geometrical Demonstrata, set out like a geometrical treatise, right? And my brother Mark used to, you know, satirize, you know, liberalism, Mori Geometrical Demonstrata, and we had a whole bunch of theorems, you know. A liberal's mind and reality extend to infinity or whatever means. The other one was, you know, the first theorem in Egypt is to construct an equilateral triangle, you know. And so he had a theorem was, on a flattened federal republic to construct a pyramid of total power. But you see those jokes, huh? So Descartes makes it very explicit, right? I wrote my doctoral thesis, in fact, in comparison of Descartes and Aristotle, you know, and Medved and so on. But Descartes wanted to proceed everywhere like you do in, what, geometry geometry, and Spinoza even, what, more so, huh? And you see it influencing even the natural scientists, huh? They want to give you a mathematical. I remember my brother Richard's high school physics book, you know, I had a quote from the British physicist Lord Kelvin, and no matter what the matter is, if it isn't mathematical, it is not scientific. Period, see? So Aristotle's example is, what, significantly chosen, huh? Plus some men, like Descartes or Spinoza or Leibniz, right? Or the mathematical physicists and so on. They would not accept what is said if one does not speak mathematically. But in ancient times, he'd have in mind the Pythagoreans and, to some extent, the Platonists, huh? And, of course, the Pythagoreans, you know, they wanted to make everything mathematical. They even had numbers and different virtues, huh? And they see likeness between certain numbers and certain virtues. And I've got your number. That's probably Pythagorean. That's the Enneagram, right? Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Now, Thomas mentions that one might be inclined this way, not only by custom, by being accustomed to mathematical studies, but if one has a mathematical, what, imagination, right, huh? So, by individual inclination, you might be, right? Now, the other people are a little more weak-minded, huh? And others will not, if one does not proceed by, what, examples, huh? More like the historical mind would proceed. Yeah, okay? And the, what, rhetorician would proceed, right? Now, this third example probably is to be taken in the sense of, what, those who think of the poets as the, what? Authority. Yeah, yeah. And, therefore, you want to proceed by authority, right? Although, you could also say there are other ones, like the Romantic philosophers who want to proceed poetically, right? The more poetic it is, the more true it is, said Naval is, right? But here it probably has a sense where the poet is brought in as a, what, authority, huh? Now, sometimes I compare it to that, which you had in the Middle Ages, huh? Where Thomas said, you know, that in philosophy, the argument from authority is the weakest, but in theology says it's the strongest, right? So, in the Middle Ages, they were accustomed to, what, theology, and, therefore, to the argument from authority. And, therefore, when they got into other parts of human knowledge, they looked for something kind of analogous to the Bible. In logic, it might be Aristotle's works, right? In medicine, it might be Galen or somebody who was taken as the authority, huh? And, I think I mentioned before of how in Albert the Great's logical works, huh? And, he's discussing, you know, some part of logic, and, is this a part of logic? And, one of the objections is, well, Aristotle hasn't got any book on this. And, Albert dismisses the argument saying, well, maybe he didn't get around to it, or maybe he just failed to, like, you know, being human being, he could have done everything, right? But, you can't think of such an objection coming up in our time, could you, so much, right? Same. But, if you kind of are accustomed to looking upon Aristotle as to logic, right, what the Bible is to, what? Theology. Yeah. You know, even today, you know, we have a problem with the Orthodox, right, church? Mm-hmm. And, um, where they want to accept the filioque, you know, the addition of, uh, it's got to be exactly there, you know, in the words already, you know, and exaggerated, you know, authority of a council that you can't even change the words or add to the words, you know? Um, so, um, in the dialogues of Plato, you know, you'll have sometimes somebody who wants to have the poet brought in, you know, and Socrates says, well, you know, let's look at ourselves, you know, because we're not sure what the poet wants to say anyway. Okay? So, perhaps those examples are well but chosen, right? The mathematician, the mathematical way of proceeding is something we find in the Pythagoreans and the rationalists in modern times. And other people are kind of a weaker mind, they want to go back to the senses, they want a sensible example. And some just want an authority that they