Pints With Aquinas - 143: What is life? With Christopher Frey

Episode Date: January 29, 2019

Today I sit down with philosopher, Dr. Frey to discuss life. A much more difficult issue than you might think. Here's two of the main texts' from Aquinas that Dr. Frey and I reference ... I bet if you read these excerpts after listening to the show they'll make a lot more sense.  Please support my work (Thank you!) at patreon.com/mattfrad --- Whether life is properly attributed to God? I answer that, Life is in the highest degree properly in God. In proof of which it must be considered that since a thing is said to live in so far as it operates of itself and not as moved by another, the more perfectly this power is found in anything, the more perfect is the life of that thing. In things that move and are moved, a threefold order is found. In the first place, the end moves the agent: and the principal agent is that which acts through its form, and sometimes it does so through some instrument that acts by virtue not of its own form, but of the principal agent, and does no more than execute the action. Accordingly there are things that move themselves, not in respect of any form or end naturally inherent in them, but only in respect of the executing of the movement; the form by which they act, and the end of the action being alike determined for them by their nature. Of this kind are plants, which move themselves according to their inherent nature, with regard only to executing the movements of growth and decay. Other things have self-movement in a higher degree, that is, not only with regard to executing the movement, but even as regards to the form, the principle of movement, which form they acquire of themselves. Of this kind are animals, in which the principle of movement is not a naturally implanted form; but one received through sense. Hence the more perfect is their sense, the more perfect is their power of self-movement. Such as have only the sense of touch, as shellfish, move only with the motion of expansion and contraction; and thus their movement hardly exceeds that of plants. Whereas such as have the sensitive power in perfection, so as to recognize not only connection and touch, but also objects apart from themselves, can move themselves to a distance by progressive movement. Yet although animals of the latter kind receive through sense the form that is the principle of their movement, nevertheless they cannot of themselves propose to themselves the end of their operation, or movement; for this has been implanted in them by nature; and by natural instinct they are moved to any action through the form apprehended by sense. Hence such animals as move themselves in respect to an end they themselves propose are superior to these. This can only be done by reason and intellect; whose province it is to know the proportion between the end and the means to that end, and duly coordinate them. Hence a more perfect degree of life is that of intelligible beings; for their power of self-movement is more perfect. This is shown by the fact that in one and the same man the intellectual faculty moves the sensitive powers; and these by their command move the organs of movement. Thus in the arts we see that the art of using a ship, i.e. the art of navigation, rules the art of ship-designing; and this in its turn rules the art that is only concerned with preparing the material for the ship. But although our intellect moves itself to some things, yet others are supplied by nature, as are first principles, which it cannot doubt; and the last end, which it cannot but will. Hence, although with respect to some things it moves itself, yet with regard to other things it must be moved by another. Wherefore that being whose act of understanding is its very nature, and which, in what it naturally possesses, is not determined by another, must have life in the most perfect degree. Such is God; and hence in Him principally is life. From this the Philosopher concludes (Metaph. xii, 51), after showing God to be intelligent, that God has life most perfect and eternal, since His intellect is most perfect and always in act. ST I, Q. 18, A. 3 --- Whether death and other bodily defects are the result of sin?  I answer that, One thing causes another in two ways: first, by reason of itself; secondly, accidentally. By reason of itself, one thing is the cause of another, if it produces its effect by reason of the power of its nature or form, the result being that the effect is directly intended by the cause. Consequently, as death and such like defects are beside the intention of the sinner, it is evident that sin is not, of itself, the cause of these defects. Accidentally, one thing is the cause of another if it causes it by removing an obstacle: thus it is stated in Phys. viii, text. 32, that "by displacing a pillar a man moves accidentally the stone resting thereon." In this way the sin of our first parent is the cause of death and all such like defects in human nature, in so far as by the sin of our first parent original justice was taken away, whereby not only were the lower powers of the soul held together under the control of reason, without any disorder whatever, but also the whole body was held together in subjection to the soul, without any defect, as stated in the I:97:1. Wherefore, original justice being forfeited through the sin of our first parent; just as human nature was stricken in the soul by the disorder among the powers, as stated above (Article 3; I-II:82:3), so also it became subject to corruption, by reason of disorder in the body. Now the withdrawal of original justice has the character of punishment, even as the withdrawal of grace has. Consequently, death and all consequent bodily defects are punishments of original sin. And although the defects are not intended by the sinner, nevertheless they are ordered according to the justice of God Who inflicts them as punishments. Reply to Objection 1. Causes that produce their effects of themselves, if equal, produce equal effects: for if such causes be increased or diminished, the effect is increased or diminished. But equal causes of an obstacle being removed, do not point to equal effects. For supposing a man employs equal force in displacing two columns, it does not follow that the movements of the stones resting on them will be equal; but that one will move with greater velocity, which has the greater weight according to the property of its nature, to which it is left when the obstacle to its falling is removed. Accordingly, when original justice is removed, the nature of the human body is left to itself, so that according to diverse natural temperaments, some men's bodies are subject to more defects, some to fewer, although original sin is equal in all. Reply to Objection 2. Both original and actual sin are removed by the same cause that removes these defects, according to the Apostle (Romans 8:11): "He . . . shall quicken . . . your mortal bodies, because of His Spirit that dwelleth in you": but each is done according to the order of Divine wisdom, at a fitting time. Because it is right that we should first of all be conformed to Christ's sufferings, before attaining to the immortality and impassibility of glory, which was begun in Him, and by Him acquired for us. Hence it behooves that our bodies should remain, for a time, subject to suffering, in order that we may merit the impassibility of glory, in conformity with Christ. Reply to Objection 3. Two things may be considered in actual sin, the substance of the act, and the aspect of fault. As regards the substance of the act, actual sin can cause a bodily defect: thus some sicken and die through eating too much. But as regards the fault, it deprives us of grace which is given to us that we may regulate the acts of the soul, but not that we may ward off defects of the body, as original justice did. Wherefore actual sin does not cause those defects, as original sin does. Article 6. Whether death and other defects are natural to man? Objection 1. It would seem that death and such like defects are natural to man. For "the corruptible and the incorruptible differ generically" (Metaph. x, text. 26). But man is of the same genus as other animals which are naturally corruptible. Therefore man is naturally corruptible. Objection 2. Further, whatever is composed of contraries is naturally corruptible, as having within itself the cause of corruption. But such is the human body. Therefore it is naturally corruptible. Objection 3. Further, a hot thing naturally consumes moisture. Now human life is preserved by hot and moist elements. Since therefore the vital functions are fulfilled by the action of natural heat, as stated in De Anima ii, text. 50, it seems that death and such like defects are natural to man. On the contrary, (1) God made in man whatever is natural to him. Now "God made not death" (Wisdom 1:13). Therefore death is not natural to man. (2) Further, that which is natural cannot be called either a punishment or an evil: since what is natural to a thing is suitable to it. But death and such like defects are the punishment of original sin, as stated above (Article 5). Therefore they are not natural to man. (3) Further, matter is proportionate to form, and everything to its end. Now man's end is everlasting happiness, as stated above (I-II:2:7; I-II:5:3-4): and the form of the human body is the rational soul, as was proved in the I:75:6. Therefore the human body is naturally incorruptible. I answer that, We may speak of any corruptible thing in two ways; first, in respect of its universal nature, secondly, as regards its particular nature. A thing's particular nature is its own power of action and self-preservation. And in respect of this nature, every corruption and defect is contrary to nature, as stated in De Coelo ii, text. 37, since this power tends to the being and preservation of the thing to which it belongs. On the other hand, the universal nature is an active force in some universal principle of nature, for instance in some heavenly body; or again belonging to some superior substance, in which sense God is said by some to be "the Nature Who makes nature." This force intends the good and the preservation of the universe, for which alternate generation and corruption in things are requisite: and in this respect corruption and defect in things are natural, not indeed as regards the inclination of the form which is the principle of being and perfection, but as regards the inclination of matter which is allotted proportionately to its particular form according to the discretion of the universal agent. And although every form intends perpetual being as far as it can, yet no form of a corruptible being can achieve its own perpetuity, except the rational soul; for the reason that the latter is not entirely subject to matter, as other forms are; indeed it has an immaterial operation of its own, as stated in the I:75:2. Consequently as regards his form, incorruption is more natural to man than to other corruptible things. But since that very form has a matter composed of contraries, from the inclination of that matter there results corruptibility in the whole. In this respect man is naturally corruptible as regards the nature of his matter left to itself, but not as regards the nature of his form. The first three objections argue on the side of the matter; while the other three argue on the side of the form. Wherefore in order to solve them, we must observe that the form of man which is the rational soul, in respect of its incorruptibility is adapted to its end, which is everlasting happiness: whereas the human body, which is corruptible, considered in respect of its nature, is, in a way, adapted to its form, and, in another way, it is not. For we may note a twofold condition in any matter, one which the agent chooses, and another which is not chosen by the agent, and is a natural condition of matter. Thus, a smith in order to make a knife, chooses a matter both hard and flexible, which can be sharpened so as to be useful for cutting, and in respect of this condition iron is a matter adapted for a knife: but that iron be breakable and inclined to rust, results from the natural disposition of iron, nor does the workman choose this in the iron, indeed he would do without it if he could: wherefore this disposition of matter is not adapted to the workman's intention, nor to the purpose of his art. In like manner the human body is the matter chosen by nature in respect of its being of a mixed temperament, in order that it may be most suitable as an organ of touch and of the other sensitive and motive powers. Whereas the fact that it is corruptible is due to a condition of matter, and is not chosen by nature: indeed nature would choose an incorruptible matter if it could. But God, to Whom every nature is subject, in forming man supplied the defect of nature, and by the gift of original justice, gave the body a certain incorruptibility, as was stated in the I:97:1. It is in this sense that it is said that "God made not death," and that death is the punishment of sin. - ST I-II, Q. 85, A. 6  SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. 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How you going, you big, beautiful bugger? You look bloody fantastic, but you don't look as fantastic as you could, okay? So if you want to look more fantastic, you have to click the link at the top of these show notes so you can look at our brand new Pints with Aquinas merch. Honestly, it is perhaps the best Pints with Aquinas shirt we've ever done.

