The Educational
Philosophy of
Saint Thomas Aquinas
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Rev. Anthony D. Gulley, Ph.D.

Pageant Press, Inc.

New York

■MUTITUH

Nihil Obstat:
Bernard T. Rattigan, Ph.D.
gji Imprimatur:
William A. Scully, D.D.
Bishop of Albany

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MAY 10, 1961
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The nihil obstat and imprimatur are official declarations
that a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral
error. No implication is contained therein that those who
have granted the nihil obstat and imprimatur agree with
the contents, opinions or statements expressed.

Library of Congress Catalog Card V-.: 65-15739
Copyright © 1964 by Reverend Anthony D. Gulley

All Rights Reserved
First Edition

Published by Pageant Press, Inc.
101 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10003
Manufactured in the United States of America

TO MY MOTHER AND FATHER

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgment

vjj

Introduction

xj

Chapter

I Efficient Causality

II God as the Efficient Cause of the
Pupil’s Learning
III
IV

V

page

1
26

The Pupil as the Efficient Cause of
His Own Knowledge

gg

The Efficient Causality of the Teacher

80

Practical Applications in The
Teaching-Learning Situation

98

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

n3

APPENDIX I

117

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I35

INDEX

147

INTRODUCTION

This study is occasioned by the confusion that exists
in American educational theory today concerning the
role of the efficient causes of learning in the teaching­
leaming situation.
For example, some modem educational theorists, in
stressing the need for self-activity on the part of the pupil,
have tended to minimize the role of the teacher as a com­
municator of knowledge and a true efficient cause of learn­
ing. They give the impression in their writings that the
part played by the teacher is that of a mere guide in
the classroom while the pupils discover for themselves
whatever is to be learned. Indeed, in some circles it is not
considered proper to use the expression “to teach.” The
traditional role of the teacher has been changed to that of
one who merely presides and guides the learning activities
of the pupil. For the teacher to teach would be authori­
tarianism. There must be no indoctrination. Let the chil­
dren learn through experience with various projects and
learning activities. One prominent progressive educator
expressed it this way: “We never interfere with the natural
urges and impulses of the child in any way, because you
never can tell where the. child will lead you.” 1 In such
1. Quoted by John D. Redden and Francis X. Ryan, A Catholic
Philosophy of Education (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1949), p. 495.

an uncontrolled environment, learning is assumed to take
place solely in response to the child’s interest and “felt
needs.”
Much of this may be attributed to the influence of
John Dewey and other enthusiasts for progressive educa­
tion. Although the importance of self-activity on the part
of the pupil was recognized by St. Thomas and by many
other educators prior to Dewey no one can dispute the
fact that Dewey did much to bring to the attention of
teachers in our time the importance of self-activity on the
part of the pupil. The difficulty seems to be that he per­
formed this task so well that many have lost sight today
of the complementary doctrine of the causality of the
teacher. It is all very well to talk about a “child-centered”
school if the function of the school is to learn only through
discovery. But if there is another mode of learning as St.
Thomas suggests, namely, by being taught then there are
two foci within the school: a teacher who teaches and who
is a true efficient cause, though partial cause of learning
and the pupil who is also a cause of his own learning and
unquestionably a very important and self-active individual.
One writer has summed up Dewey’s position in these
words, “The teachers watch their pupils mentally starve
to death from lack of proper insights and values.” 2 The
breakdown of teacher authority and classroom discipline
has resulted from this over-emphasis on the self-active
pupil. The teacher is merely an onlooker as the child in­
volves himself in the process of growth. The teacher’s part
in the “enterprise of education is to furnish the environ2. John Halbert, M.M., "John Dewey’s Concept of Democracy
in Relation to Education,” (Unpublished thesis, Department of Phi­
losophy, Maryknoll Seminary, Glen Ellyn, 1954), p. 8.

ment which stimulates responses and directs the learner's
course.”3 When the conditions which stimulate learning
have been provided “all has been done which a second
party can do to instigate learning. The rest lies with the
one directly concerned.” 4 According to Dewey education
is based upon experience and therefore “the teacher loses
the position of external boss or dictator but takes on that
of leader of group activities.” 56
Learning by discovery has replaced, according to this
philosopher and his followers, learning by instruction.
The name “teacher” loses all significance in education.
It would be more appropriate to use a term such as "guid­
ance director” or “group leader.” This man who has in­
fluenced modem education so much becomes even more
radical when he reduces the teacher to the status of learner.
The alternative to furnishing ready-made subject matter and
listening to the accuracy with which it is reproduced is not
quiescence, but participation, sharing, in an activity. In
such shared activity, the teacher is a learner, and the learner
is, without knowing it, a teacher. 6

Carried to their logical conclusions, then, the funda­
mental premises of Dewey’s philosophy of education would
all but annihilate the position of the teacher in the learn­
ing situation. One of his most ardent disciples, William
H. Kilpatrick, indicates this when he writes that, “As
teachers we must make ourselves progressively unnecessary;
3. John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: Mac­
millan, 1916), p. 212.
4. Ibid., p. 188.
5. John Dewey, Experience and Education (New York: Mac­
millan, 1948), p. 66. (By permission of Kappa Delta Pi)
6. Dewey, Democracy and Education, p. 188.

The present must honestly intend to yield sovereignty of
control to the rising generation.” ’
I Thus we see in the educational philosophy of John
Dewey a complete overthrow of the teacher’s position and
authority to the point of utter exclusion. The scepticism,
chaos and confusion which has resulted since the birth of
the “new education” attests to the fact that something
must be done to salvage the remnants of our educational
system in the United States and to protect future genera­
tions from a philosophy which says that “Even the child
is to be privileged to put a huge question mark over his
knowledge and to say he knows, not on the authority of
the wisest teacher, but on the basis of his own experi­
mental thought."78
’
The practical consequences flowing from the philoso­
phy of experimentalism are nowhere more evident than
in the Activity School. Starting with the false premise that
the child is naturally good we have education defined in
terms of free and uninhibited activity. The child should
be allowed to follow his own inclinations without “coercive
discipline and dogmatic instruction, on the teacher’s side,
mechanical obedience and passive reception of what is
taught, on the part of the child.”9
. The traditional concept of the school and education is
replaced by a free, undirected and unauthoritative envi­
ronment. Learning is viewed in terms of interest and
playful activity instead of hard work. The teacher who
7. William H. Kilpatrick, Education for A Changing Civilization
(New York: Macmillan, 1926), p. 123-24.
8. Isaac Doughton, Modern Public Education: Its Philosophy
and Background (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1935), p. 238.
9. M. J. Demiashkevich, The Activity School (New York: Little,
Ive* & Co., 1926), p. 9.

would insist on a well-disciplined classroom is labeled as
one who is dictatorial and undemocratic.
The teacher is not to exercise supreme authority or a direct
and firm disciplinary influence over the pupil, rather, she
is to serve as guide, adviser, listener and observer. . . .learning
is assumed to take place solely in response to the child’s
interests and "felt needs.”*0

The dissolution of the teacher’s place in the classrooin
can readily be seen. Under the guise of "giving a truer
understanding of her (teacher’s) work as guide and expert
helper’’10
11 these theorists have all but destroyed the dignity
and eminence of the teaching profession. As a result of this
revolution in education the learner becomes the sole
authority in the classroom and it is his interests and in­
clinations which take precedence over the knowledge of
the “incessantly talking dictator.” 12 The role of the teacher
in education is discussed by the activists only insofar as
they point out that he is there "to listen and aid rather
than to contract laryngitis and command ... to provide a
setting or, at least a directive environment where the free
creative spirit of children would operate.” ,s
This concerted effort to overthrow the teacher’s posi­
tion of authority and traditional role of honor has been
strengthened by the overemphasis on method instead Of
matter.
Besides, the what of school work is much les* important than
10.
11.
cation
12.
' 13.

Redden & Ryan, op. cit., p. 495.
Sister Joseph Mary Raby, A Critical Study of the New Edu­
(Washington: Catholic University Press, 1932), p. 8.
Demiashkevich, op. cit., p. 84.
Ibid., pp. 84-85.

..... the how, since the main basis of the school is to afford the
means of developing a complete or all round personality,
rather than impart knowledge that can be memorized.it

According to this new way of thinking on the relation­
ship between. the teacher and the pupil the child has
now come into the light of a new day. The “traditional
school” has been replaced by the “child-centered school.”ls
After years of passive subjection the child is able now to
awake from the slumber imposed on him by the stultified
atmosphere of the traditional classroom. The school boy of
yesterday was driven by a task-master called “teacher" but
the school boy of today can rightly take his place as leader
in the classroom with an adult present to guide him and
to be led by him.
• '
'■
.
....

One of the sharp contrasts afforded between the traditional
class and the laboratory class is that the teacher is a guide
rather than a mariner, a driver, an infallible planner and
final authority.16

; One further consideration prompts us to examine the
efficient causes of learning according to St. Thomas. The
modem secular educator seldom, if ever, adverts to the
Divine Causality insofar as it pertains to learning. He dis­
cusses the learning situation solely in terms of what we
would call secondary causes, leaving God, the First Cause,
out of the picture entirely. For Catholic thinkers, on the
other hand., the teaching-learning situation involved not
two as a minimum but always three, God, pupil and*
. 14. Ibid., p. 80.
15. Harold Rugg & Ann Shumaker, The Child-Centered School
(Yonkers: World Book Co., 1928).
16. Lawrence S. Flaum, The Activity High School (New York:
Harper Bros., 1953), p. 36.

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teacher. Any realistic inquiry into the causes of learning
must necessarily be concerned with all three causes. Other­
wise, the picture is incomplete and ridiculously distorted.
During his lifetime St. Thomas was not confronted
with the problem of the respective roles of the efficient
causes of learning as we have it above. But he dealt,
nevertheless, with the nature of teaching and learning
and in doing so he came to grips with the issues which
underlie the very, problems with which we must deal in
our time. Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Studiorum Ducem
points to the value of the wisdom of St. Thomas in aiding
us “to avoid the errors which are the source and foun­
tainhead of all the miseries of our time” 17 and therefore
it is important that “the teaching of St. Thomas be ad­
hered, to more religiously than ever. For St. Thomas re­
futes the theories propounded by Modernists in every
sphere....”18
For this reason it may be helpful to discuss very briefly
the erroneous views with which St. Thomas contended
in his time and to indicate his position with respect to
the nature of teaching.
For many centuries men have speculated about the
nature of knowledge and how it is communicated to others.
As might well be expected, given the difficulties which
introspection presents and the fact of human error, there
has been considerable difference of opinion on this sub­
ject. St. Thomas was confronted by some of these opinions
in his day, chiefly those of Plato, Avicenna and Averrhoes.
Plato:
Plato taught that learning was merely the rediscovery
17. Pope Pius XI, Studiorum Ducem
18. Ibid.

1:
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of knowledge. Knowledge is something that is connatural
with the soul. “The process we call learning (is) a recovering of the knowledge which is natural to us.” 19 According
to this theory each of us possessed in the world of ideas,
before we were bom, all of the knowledge which we later
acquire. Therefore what is called learning is only the
recollection of ideas which were possessed by us in a previous state;20 This doctrine would logically reduce in im­
portance the role of the teacher in the classroom. The
activity of the teacher would be that of an accidental cause.

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a thing which removes an obstruction is a mover
only accidentally, as is said in the Physics, if lower agents do .
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taking away the obstructions which concealed the forms and
habits of the virtues and the sciences, it follows that all lower
agents act only accidentally.®!

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The teacher according to the Platonist is one who
merely removes the obstacles of knowledge. The action
of the teacher is accidental to the learner’s acquiring of
knowledge.

■

''

■

Avicenna and William of Auvergne ·-.

The greatest Moslem philosopher of the eastern group
is without doubt Avicenna or Ibn Sina. He has been called
the real creator of the Scholastic system in the Islamic
world. He devoted special attention to metaphysics and
. 19. B. Jowett (trans.). The Dialogues of Plato (New York: Ran­
dom House, 1937), I, 460.
20. This doctrine of Plato can be found in Meno, 82B; Timaeus,
44A; Phaedo, 67D, 92A.
21. De Perit., XI, 1, c.

taught the existence of a Sovereign Intelligence as the
highest reality. The first emanation from the Supreme
Intelligence is the active intellect This active intellect
is the source of all heavenly and earthly intellects, and
it is the principle by which the potentially intelligible
becomes actually intelligible to the human mind. As St
Thomas has put it: “the intelligible forms flow into the
mind from the active intelligence.” 2223
In other words, there
is no need, within each individual soul, for an active
intellect. One suffices for all men. This separated active
intellect is the cause of knowledge in the knower not the
activity of the teacher.
.William of Auvergne had preceded St. Thomas at the
University of Paris. In him one can discern the first stage
in the transition from the Scholasticism of the twelfth
century to that of the thirteenth century. As one author
has written, “he is the embodiment of the meeting of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries.” 25 A definite Avicennic
influence is evident in his writings. He rejects, on the
one hand, the Platonic Doctrine of pre-existent knowl­
edge, and on the other hand, the Aristotelian doctrine
of the active intellect.24 According to his teaching, God
impresses on the intellect not only first principles, but also
abstract ideas of the sensible world.25 And therefore, he
concludes, that no knowledge is caused in us except by
God.,

22. Ibid., also Cont. Gen., II, 42.
23. F. Copleston, S. J., A History of Philosophy (Westminster:
Newman Press, 1950), II, 218.
24. W. Turner, History of Philosophy (Boston*. Ginn & Co.,
1957), p. 325. (Courtesy of Blaisdell Publishing Company)
25. Copleston, op. cit., II, 225.

Averrhoes and Siger of Brabant

While Avicenna taught that there was one active intel­
lect for all men, Averrhoes, on the other hand, taught
that all men have one passive intellect and the same intel­
ligible species. Hence, he holds that one man does not
cause another to have a knowledge distinct from that
which he himself has. This opinion, according to St.
Thomas, is true insofar as knowledge is the same in the
pupil and the teacher if the identity of the thing known
is considered. For the same objective truth is known by
both of them. But it is false to say that all men have but
one passive intellect and the same intelligible species dif­
fering only as to the phantasms.26 Such a doctrine would
logically imply that teaching is the communication of
identical knowledge and that it is not concerned with
bringing to full flower what already exists in seminal prin­
ciples. It would further imply that the teacher must be
concerned with the ordering of the teacher himself.
The leading follower of Averrhoes at the time of
St. Thomas was Siger of Brabant. Siger taught that the
intellect was “unique for the whole human species. It
‘transcends’ the individual souls, to which it is united for
the accomplishing of the act of thought.”27 For one to
teach, therefore, meant to him that there was a com­
munication of identical knowledge.
In the light of this historical context one can readily
understand why St. Thomas paid attention to these errors.
26. S. T., I, 117, i, c.
27. M. DeWulf, History of Medieval Philosophy (London: Long­
mans, Green & Co., 1926), Π, 105. (Courtesy of David McKay
Company)
■·.

His refutations of Plato, Avicenna and Averrhoes were
in accord with the needs of the moment as that period of
history clearly shows.
If St. Thomas were living today he would be faced
with errors of a different kind. There has been a com­
plete revolution against the spiritual order. The nature of
man is looked upon as wholly material with a material
end. God and angels do not exist. Man is set up as god
of universe yet a man who is different only in degree from
the brute.
The realm of the supernatural, authority and tradition
must finally yield to the new order of the natural and
free. Man is sufficient. Subjection is out of the question.
As we have seen above the result has been in the field
of education, the activity of the teacher has been sub­
mitted to a double test, that of experiment and that of
self-sufficiency.

H

Review of Related Literature

It is quite evident that St. Thomas did not leave be­
hind a complete treatise on educational theory. However,
many scholars have attempted to present a Thomistic view
of education based upon his writings in general and
in particular the De Magistro. Thanks to their efforts
considerable literature which is pertinent to our topic is
now available. In reviewing this literature we shall in­
clude for the sake of completeness some general references
that are related to our subject as well as the more specific
research on the causality involved in the teaching-learning
situation.

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In an article which appeared in The New Scholasticism
in July 1960, Guzie reviewed what scholars have written
on this question of the learning theory and St. Thomas?8
We must acknowledge our indebtedness to Guzie, there­
fore, for several references though we have added others
which are not included in his article.
Among the general references we might mention the
works of the following: Kocourek,29 McCormick,80 Woroniecki,81 Reinert,82 a comparison of Dufault83 and
Slavin.84 There are nine other articles on education in
general according to Saint Thomas.85
The following have also written on this: J. Engert,85

28. Tad Guzie, S.J. “St. Thomas and the Learning Theory,” The
New Scholasticism XXXIV (July, 1960) 275-296.
29. R. A. Kocourek, “St. Thomas on Study,” Thomistic Prin­
ciples in a Catholic School (St. Louis: Herder, 1942), pp. 14-38.
30. John F. McCormick. Saint Thomas and the Life of Learning
(Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1937).
31. H. Woroniecki, "Saint Thomas and Modem Pedagogy.” The
Catholic Educational Review XXVIII (1930) 170-80.
32. Paul C. Reinert, “Herbert and Aquinas-Educators,” The
Modern Schoolman X (Mar. 1933) 67-69; J. Kunivcic, “Principia
didacta S. Thomae,” Divus Thomas LVIII (1955) 398 or “Principi
pedagogic! di s. tommaso,” Sapienza VIII (1955) 316-36.
33. L. Dufault, “The Aristotelian-Thomistic Concept of Educa­
tion,” The New Scholasticism XX (1946) 239-57; G. Cola-Uloa, “Il
concetto della pedagogia alia luce dell' aristotelismo tomistoco,"
Sapienza III (1950) 2845.
34. Robert Slavin, “The Essential Features of the Philosophy of
Education of Saint Thomas,” Proceedings, of Catholic Philosophical
Association XIII (1937) 22-38.
35. A. L. Barthemy, O.O. L’éducation: Les basses d’une péda­
gogie Thomiste (Bruxelles, 1925).
36. J. Engert, "Die Padagogik des hl. Thomas vpn Aquin,”
Pharus VI (1925), 321-31.
'

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Novarro,37 Devy,se Boullay,89 Alver de Siqueira,38
40 Alberto
39
Garcia Vieyra,41 Rosa T. di Sisto.4243
Among these one which has been widely read in the
United States is Mayer’s The Philosophy of Teaching of
St. Thomas Aquinas.** For many years this was the only
37. B. Novarro, Commentario filosofico-teologico a la carta deq
s. Tomas sobre el modo de estudiar fructuosamanta (Almagro: Do­
minicos de Andulicia, 1925).
38. V. Devy, "La padagogie de s. Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue de
I’Universite d'ottawa. Π (1932), 139*-62*. ,
39. P. Boullay, O.P., Thomisme et education (Bruxelles, 1933).
S. Tauzin, O.P. "S. Tomas e la pedagogia moderna," Revista Brasileira de Padagogia, XXXVIH-IX (1937), 118-29.
40. A. Alves de Siqueira, Filosofia da educacao (Petropolis: Vozes,
1942).
41. Alberto Garcia Vieyra, Ensayos sobre pedagogia segun la
mente de s. Tomas de Aquino (Buenos Aires: Desclae, 1949).
42. Rosa T. di Sisto, "El concepto de pedagogia segun s. Tomas,"
Anales del Instituto de Investigationes Pedagogicas (San Luis, Ar­
gentina), Π (1952-53), 234.
43. Besides Mayer’s book there were other commentaries which
appeared in Italian:
R. Rung, "Studio sulla Quaestio disputata ‘De Magistro' di s.
Tommaso d’Aquino,” Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica, XIV (1922),
109-65.
G. Muzio, S. Tommaso d’Aquino: Il maestro (Torino: Soc. ed.
intemaz., (1928).
A. Guzzo, Tommaso d’Aquino: Il maestro (Firenze: Vallechi,
1930).
D. Morando, "Sul ‘De Magistro’ di s. Tommaso," Rivista Rosminiana di filosofia e di coitura (Torino), XXV (1931).
G. Tineant, “L'azione intellectuale del maestro secondo s. Tom­
maso d’Aquino,” Scuola Cattolica, vol. XIX, ser. V (1920), 37-50,
115-29, 173-85.
E. Chiochetti, "La pedagogia de s. Tommaso," S. Tommaso
d'Aquina: Publicatione commemorative del sesto centario della
canonizatione (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1923), pp. 280-93.
M. Casotti, Maestro e scolaro: Saggio di filosofia dell’ educatione
(Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1930).
■> ,■

book in English which treated specifically the philosophy
of teaching according to St. Thomas. Since the publica­
tion of this book, however, there have been two doctoral
dissertations which have been written which compare
the De Magistro of St. Thomas with the De Magistro of
St. Augustine.44
Mayer’s book has met with much criticism in recent
times. One critic feels that Mayer neglected to take into
account the historical setting of the work in question. For
this reason he observes that “the interpretation often be­
comes distracted . . . The result, consequently, is a rather
unorganized, often inaccurate, and incomplete presenta­
tion of Aquinas’ theories.45
Another writer maintains that Mayer reads more into
the De Magistro than is really there. This critic asserts
that Mayer has magnified the De Magistro out of due
proportion, and that the work is concerned with knowl­
edge and not character formation; that learning can be
understood as character building only in a very limited
sense; that to maintain otherwise would be to imply that
knowledge necessarily produces ethical behaviour on the
part of the learner; and that such an interpretation of
St. Thomas would make of him a Moral Intellectualist.46
Pace did a study in 1900 which treated the De Magistro
as an ex professo treatment of educational theory. After
44. William L. Wade, S.J., "A Comparison of the ‘De Magistro’
of St. Augustine with the ‘De Magistro’ of St. Thomas" (unpub­
lished PhJD. dissertation, Dept, of Philosophy, St. Louis University,
1935).
45. Tad W. Gurie, S.U., The Analogy of Learning (New York:
Sheed and Ward, 1960), p. 8.
46. John L. Hart, O.P., “Teacher Activity in the De Magistro
of St. Thomas Aquinas,” (Unpublished Licentiate Dissertation,
School of Sacred Theology. Dominican House o£ Studies, Washing­
ton. D. a, 1944), pp. 67-71.

stating the necessity for the educator having a spiritualistic
view of the pupil he goes on to state the purpose of
St. Thomas in the De Magistro in these words:
What he seeks to clear up is the rationale of the teacher’s
work, the philosophy that underlies the whole process of
education.4?

Here we have another example of an author treating
the work of St. Thomas outside of its historical context
and presenting it as though it were the complete Thomistic
theory of education. As Hart has suggested this work of
St. Thomas “is a limited treatise, a part of his theory of
education,” 47
48 and thus Pace’s treatment of this subject
“introduces us to some of the major faults to be committed
in the following fifty years by scholars of Thomistic learn­
ing theory.” 4950
Vargas in his treatment of this matter of teaching
attempts to present the relations existing between psy­
chology and philosophy in the problem of teaching.80 He
makes the distinction, which Maloney also makes in his
article,51 between education and instruction. Every educa­
tor is an instructor because education attains its end
through instruction. However, the instructor must also
be consciously an educator otherwise he fails to accom­
plish the highest aims of his science.
Schwalm is one of the earliest writers to bring out the
47. E. A. Pace, "St. Thomas' Theory of Education," Catholic
University Bulletin, VIII (1902), p. 292.
48. Hart, Op. cit., p. 51.
49. Guzie, op. cit., p. 5.
50. Brother S. Alfonso Vargas, Psychology and Philosophy of
Teaching (Washington: Catholic University Press, 1944), p. ix.
51. Cornelius L. Maloney, "Dualism in Education”; Catholic
Educational Review XLIV (1946), 335-41.

