Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 96: Categories, Predicaments, and the Etymology of Philosophical Language

Transcript
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Science, more or less, is influencing the daily speech, right? But, credit comment comes from the Latin word credit commentum, and that was the name for one of the, what, tengena, the categories, huh? Okay? And of course, the idea, when you're in one genus, you can't get into another genus. So, if seven is the genus number, it's not going to get out of the genus number and go into the genus substance, or quality, or relation, right? It's stuck in the genus, right? It can't get out. No way out. And so, when I get into a situation, and especially a disagreeable situation, and I see no way out, I'm in a predicament, huh? You know? I have no course of action. So, it's kind of amusing to see how, you know, these kind of abstract words get enough of daily speech sometimes, huh? You know? This was a testimony to the influence, you know, of philosophy, and the Greek philosophy. You know, floating his way down, right? So, actually, I just fight these things. I don't mind that. I don't like that. But, the Greek word, categoria, it actually comes from the courthouse, huh? Ah, the courthouse. Yeah. And you see it in the Gospels, too, right? In the courthouse, there's two things. There's accusation, right? And that's called categoria. And then there's what? The defense, that's called apologia. So, Socrates' apology, the Greek word is apologia, right? And that means what the legal defense in the courtroom, right? But I suppose some of the reasons why the word categoria was borrowed is because when I charge you, when I accuse you, right? I have to accuse you of some crime, right? I accuse you of murder, right? So, I'm saying, you're a murderer, okay? Or I'm accusing you of robbery. You are a robber, huh? Okay? Or some other crime, right, huh? So, in order to accuse you, I have to say something of you. I'm charging you with the murder, so-and-so, right? You know? And since I'm trying to prove that you are the murderer of so-and-so, or you are the robber of the bank, or whatever it is, huh? And so, you can see in the Latin word predicamentum, that comes from the word set-up, right? Yeah. So, in a sense, ten categories, but ten set-ups, right? But kind of by tona messia, right? And, but it has an origin from the courtroom, so my, since there's ten highest janitor, right? And my friend Warren Murray kind of, a little bit of humor there, he speaks of them as the ten supreme accusations. Of course, supreme means the highest, right, huh? Because there's no janitor above those, huh? But it, it, it, it has something of the concreteness there, of the, what, origin of the Greek word, right? Sure. It was taken from accusation, right? Yeah. Ten supreme accusations. Sounds pretty, pretty important, right? Pretty, see, don't, but not important in a sense. But the whole philosophy is very important, huh? Do you have any idea if these, some of these phrases came out of Shakespeare at all? Well, sometimes. I mean, the, the, the poets would pick up some of these and, and popularize them, too, yeah. So, I wouldn't be surprised, yeah. Saw a little book there in the borders the other day, which, on Shakespeare's, you know, the phrases that come into the English language, you know, from Shakespeare, they think of it, but, they can never be, you know, sure, all together, you know, where, yeah, you know, the film is really responsible for it, but, so. Thomas says, this proposition, I think he's usually just in the term, sense of, of statement, right? Not necessarily, uh, in the sense of a premise, right? But the very etymology of the word seems to, uh, see, it's naming properly, really, the premise rather than the statement, huh? It almost seems like calling a straight line a side or something, right? We call a straight line, when it's bounding a triangle, it says being a side, right? Triangle is three sides, huh? But to call a straight line a side would be kind of, what? Strange, wouldn't it? Call a line, right? Just considering it by itself, huh? It's a line. Something like that practical philosophy, right? You could say, I'm a man, right? And that's the way ethics looks at me, I'm a man. But domestic philosophy looks at me as, I am a father, right? And political philosophy looks upon me as a, what? Citizen, right? You know? The question, what is a citizen, is a different question than what is a man, right? Even though the citizen is a man, huh? And the question, what is the father? It's a different question, right? Than what is a man, huh? Even though the father is a man, huh? And the question, what is the premise, huh? Kind of, very subtle, the way Aristotle defines those, right? He defines, if you recall, magic, he defines a statement. How? That's one way he defines a premise, huh? Yeah, what is it? Yeah. He defines the statement as speech signifying