Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 3: Experience, Art, and the Wisdom of Knowing Causes

Transcript
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Now, as far as the first road is concerned, Aristotle is going to bring out a number of what? Kinds of knowing along this road, right? And so, kind of the first thing he's going to bring out along this road is sensing, right? Okay? And then he's going to go from sensing to memory of what you sense, right? And then he's going to go towards experience, huh? And then he's going to go towards what we usually translate as art or science, right? And these are kind of interchangeably what they have in common. These are the main steps. But there's other things he brings out, too, as he goes along. And you'll see as you go along here that you're getting towards something that becomes more and more like, what, wisdom. Now, animals, he says in the beginning of the second paragraph, are born having sensation by nature, huh? Now, as we said before, that distinguishes the animals from the, what, plants, right? But even if you compare the animals to the plants, does an animal seem wiser than a plant? And I go in the backyard, and then I start to saw a limb off the tree, you know? And the tree doesn't even know what's happening to it. If I tried to saw, you know, one of these arms or legs off the cat, they'd be very much aware, you know? So the animal, as a sense, is aware of what's going on around it to some extent, right? And the, through the senses, but the tree is not even aware of the fact that it's being mutilated. You see? And, um, I'm sure if you've got an artificial limb, you'd know it, but a tree, you know, you'd insert a limb sometimes, you know, you'd graft it on, and the tree seems to not know what's going on. Now, and from this, huh, from sensing, memory does not arise in some of them, but it does arise in others. Now, perhaps Aristotle is thinking of these lowly forms of life that are in the floor of the ocean. When Aristotle left Athens after the death of Plato, he went and did marine biology, among other things. And, um, there are some forms of animal life that are attached to the floor of the ocean, and they don't seem to be much different from a plant, because they don't move from place to place, right? But if you stick them, they, you know, react as in pain, huh? And so things come to them in the water, because the water is always in motion there, right? And they will, you know, grab things that come to them, right, when they come in contact with them. But their food comes to them, so they don't have to move from place to place. So all they seem to have is sensation of what comes in contact with them. They don't seem to have any memory, right? Well, with the cats, say, huh? And the higher animals, they all have memory, huh? And so, you know, we put the cat dish here, and the cat comes right up the stair in the morning and brought the corn, right? She remembers where the thing was. And Tabitha, who's passed on now, Tabitha, you know, after breakfast in the morning, she would always go out to her favorite hunting grounds, huh? There was a vacant lot down the three or four doors down from us, which now has got a house on it, but then there was just the woods there, you know, and those were the favorite places to go down and see what you could, you know, find out, huh? That's memory, right, huh? Now, as you go from having sensation but no memory to memory, doesn't that represent an advance in knowing? To remember something, right? If you had sensation but no memory, would you be any wiser today than yesterday? You know the old thing, you know, we say in one ear, out the other? But that's the way it would be with no memory, right? My mother used to say to the salesman, when she's trying to sell her something she doesn't want or that price she doesn't want to pay, I wasn't born yesterday, she'd say. You know, which is the way I say I'm a little bit wiser than you think, you know, or don't try to pull the wool over my eyes and so on. But if you had no memory, would you be any wiser than someone born yesterday or even today? You know, you might be inferior to them because their eyes or their ears might be more cute than yours are now, huh? So, as you go from sensing to memory, that represents a step in the direction of what? Wisdom, right? When I was little, we had a cat, and the cat smelled something cooking on the stove that was delicious. And he decided to jump on the stove, and his paws hit the Olympic stove, and he fell to the ground, he's got it singed a bit, but he never tried to do that again. He never tried to jump on the stove again. He was wiser after that, right? But if he had no memory, he'd do the same dumb thing again, right? You see the idea? So, as you go from sensing to memory, you are, in a sense, going in the direction of being a little bit smart, a little bit wiser. Now, he goes into a kind of a subtle point here, and it's kind of interesting, that animals that have memory, some of them, in addition, have the sense of hearing, right? And they can be more what