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■important role played by the teacher. He indicates very
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in the classroom.
L'action d’un maitte est donc profonde. Elle n’est pas simplèment comme le geste d’un guide soulignant quelque indication.M

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However, he does not make any distinction between learning through instruction and learning through personal
discovery very clear. To him there seems little difference
between these two ways of learning.
Some time later there were three other articles which
appeared treating the subject of the teacher in the light
of the writings of St Thomas. Keller sums up very succinctly the thoughts of Aquinas but we must agree with
Guzie in saying that he implies that knowledge is in some
way deduced from first principles?’ This seems to be
based on the misinterpretation of St Thomas’analogous
use of the Augustinian “seminal reasons” as applied to
first principles. Corbishley’s treatment is one which shows
maturity in the study of St Thomas.54 He does not treat
. the De Magistro as a fully fledged syllabus of Christian
education. Nor is he of the opinion that the solution to all
modern-day educational problems can be found in the
pages of St Thomas. By this he means the accidentals of
education vary enormously from age to age and from

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52. Μ. B. Schwalm, “L’action intellectuelle d’un maître d’apres
s. Thomas," Keime Thomiste, VIII (1900), p. 265.
53. L. Keller, "Lehren ud Lemen bei Thomas von Aquin,"
Angelicum, XIII (1936), 210-227.
54. T. Corbishley, S.J., "St. Thomas and the Educational
Theory" The Dublin Review. CXII (1943), 1-13.

country to country. The third article appeared in 1949.55
Shannon gives a re-presentation of the De Magistro and
also points out the fact that it is not intended to be an
exhaustive treatise on education. However, he does not
make too clear why teachers are important.
One of the best presentations of the role of the teacher
in the learning process is given by Gilson.56 The work is
both scholarly and inspiring. It enobles the teaching pro­
fession and returns it to the high position which it
deserves.
Wade,57 Hart,58 and DeSousa59 have written excellent
works on the part played by the teacher in the classroom
situation. Two, dissertations done at the University of
St Louis touch on this problem. Donohue60 gives a
synopsis and a formulation from the writings of St. Thomas
of the elements in the activities of teaching and learning
and compares this position with the opinion of Henry
55. C. M. Shannon, S.J., “Aquinas on the Teacher’s Art" The
Clergy Review XXXI (1949), 375-385.
:‘56. Anton C. Pegis (ed.), 4 Gilson Reader (New York: Image
Books, 1957), pp. 224-229; 298-311.
57. F. Wade, S.J.“Causality in ■ the Classroom,” The Modem
Schoolman XXVIII (1951) 138-46; “St. Thomas Aquinas and Teach­
ing," Some Philosophers on Education, ed. Donald A. Gallagher
(Milwaukee: Marquette University Prèss, 1956), pp. 67-85.
58. John L. Hart, O.P. “Teacher Activity in the De Magistro of
St. Thomas Aquinas,” (Unpublished Licentiate Dissertation, Do­
minican House of Studies, Washington, D.C., 1944).
59. ; Rev, D’Arcy DeSousa, “Teacher-Pupil Relation in Catholic
Educational Theory,” (Unpublished Master’s thesis, Catholic Uni­
versity of America, Department of Education, 1956).
60. John W. .Donohue, S.J. “The Teaching-Learning Process
According to St. Thomas & Henry C. Morrison,” (Unpublished
Master’s thesis, St. Louis University, Dept, of Philosophy, 1950).

G. Morrison. Lauer 61 discusses the art of teaching based
on the principles of St. Thomas. He discusses the ques­
tion of art and the peculiar problems of teaching as an
art. Conway62 has presented a very erudite presentation
of teaching and learning in his Principles of Education.
But his general statements do not seem to come to grips
with fundamental problems at hand.
From this survey of literature on the theory of educa­
tion as derived from the writings of St. Thomas and in
particular on the roles of the teacher and pupil in the
learning process we can come to certain definite
conclusions.
First, it has already been pointed out that St. Thomas
Aquinas has not left us a complete educational treatise
as such. His work the De Magistro was not intended to
be a complete and exhaustive treatment of education. It
was a reply to certain errors of his day in regard to the
question of how man attains knowledge. St. Thomas in­
vestigates truth insofar as it exists in man. It has been
the mistake of many writers in the past to treat this as
i
an ex professo work on education without regard for its
Î
historical setting.
Î
Secondly, there has been relatively little done by Ameri
ican scholars on the educational theory of St. Thomas.
Some have merely repeated the same texts as isolated
statements without viewing them in the light of a whole
Thomistic pilosophy.
Thirdly, it has been noted that the problems of educa­
tion change from century to century, from country to
61· J· Quentin Lauer, S.J., ‘The Art of Teaching According to
the Principles of St. Thomas,” (Unpublished Master’s thesis, St.
Louis University, Department of Philosophy, 194S).
62. Pierre Conway, Principles of Education (Washington: The
Thomist Press, 1960).

country. These are accidental changes. Therefore, we can­
not always call on St. Thomas for a solution to our prob­
lems since many of them did not exist for him. However,
the essential elements of education will never change. The
nature of the child will always remain the same. It is
here that we can draw much from the teaching of St.
Thomas. The answer to the question, “What is Man?” is
fundamental for the educator. On it depends the whole
relationship between teacher and pupil. To deny its basic
importance would lead to chaos and error in education
circles. Administration policy, guidance programs, cur­
ricula, methods of teaching are ultimately determined by
the answer given to this question.
Fourthly, it is necessary to clarify the role of the
teacher in education today. Many have lessened the im­
portance of a teacher to the degree that the pupil’s depend­
ence on him is hardly appreciated. This line of thought
is the result of an emphasis on self-activity on the part of
the child to the exclusion of the teacher’s causality in the
learning process.
Fifthly, not only the human instrumentality of the
teacher in the classroom is important, but there has been
very little written on the place which God has in the
whole education system. The relation which exists be­
tween God and the teacher and between God and the
pupil learning has not been treated to its fullest by any
writer of recent times. It is necessary, therefore, to show
the hand of God as constantly present whenever one dis­
cusses the causes of learning.

I
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CHAPTER I
EFFICIENT CAUSALITY

Education involves change. One need only to examine
the definitions of education to establish this fact. Since the
days of Plato and Aristotle one sees implicitly, if not
explicitly, some reference to change. Note the verbs—to
form, to fashion, to develop, to mold, to produce, to
elevate, to perfect, to transform and the like—so fre­
quently employed in defining education. Evidently as a
result of education human beings are somehow changed
from what they were before. This notion of change can
also be applied to learning.

CHANGE: Concept and Types
The passing from potentiality to actuality is the proc­
ess of becoming. And thus change has been defined as
the movement or transit from one state of being to
another; it is the transit from potentiality to actuality.
“But in scholastic philosophy the idea of change is the
coming forth of the new from the old, where the new
was potentially. The new state is not created out of

1

nothingness. It was in the potentiality of the old, but
needed to be brought into actuality.” 1 Therefore, when
we speak of a being as having changed we mean that a
potentiality which it possessed has been reduced to ac­
tuality. This is the teaching of Aristotle and St. Thomas
and is based on the distinctions between “Potentiality and
act, the priority of act to potentiality, the reality of motion
and becoming, but the priority of being to motion."23
The extreme opposite positions of this view are termed
by Maritain as “exaggerated intellectualism” and “anti­
intellectualism.”’
There are four types of change, three of which are
accidental and one substantial. It may be helpful to iden­
tify the particular types with which learning is concerned.
We may eliminate at the outset substantial change.
Accidental change is either local (a change of place),
qualitative (a change in quality), or quantitative (a change
in quantity). Obviously, learning is not concerned with
local change. However, it is definitely concerned with
both qualitative and quantitative, but chiefly with quali­
tative. It is a qualitative change insofar as the knowledge
of the learner is reduced from potentiality to actuality.
It is a quantitative change insofar as what the pupil learns
1. John F. McCormick, Scholastic Metaphysics (Chicago: Loyola
University Press, 1928), p. 57.
■ >.
2. Jacques Maritain, An Introduction to Philosophy (New York:
Sheed & Ward, 1947), pp. 250-51..
3. "Exaggerated intellectualism (Parmenides, Spinoza, Hegel) re­
fuses to admit the notion of potentiality . . . everything which is, is
wholly act or pure act, (therefore) either motion must be unreal
(Parmenides) or contraries identical (Hegel) and. creatures must
possess the same nature as God (Pantheism).
Anti-intellectualism (Heraclitus, Bergson) equally rejects the dis­
tinction between potentiality and act, but because the notion of
being is in the opinion of these philosophers illusory." Ibid., p. 251.

2

can be measured. In speaking of scientia St. Thomas
remarks: “. . . it has a certain quantity through being in
its subject, and in this way it increases in a man who
knows the same scientific truths with greater certainty
now than before.” 45
Every change involves five things: s (1) Terminum a
quo which is the thing to be changed whether substan­
tially or accidentally. It is the term from which the change
moves or takes its beginning. (2) Terminum ad quern
which is the thing resulting from the change. It is the
term to which the change moves and in which it finds
its completion or fulfillment. (3) Transitus which is the
actual transmission or movement in which the change
essentially or formally consists. (4) Substratum or sub­
stantial support for change, and this remains unchanged
in the process. (5) Agent or mover or motor force which
effects the transition, an efficient cause.
All five are evident in the teaching-learning situation.
No new item of knowledge can be acquired without them.
Thus Aristotle sums up the notion of change in these
words: “For everything that changes is something and is
changed by something into something. That by which it
is changed is the immediate mover." 6

Nature of Cause
If learning involves change, obviously it is caused, for
"nothing passes from potency to act save by a being
already in act”7 It is necessary for us, therefore, to in4.
5.
6.
• 7.

S.T., 1I II, 24, 5, c.
Paul J. Glenn, Ontology (St. Louis: Herder, 1937), p- 88.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, XII, 3.
S. T„ I, 2, 3; c; Cont. Gen. I, 13.

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quire into the nature of cause and its divisions. It is only
through a clear explanation of the nature of cause and
its divisions that we will be able to have an understanding
of the teaching-learning situation in regard to its efficient
causes.
A cause is not a condition. We can define a condition
as a “circumstance or set of circumstances required for
the working of the cause.” 8 It differs from a cause in this:
that though it is necessary yet it in no way suffices for the
existence of the effect. A connection with the source of
electricity is a prerequisite for the incandence of the bulb.
The connection does not make the bulb glow but merely
enables electricity to reach the bulb and produce there
incandence. Again, when a switch is thrown, the throwing
of the switch is not the cause of the locomotive passing
to another track, but only the condition for its passage,
by removing an obstruction from the way. As one author
has put it: The influence of a condition “is not positive
but purely dispositive insofar as it removes obstacles which
prevent the cause from acting.” 9
A cause is not an occasion. An occasion is a circum­
stance or set of circumstances that favor the operation of
a free cause in the exercise of its causality. An occasion can
exercise a positive influence when it helps to induce a
free cause to produce an effect. The operation could take
place but not so readily. Night is not the cause of robbery
but favors the operation of the robber. In other words,
the occasion merely facilitates the production of the
effect.
A cause is a species of principle. A cause stands to a
principle as a species to genus, that is, a cause is a special
8. McCormick, op. cit., p. 144.
9. Henry J. Koren. An Introduction to the Science of Meta­
physics (St. Louis: Herder, 1955), p. 230.

4

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kind of principle. In its widest sense, a principle is
defined as “that from which something proceeds in any
way whatever.” 10 And that which so proceeds from a
principle is called a principiate.
It has been pointed out by the scholastics that a being
may be a real principle in two ways: (1) By simply com­
municating the same numerically identical nature and
perfection which it possesses, e.g. Blessed Trinity; or (2)
By producing at least numerically different from its own
some other perfection. In this latter case we have what is
called a cause and an effect.11
Thus it is said that the relation between a principle
and a principiate may be a relation of order only, or a
relation of order and dependence. When there is a relation
of order and dependence, that is, when one thing flows
from another with dependence on that other, the princi­
ple is called a cause and the principiate an effect. “A cause,
therefore, is a principle from which something originates
with dependence.” 12
Hence, though every cause is a principle, not every
principle is a cause; for cause implies “entitative” other­
ness, and dependence of its principiate, which a principle
as such does not. Thus a point is the principle of a line
but not its cause; the dawn is the principle of the day
but not a cause.
A cause, therefore, is that which contributes, in any
way whatever, to the producing of a thing. It implies a
certain influx into the being of the thing caused,13 and
connotes that on which, in turn, things depend either

10. S.T., I, 33, 1, c.
11. Michael W. Shallo, Scholastic Philosophy (Philadelphia:
Peter Reilly Publisher, 1915), p. 158.
12. McCormick, op. cit., p. 142.
15. In V Met., 1, n 751.

(·«Μϊϊ
for their being or becoming.14 The thing produced by a
cause is called its effect. “For true causality to exist there
must be: a real distinction between cause and effect; a
true dependence of effect upon cause; a priority of time or
nature in the cause when viewed in conjunction with its
effect.’’15
The belief in cause and effect is based on the experi­
ence of things causing other things, or of events causing
other events. Everything that we experience and under­
stand is an instance of the cause-effect situation. “Our
experience of the cause-effect situation is virtually infinite
in extent, and is ever present. We believe that things are
produced by other things because we see and feel those
things producing other things, because we produce things
ourselves and are conscious of doing so, and because things
act upon us and produce effects in us.” 1617
Another factor which confirms our belief in cause
and effect stems from the principle of identity, namely,
that which is, is, and its obverse statement, the principle
of contradiction, forbid us to believe that anything comes
from nothing.
That -which is not, since it is not cannot become something;
and that which is something cannot of itself become what it
is not. That which is potentially something, since in itself
it is only potentially that thing, cannot of itself be it; it may
become it, but only by receiving the actuality which it lacks.*?

Therefore, we may conclude, that our mind demands
a cause for whatever occurs. Perception, in most cases,
14. In I Phy., 1; cf. ST., I, 104, 1, c; De Pot., 5, 1, c; In I Sent.,
12, 1 2 I.
15. Glen, op. cit., p. 203.
16. Brother Benignus, F.S.C., Nature, Knowledge and God (Milwaukce: Bruce, 1947), p. 390.
17. Ibid.

?

fulfills this demand by showing us events as following
from prior events.
It behooves us then to take a realistic attitude toward
learning and to realize that learning does not just happen,
but is caused; The pupil does not pass from potentiality
to act with respect to any given item of knowledge unless
there be a cause upon which this effect depends.
DIVISION OF CAUSE

:·

Of the generic concept of cause, St. Thomas recognized
the fourfold division—material;; formal; efficient, and
final,18 which had been elaborated so systematically by
Aristotle.1920
It is important for our purpose that we discuss
briefly cause as seen under these aspects. We should note
here that the terms, material and formal may be used
analogously, that is, to designate in the case of the former
a subject that is indeterminate and in potency to receive
various determinations and in the case of the latter those
specific determinations by reason of which the subject of
which the subject may be said to have learned or acquired
knowledge through instruction.80
18. Cont. Gen., Ill, 10; S.T., I, 3, 8, c; I, 105, 5, c; In II Phy.
lOh; In V Met. 2 & 3; De Pot. 5, 1, c; In Sent. 29, 1,1, c; In De
Somno, 4a; In I De Caelo 9a; In I Gen. et Corr. 1c & 2a.
19. Phy., II, 3, 194b, 23; Anal. Post.,ll, 11, 94a, 21; Met. I, 3,
983a 26; V, 2, 1913a, 24; De Gen. Anim., I, 715a, 3-6.
20. "The terms material and formal have passed from natural
philosophy into all branches of philosophy, to designate by analogy, <
on the one hand whatever, in itself indeterminate and potential,
plays the part of a subject which receives a determination, on the
other hand whatever possesses of itself a determining, actualizing,
and specificatory function, or again whatever is taken as possessing a
particular character, in a particular aspect.” J. Maritain, Introduc­
tion to Philosophy, p. 252.

7

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Final Cause. The final cause is first in intention and
last in execution for it is “that for the sake of which
something is done;” 81 e.g. a student will go to school for
the sake of attending a lecture. In the order of intention,
therefore, the final cause is first because it induces the
agent to act.82 A detailed and minute explanation of final
cause is not Our purpose here.8’ We must note, however,
that the final cause is a positive influence on the action
of the efficient cause and it exercises a positive influence
upon the existence of the effect. Therefore it is a true
cause. This influence of the final cause on the efficient
cause is not by an immediate physical action but only21
*23
21. In V Met., 2, n. 771.
22.. “We may distinguish 'end for which’ i.e., that for whose
benefit a thing is done, and ‘the end which,* or the object intended.
The end which is intended may be immediate or ultimate according
as it is subordinated to another end or not. For example, if a man
works hard to send his son to college, the son is the end for which,
and ‘to send to college' is the immediate end which is intended; the
ultimate end intended by the father in this particular line would be
to give his son a better preparation for life, or something similar.
"We may also distinguish the end of the act and the end of the
agent. The end of the act is the end towards which the act naturally
tends, whereas the end of the agent is the end which the agent has
in mind in performing the act. For example, the end of the act of
healing is the restoration of health, but the end of the agent (the
physician) may be to make money.” Koren, op. cit., p. 236.
23. Cf. Cont. Gen., Ill, 2; De Verit., 12, 2, c; In I Met., 4, nn.
70-71; In V Met., 3, n. 782; In II Phy., 5 fc 10.
Keven O’Brien, The Proximate Aim of Education (Washington:
Catholic University Press, 1958).
Russell J. Collins, "The Metaphysical Basis of Finality in St.
Thomas,” (Unpublished doctoral dissertation. School of Philosophy,
Catholic University of America, 1947).
Aldo J. Tos, "Finality and Its Implications for Education,” (Un­
published master’s thesis. Department of Education, Catholic Uni­
versity of America, 1955).

inasmuch as it is an object of appetition to the efficient
cause, moving the latter to action. It may be something
nonexistent which the agent seeks to produce, or some­
thing really existing which the agent seeks to get pos­
session of, or finally, something actually possessed which
the agent enjoys.2i
The efficient cause cannot exercise its causality without
the final cause which moves it here and now:
A potential agent cannot determine itself to a definite act
without violating the principle of sufficient reason. A potential
agent needs to be determined to a definite act here and now,
, and this is done through the causality of the end which
determines the agent to act in this way to attain the end
and not in another way.25

Hence, the final cause is the explanation of the action
here and now of the efficient cause; without the final cause
there could be no efficient causality. Speaking of the rela­
tion between the final cause and the efficient cause St.
Thomas says: “The efficient cause and the final cause cor­
respond, for the one is the starting point and the other
is the terminum . . . The efficient cause is the cause of
the final cause, and the final cause is the cause of the
efficient cause. Yet with this difference: the agent is a
cause of the end even in respect of existence, since by
producing change it leads to the end coming to be.” 24
2627
25
Finality permeates the entire system of St. Thomas and
enforces some weighty conclusions as Tos observes.87
24. Shallo, op. cit., p. 168.
25. Russell J. Collins, op. cit., p. 54.
26. Selected Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, M. C. D’Arcy (ed.)
(New York: Dutton & Co., 1950), p. 155.
27. Tos, op. cit., p. 23.

9

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The whole Thomistic doctrine on the relation between
efficient causality and final causality is summed up very
well by the Angelic Doctor in these words:
Matter receives form only insofar as it is moved by an agent,
for nothing reduces itself from potency to act. But the agent
does not move without intending an end or as a pre­
ordained end . . . For unless the agent were determined to
a particular effect it would not do one thing rather than
another. If, therefore, it is to produce a determining effect,
it must be preordained to a particular thing which is its end.28

In education it is the neglect of the final cause which
has brought about much of the confusion and chaos which
exists in it today. “The surprising weakness of education
today . . . proceeds from our attachment to the very per­
fection of our modern educational means and methods
and our failure to bend them toward the end.” 29 It would
be difficult to exaggerate the need for taking into con­
sideration the end of learning—the final cause—in our
statement of principles. St. Thomas points out that
. . the end in practical matters is what the principle
is in speculative matters.” 30 That is to say: “___ the end
stands in the same relation to the means to the end, as
do the premises to the conclusion with regard to the
understanding.” SI
The immediate end of learning is the acquisition of
knowledge. But "the supreme end of man in general and
common to every form of human activity is that of bring28. S. T., I-H, 1, 2, c.
29. Jacques Mari tain. Education at the Crowroads (New Haven:
Vale University Press, I960), p, 3.
30. S.T., I. 82, 1, G
31. S.T., I, 19, 5, g

10

82. Vincent A. Yzennans (ed) Pope Pius and Catholic Education
(St. Meinrad: Grail Publications, 1957), p. 98.
33. Pope Pius XI, Encyclical on the Christian Education of
Youth.
34. Ibid. ' ■'
35. In V Met. 2, n. 763.
36. William B. Collins, Metaphysics and Man (Dubuque: Loras
College Press, 1959), p. 111.

11

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■■*·*·*·£*·

ing man closer to God.” 52 Pope Pius XI warns us that
"it is . . . as important to make no mistake in education,
as it is to make no mistake in the pursuit of the last end,
with which the whole work of education is intimately con­
nected.” ** And this “there can be no true education
which is not wholly directed to man’s last end.” 84 This
applies to teaching and to learning. The final cause is
the cause that gives direction to every activity in the
teaching-learning situation.
Material Cause. The material cause has been defined
as the matter out of which a thing is made and which per­
sists actually within the effect.85 In other words, a material
cause is matter. As such this would be an inadequate,
though descriptive definition. For example, if a statue
is made of marble, the color and hardness of the marble
persist in the statue unchanged; they are neither new
being nor the stuff of which new being is made. The
true stuff is the marble’s potency for receiving the new
perfecting principle. Thus Collins defines material cause
as: “the permanent potential substrate of the new form” M
He points out further that the raw stuff’s potency is a
permanent substrate: (a) a substrate because it will receive
the new perfecting principle and (b) permanent in the
sense that it was in existence before the new being existed
and persists in the new thing.

ΜΜΙΙβΒΐΐΗΜ·

When the efficient cause produces new being, it makes
the essence actually present that was potentially but really
present in the material cause. "The potency to be actual­
ized, or subject in which the change occurs, is the material
cause.” 37 From this one can readily see why the material
cause is called an internal cause.38
In discussing the material cause in education we can
speak of the remote material cause, that is, the person who
is being educated; and the proximate material cause, that
is, the learner’s faculties, his intellect and will. As we
have already pointed out the word material is used
here in an analogous sense to designate a subject that is
in potency to receive various determinations; it does not
mean that the pupil is nothing more than matter. It means
rather that the material cause is a human person with a
soul as well as a body.3940
This view seems to be in harmony with that of Pope
Pius XII who tells us: ". . . it must never be forgotten
that the subject of Christian education is man whole and
entire, soul united to body in unity of nature, with all his
faculties natural and supernatural, such as right reason
and revelation show him to be; man, therefore, fallen
from his original state, but redeemed by Christ and
restored to the supernatural condition of adopted son
of God ..." «

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37. Ivo Thomas, “Deduction of the Four Causes," Dominican
Studies II (1949), p. 311.
38. The material and formal causes are called internal because
they are inside the new being. Similarly, the efficient, final and
exemplary are said to be external since they are outside the new
being.
39. Sister Mary de Sales Cosen, A Philosophical Study of Edu­
cation as a Science (Washington: Catholic University, 1960), p. 20.
40. Pope Pius XII, Ibid.

Formal Cause. The formal has been defined as “An
internal principle that perfects and determines the mate­
rial cause.” 41 It perfects the substrate’s potency to become
an essence; it actuates the substrate’s potency to receive
its defining principle. Therefore, there is a very close rela­
tion between the material and the formal causes. The
latter, like the former, is also an internal principle.4*
The effects of the formal cause are also twofold: (a) it
actuates the material cause, thereby producing the new
essence; (b) it gives existence to the new being in the sense
that it makes the essence definite enough to exist. “The
substantial form gets the matter-form compound ready
for existence. An accidental form makes the being ready
to receive its new accidental existence, but in a very
peculiar way, for the accident gets the substance ready for
having the accident share in the substance’s existence.” 43
The causality of form is neither action nor passion but
specification or determination; the formal cause is, as Aristotle
calls it, a formula. It does not do anything any more than
the precise formula of a chef’s recipe, or the relations be­
tween notes in harmony do anything, if by doing is meant
acting. But by virtue of its union with matter, the effect is
produced and exists.44

It must be pointed out, however, that formal causality
is never operative except as applied by an efficient cause.
An action exists only by virtue of the movement of an
efficient cause. Hence, though formal and efficient causal­
ity are mutually dependent, the efficient cause is prior
41. William Collins, op. cit., p. 112.
42. De Peril., Ill, 1, c; XXVII, 3, 25; In V Met., 2, 264; De
Spirit. Creat., i, 9m.
48. W. Collins, Ibid.
44. Brother Benignus, op. cit., p. 73.

13

in the order of causality. The formal cause is a cause
only insofar as the efficient cause applies it to action by
acting under its formal determination.
We can, therefore, say in conclusion that causality of
the material cause and the formal cause (the internal prin­
ciples of being) “consists in a mutual communication of
their own particular reality, the matter as potency and the
form as act.”45 It is the union of two intrinsic principles,
an immediate union and a perfect one.46
In education the formal cause, as in so many of the
productive sciences, coincides with the proper and immedi­
ate end, except for the fact that the formal cause is always
intrinsic while the final cause, being in the order of inten­
tion, is always extrinsic.47 It is the accidental formal cause
that is spoken of in education since there is no substantial

P

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45. Henri Renard, S.J., The Philosophy of Being (Milwaukee:
Bruce,
... 1943), p. 159.
46. In order to clarify the proper role of the material and
formal causes in their relation to the existence of a new being it
would be well to examine the three ways in which a new being
comes into existence and what the material and formal causes are
in each case. (1) When a new being comes into existence by an
accidental change of an old being, that is, when à statue is made
or a man acquires a new mental action, the formal cause is obviously
the new accident. But which of the potencies of the old being is
the permanent substrate of the new form? It is the substance of the
old being. (2) When new being comes into existence by a substantial
change of an old being, that is, when food is assimilated by a man
and becomes human substance, prime matter is the material cause
since it is the only potency of the old being that persists. And the
formal cause is the new substantial form. (3) When a new being
comes into existence out of nothing, there is no material cause. In
this case the efficient cause, that is, the Creator, does not have the
assistance of a material cause. But the material cause and the formal
cause are correlatives. Therefore, since there is no material cause,
neither is there a formal cause.
47. Sister Mary de Sales Gosen, op. cit., p. 19.

