Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 30: The Six Fundamental Questions of Metaphysics

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Seagoras and Plato or Timaeus are putting the mind in some way superior to matter. They're not thinking that this superior mind and this greater mind is responsible for the very existence of matter. So they have, in a sense, two first beginnings that, as far as existence is concerned, are, what, independent of each other, although one can act upon the other, and maybe not to be hers, right? But I think there's something, you know, kind of diabolical, in a sense, in leaving out that middle position, because it's very hard to go from the almost inevitable first position of our mind that matters the beginning of all things, to the truth, without at first coming to that middle position, and seeing that mind or understanding is something immaterial that doesn't depend upon matter for its existence. Until you see that, you wouldn't even raise the question whether there could be a mind responsible for the existence of matter, right? If mind can't be without matter, right? If mind is simply the result of a formation of matter in some way, right? Or an organization of matter in some way, then it wouldn't even raise the question, right? So if you leave out that middle position, I think you make it impossible, for a human reason, to go from, say, matter is the beginning of all things, to what is a truth, that there is some mind that is the beginning of all things. So you've kind of taken out the bridge between the two sides that they do talk about, huh? So you shouldn't neglect that, that in-between position, huh? Okay. Now the third question. Further, the most difficult of all, and having the most question, whether the one and being. Now one and being, as you find out in the fourth book, one and being are both the subject of wisdom, and, of course, the Pythagoreans and the Platonists, being influenced by mathematics, tend to start with the one, which is the beginning of number. Whether the one and being, as the Pythagoreans and Plato say, are not something other, but the substance of what is. Or not, but some other subject, as Empedocles says, love, another fire, another water, or air. Now, let's think a little bit about numbers, huh? Okay. And in the number two, would you say there's two ones in the number two? Hmm? Hmm? Two ones in there, aren't there? Somewhere, okay. Number three, there's three ones, right? Okay. So we say one is the beginning of all numbers, huh? And every number is composed of ones, right? Okay. Now, what is this one that is the beginning of all numbers? What is this one that measures all numbers, huh? What is this one that seems to compose, right? All numbers. Sometimes they call it the unit. Unit is really a word for one, right? What is this one? Is it one point, or is it one line, or is it one circle, or is it one man, or is it one horse? Which of these is it? Is it one something, or is it just one period? What would you say? It seems to be just one, right? I mean, if it was one point, how could you speak of three lines, right? If it was one line, how could you speak of three circles? If it was one circle, how could you speak of three cubes, or something? So the Pythagoreans and the Platonists thought, well, it's just one. So it is. And since this one seems to be involved in the very, what, substance of something, you know, if you take me out there to the guillotine, right, divide, and divide me, that would be the end of me, right? If I saw this table here in half, divide it, you don't have a table anymore, right? I put your little hat through the shredder, right? You know? So the Platonists, as we all note, saw that things resist being divided, right? It's the old military age, divide and conquer him. So they try to preserve their unity just as they try to preserve their, what? Being, right? We just elected, the Cardinal just elected a new Pope, right? Okay? In some way, he's the, what? The unity of the Church, right? Okay? So, in a sense, to adhere to the unity of the Church is to adhere to the very being, right, of the Church, right? So an army or something like that, or a city, right? A house divided, what did Lincoln say? A house divided? Can't stand, right? Or Christ himself had said this. I was borrowing the words of Christ there, and they're accusing him of casting out doubles by Beelzebub or something. So they saw a connection there between one and, what? The very substance of things. But since one is also the beginning of a number, then they begin to think that numbers are the, what? Key to all things, right? And there's some truth to this, but we'll see that when we get to the eighth book in a little bit. Let's go back to the question here. So this is very much a question about the one and the middle, isn't it? Whether the one is just one and nothing more. That's what Satan is saying, right? And more obscurely, but kind of hinting at it, is there some being that is just being and nothing more. And of course, that reminds us of what? Scripture, right? He says, I am who am, right? You might say, who are you? Like you want to add something there, right? No, I am who am. See? Is there something one or being, right? Something one that is just one and that one point or one line or something else and being that is just being, right? So here's the most difficult of all and having the most questions. But it's a profound thing he's talking about here. I think I mentioned that in, I think it's Hillary, the doctor of the church, right? Hillary in his book on the Trinity, right? There's kind of a famous book there. I know Thomas in the Treatise of the Trinity follows Augustine most of all. But after Augustine, he quotes Hillary, it seems a lot. If you look at the beginning of Hillary's book, where he gives a little kind of autobiographical sketch of his coming