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go, click the bloody link, at least have a look at it. All right? You know, don't dismiss what I'm saying without having a bloody look at it. Have a look at it. See? Looks great. Go get one. Now it, have a look at it. See? Looks great. Go get one. Now. Or not. But do it. Or, yeah, do it. G'day and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd. If you could sit down

over a pint of beer with Thomas Aquinas and ask him any one question, what would it be? Today, we are joined around the bar table by philosopher Dr. Christopher Wray to discuss life. So, you know, it's bigger. It's bigger than you and you are not me. The lengths that I will go to really, you know, the distance in your eyes. Oh no, I've said too much. Like 15% of my listeners got that and you're all above 30. Anyway, let's just try and get through this podcast without losing our religion. All right. Losing My Religion by R.E.M. Come on, people.

It is really good to have you back here at Pines with Aquinas. You'll remember earlier on in the Januaries, I interviewed Dr. Jennifer Ray. Today, I'm interviewing her husband, Dr. Christopher Ray, and we are going to be talking, as I say, about life. What is life? I promise you that's a more difficult question than you think that it is. We're going to talk about God, and is God alive, and is life proper to man? What about death? Would we have died prior to the fall if it weren't for the tree of life? All very interesting philosophical questions. So grab a beer, grab a seat, grab, you know, whatever. Just grab something.

Okay. Dr. Frey, thank you very much for being on Pints with Aquinas. Thank you for having me. I've been looking forward to it. Yeah. So I had your wife on earlier, well, in January. So it was great to chat with her. Now I'm chatting with you. Soon I'll be chatting with your kids and your nanny. It'll be great. We do have other philosophers in the family. You could keep going. Do you really? Yes. My brother-in-law, my wife's brother got his PhD working on Spinoza's ethics. So there's quite a few philosophers sitting around. How did that work out?

How did that work out? I mean, the way I suppose it normally does, people get interested in this material and decide to go to graduate school. No one else in my immediate family works in philosophy, so I'm it on that side. I would love to be a fly on the wall while your wife, the philosopher, and you, the philosopher, have like a quarrel or an argument. I want to see if you're like, that second premise was fallacious.