14

change wrought in the pupil by the teacher. Education,
from the point of view of the educator, is a matter of in­
ducing new accidents within the pupil through the co­
operative causality of all secondary agents of education
under God, the Primary Agent.48 All that has been said
about the broader term education can be applied to the
teaching-learning situation as well. The knowledge ac­
quired by the learner is an accidental change and the
formal cause in such an instance is the new accident. Thus,
it is the accidental formal cause that is spoken of in the
teaching-learning situation.
EFFICIENT CAUSALITY
To this point we have discussed the concept of a cause
and have seen that it is not a condition and not an occa­
sion. It is a species of principle. We have also seen three
types of cause—final, material and formal. It is now our
intention to examine at length the nature of efficient
cause. Only in the light of this concept will it be possible
to understand the Thomistic position in regard to the
nature of learning through instruction, and the role of
the various agents responsible for it.
The concept of efficient cause is discussed by St.
Thomas in several places.49 The essential feature of the
efficient cause, according to St. Thomas, is productivity.
This is the distinctive mode of influx which gives the
efficient cause its specific nature.50 In other words, it is the
48. Ibid.
49. In I Met., 4, n. 70; In V Met., 2, n. 765; In II Phy. 2.
50. "On the contrary, the act of being, as such, is caused by
creation, which presupposes nothing; because nothing can pre-exist
that is outside being as such. By makings other than creation, this
being of such being is produced; tor out of pre-existent being is
made this being or such a being." Cont. Gen., II, 21.

15

Mi

making of a thing by action. Thus, an efficient cause is an
acting cause. Because it contributes to the being or the
becoming of another by its action the efficient cause is
also known as a productive cause.
Efficient cause alone, in the proper sense, exercises its
causality “per modum actionis,” so that it can be said of
it exclusively that action is its mode of influx,51 and it is
through action alone that the effect depends in its efficient
cause.5253This is what distinguishes it from other causes.
For here we understand the words “to act” in a strict
sense, that is, effectively, which is the causality of the effi­
cient cause. Thus St. Thomas has pointed out:

!
S?

A thing is said to act in a threefold sense. In one way,
formally, as when we say whiteness makes white ... In
another sense a thing is said to act effectively, as when a
painter makes a wall white. Thirdly, it is said in the sense
of the final cause, as the end is said to effect by moving the
efficient cause.®8

It is through action, therefore, that what we term the
effect proceeds from54 and is dependent on the efficient
cause.5556AU actual efficient causality and true efficiency
bespeaks action tending from an agent toward another55
which is its term.
To act effectively is to communicate the proper per­

f

51. ·'. . . influere causae efficientis est agere;” De Périt., XII, 2,
c; “Efficiens est causa inquantum agit,” In Met., 2,
52. "■. ; ; per actionem ... alicuius principii dependet effectus
a causa agente." De Potentia, 5, 1, c.
53. S.T., I, 48, 1, ad 4.
54. "Again, an effect proceeds from its efficient cause througb
the latter’s action” Cont. Gen., II, 32, 4.
55- ". - - for it is through the agent’s action that the effect de­
pends on the efficient cause." Ibid., 31, 3.
56. "Efficiency denotes action tending to something else.” S.T.,
II-IÎ, 183, 3, ad 2.

16

fection to others. Now to act from itself does not indicate
any mutation in the agent. It is not necessary that the
mover be moved. In other words, the cause acting does
not change. To change or to be moved implies to receive,
and is consequently a passive potency which is the capacity
to receive. On the contrary, to act means to give by itself
alone and not to receive. This implies an active potency.57*
1234
Thus we have here the metaphysical basis for change.
In other words, whenever there is change, substantial or acci­
dental, or from non-being to being, this change must be
ascribed to something which by its real causal influence pro­
duces or effects the change.®8
57. Meehan has summarized the Thomistic teaching on this
point in the following way:
1. Motion is neither the potency of something existing in po­
tency, nor the act of something existing in act, but properly the
act of something existing in potency·, “act” relative to an ulterior
perfection or act. (In III Phy. 2).
2. It is the act of and therefore takes place in the object acted
upon and not in the mover or agent, for what exists in potency as
such is mobile and not movens. The latter as such is in act. As act
of the mobile, it is called passio. (Ibid.)
3. Nevertheless motion is at the same time the act of the agent
or mover. (In XI Met. 9, n 2310). As such it is called “actio" (In III
Phy. 4) and takes place not in the agent but in the patient. (In III
De Anima, 2, n. 592).
4. There are not two distinct motions of which one is the
act of the agent, and the other the patient for
a. either the two motions would be in two different subjects,
one in the agent and one in the patient, or
b. they would be in the same subject; both being exclusively
either in the agent or in the patient.
Cf. Francis X. Meehan, Efficient Causality in Aristotle and St.
Thomas (Washington: Catholic University Press, 1940), pp. 223-224.
58. Joseph Schneider, “Efficient Causality and Current Physical
Theory," Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Asso­
ciation XIV (1938), p. 13.

17

Summarily, then, action, that is, the exercise of its ener­
gies by which it makes something else to be, which was
not before, is the distinguishing characteristic of efficient
causality. It transfers something from non-existence to
existence “since the imperfect is not brought to perfection,
except by something perfect already in existence.”5960
In
other words, the notion of efficient cause is the notion of a
being which by its action, brings about or produces
another being. The notion of effect is the notion of a
being produced or brought about by the action of another.
To St. Thomas and the scholastics the principle of
efficient causality meant a necessary and universal princi­
ple, ontologically valid and objective, which can be stated
as follows: “Whatever begins to exist must have an efficient
cause.” ®0 Too much emphasis cannot be laid on the fact
that the philosophical concept of efficient causality is not
generalized experience, a law or principle arrived at
through a number of experiments. It is not directly sen­
sible. It cannot, like color and sound, be perceived by the
senses. It is the object of a primary idea of the intellect,
an immediate and necessary deduction from the principles
of identity and contradiction.
Thus, it is not our concern here to present a refutation
of those false philosophies which have clouded much of
the recent philosophical thinking by their erroneous views
on the nature of a cause.61 We have attempted merely to

IB
U
μ
U
I 5»

59. S.T., I II, 66, 6, ad 3.
60. S.T., I, 44, 1, ad 2.
,
61; The principle of efficient causality meant ". . . to Hume, an
instinctive belief based upon association without metaphysical im­
plications ... to Kant, a purely subjective condition of the mind
relating things causally ... to Comte, a convenient instrument of
classification without absolute necessity or universality." Schneider,
op. cit., p. 13.-·
■
/ · .

18

present a dear and distinct concept of the efficient cause
as it is found in traditional scholastic teaching. Thus,
it is the teaching of Aristotle and St. Thomas which pro­
vides us with the basis for this most important doctrine.68

KINDS OF EFFICIENT CAUSE
In order to have a clear concept of the function of
efficient causality in the teaching-learning situation we
will now consider the various classifications under which
it can be viewed. These different aspects of the efficient
cause will throw much light on its nature and will give
us a more concise understanding of its role in learning
and education.62
*66
63

1. PRINCIPAL AND INSTRUMENTAL. The prin­
cipal efficient cause is that on which the existence of the
62. The conditions required for efficient action insisted upon
by Aristotle and St. Thomas are: (1) the previous proximate poten­
tiality of the agent and patient, passive on the part of the subject
acted upon and active in the case of the agent; (2) antecedent
dissimilarity or contrariety between the form in the agent, the. like­
ness of which is to be communicated, and the form in the receiving
subject; (3) contact, either physical and immediate or virtual and
mediate, between agent and patient; (4) unimpeded action, that is
to say, absence of hindrance or obstacle.
Cf. Meehan, op. cit., pp. 235-236.
63. St. Thomas in his Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics
notes the division of efficient cause as given by Ibn-Sina, He gives
four varieties of efficient cause: (1) Perfective which gives final
completeness to a thing; (2) Dispositive which prepares matter to
receive form; (3) Auxiliary which differs from the principal agent
in that it acts for another’s end; (4) Consiliary which differs from the
principal cause by laying down the scope and manner of action.
Cf. Selected Writings of St. Thomas (D’Arcy, ed) pp. 155-56.

19

effect primarily depends and its power and efficacy is
permanently inherent.64 On the other hand, an instru­
mental efficient cause acts only insofar as it is moved by
the principal cause.65 It indeed influences the effect but
only through the activity of the principal cause. The saw,
the axe and the chisel (instrumental causes) really cause
but only when they are put into act by the carpenter
(principal cause).

2. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY. A principal cause
is either primary or secondary. A primary efficient cause
does not need the help of another cause for the actual
exercise of its causality. God is the sole Primary Efficient
Cause, for the definition of primary efficient cause is this:
a cause which is wholly independent of other things.66
"God is the universal cause of all being.” 67 A secondary
cause needs the help of another cause to use its power to
act. This other cause may be a superior efficient cause
or it may be a material cause. It will be evident later on
that it needs both.68 Thus creatures are secondary causes
becaùse they depend upon the First Cause for their exist­
ence and their equipment and their function.
In the teaching-learning situation we shall see that
64. S.T., in. 62, 1; ad 1 & 2; III, 4; I, 3, ad 3; II, 3, ad 2; 2/
ad 3; I, 2, ad 1.
65. S.T., II, 5 ad 1; 1, ad 3: 1, ad 1; 4, ad 2; I, 3, ad 2.
66. Glenn, op. cit., p. 318
67. S.T., I, 45, 2, c.
68. "When the other cause is a superior cause, the distinction
between a second principal cause and an instrumental cause is
tenuous. But if a proximate efficient cause is a second cause, the
action which produces the effect issues from the second cause’s own
power, while if the proximate efficient cause is an instrument, its
action issues partly from the power of the instrument and partly
from the power of the principal cause." W. Collins, op. cit., p. H7.

God has a role to play which is in accord with the notion
of primary efficiency. “God alone teaches interiorly and
principally, just as nature alone heals interiorly and prin­
cipally.” 69 Therefore, God is a principal and primary
efficient cause of learning but in a very unique way. How­
ever, there is also a principal secondary cause. “For the
signs are not the proximate efficient cause of knowledge,
but reason, in its passage from principles to conclusions.” 70
We shall also examine in detail the role of the teacher
who is an “indispensible mover, bringing the intellect from
potentiality to actuality.” 71
Thus the term “secondary cause” distinguishes all
other causes from the Primary Cause: God. But they are
true causes and exercise a real influence and efficiency
in the order of being. “Hence, secondary causes produce
the whole effect . . . partly in virtue of their own nature,
by which the effected actuation is determined, and partly
in virtue by God’s influx into them, by which they do all
that they do.” K

3. TOTAL AND PARTIAL. The total cause accounts
for the whole effect; for instance, a horse pulling a cart is
the total cause of the movement of the cart. The partial
cause accounts for only part of the effect; either of two
horses pulling the cart.
4. PHYSICAL AND MORAL. A physical efficient
cause is one that produces an effect by its own physical
activity. A moral efficient cause (which some say is not
69.
70.
71.
72.

De Verit., XI, 1, c.
Ibid., XI. 1, ad 2.
Ibid., XI. 1, ad 12.
De Pot., HI. 4. c.
iH'i

20

21

an efficient cause properly so called, but as such by an
extension of the meaning)73 is one that exercises an influ­
ence on a free agent by means of a command, persuasion,
invitation or force of example. The free agent who is
moved to action by such influence is the physical efficient
cause of the action; the one who exercises such influence
over the physical cause is the moral efficient cause of the
action.
5. PROXIMATE AND REMOTE. A proximate ef­
ficient cause admits no medium between itself and its
effect. A remote efficient cause has one or more mediate
causes between itself and its effect. A thief is the proxi­
mate cause of the theft; the man who ordered the thief
to steal, or showed him how to do it, is the remote cause.
A disease may be the proximate cause of death; the con­
tagion or infection which induced the disease is the remote
cause. “There is here an axiom of value to the philosopher
and moralist: Causa causae est causa causati which is trans­
lated literally as, 'The cause of a cause is the cause of
what the latter produces.’ We may, however, translate the
axiom freely thus, 'The remote cause is a true contributor
to the effect of the proximate cause’” 74

i!

I

6. NECESSARY AND FREE. A necessary cause is one
that is compelled by nature to produce its effect when all
conditions for it are fulfilled. Fire under dry chips is the
necessary cause of flame. The sun is the necessary cause
of daylight. A free cause is one that can refrain from
producing its effect when all conditions for it are fulfilled.
A hungry man with appetizing food before him may still
refuse to eat.
73. Glenn, Ibid., p. 319.
74. Ibid., pp. 320-21.

22

7. PER SE AND PER ACCIDENS. A per se or direct
efficient cause is one that tends by nature or intention to
produce the effect that actually is produced. Fire is the
per se efficient cause of light and heat; it tends by nature
to produce light and heat. A hunter who shoots a rabbit
is the per se efficient cause of the killing, because he
intends it. A per accidens or indirect efficient cause is one
that produces an effect “by accident,” since it is either
not such a cause as naturally produces this effect, or the
effect is not intended. A man drilling a well for water
strikes oil; the drilling is not by nature calculated to bring
up oil in each case, it does so per accidens. Another exam­
ple would be a man digging à grave uncovers buried
treasure per accidens.

;
7. UNIVOCAL AND EQUIVOCAL. A univocal cause
produces an effect of the identical species to which itself
belongs. “Now there are some univocal agents which
agree with their effects in name and definition, as man
generates man.”7576
An equivocal cause, on the other hand,
produces an effect which belongs to a different species
than that to which the cause belongs. The human sculp­
tor produces a non-human statue.
It is important that we note here that an "instrument
is neither a univocal nor an equivocal cause.” ϊδ And in
the same place he makes it clear that the instrument de­
rives its univocal or equivocal causality according to
whether the principal agent is a univocal or equivocal
cause.
8. NATURAL AND RATIONAL. A natural efficient
cause is any necessary cause in the physical order. It is
75. S.T., I, IS, 5, obj. 1.
76. In IV Sent., 1, 1, 4, 5.

. '23 ;

·

also called agens per naturam, that is, “acting by its
nature.” A rational efficient cause is a free cause, a cause
which acts with knowledge and free choice. It is also
called agens per intellectum, that is, “acting with under­
standing.” It is this latter type of cause with which we
are concerned in the teaching-learning situation.

9. COORDINATED AND SUBORDINATED. A co­
ordinated cause is the same as a partial cause and thus
accounts for only part of the effect. A subordinated cause
is one which depends upon another cause.
10. POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE. A per accidens
efficient cause may be either positive or negative. A posi­
tive cause prepares the way for the effect by disposing
the subject for its reception. A negative cause prepares
the way by removing impediments which hinder the pro­
duction of the effect.

11. IMMANENT AND TRANSIENT. The effect of
an immanent cause is produced within the cause itself.
The effect of a transient cause is produced outside the
efficient cause.

SUMMARY

U

Since education involves change and since change is
brought about by a cause we have explained the nature
of cause in general along with its specific classifications.
For our purpose we are mainly concerned with efficient
causality. As we have seen an efficient cause may be
primary or secondary: principal or instrumental; total
or partial; physical or moral; proximate or remote; neces-

24

sary or free; per se or per accidens; univocal or equivocal;
natural or rational; coordinated or subordinated; positive
or negative; immanent or transient.
In the teaching-learning situation the effect that is
produced is the knowledge of the learner. In the follow­
ing chapters we will examine in detail the efficient causes
of learning: God, First Cause; the pupil, principal cause;
the teacher, instrumental cause. Through analysis of the
writings of St. Thomas we hope to show all that is in­
volved in teaching and learning from the viewpoint of
efficient causality.

25

■Ni

CHAPTER II

GOD AS THE EFFICIENT CAUSE
OF THE PUPIL'S LEARNING

Before treating specifically God’s role as an efficient
cause of the pupil’s learning, it seems fitting to treat in
a general way the pupil’s relationship to God as a creature
whose end is God and who is necessarily governed by
God’s providence. It is only within this framework that
one can gain the proper perspective with relation to the
more specific question of the divine causality in the
teaching-learning situation.
God is the cause of all things.* He alone is His own
existence while all other things have their existence by
participation. Now whatever exists by participation is
caused by that which exists essentially, as everything ig­
nited is caused by fire.1
2 St. Thomas states that all creatures
are to God as the air is to the sun which enlightens it.
“For as the sun possesses light by its nature, so God alone
1. S.T., I, 57, 2, c; "since He is the cause of the entire substance
of the thing, as to both its matter and form." Also cf. I, 22, 2; I, 44,
I; I, 45, 2; I, 61, 1; I, 65, 3, c; I, 75, 5, ad I; I, 79, 2, c; I, 103, 5, c;
Cont Gent. Π, 6, 1.
2. S.T., I, 61, 1, c; cf. Ik 44, I, c.

is Being by virtue of His own essence; whereas every
creature has being by participation.” 5 Therefore, we say
that God is the First Cause of all things.
At the fountainhead of the hierarchy of beings is the source
of all beings, God. There must be a source which is being in
the highest sense of the word. Any study of being in its various
manifestations necessitates constant reference to its cause;
this obviously leads to the First Cause, God. While first
principles are derived from experience we can pass beyond
that realm and probe deeper into the source from which
they come.4

To say that God is the First Cause of all being is to
say that God is the only true Creator. When we say an
artist has created a masterpiece we are speaking in an
analogous sense because creation belongs only to God.5
“To create is, properly speaking, to cause or produce the
being of things.” 6 Creation, and creation alone of all acts
of production, is the production of being itself and not
a mere change in being.7 It follows, then, that every crea­
ture possesses being as having received it. Of itself, apart
3. S.T., I, 104, 1, c.
4. Sister Mary Dominica Mullen, Essence and Operation in the
Teaching of St. Thomas and in Some Modern Philosophies, (Wash­
ington: Catholic University Press, 1941), p. 16.
5. S.T., I, 90, 3, c: “God alone can create; for the first agent
alone can act without presupposing the existence of anything; while
the second cause always presupposes something derived from the
first cause ... and every agent that presupposes something to its
act, acts by making a change therein. Therefore everything else acts
by producing a change, whereas God alone acts by creation.” Also
cf. St. T. I, 65, 3, c;I, 14, il, c; I, 15, c, ad 3; I, 44, 2, c; 3, ad 4;
Cont. Gen. II, 15, 3; II, 16; II, 17.
6. S.T. I, 45, 6, c.
7. S.T. I, 45, 2, ad 2; Cont. Gen. II, 17.

27

from God, it is nothing. Therefore all creatures belong to
God “naturally.” 8 For He brought them from non-being
to being.9
All creatures are like God inasmuch as every effect
must to some extent resemble its cause. But, at the same
time we must hold that no creature is specifically or gen­
erically like God, for God is not contained in any species
or genus. Hence, the creature bears only an analogous
likeness to God for God is not a univocal cause, but an
equivocal cause.1011
Thus, Sacred Scripture recalls the like­
ness between God and creatures: “Let us make man to
our image and likeness” (Genesis 1:26). Yet at times the
likeness is denied as in Isaiah (XL:18): “To whom then
have you likened God, and what image will you make
Him?” or in the Psalm (LXXXILl): “O, God, who shall
be like to Thee?”
God is completely independent of everything. But this
is not true of a creature. On the contrary, a creature’s de­
pendence upon the Supreme Being is absolute.
All living being other than God move themselves, only because
they are moved by another. There is another, namely, the
First Cause of all being, that moves them or determines them
to move themselves, without thereby contradicting the notion
of life or destroying their vital autonomy.il

Maritain further points out that it is as the cause of
being that reason is compelled to recognize the existence
of God.*213
*Thus, the notion of the First Cause of all being
8. S.T. I, 60, 5, c.
9. S.T. I, 61, 2, c; Cont. Gen. II, 16.
10. Cont. Gen. I, 29, 2.
11. Jacques Maritain, A Preface to Metaphysics (New York:
Sheed and Ward, 1948), p. 139.
12. Ibid., p. 140.

28

shows not only the dependence of all creatures on God
but also is the very foundation of His existence.

GOD: The Omega of All Being

A discussion of God as the First Cause of all being
would be incomplete and somewhat awkward if there was
no mention of the purpose of creation. Because education
is an activity manifestly aimed at changing an individual
and leading him to certain goals, it must be guided in
that activity by the end which the First Cause has in
aeating. Gilson tells us that science can give an account
for many things in the world but fails to answer the ques­
tion: Why is there something rather than nothing? 18
13. "The problem of final causes is perhaps the problem most
commonly discussed by these modem agnostics . . . I am asking in
Leibniz's own terms: Why is there something rather than nothing?
Here again, I fully understand a scientist who refuses to ask it. He
is welcome to tell me that the question does not make sense. Scien­
tifically speaking, it does not. Metaphysically speaking, however, it
does. Science can account for many things in the world; it may
some day account for all that which the world of phenomena
actually is. But why anything at all is, or exists, science knows not,
precisely because it cannot even ask the question.
‘To this supreme question, the only conceivable answer is that
each and every particular existential energy, each and every existing
thing, depends for its existence upon a pure Act of existence. In
order to be the ultimate answer to all existential problems, this
supreme cause has to be absolute existence. Being absolute, such
a cause is self-sufficient; if it creates, its creative act must be free
. . . Now an absolute, self-subsisting, and knowing cause is not an
It but a He. In short, the first cause is the One in whom the cause
of both nature and history coincide, a philosophical God who can
also be the God of a religion.” Etienne Gilson, God and Philosophy
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949), pp. 137-141.

29

It has already been poihted out that God, since He is
First Cause and Supreme Being, is not subordinated to
nor moved by any other being. Consequently, the end
for which He acts cannot be anything below or outside
Himself for then He Who is perfect would be acting for j
something that is not perfect. Hence the end for which {
God acts can be no other than Himself.14 Creatures, since
they are creatures and hence lack the perfection of being,
act from a desire for an end not yet possessed. God, how­
ever, does not act because He requires something perfect
Himself15 but rather to manifest His goodness and per­
fection.16 To view the causality of God in any other way
would be to posit imperfection in God. Although this
might be the source of some difficulty for those who do
not think of God from the aspect of perfection of Being,
it is not difficult to understand when one considers God
that the very essence of the Supreme Being is the posses­
sion of perfection of Being itself.17 Therefore, it follows
that God in acting does not increase in perfection.18 His
acts are ordered to Himself because He can act for no
end outside Himself and consequently everything that
14. ". . . nothing apart from God is His end.” S.T. I, 19, 1, ad 1.
15. ”, . . since the goodness of God is perfect, and can exist
without other tilings inasmuch as no perfection can accrue to Him
from them . . ." S.T. I, 19, 5, c.
16. ”. . . God wills things apart from Himself only for the sake
of the end, which is His own goodness, it does not follow that
anything else moves His will, except His goodness.” S.T. I, 19,
2, ad 2.
17. . . The Divine Being is undertermined and contains in
Himself the full perfection of being.” S.T. I,19, 4, c.
18. “. . . all things which are diversified by the diverse participa­
tion of being, so as to be more or less perfect, are caused by one
First Being, Who possesses being most perfectly." S.T. I, 44, 1, c.

30

flows from His creative act is ordered to Him as end. God
is the final and ultimate end of all that is, and just as
the Good is the end for which every agent acts, so God, the
Supreme Good, is that end toward which all things are
directed. “Now all things are ordered in various degrees
of goodness to the one Supreme Good, which is the cause
of all goodness; and so since good has the nature of an
end, all things are ordered under God as preceding ends
under the last end. Therefore, God must be the end of
all.” «
It can be concluded then from what has gone before
that God in some way is directing all things to Himself
and that He alone is the End of all being.

MAN’S FIRST CAUSE AND FINAL END
Man is the masterpiece of God’s earthly creation. Just
as all beings are directed toward God as their last end,
so especially is man who has been made to the Divine
image and likeness. Because of his intellectual nature man
is ordered to God in a way that belongs to no other crea­
ture of God. “Consequently, this must be the end of the
intellectual creature, namely, to understand God." 19
20
Because man is directed toward God as his final end
it is only in the possession of God that he will find true
and complete happiness. Anything less than God would
lead to fnistration and disappointment. “Common sense
demanding a reason of being, arrives at God who is the
Alpha of all things. Common sense demanding the intel19. Cont. Gen. Ill, 17.
20. Ibid., Ill, 25.

31

legibility of action, arrives at God as the Omega of all
things.” 21 This is the entire answer to life itself. Without
this answer men have turned to pleasures of the body,
honors, wealth, world power and many other goals some
of which have also brought insanity and suicide to their
possessors.
Certainly it is not too difficult to see the error promul­
gated by a false philosophy of education that would set
up goals which have their roots in a merely earthly exist­
ence. St. Thomas was keenly aware of this danger.
■ The last end of man is God . . ; We must therefore posit as
man’s last end that by which especially man approaches to
God. Now man is hindered by the aforesaid pleasures from
his chief approach to God, which is effected by contemplation,
to which these same pleasures are a very great hindrance, since
more than anything they plunge man into the midst of sensi­
ble things, and consequently withdraw him from intelligible
things. Therefore human happiness is not be placed in bodily
pleasures.22

It is important therefore that a philosophy of educa­
tion recognize man’s true ultimate end. Wealth and honors
do not bring terminative happiness which is the essence
of a true and ultimate end. No sooner are these possessed
than it is realized “how ephemeral and superficial they,
too, are to fill up the void in our hearts. And the intellect
tells us that all these riches and honors are still but a
poor finite good that is dissipated by a breath of wind.”2’
21. Fulton J. Sheen, God and Intelligence (New York: Longmans,
Green, and Co., 1925), p. 265. (Courtesy of David McKay Company)
22. Cont. Gen., ΙΠ, 27.
23. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Providence (St. Louis: Herder,
1944), p. 43.
: »*.