into the church and so on, but part of it was picking up the Old Testament and reading this, what do I tell them? What's your name? I am who am. And that, you know, struck him as very profound as a man of some, shall we say, philosophical erudition, right, huh? I'm sure Plato would have been interested in that, huh? Now he's contrasting Pythagoras and Plato who were saying this with the other Greek philosophers who say, no, unity is not one period, it's one something that's making things one, and he gives the opinion of Empedocles, right? Now Empedocles spoke, if you recall, of earth, air, fire, and water, the four matters. And then love, what? It's what brings them together, right, huh? Love is what unites them, and then hate would be what makes them many, what separates them, huh? So it's not one itself that's making things one, but it's love, right, huh? You see? Love is the unity of things, and we think of love as a, what, something that binds and unites, huh? So when we studied love and friendship, if you recall, the first effect of love was to what? Unite, huh? Okay. I mentioned that how in Shakespeare's play there, the Trilladove there play, not the play but the poem, you know, where reason is puzzled at love because it's making two one, how can two be one? Love, okay? So he's contrasting Empedocles and other thinkers with Pythagoras and Plato, right? For which the one period, right, is and is the foundation of things. And they say, no, no, it's something else that is the source of unity, love. Why others, you know, who speak of, what, all things are made out of one matter, right? Like some said fire, like Heraclitus maybe, and water, the very first philosopher of all, who was Thales, right? And Heir, the next Simenes, there, the third philosopher. So that's the unity of things, right? We're all made out of water, right, huh? What does Shakespeare say there in Indy the Fourth? Time of the Englishmen, you know, they shouldn't be fighting among each other. All of one nature, of one substance, bread. Okay, we're all made out of the same metal, so to speak, right? We should be friends, huh? We're all flesh and blood, right? That's what unites us. We're all made out of the same stuff. That's our unity. It's not one period, it's that one matter out of which we're all made, right? Okay. You know, they can make a red wine and a rosé wine and a white wine out of the same grapes, huh? You know, they can separate the skins right away and so on. So, you know, you look at these three, you say, oh, they're the same, what? They're the same, huh? They're all one. He had the same thing with tea, huh? They can make a green tea and a black tea, so-called, or red tea, and an oolong tea, which is in between, out of the same tea leaves, huh? But they're fermented more, you see? And the green ones are hardly fermented at all. And then the red ones, or black tea as we call it, the Chinese called red, that's fully fermented. And then the oolong is in between, huh? You see, but they're made out of the same thing, right? They're, that's their unity, right? The same tea leaves ever used in all of these, huh? Someone gave me some white tea. It's kind of funny, huh? Yes. Huh? Yeah, it's the same, uh... Yeah, from China. Actually, if someone had given it to somebody, then they gave it to me because they don't like tea, and there was like a really nice box, and like a red box, and a green box, and a yellow... And I thought, well, it's going to be a red tea, and a oolong, and a... But they're all white, white teas, and I'm not sure I like them, but... But, uh, um, but this is the way these people would see the unity of things, right? Okay? All things are one in some way. They're made out of the same, what? Matters. The unity. The unity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Heisenberg, in the 20th century, says if we substitute the word energy for fire, we can complete what he said word for word. All things are exchange for energy, energy for all things. That's the unity of things, right? It's not this abstract one that you pick and us are talking about, huh? Well, which is it? I mean, there's some truth to what Empedocles is saying, right? And the materialists even are saying, as far as unity of these things are concerned, huh? Is there some truth to what Pythagoras and Plato are saying? You see, is the being of God belong to some substance other than that being itself? Is there a composition in God? I've got to be careful to not confuse, though, the being which is said of all things with the being who said I am who am, right? Like I mentioned how Hegel makes that confusion, right? But he's talking about what is just being, right? But you have to be careful of distinguishing what is just being in these two, what, senses, huh? And is the one that is the beginning of number, is that the one that is convertible with everything that is? Because all things to be have to be one, huh? Because all things are either, what, simple or composed. And if they're composed, they won't be if they're not put together, right? Which is a kind of oneness, a kind of unity. And if the composed is one, then therefore it's yours, the simple is one. So everything that is, is one. But is the one that everything is, the one that's the beginning of number? Well, the Platonists can't distinguish the two, huh? And Aristotle says, well, they're not the same one. The one that everything is, and the one that's the beginning of number. The one that's the beginning of number is limited to the genus of quantity. And that's tied up with the continuous and the infinite divisibility, the continuous. And that's the way things can go on forever. But it's very hard for our mind to separate the one that is the beginning of number from the one that's convertible with what? Being, huh? That's caused people difficulty all the way down through history. Just as our mind's a hard time