taught, the ones that don't have the sense of hearing. Now, he says that those who have memory, though, are, and he's actually using the word prudent, right? There's something like prudence, right? So, you can say that the cat is more prudent about the stove after being singed, right, than it was before, because of memory, right? And Thomas, in his commentary, if you see it sometime, you know, he'll quote Cicero, you know, that the memory of the past, right, and foresight of the future are integral parts of prudence, huh? So, it's something like prudence in the animals, huh? Those that have memory, right? Okay. And he goes on to those who have ears. And they can be, what? Taught, right? Now, perhaps it's a lesson for us, too, right, huh? We have to have ears in order to be, what? Taught, huh? And that's why Plutarch says we have two ears and one mouth. Yeah. Okay. Now, when he gets to the third paragraph, he starts to talk about the differences between men and other animals. We have sensation and memory and even hearing, right? But we begin to differ from the other animals by experience. They don't have experience much. He says the other animals live by images, right? Like the lowest animals that just have this temporary image, right, of things. And the more advanced animals that live by memories, right? But they share a little in experience. And he's going to go on to explain what he means by experience, huh? That's kind of the first place where they start to differ. But then the race of men lives by art and reasonings, huh? Okay? Now, he comes back to experience, which is the next step he talks about. And when he uses the word experience, you've got to be careful there, huh? Because sometimes people use the word experience even for sensation, memory of a sensation, right? Now, if you broke a leg or had some very striking sensation, right? And you remember that, you know? You know, people say, well, that was quite an experience, right? But that's not what Aristotle means by experience here, huh? A memory or a sensation that made a big impression upon you, huh? What he means by experience here is a collection of many memories, right? Of the same sort of thing, huh? Okay? So experience involves many memories of the same sort of thing and then bringing together these, right? And that's why the other animals don't share much in experience because they don't have this ability to bring things together. And this is something, you know, showing already the influence of reason, right? That we can bring together these memories. Experience comes to be from memory in man. For many memories of the same thing perfect the power of one experience. Now, let's stop there, right? Obviously experience, in this sense, comes after memory, right? You can be a man of one memory without experience, right? But you can have the amount of experience without many memories of the same sort of thing that have been brought together in your head, huh? You can be a man of one memory, right? You can be a man of one memory, right? You can be a man of one memory, right? You can be a man of one memory, right? You can be a man of one memory, right? You can be a man of one memory, right? Now, does the man of experience seem to be wiser than the man of one memory? I say to the students, you know, if you had one date with one girl in your life, right, do you seem to be as wise about a woman as a man who's had many dates? Or if a girl's had one date with one man in her life, does she seem to be as wise about men and how wicked they are as a woman who's had, you know, dated many men and so on, right? Okay. You know, sometimes you have parents, you know, who think that their son or daughter, either one, is getting involved too much with someone, you know, and they haven't really dated enough. You hear that expression quite often, right? As if they're not maybe wise enough about men and women and what to expect and what to avoid and so on, right? So don't we all think of the man of experience and whatever it might be? If a man's, you know, been in one political campaign, right, does he seem to be as wise about this as a man who's been in 20 campaigns? Or a soldier who's been in his first battle? Does he seem as wise as a soldier who's been in 10 wars? We all think of the man of experience as wiser than the man of one memory and whatever it might be, right? That might be baseball, right, huh? If I've played one game of baseball, I've been up to bat once. But a man has been up to bat, you know, millions of times, right? He seems much wiser about baseball than not. Do you see that? So, in fact, as you go from the animals that have only sensing and no memory, right, to the animals that have memory, that seems to be a real advance in knowledge, right? But as you go from the man of one memory to the man of experience, don't you seem to have a person who's wiser about these things? So, this road is going in the direction of wisdom, right? Now, he's going to bring out, and he's going to take much more time doing it, he's going to bring out the difference here between what he's called experience here and