It can reach that register. Sometimes it's just we are human beings as well. The normal ways in which people argue come out, but it's a surprisingly non-argumentative relationship in general. So luckily it doesn't have to get to that. Very good. Well, today we want to talk about what Aquinas has to say about life and death. And this is the beautiful thing about philosophy. The simplest of questions actually have very sophisticated and beautiful answers. So, I'm excited to delve into this topic, and I thought we could begin with perhaps a very simple question, and I suppose you'll

be answering this from a philosophical point of view. What is life? Yes, and you said it's a simple question, but it isn't. As you find out, all simple questions end up being quite complicated. It was a complicated question for Aquinas and his predecessors, and as it turns out, it's still a complicated question today. If you went to most biologists that care about these issues, you'd get quite a few diverse answers, and there have been people today who throw up their hands thinking that a good answer that everyone would find acceptable just isn't available. I guess there are two related questions. One's a question of just how we would go out and classify things. So, you know, let's say you went out into the world and you wanted to divide things up into those things that are living and those things that aren't, right? Just put them in two different boxes.

This is itself a hard question, but Aquinas, following Aristotle, thinks there are certain marks that you could use that would be a reliable way of assuring that something's alive if certain activities are being performed. So there are nutritive activities. There are things like growth and reproduction. There are locomotive activities, things moving about under their own power from place to place. And then there are things that we would at least today qualify as more mental, both perceptual activities and intellectual

and rational activities. So, you know, you go out and you look and you try and see which things have these, and then that's a pretty good way of dividing things up. They're always going to be difficult borderline cases. Like what would be an example? Well, these days, I mean, people have doubts as to say whether viruses are alive or not. They've got some features, reproductive features, that you think would qualify them as being alive. is quite primitive, and it's unlike any other even kind of simple biological activities in even things like bacteria and so on. And there are certain kinds of archaeobacteria, just very primitive beings where it's borderline, and there are debates. Should we even think of these as living organisms or not? Maybe they're just incredibly sophisticated, inanimate mechanisms.

And Aristotle and Aquinas, both of them think that there aren't incredibly hard lines. There are going to be difficult cases as well, where plant life sort of bleeds into inanimate activities and you may not be able to find a really hard line where you can say clearly everything on this side is alive and everything on the other side isn't alive. So that's one sort of question. There's a harder question, though, which is more a question about definitions, what life is. So you've got all these different activities, and we've all agreed, or maybe it would take some argument, but roughly let's assume we've all agreed that these are all instances of living, all of these activities. But there's still a question about what justifies grouping these as all being manifestations of a single kind of thing, namely life.

So you can imagine, I mean, these are really different activities. You've got something like a sunflower blooming, or a tiger hunting its prey, or a human being contemplating the heavens. It's hard for me to think of three activities almost as dissimilar from each other as those. But we want to say, no, each of these prima facie distinct activities are all instances of something more fundamental. They're all instances of living. And so there's a question, in virtue of what, should we classify all of these things under a single genus as belonging to a single kind of thing?

And that's a much harder question. And that's something, again, that we still have difficulty with today. If you were trying to give a definition of life, what life is, you'll find there's no current agreement about what's actually fundamental, that the one thing or the small number of features that all living things share, in virtue of which we call them alive, or which they warrant the label being alive. Are we getting here into Aristotle's differentiating of the soul, like the vegetative, the sensitive, and the rational, that is to say, if we can agree what life is or what constitutes something

being alive, then the question becomes, how do we kind of delineate the different types of life? The problems, I mean, Aristotle grappled with them directly, and what you point to is exactly the spot where he does so. So, the soul is the principle of life, that just means, basically, it's what ultimately explains and is the source of life activities. And so, discussions about different types of souls are really discussions about different ways something can live, different ways something can manifest life. And so you've got the lives of plants, which is mostly nutritive activities, and these beings have nutritive souls.

You've got the lives of animals, which consist not only in nutritive activities, but perceptual and locomotive activities. Their principle is a perceptual soul or an animal soul. And then you've also got human lives, which are distinctive rational activities. And you want to say, well, look, Aristotle wonders, why don't we just study plants and just study animals and then just study humans? These could be three different sciences for three wildly different kinds of activities. That might be the way nature's carved up. They're just fundamentally different ways to be, and each warrants its own separate kind of investigation with its own different principles. And he thinks, no, there should be a way to unite them all together, right? To think, you know, for there to be a study of the soul or a study of life that comprehends all of these different ways life

can be said. But he doesn't think you can give a definition of life. He actually searches for some common feature that all of these things have, and he can't come up with one. He thinks at best you just have to see how all of these different ways of life are related to one another. They kind of form, he thinks, a sort of hierarchy where the simplest life forms live nutritive lives and then you've got the animals who not only perform nutritive activities but the perceptual and locomotive ones. And then human beings are on the top.

And you can see the ways in which all of these different ways of living are related to one another. They each occupy a position in a certain well-grounded hierarchy. And he thinks, in some sense, that's the most you can say about this. It's not as if, it's not like if you're doing geometry and you want to say, oh, there's a single subject matter, plain figures, and then you give a definition that would apply to all of them, and then now you're okay. You've got some definition that unites the field of study you're about to inquire into. Aristotle doesn't think you can do that with life. He actually says it's foolish to try and give a definition. This is fascinating because presumably

Aristotle didn't know much about bacteria and disease. And so I would imagine like a primitive way of looking at life, and this is probably very simplistic, but things that are alive look really different when they're dead and they begin to rot and decompose. But this isn't true of things like rocks. So I know that sounds really simple and maybe it is, but if I'm doubtful that a certain plant or animal is alive, once I kill it, I begin to notice a difference. It begins to decompose. Yeah. Well, right away, you might not. Aristotle mentions that sometimes it may take a while for you to notice whether it has or not, because immediately upon death, it's not as if it's like in those old horror movies with mummies where it looks just the same, but then you touch it and it collapses into dust.

It can take some time. And this is certainly true. And this is certainly true. I mean, one thing that both Aristotle and Aquinas emphasize is how much, what a significant transition it is between something being alive and something being dead, so much so that we wouldn't even say that the same parts are present. So, for example, I have all sorts of parts, hands and legs and hearts and all the various tissues. And he says, when I die, we would only use those words homonymously. And that just means we would use the same name. You could point to someone on the autopsy table and say there's the heart but even though you're using the same word heart there isn't the same organ there all that's common is the name what's present before you

when you're looking at a corpse is just it's in some sense a heap of autonomous natural bodies each doing their own thing and And what does that look like? As you said, it looks like rotting or putrefaction or whatever you would call it. It's going to act very differently, right? So they're both going to agree, both Aristotle and Aquinas, that something very different is going on when something is alive and when it's dead. There's a certain kind of unity that's present in living organisms

that's not going to be present in anything that's inanimate, not just a rock, but even kind of complex inanimate bodies, certain artifacts and things like that. But that's on some sense the side of the first kind of question. What features would we commonly use to pick out the living and distinguish them from the dead? So I could look and say, hey, this thing seems to be maintaining itself. It's growing. When some bit of matter is jettisoned from it, it takes a nutriment

and changes it in the right way and fills in that gap, right? Brings more matter back into the system, right? That's the kind of activity which presumably only living things are engaged in, right? Mountains aren't working that way, some boulder falls off. But it's unclear why we would call that, what that has in common with, say, me seeing the sort of vivid redness of a stop sign or me thinking about some difficult mathematical proposition. Those are also both ways of living, which seem a lot different than me eating a hamburger and turning it into more flesh. Here's one of these weird philosophical questions that when I say it, it'll sound insane, but if you had five beers in you, it would seem super interesting.