the true or the false, huh? Speech which is true or false, huh? And then later on he divides the statement into an affirmative statement, a negative statement, right? But he doesn't define statement by affirmation and negation. He defines it by true and by what? False, huh? But when he gets to the premise in the prior litics, then he talks about, what, affirmative and negative, huh? And you can kind of see, you know, when you study the syllogism formula, like we did a little bit earlier, when we were doing the logic, you find out, for example, that you can't syllogize from two negative statements, okay? And so the difference between affirmative and negative has nothing to do with being a statement, right? And the power to infer things, and so on. And whether something is said of something universally or just in particular, it's very important, right, for the syllogism, right? Okay? When you talk about the truth or false in the statement, you're just kind of looking at it by itself, right? You're not talking about it in reference to its ability to draw a, what, conclusion, right? And again, you know, if I lay down, let's say, even something absurd, like, something totally false, like, if I say, every dog is a animal, right? Every stone, let's say, is an animal. And every man is a stone, huh? It follows that every man is an animal, right? Or I say every stone is a dog. And every man is a stone, it follows that every man is a dog, right? Even though the premises are all, what, false, right? But the question of whether the conclusion follows or not is another question from whether the premises are true or false, huh? In order for the conclusion to be good, it has to both, what, follow from the premises, if it's a syllogism, necessarily, and it has to, what, follow from two premises? Yeah, yeah, you have it too. And so you have the two books, the prior and the post-analytics. When the prior analytics, you're looking just at the form of the syllogism. And then you take up whether it's true or false, whether they're affirmative or negative, universal or particular, right? And then you can see whether something follows in terms of that. So. But notice when he begins this second way, he says. The second way is such. If every mover is moved, either this propositziella is true per se or per accident. He's talking about... on what way it's true, right? It would be true if somebody's maintaining this proposition, right? So he's looking upon it really as a what? Statement, yeah, because he's thinking about the truth or falsity in a way. Although he might also be looking at it in terms of post-analytics, right? Which descends to the truth or falsity of it, right? Okay. Now, if perochidens, therefore it is not what? Necessary, right? Because what is perochidens, true, is not necessary, right? Now, I think I mentioned that in the post-analytics. Aristotle is pointing out that the premises of a demonstration, right, they have to be what? Necessary, right? And then he also says they have to be, what? Perseic, half-out-toe, the Greek, right? Okay. Now, how do you translate perseic in English, right? Essentially. Yeah. Perseic in English, if you translate as through itself, that would be perseic, right? Sometimes, in English, it has a sense of by itself, right? Okay. Because that's how it gives us one meaning of cop-out-toe or perseic when a man's all by himself. Well, okay, sometimes it has a sense, but it's not so much, say, as such, right? Okay. So sometimes Thomas Wall must identify meaning, perseic in kundum kwa gunismodi. Okay. And I think in English, say kundum kwa gunismodi would be saying, or I'd be saying, as such, right? And I think I mentioned there earlier, when you're doing logic, that in one place in the post-analytics, there's all the reasons from the premises of a demonstration being necessary, and it being per se. In another place, the reasons of it being per se is it being necessary. And Thomas said, you know, no, no, what's he doing here, right? Because when you're reasoning, you should reason what is more known to what is less known, right? And you can't prove a thing to itself, right? And so on. And Rastal himself, in the post-analytics, warns us against reasoning in a circle, right? And so Thomas says, what is the master doing here, right? Well, modern philosophers say, well, he's talking to himself, or he's, you know. And, you know, I've seen Thomas sometimes, in other places, you know, where there seems to be something, particularly, Galerian or Rastal, and they'll say, you know, most important man is to say, well, it's so great a philosopher, it's so great a matter. You know, this is such a stupid thing, doesn't make sense, right? And so Thomas says, I read the demonstration is from necessary to, what, per se. But, you know, someone who's grown up in the school of Plato, it's a probable opinion of all the Platonists that episteme is about the per se, right? The ideas, right? If you look at