what he's going to call art or science in a kind of general way, right? He's going to bring out a couple of differences, eventually, between experience and art or science. And in terms of the first difference between experience and art or science, he's going to reason, actually, to a certain superiority of experience to art or science. That experience can be superior to art or science, sometimes in doing. But then he's going to bring out a second difference between art or science and experience, from which he's going to reason that in terms of knowing, in being wise, the man of art or science seems to be wiser than the man of experience. And that's going to be in terms of the man of art or science, as his art or science is perfected, that he knows why, he knows the cause of things. And he's going to, you know, stop and elaborate that very carefully, right? So he says in the fourth paragraph on page one, experience seems, or comes to be from memory in men. For many memories of the same thing perfect the power of one experience. You need many memories of the same sort of thing, and you could add that they have to be brought together. There's a colatio, bringing together these things. And experience seems to be very much like science and art. For science and art come to men through experience. For experience makes art, as Polis says. He's a character in one of Plato's dialogues. Plato, as you know, was the master of Arstava. I'm the teacher, right? Twenty years. For experience makes art, as Polis says, speaking rightly. But inexperience, chance. Beginner's luck. Now, how does art or science, he's using them, as I say, loosely, you know, interchangeably, for another stage of annoying. And that is that we start to know the, what, universal. That's the beginning of art or science. He says, art comes to be whenever one universal understanding about light things comes to be from the many things kept in mind by experience. So when you begin to separate out what these many similar memories have in common, you begin to understand what's common to many. You begin to understand the universal. That's the beginning of art or science as distinguished from, what, experience. And that's the first difference, huh? Experience, like memory, like sensing, is the knowledge of the singular. It may be of many singulars, but it's still a knowledge of the singulars, huh? By art or science, it's the beginning of knowing the universal. Being by universal, not necessarily universal, everything in the world, but common to many things, huh? Okay? The universal is something that is common to many and said of many, huh? And he gives the example. And Aristotle, as you know, is the son of a medical doctor, so he has many examples. For to have in mind that this benefited Kellyus when suffering this disease, and Kellyus is one individual, and Socrates, and in each case thus too many, belongs to experience, huh? But that it benefits all such as are marked by one condition and suffer this disease, such as a phlegmatic or choleric suffering the brain fever, belongs to art, right, huh? You had a headache, my friend, huh? And you took an aspirin and the headache went away, right? And you had a headache the other day, and you took an aspirin, you know? And so I remember that it benefited you, and it benefited you, and it benefited you too, and your headache, didn't it, huh? And this is a matter now of experience, right? Many memories, right? Brought together. The memory of you and your headache, and how it was relieved, and your headache, and your headache, and everybody else has headaches, cunt. And now when I say, what they have in common, right? You all had a headache, yeah, and you all took an aspirin, right? Okay? So now we're going to put down a rule of primitive medical art. Aspirin is really a fix, right? This is the beginning of the medical art, right? It's something universal. Do you see that? Okay? Now, in terms of this first difference between experience and art or science, he's going to compare them as far as doing is concerned, right? And shows you how Aristotle is not naive at all about how the man of art or science may sometimes fail, right? And he's going to give a reason for that, huh? As far as doing is concerned, experience does not seem to differ at all from art, but we see sometimes the experience succeeding more than those having reason without experience. And now he's going to give a reason for this in terms of the difference he's already said, right? That experience is a knowledge of the singular. Art or science is a knowledge universal. When you do something, it's always in the singular. So I don't cure man, I cure this man with his particular illness, right? So in some sense, experience is closer to what you do, and you might succeed, right? The cause is that experience is knowledge of the singulars, while art or science are universals. But all doings and makings are about singulars. For the doctor does not cure man, except accidentally, because Callius or Socrates is a man, right? But it's really Callius or Socrates that he cures. If someone has reason without