The same may be said of other goods which, although they
afford happiness for a time, soon give way to anxiety and
weariness of mind.

PROVIDENCE AND THE FIRST CAUSE
We have considered God as the beginning and end
of all being. But we must go further than merely estab­
lishing the fact that there is a God who is called the First
Cause. We must ask ourselves the very important ques­
tion: Is this a far-distant deity who created man and the
world in which he lives and then abandoned both to the
whims of chance? In other words, are we to admit with
the deist of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries God’s
existence and creative act but deny that he has any care
for the world and the people in it? One who would be so
foolish as to adhere to such a notion would be labeled by
Gilson, and rightly so, as “one of the most delectable ob­
jects of contemplation for the connoisseurs of human silli­
ness” 24 and by Bosseut as an “atheist in disguise.”25
In these days of positive unbelief, agnosticism and
general indifference concerning the supernatural we can­
not emphasize too strongly the influence of a Divine Being
in our daily lives. We must recognize that there is reason,
design and order in every breath that we take, in every
moment that we live, in every leaf that falls to the ground.
There is a reason which is divine for everything that hap­
pens, even the greatest evils that occur on this earth. That
24. Gilson, op. cit., p. 104.
25. James B. Bossuet, History of the Variations of the Protestant
Churches (New York: D & J. Sadlier, 1845), BK. V, dip. 26.

33

 f-

this tenet is true and valid as the very existence of God
Himself is not always evident even in the field of religion.
Even a casual survey of the field of religion today will reveal
two outstanding facts, the progressive fading of any idea of
the supernatural, and the almost general acceptance of the
mechanistic explanation of the universe advanced by the ex­
ponents of philosophies based entirely upon a physical science.
Despite its essential incongruity the notion of a finite God is
seriously discussed by professedly Christian theologians ...
Optimism, not discouraged by the collapse of Nietzche’s ‘mas­
ter morality,’ is striving to eliminate any need for a Divine
Providence by making strenuous efforts to banish evil from a
universe evolving toward perfection.26

ii i
{ ’

• ! ij

■: M
i
hij

This doctrine is being met in many quarters today.
One need listen to the advertisements of the "wonder
drugs” that will do away once and for all with the evils
of disease. The life span of every human being is being
lengthened as though man is the master of life and death.
The influence and design of an all Creative and All Loving
Cause is totally ignored. Man is trying to convince himself
that everything depends on himself and he can look to
no higher power for help or purpose in living, or even
more, in dying. “But, for many Christians also, the forgetfulness of these laws (of providence) is the cause of a fatal
discouragement.”26
27
The influence which this type of thinking has had in
the field of education can be easily seen if one merely
examines the aims and goals put forth in many educational journals. The secularism that characterizes much of
26. Richard Downey, Divine Providence (New York: Macmillan,
1928), p. vii.
27. Henry Ramiere, The Laws of Providence (Philadephia: Mes­
senger of the Sacred Heart, 1891), p. 7.

our education today can be traced back to the seeds
planted by the deists and the tenets of deism. The funda*
mental principles of this false philosophy were watered
and nurtured by the French and British empiricists.28
Therefore, a complete understanding of the doctrine
of Divine Providence is most important today if we are
to have a true Christian philosophy of education.29 Our
strategy must be aimed at the very roots of a godless phi­
losophy of education which would deny or ignore, not
only the existence of God, but even more, the fact that
He is a God Who takes loving care of His creatures. Shake­
speare spoke these words through one of his characters on
28. ‘‘Before the time of Locke, Lord Herbert of Cherbury (15811648) had advocated a naturalistic philosophy of religion, thus
planting the seed of the deistic doctrines which appeared after the
days of Locke and found a congenial soil in English empiricism,
Deism may be described as a movement tending to free religious
thought from the control of authority. Its chief thesis is that there
is a universal natural religion, the principal tenet of which is, ‘Be­
lieve in God and do your duty'; that positive religion is the creation
of cunning rulers and crafty priests; that Christianity, in its original
form, was a simple though perfect expression of natural religion;
and whatever is positive in Christianity is a useless and harmful
accretion. These principles naturally provoked opposition on the
part of the defenders of Christianity, and there resulted a con­
troversy between the deists, and free thinkers, as they were called,
and the representatives of orthodoxy. ...
‘‘While this controversy was being waged, the principles of
empiricism were being applied to psychology by the founders of the
association school, and to ethical problems by the founders of the
British schools of morals.” William Turner, History of Philosophy
(New York: Ginn & Co., 1929), pp. 494-495.
29. “God therefore is infinitely wise and infinitely powerful. In
other words, He is a personal God. This fact of facts, the existence
of · a personal God, is of supreme importance in any program of
education.” William J. McGucken, S.J., Catholic Education (New
York: American Press, 1955), p. 4.

ï ïf

35
•i

the providence of God: “There’s a divinity that shapes
our ends, rough-hew them how we will.” (Hamlet V, ii, 10).

NOTION OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE
Having seen the necessity and importance of divine
providence in life and specifically in the field of educa­
tion, we are going to consider the nature of the providence
of God. St. Thomas has written concisely on the necessity
and meaning of divine providence.30 All creation comes
under the providence of God but it is man who is espe­
cially cared for by God.3132
“Since it is the divine intellect
and will, considered as governing creation, providence is
eternal. But the execution of this order in creatures takes
place in time. This execution is divine government.”!î
Moreover it is pointed out by St. Thomas that provi­
dence in God corresponds to the virtue of prudence in
us.33 There is a prudence which is found in a father who
30. “God is the cause of all things by His intellect, it is necessary
that the type of the order of things toward their end should pre­
exist in the divine mind; and the type of things ordered toward an
end is, properly speaking, providence.” S.T. I, 22, 1, c.
31. “. . . it necessarily follows that all things, inasmuch as they
participate existence, must likewise be subject to divine providence."
S.T. I, 22, 2, c. Also cf. I, 8, 3; I, 23, 1; I, 105, 5, ad 3; I, 113, 6;
I II, 91, 2, c; I II. 93, 1. c, 4, 5.
"Now among all others, the rational creature is subject to Divine
Providence in the most excellent way.” S.T. I-II, 91, 2, c. Also cf.
S.T. I, 103, 5, ad 2; 113, 2, c; 116, 1, c; Ι-Π, 83, 2. Cont. Gen. 1Π,
76; 77.
32. Brother Benignus, op. cit., p. 576.
33. "Now it belongs to prudence ... to direct other things to­
ward an end whether in regard to oneself ... or in regard to others
subject to him, in a family, city, or kingdom.” S.T. I, 22, 1, c.

36

must provide for the needs of his family and also a pru­
dence found in lawmakers and government officials for
the promotion of common interests of the nation. So in
God there is a providence directing all things to the good
of the universe. “It belongs to God to direct things toward
their end.” 34
The notion of Divine Providence can be summed up
under three general statements. First of all, as it has been
pointed out, Divine Providence extends to all creation.
This is deduced from the fact of the universality of divine
causality.35 God is the First, if not exclusive, Cause of
all things except evil.36 In regard to physical evil and suf­
fering, God wills them only in an accidental way, in view
of a higher good.37
Secondly, from the universality of Divine Providence,
we may conclude that it safeguards the freedom of our
own actions. For providence extends to the free mode of

34. S.T. I, 23, 1, c.
85. “But tire causality of God, Who is the first agent, extends
to all being . . . Hence all things that exist in whatsoever manner
are necessarily directed by God towards some end . . . the providence
of God is nothing less than the type of the order of things ... it
necessarily follows that all things, inasmuch as they participate
existence, must likewise be subject to divine providence.” S.T. I,
22, 2, c.
36. “Now God cannot be directly the cause of sin, either in
Himself or in another, since every sin is a departure from the
order which is to God as the end.” S.T. Ι-Π, 79, 1, a
37. "Hence He (God) in no way wills the evil of sin, which is
the privation of right order towards the divine good.” S.T. I, 19,
9, c. “Since God, then, provides universally for all being, it belongs
to His providence to permit certain defects in particular effects,
that the perfect good of the universe may not be hindered, for all
evil were prevented, much good would be absent from the universe."
S.T. I, 22, 2 ad 2.

'l'l

'il­
ii

•f

I
I
t

I

37
T

our actions by actuating the liberty itself which it pro­
duces in us with our cooperation.3839
The slightest idiosyncrasy of temperament and character, the
consequences of heredity, the influence exerted on our actions,
by the emotions are all known to providence; it penetrates
into the innermost recesses of conscience, and has at its dis­
posal every sort of grace to enlighten, attract, and strengthen
us. There is thus a gentleness in its control that yields nothing
to strength.^

We must always keep in mind that this free mode in
our choice, this indifference dominating our desire, is
still within the realm of being and nothing exists unless it
is from God.40
Thirdly, it can be said that although providence as the
divine ordinance, extends to all reality and goodness, to
last fiber of every being, nevertheless in the execution of
the plan of providence, God governs the lower creation
through the higher, to which He thus communicates the
dignity of causality.41 Here we can see clearly the use of
secondary causes by the first cause.
Hence secondary causes produce the whole effect . . . partly
in virtue of their own nature, by which the effected actuation
38. God, by moving voluntary causes, does not deprive their
actions of being voluntary, but rather He is the cause of this very
thing in them.” S.T. I, 83, 1, ad 3. Also cf. I, 103, 5-8; I-II, 10, 4
ad I; 109, 1.
39. Garrigou-LaGrange, op. cit., pp. 160-61.
40. S.T. 1-11,79, 1,2.
41. ". . . there are certain intermediaries of God’s providence;
for He governs things inferior by superior, not on account of any
defect in His power, but by reason of the abundance of His Good­
ness; so that the dignity of causality is imparted even to creatures."
S.T. I, 22, 3, c.

is determined, and partly in virtue of God’s influx into them,
by which they do all that they do.®

Thus, a secondary cause is a real· and true cause. If
God alone wrought everything, and created causes did
nothing, then this would not be true. And if they are not
valid causes “their employment by God would be futile
and meaningless.”42
4S
44
43

THE IMMEDIACY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE
God not only cares for all things by His providence
but He cares for them immediately. In explaining this
immediacy of God’s providence St. Thomas makes the dis­
tinction between divine providence, which is the divine
reason itself foreseeing and ordaining all things to their
end, and the divine government of the world, which is
the execution of the order of providence. “God immedi­
ately provides for everything, because He has in His intel­
lect the exemplars of everything, even the least.” 44 This
care which God has for everything is immediate since “He
gives to whatever causes He provides for certain effects
the power needed for producing these effects. Wherefore,
He must have beforehand in His intellect the order of
these effects.” 45 Thus, providence, or God’s foresight and
ordering, is immediate in respect to every being; God
foresees and foreordains in itself every detail of the created
world.
42. Robert O. Johann, “Comment on Secondary Causality,"
The Modern Schoolman XXV (1947-48), p. 23.
43. Brother Benignus, op. cit., p. 590.
44. S.T. I, 103, 2. c; I, 22, 3, c.
45. Ibid.

39

This is not the case, however ,in regard to the exe­
cution or carrying out of this ordination. God employs
“intermediaries” or secondary causes which produce one
effect through with God.46 As was said above this is not
from any defect in God but from the abundance of His
goodness whereby He deigns to communciate to creatures
the dignity of causation. Therefore, God’s immediate pro­
vision of an effect includes the provision of secondary
causes through which the effect will be produced.

EFFECTS OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE

4

Considered from the point of view of its end, which
is the divine goodness itself,47 the effect produced in crea­
tures by the government of God is the likeness of this
46. "For two things may be considered in every agent; namely
the thing itself that acts, and the power whereby it acts; thus, fire
by its heat makes a thing hot. Now the power of the lower agent
depends on the power of the higher agent, insofar as the higher
agent gives the lower agent the power whereby it acts, or preserves
that power, or applies it to action . . . Consequently, the action of
the lower agent must not only proceed from it through the latter’s
proper power but also through the power of all the higher agents;
for it acts by virtue of them all; and just as the lowest agent is found
immediately active, so the power of the first agent is found
to be immediate in the production of the effect; because the power
of the lowest agent does not of itself produce this effect, but by the
power of the proximate higher agent, so that the power of the
supreme agent is found to produce the effects of itself, as though
it were the immediate cause, as may be seen in the principles of
demonstration, the first of which is immediate. Accordingly, just
as it is unreasonable that one action be produced by an agent and
by virtue of that agent, agent and God, and by both immediately,
though in a different way.” Cont. Gen. Ill, 70.
47. "The ultimate end of things is necessarily the Divine Good­
ness itself." Compendium of Theology, chp. 101.

40

divine goodness48; in other words, God, by moving all
creatures toward Himself as their ultimate end, produces
in each of them, according to its own nature,49 a reflec­
tion of, or participation in, His own Essential Goodness,
and produces in all taken together the most perfect cre­
ated reflection of His own perfection, namely, the order
of the universe.50 This assimilation of creatures to God is
accomplished in two respects; God is good, and so the
creature is made like God by being made good;51 God
causes goodness in others, and so the creature is made
like God by being made able to move other creatures to
good.5253
*Hence, there are two universal effects of the divine
government of things; the conservation of things in good
and the movement of things to the good. These two effects
of Divine Providence are called the Divine Conservation
and the Divine Concurrence.55

48. “Therefore all the actions and movements of all creatures
exist on account of the Divine Goodness ... in the sense that they
are to acquire it in their own way, by sharing to some extent in
a likeness of it.” Compendium, clip. 103.
49. “Each thing imitates the Divine Goodness according to its
own manner.” Cont. Gen., Ill, 20.
50. “Order towards good is itself a good . . . Now everything
insofar as it is the cause of another, is directed to a good.” Coni.
Gen. Ill, 21.
51. “From the fact that they acquire the Divine Goodness, crea­
tures are made like unto God.” Cont. Gen., Ill, 19.
52. “Things tend to be like God insofar as He is good ...
Now it is out of His goodness that God bestows being on others, for
all things act inasmuch as they are actually perfect." Ibid.
53. “Wherefore there are two effects of government, the preser­
vation of things in their goodness, and the moving of things to
good.” S.T. I, 103, 4, c.

41

I. Divine Conservation
Although God does use intermediaries in the workings
of Divine Providence we must not think that He Himself
is far off and that His creative act is something past and
static. St. Paul calls upon us to realize that God is “not
far from every one of us: for in Him we live, and move,
and have our being’* (Acts XVII:27). Every creature de­
pends upon God for its very existence.54 A great river
seems to take care of itself and is completely independent
of anything else. But if one were to analyze the very exist­
ence of a river it would become evident that this is not
the case. For the great river depends on a thousand little
streams for its very existence. If all the small brooks were
to dry up and the tiny streams which flow from them
were to cease flowing then the great river would soon dis­
appear. For it cannot for one instant claim self-sufficiency.
To continue in existence the great river needs a constant
influx of water. Its very being consists in the water which
flows into it from a thousand tiny tributaries. These latter
do not make the river and then leave it. If they were to
stop making the river it would cease to be.
Sometimes men are inclined to think of creation as
a past benefit, very much as we think of a plaything of
our childhood as something we enjoyed then, but which
has long since passed out of our lives. But creation is not
static: it is essentially dynamic.55 And so Guardini writes
of the Divine Creator as “One Who is continually lifting
54. "For the creature needs to be preserved by God insofar as
the being of an effect depends on the cause of its being." S.T.
I, 104, 1, ad 2.
55. "Since God not only gave existence to things when they
first began to exist, but also causes existence in them as long as
they exist, by preserving them in existence." Cont. Gen. ΙΠ, 67.

42

existence out of nothingness, Who constantly and totally
effects it.”56 This doctrine is most reasonable and most
sound since
. no effect can be endowed with power of
self-preservation.” 57
The complete and total dependence of man upon
God is never seen more clearly than in this doctrine of
divine conservation. It should be noted that this sustaining
influence is not a new act, or a multiplicity of new acts,
on the part of God. It is one continuous action which is
without either motion or time.5859St. Thomas compares
the divine preservation to the preservation of light by the
sun. God is directly, by Himself, the Cause of every existence,
and communicates existence to all things just as the sun com­
municates light to air and to whatever else is illuminated by
the sun. The continuous shining of the sun is required for
the preservation of light in the air; similarly, God must un­
ceasingly confer existence on things if they are to persevere
, in existence. Thus, all things are related to God as ail object
made is to its maker, and this not only insofar as they begin
to exist, but insofar as they continue to exist.59

In the continuous execution of the plans of divine
providence there is no change, no succession in the creative
set itself since it is eternal and immutable. “There can
be no before and after in God." 60 However, the verifi56. Romano Guardini, The Conversion of Augustine (Westmin­
ster, Md.: Newman Press, I960), p. 121.
57. S.T. I, 104, 2, ad 2.
58. "The preservation of things by God is a continuation of
that action whereby He gives existence, which action is without
either motion or time.” S.T. I, 104, 1, ad 4.
59. Compendium of Theology, chp. 130.
60. Cont. Gen., I, 58.

48·

·

■■

cation of the creative act, which takes place in time, in­
volves both change and succession in the created object. As
the sun is the only source of light to this planet, so God
is the only source of conservation to the universe. “The
cause of a thing’s needs must be the same as the cause of
its preservation; because preservation is nothing else than
continued existence.” 61 Thus it is in this sense that it is
said that: “Providence is God’s continual act, interplay of
relations, as effecting of events.”6263
65
64
This preservation of creatures in existence by God is
not the immediate providence of God at work. It is here
that we see the order among things which God has
established.
God created all things immediately, but in the creation itself
He established an order among things, so that some depend
on others, by which they are preserved in being, though He
remains the principal cause of their preservation.63

In conclusion, then, it is evident that since the divine
operation of conserving things is the same operation as
creating them, it is clear that God could not possibly
enable a creature to keep itself in existence without His
assistance; to do so would be to cause something to be
uncaused.
Accordingly, the statement that a thing does not need God
to uphold its existence implies that it is not created by God;
while the statement that such a thing is produced by God
implies that it is created by Him. Wherefore, just as it would
involve a contradiction to say that God produced a thing that
61. Cont. Gen., IH, 65.
62. Guardini, op. cit., p. 123.
63. S.T. I, 104, 2, ad 1.

was not created by Him. Even so it would involve a contra­
diction were one to say that God made a thing that did not
need to be kept in existence by Him.®!

II. Divine Concurrence

The second effect of Divine Providence is the action
of God in the action of every created agent, giving it its
power to act, moving it to act, and producing the effect
which it produces. In all things that operate God is the
Cause of their operating.
AU power of any agent whatsoever is from God, as from the
first principle of all perfection. Therefore since all operation
is consequent to some power, it follows that God is the Cause
of every operation's

Therefore, every agent in the universe is an instrument
in the hands of God. He produces, as First Cause, the
effects which the natural agent produces as secondary
cause.66 The secondary cause does act by its own power
but is always in subordination to the First Cause.67 But
because God is Pure Act and preserves things in being by
64. De Pot., V, 2, c; cf. S.T. I, 104, 1, ad 2.
65. Cont. Gen., Ill, 67.
66. “In the order of active cause, the more perfect is naturally
first; and in this way nature makes a beginning with perfect things,
since the imperfect is not brought to perfection except by some­
thing perfect already in existence." S.T. Π-Π. 1. 7, ad 3.
67. “Since then existence is the effect common to all agents,
for every agent makes a thing to be actually; it follows that they
produce this effect insofar as they are subordinate to the first agent,
and act by its power.” Cont. Gen. Ill, 66.

His providence, it is by His power that a thing causes
being, that is, is enabled to bring about an effect.6869
Since the natural agent acts only by powers of God
in which it participated, and since the effect which it pro­
duces is due primarily and chiefly to God, God operates
in the operation of every natural agent as a principal cause
in an instrumental cause.
- St. Thomas summarizes the teaching on divine concur­
rence in these words:
If, then, we consider the subsistent agent, every particular
agent is immediate to its effect. But if we consider the power '
whereby the action is done, then the power of the higher
cause is more immediate to the effect than the power of the
lower cause, since the power of the lower cause is not coupled
with its effect save by the power of the higher cause; where­
fore . . . the power of the first cause takes the first place in
the production of the effect and enters more deeply therein
. . . Consequently, we may say that God works in everything
forasmuch as everything needs His power in order that it
’ may act.. .* Therefore God is the cause Of everything’s actions ■
inasmuch as He (1) gives everything the power to act, and ;
. (2) preserves it in being, and (3) applies it to action, and (4)
inasmuch as by His power every power acts. And if we add
to this that God is His own power, and that He is in all
things, not às part of their essence, but as upholding them
in being, we shall conclude that He acts in every agent im­
mediately, without prejudice to the action of the will and of
nature.6®

Though God does act immediately in every agent that
agent still acts with complete freedom. The action of the
68. "Nothing gives being except insofar as it is a being in act.
Now God preserves things in being by His providence. Therefore
it is by God's power that a thing causes being.” Cant. Gen. Ill, 66.
69. De Pot., Ill, 7.

46

First Cause does not mean that the agent's free will is less­
ened or taken away. On the contrary, the individual re­
ceives his freedom from God and therefore “the more effi­
cacious God is in a man, the freer that man becomes.
The more exclusively and all-inclusively God acts in him,
the more truly does a man’s action become his own.”70

DIVINE PROVIDENCE AND ITS IMPLICATION
FOR EDUCATION

For the educator, for the teacher, for the learner the
effect of God’s providence ramifies into a thousand dif­
ferent areas. It is here that we find the ultimate answer
to all the questions about life. For Christ has told us:
"Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And not one
of them shall fall to the ground without your Father. But
the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not
therefore; better are you than many sparrows” (Matt.
X:28). Every person that has ever lived has come under
the providence of God. Every moment of our existence
has been watched over by the Creator of all existence.
There is not one detail that has been missed by Divine
Providence and this is reflected in every event which
affects a child in any way from the first moment of con­
ception to the attainment of eternal salvation. He is born
of these parents who may be Catholic or Protestant; Jew
or Gentile; rich or poor; black or white. It is this par­
ticular century, in this particular environment, at this
particular hour. He goes to a particular school and comes
into contact with teacher and companions with their com­
plex backgrounds each of which has a varied influence on
70. Guardini, op. cit., p. 128.

47

him. The world may be at war or enjoying peace in a
climate that is hot or cold. All these things have a fore­
ordained purpose in the divine plan. Not one of these
events is a waste, as it were. “Those things that are of
God are ordained by Him” (Rom. XII: 1). Nothing is too
small nor too insignificant that it is deemed worthless
or useless in the eternal blueprint of the Supreme Archi­
tect In this doctrine we find the basis for our confidence
in a provident Father: “Seek ye therefore first the king­
dom of God and His justice; and all these things shall be
added unto you. Be not therefore solicitous for tomorrow;
for the morrow will be solicitous for itself. Sufficient for
thé day is the evil thereof” (Matt. VI:34). Thus there is
some higher, some eternal purpose to which the divine
governance directs all things.
This is true not only for all the evident good that is
brought about but even for the evil that is permitted to
happen. This can be seen in the words of Christ: “Blessed
are they that suffer persecution for justice sake: for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. V:IO). St. Paul also
shows how this universal and infallible providence directs
all things to a good purpose, not excluding evil, which it
permits without in any way causing it. He writes these
words to the Romans: “We glory also in tribulations,
knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience
trial; and trial hope; and hope confoundeth not; because
the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts, by the
Holy Ghost who is given to us” (Rom. V: 3).
The providence of God is clearly illustrated by Our
Lord in the parables of the prodigal son, the lost sheep,
the good shepherd, and the talents. It would not be too
rash, therefore, to say that a failure in school or a bad
teacher or poor textbook definitely come under the divine
providence. There is a purpose here that is not entirely
48

clear in the immediate present but, as in many other cases,
will become clear at some future time. In regard to divine
governance there are no accidents. Everything has its
proper place in the plan of God.

PARENTS AND TEACHERS AS INSTRUMENTS OF
DIVINE PROVIDENCE
It has already been pointed out that God uses inter­
mediaries in the execution of divine providence. “Divine
providence disposes not only what effects shall take place,
but also from what causes and in what order these effects
shall proceed.” 71 The order of things is such that certain
human beings govern and direct certain other human
beings. This is the case with parents and teachers who
are the principal cooperators in the divine order of things.
Parents not only cooperate with the Creator in the gen­
eration of life itself but are also responsible for the edu­
cation and training of their offspring. “But Christian par­
ents must also understand that they are destined not only
to propagate and preserve the human race on earth, indeed
not only to educate any kind of worshipers of the true
God, but children who are to become members of the
Church of Christ, to raise up fellow citizens of the saints,
and members of God’s household, that the worshipers of
God and our Saviour may daily increase.” 72
Parents are definitely part of a destiny which is divine
and therefore makes them a precious instrument to the
hands of God. Pope Pius XII speaking on the Respons·
71. S.T. II-II, 88, 2, c.
, 72. Raymond B. Fullam (ed.), The Popes on Youth (Buffalo:
Canisius High School, 1956), pp. 287-88.