separating what is basically substance from what? Body, right? And so the Greek philosophers, as Aristotle reports in the book on place there, the fourth book of natural hearing, was a common opinion that whatever it is must be somewhere. If it isn't somewhere, it doesn't exist. So to be in some place is a property of what is. But to be in place, to be contained in a place, is really a property of natural bodies. So they're identifying what is basically substance, fundamental things, with bodies, right? And they can't separate them, right? It's very hard for the mind to rise above that because we always think with images. And if something cannot be imagined, it's hard for us to think about it. So we can see this is the most difficult of all and having the most questions, right? And we think Aristotle had arrived at the idea that God is being itself, huh? But it's most difficult. But it's made even more explicit in the great Arab philosophers, starting, I guess, with Al-Farabi, huh? And Thomas takes it over, too, huh? Develops it. It was a really profound question that Aristotle was raising there. Is that distinction, is that what the term means, the analogy of being? No, the analogy of being is first referring to the word being that has many meanings, huh? And what analogy means, that the word is equivocal by reason, right? Equivocal means it has many meanings, but there's a reason why it has these many meanings. There's a connection among these meanings. And we'll see that when we get to the beginning of the fourth book, huh? Because when Aristotle is showing that wisdom is about being as being, he will point out that the word being has more than one meaning. And then the question arises, well, can there be one knowledge, then, of everything that's called being? And if the word was equivocal by chance, like, say, the word bat, instead of the baseball bat, and the bat that flies out of the belfry at night, if the word is pretty equivocal, there'd be no reason for studying, in the same knowledge, the baseball bat and the flying mouse, or the flying rodent, as we call it, the other bat. right? But let's take the word political, right? Political is an equivocal word, and political, first of all, refers to the city, the polis. But we also speak of the government as something political. Now, is the government the polis, the city? No. But is there a reason for calling both the city and the government political? Is there a connection between the two? Well, the connection is that the government rules the city, right? Okay. Well, then we talk about law. Law is something political. But is the law a city? No. Is the law a government? No. But is there a connection between city and government and law? Yeah. Because the government rules the city by laws, let's say, right? Well, then we talk about revolution, right? Like Aristotle in the fifth book of the politics. But is revolution a city? No. Is it a government? No. Well, why talk about revolution when you talk about city and government then? Revolution is a change of government, right? Okay. And would it make sense to talk about government in one science and the change of governments in another science? Would you know and understand the change of governments without understanding government? See? But I can understand a baseball bat without understanding the flying rodent at all, right? And I can understand the flying rodent without knowing about a baseball bat, right? So the fact that the word bat is said of those two just happened, right? There's really no connection why they should have the same name. But there's a reason why the city, the government, law, revolution are called clinical. And a reason why they should be studied together. So you don't have to have everything that's studied in a reasoned out knowledge be called the same in exactly the same meaning, right? But they've got to be connected. And so I'll be pointing out in the fourth book that the word being is what? Equivocal by reason. Yeah. And if it says say equivocal by reason, they'll say analogous, right? Proportional. But it's maybe more precise to say it's equivocal by reason. Okay? Okay. So that's really a terribly profound question right here in front of us, huh? Is there something that is just being? Is there someone who is I am who am? In a sense he's asking that, right? See? Because it doesn't seem to be true of these things that are around us, huh? To be breakfast is something to be. I don't think that's something, right? It is that way. Very, very profound question. You wonder how Aristotle could come up with these, you know, somehow. But in a sense, the Pythagoreans, the Platonists, are kind of raising the question. And Aristotle saw the connection between one and being, as the Platonists did to some extent, huh? And how one and being go together. How the unity of a thing and its being go together. And then if you make some one that is just one, then maybe there's something that's just being, right? But they say there are all kinds of problems, you know. Is the one that is the beginning of number the same as the one that's convertible with being? And the Platonists were proceeding as if that were so, and therefore everything is numbers. Aristotle says, no, they're not exactly the same, those two. The one that's the beginning of number is the one we know first, but is that the one that's convertible with being? Very difficult, very difficult things. And then the last question he raises in that group, and whether the beginnings are universal as the Platonists said, man himself and dog himself and other things, or as individual things like what? This father, this cat, this dog, right? Now, it seems to me that the difficulty of this in a way is the difficulty of understanding what we call a universal cause. You want something whose causality extends to, what, many, huh? Many, many things, an infinity of things. And