can hold on to, see? Okay. Well, I mean, what might be appropriate in one place is not appropriate in another place, right? Mm-hmm. Now, the fourth paragraph is, uh, looking at this a little bit differently, and the Greek word there that is translated here, precision, by putting parentheses or certitude, it can be translated either way, right? Okay? Now, as you go, um, from mathematics towards other sciences, you get less, what? Certitude, less precision. So, Aristotle, in the, um, Nicomarckian Ethics, say, it's equally ridiculous or laughable to allow the geometry to persuade you like a rhetorician, and then to demand a rhetorician that he demonstrates something with the certitude that a geometry has when he demonstrates it there. And Aristotle's taking two extremes there, right? Okay. So, sometimes people will demand more certitude or more precision than the matter admits, right? Mm-hmm. And other times, they'll accept less precision, less certitude than the matter admits, right? Mm-hmm. So, as Aristotle will say, you have to look for the certitude or precision that's appropriate to the matter. And you can't, you know, in talking about revolution and governments, huh, have the same precision as you can, you talk about, about triangles or squares, right? Or the same certitude, huh? And some want all things considered with precision or certitude. And, of course, that's, tends to be the mathematical people especially, huh? Mm-hmm. So, Descartes wants that kind of precision or that kind of certitude everywhere. While others are paying by precision or certitude. Yeah! Either through inability to follow the reasoning, that's because of the weakness of their mind, right? Or through its, what? Stinginess, huh? See? For precision or certitude has something of the sort, so it seems illiberal to someone's reasoning, just as in business transactions, huh? Well, when I was first a non-professor there, a bachelor there at Assumption College, sometimes we professors would go out and tell them some bachelor professors and have dinner in the restaurant, huh? Now, you'll order something, you'll get your meal and so on, and then the bill comes, right? Right? And most of the professors would just, you know, toss their money in, you know? There's one old professor, right? He wanted to pay just what his meal had cost, right? I wonder if you're still a bachelor. You see? Yeah. Well, that's a kind of, what? You know, stinginess, right? I don't care whether, you know, your meal costs maybe a dollar, two dollars more than my meal, so what? I don't care, just, you know, or kind of, I mean, just three even things, huh? So some people think it's like that, right? To demand this kind of certitude or precision. And in one of his sonnets there, Shakespeare speaks of nigger truth, huh? Now, it doesn't, it means nigger, right? Stingy truth, right? And, um, it's interesting, right? Because when we go to somebody's house, let's say, and we have dinner there, we praise the dinner, don't we? We all do that, I think. And we don't say what we really thought the dinner was like, huh? We don't say, you know, well, I've had better, you know. Or you don't use the right herb, or you cook that a little bit too much, or you make yourself a persona non grata, see? But that would be the truth, right? So, being, you know, accurate or precise, it sometimes seems to be, what, stingy, you know. When I was a little snot there in college, a freshman in college, in fact, the English professor had his own book, you know. And the first sentence in the book almost was, words spoken are written in our thoughts. What did you say about that? Words spoken are written in our thoughts. Yeah, so I said to him, strictly speaking, that's false. I don't give you... But see, like, you know, you're being more precise, and, you know, well, there's a connection between words and thoughts, and why have you been so precise, worthless, you know? See? If I'm being kind of stingy, you know, and you've got to speak exactly right, you've got to be in trouble with me, you know? It's like an accounting class I took once, and the professor actually miscalculated my score, and he owed me, like, two points on the test. So I showed him after class, and he just said, oh, that's, like, it's no big deal. And I just thought, well, do you do your accounting? There's a couple points off there. You still love the class. It's a wash. Did you pass? Did you pass? That semester, yeah. Now, what Aristotle's been doing here up to this point, in these last two paragraphs, is showing how, in fact, men often do, very often, maybe most often, do proceed, right? They do want to proceed in the way to which they are accustomed, or as Thomas says, to which they are naturally, as individuals, inclined, right? But he's also kind of hinting at that, and this is not the way to decide, is it? Because you and I would be proceeding in quite different