<

49

bilities of Catholic Men calls parents ‘‘the first educators"
of their children:
Those parents merit much from the Church and society, who,
conscious of their great responsibilities, exert themselves to
become the first educators of their children; by word and
example inciting to every Christian doctrine and showing
their children how to practice their faith in their ordinary
lives. But those parents who do not feel this responsibility
and do not regulate their lives by the norms of the gospels,
think only of religion as some accessory thing or something
which may easily be tossed aside.?s

The whole doctrine of parental rights in education
can be ultimately traced to the doctrine of divine provi­
dence. For “all that happens here below is subject to di­
vine providence”;73
74 and since “the father is the principle
of generation, education, of learning,” 75 we can say that
parents have a special place in the design of God in order­
ing things in this world.
Because of the complexity of learning and education
in our civilization it becomes necessary for the parents to
delegate, not by choice'but by obligation,7677
to those who
will fulfill this task completely and competently. The
teacher becomes another human instrument that is used
by God in His eternal plan. In a later chapter we will
discuss at length the role of the teacher in learning and
education for the true work of a teacher cannot be over­
estimated since it carries with it so weighty a responsibility.
73. Ibid., p. 24).
71. S.T., I, 116, l.c
75. S.T., H-II, 102, 1, c.
76. Sister M. Bernard Francis Loughery, Parental Rights in
American Educational Law (Washington: Catholic University, 1957),
p. 5.

50

Pope Pius XII calls the teacher a direct collaborator in
the work of God and His Church:
Here is the reason why, in expressing our pleasure in receiving
you, (Union of Italian Teachers), we speak as direct collaborators in this, the work of God and His Church, perhaps the
most noble of all undertakings, even according to the unani­
mous opinion of human wisdom, as represented by Cicero,
who looked upon the world with pagan eyes. “What public
office,” he wrote, “can we exercise greater or better than the
teaching and the instruction of youth?” Thus, the responsi­
bility that we have in common is immense, and though in
different degrees, it is not in completely different spheres.
It is the responsibility for souls, for civilization, for the im­
provement and happiness of man both on earth and in
heaven.??

GOD: The Principal Teacher
Because we are concerned with the efficient causes of
learning we have discussed God, the First Cause and the
role of Divine Providence in our lives, especially in the
field of education. At this point we must see more specifi­
cally how God is a true teacher. Does God have a true
role to play in learning and education? We have already
seen that “the knowledge of God is the Cause of all
things;” 78 and also that “God works in such a manner
that things have their proper operation.”79 Therefore,
though it is true to say that “the intellectual operation is
performed by the intellect in which it exists,”80 it must
77.
78.
79.
80.

Fullam, op. cit., p. 279.
S.T., I, 14, 8, c;I, 14, 9, ad 3: I, 19, 4, ad 4.
S.T. I, 105, 5, c.
Ibid., c, ad 1.

51

not be forgotten that “it is a secondary principle and de­
pends upon the First Principle." 81 Hence, God moves the
created intellect8283
84
and by Him the power to understand
is given to the one who understands.85 Thus St. Thomas
concludes that “we always need God’s help for every
thought, inasmuch as He moves the understanding to
act.” 84
God moves the created intellect in two ways.
For He is the First immaterial Being; and as intellectuality
is a result of immateriality, it follows that He is the First
intelligent Being. Therefore since in each order the first is
the cause of all that follows, we must conclude that from
Him proceeds all intellectual power. In like manner, since
He is the First Being, and all other beings exist in Him as
in their First Cause, it follows that they exist intelligibly in
Him, after the mode of His own Nature. For as the intelligible
types of everything exist first of all in God, and are derived
from Him by other intellects in order that these may actually
understand; so also are they derived by creatures that they
may subsistas

h

Therefore, God moves the created intellect by giving
to it intellectual power and secondly, by impressing on
the created intellect the intelligible species. Moreover, He
maintains and preserves both power and species in exist­
ence for “God not only gives things their form, but He
preserves them in existence, and applies them to act and
is the end of every action." 86
This is all in accord with the established order of
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.
Ί6.

Ibid., ad 2.
Ibid., ad 3.
Ibid., ad 1.
S.T., HI, 109, 1, ad 3.
S.T., 105, 4, c.
S.T., I, 105, 5, ad 3.

52

nature. “IE therefore we consider the order of things de­
pending on the First Cause, God cannot do anything
against this order.” 87 Even from the point of view of
secondary causes this is true; for He is not subject to
secondary causes. “Wherefore God can do something out­
side this order created by Him, when He chooses, for
instance by producing the effects of secondary causes with­
out them, or producing certain effects to which secondary
causes do not extend.”88 Therefore, we can conclude with
St Thomas:
The thing that underlies primarily all things, belongs properly
to the causality of the supreme cause. Therefore no secondary
cause can produce anything, unless there is presupposed in
the thing produced something that is caused by a higher
cause .89

St. Thomas is also careful to note that even though
“God works sufficiently in things as First Agent, it does
not follow from this that the operation of secondary causes
is superfluous.”90 This point will be enlarged upon in
our treatment of the secondary causes of learning, namely,
the pupil and the teacher. The important fact here that
we wish to be clear is that "man cannot even know truth
without divine help.” 91
Consequently, whenever a natural agent produces an
effect, God (a) moves the agent, applying its power to the
production, as does any principal cause, and (b) He pro­
duces in the effect what is primary and most common,
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.

S.T., I, 105, 6, c.
Ibid.
S.T., I, 65, 3, c.
S.T., 105, 5, ad 1.
S.T., I II. 109, 2, ad 3.

53

ri* 'l· β
namely, being.9* Therefore, since the natural agent acts
only by the power of God in which it participates, and
since the effect which it produces is due primarily and
chiefly to God, God operates in the operation of every
natural agent as a principal cause in an instrumental
cause.92
93
From the preceding consideration another one follows
very clearly, namely that both the truth of things and the
truth of human intellects are from and depend upon the
first truth, that is to say, the truth of the divine intellect
upon which things depend for their being.
If we speak of truth as it is in things, then all things are true
by one primary truth; to which each one is assimilated accord-

92. Brother Benignus, op. cit., p. 586.
93. A good summary of all that we have said so far about how
God operates in the operation of every natural agent can be found
in these words of St. Thomas: “If, then, we consider the subsistent
agent, every particular agent is immediate to its eSect. But if we
consider the power whereby the action is done, then the power of
the higher cause is more immediate to the effect than the power
of the lower cause, since the power of the lower cause is not coupled
with its effect save by the power of the higher cause; wherefore .,.
the power of the first cause takes the first place in the production
of the effect and enters more deeply therein . . . Consequently, we
may say that God works in everything for as much as everything
needs His power in order that it may act . . . Therefore God is
the cause of everything’s action inasmuch as He (I) gives everything
the power to act, and (2) preserves it in being, and (3) applies it
to action, and (4) inasmuch as by His power every other power
acts. And if we add to this that God is His own power and that
He is in all things, not as part of their essence, but as upholding
them in being, we shall conclude that He acts in every agent im­
mediately, without prejudice to the action of the will and of nature."
De Pot., HI, 7.

ing to its ■ own entity. And thus, although the essences or
forms of things are many, yet the truth of the Divine Intellect
is one, in conformity to which all things are said to be true.9'

The divine intellect measures or determines the truth
of things, since it gives them their being and the relation
of that being to itself. It gives them also their truth in
reference to human intellects, since in this respect they
are true insofar as they are knowable, and they are know­
able by virtue of their forms; 94
9596and these forms, which
are the principles by which things are what they are, are
from the Divine Intellect, the Creator, who is the exem­
plary and efficient cause of all things. Finally, since human
intellects are true insofar as they are in conformity with
things and since they are in such conformity only insofar
as they possess the forms of things and predict these of
things, it is manifest that their truth is from the intellect
whence these are, and whence their own nature, power
and operation are: the creative intellect of God. Hence,
the divine intellect is the first truth and the source of all
truth.90
Since truth is the proper subject matter of education
it is important that this source of truth be recognized in
any discussion on teaching and learning. Again, since God
is the end of all things, including education, it should be
noted that “the only natural desire for God recognized by
Sl Thomas is the necessary tendency in every created in­
tellect towards the possession of the truth, a tendency
that cannot be satisfied by anything less than a knowledge
94. S.T., I, 16, 6, c.
95. S.T., I, 16, 2. c.
96. De Vcrit., I, 8, c.

55

■Mt

and vision of God.” 97 Thus it is said that the intellect
by nature is impatient of ignorance.
LUMEN INTELLECTUALE

St. Thomas speaks of the intellectual virtue of the
creature as an “intelligible light derived from the prime
light” 98 and as a certain participated likeness of the un­
created light in which are found the rationes aeternae”99
It is by reason of this shared light which is essential to it
that the soul merits being called an intellectual sub­
stance.100 God causes it to be connaturally present in the
soul. Later on we shall see how the human intellect is
strengthened by the light of faith and the gifts of the
Holy Ghost.
. . . human knowledge is assisted by the revelation of grace.
For the intellect’s natural light is strengthened by the infusion
of gratuitous light.101

Divine operation is so necessary for man’s cognition
(natural as well as supernatural) that He must not alone
confer and conserve the intellectual light in being but
must also direct and move it to action.102 This follows
97. William R. O’Connor, The Eternal Quest (New York: Long­
mans, Green, & Co., 1947), p. 180. (Courtesy of David McKay
Company)
98. S.T., I, 12, 2, c.
99. S.T., I, 84, 5, c.
100. De Verit., XII, 1, c.
101. S.T., I, 12, 13, c.
102. Francis X. Meehan, "Lux in Spiritualibus According to
the Mind of St. Thomas Aquinas,” Philosophical Studies in Honor
of The Very Reverend Ignatius Smith, OJ*. (Westminster: Newman
Press, 1952), p. 155.

from the Thomistic teaching that God’s activity is re­
quired in the operation of every creature.103
105
104
God, then, causes the activity of finite intellection,
though not in the sense that there is no proper causality
of the created intellect. The natural light concreated with
the intellective substance is itself an active power which
functions in a true but subordinated fashion under the
influence of the Prime Cause. “The divine element in
human cognition does not consist in an enlightenment
that is over and above the illuminative power of the fac­
ulty’s indigenous light, but simply in moving this light to
its proper object. Such movement is most necessary, nat­
ural, intimate and interior.” 104 St. Thomas gives this
analogy:
The material sun sheds its light outside us; but the intelligible
Sun, Who is God, shines within us. Hence the natural light
bestowed upon the soul is God’s enlightenment, whereby we
are enlightened to see what pertains to natural knowledge.105

Thus, it is said that the human understanding has an
“intelligible light, which of itself is sufficient for knowing
certain intelligible things.”106 The certain intelligible
things of which St. Thomas speaks is that knowledge which
is had through the senses. To come to a knowledge of
higher intelligible things a stronger light is necessary as
we have seen in our discussion on Faith. “Hence, we must
say that for the knowledge of any truth whatsoever man
needs Divine help, that the intellect may be moved by
God to its act. But he does not need a new light added
103.
104.
105.
106.

Cont. Gen., Ill, 67; S.T., I, 105, 5, c; III, 109, 1, c.
Meehan, op. cit., p. 115.
S.T., I II, 109, 2, ad 2.
Ibid., c.

57

to his natural light, in order to know the truth of
all things, but only in some that surpass his natural
knowledge.” 107
Not all things are equally intelligible to the human
mind, nor are all things that are intelligible equally near
to its light.108 “Therefore man gains knowledge of things
he does not know through two things: intellectual light
and self-evident primary concepts. The latter have the
same relation to the intellectual light of the agent intellect
as tools to the craftsman.” 109 One of the weaknesses of
human intellects is that they labor under the need of
progressing from known intelligibles to those previously
unknown, inferentially deduced by the process of reason­
ing. Participating only minimally in intellectual light, its
advance toward the fullness of truth must be successive
and gradual; it must proceed by means of its light from
basic conceptions and first principles to the investigation
of unknown fields. “For God endows our nature with the
knowledge of first principles.” 110 They are known intui­
tively, effortlessly by a simple inspection of them under
the natural light.111 There is nothing there unless and
until the intelligible species in which they are expressed
have been first formed by the light of the agent intellect
operating on sense phantasms.112 Being, non-being, whole
and part are known “through the intelligible species which
he has received from phantasms.” 118 And since prime
principles must be expressed in these concepts it is clear
107.
108.
109.
110.
111.
112.
113.

Ibid.
De Verit., XI, 3, c.
Ibid.
De Vent., XVII, 1, ad 6.
Meehan, op. cit., p. 158.
De Verit., II, 1, c
S.T., I-II, 51, 1, c.

58

that they are not ready-given as part of the mental equip­
ment with which man is bom as is the case with the
natural light itself. They are subsequent to and dependent
on the activity of the agent intellect and stand in relation
to it as the prime effects of its causality: *’. . . phantasms
cannot of themselves affect the passive intellect, (but) re­
quire to be made actually intelligible by the active
intellect.” 114
Man is said to be divinely endowed with the knowledge
of first principles because God is the author of nature
which under Him so readily forms them by means of its
intellectual light. Thus God is truly a teacher:
That which is introduced into the soul of the student by the
teacher is contained in the knowledge of the teacher . . .
Now, the knowledge of the principles which are known to us
naturally has been implanted in us by God: for God is the
Author of nature. These principles, therefore, are also con­
tained by the Divine Wisdom.1!5

Weak though our intellectual light is, all men nor­
mally, naturally apprehend the truth of these principles
by reason of their specifically similar nature.116 By means
of them we judge everything else. Because of their evi­
dence they are the deepest ground of certitude. They are
focal points for the illumination of all subsequent truth.117
Without them there would be no reasoning to certain con­
clusions from known premises, since they must illumine
all other premises and less universal principles.118 Th»·
114.
115.
116.
117.
118.

S.T., I, 84, 6, c; I, 86, 2, a
Cont. Gen., I, 7.
De Spirit. Creat., 1, 9, c.
S.T., Π-ΙΙ, 171, 2, c.
De Verit., XI, 1. c.

entire certitude of all the sciences arises from the certitude
of the principles. Conclusions are known with certitude
only when resolved into principles and ultimately into the
prime principles.
The whole certainty of scientific knowledge arises from the
certainty of principles . . . that something is known with cer­
tainty is due to the light of reason divinely implanted within
us, by which God speaks within us.1 *9

Thus we conclude that the intellect of the creature is
perfected only by the possession of truth and will reach
the consummation of its perfection only when and if, like
the water that has flowed from its fountain source, it is
elevated and reverts to its principle where it can gaze
ultimately upon revealed Truth Itself. If man is faithful
to the light given him then he cannot but help grow in
truth. By docility to it he will discover the will of God in
himself and in all things. The love of truth will bring
him back eventually to the luminous source of all truth,
when in the presence of unveiled light he shall see all
light as is given to all lovers of truth to see. "Therefore,
it must be said that to see God there is required some
similitude in the visual faculty, namely, the light of glory
strengthening the intellect to see God, which is spoken of
in the Psalm (XXXV: 10), ‘In Thy light we shall see
light/ ” 119
120121

Thus, “due to the light of reason divinely im­
planted within us, by which God speaks within us,” Kl
119. Ibid., ad 13.
120. S.T., I, 12, 2, c.
121. S.T., I, 117, 1, ad 4.

60

we conclude that "God alone teaches interiorly and
principally.’’122123
124
Now, God in a most excellent way causes man’s knowledge
. . . For He adorned the soul itself with intellectual light and
imprinted on it the concepts of the first principles, which are,
as it were, the sciences in embryo, just as He impressed on
other physical things the seminal principles for producing all
their effects.123

All human teaching depends upon man’s possession
of this intellectual light. It is God, the Giver of this light,
therefore, Who is the principal teacher.
Now this light of reason ... is placed in us by God, as
though a certain likeness of the divine truth taking up its
abode with us. Whence, since all human teaching cannot have
efficacy except from the power of this light, it is clear that
it is God alone Who teaches interiorly and principally, as
nature is also the principal healer.

So it is written of God: "He that teaches man knowl­
edge” (Psalm CH:3), inasmuch as “the light of His coun­
tenance is signed upon us” (Psalm IV:7). It is through
this light that all things are shown to us. For “the teacher
only brings exterior help, as the physician who heals: but
just as the interior nature is the principle cause of knowl­
edge. But both of these are from God.” 125

122.
123.
124.
125.

De Verit., XI 1, c.
Ibid., XI, 3, c.
Ibid., XI, 1, c.
S.T.,1, 117, I, ad 1.

61

LEARNING AND THE GIFTS OF THE
HOLY GHOST
What is beyond the power of human extrinsic agents,
is possible to the Divine Teacher of soul, Who dwells
immanently in the learner and Who exercises over him a
strong, yet gentle and freedom-respecting influence. No
finite nature can acquire all the knowledge to which it
tends without first having in its possession the habits or
virtues that are necessary in order to bring about a pro­
portion of equality between the power of understanding
and the object to be understood. Thus we will focus our
attention on the Primary Cause as He is operative through
the gifts of the Holy Ghost. This is another way in which
God may be said to be the Principal Teacher in the
teaching-learning situation. As Poggi has pointed out:
"Only the Holy Ghost, hidden within the depths of the
heart, can bring to fruition the efforts and good-will of
His secondary instruments. He is the source of those
truths which human agents attempt to transmit.” 126 These
supernatural realities, which place their subject in direct
contact with the Author of all truth, function as further
principles in the acquisition of even natural truth. There­
fore a student who is in the state of grace, in whose heart
the Holy Ghost abides, is even better equipped as a
seeker of truth than his fellow who has the faith, but
who lacks charity and the gifts.
It should be clearly understood that the gifts of the
Holy Ghost do not assist in the pursuit of natural learning.
They do not supplant the natural human reason in its
126. James E. Poggi, "The Gilts of the Holy Ghost and Their
Implications for Education," (Unpublished master’s thesis. Catholic
University of America, Dept, of Education, 1955), p. 121.

62

work of acquiring and understanding truth. “The order
of grace neither abolishes nor violates the limits of na­
ture.” 127 The gifts do not substitute for the hard work
which reason must pay as the price for the acquisition of
truth. There is no supernatural communication of natural
truths. Human reason, in regard to its own proper object,
must always act on its own level and according to its own
laws. “Faith and the gifts of the Holy Ghost, in making
perfect the reason, ônly clarify the sight.” 128
With this reservation, how can it be said that the
gifts facilitate natural learning? They do so in two gen­
eral ways: (1) negatively, by guarding the mind from
error through a relation of the natural truths to the
supernatural; (2) positively, by favoring a synthetic, har­
monious view of reality through an integration of super­
natural and natural truths.
The intellectual gifts exercise a purifying influence
upon the mind. Through the gifts of Understanding, Wis­
dom and Knowledge the Holy Ghost maintains a mental
balance and accuracy. By Understanding the student is
given a correct estimate of his supernatural end, the first
prerequisite for correctly evaluating lesser and subordinate
ends. The judgment is actually carried through by the
gifts of Wisdom and Knowledge. It is the nature of these
gifts to judge of human and created things in the light of
the Divine, the former by proceeding from the highest
causes to the lower; the latter by ascending from created
realities to the first causes themselves.129 Thus through
the operations of these gifts, whatever is presented to the
127.
Charles
128.
129.

Jacques Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge (New Yorik:
Scribner’s Sons, 1959), p. 428.
Ibid.
Poggi, op. cit., p. 108.

63

mind of the student in the course of his academic pursuits
will be weighed and tested in the light of ultimate values.
If there be any inconsistence between the two truths, it
will be unveiled through the hidden action of the Spirit.
The pupil will at least sense implicitly, by a certain super­
natural instinct, that all is not well. He will suspend
judgment until he has had recourse to better informed
authorities.
The gifts of the Holy Ghost contribute to the effective­
ness of natural learning in a second way by inclining the
student to the formation of an integrated view of reality.
It is not enough that individual truths be learned. To
grasp their full significance they must be studied in rela­
tion to other truths, especially to those principles and
causes of a higher order from which they emanate. “To
form the intelligence is to reveal to the student the splen­
dor of order.” 130 For knowledge, to be true and valid,
must proceed along the lines in which reality itself is
constructed.
The efforts of reason to arrive at integration are sec­
onded and facilitated by the operations of the Holy Spirit
through the intellectual gifts of Wisdom and Knowledge.
Let it again be stated that these gifts do not supplant the
work of reason. However, in their own proper mode of
action, through an interior movement flowing from union
with the Divine Truth itself, they come to the aid of
weak human reason, lifting it up and compensating for
its deficiencies in its strivings to view its findings under
the light of the highest Truth. For “. . . it is a general law
that the lower . . . without quitting its own proper and
130. J. Rutche, Le Saint-Esprit et l’Education (Quebec: Libraire
De L’Action Catholique, 1940), p. 24.

64

specific limits—tends towards the higher and seeks to enter
into continuity with it.”131
Thus through the gifts of the Holy Spirit we can see
the working of the Divine Causality in the teaching­
learning situation. By focusing special attention upon His
direct operations through these intellectual gifts we have
a more precise picture of God’s efficient Causality in
education.

THE GIFT OF FAITH AND LEARNING
A consideration of Faith is appropriate at this point be­
cause the gifts of the Holy Ghost pertain in a special way
to Faith since they ultimately spring from it as from
their root and faith opens up to the pupil vast areas of
knowledge which otherwise would remain closed to him.
The Vatican Council has defined Faith as “. . . a
supernatural virtue, whereby inspired and assisted by the
grace of God, we believe that the things which He has
revealed are true; not because the intrinsic truth of the
things is plainly perceived by the natural light of reason
but because of the authority of God Himself, "Who re­
veals them and Who can neither be deceived nor
deceive.” 132
Faith in itself is a total, but naked, acceptance of God’s
truth on the word of God revealing. It puts the Christian
in direct contact with the supernatural truths which form
the basis of the Christian life. But this virtue, taken purely
131. Maritain, op. cit., p. 350.
132. Vincent McNabb, (ed) The Decrees of the Vatican Council
(London: Burns & Oates, 1907), p. 22.

65

by itself, has certain limitations. Faith is of its nature
dark, obscure, blind. It does not accept truth because it
can see and understand it, but only because God has re­
vealed it, Who is Truth Itself and cannot deceive. “The
principal object of faith is the First Truth,” 133 and “the
merit of faith arises from this, that at God’s bidding man
believes what he does not see . . . reason debars merit of
faith which enables one to see by knowledge what is pro­
posed for belief.” 154
But “reason, indeed, enlightened by faith,” states the
Vatican Council, "when it seeks earnestly, piously and
calmly, attains by a gift from God some, and that a very
fruitful, understanding of mysteries.” 135 It is the function
of the intellectual gifts to supplement Faith, and, by a
penetration and judgment of the supernatural truths pro­
posed by Faith, to remedy its intrinsic defect. “Faith pre­
supposes natural knowledge, even as grace presupposes
nature, and perfection supposes something that can be
perfected.” 136
In this matter the gifts of the Holy Ghost must be
very carefully distinguished from faith itself and from dis­
cursive wisdom. “. . . Faith causes man to assent to the
truths of revelation without investigating them by the
processes of reason.” 1,7 Subaltemated to Faith there is
discursive or theological wisdom which formulates judg­
ments which proceed
. . discursively and are based on
knowledge that is acquired by study, although its princi138. S.T., ΙΙ-Π, 5, 1, c.
134. S.T., III, 55, 5, ad 2.
135. McNabb, op. cit., p. 26.
136. S.T., 1, 2, 2, ad 1.
137. Thomas Donlan, O.P., Theology and Educaion (Dubuque:
W. Brown fe Co., 1952), p. 4.

66

/ï

pies are obtained by revelation.” 1S8 Finally, supplementary
to Faith but above theological wisdom, there is the infused
gift of Wisdom, by which “. . . man is inclined to judge
reality from the divine aspect by a kind of inclination or
instinct which is divinely inspired.”189
To believe is one thing. To speculate and meditate
upon the truths of Faith and to draw conclusions from
them according to the human manner of reasoning is yet
another. But to know these truths directly, to be placed
in immediate contact with them and to experience some­
thing of their beauty and grandeur through the inner im­
pulse of the Holy Spirit, is something else again; and it
is this last mode of supernatural knowledge which is the
particular feature of the intellectual gifts of the Holy
Ghost.
. Through the gifts of Understanding, Wisdom and
Knowledge man’s knowledge of divine things is, as it
were, brought into harmony with God’s own knowledge
of Himself. The human intellect is made “connatural”
to God’s way of knowing. "Face to face with God we
have no other means of surpassing knowledge by concepts
than our connatural knowledge, or 'co-naissance’ as Clau­
del has called it, our co-nativity with Him.” 138
140
139
We conclude, therefore, that God is the principal agent
in the communication of new knowledge, since He is the
author of human intellectual power which is in the human
teacher and the learner. He is also the creative First
Cause of the learner’s perception of the truth and the
certitude of what is proposed to him in instruction.
138. Ibid.
139. Ibid.
140. Maritain, op. cit., p. 321.