the only thing that kind of seems to extend to infinity of things is universal, because that is said of many things, in fact, in some cases of an infinity of things. So I think everybody here knows to some extent what a number is, huh? And everybody here knows the distinction between, say, an odd number and even number. And how many things is an odd number set of? And how many things is an even number set of? Yeah, yeah. So if you want something that extends in some way to an infinity of things, to a large multitude, at least, of things, you tend to think of the universal, don't you? But some might say, yeah, but is that real? Is that something real? Right? Karl Marx kind of makes fun of Hegel for doing this, so I'm trying to get everything for the universal. He says, this is what Hegel does, and he's kind of making fun of Hegel. He's got an orange here, right? And an apple here, and a pear, and a peach, right? And he thinks about the four of them, and then he comes up with this idea of what a fruit is, right? Now he's got the universal idea of fruit, huh? Now he's got to get a way of deducing apple, and orange, and peach, and banana, and so on, from the idea of fruit in general, huh? That's what the Gating System is, right? And so you might raise a question, is that just an abstraction of the mind, this idea of fruit, right? But this universal fruit does in some way extend to the apple, and the orange, and the peach, and the banana, and all the rest of them, right? Okay? And of course, in wisdom, we're trying to get at a universal cause. Okay? Now let's get down to some real causality, you know, that's in our experience. Well, the woman is pregnant, right, huh? Okay? And she gives rise to this boy or this little girl, right, huh? Or the cat is pregnant, the cat produces this, right? Or the carpenter, right? He doesn't make table, he makes this table right here that I'm wrapping with my fingers, huh? You see? And the real cause is they're individuals, right? In a sense, it looks back to that first question, you know, whether there's one cause, right? Whether in kind or in number, right? Because if there's one, in some sense, in number, it's going to have to extend everything, but it's universal that extends everything, right? Yet universal doesn't seem to be real. So what you're looking for is an individual that's universal, but that individual is rather unique. And the universality of that individual is going to be something quite different from the universality of what is said in many, huh? Okay? Who's commanding the army? Is it general? General? In general? Okay. Is it soldiers conducting, you know, directing the army? Right? Well, soldiers set of everybody in the army, right, huh? But is there some universal thing called soldier that's influencing the army? Or is it individual, like MacArthur, that we call the general, right? But he's called general because he's set of everybody? No. Because this causality extends to everybody, huh? Right? But the human mind has a hard time understanding that kind of a, what, cause, huh? They sometimes, you know, refer to the, to the The sun is an interesting example of it, right? The sun seems to be an individual body. It's not universal, is it? But yet its causality extends to all the plants in some way, all the life here on the face of the earth, right? So we think as before Aristotle, either that the causes are individuals, or it definitely causes them in some way, but their causality doesn't extend very far, right? My causality doesn't extend to the whole human race, does it? My causality extends only to my children, and maybe in some ways my grandchildren, but not to the whole human race, you see? Maybe others does, huh? So you try to get to the idea of, what? An individual that is a universal cause. It's very hard for our mind to, what, understand that, huh? When we try to express the universality of a cause, we tend to understand it by something that is said of many or of all, right? If I say God is the cause of all things, right? I'm using the word thing there, which is said of all things, right? I'm trying to express the universality of God's cause by saying he's the cause of all things, huh? If I wanted to, you know, take the man who's in charge of the whole army, let's say if there is a man in charge of the whole army, the chief of staff or whatever he might be, I might say his commands extend to all soldiers, right? Why Sergeant So-and-so, his causality extends to all the members of squad B or something, right? So if I try to understand the universality of the cause of the chief of staff, I make use of the universal set of all, right? But it's a different kind of universality that the chief of staff has, because he's an individual, right? But if you just think of the cause, the real cause being an individual, then you say, well, individuals don't influence much, right? I'm just a number there in the telephone book or something. My causiology doesn't extend very far, you know? A couple of students listen to me, maybe that's it. I don't, I'm not the light that lightens everybody that comes into this world. I can't even light to my class, you know? Everybody comes into my class alone. So you see the individual's causality, that is very real causality, I mean, we're very sure that it is causality, but it doesn't seem to extend very far, right? So people are often confusing, as I say, those two universalities, right? Just like the supreme confusion, as we said many times here, is to confuse the being said of all things with the cause who said I am who am. Very hard for the mind to separate those things. So notice the difficulty is saying, and who are the beginnings of universal and individual things? If the beginnings are universals, they don't seem real, right? Although they extend to everything, or many things. If they're individual things, they seem to be real, but they don't