Plato's phrasy ideas, you know, man himself, to himself, by himself, he's going to read that phrase, right? Kapal to, right? So here, in the sense he's reasoning from a probable opinion, right? To that, right? And in the case, he's reasoning more with necessity, no pun intended there. Okay? But these two things are very closely, what, connected, right? Now, let's exemplify this a bit, because that's, what he's saying there, that there's a connection between these two, right? And then between the, what, per accidents, right? Or the two happening, or by happening, right? And what is contingent and not necessary, right? Okay? Now, let's take the number seven here, or take a triangle, right? Take a square. A square, you can do that example here. It belongs to the square, as such, to itself, to what? Be it quadrilateral, for example, right? Okay? So anything that belongs to the definition of the thing, like quadrilateral, or equilateral, right angles, and so on, all of these things belong to a square, as such, or to itself, right? And it takes a while, people, you know, to be at home with that phrase to itself, huh? What does that mean? If I say a square to itself is a quadrilateral, right? What I mean, the square, through being a square, must be a, what, quadrilateral, right? Notice it's also necessarily a quadrilateral, right? It's necessarily a quadrilateral, it's necessarily right angle, right? It necessarily has angles equal to, what? Yeah, and so on, right? The triangle, as such, is three-sided, and the triangle, as such, has interior angles, it goes through right angles, and so on, right, then? Okay? So, what belongs to the square, as such, also belongs to it, what? Necessarily, right? It can't be a square, and not be all these things, right? Okay? But vice versa, what necessarily belongs to the square, right, belongs to it, what? Yeah. As such, right? Okay? But, let's say, green now, right? A square can be green, but necessarily is the square green? But again, does it belong to the square, as such, or through being a square, to be green? No. It's by happening, right? It's by happening, right? So, you see the connection between these two, and the connection between contingent, what can be and not be, right? And, what? That's it, per se. Per accidents, it's the last of the words, right? Per accidents, to happening, we could be, to happening, or by happening, right? So, how's he proceeding here? He's saying, if you say, that every mover is moved, right? Which he doesn't agree with, right? But if you say that, right? If you say that's true, right? It must either be true, what? Yeah? Or here he says, yeah, it must be the true per se, or per accidents, right? Okay? It's got to be one or the other, huh? Okay? And if it is true per accidents, then it is not, what? Necessary, right? For what is, through happening, true, or by happening, true, is not necessary, right? Okay? Therefore, it's contingent, or it's possible, you might say, that no mover be, what? Moved. That's possible, right? Okay? But if the mover is not moved, then it doesn't move anything else, as the adversary is saying, right? Therefore, it is contingent, it could be, that nothing is moved. For if nothing moves, in the active sense there, nothing is moved, right? And he says, Aristotle has this for an impossibility, right? Okay? Now, Thomas will discuss later on, you know, whether that's really impossible, right? Okay. Okay. Okay. Aristotle has this for something impossible, to wit that at some time there was no motion, right? Therefore, the first was not contingent, because from something false as possible, there would not follow something false that is what? Impossible. And thus this statement that every mover is moved by another is not Procedent's true, right? So notice the form of the argument there, right? It's an if-then argument, right? And the whole thing is going to be an if-then argument in a sense, right? But he's eliminating one of the two possibilities, right? If it's true that every mover is moved, right? Either this is true per se or Procedent's, right? And if it's true Procedent's, he's going to eliminate that possibility, right? Then it's contingent, right? And therefore it could be that there's no motion at all, right? And Aristotle takes that as a, what, impossible thing, right? And Aristotle is assuming here that motion always was, right? Okay? Now sometimes Thomas speaks to that as if that was the mistake of Aristotle, right? Okay? But other times he has a second thought about it, right? Okay? We'll come back to that, right? Okay? But for the moment let's assume, right, that motion always was, right? And that it must always have been, right? Okay? And if it, and that would be contradicted by saying that what? Every mover is moved is true Procedent's, right? Because then it could happen, right? Something impossible, there is no motion at all. You see that? Okay? It's not involved, right? Okay? The part where he says if, but