67

SUMMARY
In this chapter we have discussed the role of Divine
Causality in the teaching-learning situation. From a con­
sideration of Divine Providence, which extends to all
creatures, we saw that God not only conserves all beings
in existence but also gives to every created agent its power
to act by moving it to act and by producing the effect
which it produces. In the execution of His Providence
it was made clear that God uses intermediaries as His
instruments.
Not only is God the First Principle of all operations
of creatures but He is also the Author of nature. As such
He has endowed human nature with the light of reason
and has given to whom He will the added light of faith
and the gifts of the Holy Ghost which enable man to
come to knowledge of things that would otherwise remain
closed to him. In this way we have shown that God
teaches principally and interiorly.
In the following chapters we will attempt to examine
the relationship between Divine Causality and the roles
played by the learner and the teacher in the teaching­
learning situation.

68

CHAPTER III
THE PUPIL AS THE EFFICIENT
CAUSE OF HIS OWN KNOWLEDGE

In the preceding chapter we discussed God, the First
Cause, and the role which He plays in the teachinglearning situation. It was pointed out that the pupil is
not the total cause of any knowledge that he may possess
as the result of teaching. He, with the teacher, is a sec­
ondary cause under God for whatever is learned through
the cooperative activity of teaching and learning. Both
the teacher and the pupil are partial causes of the end
result, namely, the new knowledge acquired by the pupil.
Not all learning, of course, requires a teacher. There
is much that the pupil discovers for himself. In this latter
instance, the learner is not a partial cause, but the total
cause of his knowledge at the level of secondary causes.
As has been pointed out no one may be said to be the
total cause of any knowledge that he possesses in view of
the Divine Causality which is ultimately responsible for
the activity of all secondary causes or agents. But focusing
our attention on secondary causes the student may be
said to be the total cause of whatever he has learned
through discovery.
Our precise problem in this chapter, however, is to
investigate the exact nature of the efficient causality of

69

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the pupil in the teaching-learning situation and to deter­
mine more precisely how the pupil exercises his own
efficient causality as a partial cause in cooperation with
the teacher as another efficient and partial cause of what­
ever is learned in this situation.

DISCOVERY AND LEARNING
THROUGH INSTRUCTION
As a preface to our remarks on the pupil as an efficient
cause of his own knowledge in the teaching-learning situ­
ation, it is necessary to distinguish between the two ways
of learning.
Learning Through Discovery. The process through
which the mind acquires knowledge through discovery is
•somewhat complex. Man’s mind, at birth, is a tabula rasa
—a blank tablet. Knowledge begins with the senses. Nihil
in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensibus. But knowl­
edge is much more than mere sense images or phantasms.
Both Aristotle and St. Thomas reason to the existence
of an active power within the mind which deals with
whatever the senses have presented to it. Discovery, then,
is essentially an active process.
St. Thomas speaks, moreover, of rationes seminales by
which he means certain first principles of knowledge which
exist in the mind and which are the seeds of all knowledge.
As succinctly explained by St Thomas:
< ' Certain seeds of knowledge pre-exist in us, namely the first ■
concepts of the intellect which are recognized immediately
by the light of the active intellect through the species ab­
stracted from sense presentations . . . From these universal
■ ' principles follow as from germinal capacities.*

1. De Verit., XI, 1, c.

70

It is by reason of these endowments both at the sense
level and the intellectual level that the pupil is able to
learn things by himself. Because some knowledge exists
in him in these rationes seminales the learner can reason
and acquire additional knowledge.
Learning Through Instruction. The other method by
which one learns, says St. Thomas, is through instruction
by another. It is definitely a different way of acquiring
knowledge since here there are two separate secondary
causes involved whereas in learning through discovery
there is but one secondary cause. This does not mean,
however, that learning through instruction is totally dif­
ferent from learning through discovery. Indeed St. Thomas
teaches that the teacher must keep in mind the process
by which the pupil learns through discovery and minister
accordingly. “For one man teaches another as a kind of
univocal agent and thus communicates knowledge to the
other in the same way that he himself has it.” 23But the
way in which the teacher came to this knowledge is
through a process of reasoning. “Consequently, one person
is said to teach another inasmuch as, by signs, he manifests
to that other the reasoning process which he himself goes
through by his own natural reason.” ’ Thus it may be
said that learning through instruction is not altogether
different from learning through discovery. The teacher
can only minister to the pupil. He cannot supply the light
of the pupil’s agent intellect. He merely supplies material
through which the pupil forms phantasms and the pupil’s
agent intellect can work. The words of the teacher, St.
Thomas tells us, “heard or seen in writing, have the same
efficacy in causing knowledge as things outside the soul.” 4
2. Ibid., XI, 3, ad 4.
3. Ibid., XI, 1, c.
4. Ibid., XI, 1, ad 11.

71

Learning through instruction can be said to be “. . . a
human awakening.” 5
In the following chapter on the efficient causality of
the teacher we will discuss the concept of learning through
instruction in more detail. For our present purpose let
this distinction between learning through discovery and
instruction suffice.

EFFICIENT CAUSALITY OF THE PUPIL

In the first chapter we listed the various kinds of effi­
cient causality. We explained each kind in detail. It is
our intention here to apply these descriptive definitions
to the role of the pupil in the teaching-learning situation
in order to ascertain exactly in what manner he is said
to be an efficient cause of learning.
1. The pupil is a secondary efficient cause. It has al­
ready been pointed out at some length in the second
chapter that God alone is the primary cause of all being.
Therefore all other causes are called secondary since there
can be only one Primary Cause “since the second cause
acts only in virtue of the first” 6
2. The pupil is a partial efficient cause. The total
cause accounts for the whole effect whereas the partial
cause accounts for only part of the effect. In the teaching­
learning situation the pupil is a partial cause since he
accounts for only part of the effect which results, namely,
5. Jacques Mari tain, Education at the Crossroads (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1943), p. 9.
6. S.T., I II, 19, 4, c.

72

his own knowledge. God is a Cause of this effect insofar
as He has endowed the mind of the pupil with the light
of reason and has given him the gift of intelligence. The
teacher has contributed to the production of the effect by
presenting to the intellect of the pupil the knowledge
with which he (the teacher) already possesses. Thus the
intellect of the pupil is a partial cause in the production
of the effect in the teaching-learning situation along with
God and the teacher.

3. The pupil is a physical efficient cause. The pupil is
not a moral efficient cause of his own knowledge but a
physical efficient cause. A physical cause produces its effect
by direct action towards this effect and is not necessarily
material to nature.7 This is evident by the production of
his own knowledge by the learner.
4. The pupil is a proximate efficient cause. The effect,
the pupil’s knowledge, proceeds immediately from his
intellect. Thus in the teaching-learning situation the pupil
is a proximate cause. “For the signs are not the proximate
efficient cause of knowledge, but the reason is.” 8

5. The pupil is an immanent efficient cause. The caus­
ality of the pupil does not pass from one entity to another.
“. ... acts of the intellect and will are the results of an
immanent causality.” 9
7. “. . . the intellect is a physical cause of thought. Wherefore
as is plain, physical in this place must not be identified material.’’
Thomas Harper, S.J., The Metaphysics of the School (New York:
Peter Smith, 1940), III, 16.
8. De Vent., XI, ad 4.
9. Harper, op. cit., p. 8.

73

6. The pupil is a coordinated efficient cause. A co­
ordinated cause is the same as a partial cause in that it
cooperates with the causality of God and the teacher thus
accounting for only part of the effect.

7. The pupil is a subordinated efficient cause. In the
teaching-learning situâtion the pupil depends on the caus­
ality of the First Cause and the causality of the teacher.
Thus the pupil is said to be a subordinated cause.
8. The pupil is a free efficient cause. The pupil has a
free will and therefore can make a choice as to whether
or not he will allow himself to be taught. In other words,
he has the "power of causing or not causing at his pleas­
ure.” ,0 St. Thomas observes, "Every agent acts either by
nature or by intellect.” JI The word necessary as applied
to cause means one which cannot help acting. This is not
to be understood as contra-distinguished from contingent,
but as the opposite of voluntary. Wherefore, as St. Thomas
puts it, "Will is divided from nature, as one cause from
another; for some things are produced naturally, others
voluntarily.”10
12 Thus all the operations of nature, that is,
11
unintelligent creatures, are necessary; while the operations
of the intelligent creatures, as such, are free.

I

9. The pupil is both a direct (per se) and an indirect
(per accidens) efficient cause. In the teaching-learning
situation the pupil has the intention of acquiring knowl­
edge; otherwise the effect would not take place. For the
acquisition of this knowledge depends on the pupil inas­
10. Ibid., p. 17.
11. Metaphysics 50, iii, c.
12. S.T., I II, 10, 1, ad 1.

L

■

74

much as he can refuse to learn. Thus the pupil can be
said to be the direct cause of his own knowledge since in
order to acquire it he must freely intend to acquire it.is
But it is also pointed out by St. Thomas that a thing is
the cause of another in a second way, that is, by accident.
“A thing is the cause of another in two ways; in one way
absolutely, in another way by accident. That is absolutely
the cause of another, which produces the effect according
to the virtue of its own nature or form. Whence it follows
that the effect is in itself intended by the cause . . . A
thing is cause of another by accident, if it be a cause re­
moving a prohibitive." *
14 Therefore the pupil is said tobe an accidental cause of his own knowledge insofar as
he takes steps to remove various obstacles to learning. In
other words, “That which is an efficient cause by accident
is connected to or related to the effect not by virtue of its
own nature or form, but in a variety of ways.” 15 Thus
we can say the pupil is both a direct and an indirect effi­
cient cause in the teaching-learning situation.

10. The pupil is a positive and a negative efficient
cause. As a positive cause the pupil prepares the way for
the reception of the effect. He listens to the words of the
teacher and makes a definite effort to understand what is
being taught. As a negative cause he removes any impedi­
ments to learning. He attempts to clear his mind of dis­
tractions while the teacher is speaking. Every pupil at one
time or another has the tendency to daydream about his
after school activities. By controlling these distracting
thoughts he acts as a negative cause in learning.
IS. S.T., I, 104, 2, c.
14. S.T., I II, 85, 5, c.
15. Harper, op. cit.. Ill, 11.

75

11. The pupil is the principal efficient cause. As has
been pointed out before the principal cause is that cause
which acts with complete independence of any other effi­
cient cause. Absolutely speaking, there is only one Prin­
cipal Efficient Cause, the First Cause, God. All finite
causes, in relation to the First Cause, are instrumental
causes. Thus in this sense, even the pupil is said to be the
instrumental cause of his own knowledge.
According to another usage of the term principal cause,
every power or faculty given to an entity in order to
enable it to operate, even though such a power or faculty
is sufficient for the production of the effect, and is nobler
than, or equally noble with the effect, is said to be an
instrumental cause; while the supposit or substance, to
which these faculties pertain, is deemed the principal
cause.16 Thus, for instance, in accordance with this accep­
tation man or the human soul would be the principal,
and the intellectual faculty the instrumental, cause of
thought. Metaphysicians make some very fine distinctions
concerning the individual agent acting which are not of
immediate concern to us here.17
16. Ibid., p. 14.
17. In regard to the whole person acting one author points
out certain distinctions which are important in the whole frame­
work of metaphysics.
“(1) The individual agent acting, that is the supposit, e.g., man,
the animal, etc., called the principium quod agit, is called the causa
ut quae· (2) the agent’s nature and active powers to act, called
the principium quo agens agit, the causa ut qua·, (3) the actions of
the powers are immediate causes in facto esse. Corresponding to
these three obvious distinctions we distinguish the cause in remote
first act, causa iri actu primo remoto (the agent); cause in proximate
first act, causa in actu primo proximo (the powers); and the cause
in second act, causa in actu secundo (the actions of the powers).”
Charles A. Hart, Metaphysics for the. Many (Washington: Catholic
University Press, 1957), p. 212.

76

In regard to the teaching-learning situation St. Thomas
observes: “. . . through the instrumentality, as it were, of
what is told him, the natural reason of the pupil arrives
at a knowledge of the things which he did not know.” 1819
The difference between learning through discovery and
learning through instruction has already been indicated.
In both instances the intellect of the learner is the prin­
cipal efficient cause. The pupil contains within himself, in
a state of potentiality, whatever knowledge he acquires.
Knowledge, therefore, pre-exists in the learner potentially,
not, however, in the purely passive, but in the active sense.
Otherwise, man would not be able to acquire knowledge
independently. 19

When it is said that something pre-exists in active com­
pleted potency, the external agent (the teacher) acts by
helping the internal agent (the pupil’s intellect), providing
it with the means by which it can enter into act. To illus­
trate the teaching-learning situation St. Thomas uses the
analogy of the doctor being assisted by nature in the
process of healing. “. . . art in its work imitates nature ...
the exterior principle, art, acts, not as principal agent,
but as helping the principal agent, which is the interior
principle, by strengthening it, and by furnishing it with
instruments and assistance of which the interior principle
makes use in producing the effect.”20
In conclusion on this discussion of the pupil’s efficient
causality in the teaching-learning situation we can say
that the learner is a real and true efficient cause. We have
seen that he is a secondary, partial, physical, proximate,
immanent, coordinated and subordinated, free, direct and
18. De Perit., XI, 1, c.
19. Ibid.
20. S.T., I, 117, c.

77

indirect, positive and negative, and finally the principal
efficient cause. Hence, we agree with Maritain when he
writes:
ί;

All this boils down to the fact that the mind’s natural activity
on the part of the learner and the intellectual guidance on
the part of the teacher are both dynamic factors in education,
but the principal agent in education, the primary dynamic
factor or propelling force, is the internal vital principle in
the one to be educated.21

In the next chapter on the causality of the teacher it
is also possible to say that the teacher, in a sense, is a
principal cause in the teaching-learning situation.

12. The pupil is a kind of univocal cause. The fact
that the pupil is a univocal cause of his learning in the
teaching-learning situation can be deduced from the words
of St. Thomas when he speaks of the causality of the
teacher in causing knowledge and the causality of an
angel in causing knowledge. First oE all, we must examine
the definition of a univocal cause and an equivocal cause.
A univocal cause is one that produces an effect similar to
itself; as, for instance, fire begets fire, a horse a horse, etc.
An equivocal cause is one that produces an effect which
is not similar of itself, and may be of various kinds. Thus
heat produces softness in wax, hardness in clay, brilliancy
in iron.
If, therefore, a cause is essentially limited to one effect which
is the expression of itself by specific likeness; it is called a
univocal cause. If a cause has more than one effect, or an
effect which is not the determined expression of itself; it is
called an equivocal cause.22

21. Maritain, op. cit., p. 31.
22. Ibid., p. 18.

■

78

It is important that we remember here that we are
speaking of the pupil learning through instruction and
not learning by discovery. Now St. Thomas explicitly
states that the teacher is a univocal cause in the teaching­
leaming situation. This will be discussed at length in the
next chapter but it is necessary to recall it here. “One
man teaches another as a kind of univocal agent.”23 By
this he means that the teacher “communicates knowledge
to the other in the same way he himself has it.” 24 This
way is the process of reasoning by proceeding from causes
to effects. But when St. Thomas speaks of the causality
of an angel in teaching he observes that “an angel teaches
as a kind of equivocal cause for he knows intuitively that
which man learns through a process of reasoning.” 25 Thus
we can say that the pupil is a kind of univocal cause in
the teaching-learning situation since he produces the effect
by a process of reasoning within himself and not intui­
tively as an angel does.
We can conclude that the pupil is a kind of univocal
causé from what St. Thomas says concerning an instru­
ment. "An instrument is neither univocal nor an equivo­
cal cause.” 26 And in the same place he makes it clear that
it derives its equivocal or univocal causality according to
whether the principal agent is an equivocal or univocal
cause. Now it is clear from the De Veritate that the teacher,
who is the instrumental cause of the pupil’s knowledge,
is a “kind of univocal cause."27 Therefore this would
imply that the pupil is also a kind of univocal cause of
his own knowledge.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.

De Verit., XI. 3, ad 4.
Ibid.
Ibid.
In IV Sent., I, 1, 4, 5.
De Verit., XI, 8, ad 4.

79 J

CHAPTER IV
THE EFFICIENT CAUSALITY
OF THE TEACHER

Now that we have examined in detail the efficient
causality of God, the First Cause, and the efficient causal­
ity of the learner we are now ready to investigate the role
of the teacher in the teaching-learning situation. We have
seen that God alone teaches "interiorly and principally”1
insofar as He has "adorned the soul with intellectual light
and imprinted on it the concepts of the first principles,
which are, as it were, the sciences in embryo.”2 This is
what is meant when St. Thomas says that knowledge pre­
exists in the learning potentially? Because this potentiality
is understood in the active sense and not in a purely pas­
sive sense we are able to posit two ways of learning; one
in which the natural reason by itself reaches knowledge
of unknown things, and this way is called discovery and
another way in which someone else aids the learner's nat­
ural reason and this way is called learning through instruc­
tion. In both these ways we have seen that the pupil is
the principal efficient cause of his own knowledge.
1. De Verit., XI, 1, a
2. Ibid., XI, 3, c.
3. Ibid., XI, 1, c

80

In this chapter we are concerned with the efficient
causality of the teacher. Just what is the position of the
teacher in the teaching-learning situation? How exactly
does the teacher , fit in this triangle of learning through
instruction with relation to God, the first Cause and also
with relation to the learner. Though man is naturally
equipped by the Creator to come to a knowledge of things
on his own through discovery, he would be intellectually
impoverished were this the only method by which to
acquire knowledge. The knowledge to be attained is too
profound and vast for individuals to aspire to attain it
unassisted by others. Likewise, unruly passions and inordi-.
nate desires could scarcely be tempered and subjected to
reason without the encouragement and instruction of
others. Moreover, it seems contrary to nature. For a con­
siderable time after birth, man’s total intellectual and
moral helplessness parallels his physical dependency. Even
when he outgrows this dual dependency, man learns more
profoundly and extensively by the assistance and contact
with others than he would were he to live in isolation.
Thus it is necessary for man to utilize the benefits of many
trained minds in intellectual matters.
Were we left to ourselves, we might have to wait a long time
before finding an answer. We might despair of ever finding
one and quit bothering about the question.·*

Thus is the necessity of the teacher succinctly stated by
Gilson. The same author shows the nobility of teaching
when he quotes the words of St. Thomas: “it is a greater
thing to distribute to others what one has contemplated
than only to contemplate.” 4
5
4. Anton C. Pegis (Edit), A Gilson Reader (New York: Double­
day and Co., 1957), p. 301.
5. Ibid., p. 311.

81

There is definitely, then, a relationship which exists
between the teacher and between God and the learner.
Each is a true cause in the teaching-learning situation.
Each is inter-related with the other. Herein lies the sacral
character of learning. For we have here the cooperation
of teacher and student with the providential plan of God
for man. “The human teacher is the minister of God in
achieving the communication and constant increase of
knowledge. The student is assured that his docility and
intellectual work are the normal means by which he per­
fects his own rational nature and simultaneously makes
a closer approach to the infinite truth of God.”6

THE EFFICIENT CAUSALITY
OF THE TEACHER

1. The teacher is more than a condition for learning.
The teacher is a true efficient cause in the teaching­
learning situation. A condition is a circumstance which is
required for the working of a cause. It in no way suffices
for the existence of the effect. The teacher produces a
real effect, namely, the knowledge acquired by the learner.
He is more than a mere circumstance for this effect to
come into being. As was pointed out above the influence
of a condition is not positive but purely dispositive insofar
as it removes obstacles which prevent the cause from
acting. But “the teacher leads the pupil to knowledge of
things he does not know in the same way that one directs
himself through the process of discovering something he
does not know.”7 When something comes into existence
6. James Collins, St. Thomas: The Teacher—The Mind (Chi­
cago: Henry Rcgnery Co., 1959), p. xvi.
7. De Verit., XI, 1, c.

it must have a cause. The pupil acquires knowledge
through instruction. The pupil is the principal efficient
cause of the knowledge acquired through instruction, but
as we shall see later, the teacher, though referred to by
St. Thomas as an instrumental or ministerial cause, also
exercises a role as a principal efficient cause, contributing
in part to the production of the final result—the pupil’s
knowledge.

2. The teacher is not an occasion. We have already
pointed out that an occasion merely facilitates the pro­
duction of an effect. It is not the cause. For the effect
could take place without the occasion but not as readily.
A bright, cheery and quiet classroom is not the cause of
the pupil acquiring knowledge but it favors the teaching­
leaming situation. But the cause of the knowledge being
communicated to the pupil is the teacher. Therefore the
teacher is a true efficient cause and not the occasion of
the pupil learning.
3. The teacher is a secondary efficient cause. All that
has been said about the relation between the First Cause
and all other causes can be applied here as well. It has
already been shown that secondary causes are true causes.

4. The teacher is a. partial efficient cause. Since the
teacher does not account for the whole effect he is called
a partial cause. In the teaching-learning situation the
causality of the pupil and the causality of the First Cause,
God, must also be considered.
5. The teacher is a physical efficient cause in one sense;
a moral cause in another sense. A physical cause is one
83

82

“which produces its effect by its own proper power and
action either immediately or through an instrument”’
We have seen that the pupil is a physical cause of his
own knowledge since he produces the effect immediately
by his own proper power, that is, the power of his intel­
lect. The teacher, through instruments, that is, signs,
produces the effect through power which is proper to him.
Thus, before the mind has the habit, it is not only in acci­
dental potency to know these things, but also essential
potency. For the mind needs a mover to actualize it through
teaching, as is said in Physics. But a man who already knew
something habitually would not need this. Therefore, the
teacher furnishes the pupil’s intellect with a stimulus to
knowledge of things which he teaches, as an indispensable
mover, bringing the intellect from potentiality to actuality.9

Teaching implies act, and being moved bespeaks po­
tency. Therefore, the teacher, acting under its own power,
produces the effect as a physical cause using signs.
In another sense we can speak of the teacher as a
moral efficient cause of teaching. A moral cause produces
the effect through example, persuasion, threat, command,
etc. To anyone who has taught the role of the teacher as
moral cause is more obvious. However, as a moral cause
the teacher can urge the pupil to go to the library and
read books so that he will gain knowledge. This is the
case on the university level. But it is not the role of the
teacher in the teaching-learning situation we are discussing
here. It is much more than mere persuasion to attain
knowledge. This seems to be implied in the words of St
Thomas:
8. Hart, op. cit., p. 211.
9. De Verit., XI, 1, ad 12.

84

In effects which are produced by nature and art, art operates
in the same way and through the same means as nature.
For, as nature heals one who is suffering from cold by warm­
ing him, so also does the doctor. Hence, art is said to imitate
nature. A similar thing takes place in acquiring knowledge.
For the teacher leads the pupil to knowledge of things he
does not know in the same way that one directs himself
through the process of discovering something he does not
know.10

6. The teacher is a remote cause. The effect of the
teaching-learning situation is the knowledge acquired by
the pupil. This effect is caused directly by the intellect
of the pupil but “mediately by the one who teaches. For
the teacher sets before the pupil signs of intelligible
things, and from these the agent intellect derives the
intelligible likenesses and causes them to exist in the
possible intellect.” 11 Therefore it is said that the teacher
is a remote or mediate cause in contradistinction to the
proximate causality of the pupil. As we have already seen:
"For the signs are not the proximate efficient cause of
knowledge, but the reason is.” 12*
7. The teacher is a transient cause. This is evident from
the fact that the “teacher or master must have the knowl­
edge which he causes in another explicitly and perfectly,
as it is to be received in the one who is learning through
instruction.” Thus teaching involves a giving and a re­
ceiving. Gilson has summed it up very well.
Now causality is the very act by which a being gives some-

10.
11.
12.
18-

Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,

XI,
XI,
XI,
XI,

I, c.
1, ad 11.
1, ad 4.
2, c.

thing of itself to another being, and this is the reason why
effects naturally resemble their causes. The good teacher then
loves to impart to his pupils the very best thing there is in
him; namely, intellectual life, knowledge, truth . . . The
highest reward of teaching is the joy of making over minds
similar, not indeed to ourselves, but to the truth which is
in us.n

Moreover, as St. Thomas points out, teaching is the
communication of knowledge. The teacher “communi­
cates the identical knowledge which he has himself."14
1516
Thus it is said that the teacher is a transient efficient cause
in the teaching-learning situation. ;
8. The teacher is a coordinated cause. Since the teacher
accounts for only part of the effect he can be called a
coordinated cause along with God and the pupil. He co­
operates with the other two causes in a Divine work.
For this implies that the human teacher, not figuratively but
in a very real sense, cooperates in a divine work. Hence,
his dignity as well as responsibility. It is merely no mean
service that he is called to perform in fostering and develop­
ing the scientiarum semina which God himself implants and
vivifies.1®

'
*

In the teaching-learning situation each cause is neces­
sary and important. Without each cause being present
this situation could not occur.