extend very far. They're looking for something different than poetry, too, huh? It's kind of interesting how they say that the great poet represents more the universal than the singular. But the universal singularized, the singular universalized. And so one of the commentators there on Sophocles' great play there, I guess, Oedipus the King, you know, when he falls, you know, the choir comes in, it's kind of like a commentary almost on what's happened, you know, and says, O Oedipus, it says, no, O you generations of men, you know, you miserable thing, man, you know. You see something universal in the downfall of this man. And so when you see Romeo and Juliet, they say, this is young lovers, you know, it's not just individual pair. But we're looking for something that's universal and singular. It's another way to that than the poet has, huh? Right. The poet's getting a universal singularized or singular universalized, they say, trying to express that, huh? But even that is something kind of mysterious, huh? What the poet does, huh? But here we have to have it in another much more difficult way, the universal and the individual, right? The reality of the individual, that's what you need. But the universal extent of the universal, how do you combine those two, huh? That's really a problem for the philosophers. We should take a little break here before we, you know, break here between the first four and now the next two questions, which are about ability and what? Act, right? Okay. Now, when we're talking about ability and act, that's the next two questions here, right? Now, the next question is extremely important, and perhaps the basic question, one of the most basic questions of all. And is the first, what, beginning an ability or an act? Now, notice, the first philosophers, and many thinkers here today, right, natural scientists, they say matter is the, what, beginning of all things, right? Well, matter is able to, what, become all things, huh? So matter is basically ability. So if you say that the beginning of all things is inability, that's in harmony with saying that matter is the beginning of all things, huh? And so what you have, a large group of thinkers today, we call them evolutionary humanists, right? Okay? But they think of matter as the beginning of all things, and somehow out of this matter evolves everything else, huh? And he had a position with the Marxists, right, who were very influential for a century or so, huh? So the official name of Marxist philosophy was dialectical materialism. And materialism meant that matter is the beginning of all things, and dialectical meant that there were opposites in matter, and the struggle of these opposites gives rise to things. And he has something like that in the evolutionists, right? They speak of the struggle in nature, the means of survival and so on, giving rise to the development of things. So Karl Marx, you know, dedicated, was a couple of other works that, to Darwinna. So Darwinna has a copy of one of Marxist's first works, or great works. Now, you could say, in general, that all materialists are saying that the first cause is what's most in ability, most potential, is another word. Now, the Platonists are insisting upon the foreword, right? And form is what? Now, when you get to the Ninth Book of Wisdom, you could say, with a bit of oversimplification, but basically, you could say the book has three parts. And the first part is about ability. The second part is about act. And the third part is the order of act and ability. And order, as you know, means before and after. And before and after, as you know from the categories, has many meanings, right? So there's many ways in which, you can speak of the before and after, among these, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Act or ability, right? Most people don't realize that the whole kind of puzzle there is asking the fundamental question of wisdom, right? Which came first, ability or act? Because in some way, it seems the chicken came before the egg because the chicken makes the egg, right? You say, yeah, but chicken comes from an egg. So there seems to be reason to think that the chicken came before the egg, so the chickens lay eggs. And yet, as the chickens come from the eggs, it seems they're ability to act. And Aristotle will answer that question, which came first, the chicken or the egg? You won't use that. Those words are that levity that might suggest by using those words. But that is going to be the question, right? In other words, that's going to lead to the answer to that question is going to lead you to say either that the first cause is most in ability, right? Least actual, right? Most in potency. And then you'll be looking for something like matter, right? As the beginning of all things. Or the first cause would be most in act, right? It might even be, what? Pure act, right? So this is going to be, you know, a fundamental disagreement about what the first cause is going to be like. Is it most in ability to be gradually actualized by some kind of evolution or a struggle of opposites or something, right? Or is the first cause most in act? Aristotle, in that third part of the book, will consider a number of ways, a number of senses of before and after, right? To bring this out, and we'll see there, the kind of mistake that's being made, if you'll make a mistake about this. The second kind of mistake outside of words that we study in the book on some physical refutations, huh? It's a very common kind of mistake, huh? Which Socrates makes himself in the middle. Which everybody makes in their daily life when they think they should do what they shouldn't do. Or not do what they should do, right? The kind of mistake we're making constantly in our daily life. I tell the students, every time you go wrong, you're making this kind of mistake in your thinking, huh? The fallacy is simply, and not