This is why I love philosophy. I wonder how it was that the ancients were convinced that plants didn't feel pain. So if you grant that plants are alive and you tear them up and you begin to eat them, how do you know they're not internally screaming? It's not obvious at all. Aristotle's predecessors had very different views about what was alive and what wasn't. I mean, if you go all the way back to Thales, he infamously thought that magnets were alive, right? thought that magnets were alive, right? And this would sound silly to us, but they are kind of initiating movement on their own in a way that doesn't seem to be present in a lot of inanimate bodies. A lot of the pre-Socratics didn't think plants were alive at all, that they should be

viewed in some sense operating under the same principles that other kind of complicated inanimate bodies would be doing. One interesting thing, you mentioned plants and pain. Plato, at least in the Timaeus, he did think animals were alive. Sorry, he did think plants were alive. But he used the word for life that you would normally give for animals, and he actually gave an argument that plants did perceive at least pain and pleasure. And so… Well, they certainly retreat, you know, if you light a match towards it or something like that. I mean, unlike animals, they can't get up and run away from what's attacking them. But they do, in a sense, kind of retreat from physical danger.

Yeah, and it's not obvious that they don't. I mean, I think now most people, there are always a few holdouts who try and attribute all sorts of perceptual capacities and maybe even conscious life to plants. maybe even conscious life to plants. But the majority of botanists are perfectly fine denying them any sort of conscious life. But they still want to think of them as alive, right? And this is at least Aristotle's... Sorry to interrupt you. I just had that idea. What are those weird plants that actually appear to have mouths that eat things and swallow them?

Oh, just eating insects and things like that? Yeah. Yeah, different ways of – yeah, there's always going to be some way of breaking down kind of large-scale food into the more basic building blocks that you could absorb and then turn into whatever tissues you need. You know, Aristotle and Quincey, they talk about plants, that their roots have, are like mouths in some sense, that they have the same functional abilities that our mouths do. And that so, you know, what's up for us is down for them, since organs that are typically in the upper parts of us are in the lower parts of plants, and that the earth itself serves as their stomach, kind of breaking down nutriment so that it could be absorbed properly.

But Aquinas, he's a little more optimistic than Aristotle is about finding the one feature that all and only living things possess. He focuses a lot on this idea that living organisms are self-movers. Where movement, it doesn't just involve locomotion, right? Like moving from one place to another place. But in some sense, it would also involve any sort of activity. So even thinking would be considered a movement. And this is important because one of the things that Aquinas is very clear about is that God is alive. And God certainly isn't the sort of thing that is engaged in

nutritive activities, right? God isn't losing matter. He doesn't need to gain new matter. And so he's not reproducing, at least certainly not in the way that animals and plants are doing. And so you certainly don't want to say, all right, well, what is it to live? To live at a minimum is to engage in these nutritive activities, because then you're going to exclude the life of angels and the life of God. And he thinks not only do they live, but they're in some sense, the most perfect examples of living beings that they are. They live the most fully. I just pulled this up here in the Summa Theologiae, first part, question 18, just for our listeners here. I think, what are we going to look at?

Article 3. I'm not sure if you have it in front of you there, Dr. Frank. I can get it real quick. Yeah, is life properly attributed to God? And the first objection is, it seems that life is not properly attributed to God for things are said to live in as much as they move themselves as previously stated but movement does not belong to God neither therefore does life yeah but it does turn out okay I mean of course as we all

know he responds to each of these objections. I mean, the kind of movement he's talking about, the sort of acts of the intellect qualify, right? So insofar as God understands, for example, his activity of understanding is a movement, and it's not an externally compelled movement. It sources himself. He is, in this way, a self-mover, and the self-movement is one of the ways in which life manifests itself. Would you mind if we perhaps read through some of the respondio? Sure. Let's see.

Article 3, whether life is properly attributed to God. Maybe I could read a couple of lines and get your take on it. Sounds great. Okay. Life is the highest degree properly in God, in proof of which it must be considered that since a thing is said to live insofar as it operates of itself. There you go. That's an interesting kind of definition there. Live insofar as it operates of itself and not as moved by another. The more perfectly this power is found in anything, the more perfect is the life of that thing.

In things that move and are moved, a threefold order is found. Maybe we'll just pause there. Yeah, I mean, it's not just any movement or any activity that concerns him. He is focused on this more narrow category of self-movement as being what's central to living. This involves not just a lack of external compulsion, right? I mean, a lot of things can be moved contrary to their natures. And there are other things that can be moved in accordance with their nature. So, for example, fire moves upward, Aquinas thinks. This is a movement natural to fire, but this still isn't self-movement. It requires kind of external

efficient causes. It requires that they be generated from a certain kind of body, that there be a first mover, that the heavenly bodies be rotating in a certain way. I mean, there's a lot of external causal apparatus that needs to be in place for fire to be moving in the natural way that it does. He thinks of living organisms as, in some sense, more self-contained than that in being the source and the author of their movements. It's not just that nothing external compels, say, God to engage his intellect. It's that he is his own source and cause of this. And he thinks that's the same way for us, that we're the causes of our own vital activities, the sort of activities that are characteristic of living. We are the ones that initiate these motions. We're the sort of activities that are characteristic of living, we are the ones that

initiate these motions. We're the source of them. We're the ultimate cause of them. Yeah, given the divine simplicity of God, it's not just life that you struggle to understand how it applies to God. It's other attributes as well, isn't it? I mean, when you think of things like mercy and how we kind of experience mercy, you know, in a sensitive way, we see somebody and we have a passion or an emotion response, emotional response, you think, well, how does that apply to God? And you think, well, okay, maybe God isn't like that, so maybe God doesn't have mercy. My point is it's not just life that seems difficult to square with God as He is simple. It's other attributes as well.