experience and knows universal, but does not know the singular in this, he many times makes a mistake in medical treatment. For it is more the singular that is, what, treated, huh? Okay? So, let's give a simple example there. My wife is giving birth to the first child there after giving birth. They often, the hospital, give them, I think it's Demerol or something like that. And there's a standard dose they give every woman who, you know, the nurse will bring in the dose for you, right? Now, when they gave this dose to my wife, it gave her a headache. In other words, it didn't relieve her, make her more comfortable, it made her worse, right? So, the second time she had a baby, they brought in the usual dose of that. And she said, let's give me half of that, right? See? And that she could take and then it relieved her pain and discomfort, right? So, she was a better, what? Physician, you might say, of herself than the nurse, right? Because the nurse says it's kind of universal. You give this dose to the person in this condition. And it actually, as far as my wife is concerned, this individual that you're trying to relieve the discomfort of, it made her actually worse, right? You see? But her having an experience of herself, right, was better able to cure herself than the, what, doctor, right? Okay. And I know myself, you know, if you take something, you know, mind of, like, getting nauseated or something, you know, you talk to different people, what they do when they feel, you know, nauseated, and what one person does, you know, from experience, we lose their nausea, and someone else, oh, I did that, it's going to be worse, you know, I mean. But you know yourself, right, huh? Okay? Okay. When I was a freshman in college, you know, I remember kind of a general psychology course, kind of these general requirements, you know. But the psychologist who taught the course worked in the mental home in the, you know, in the afternoon, huh? And he was remarking, being very honest, I think, huh? He was saying, there really aren't enough psychologists to get to know the patients well. So he says what happens is that when a patient comes in, they have a board meeting and they classify them. And then you get the treatment for that kind of ailment that you're classified in. And he says it often makes them worse, he thinks. That's because you're, what, going by art or science and the universal rather than what's individual to this person. Or to expand upon that or take another example, if, say, your child or your friend is depressed, right, the psychologist who knows the various kinds of mental ailment, right, knows the universals, might not be as quick as you would be to get your friend or your child out of that, what, depression, right? Because you know your friend, you know your child, you know what to suggest that might perk them up or get them out of this state of mind quicker than the, what, psychologist who knows all the universal, you know, and the subdivisions of all the different kinds of mental ailment because they don't have the same experience of your child or your friend, you see? Okay? If I'm depressed, well, I can show you a nice picture of one of my grandchildren, right? Or if it's a Mozart or something, right? You see? But if you know me, you know what to do. So you'll get me a bottle of wine or something, you know? You see? But, so you might be a better, you know, psychologist, so to speak, for your child or your friend than would be, what, the psychologist who knows the, who has the universals but doesn't know your, what, friend, huh? Okay. Take a different art or a science here. When I was a student in Quebec, some of the indigent American students, right, would get a job teaching conversational English and all kinds of secretaries and other people who had to learn some English, right, in order to qualify or hold on to their job or to be able to function in their job because of the contact English and the French. And so they'd be teaching, you know, kind of an informal course in English for people of this sort. But sometimes you get kind of a more technical question, right? And they'd be asking about the rule of English grammar, huh? And then sometimes the Americans do realize that although they speak English quite well and they have a long experience of English, right, they don't know the what? Yeah, they don't know the universal rule, huh? You see? And then you see the difference between experience and art, right? Through my experience of English, I might speak better than someone who knows the rules, you know, of English grammar. Maybe the French man has learned the rules of English grammar, might be able to recite them better than me, but he can't speak English as well as me because he doesn't have the experience of English that I have. You see the difference between the two? And how the man of experience might succeed better in speaking that language than the man who knows the rules, huh? Is it? Or, you know, I think sometimes, you know, in college they're in the politics department or political science department. They'll teach, you know, a