simply, but in some way, huh? But what's marvelous about the dialogue called the Mino is that Mino himself makes this mistake when he sophistically attacks the very possibility of investigating what you don't know. And if Mino's objection is good, it's impossible to go looking for what you don't know. It might happen upon it, but don't go looking for it, because you can't go looking for it. And he's an argument, but you can't go looking for it, right? Do you know what you're looking for? If you know what you're looking for, you already know it. You don't have to go looking for it. If you don't know what you're looking for, how can you go looking for it? And Socrates tries to reply to that, right? And he tries to solve the objection, and he makes the same kind of mistake. You wonder, you know, whether Taylor knew what he was illustrating there, right? He illustrates a man making the second kind of mistake outside the words. Another man, his revered master, Socrates, trying to reply to that and making the same kind of mistake. What's the kind of mistake that is made here is going to determine whether you know the truth or you're mistaken about the first cause. And most people are, what, mistaken about the first cause. Most of them are materialists, huh? But because of making the same kind of mistake that Mino and Socrates make. It's a very interesting kind of mistake. Kind of hard at first to get a grasp of it, huh? We'll talk about that kind of mistake again when we get to the ninth book here. So, you know, this sounds kind of simple, and in ability or act. But you realize the complications of this are, what, world shaky if you wish, huh? You know? Now the second question. Further with or otherwise, then, by what? Motion. Now if you recall the definition of motion involved both ability and act, huh? But now the second question here is, really, what? Asking whether there's such a thing as creation. Because Aristotle doesn't deny that some things come to be by motion, right? Now the things that come to be by motion or by change are by transformation, you might say, of matter. So the carpenter gets the wood from the tree, right? And then he changes the wood, the shape of it, huh? Cuts it and smooths it and so on until he gets a, what, table or something, right? So is that the way things come to be, only by transforming matter, by changing matter in some way? If that were so, matter would have to be, what, eternal, right? It always was. It always won't be, right? And things would come to be only by transformation of matter. And so, that has some consequences for your soul, right? Your soul must have come to be by, what, transformation of matter by your parents. And therefore your soul would be tied to your, what, body, right? And not in any way transcender. body, huh? In that case, understanding would have to be in the brain, and some kind of material process in the brain, and so on. But on the other hand, if your act of understanding is not in the brain, if I understand, for example, continuous things in an uncontinuous way, like we were mentioning with the definition of a square, where the definition is not continuous, but the square is, right? If my reason or understanding understands continuous things in an uncontinuous way, that's a sign that the understanding is not what? Continuous, it's not a body. There are many other arguments you can use to show that understanding is not bodily. Well, then you begin to suspect, well, my soul could not have, what, come to be by the transformation of matter. That might have prepared the body for my soul as a suitable receptacle for my soul, but my soul itself could not have come to be by the transformation of matter. Then not everything would come to be by emotion, right? But if everything comes to be only by emotion, you'd be back in saying that really natural philosophy, which is the study of changing things, the study of motion, that's really the whole, right? So you can see how profound that question is. And if in the soul and things like that come to be not by the transformation of matter, if they are created, then the question arises, what about matter itself? Maybe that's not the first beginning. Maybe it is a beginning, but a beginning that is not a transformer of matter, or that can only be produced by transforming matter, but one that can create. So these are extremely profound questions when you start to think about them, huh? And Aristotle is thinking. My old teacher, Kasurik, and I told you his remark, and it's just, it's kind of funny, too, because we had about six or seven philosophers there at the College of St. Thomas, and I was a student there. And Kasurik was by far the best. In fact, the only guy really took seriously in the whole department. But he says, compared to Aristotle, he says, I've got the brain of an angleworm. There's not another, you know, half-baked, half-educated people would have said, you know. But, you know, these are really terribly profound questions, as you'll see, huh? Aristotle knows what a question is, huh? These are not much ado about nothing like some of the questions of the moderns, huh? I told you that joke, I guess the guys in the classroom, he says, Professor, how do I know if I exist? I told you what the professor's answer was. Who's asking? You know, that's not really a question, do I exist, right? But these really are questions, right? And it's very difficult to answer these, right? You see? But, so, you see then the distinction of these six questions, huh? The first four are about the one and the minion, kind of a broad sense, huh? But as you get into them, you realize how profound they are. And the last two here are about ability or act, huh? The fundamental one is ability come before act or act before ability, which came first, the chicken or the egg, right? Because this is a question that you'll have to think about in order to find out