if the mover does not move, then nothing, there's no motion. Does not move. Yeah, or anything else. Anything else. Yeah. Notice that what they're saying is that the mover, every mover moves only insofar as it's being moved itself, right? Okay? Aristotle is saying, or Thomas is saying, Aristotle is saying, is that true as such, per se, right? Or is it true Procedent that you're saying this, right? And he's taking up the possibility that there's true Procedent's first, right? You can eliminate that possibility, right? And he says, if it's true Procedent's, right, then it ain't necessarily so. It could be that nothing is moved, right? That no mover is moved. Would you say it could be that, yeah, the mover is not moved, but it still could be a mover? No, no, see, the person he's arguing against here, and the proposition, in a sense, he's arguing against, is that every mover is what? Yeah. Every mover moves other things, right, insofar as it's moved itself, right? But if that was only true Procedent's... Then it would not be necessary to be contingent, right? And therefore it's possible, right, that no mover is moved, right? Okay? In which case it's possible to be no motion. But Airstyle's taking that as being something impossible, okay? Now he's going to come back and examine that supposed impossibility, right? Okay? You know, is there a weakness there or not, right? Okay? But for the moment, let's assume that, right, and come back and examine that, right? You see the way the argument goes up to this point. Okay. Also, this is kind of a secondary thing here. If two things are joined by accident, by happening in something, and one of them is found without the other, right? It is probable, right, nothing more than that, that the other will be found without the other, right? Okay? As for example, if white and musician are both found in Socrates, and in Plato one finds a musician without him being white, it's probable that in some other thing one can find something white that is not a what? musician, yeah. If therefore the mover and the moved are joined in something by happening, and motion is found in something without it moving something else, right, it is probable that one is going to find a mover without its being what? Moved, huh? Nor is it against this the instance in which of two things of which one depends upon the other, because such things are not joined per se, I mean the things we're talking about here now, are not of that sort, they're not joined per se, but they're joined, what, per accident, right? Okay? It happens if the mover is moved, right? It happens if these two things are found in the same thing together. It's both the mover and moved, right? Well then, if you have something that's moved that doesn't move something else, right, then probably you're going to find the mover that moves without being moved. Okay? So this is now, it's kind of a... It's his problem, right? It's kind of outside the set of view about the Parchetians. It reminds me of the thing in rhetoric, you know, where they say, you know, if sometimes, what, the false is believed, right, then it's probable at some time that the true is what? Oh, not believed. Yeah. Right? Okay. Now it goes to the other alternative, right? So you notice he has two reasons to eliminate the possibility that the statement every mover is moved is true by happening, right? Okay? One of which is stronger than the other maybe, huh? Okay? Because he says that leads to something impossible. Okay? And the other is probable, right? Okay? Now it goes to the other horn of the dilemma. If, however, the foresaid statement is true per se, likewise there follows something impossible, huh? Or inconvenient, I would like to say. It has a little more meaning than that, right? It means it doesn't fit. Together it doesn't go. It doesn't go with. Yeah. Yeah. But it has a sense here. Yeah. Because either it's necessary that the mover be moved by the same species or kind of motion by which it moves, or by some, what? Other one, right? If, therefore, if by the same, therefore is necessary that the one, what? Altering something, right? Be altered, right? And the one healing someone is also being healed. And that the one teaching is taught, right, huh? You see? Okay? And by the same, what? Science, right? But this over is impossible. For it is necessary that the one teaching have the knowledge, right? And the one learning necessarily does not have it, right? So if he was both teaching and learning the same science, then the same thing would be had by him and not had by him, which is, what? Impossible. Right, huh? If, however, by another species of motion it is moved, thus it would be necessary that the one, say, altering, for example, would be moved by going to place, right? And the one being moved according to place was growing or something, right? and so on about others. Since there are limited genera and species of motion, it follows that one cannot go on forever, always