course in comparative government, right? And so Professor X there, he can explain the difference between, say, the American government and the British government, right, and the difference between a prime minister and his dependence upon parliament and the president's independence, and some of the congress and so on, right? And so on. But if it came to getting a piece of legislation through the U.S. Congress, right, this guy has been down in Washington for 20 years there, he's the guy who knows what to promise you and how to twist your arm and what to say to you, you know, and so on, in order to get a piece of legislation through. So he might succeed better in getting a piece of legislation through the U.S. House of Representatives than the professor who knows all the universals of our government, huh? Because you don't get a piece of legislation through legislature in general or parliament in general, but through this legislature with these particular people with their particular needs and foibles and all the rest of it, right? You see the idea? So the man of experience, as far as doing, may succeed better, he says, than the man of art or science. And that's in terms of the difference, that it's a knowledge of the singular and the fact that what you do is something, what? In the singular. Singular, yeah. But now in the first complete paragraph in page two, he brings out a second difference, right? Between the man of art or science or his knowledge and the man of experience. And the second difference is that the man of art or science, when his knowledge is perfected anyway, he knows why things are the way they are, right? The man of experience knows merely what? So he says, nevertheless, we think, and this is not the editorial way, he means men in general, we think that knowing and understanding belong more to art than experience, and we hold that the artists are wiser than the experience, so that wisdom is more a matter of knowing than of doing, as he says, right? And this is because they know the cause while the others do not. The experience merely know that it is so, but do not know why it is so, but these know why it is so and the cause, which answers the question why it is so, right? Now if you ask people, who's wiser? The man who knows the way things are, but doesn't know why they are the way they are, or the man who knows why they are the way they are? Well, everybody would answer, yeah, the man who knows why, right? But this is so important a point that in the next three paragraphs, which we'll be looking at next time, Aristotle is going to use, you might say, three kinds of examples, or signs, right? To show that the man who knows why, right? Is thought by all of us to be wise than the man who really knows the value to so, right? Okay? I'm a tea drinker, huh? And I know from experience that if you leave the water in contact with the tea leaves beyond, let's say, four or five minutes, let's not even leave in there ten, twelve minutes, you're going to get a bad-tasting cup of tea, huh? Okay? Why is this so? See? I mean, a dummy like me might say, you know, well, it gets too strong. But if that was the only problem, you could, you know, add more water, and you see what I mean? No, the taste is different, huh? You see? Well, chemist was explaining to me that chemicals are released at different, what? Times, see? So it's actually different. He says chemicals in the tea leaf that are released the first, say, four or five minutes, and those that start being released around, I don't know, seven, eight, nine, ten minutes, right? You see? So he knows why, better than I do from experience, why, he knows why I get a bad-tasting cup of tea if I don't put the buzzer on or if I get distracted by philosophy or something, you know? But I know that it is so, right, from experience. But he seems wiser than me, right? Do you see? Yeah? That part of science you're referring to, is that also what in the past you've also referred to as reasoned out knowledge? Yeah, yeah. I do, friends, the epistatement, yeah. And he's going to say he's not talking here about the difference between episteme and techne, between science and art, huh? He's explained that in the sixth book in the Comarcan Ethics, but he's just using them kind of interchangeably here for a knowledge of the universal and why it is so, right? As distinguished from the knowledge of the singulars and only that is so, right? Okay? So we should stop here then. Yes. What's the thing? Do you want to meet next week or is there a problem next week? Probably a problem because Father wants to be in there so... Okay, 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, an angelic doctor, and help us to understand what you have written. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. And Aristotle is comparing art or science, which is a knowledge of the universal, with experience, which is still a knowledge of the singular or singularism. And we saw last time how, as far as doing is concerned, right, the man of experience might succeed, better than the man of art or science, from that very difference. That he has a knowledge of the singular. And what you do is always in the singular. You don't cure a man, you cure this man with his individual conditions. But then he brings out a second difference between art and science, on the one hand, and experience. And that is that experience, as such, only tells you that something is so. It doesn't tell you why it is so, right? But art or science, as it's perfected, is a knowledge of the cause, a knowledge why it is so. Now, right on the surface of it, if you ask somebody, you say, who's wiser and more knowing? The man who knows that something is so, but doesn't know why it is so. Or the man who knows why it is so. Everyone would answer, right? The man who knows why. So because the man of art or science knows why, he knows the cause, he seems to be wiser than the man of mere experience. And this also indicates that wisdom consists more in knowing than in doing, right? Which is a consolation to us lazy fellows. Okay? My old professor, Sirkish, always quote Stephen Thomas. The man sitting becomes wise. Okay? Except he translated homo sedes fit sapiens. The man sitting makes wisdom. I think the lot is becomes wise, huh? Rather than the man running around doing things, right? He gets things done, perhaps, but he doesn't become wise. So. Now, this is a very key thing for Aristotle. This particular difference in this particular awareness now that wisdom consists more in knowing the cause, right? So, in the second complete paragraph on page two, and in the third and in the fourth paragraphs, he's going to manifest and kind of elaborate, huh? By some kinds of examples or signs, the truth of that, right? That we would think the man who knows why and the cause is wiser and more knowing. And the first way he does this is by using the distinction between what we call the chief artist, in Greek, the architectonic, the architect, which comes in the Greek words for chief or principal and artist, and the subordinate artist, right? The man who, what? Commands others, right? And those who carry out his instructions, huh? Now, we talked about that distinction between the chief artist and the subordinate art that obeys in the beginning of Nicomachean Ethics, right? Okay? And we gave him examples of that, right? So, he took the example of the medical doctor, right? And the pharmacist. Now, probably in our society, who's got a great reputation or is admired more, the pharmacist or the medical doctor. Yeah. And we see that the medical doctor gives a... command to the pharmacist that we call a prescription. He prescribes what the pharmacist shall give you, right? Now does the pharmacist as such know why you should have this medicine? That's not what qualifies him to be a pharmacist, huh? It'll qualify him to be a doctor, right? But as a pharmacist, all he has to be able to do is to carry out the instruction that the prescription gives him from the doctor. So we'd all think of the medical doctor as wiser than the what? Pharmacist, right? But the medical doctor knows why you need this, right? And so the medical doctor, if he's wiser than the pharmacist, this is a sign that wisdom consists in knowing why, knowing the cause. And the same way if he took the general and the subordinate officer even, who obeys the general, right? So if I'm Napoleon and you're the head of the cavalry, you might have instructions to not charge or lead the cavalry charge until I give you this signal. Now, as head of the cavalry, you have to know how to lead a charge, but do you have to know why you're not going to charge until this moment? No, but I'm Napoleon, right? And I've got a plan to win the battle, and I know why it's better for the cavalry to charge at that moment than earlier or later where I wouldn't do the same good towards the victory. So who seems wiser? Napoleon seems wiser, right? The general who knows why, huh? Okay? Did I take that simple example? I remember when the kids were in kindergarten or first grade, I guess it was, about how when the kid begins to print first, huh? How they teach him to write the letter C? Did I give you the example one time? So you just give it again here. The kid is learning how to print as they do before they learn how to write. And let's say you're going to learn how to print cat. Now, when you form the letter C, you'll find that some kids will begin up here and write C like that. Other kids will begin down there and write the C like that. Okay? Now, if you're the assistant there in the classroom and the more knowing teacher, right, tells you, now make sure that they write the C starting from up here rather than from down there. Why? Well, you're not paid to think, right? Just paid to make sure they do that, right? Okay? Now, is there a reason why you want to begin up here rather than down there? Well, you're going to go on from printing to what they call cursive writing, huh? And when I try to write the word cat, if I begin up here, it's very smooth, right? If I begin down here, now I've got to interrupt and go over here and try to form my T and, you know, you see? But if it's starting here. So there is a reason