ways in the same matter. So now he's going to say, hey, in the next to the last paragraph, hence one ought to be educated, right, as to how each should be received, huh? How each subject, right, should be approached, right? Or how each, what, lecture should be received, huh? And he's going to, in the last paragraph, talk about how that's done. But he says, since it is absurd to seek at the same time episteme, or I translate that as reasoned-out knowledge, or reasoned-out understanding, and the way of reasoned-out knowledge, huh? Okay? It's not the same thing, right? And it is not easy to get either, he says. Okay? So you shouldn't be at the same time trying to learn geometry, right, and learn how one should learn geometry. But you should learn, maybe, how we should learn geometry, and then what? Learn geometry in that way, huh? Now, Avera was, in his commentary, and Thomas Aquinas, following here at this point, says, And for this reason also, logic got to be learned before the other parts of philosophy. Because that teaches the common way of going forward in reasoned-out knowledge. But then in addition to that, is what he's talking about here, each reasoned-out knowledge has its own way of going forward. And you ought to learn that in the beginning, right? So if you look at the first question, say, of the Summa Theologiae, Thomas will talk about how we're not to proceed in theology, whether theology is argumentative, in what way it's argumentative, and whether it's used in metaphors, scripture, and so on, right? But he's talking there about how we're not to, what? Proceed, right? And you can see Boethius doing this very carefully in the beginning of the De Trinita Antiham, that the different sciences don't proceed in the same way. I mean, we'll elaborate somewhat on those differences when we get to the sixth book, when he finally determines it more for wisdom, huh? Now notice, you could say that in all of our knowledge, you can distinguish between what we know and how we know it, right? And Aristotle uses that distinction in the beginning of the first book of the Dianima, when he says that one knowledge is better than another, because either what you know or how you know it, right? And elsewhere he explains that the criterion of what you know is more important, but still both of them, right, are important, huh? But here he's saying, you know, you ought to know how you're going to know something, right, before you try to know it. And you can't do both at the same time, huh? Now, what I've translated here is the way of reasoned out knowledge, huh? Let me just take the difference there, huh? Because once in a while you have, say, the Greek word, and then the Latin word that you used to translate it, and then the English word, right? You'll see, if you read these things in Greek and Latin as well as in English, that the pseudonym, to try to find the language, suddenly it has a different etymology and a little bit of nuance there, right? I think I pointed out when you read the Ethics, huh? How the Greek word, we translate by happiness, is etudiamonia, okay? Now, when I first read the Ethics, in English, right, they had that translated by happiness, okay? Happiness is the name given in the English text to the end of man, his goal, happiness. But the Greek word is etudiamonia. In the Latin text of Thomas, the word is philicidias, okay? Okay, so these are supposed to be referring to the same thing, right? The end of the purpose of man, huh? But notice that the etymology of these three words is different, huh? Because happiness comes from ha, which means luck. And in Latin, what would correspond to the word happiness would be bona fortuna, okay? I've been fortunate in life, right? In Greek, you'd have e-u, and the word for luck, eutukia, right? Okay? It's kind of funny in English now, and if I say you're lucky, that means good luck, right? So happiness means good luck, huh? Okay? Philicidas comes from the Latin word for fruitful. So it's like fruitfulness, right? Okay? So it comes from the word for fruit. Well, that suggests that happiness is not a result of luck, or good luck, right? But it's a natural fruit of virtuous behavior, right? Okay? Which, in some sense, fits more with what Aristotle's talking about, right? Now, Aristotle, in the Poetics, Poetics, and he's talking about Greek tragedy and so on, for luck, or all the things happening on the sun. Then he uses the word eutukia. Eutukia meaning well or good, and tukia meaning luck, right? You see? But here, eudaimonia means you've got a good angel. A good daimun, huh? Daimun does need a good thing. Oh, that seems... Yeah. Now, it's kind of fruitful to look at those three words, right? Because the eutymology suggests that luck has something to do with the day to our goal in life, right? But this suggests it's results of what we choose to do or not do, right? So, let's do it. So, let's do