having a thing being moved by a different what kind of motion, right, than the one that's imparting to something else. And thus there will be something, some first mover that is not moved by another. Unless perhaps someone says that there comes about a what, circulation, in this way that having completed all the genera and species of motion, one comes back again to the first. But if the one moving according to place is altered, and the one altered is growing, the one growing is moved according to place, from this follows the same thing as before. That that which is moved by some, according to some species of motion, excuse me, that which moves in an active sense, right, according to some species of motion, is moved by the same, although not in an immediate way, but immediately. Therefore it remains that it is necessary to lay down something first that is not moved by something outside. Now, he's going to go on to what Aristotle does in the metaphysics before he comes back to that problem that we raised there. So let's look at that now, right? Because, this being had, that there is a first mover that is not moved by something exterior, it does not follow that is entirely immobile. Therefore, further, Aristotle proceeds by saying that this is able to be in two ways. In one way, that that first thing can be entirely immobile, right? Which being laid down, we have what we propose to have, namely that there is a first mover that is immobile. Another way, that that first mover is moved by itself, right? And this seems to be probable, right? Okay. Why? Because what is through itself is always before that which is what? Yeah. Whence also in things moved is reasonable that the first thing moved is moved through itself or by itself and not by what? Another, right? Okay. Now, um, no, it's such a very famous proposition and it was Plato who first brought this out, right? Okay. What is through itself is always before that which is through another, right? Okay. So, let's look at that a little bit, huh? It's really before and after, right? Let's take the formula before and after. Before the through another is always before the through another. I think that Plato was the first thinker to very much talk about this, right? Now, is coffee sweet through being coffee? But is sugar sweet through being sugar? Okay. Yeah. Okay. And so if the coffee is sweet, but not sweet to itself, there must be before the coffee something that is what? Yeah. Simple enough, right? Sounds quite reasonable to me, right? Okay. Now, is the water wet through itself? Is the dishcloth wet through itself? So if you discovered that the dishcloth was wet, but you also saw the dishcloth was not wet through being a dishcloth. You'd say there must be something, what? You're looking before and after now, right? Using your, you know, this is what the reason does. That's the definition of reason. It's before and after, right? There must be before the dishcloth, right? Something that is wet through itself. And Eureka, I have found that it's water, right? Which is wet through itself, right? Okay. Now, um, let's make some, you know, more profound applications of this now, right? Okay. Are there some statements that are known to other statements? So there's some statements that are known to others, huh? And not to themselves, right? Okay. Well, then there must be, right? Some statements somewhere that are known, what? Yeah. Right? Right? That's, that's true, I think, huh? And, you know, same thing is true in simple terms, too, right? That there's some things that are known as to what they are through something else, right? What is everything? That's right. It must be something that is known to be what it is, not through knowing what something else is. Right? Okay. So, I mean, that's, that's fundamental, right? I see. And, you know, the, the moderns, you know, sometimes want to say, and Aristotle even talks about some of the ancients, right? They want everything to be proven, right? And, in other words, they, they regard therefore every statement as having to be known to another, right? But if that was so, then no statements could be known, right? And, and what about, uh, uh, desirable or good, right? Well, a minute ago, we just have meanings. Yeah. We don't have an end. Yeah. If everything is desirable for the sake of something else, nothing is desirable to itself or as such, anything is desirable because something else would it be desirable, right? You find this when you first start studying philosophy, people say, well, what's that good for? Well, they kind of, you know, started out the idea that to be good, something has to be good for something other than itself, right? And, uh, I told you the conversation that my brothers used to have with, we used to have with the, uh, my father's engineer. He's kind of a practical guy interested in making money and so on. And, uh, but we're the only educated people around there besides himself, right? College