Well, I can report that's certainly the case in my he possesses these attributes is analogical, right? That it's not literally the same way in which we have a will that he does or in which we love that he does. But there is enough in common that we can get some sort of understanding of what those attributes are by reflecting on the ways in which they're manifest in us. But you have to know, in some sense, that even if you had a complete understanding of the way in which all of these properties are present in us,

you haven't, by doing that, completely understood what it is for God to possess them. But, I mean, it is interesting at least that he does attribute life as one of the properties that God possesses. And this is because, well, in one, his activity, at least the activity of understanding is one of the activities that he thinks is characteristic of living things, at least down here, this side of heaven, that our intellectual engagements are at least analogous to the sort of intellectual activity God engages in, and that it's a vital activity. And then in both cases, he thinks that the movements, those activities, they're self-movements, that we are the source of our intellectual activity, and God is the source without external compulsion of his intellectual

activity. So there's that commonality as well. Yeah, I was going to ask, why isn't that a sufficient definition of life? He says here, you know, we say something's alive insofar as it operates of itself and not as moved by another. It does seem like Aquinas is more inclined to focus on that one feature as what is the central feature of living things. I mean, it might be too strong to say this, but it's closer with Aquinas than it is with Aristotle. For Aquinas to live is to be a self-mover,

and self-moved activity is the same thing as life or vital activity. Aristotle is a little less optimistic about finding a single property. Is there a reason for that hesitancy on part of Aristotle? For this proposal in particular? I mean, in some ways, the worry is just, I mean, usually what happens is you focus on some features that are going to get the extension of life wrong, or either, or that's one way of doing it right so you could say like a lot of modern definitions say all right what is it to be alive well it's to engage in certain homeostatic nutritive activities right or people in their modern definitions will even say like reproduce on the basis of dna or rna they'll build in um the idiosyncrasies of how these activities are materially realized here, that would exclude God living just by definition, right? He doesn't engage in any of those activities.

And then on the other hand, sometimes you find definitions in which there are kind of more broad structural features, right? say, oh, living organisms are highly organized. But then when you look, a lot of things have organizations, and when you get down into the details of what they mean, they end up meaning something like organized in the way that living organisms are, where they're kind of presupposing in their definition the notion of life that they're attempting to define in the first place. Things get circular.

And so Aristotle's word that if you, say, appeal to self-motion, well, maybe you're thinking of self-motion of the kind that living organisms engage in and that self-motion might be a broader category that at least in principle it could apply to things that aren't living even if even if in every case the only things that um act by self-motion are living things it's not clear that he would think it's a good definition. Like, I think Aristotle's word, you know, if he wrote a book on self-motion and you read it, at the end of reading that, would you know what life is? And he's not as sure of that, even if you've managed to pick out a feature that all and

only living things have. featured that all and only living things have. But Aquinas, I think it's fair to say that whether he thinks it's a good definition or not, he does focus on self-motion as being the most important thing about living organisms. And it's the one that he attributes to God in explaining why it's appropriate to say that God's living. Now, in this respondio, he says, you know, we have a threefold order. And I believe here he's going to be talking about, you know, plants, animals, and then intelligent life. Is there anything you want to hone in on in this kind of main response before we perhaps ask whether or not life is proper to man and whether there could have been death prior to the fall in man and things like that.

Yeah, I mean, I guess we could just re-emphasize how the wide variety of ways in which this one thing, life, can manifest itself, right? And I mean, I suppose we've come to, I mean, especially people working in the Aristotelian tradition, this threefold division between plant life, animal life, and human or rational life seems commonplace. But it is surprising how wildly different these activities are, and that we would still put them in the same group as all examples of one thing living, which at least to me still seems surprising and in need of explanation. Why we would want to treat these all as examples of the same thing rather than just three wildly different kinds of phenomena that we could investigate separately. Let's talk a little bit about Adam and Eve and whether or not, you know, death would have come about. It's something I've often thought is, you know, if they didn't have this

so-called tree of life to sustain them, would they naturally have died eventually? Yeah, I mean, you think that life necessarily entails death, but that's not so. I mean, we know that's not so, because if God's alive, God's not the sort of thing that even has the potentiality of dying, right? To live doesn't mean you're susceptible to death, but it is so for us, right? And it turns out it was so for us even in the garden. According to Aquinas, the reason why, and there was a certain immortality present in Adam and Eve as long as they didn't sin, But this was a supernatural gift imposed upon them, right? It's not built into the nature of human beings, even from the beginning, that they're the sort of things that

could live forever, that could be immortal. It was the removal of this gift that led to them dying. But that was in some sense, in some sense, it was him putting human beings back into the condition that they would be simply given what it is to have the form of a human being. And this is why when Adam and Eve eat of the fruit, they're then banished from the garden and therefore banished from the tree of life. And this is why I think God says, lest they take the tree and live forever, take the fruit of the tree. Yeah, I mean, there's a way in which you could see the newly present mortality as a punishment. I think in Aquinas' view, it's not a new punishment, but the removal know, things outside the garden. So I remember that being a real kind of eye opener for me several years back when I thought about that. Yeah, I haven't thought too much about it.

I mean, I wonder if they fell off a cliff, whether they would die in this way or whether it was just... I mean, there's the sort of aging and decay that comes just from being in matter. I mean, there's entropy. I mean, the way they're thinking of this is that, you know, human beings, they're made up of matter. And this matter has its own natural tendencies, right? So really earthen tissues will want to go down. More fiery tissues will want to go down, more fiery tissues will want to go up. And so the stuff we're made of, if left to its own devices, would be kind of splitting off in all

sorts of directions. And part of the activity of our nutritive souls, it seems, is to try and keep this from happening rapidly. And when it does happen, happen right when some piece of tissue does fly off that you can um eat some food and turn it in to you know give it the right qualities and assimilate it into the body and replace it right so you're trying to replace your body and maybe take on more nutriment and grow in the right ways if you're bringing more in than you're losing. I mean, we were mentioning earlier what happens when we die, that activity of putrefaction, that's what our tissues would do if there was no nutritive soul present at all, right? They're all going to split off and go in all sorts of different directions.