it. So, let's do it. So, let's do it. Here it depends maybe a little bit upon a higher being. Well, maybe there's a bit of truth in all of them, right? So, in the etymology of the word, there's a little connotation there. In some sense, the emphasis of Nicomachean Ethics is really upon what you can choose to do or not to do, and one thing will make you happy and the other thing will make you miserable, right? Life is outside of our control, and a higher power is not in our control either, right? Or the way we can pray it so. Now, the Greek word here is propos. The Latin word that you'll find in Thomas' commentary is the word bonus. And we usually translate it way. So Thomas in his translation here when he's making a point about logic, he'll talk about the modus potraidenti in the science, right? And then logic is being about the common modus potraidenti, right? And we translate that in English sometimes as the way of proceeding, right? If you want to make it entirely, you should say the way of going forward, right? That's what proceeding means. Okay? So the way of going forward in geometry and the way of going forward in theology is not the same. And the way of going forward in natural philosophy is not the same as geometry or theology, right? Okay? Now, sometimes you'll find Thomas just the word modus all by itself. The modus of a sign, so. Now, the Greek word is what? Tropos, huh? Okay? Now, there's a little bit of a difference in the etymology of these words, huh? Well, if you look at the word tropos in Greek, it can have this sense of way, you know? But it turns, it really goes back to the Greek word to turn. Okay? It's interesting. It's taken from turn. Now, my favorite writer, Washington Irving, right? In one of his works there, Montchoy, right? Very interesting work. Montchoy's a guy with a poetic turn of mind, he says. And he wants everything to be poetic, right? Okay? Like Novalis there in Germany in the 19th century. The more poetic it is, the more true it is. You know? But you can say, you know, the turn of mind of a historian and a geometer is not the same, right? The turn of mind of a theologian, right? Indeed. So, you go to a different science you've got to kind of turn your mind in a little different direction, huh? It's kind of interesting that word turn, right? Mm-hmm. Modus, as Thomas is always talking about, in reference to from St. Augustine, modus is determined by what? Measure, right? So, modus is particularly the word for measure. The English word way is almost like the word, what? Path or road. Okay? Though sometimes way in English is a little more abstract, the way of doing something, right? Mm-hmm. Okay? You've probably seen that expression in it. It was very popular for a while. You're M.O., you're, what? Modus. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then way is much the sense of road, but a way of doing something, right? But it's... So a little difference in the, what? Etymology, right? But Aristotle uses the word tropas there, so we go modus, and I use the word way, yeah? Okay? The way of going forward, huh? Aristotle will sometimes think of the tropas of going forward, too, huh? Proogena. Okay? So Aristotle is saying in the next to the last paragraph that the way of going forward, right? The way of proceeding, huh? The way of turning your head. It's not the same thing, right? As the reason knowledge itself, right? And you can't learn two things at the same time. And it's not easy, he says, to get either one of these, huh? Okay? And you have to stop and figure out what the way of proceeding in this science should be, right? Okay? Aristotle is very brief in the last paragraph when he says how this is to be determined, huh? He says, mathematical precision or certitude, you can take it either way, should not be demanded everywhere, but in those things not having, what? Matter. Hence, this is not the way of natural science, for probably all nature has matter. Thus, one should first consider what is nature, and in this way it will become clear what natural science is about, and with it belongs to one science and more than one to consider the causes and beginnings. Now, Thomas, in common on that part, says that's exactly what he does in the second book of natural hearing, in the second book of the so-called physics, right? He determines what nature is and therefore what natural things are, and then he finds the way of proceeding that fits this, what? Matter, right? Okay? So, the principle that I saw what I was enunciating is that the tropis or the modus or the way of proceeding in any given reasoned out knowledge should fit that, what? Matter. The matter be considered there, right? Okay? Now, let's take that principle and then we're going to try to exemplify and unfold it what that means. We say, the way of proceeding. You want to speak English? the way of going forward, right? In any reasoned out