education. They talk to us sometimes, you know, and, uh, so, uh, finally we're studying philosophy, you know, and what are we studying that for, see? And, uh, my brother, Mark, and Richard say, well, we're studying it for its own sake. Well, he, he just couldn't, you know, accept that answer. We could not be studying it for its own sake. And so after, you know, he thought about it, well, I'd come back another day and ask us again, you know, why are we studying it? And, uh, Richard and Marcus and my brother would give him the same answer, right? It's for its own sake, right? I'll say it's for anything else. And, um, well, of course, as I say, I mean, he just couldn't accept that sake. So finally, one day he had to answer his own question, right? He said, I know how you're studying it. We said, why? It's brain food. In other words, you take this, you really fill up your brain, right? You do something in your brain, right? He's got a hair of the truth. It's something to think about. I mean, I mean, David's supposed to show you, you know, he could make money if he wanted to, right? You see? But then he, you know, actually showed them and he said, but now I see. You know? Not that I'm interested in money because I don't know how to make it. I don't know how to make it. But that's not my interest in life. So, so there must be something that is desirable, right? To itself, right? Otherwise, nothing would be desirable. Okay? It's the idea, you know, what are you philosophers contributing to the common good, right? My brother Richard's answer was, we are the common good. That infuriates some people. You have to be qualified a bit, but there's something like that, right? In a sense, you know, this contemplation of truth is the ultimate end of man, right? And even the practical man, you know, in heaven, that's what he'll be doing. The practical life is over, right? You know, the famous words there, Christ, Mary and Martha, you know, where he says, is that Mary has chosen the better part, right? And she'll not be taken away from her, right? But the church fathers and Thomas, the church fathers here, understand that as being, that she's chosen the better life, the contemplative life, is distinguished from the practical life, right? And she'll not be taken away from her, it's the fact that contemplative life will continue in the next life, right? In fact, be more perfect, While the other one, the practical life, will be, what? Cease, right? No longer. I tell students that sometimes, every student will say, well, we'll be able to do the practical life because we'll have a chance to do it in the next life. Can you say that? You've convinced me, I've got to go, I'm going to leave, I'm going to leave the contemplative monastery, I'm going to enter a practical order. I can't do it in the next life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a time when St. Teresa Avila, you know, she appeared to one of her, after she died, right? And she appeared to one of her sisters, you know, and he says, you know, you and I are very much alike in some ways, she says, we're both praising God, right? He said, I'm praising him now face to face and you're praising him behind a veil, so to speak, right? But I mean, very similar to life we're leading, you're leading here on earth, and I'm leading up in heaven here, right? I'm interesting, you know? Anyways, you know what she said to this, well, nuns, right? You know? Tap it there. Okay. Now, is this true, this statement, then, or what do you think? It's not in that case. What? It won't be true in that case. Won't it not be true in that case simply because there would be, given the definition of motion, strictly speaking, that would imply a contradiction for something to be moving itself, and that's why it's not per se, rather than per annu. Yeah, I mean, that there can't be. There can't, there can't be. There can't be a thing in motion to itself. Yeah, because it implies a contradiction. Yeah. Yeah. one very strange position that Plato got into, who got into? Plato. Plato. Was negatus, is that there are these, what they call, forms in Greek. kind of, kind of, um, but notice, Plato saw some interesting truth, nevertheless, huh? See? Is Socrates a man through being Socrates? Is it through being Socrates that was a man? No, no, that would be, that it would be limited to him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, in some way, it seems as if, uh, no material thing, right? That orange is, what's that name? That orange is not a cat to being orange, right? Okay? Moppet, the cat we got at home there, Moppet is not a cat to being Moppet, right? Otherwise, Moppet would be the only cat, right? Okay? Well, in these material substances, right, uh, each is unique. right? And it is what it is to itself, right? Okay? But then Plato thought, well then, if Socrates is not a man through being Socrates, then he's a man to another, right? And therefore, there must be something that is a