But there is a question of what the different role that matter and form play in our dying. I know you're a philosopher, but before we get to that, can I ask you a theological question? You can. I'll see if I can answer it or whether it's above my pay grade. Feel free to punt. I've often wondered, and I've heard people raise this question, what Adam and Eve were supposed to think when God said to them, you must not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it, you will surely die. I know we're just speculating here but but could yes it would be speculation yeah but could this be because adam and eve had encountered death in other living organisms that they kind of knew what it was because as we've already stated we're not saying that and this is what aquinas says directly he says if something was a carnivorous sort of beast, it's not like it was

eating strawberries prior to the fall and then only after started tearing the flesh from other beasts, that this was in the nature of the carnivorous animal and prior and after the fall. Yeah, that seems right. But I mean, even in those cases, you don't need carnivores as examples of life and death those plants that they're eating even uh even if they were eating strawberries there that that means the end of life for those those organisms at least yeah um so there is i mean there would be knowledge of that things that are alive can die. There's knowledge of what it is for things to live and die. There's a different kind of, you know, to say you'll know death,

it means that's the sort of thing that can now happen to you. Know it intimately in that first personal sort of way. It's now the sort of thing that can apply either to beings of your kind or to you as an instance. And that's certainly one of the things that happened after eating. I mean, that's one way that phrase, you'll end up knowing. Yeah, this is one of the reasons, again, I do love philosophy, because I could see people having a theological debate about whether or not there was life or death prior to the fall in any sense. And then the philosopher sticks his head in and says, what is life?

All right, good luck. I'll be back in a few years and let me know if you've figured it out. Yeah, a few millennia. We'll get back to the answer. All right, well, let's move on to matter and form and how this plays into it. matter and form and how this plays into it? Yeah, I mean, one difficult question is, well, it's not part of our forms or what it is to be a human being that we die. Maybe I should say more about this. A lot of times, you know, we talk about what it is to have a human form, and this involves having a certain end or telos. And it's really difficult to distinguish, oftentimes, different senses of the word end.

So sometimes end could just mean the last stage of something. And if we mean it that way, though, if all human beings die, you might say our end is death. But that's not usually the way Aquinas is using it, right? The end of the human life would be, in some sense, fully realizing the human form. If we could achieve our end completely and successfully, it would consist not just in naturally realizing our human form, but achieving some sort of happiness, really flourishing and excelling, exemplifying our form as best that we can. Would you mind, just for some of our listeners, clarifying what we mean by form and matter?

Yeah, well, this will be a very thumbnail sketch, right? I mean, the form is, in some sense, the substance or essence of something. It's a specification of what we are, right? So to have a human form is both, in some sense, what it is to be a human being. is both, in some sense, what it is to be a human being. It's going to be derived from that. But it's also going to be the cause of our being a human being. It's what makes anything with that form an actual instance of that kind. And it's also going to serve as the end, you know, that for the sake of which human activities occur. We, you know, so for example, when we're growing, we're growing for the sake, in some broad sense, of our form.

We're trying, or at least the activities are directed towards the full realization of our form. So that's why they think it occurs in a regular way, in a predictable way. And if all goes well, certain features are going to be present and not other features, right? When we grow and develop, hopefully, if all goes well, we'll have a fully realized human form and not, you know, say, a tiger's form or something. say a tiger's form something um and yeah so um the matter is in some sense all of these activities have to be um embodied and realized in some matter and at least for this tradition you're going to be pretty limited what you matter from which something can be built up, right? It's going to be the elements, earth, air, water, and fire, and all the various mixtures of these.

And all of these materials, there's a small number of characteristics that are really important to them, right? So, you know, how hot or cold they are, their level of moisture, whether they're wet or dry, and their weight being heavy or light, that those are principles of locomotion, whether they kind of move naturally in one direction rather than another. And then, you know, all of the other sort of material features that you'd find in things, right? Whether it's hard or soft, whether it's the sort of thing that, right? Whether it's hard or soft, whether it's the sort of thing that, you know, breaks easily or sticks together, whether you, you know, there are long lists of all the sort of features of material bodies. Those are somehow going to be derived from these simpler characteristics, you know, hot, cold, wet, dry, heavy, and light. And yeah, every tissue in our bodies is made up ultimately of these kind of simpler inanimate bodies

and can be described by these more basic material characteristics. It turns out, though, that nothing made up of bodies with these material characteristics is going to last for very long. Each of them is going to be—if something's particularly heavy, it's got a natural inclination to move downward. That's just what it is to be heavy. That's why a lot of human beings' tissues are heavy in this way. That's why if you pulled my chair out from underneath me right now, I'd fall to the ground. That's because I'm made up of primarily earth and matter.

That's the way they would be describing this. Yeah, given gravity too, I suppose. Well, see, that's not in their systems. That's how we'd explain it. But they think that earthen things have a natural tendency to move towards the center of the cosmos. And so it will act that way unless something is preventing it from doing so. So right now, the chair being under me is preventing all of my earthen tissues from moving the way they would by nature. And once you remove that hindrance, now they're free to act unchecked, and they move downwards until they reach another hindrance, I guess, which would be, you know, the floorboards of the second story of my house I'm

sitting in. So yeah, no gravity. But I mean, we could switch this around to update the physics to be slightly more in tune with, you know, the contemporary explanations that people accept these days. But there is this idea that anything made up of matter can only last for so long because the material tendencies of the things you're made up of aren't going to be in alignment with the sort of movements that would be proper to your nature, your human nature, the nature of a sunflower or a tiger. There's always going to be some conflict between the movements that would fully realize a living organism's form and the movements that would be natural to these materials. It's interesting, Aquinas, he's thinking of, he's thinking of, you know, how could I best create a living organism?

You know, you imagine God is a great craftsman, and he's got this form, right? He's got a human form, and he wants to realize it in the matter that's most suitable. And he says, look, if there were a way to do this, if there were a way to put the human form in a matter that was perfectly in alignment with the movements that human beings would need to fully realize their form, he would do it. There's just no such way of doing so. The only way to realize a form, a human form, is in the materials that are available. And those are going to be materials that are ultimately at odds with the movements that we would need to engage them.

That sounds a little like C.S. Lewis from The Problem of Pain, who was trying to explain pain and why all things being equal, pain was inevitable. And he was saying something similar, you know, that we are kind of enfleshed beings who wander around in a physical world with other fleshed beings, you know? Yeah, I mean, there are two things I could say about that. There are some things where their matter is perfectly in alignment with their natures. So Aquinas will talk about the heavenly bodies, right? And to be a heavenly body, all you need to do is move in a circle. That's the only activity that they're engaged in, right?