what comes first, right? Because the first comes before everything else, right? So if you're thinking that ability simply comes before act, then the first beginning of all things will be most in ability. And most commonly, you find this in the opinion, let's say, of those in ancient times or in modern times who say that matter is the beginning of all things. But in a way, you have this in Hegel, too, see? Because Hegel is trying to evolve everything out of the most universal. But if you compare the more universal to the less universal, it's like the ability to act, huh? If I know that the cat is an animal, I don't fully and actually know what the cat is, huh? Although I'm on the way to know what the cat is, huh? And then when I add the differences to the genus, I get more actual. So in a way, to try to deduce everything out of the being which is said of all things and most universal, in a way is to make what is able to be everything the beginning of everything, right? So that's in a kind of strange way. In a different way, making ability the beginning of all things, huh? What is most in ability, huh? And I tell you, this has actually happened in one of the philosophical associations here. My friend was giving a paper, see? He was talking about the importance of the distinction between nature and art, which is very important. And so anyway, you have a question period after your paper and so on. So one guy says, well, the philosopher can't distinguish between nature and art. The philosopher doesn't do that. You're the aristocrats on the second book of natural hearing, huh? But the guy says, the philosopher can't do that. So my friend said, why can't the philosopher do that? Well, the philosopher talks about being. And in being, there's no distinction between nature and art. So my friend said, well, that's the being that Hegel says passes over into not being, huh? He's just saying nothing, what? Distinct about it, right? You see? And if I say, you know, I'm going to tell you about the giraffe. You know nothing about the giraffe, right? You say, well, tell me, Perkis, about the giraffe, right? And I say, well, the giraffe is something, which is true, right? Okay? And now you might say, you know, I already told you what the giraffe is. You really told me nothing, Perkis, you might say, right? Okay? Well, the word something doesn't mean nothing, does it? You see? But in saying that the giraffe is something, I seem to have told you nothing, really, about the giraffe, right? It's so vague and indeterminate and so general, right, huh? You see? So the Hegel tries to make something or being pass over than nothing because it's saying nothing, right? This is kind of, you know, the literature made of, you know, the tricks of Hegel, you know, how he does these things. But, so my friend, so that's a being, you know, there's no distinction at all, right? And, of course, that's not really good. I'm staying with the philosopher does anyway. But I mentioned that just to point out that the universal is like matter in a sense, or the more universal is being more, what? Inability, huh? I mentioned the difficulty of the famous empiricist John Locke there, right, in the essay on Human Understanding, where he's trying to understand the general idea of triangle, right? And he says, are the sides of the general idea of triangle, are the equal or unequal, right? Are they meeting at right angles or not? And finally he says, well, it's all and none of these, right? Okay? And then I mentioned how Barclay, you know, quotes those words in the principles, his fundamental work there, and says, well, this doesn't make any sense, so there are no general ideas, see? Well, what's the proper understanding of the general idea, see? You see, let's define triangle in general, right? Well, you'd say it's a plane figure contained by three straight lines, huh? So three straight lines are the definition of triangle in general. And now, Locke is asking, are those three lines equal to each other, or just two of them or none of them, right? Well, which is it? You've got three lines there, they've got to be equal or unequal, right? You see? And if you say they're equal, then it doesn't fit the scalene triangle, say. If you say they're unequal, it doesn't fit the equilateral triangle, so it's both and neither, right? What else are you going to say? It's all and none, right? Well, it's a little bit like confusion of the great anecdote. He talks about matter, right, and everything is in there, but it's so, what, small, nothing is distinct from another thing, right? And nothing's really separated from another thing. Nothing's cut off from anything else, right? So what would you say about those three sides of the triangle and the definition of triangle? Because three lines have got to be equal or unequal, don't they? Yeah, yeah. The proper answer would be that the three lines are equal and unequal in ability, right, but neither in act. That's kind of a subtle thing, isn't it, huh? So you say the three lines are able to be equal or unequal, and you bring in a difference, right, what they call species-making difference, you will make actual what is there only in ability. And that's why the great Porphyry, right, and, you know, not him originally, Aristotle before him, not Plato, says that the genus, the difference, where the genus is taken more from what? Matter, and the difference from what? Form. And, of course, the matter is ability, and the form is act. And that's why when you add the difference, you get what we call edas, a species, a form. And we even, in English, we'll speak of, you know, the forms of government, huh, so that the species seems to be, through the difference, something like form to matter to the genus, huh? So, in a sense, when Hegel tries to evolve, shall we say, right, by the Gaelian system, everything from the most universal, the most vague, the most