man, right, to itself. What is that? The idea of that's the form, yeah. That's the form, yeah. Okay? And, I still thought there's something a little bit strange about that, right? And when he's in a kind of playful mood, you know, he compares it to, uh, the anthropomorphic views of the gods, right? Not when you understand the nature of Zeus or God, they imagine it to be kind of a kind of Superman, right? but, you can see how man having this intervention in mind, right? And then discovering in a way that, in a material thing, and even in a mathematical thing, right? You see? Is this circle, is this a circle through itself, right? Right? Well then, how could you have another circle, you know? Right? So, he said, if these are not circles through themselves, then they must be circles through partaking of what is a circle through itself. And if you and I are not a man, if I'm not a man through being Dwayne Berkowitz, and you're not a man through being yourself, then you and I must be men by partaking of the man's self to himself. So Aristotle spends a lot of time there in the seventh book of wisdom reasoning against this idea that the idea is. But, very much tied up with this proposition, that's not the only reason for it. Thomas usually gives this reason for it, that Plato thought that truth required that the way we know be the way things are, right? Oh. Where Aristotle answered no to that question. So, if you add to this the thought that through definitions we truly know things, as Socrates seemed to bring out, but through definitions we know the universal separation from the singular, so if we're truly knowing, through definitions, through definitions we're knowing the universal separation of the singular, we're knowing man in separation from Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, then, truly, man must exist, right? Outside of our mind in separation from Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, right? And Thomas usually gives that, you know, as the reason why Plato thought that, Just as he thought that there's also a mathematical word, right? Corresponding to the truth of the geometry, because in geometry I truly know sphere and cube in separation from ice cube and plastic cube and wooden cube and any kind of material cube, right? And therefore he thought there must really be a mathematical world, right? Existing in separation from the material world, otherwise, all this wonderful certitude that we seem to have in geometry would disappear, right? But I say another way to reason to some of these things is in a sense by taking this, right? And apparently seeing that Socrates is not identical at least with what a man is. Maybe there's a problem in having a man by himself through himself, right? Because in a sense you're trying to make something both what? Material and immaterial at the same time. Okay? in a sense you're going to be in a sense you're If it belongs to what a man is, to be material, right, and then this forms, as the name indicates, are without matter, right, how can that be what a man is? What a man is contains matter, right? So, I mean, there are other things too, people get into the problem, sometimes the Platonists, you know, speak as if there must be something bad to itself, because, again, on the idea of this principle, right, but Aristotle in the ninth book of wisdom argues that it cannot be a bad to itself, and Thomas would argue that way too, because the bad is really what? Yeah, it's a non-being of something one is able to have, right, and should have by nature, right, but you don't have, right, and so something couldn't be bad to itself, it always has to be something that is good, that subject, right? Of course, as we point out, that really, the bad is always opposed to some nature, right? So, it's not nature is bad, it's what supposed nature is bad. If there was a bad to itself, its very nature would have to be to be bad, which ended up in a contradiction, right? That's what the bad really is. So, maybe there can't be a bad to itself, right? But, so maybe you have to be somewhat careful in the statement, or at least in the application of it, right? You see? But that's a great deal of probability, right? So, he says, go back to this paragraph where I took off from here. So, because, therefore, being had that there is a first mover that is not moved by another thing outside of it, it does not follow that it be altogether mobile, therefore, further Aristotle proceeds by saying that this could be in two ways. In one way, that that first thing is wholly immobile, which being laid down, the thing that we want to reason to has been had, proposed, namely that there be some first mover that's immobile, in another way, that that first thing be moved by itself, right? And this seems to be, what? Probable, right? Because what is through itself, what is per se, always is before that which is, right? Through another, right? Whence in things moved, the first moved is