Moving around in a circular orbit. I have four small kids. I feel like I do that a lot of the day. Yeah, well, it's easier for them because their matter is ether, and all ether does by nature is moves in a circle. And so you've got something who, you know, to perfectly realize the form of a heavenly body is to move in a circle, and you've got this matter, all it does is move in a circle, and that's great. You've got these two things there in alignment circle and you've got this matter. All it does is move in a circle and that's great. You've got these two things there in alignment. And this is one of the reasons why,

um, this circular motion will continue eternally. Nothing will ever stop it. It will never tire because you've got a perfect alignment between the form and the matter. That's not going to work for you or me. There is no matter that moves exactly like a human being needs to move. We have matter that is wanting to go off and do its own thing.

And Aristotle uses words like, you know, it's a constant effort and it's tiresome to live a human life, not just, you know, practically being worn down and weary of the world, but just physically the idea that it's you're constantly engaged in this fight with the matter. from all of this physical labor that I'm doing, and therefore I'm going to rest. Well, a little bit of rest can be rejuvenating, but if I choose to binge on Netflix for three days, it's not like I come out of that stupor feeling fully alive and refreshed. I feel in some ways more exhausted. Yeah, yeah. And even when you're resting, it's not as if, I mean, you're resting your kind of high-level conscious capacities, right? You're not doing any complicated thinking, but the nutritive parts of your soul are working away, right? They're constantly replacing material.

There's, in some sense, no rest of living. You're constantly living in some way. The only rest is death, and that's not really rest. That's just the cessation of the activity altogether. You're always active until you aren't there at all. Yeah, I really like, I think, where was Socrates talking about after he was sentenced to death? And was it the, I'm trying to think which dialogue that was, where he was in prison? Well, there's two when he's in prison, but you're probably thinking of the Phaedo when he's talking about. That's right. Yes, the Phaedo, where he's talking about death. And he's like, look, it's kind of like's kind of like a Pascal wager kind of thing.

He's like, look, either we get to kind of hang out with people and chat with people and that'll be great because then I get to ask questions forever, or it'll just be oblivion. And who doesn't like a good night's sleep? Like a good night's sleep is where you don't have any dreams. It's great. That's what death will be.

That's fine with me too. That's not much of a consolation to many people reading it, but there are quite a few movements, not just Socrates in those passages, but other ancient Greek traditions, Epicureans, who were like, well, when you're dead, you aren't there to be harmed. Yeah, that's something. Yes, the long rest. I'm looking here at the first part of the second part, question 85, and maybe we can begin to wrap up with this.

The effects of sin, and first, the corruption of the good of nature. I'm looking at Article 6, whether or not death and these defects are natural to man. Now, rather than read this big answer, I wonder if you might kind of sum up what Aquinas wants to say about this, whether death is natural. And we've been talking about it, but just to kind of put a bow on it. But this is an interesting passage in that, I mean, one thing that Aquinas is able to do, he often employs what's called the nature craft analogy, because there are a lot of ways in which natural activities and the role that our form plays in them is similar to the activities of a craftsperson. And so he's able to answer certain questions about the role that form

and matter play in our death that can be better understood if we transition to thinking about a craftsperson. So he focuses a bit on an artisan who's making a knife. And you ask, all right, well, what does a knife do? What's its function? And it's presumably to cut, right? That's what knives are for. And so now you're a craftsperson and you know what a knife is, and you're sitting there and you're trying to make the choice about what to make it out of, what sort of matter. And you say,

all right, well, in order to execute its function, it's going to have to have certain properties, right? It's going to have to be sharp. Nothing can cut or cut well if it's going to have to have certain properties, right? It's going to have to be sharp. Nothing could be, you know, nothing can cut or cut well if it's not sharp. And so whatever matter I make this out of, it's got to be a sort of matter that is amenable to being sharpened. So, you know, you aren't going to make it out of butter or a hunk of cheese. it out of butter yeah butter or a hunk of cheese or a bit you know there are a lot of things that wouldn't make good knives but you know you also want it to be durable so you know you could make a knife out of obsidian and you can actually get a really sharp blade but if you actually cut something with it it's going to snap in half really easily right um and so what the best – like if you were making a knife around the time of Aquinas, the best you could do is iron.

This is going to be the best possible matter that you could choose from all the matter that's available to you to make a knife. Well, it turns out that – this is true – but anything made out of iron is going to rust. That's a downside. But then you want to say, well, look, is the craftsperson, the cutler,

the person who made this knife, are they responsible for its rusting? And the Aquinas is going to argue, at least in this case, that that craftsperson isn't. They didn't choose iron because it was going to argue, at least in this case, that that craftsperson isn't. They didn't choose iron because it was going to rust, even if they could foresee that it would rust. They chose it because it was the matter that was going to best realize the form,

the form of a knife. And, yeah, it's an unfortunate consequence that it will rust, but the matter wasn't chosen for that property. And so I guess the idea is how can you criticize the craftsperson for choosing this material? Could you have chosen better? And the idea is like no one could choose better. And this idea is like, no one could choose better. And sometimes you're stuck with the unforeseen, even the foreseen consequences of your best choices, right? Yes. And so you can imagine something similar happening with the human being. You're like, what could I possibly make this out of? Now, it turns out, in order to be a human being, you have to be able to perceive things.

And in order to perceive things, Aquinas thinks your sense organs have to be made up of some ratio of all of the elements. In order to be sensitive to all the materials in the world, the sense organ has to, in some sense, itself be made up of all of these, right? So there's no way to get a human form realized in matter unless it's going to be a mixture of earth and air and water and fire and all of these mixtures. You just can't do it. Now, you can imagine if you were thinking like, well, it's some great engineering project and you've got all the potential matters or materials

to make a human being out of, um, you're going to choose the best one, right? Um, but even choosing the best one, it's going to be a material that's eventually going to, if it keeps acting the way it does,

break down and ultimately lead to our death. There's nothing, there's no way you could choose a matter that wouldn't do that. Even Superman died. He came back from there, but that's another story. That's right. He's thinking anything that's made out of these kind of materials, and there are a limited number of them, is going to die.

I mean, this is a general principle. You were mentioning Socrates. This goes even back to Plato. It's almost a general principle for Plato that anything made out of matter can't be eternal. That's almost by definition. He'll bring this up even in talking about, like in the Republic, the Kallipolis, which seems like this ideal city. And he says, well, look, why wouldn't this just last forever? Why would it ever have to devolve into another form of government?