knowledge, any reasoned out understanding should not be determined by custom, right? Or by individual inclination, but it should be what? Yeah, it should fit the matter, right? Or the subject, you know? We're mad in what kind of freak. Should fit the matter of that reasoned out knowledge. So, you must know what the matter is, right? Of a reasoned out knowledge, you must know what it's about, right? Before you can figure out what way of proceeding should set matter. You see? Now, in the first book of the Nicomarckian Ethics, Aristotle states the same principle, right? But he makes an interesting comparison because of the word matter, right? He compares it to the, what? Mechanical arts, practical arts, right? That make something out of wood or something out of, what? Cloth, right? Or make something out of metal or something, right? And he says that the way of working in any of these arts, right? must fit the, what? Yeah, yeah. So, my brother-in-law sometimes practices carpentry, right? He uses a hammer and a saw and more precise instruments than that. He does use a hammer and a saw, right? My wife makes dresses sometimes, huh? And she uses maybe the scissors and a needle and thread and so on, right? But my brother-in-law never uses a needle and thread when he makes something out of wood. My wife never gets a hammer and a saw when she makes a dress, right? Are you sure? So, I think these two people are, what, using the tools, right, and the way of working with those tools that fits wood in the one hand and then cloth in their hand, right? Okay? Now, if you were a glass blower, right, you'd have another set of tools, right, to blow the glass, right? And a hammer would not be too useful in making something out of glass. You see? That's a very kind of deep comparison that a strong mix, right? Because it's very well known to us that the different mechanics that the that the things The civil arts, as they were called in the Middle Ages, the servo arts, as they're sometimes called, right? The ones that take some exterior matter, whether it be cloth or wood or steel or glass, right? And make something out of it, right? They all seem to have different tools, huh? And a different way of using those tools, huh? And the tools that they have and the way they work their matter both have to fit the matter, right? Do you see that? That's a very interesting comparison he makes, huh? Do you see that? My father's factory there. Sometimes I work in a wood shop, and sometimes I work in a forge shop, right? In a forge shop, they might heat a piece of metal and then what? Bend it, right? But in the wood shop, they didn't heat the piece of wood and then bend it to shape. That's just suitable to the matter, right? Do you see what I mean? So that's one beautiful likeness that Aristotle uses, right? To show, right? There's a certain likeness in even looking now at knowledge, which is for the sake of understanding what and why, right? But where your way of going forward in that reasoned out knowledge or reasoned out understanding, right? It has to fit the subject or matter of that knowledge, right? In the same way that the tools and the ways of working with the material at hand in all to serve our hearts must fit the matter, right? I suppose to some extent that's true in the fine arts, too, right? So, the painter would have different tools than, say, the musician, right? And the sculptor would have different tools than the, what? Painter, huh? So, Michael Angel was making the pietas or something. He might have a different tool than when he was painting the, what? The ceiling, right? Okay. What Aristotle said, too, that we're not to demand the same precision as circuitry everywhere. If you're making the heads of the presidents there out in South Dakota there, you know, and you're blasting away, you can't have the same precision as you can have on a piece of paper, right? And even, you know, with wood, you know, you kind of notice when you saw wood, you know, you'd take some of the log with you, you know, and exactly where you draw the line, you know? You can't have quite the same precision as you can on a piece of paper or when you're cutting with the scissors, right? You can be much more precise there, you know? But when you saw, you take part of the board with you, you know? So the matter doesn't admit of the same, what? Precision, right? Precision. Yeah, yeah. So that's one beautiful comparison, right? Okay. Now, look at this on these likenesses here, huh? Likeness, I should abbreviate it to the matter of the kind of arts, or civil arts. Now let's take another very simple example here. Suppose I've got the ear of Mozart, right? You know, a man who could play the trumpet, he'd faint, you know, was so sensitive to that ear, right? Okay. Now, it would make sense for Mozart when he goes to the Uffizi Gallery to see the paintings there and so on, to bring his ear up to the