reasonably said to be, it's reasonable to say that it is moved to itself, right? And not by another. But, this being given, again, the same thing will follow, huh? For it cannot be said that the thing moving itself, the whole, is moved by the whole. Because thus they would follow the four said, what? Things that don't fit together. That don't go. Yeah. They named it, someone would be, someone would be at the same time, what? Teach and be taught, huh? And likewise, in other motions. And again, that something would be at once in ability and in act, right? Looking back to what was used in the first time. For the mover, as such, is in act, and the moved is in what? Yeah. You can say the giver, as such, is in act, right? And the receiver, as such, is in what? Ability, right? What's the old say? It's more divine to give than to receive, right? It's almost an understatement. It's more divine, right? Because if God is pure act, he can only give. He can't receive, right? Okay. And that's why, I was at Avicenna, with the Greek, the Arab philosophers said, you know, God alone is truly liberal, right? You know? Because he gives, not expecting anything to be given him in return. He not only does that, but he can't receive anything in return, right? Kind of an amazing thing, yeah? You see, when you or I are liberal, and we give something free to expect, nothing in return, we get that good act out of that, don't we, right? Mm-hmm. See? That's something added to us, right? Mm-hmm. But God doesn't, what, get another good act out of this, right? Mm-hmm. No. It's all together simple, and there's no distinction between God and his act, right? It's pure act, yeah. So he gives without receiving anything, right? So you only know what it is for us to thank him, right? You know, sometimes I compare it, you know, to a child who's paid an allowance by his mother or his daddy, right? Mm-hmm. And then he saves some of his allowance or takes some of his allowance and he buys a gift for his mommy or daddy, right? His mommy and daddy appreciate that, right? Mm-hmm. You see? In a sense, he's, what, got from them, yeah. Yeah, but, you know, the parents still rejoice in this, and they don't expect him to be able to have his own funds at that age anyway, right? Right. You know? But in a sense, we're giving God back what we have, what, received from him, right? But in another sense, maybe he can't be given anything, right? So thanksgiving, you know, is very important, huh? And Thomas' prayer there, you know his prayer after communion, you know, the famous prayer? Oh. Yeah. But the very first line in that prayer is what? He's giving God thanks, right, for the gift of the Eucharist, right? You know, he's bestowed this upon him, right, who's holy and worthy, right? And it's entirely the divine mercy that he's given him, Eucharist, huh? In one sense, it's very strange, you know, like, you know, in the end sometimes they praise us for going to Mass or, you know, or do any Mass or something like that, you know? But, you know, if somebody's up in the drugstore there, you know, passing out $1,000 bills to anybody that comes in there, right, would you praise somebody for having an unclined up there, you know, and say, what a wonderful person you were to go up there and get your $1,000 bill. Oh, no, no, no. It'd be a fool not to go there, right? You know? But you're receiving something more, shall we say, with a $1,000 bill when you receive the Eucharist, right? You know? So, uh, it's something to say to people, you know, I go to Mass because I can't do anything better to do. I need them to figure out the true significance of that, huh? Say something like that about philosophy, too, right? Why do we think about these things? Well, we can't really think of anything better to do. Gee, you've got that much imagination, you guys. So, you know, it's kind of a famous proposition that Aristotle has in one of the biological books, I think, where Thomas quotes it from, but Thomas is always giving it out. Omni agens agens quantum est in acta, right? Every agent, every maker acts or makes insofar as it is an act, right? Okay? But if you stop and think about it, what is given is as act to what receives what is given, right? And what receives what is given is to what it receives as what? Ability is to act, right? So, if something gives itself something, you would have to have and not have, right? Okay? Somebody told me, there was a seminary there, that the old priest, you know, when he asked a question in class and a student couldn't answer, he'd always say, you know, that, but none have it. He always, nothing gives what it doesn't have, right? He always, nothing gives what it doesn't have, right? He always, nothing gives what it doesn't have, right? He always, nothing gives what it doesn't have, right? He always, nothing gives what it doesn't have, right? He always, nothing gives what it doesn't have, right? He always, nothing gives what it doesn't have, right?