And one of the principal arguments is like, look, this is something realized materially. And the material world is a life of opposites and change and flux, and nothing will last forever. And that is true of living organisms as well. There are all sorts of these contrary powers fighting it out, moving on their own, undermining the sort of organization that we need to have in place to keep living and realizing our form. that we need to have in place to keep living and realizing our form. And we can live longer or shorter lives, but we can't live indefinitely. And Aquinas thinks you can't blame our forms for that. Our forms just specify, in some sense, what a perfect example would be.

And in that form being realized, if everything goes well, it'll realize itself in the best matter available. And you don't blame the form for there not being a good enough material available for it to be realized materially, right, without dying. Even now with, like, knives, we've got better materials than iron. You can make it out of steel. And so maybe it won't rust, but it's still not going to last forever. There's no choice you can make that's going to give you an eternal knife. That's right.

You know, there's a beautiful spiritual meditation that could be had here. You know, you think how Adam and Eve had to eat the fruit from the tree of life in order to remain alive. And of course, we have the new tree, which you might think of as the crucifix, which was given for us. And now we eat from the fruit of that tree, if you will, that is the Eucharist in order to have eternal life. Yeah, but the eternal life isn't Well, here's a question. It's not the sort of materially realized life that we're presently engaged in now.

And this, again, is by my pay grade, but there are going to be certain things in place after the bodily resurrection that's going to prevent our further dissolution. But this would likely be in the same category as the sort of activity God would have to engage in with respect to us to keep Adam and Eve going on. It would be some sort of gift counteracting the activity of the material bodies that we'd be forced to be shoved back into. So if somebody were to say, well, God could have created us in a perfect state like he will in the next life, I suppose the answer could be, well, he did do that and we sinned. At least that's the theoretical answer to that. Yeah, that's right. And when you say he could, I mean, he does, Aquinas, in talking about the resurrection,

you know, it is, our bodies are in some sense, perfect, right? You know, you come back at the perfect age of a human being, I think it's 32, right? And you come back, you know, if you, if somehow during your life, you lost a leg, he'll take some of the matter from your hair clippings and nail trimmings and bring a new one back in and everyone is fit and healthy and um i mean at the buzz resurrection the bodies are in some sense the perfect exemplification of your human form with some of the accidents to you it's not like everyone ends up looking identical but even so you haven't created something that could live eternally. You're still made up of matter.

There would have to be an additional gift of God that is present, counteracting the material tendencies that are simply inconsistent with the realization of a human form, even in that state. My final question, Dr. Frey, is how does this, why should this continue to concern us? Because perhaps some people are listening today and they think that this is just rather a highfalutin theoretical chat that doesn't really affect us in some sense. In some sense, that's maybe true. That hasn't stopped me before. Let's not dodge that bullet. That's true. But it's fun to

talk about. But also, how could thinking about these things sort of bless our relationship with God and in our day-to-day lives with Him? Well, even before we get to the theological side of things, even if you aren't worried about the metaphysics of this, right? And, you know, Aquinas was. He thought living organisms are substances of par excellence, like they're some of the great examples, and he thinks it's important to reflect on the kind of unity and activity. Both Aristotle and Aquinas think that even if you're just concerned with natural philosophy, that one of the things that

elevates one study above others is the wonder it instills in the person engaged in the study. And living activity, and we kind of become numb to it over time, given its ubiquity, it's present everywhere, but it really is wondrous the sort the variety of activities that living organisms engage in and how different it is the way in which um you know the the how different it is from the activity present elsewhere in the inanimate universe it's a a difficult question even today, how life came to be in an otherwise inanimate universe, right? At one point in time, there were no living organisms, we think, and inanimate interactions at some point led to the sort of primitive beings that we think of as the first instances of living organisms that went on to develop and differentiate into the, you know, millions of different species that we encounter.

It's pretty remarkable. But what's especially important also for Aquinas is that some of the activities in which we engage in, that are living activities, are though maybe analogously different, in some sense the same activities that God himself participates in. That in thinking of ourselves as alive, or thinking of ourselves as realizing some of the same features that God, as alive, is also realizing. It's one of the ways in which many think we are made in this likeness,

especially that often these features are appealed to, the fact that we too can engage in rational activity and willed activity and be the self-moving sources of our own, the ways in which we determine how we act. Well, if our listeners are looking for a fun challenge today, it would be to just ask a random person at your work or in your family, what do you think life is? And they're going to say, like, that's a stupid question. All right, well, answer it for me i dare you yes yeah because when we discussed you know what we would be discussing today what we're discussing today uh you know like just life it's like well yeah we just take

it for granted but thinking about these things is a really beautiful activity it makes a good subject for a socratic dialogue you often ask know, what is justice or what is beauty? Ask what is life, and you'll probably be able to reduce your interlocutor to the same sort of frustration that Socrates reduced to. Until they look upon you as a gadfly and that's

the end of your relationship. That's right. Well, thank you so much for being on the show today. If people wanted to learn more about you, Dr. Frey, how could they do that? Let's see. I mean, I have a website, ChristopherFrey.org, and you so much for being on the show today. If people wanted to learn more about you, Dr. Frey, how could they do that? Let's see. I mean, I have a website, ChristopherFrey.org, and you can go there. It's just got some articles that I've written and some other material. That's probably the easiest way.

Yeah, terrific. All right, well, I'll throw that link up in the show notes. This has been a fascinating discussion, and I think it's going to be one of those discussions that's going to rattle around in my brain long after I've had it. So thank you very much for that and thanks for being on the show. Thank you for having me. I had a great time. All right, everybody, thank you for listening to this week's episode of Pints with Aquinas. I want to ask you to do two things. If I could tell you and force you, I would, but since that's immoral, I'm going to ask you. Number one, leave us a review, would you? Come on. Go to iTunes, leave us a five-star review if you want.

I don't mean to tell you what to do, you know, but I mean, if you're going to leave a review, you might as well go the whole way. Secondly, have you subscribed to The Matt Fradd Show yet? Come on, have you? Do it. We've got really long-form episodes coming out every month where I interview very interesting people,

and I think you'll really bloody enjoy it. So there you go, two things. Is that all right? Oh, what was that? Oh, sorry. I thought that I heard you laughing just then. I thought that I heard you sing. I mean, if you want to get down to it, I think I thought I saw you try, but that was just a dream.

Okay. Now I've definitely said too much. Thank you.