paintings. Make any sense? Not much. Or it would be good for Botticelli or some other painter, you know? When he goes to Mozart's music, right? Put his earplugs in and stare. See? And there's likeness here now. Here you're talking about two ways of knowing, right? Mm-hmm. The eyes and the ears, right? And regardless of whether you're accustomed to use your eyes more or your ears more, right? That's not the way to decide, right? Mm-hmm. Or if I have good eyes and bad ears, or vice versa, I should use the eyes rather than... No. But whether you use your eyes or your ears or your sense of taste or smell, right? The way of knowing has to fit what you're trying to know. So if I'm trying to know the music of Mozart, the tool that fits the music of Mozart is my ears mainly, right? If I'm trying to know the painting of Botticelli, then it's my eyes that fit that, right? If I'm trying to know wine, right, color is not the most important thing, although it has something to do with it. The sound of it is important in class, you know? But the bubbles of the champagne, you know, it's kind of a nice sound, but it's primarily smell and what? Taste, right? Okay? So one should not use the means of knowing to which one is accustomed in these three, right? I mean, if I'm a great wine taster, you know, like, what's his name? Parker, you know? Parker. He's famous. Everybody doesn't fear, you know, what his decisions will be about, the new wines and so on. He tastes the wine all day long, right? He has to spit it out because he's completely drunk every day. But I mean, he's very famous, you know, okay? But so he's accustomed to using his sense of taste and smell all day long, right? If he goes out to hear a concert in the evening, I don't know if he does, he can't use the senses that he's accustomed to using all day, right? Or these people, you know, who are with the tea tasters, you know, and they're always tasting tea, you know, for them to buy this or that kind of tea, right? But he might be accustomed all day long to use his sense of, what, smell or taste. But then when he goes to the museum or to the thing, he has to use not the sense to which he's accustomed, right? But likewise, you could say, like with Thomas, you know, if you're particularly good at one's sense, right? My brother Mark was in Detroit one time and visiting a friend there, and his friend had some artist friends, right? And these guys are very sensitive to different shades of color, you know? My brother Mark would describe these guys, you know, they come into a room like this. Your eyes are, you know, I've never seen a shade of blue just like that. You know? They're completely absorbed in their eyes, you see? And, but if you've got very good eyes and you're very sensitive to different shades, this is not going to make you more sensitive to Mozart's music, right? No. So you see how the same principle is involved here. This is a very easy example to see, right? Much easier than what Aristotle's talking about here, right? But you can say the eyes and the ears, and taste and smell put them together here, in wine, three different ways of knowing, right? But which way of knowing you use should not be determined by the one you're accustomed to use the most, or by the one that you naturally are inclined to, right? I remember one time I was teaching that first book of the metaphysics there, the premium there, and Aristotle's talking about the eyes, you know? And I would say, you know, people would rather be deaf than blind, right? Well, this one girl is a lover of music, you know? She'd rather be blind than deaf, you know? So, I mean, some people are inclined to one sense than another, right? But even if you're especially, you know, inclined to use your sense of hearing, right? That's where you get your greatest thrills in life. You can't use that when you throw up knowing the paintings of a lot of children to somebody. You see? Okay, we're trying to know the wine, right? So, you have to go by the, what? The one that fits the matter, right, huh? Okay? So, that's another comparison there, right? It's a little different here, see? Like this, the use of the senses, huh? Remember that famous movie that Disney made there, the Fantasia, right? Oh, yeah. And, in a way, some people criticized Fantasia because he was trying to be visual about, what? Music, right? And people who are not accustomed to using their ears to listen carefully, right? To use classical music that you're playing, right? Quite their eyes, taking these things right away, right? But it's kind of the wrong way to be introduced to what? Classical music. Yeah, yeah. You have to get it through your ears, right? And it's kind of a distraction, it says, all this thing is jumping around there, you know? Some pieces of music are perhaps moved by you because of the images you have. You know? That's kind of, you know, making that mistake, right?