9. The teacher is a free cause. The teacher, being a
human being, has a free will and is thereby enabled to
14. Pegis, The Gilson Reader, p. 309.
15. S.T., I, 117, a
16. E. A. Pace, “St. Thomas Theory of Education,” Catholic
University Bulletin VIII, (1902), p. 302.

86

act voluntarily. He is not compelled nor coerced by the
pupil the principal cause. He is a free agent acting
voluntarily.
10. The teacher is a subordinated cause. The teacher
is said to be a subordinated cause insofar as a secondary
cause is dependent upon and subordinated to God, the
First Cause. The teacher is free to oKer his knowledge to
the pupil. However, if the pupil does not cooperate as
an efficient cause the effect will not take place. Thus in
this sense the teacher is called a subordinated cause.

11. The teacher is an indirect cause. In order to under­
stand how the teacher is an indirect cause of the pupil’s
knowledge we must first show how this knowledge pre­
exists in the pupil before it becomes actualized by the
teacher. The knowledge of the pupil pre-exists in an active
and completed potency. Healing is an example of this
kind of potency since the sick person is restored to health
by the natural power within him. Therefore St. Thomas
says: "When something pre-exists in active completed
potency, the external agent acts only by helping the in­
ternal agent and providing it with the means by which it
can enter into act.” 17 Thus the teacher is an indirect
efficient cause of the pupil’s knowledge. Again we appeal
to St. Thomas who states explicitly that the knowledge of
the pupil is “caused directly by the agent intellect and
mediately by the one who teaches.” 18

12. The teacher is a univocal cause. As has been stated
before a univocal cause is one which "has within itself
17. De Verit., XI 1, c.
18. Ibid., XI, 1, ad 11.

87

everything which it produces in the effect, and it has
these perfections in the same way as the effect.”19 In dis­
cussing the difference between the causality of a human
teacher and that of an angel teaching St. Thomas observes:
“For one man teaches another as a kind of univocal agent,
and thus communicates knowledge in the same way that
he himself has it.” 20 It should be noted that St. Thomas
uses the words “as a kind of univocal cause” since the
knowledge "which arises in the pupil through teaching is
similar to that which is in the teacher.” 21 This knowledge
is not “numerically the same”22 in the teacher and in
the pupil. Therefore since the cause does not have within
itself in exactly the same way everything which it produces
in the effect St. Thomas uses the phrase “as a kind of uni­
vocal cause” when he refers to the causality of a man
who teaches another.
That the teacher as a univocal cause becomes even
more clear when one considers the words “communicates
knowledge in the same way that he himself has it” in the
light of the words "has these perfections in the same way
as the effect.” The first group of words refers to one man
teaching another while the second group of words refers
to the action of a univocal agent. For St. Thomas has
previously stated that knowledge is produced in the same
way whether it be by personal discovery or learning
through instruction. “For the teacher leads the pupil to
knowledge of things he does not know in the same way
that one directs himself through the process of discovering
something he does not know.” 2* In both cases the process
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.

Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.
Ibid.,

XI, I, c.
XI, 3, ad 4.
XI, 1, ad 6.

XI, 1, c.

88

of reasoning is the way in which the effect comes about.
The teacher causes the effect in the pupil in the same way
that he acquired this knowledge, namely, through a proc­
ess of reasoning and this effect which is the knowledge of
the pupil is similar to the knowledge of the cause which
produces this effect.
Therefore the words “in the same way” can be under­
stood in a two-fold sense. When they are understood per
modum esse the knowledge of the teacher and the knowl­
edge of the pupil is said to be similar; when these words
are understood per modum actionis the knowledge of the
teacher and the knowledge of the pupil St. Thomas says
“. . . he communicates the identical knowledge which he
has himself.”24 Thus it is said that the teacher is a
univocal cause.
13. The teacher is an efficient cause “adjuvando et
ministrando." St. Thomas defines teaching as “to cause
knowledge in another through the activity of the learner’s
own natural reason.” 2S26We have already seen that the
learner’s intellect is the principal cause in the teaching­
leaming situation.
i

We must remark that the exterior principle, art, acts, not
as principal agent, but as helping the principal agent, which
is the interior principle, by strengthening it, and by furnish­
ing it with instruments and assistance, of which the interior
principle makes use in producing the effect.26

Thus the learner is the principal cause of his own
knowledge while the causality of the teacher is looked
24. S.T., I, 117, c.
25. De Verit., XI, 1, c.
26. S.T., I. 117. 1. c.

89

upon as “adjuvando et ministrando.” 27 This phrase is
used by St. Thomas when he speaks of angels28 and is
applied to the teacher “helping the principal agent” by
"furnishing it with instruments and assistance.” Though
this be the case it does not lessen the dignity and impor­
tance of the teacher in any way whatever. For “when
anyone acquires knowledge by himself, he cannot be called
self-taught, or be said to have been his own master: be­
cause perfect knowledge did not precede in him, such as
is required in a master.” 29 Commenting on this view of
St. Thomas one author points out the unfavorable recep­
tion it would receive from some modem educational
theorists and “from the present generation which is prone
to admire the ‘self-taught’ man.”80
The teacher in a sense is the principal cause of the
instruments used by the pupil in acquiring knowledge.
Of this there can be no doubt. “The external agent acts
only by helping the internal agent and providing it with
the means by 'which it can enter into act.’ ”81 Thus it is
that St. Thomas observes that it is ... “through the instru­
mentality, as it were, of what is told him, the natural
reason of the pupil arrives at a knowledge of the things
which he did not know.”82 As Smith has put it: “. . . the
teacher is like the manufacturer of tools; the learner is
like the user.” 88
The teacher does not give the pupil the intelligible
27. Pace, op. cit., p. 297.
28. S.T., I, 112, 3, c.
29. S.T., I, 117, 1, ad 4.
30. Pace, op. cit., p. 296.
31. De Verit., XI, 1. c.
32. Ibid.
33. Vincent Smith, The School Examined (Milwaukee: Bruce,
1960), p. 23.

90

light but none the less “he is in a certain sense a cause
of the intelligible species, insofar as he offers us certain
signs of intelligible likenesses, which our understanding
receives from those signs and keeps within itself.” 3435
14. The teacher as ministerial cause. It is our purpose
now to examine the precise nature of instrumental caus­
ality since the teacher is a ministerial cause which St.
Thomas defines as an intelligent instrument. Every instru­
mental agent produces its effect by the power of the prin­
cipal cause communicated to it and by its own proper
power. Just how does this statement pertain to the teach­
ing-learning situation?
The most basic difference between the principal and
instrumental causes St. Thomas notes are the following:
For a principal agent acts according to the requirement o£
its own form, and so the active power in it is some form or
quality having complete reality according to its own nature.
But an instrument acts inasmuch as it is moved by another.
Hence, it has a power proportioned to this motion. But
motion is not complete being, but it is a way of being, as it
were something between pure potency and pure art . . . And
so the power of an instrument inasmuch as it is an instru- ■
ment, according as it acts to produce an eSect beyond diat ■
which is proportioned to it according to its nature, is not
complete reality having a fixed being in its nature, but
incomplete reality.^

From this passage it is quite evident that in pointing
out the difference between principal and instrumental
causality there are two major facts to be noted: (1) the
power of the instrument as instrument comes from the
34. De Verit., XI, I, ad 14.
35. Comm, in Quart. Lib. Sent. Dist. l, Q.I, a. 4, qa. 5, sol. 2.

91

principal agent and (2) this instrumental power operates
in producing an effect beyond the natural power of the
agent which receives it. It is to be noted also that the effect
produced in such an instance is in proportion to the
power of the principal agent. These are the most funda­
mental distinctions to be made between the principal
and the instrumental cause.
In any discussion of instrumental causality it is neces­
sary to keep in mind that the instrument is not a purely
passive thing submitting to the causality of the principal
agent. This is especially true in the teaching-learning
situation. When St. Thomas uses expressions such as "that
through which someone operates” 36 and "moved mover"37
he in no way wished to render the metaphysics of instru­
mental causality static nor did he intend to diminish the
dynamism of being. These expressions represent summary
conclusions of much more lengthy accounts of the nature
of instrumental causality. He leaves no room for mere
occasionalism in this matter. The instrument has and
must contribute its own proper activity if it is to act as
an instrument. For this reason it is important to distin­
guish the proper power of the instrument (virtus instru­
menti) from that power which it receives from the prin­
cipal cause precisely as it is an instrument (virtus instrumentalis). In the teaching-learning situation we have seen
that the teacher is a transient cause and this is in accord
with the notion of instrumental causality. This seems to
be justified by the words of St. Thomas when he says,
"the instrument is never used to perform an act except by
way of a motion.” 38 And again,
36. S.T., ΙΠ, 62, I, c
37. Cont. Gen., Ill, 21; De Verit., XXVII, 4.
38. Coni. Gen., II, 21.
'

92

The instrument does not operate except to the extent that
it is moved by the principal agent, which operates of itself;
and therefore the power of the principal agent possesses
permanent and complete being nature, whereas the instru­
mental power possesses transient being received from one
thing into another, and this being is incomplete, just as
motion is an imperfect act going from agent to patient.^

The expression “moved mover” makes clear the mind of
St Thomas on this matter. Thus the instrument is con­
stituted as such by the very fact that it is moved by the
principal agent.39
40
It should also be noted that the instrumental power
is a physical power. However, this does not exclude the
term or intention of the action which must be taken into
account if we are to establish the instrumental nature of
a given thing. This instrument is constituted this kind of
instrument from the end of its activity in which it is en­
gaged. In fact it is to the end that we must look if we are
simply to declare something as an instrument. For if the
end of an action is such that a particular efficient cause
in producing this action could not of its own power either
intend or bring about that end, then we must conclude
that the said efficient cause is an instrument. Nor does
the fact that the instrumental power is a power of the
physical order exclude one from calling this instrumental
power an intentional power. For it is intentional inasmuch
as it refers the observing intellect to an end which is its
raison d’etre and which is commensurate with it.41
39. S.T., HI, 62, 4, c.
40. S.T., III, 62, 4, ad 3.
41. De Verit., XXVII, 4; S.T. Ill, 19, 1, c; III, 62, 1, ad 2;
In IV Sent. I, 1, 4; Cont. Gent., Ill, 69; S.T. III, 19, 1 et 2; III, 19,
1, ad 2; De Verit., XXII, 13; In IV Sent., XIX, 1, 2, 1; Ibid., I,
1, 4, 3.

93

Up to this point we have been concerned with the
exact notion of instrumental power and have viewed it
in isolation, as it were, from its operational aspects. Look­
ing at it from this operational angle, it is clear that the
transient motion received from the principal cause by the
instrument must precede the proper motion or action of
the instrument. St. Thomas implies this in his use of the
expression “moved mover.” If the distinction between
the moved and the mover is to mean anything, the tran­
sient motion must be received by the instrument previ­
ously. There is more than the simply combined energies
of the two causes to produce this effect. And we have seen
that the instrumental power in producing an effect be­
yond its native powers does this precisely because it has
received a power from the principal agent which is more
precisely noted as a transient motion. The simultaneous
motion of the principal and instrumental causes is true
only in the operational order, in the order of second act.
But such an order presupposes something prior by which
the agent is constituted as a cause. In instrumental causal­
ity such a presupposition is the instrumental power. Thus
St. Thomas speaks of the instrument receiving its instru­
mental power in a two-fold way: one whereby it is con­
stituted an instrument in which case it receives the power
inchoatively, as it were; the other when it is actually
moved by the principal agent to produce the effect.42*For
St. Thomas the most basic motion of any instrument to
the extent that it is an instrument lies in the fact that "the
thing moved moves; and so, just as the complete form is
related to an agent acting of itself, so the motion by which
the instrument is moved by the principal agent is related
to the instrument.”4’
42. In IV Sent., I, 1, 4, 5.
48. De Verit., XXVII, 4, c.

94

As we have already pointed out the fact that St. Thomas
describes the instrument as that through which some
agent operates this must not be construed in the light of
some kind of a passive submission to the principal cause.
The instrument very definitely has an active and proper
part to play in the actual production of the effect. In fact
the instrumental action would be impossible without the
instrument exercising its proper action. Thus St. Thomas
points out: “every instrumental agent accomplishes the
action of the principal agent through some action proper
and connatural to itself.” 44 And on another occasion he
affirms that “the instrument does not perform that action
which exceeds its proper nature unless it exercises some
connatural action.” 45
When the Angelic Doctor states that “the instrument
does not act according to its own proper form or power,
but according to the power of that by which it is moved,”46
he does not contradict himself. It simply means that the
instrument considered as instrument does not act by its
own power but by the instrumental power which is due
to the movement of the instrument by the principal agent.
The native power (virtus instrumenti) of the instrument
can never constitute the instrument as instrument, though
it does make it this or that kind of instrument. Neverthe­
less, the instrumental exercise of power is impossible
unless the native power of the instrument be exercised.
; In any discussion on instrumental and principal caus­
ality there must be some mention made of “causal unicity.”
Simply, it means that in regard to the total production
of the effect there is one operation of two causes. They
do not work as two but as one, though in the order of
44. Cont. Gen., II, 21.
45. Tie Vent., XXVI, 1, c.
46. S.T., III, 64, 5, c.

95

causality one is principal and the other is instrumental.
The one total effect flows from the one operation that
involves the principal cause using the power that is proper
to the instrument and the instrumental cause participating
transiently in the potver of the principal cause which it
has received into itself.47
By reason of this “causal unicity” the same effect must
be totally attributed to the instrument and totally attrib­
uted to the principal agent. This fact is well worth noting
for it determines the instrument as a true cause and not
a mere occasion or causal partnership on the basis of
equality. St. Thomas explicitly points out that the instru­
mental cause does produce the total effect.48 But the an­
swer to how it does this is found in the explanation of
"causal unicity.”
In conclusion we may say that, according to the metaphysics
of St. Thomas Aquinas, the instrumental cause in union with
the principal cause does produce the entire effect, so that
the effect may be wholly attributed to the principal cause and
wholly to the instrumental cause. This is explained by the
causal unicity that obtains between the principal and instru­
mental causes which is effected by the participation of the
instrumental cause in the power of the principal cause by
means of intrinsic reception of the instrumental power from
the principal cause.49

In this discussion on the nature of the instrumental
cause we have attempted to show the importance of this
type of causality in the metaphysical portrait. In addition
47. Emmanuel Sullivan, "Instrumental Causality and the Pro­
duction of the Total Effect,” (Unpublished master’s thesis, Catholic
University of America, School of Philosophy, 1957), p. 47.
48. Cont. Gen., Ill, 70; S.T., III, 19, 2, c.
49. Sullivan, op. cit., p. 49.

96

π
to its own proper power as an instrument it also contrib­
utes totally to the production of the effect. This gives
instrumental causality a dignity which distinguishes it
from mere occasionalism and gross servitude. It now be­
comes our task to apply these metaphysical notions of
instrumental causality to the instrumental cause in the
teaching-learning situation.

SUMMARY

Though man is able to come to a knowledge of things
on his own, he would be intellectual impoverished were
he to depend on this method alone for his knowledge.
For a considerable time after his birth man’s total intel­
lectual and moral helplessness parallels his physical de­
pendency. He learns more profoundly and extensively by
the assistance and contact with others. The necessity of the
teacher is seen to be evident in the light of such
considerations.
The teacher is a real and true efficient cause of the
knowledge produced in the learner. A definite relationship
is encountered with God, the First Cause in which lies
the sacred character of teaching.
The teacher is no mere condition or occasion for learn­
ing. Teaching is an activity which is truly causal. It co­
operates with the causality of God and the pupil to pro­
duce a definite effect. Specifically, we designate the caus­
ality of the teacher as secondary, partial, remote, transient,
free, indirect and univocal. In one sense the teacher is
also a physical cause and in another sense he is also moral.
. Though St. Thomas refers to the teacher as a ministerial
cause he can also be regarded as the principal of those
instruments which the pupil uses to actuate his knowledge.
97

CHAPTER V

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS IN
THE TEACHING-LEARNING
SITUATION

Thus far in this discussion on the efficient causality
of the teacher in the teaching-learning situation we have
seen that the teacher is a true cause and not a mere con­
dition nor occasion in the production of the effect, namely,
the student's knowledge. We have classified the causality
• of the teacher as secondary, partial, physical in one sense
and moral in another, remote, transient, free, subordi­
nated, indirect, univocal and instrumental. Now we ask
the question: What does this type of causality on the part
of the teacher mean in the practical order in regard to
the teaching-learning situation?

'1. Teaching is not indoctrination. In teaching “a man
is said to cause knowledge in another through the activity
of the learner’s own natural reason.”1 In other words,
one learns through teaching by applying general selfevident principles to certain definite matters and thus
arriving at knowledge of things he did not know. The
true teacher leads the pupil to knowledge by a reasoning
.

1. De Verit., XI, 1, c.

98

process. On the other hand, indoctrination has been
termed “intellectual imposition”2 by some because the ,
teacher does not relate the matter to self-evident princi­
ples. In this case it would be opinion or faith that is the .
basis for the pupil accepting the particular conclusions .
of the teacher. St. Thomas explains: “But, if someone
proposes to another things which are not included in selfevident principles, or does not make it clear that they
are included, he will not cause knowledge but, perhaps,
opinion or faith.” 3 Thus he enumerates the qualifications .
of a good teacher as three: “stability, that one may never
deviate from the truth; clarity, that one may not teach .
with obscurity; utility, that one may seek God’s honor ·
and glory and not his own.” 4
Does this mean that the authority of the teacher is
destroyed? Most certainly not. "At the outset of his teach-,,
ing, however, he does not explain to his pupil the intelli;.
gible principles of the things to be known . . . the teacher
proposes some things, the principles of which the pupil
does not understand when first taught, but will know
later when he has made some progress in the science.”5
This is not indoctrination strictly speaking because the ·
learner can eventually connect these propositions accepted
on faith with foreknowledge which he has and thus enjoy
the certitude which the teacher had claimed for them.
Often it is alleged that pupils of a Catholic education .
are prime examples of indoctrination. This is a false accu2. Francis C. Wade, “St. Thomas and Teaching,” Some Philoso- .
phers on Education (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1956),
p. 82.
3. Ibid.
4. Thomas Kane, “Noblest Teacher of Teachers,” Dominican·
XXXV (1950), p. 14.
5. De Verit., XIV, 10, c.

99

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sation. “For in the teaching of religious knowledge, there
is, on the part of the learner, a foreknowledge, possessed
by the light of faith, which the human teacher makes
explicit.”® And so St Thomas makes this analogy be­
tween faith and teaching: “The articles of faith stand in
the same relation to the doctrine of faith as self-evident
principles to teaching based on natural reason.” 7

2. Teaching is a cooperative art. It has already been
pointed out that every babe is born a self-activist, that is,
as a student he is able through discovery to come to a
knowledge of things since knowledge pre-exists in the
learner potentially. But it does not follow from this that
the teacher merely exists “to provide an environment that
induces educative or developing activities.”8 Nor can
one agree that “the function of the teacher must change
from that of cicerone and dictator to that of watcher and
helper.” 9 This attitude toward the teacher has resulted
from a gross misconception or complete ignorance of
Thomistic teaching. Though he is bom a self-activist,
the student at first possesses knowledge only in potential­
ity, so that “the teacher who has the knowledge as a
whole explicitly can lead to knowledge more quickly and
easily than anyone can be led by himself.” 10 It is in this
sense that we can apply the dictum “Art imitates na­
ture.” 11 The teacher leads the child to the knowledge
6. Vincent E. Smith, The School Examined (Milwaukee: Bruce,
I960,, p. 20.
7. S.T., II-II, 1, 7, c.
8. John Dewey, Interest and Effort in Education (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Co., 1913), p. 96. (Courtesy of Mrs. John Dewey)
9. John Dewey, Schools of Tomorrow (New York: Dutton &
Co., 1915), p. 172.
10. De Verit., XL 2, ad 4.
11. Ibid., XI, 1, c.

100

of things he does not know in the same way that one
directs himself through the process of discovery. There­
fore, the true teacher cannot be called a “taskmaster who
assigns lessons in a prescribed book, who hears the young
recite what the book says and who tests and grades his
pupils on the basis of their ability to ‘hand back’ that
which they have studied.” 12
Teaching is a cooperative art involving God, teacher
and pupil. We have seen in some detail how each plays
a part in the teaching-learning situation.
3. The necessity of the teacher. In our time material
progress has produced many inventions which ought to
benefit the student greatly. Radio, television, and the
motion pictures are the mechanical devices that are being
used, along with books, for teaching purposes. The question which arises at once is: Will these man-made inventions replace the human teacher? According to Thomistic
doctrine this will never happen. For the student will
always be bom in potentiality for knowledge, and the
teacher, who possesses in act what the student possesses
only in potential, will always remain of service to the student. Though times change and methods of teaching improve, human nature does not change. The teacher is a
“dynamic factor” ,s as is the learner; two living intellects
coming into contact Gilson observes: “in other words,
unless he is actually thinking aloud and engaging his own
intellectual activity in his lecture, the teacher does not
really teach. Incidentally, this is one reason why it is
doubtful that any mechanical device will ever replace the
actual presence of the real teacher. Only one living intel-

’

12. John L. Childs, American Pragmatism and Education (New
York: Henry Holt & Co., 1956), p. 347.
13. Maritain, op. cit., p. 31.
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101

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lect, patiently preceding us on the way to truth, can effec­
tively teach us how to think.” 14 Thus all the appliances
and equipment used in learning are but the means to an
end. These things are “but a tributary to learning, to the
acquisition o£ wisdom. Our devotion to the ways of know­
ing should not blind us to the end-results of knowing.”15

4. The teacher does not merely stimulate the mind.
This is an important point to be noted in light of the
teaching of some modern theorists who see the teacher’s
role as one who “is to furnish the environment which
stimulates and directs the learner’s course.”16 In the
acquisition of knowledge, in passing from the known to
the unknown, the intellect of the learner is not in pre­
cisely the same situation with regard to every one of its
objects of cognition. Some it grasps intuitively; others it
reaches by bringing out to explicit knowledge what is
contained implicitly in self-principles. “Just here it needs
the teacher, not simply as a guide, but as one who by
his words sets the intellectual faculty in motion and to
this extent causes its advance in knowledge.”17 This
necessitates the possession by the teacher of a complete
and perfect knowledge of what he teaches. For "the actu­
ality of the child’s potential depends on the completeness
and perfection of the teacher’s knowledge.” 18 Therefore

the teacher is much more than one Who offers mere stimu­
lus to learning if he “possesses a knowledge which the
student does not have and that the teacher actually com­
municates this knowledge to the student whose mind is a
‘tabula rasa,’ as Aristotle put it.” 19
Thus St. Thomas speaking on the progress made in
knowledge remarks that the teacher has this knowledge
in a perfect way which he imparts to the learner little by
little and according to the pupil’s capacity.20 This also
implies a certain amount of response on the part of the
pupil who cannot sit passively in a classroom and expect
to acquire knowledge. “His mind must be active at all
times, attempting to follow the reasoning indicated by the
teacher.” 21
How different this concept of the teacher’s role is from
that of Dewey when he writes that “no thought, no idea,
can possibly be conveyed as an idea from one person to
another . . . when the teacher has provided the conditions
that stimulate thinking and has taken a sympathetic attititude toward the activities of the learner by entering into
a common or conjoint experience, all has been done
which a second party can do to instigate learning .. . the
teacher is a learner, and the learner, without knowing it,
a teacher.” 22 It is true that the teacher communicates his
ideas by means of sensible symbols. "From the sensible
symbols, which are received into the sense faculty, the
intellect takes the essence which it uses in producing

14. Pegis, The Gilson Reader, p. 306.
15. James H. O’Hara, The Limitations of the Educational
Theory of John Dewey (Washington: Catholic University Press,
1929), p. 92.
16. John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: Mac­
millan, 1916), p. 372.
17. O'Hara, op. cit., p. 95.
18. Mary H. Mayer, The Philosophy of Teaching of St. Thomas
Aquinas (New York: Bruce, 1929), p. 23.

19. Rev. Ban Endslow, "The Educational Theories, of Jacques
Maritain," Unpublished master’s thesis. Catholic University, Depart­
ment of Education, 1951), p. 53.
20. S.T., II-II, 1, 7, ad 2.
21. R. A. Kocurek, "St. Thomas on Study,” Thomistic Principles
in a Catholic School (St. Louis: Herder, 1943), p. 30.
22. Dewey, Democracy and Education, p. 188.