indeterminate, the most indistinct, the most potential, in a sense, right, he's, in a way, saying that ability becomes, what, first, right? And, therefore, there's some justification for Karl Marx, you know, who studied under Hegel all these years, huh, and said, well, Hegel was standing on his head, right, and we're going to turn him up and put him on his feet. But that Hegel, in a sense, is reflecting in his mind what's going on in matter, huh? But there's some truth to that, in this, in particular, that I was mentioning here, because just as matter can be formed in various ways, right, so the genus can be determined by the differences in various ways, huh, okay? So, in a sense, wood is the chair and table and door, right, a bit like the genus triangle is the scaliness axis and equilateral, huh, so... So, that's another, but more unusual way, shall we say, of this common way of seeing ability before, what, act, yeah, you see? So, probably, you had an awful lot of materialists and you still have them around, right? You know, probably, you know, if you read, even the great scientists of the 20th century, most of them are materialists, huh? But that's probably, you know, an effect of custom, because as you go forward in natural philosophy, you're going towards matter, right? And so, you're going more and more into matter, so matter seems to be everything to you. But it's very hard to rise above that. Even the first philosophers, you know, saying that water or something is the beginning of all things, and even our English word for cause, ground, indicates that we kind of begin there, huh? That's not the place to end, obviously, you know, thinking, but, you know, that's where you are in the beginning, huh? And so, most people are thinking of ability as being before act, simply speaking, and therefore, what is most ability, the first matter, or what is most ability in Hegel's sense, the most confused and indistinct notion of our mind, it's something, right? You know? I mean, sometimes people wonder whether you have any thought corresponding to the word something, I mean, people will, I think, correctly think that you can't get something out of nothing, right? And so, they mean something by the word something, but the word nothing, you mean something, right? What do you mean by something? You see? It's so indetermined and indistinct, and that means it's most what? Potential, most, you know? So, we're going to form your mind, you see? We're going to make those confused thoughts be more distinct, huh? There's some beautiful passages of Aristotle in the Edomian Ethics where he talks about this, you know? We're going to take what everybody's saying in a confused way, we're going to make it distinct, huh? And I think I mentioned before, you know, how Cardinal Newman there, I guess, and he has a thing on the idea of university there, who speaks of Aristotle in the Edomian Ethics, he takes thoughts that we all have in kind of a vague and shadowy way, and he, what, makes them distinct, and then he builds upon them, and so on, but there's a kind of a movement there from ability to act, and from potency to act, from indetermination there to a more determinate state of mind, huh? Those are really profound questions, huh? Now, the last two questions here are dealing with mathematical things. In addition to these, were there numbers and lines and figures and points as substances or not? Well, the Platonists and the Pythagoreans tended to identify, at least a material substance, with these numbers and lines and figures and points. That's why the naturalists were more thinking, you know, well, no, it's earth, air, fire, and water. They have size and shape, they have something more than just numbers and lines and figures. Now, you find this in Descartes, huh? Because Descartes identifies the material substances with their, what, extension, right? You say, you know, what's the expression in the Latin? Res extensa! And you've heard my kind of joke there about Descartes. He's not distinguishing between the substance of these things and their, what, size, right? And to some extent, everybody makes that distinction, right? The substance of a cat or a dog is basically what the dog or the cat is. And is the, is what a dog is or what a cat is the same as its size? No. So if you identify the substance of the cat or the dog of its size, then you could say the dog or the cat never grew up, right? That he's changing its size, it's taking a substance, right? See? And then, I'd have to say with our friend Descartes, he never grew up, right? Not just mentally, but he never grew up, right? That's kind of, you know, a theological footnote. So, if you identify the substance, say, of the bread and the wine, the Eucharist, with the size and quantity of the bread and the wine, right? Then you're going to have a philosophical thinking that's going to be a contradiction with the mystery of the Eucharist, then. Because in the Eucharist, you have a transubstantiation, as the Church says, the substance of the bread and the wine is changed into the body and the blood of our Lord. But this quantity of the bread and the wine remains, and then the sensible qualities that follow upon that remain. But if the substance of the bread and the wine was its quantity, then you've got really a problem, right? I'm trying to say the Eucharist, huh? But it's an example there. As I say to people, you know, it's important to see this, too. Her style's understanding of substance and quantity is true, not because it is in harmony with the Eucharist. That's a sign for me as a Catholic, right? That it's true, and that Descartes' thinking is false, because it's not in harmony with the Eucharist. But that's not the reason why it is in harmony with the Eucharist. It's in harmony with the Eucharist, because it is true, you know? You know how people are so subjective, as they say nowadays. You know, I say...