why you need to do that, right? But the assistant there, as such, doesn't have to know that, right? The teacher can't be watching every kid in the classroom if it's 20, 30 kids, right? And so the assistant there, or maybe the mother who's volunteered, whoever it is, merely knows that they should start out there. But she doesn't know why, see? That's a very simple example, right? Okay? I'll tell you the example, you know, I was a freshman in college, huh? And my brother Richard made sure that I had a good advisor, Dr. Kassarit there in the philosophy department. And Kassarit looked at my scheduled courses, right? He says, Duane, where's your Greek? I said, my Greek? You're going to study in philosophy? He says, you take Greek. He didn't tell me why. And now I realize, you know, that whatever knowledge I do have of Greek was because he twisted my arm. And now I know why it was so valuable for me to know some Greek. All the doors that were opened up for me, right? They would have been closed, huh? The same way when I started with Euclid, right? I said, Duane, go and get Euclid. I said, why? Go and get it. But then after a while, you begin to realize why this is so important, and that you're wiser, aren't you? So he says, whence also we think, we does not, it's not the editorial we, doesn't mean we Aristotle think, it's not even the we, we the philosophers think this, right? But men in general would think that a polling is wiser than the man he commands, right? That the medical doctor is wiser, right? But the grand chef is wiser than the guy who peels the potatoes and is told to cut them in this way rather than that way, but doesn't know why that should be done, huh? So he says, whence also we, meaning even men in general, think that the chief artists about each thing are more honorable, respect them more, right? And no more and are wiser than the handicraftsmen, because they know the causes of the things made. For the latter are a bit like inanimate things. They make, but they do not know what they make, as fire burns, huh? So it's like in that famous Charge of Light Brigade, you know, that was celebrated in the famous poem of Tennyson, was it? There is not to question why, there is but to do and die, right? And I told you when I was working under my brother Marcus there in the factory, and I'd ask the question, why, when he told me to do something in a certain way, and he'd say, you know, you're not paid to think, he says, you're just paid to do something. And that's, you know, you should do this, right? You're not paid to think about why you should do this, you shouldn't do it. You're just paid to do it. So, inanimate things make each of these by a certain, what? Nature, huh? So they're like the fire, right? Which burns, right, huh? I skipped a sentence here. But they do not know what they make, as fire burns, huh? Inanimate things make each of these by a certain nature. So it's the nature of the fire to burn, right? While the handicrafts men do through custom. And custom is like a second, what? Nature, we call it, huh? Used to be a guy down at my father's factory, you know, and he would always be in on the start of any new job, and he'd go over and he'd get the guys working on a new procedure or a new product, or whatever it was. And once they got the knack of it, then he'd move on into another department. My father said, I've got to pay this guy more than anybody else, right? Because he was the guy who knew why it should be done this way, that way, right? And he'd just get the other guys into the knack, which means kind of the custom of doing it, and then that's it. I wonder sometimes, and I think back upon how we learned how to, at least in my day we did, we learned how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. And he had some way of, you know, using the numbers, right? And I wonder if we really knew why it would work that way. Or whether we just knew that was the way to add up, or that was the way to divide, or what column to put it in, so on. I'm not sure I really know why these things work. Hence the chief artists are wiser, not by doing, but by having a reason and knowing the causes. Now, though the main thing he's trying to show here is that it's in terms of knowing the cause, right? At the same time, he's touching upon the fact that wisdom consists more in knowing than in the actual, what? Doing something. Sometimes you had, in history, some famous scientists who were physically handicapped and couldn't therefore physically carry on the experiment that would be used to test their own theory, right? So they tell somebody else what to do, and they observe the results of it, right? But he seems wiser than the guy who's just carrying out his instructions. But it's in terms of his knowing, not in terms of his doing, then, that he's wise. So that's the second thing, although it's not the main thing he's trying to show at this point. That wisdom consists more in knowing than in doing, huh? In being Mary rather than Martha. Now, the second sign is taken from the teacher. He says, on the whole, the sign of knowing is the ability to teach.