102

103

knowledge in itself.” 23
2526And accordingly it follows that
24
“whosoever learns from man does not receive knowledge
immediately from the intelligible species which are in
his mind, but through sensible words, which are signs of
intellectual concepts.” 24
To some extent it is true that in order to think the
student must wrestle with the problem at first hand, seek­
ing and finding his own way out. “. . . and thinking in
the sense of reflective thought arises only when we are
confronted with a problem.” 25 For it is not sufficient that
the teacher furnish the subject matter, no matter how
orderly it may be presented. The mind of the student
must be active in any acquisition of knowledge. In accord­
ance with the first principles of reason and what he already
knows to be true, he accepts or rejects what is proposed
to him. “Thus it is by the immanent activity of the stu­
dent’s mind that he acquires any knowledge.” 28
But if Dewey implies that the student must seek and
find, that is, discover for himself, without the aid of a
teacher, whatever he knows, the statement is not true.
For as we have already indicated St. Thomas points out
two ways of acquiring knowledge, without a teacher by
discovery and with a teacher through instruction. When
he suggests that the student must wrestle with the prob­
lem at first hand and that the teacher can best help by
entering into a common or conjoint experience it is very
misleading. It seems to argue for the necessity of actual
experience of whatever is known. If that must be the
case, then Dewey himself supplied his own answer when

23. De Verit., XI, 1, ad 4.
24. S.T., III, 12, 3, ad 2.
25. William F. Cunningham, The Pivotal Problems of Education
(New York: Macmillan, 1940), p. 141.
26. Kocureck, op. cit., p. 30.

104

he wrote: "One can be insane without knowing he is
insane, and one may know insanity without being crazy;
indeed absence of the direct experience is said to be an
indispensable condition of the student of insanity.”27
Although Dewey hesitates to reduce the teacher to the
status of a mere onlooker,28 he does something worse by
reducing him to state of a learner. This error is also re­
futed in the writings of St. Thomas when he points out
that a man cannot be his own teacher nor be said to
teach himself.29 Therefore, as teacher he cannot also be
learner. When one speaks of a man as being “self taught”
he is speaking of teaching in an improper sense. For the
name of teacher implies the possession of'knowledge
which is being taught.30*32
5. Teaching is “truth centered.” These days there is
much talk about whether teaching should be “childcentered” or “subject-centered.” In an analysis of the
teaching-learning situation according to the writings of
St. Thomas, it is not too difficult to conclude the Saint’s
view on the matter. From all that has been said so far it·
becomes evident that all true teaching is actually “truthcentered.” “Man can truly be called a true teacher inasmuch as he teaches the truth and enlightens the mind.” 81
And in another place he reiterates: "Teaching consists in
communicating a truth meditated beforehand.”82
Thus in the communication of truth lay the vocation
27. John Dewey, Experience and Nature (Chicago: Open Court,
1925), p. 18.
28. “This does not mean that the teacher is to stand off and
look . .
Democracy and Education, p. 188.
29. De Verit., XI, 2, a
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid., XI, 1, ad 9.
32. S.T., Π-Ι1, 18, S, ad 3.

105

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of the teacher. “No doubt it is to and for the students
that truth is taught, and in that sense the knowing stu­
dent is the end of teaching.”33 Therefore “love of truth
—which is the primary tendency of an intellectual na­
ture” 34 is a fundamental disposition which should be
fostered in the principal agent and this is the very basis
of education. For “teaching causes truth to be in other
men so that they can more easily attain their end.”35
Herein lies the joy of teaching, that is, “the joy of
making other minds similar, not indeed to ourselves, but
to the truth which is in us.”36 True freedom results
from teaching truth because “teaching results in the free­
ing of the mind through the mastery of reason over the
things learned.”37 The truly learned man is a man of
truth and the truth makes him free. And the possession
of this freedom can never be taken away. It is for this
reason that every dictator from the dawn of history has
made the educated and learned the primary object of
persecution. For their freedom is intangible to fire, sword
and chain. Therefore to destroy their freedom he must
destroy the man.
The man of truth cannot be without virtue. “Truth
visits those who love her, who surrender to her, and this
love cannot be without virtue. For this reason, in spite of
his possible defects, the man of genius at work is already
virtuous; it would suffice for his holiness if he were more
completely his true self.”38 Thus truth is not easily ob33. Wade, op. cit., p. 84.
34. Maritain, op. cit., p. 36
; 35. Wade, op. cit., p. 85.
36. Pegis, The Gilson Reader, p. 309.
37. Maritain, Ibid., p. 49.
38. A. G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life (Westminster, Mary­
land: Newman Press, 1959), p. 19.

106

tained but comes only to those who seek it diligently and
with effort. “Truth in any line of endeavor is very diffi­
cult to obtain; the history of its acquisition is a record
of untold effort and patient research.” 3940
One can readily see how important a “truth-centered"
notion of teaching is. The construction of the curriculum
is the result of one’s outlook on this question of whether
teaching is “child-centered” or “subject-centered” or
“truth-centered.” In traditional philosophy, truth and
falsity were thought of in terms of objective conformity
and non-conformity in regard to reality. “Dewey rejects
such an outlook, on the one side because it would imply
a form of dualism, and on the other side because the
existential situation of knowledge excludes all fixity: it is
an endless process.” «
For Dewey, then, the criterion of truth cannot be a
static conformity with an absolute. “Knowing . .. means
a certain kind of intelligently conducted doing.” 4142
Think­
ing is activity in itself, "performed at specific need, just
as at other need we engage in other sort of activity.” a
Thus any intellectual operation is a kind of “doing” and
a tool of action. It is in this quality of activity that truth
or falsity can be found.
Its active, dynamic function is the all-important thing about
it, and in the quality of activity induced by it lies all its
39. O’Hara, op. cit., p. 84.
40. Joseph DeAndrea, “Philosophy of Man According to Karl
Marx and John Dewey: A Comparative Study," (Unpublished mas­
ter’s thesis, Catholic University, Department of Education, 1956),
p. 30.
41. John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (New York:
Henry Holt & Co., 1920), p. 121.
42. John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic (Chicago: Uni­
versity of Chicago Press, 1916), p. 76.
.■

107

truth and falsity. The hypothesis that works is true one; and
truth is an abstract noun applied to the collection of cases,
actual, foreseen and desired, that receive confirmation in their
works and consequences.4^

With this fluid understanding of the concept of truth
one can begin to realize the devastating effect that is
brought to bear on the curriculum of the school.
Since the curriculum is always getting loaded down with
purely inherited traditional matter and with subjects which
represent mainly the energy of some influential person or
group of persons in behalf of something dear to them, it
requires constant inspection, criticism, and revision to make
sure it is accomplishing its purpose.4*·

The worth of the curriculum is measured to “the
extent to which (it is) animated by a social spirit.” 45 For
the curriculum should “present situations where problems
are relevant to the problems of living together, and where
observation and information are calculated to develop
social insight and interest.” 46 Thus many modern educa­
tional theorists have one remedy which they are always
proposing as the solution to all educational ills and that
is: change the curriculum by either adding to it or sub­
tracting from it. Nothing is stable; all truth is relative.
Thus we have the “comprehensive high school” proposed
and urged “for as the curriculum is narrowed, so is the
opportunity for a meaningful program.” 47 And this so43. John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 156-57.
44. Dewey, Democracy and Education, p. 283.
45. Ibid., p. 415.
46. Ibid., p. 226.
47. James B. Conant, The American High School Today (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), p. 77.

108

called meaningful program involves “the teacher (who) sits
on the same level as the student, discussing the truth as it
appears to each. The individual adjustment which each
makes to the truth is then uppermost, and as the teacher
examines, he can also be examined.” 48
One of America’s most distinguished men of letters
has summed up very well the damage that has resulted
from an objective recognition of truth:
The last generation of students may never forgive its teachers
who taught contempt and fear for the truth. The distinction
they made was one between fact and opinion, not one be­
tween opinion and truth . . . To say that truth is better than:
falsehood is not to speak vaguely. It is more powerful, it is
more interesting, and it is less lonely ... It is the love of
truth that makes men free in the common light of day.49

Thus it is that we say that teaching is “truth-centered. ”
The teacher and educator who takes this as his position
will build on firm ground instead of shifting sand.

6. The teacher is a coadjutor of God. Because it is his
task to communicate truth to others the teacher is in a
very special way a servant of God. For in doing this work
he imitates the Divine life. “To contemplate truth by
his intellect and to communicate it out of love, such is
the life of the Doctor. It is an exalted human imitation
of the very life of God.” 50
Asa teacher he cooperates with God in causing knowl48. General Education in a Free Society (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1955), p. 246-47.
49. Mark VanDoren, Liberal Education (Boston: Beacon Hill
Press. 1959), p. 177-78.
50. Pegis, op. cit., p. 227.

109

sledge in-the learner. “The teacher, then, must share in
j· the Wisdom which is from the beginning and after which
all things that are have been made.”51 Because of its
affinity with the Divine, teaching is a most noble profes­
sion. “If the teacher is a coadjutor of God in the training
‘ and development of souls, then all other human work
‘ pales into insignificance.” 52*
‘
Because of the sublime dignity of his calling teachers
are obliged to “be imitators of the only Divine Master,
Jesus Christ,”55 as Pope Pius XII has warned. As one
author has stated: Christian teachers “should conceive
unto themselves Christ, their prototype, the great
teacher.”54
As we have seen St. Thomas points out that God alone
teaches interiorly and principally by implanting in the
learner the light of reason by which self-evident principles
'.become evident. But “man is said to teach the truth, al­
though he declares it exteriorly, while God teaches inte­
riorly.”55 Thus there is an intimate relationship between
God and the human teacher. The God-given intellect of
;,the learner is strengthening the intellect of the learner
■ “inasmuch as he proposes to the disciple the order of
: principles to conclusions, by reason of his not having
sufficient collating power to be able to draw the conclu51. Brother S. Edmund, F.S.C., "The Aim and Obligation of
the School," Proceedings of the Western Division of the American
■.Catholic Philosophical Association (April, 1941), p. 85.
52. Edward F. Fitzpatrick, Exploring a Theology of Education
(Milwaukee: Bruce, 1950), p. 125.
•
53. Vincent Yzermans (ed.), Pope Pius Speaks on Education,
p. 167.
54. Richard H. Tierney, Teacher and Teaching (New York:
Longmans, Green & Co., 1915), p. 11. (Courtesy of David McKay
Company)
55. De Perit., XI, 1, ad 7.

. uo

sions from the principles.” 56 Herein is evident the dignity
and sacral character of the “teaching triangle," as it were.
Thus to cause knowledge in another is to cause one
to become like God. For to become like God is the last
end of all things.57 In the words of Gilson: “Only, because
thought is the highest and most noble form of activity in
nature, man is the highest and noblest among the known
images of God. If to teach is to cause others to think, it
is to help them in becoming not only like unto their
masters but unto the Master of their masters, God.” 58
And so the true teacher will leave an incorruptible monument behind since he will leave “.... Christ reproduced in
another human soul. The teacher’s work is done. Generations will call them blessed.” 59
Father Wade has pointed out in his article60 that St.
Thomas explains how man shares in the divine providence
of the world by acting on or with other men. He picks
out only two actions of man: the first is teaching, the
second is the procreating of offspring.61 62
Thus
*
it is that
the teacher is a cooperator in the Christian formation of
the pupil.
Though he is unable to cause goodness or grace physically in his students, the teacher can act as an “impetrator
before the throne of God, praying the Giver of all gifts
to shower His grace on the souls of these students; he
should pray for them because these students represent his
own apostolate for the kingdom of God.” 68
56. S.T., I, 117, 1, c.
57. Cont. Gen., Ill, 20.
58. Pegis, op. cit., p. 309-10.
59. Tierney, op. cit., p. 11.
60. Wade, op. cit., p. 84.
61. S.T., I, pp. 117-119.
62. Kevin O’Brien, The Proximate Aim of Education (Washing­
ton: Catholic University Press, 1958), p. 240.

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SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

In this study of the efficient causes of learning we have
attempted to delineate the precise role of God, the pupil
and the teacher in the teaching-learning situation.
We have seen that God is the First Cause of all being.
Through His Divine Providence He not only preserves
all beings in existence but He also concurs in the action
of every created agent by giving it its power to act, mov­
ing it to act and producing the effect which it produces.
In the execution of Divine Providence God uses inter­
mediaries thus establishing an order in which certain
human beings govern and direct certain other human
beings. In education that is the case with parents and
teachers who are cooperators in the divine order of things.
In the teaching-learning situation God is the Principal
Teacher since it is He Who gives the created intellect its
intellectual power and impresses on it the intelligible
species. Since He concurs in the actions of all created
agents we can say that He moves the teacher to teach and
He moves the learner to learn without infringing upon
the free will of either one.
The pupil, along with the teacher, is a secondary cause
under God for whatever is learned through the coopera­
tive activity of teaching and learning. We have seen that
113

' il'

'K

; f1

the learner is a proximate, physical, immanent and free
cause of his own knowledge. Because he is a free agent
he has the power of acting directly and indirectly; posi­
tively and negatively. The high point of our discussion
on the pupil in the teaching-learning situation is the fact
that he is the principal cause. Though he is dependent
on God and the teacher he, nevertheless, has within him­
self the interior principle that enables him to reduce the
knowledge he has in potency to the state of actuality.
In our discussion on the efficient causality of the
teacher we saw how man’s total intellectual and moral
helplessness parallels his physical dependency. Because he
learns more profoundly and extensively by the assistance
and contact with others it is necessary for man to utilize
the benefits of many trained minds in intellectual matters.
Thus the teacher’s role becomes one of necessity rather
than choice.
;
We saw that the teaching-learning situation is a co­
operative activity in which the three efficient causes—God,
the pupil and the teacher—-are inter-related. Thus is the
sacred character of teaching and learning wherein the
teacher and pupil cooperate in carrying out the providen­
tial plan of God for man.
More specifically, we saw that the teacher is much
more than a mere condition for learning. Nor is the
teacher a mere occasion that facilitates the production of
knowledge within the student. On the contrary, the teacher
is a real and true efficient cause whereby the student comes
to know that which he did not know before. We can say
that the teacher is a secondary, partial, physical and moral,
remote, transient, free, indirect and univocal. We have
seen that the teacher is the principal cause of the instru­
ments used by the . pupil and in the teaching-learning
activity he is an efficient cause adjuvando et ministrando.
Thus is the rule of the teacher vindicated.
114

This view of the efficient causes of learning holds many
implications and practical conclusions for education. True
teaching is not an indoctrination but is a cooperative art
involving the efficient causality of God and the learner.
From this we can conclude to the necessity of the teacher
as an active cause in the classroom and not a mere guide
or "stimulus provider.” Again, this view of the three
efficient causes of learning leads to certain definite con­
clusions on the curriculum. For teaching is “truth-cen­
tered.” Finally, we can say that the mission of the teacher
is somewhat divine in the sense that he is a coadjutor of
God because of the intimate relationship that exists be­
tween God and the human teacher.
Cardinal Newman has summed up very well the im­
portant role of the teacher when he writes, “when (men)
aim at something precise, something refined, something
really luminous . . . they avail themselves, in some shape
or other, of the ancient method of oral instruction, of
present communication between man and man, of teach­
ers instead of teaching, of personal influence of a master,
and the humble initiation of a disciple.”12He goes on to
say that we consult the living man and listen to his voice.
For “no book can convey the spirit and delicate peculiar­
ities of its subject with that rapidity and certainty which
attend on the sympathy of mind with mind.... The gen­
eral principles of any study you may learn from books
at home; but the detail, the colour, the tone, the air, the
life which makes it live in us, you must catch all these
from those in whom it lives already.” *
„

1. John Henry Newman. University Sketches (Westminister:
Newman Press, 1953), p. 8.
2. Ibid., p. 8-9.

115

APPENDIX I
THE NATURE OF THE PUPIL

The importance of a correct concept of the nature of
man cannot be overemphasized by one who concerns him­
self with the education of young people. The erroneous
notions about the nature of man that have been put forth
by the various philosophies of naturalism, idealism, and
materialism have been recognized by our most ardent
Christian thinkers. Christopher Dawson has been one who
recognizes this situation :
"During the last four hundred years Spiritualism has been
declining force, and the materialistic view of man has become
the great rival of Catholicism.*’1

It is the task of Christianity to bring forth, once again,
the true concept of the nature of man. For the educator
to speak of goals and aims he must be first whole-heartedly
concerned with this notion. It is impossible for education
to accomplish its essential task if it ignores or avoids this
1. Christopher Dawson, Enquiries Into Religion and Culture
(London: Sheed & Ward, 1933), p. 311.

117

issue. The world has too long been at the mercy of the
lop-sided philosophy of naturalism, utilitarianism, ideal­
ism, and socialism. Everyone speaks of the education of
the “whole child” but there are few who give evidence of
what this actually means. Maritain gives a very succinct
definition of the theme of this paper when he writes:
“Hence, in point of existence, we may say that man is at
once a natural and a supernatural being.” 2
We propose to re-examine the nature of man according
to the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas and to show how
necessary it is to have a correct concept in the field of
education.
Before explaining the teaching of St Thomas on the
nature of man it would be well for us to take a look at
the outstanding errors on this doctrine. One must keep
in mind that the effect of these errors are still influencing
the philosophy of education today. It is not possible, nor
is it our purpose, to give a detailed description of each
false teaching. We will merely review some of their basic
premises from which they draw the most damaging con­
clusions. The true and traditional teaching on man was
in existence before these false doctrines and as their flaws
are exposed more and more it will become evident that
the truth will prevail.

NATURALISM. Everyone who is in the field of educa­
tion is well aware of the far reaching effects that this
denial of man’s dualistic nature has had for the last few
centuries. Some have said this is the parent of all the
other false educational philosophies.,"False views of man's
nature have their primary origin in the false philosophy
2. Jacques Maritain, True Humanism (London*. Geoffrey Bles,
1954), p. 3.

'118

. .

X/ * A

d

of naturalism.” s The same authors have summed up very
well the most important proponents of naturalism in the
following words:
“The forerunner of naturalism in education was Montaigne;
the father of it was John Locke; the theorist was Rousseau;
the one who brought naturalism into the school was Basedow;
among its exponents were Spencer in England, and John
Dewey in the United States.” 4

It was this group of men that is responsible for much
of what is taught today in our schools and also for the
many problems which have arisen in society because of
this teaching. One need examine some of the tenets put
forth by this false conception of man and his place in the
universe to show how a one-sided view can lead to a one­
sided way of life.
The fundamental principle, that of naturalism, is
described by one author as follows:
"... the doctrine that separates Nature from God, subordi­
nates Spirit to Matter, and sets up unchangeable laws as
supreme.” s

The soul is denied and man is looked upon as a prod­
uct of nature. Man’s end becomes the natural happiness
be found on this earth. One can easily see how this notion
ramified into many other false theories. From this spring­
board other men will propose erroneous doctrines on the
child in school and consequently what that child should
3. John D. Redden & Francis A. Ryan, A Catholic Philosophy of
Education (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1949), p. 162.
4. Ibid., p. 394.
5. J. Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism (New York: Macmillan,
1899), p. 186.

119

be taught. Strange sounding phrases will arise such as
“physiological processes” 6 as the explanation to mental
functions. This becomes a necessity since any dualism
between mind and body are denied. The difference be­
tween man and the brute will become a question and
the answer will have to be: “There is no difference in kind,
only one of degree, between man and the brute," 78
This doctrine of naturalism is far from being without
influence in the United States today. Though the seeds
were planted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
and then nurtured in the eighteenth century by Rousseau
it has produced bitter fruit in the American educational
system. One need only to examine the leading books in
specific areas to see that the authors are well saturated
with this false concept of the pupil. Thus Cunningham
writes:
“‘Naturalism’ is the euphemistic label used in the United
States today. The implication of this label is that man is
one with nature, merely an animal, though the most highly
developed animal the evolutionary process has yet brought
forth." 8

EXPERIMENTALISM. Another false educational the­
ory that cannot be ignored when one considers the nature
of the pupil is that which is known as specifically Ameri­
can. It is the basis for the pragmatic methods of modem
progressive education. It developed as a reaction to the
6. G. O'Connell, Naturalism in American Education (New York:
Bena'ger Bros., 1938), p. 80.
7. P. Manque, The Philosophy of Education (New York: Pren­
tice-Hall, Ina, 1939), p. 47.
8. William F. Cunningham, The Pivotal Problems of Education
(New York: Macmillan, 1940), p. 31.

120

traditional European philosophies. The name that is im­
mediately connected with experimentalism is that of John
Dewey, although it has many other exponents.
". . . experimentalism may be traced to the ancient Greek
Philosopher, Heraclitus, who centuries ago, taught a philoso­
phy of change. While many theorists have furthered its de­
velopment, the most significant contributors have been Pierce,
James, and Dewey, with John L. Childs its chief interpreter
at the present time.” 9

The influence of naturalism can readily be seen in
this philosophical notion if one examines its main tenets.
As we have said above, this is one of the false notions
that pushes on and sets forth new erroneous conclusions
whose effects are being recognized at the present time as
almost disastrous. Some colleges are obliged to offer read­
ing courses for students that are deficient in this area and
technical institutes are discussing courses in the humani­
ties when the curriculum is being constructed. One of the
factors for this re-evaluation of colleges programs may
have been brought about by the implications and results
of the following:
"Intelligence is not a substantive thing back of the activity
of an organism which makes that activity intellectual; intelli­
gence is behaviour that is guided by anticipated consequences.
In other words, we behave intelligently when we participate
in the movements of events in such a way as to shape the
direction of present happenings so that they terminate in
outcomes favorable to growth and expansion." Ό

It is this vague and confusing jaigon that has led many
to lose faith in the whole system of American education
9. Redden fc Ryan, op. cit., p. 476.
10. John L. Childs, Education and the Philosophy of Expert·
mentalism (New York: The Century Co., 1931), p. 75.

121

IMMÎM1W

and has brought about an avalanche o£ criticism even out­
side the field. Dewey is more definite in his conception
of the child although still in error. Here is a very specific
example of the philosophy of naturalism which influenced
his thinking.
. Experience knows no division between human concerns
and a purely mechanical physical world. Man’s home is
nature; his purposes and aims are dependent for execution
upon natural conditions. Separated from these conditions
they become empty dreams and idle indulgences of fancy . . .
This philosophy is vouched for by the doctrine of biological
development which shows that man is continuous with nature,
not an alien entering her processes from without." u

Since the philosophy of experimentalism holds that
man is merely a biological organism which is in continual
interaction with its environment one is necessarily led to
the conclusion: “There is no superior being.” ,2 There­
fore, the consequences of this implication on the educa­
tion of the child would be drastic since it ignores com­
pletely a most important part of him. He is not too much
different from the brute.
"Moreover, experimentalism asserts that man is a being who
differs in degree but not in kind from other animals, and
who, living in organized society, possesses all the essentials
which make possible ‘a refined, humane experience.' " u

This false philosophy is one that is accepted by many
11. John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: Mac­
millan, 1956), p. 333.
12. Romualdez, Sister Bellarmine, The Concept of Being in
Modern Theories of Education (Washington: Catholic University
Press, 1952), p. 63.
13. Redden and Ryan, op. cit., p. 480.

122

educators in the United States and as a result it guides
them in making up the curriculum and in promoting pro­
gressive theories that have led to confusion and uncertainty
in the aims, methods and products of education.

SOCIALISM. Another offshoot of the naturalistic phi­
losophy of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is that
known as socialism. This also has had its influence on the
educational system.
‘‘Socialism and naturalism are integrally related, in that both
attempt to solve the problems of life by means of science:
the former, by social science; the latter, by natural science.
Both misinterpret man’s true nature; Naturalism emphasizes
the human animal, as such; socialism stresses the social
animal." 14

Thus we see once again a deformed concept of the
nature of man. It is merely a matter of emphasis that
determines for socialism what kind of animal man is. It is
true that man is a social animal but this false theory ex­
cludes any other facet of man’s nature. It is a reaction to
those who would emphasize the individuality of man ex­
cluding any social nature. Both are extreme positions and
when man’s spiritual side is denied then there is a double
error. Bergson seems to find a middle ground in the con­
flict between socialism and individualism.
“In other word, according to Bergson, Man naturally craves
for companionship, and the ‘will to community* is a funda­
mental tendency of human nature. 'As a matter of fact, the
individual and society are implied in each other; individuals
make up society by their grouping together; society shapes an
entire side of individuals . . . The individual and society thus

14. Ibid., p. 415.

123

condition each other!’ Here, Bergson seems to take the via
media between socialism and individualism.” 1516

There is, therefore, a place for the individual and for
society. When one attempts to exclude the other there is
bound to be error and difficulty. But even if this is ad­
mitted one must still have a true answer to the question:
What is man? Without this all rigid distinctions become
futile. Socialism has failed in this point as well as in
maintaining an exclusive position. There fundamental
philosophy is materialistic and atheistic and has converted
man into a means to an end and not an end in himself.
The end is society and man is the instrument of society.
Thus Fitzpatrick quotes the author of the book, End of
Our Time who is speaking of socialism and its relation­
ship to the world of capitalism:
“Mr. Berdyaev in the End of Our Time has stated the fact
thus: ‘Socialists take over from bourgeois capitalist society its :
materialism, its atheism, its cheap prophets, its hostility against
spirit and all spiritual life, its restless striving for success and
amusement, its personal selfishness, its incapacity for interior
recollection.’ ”16

In this statement we have a concise picture of what
the philosophy of socialism is. Besides being a move “in
the direction of putting the welfare of the group ahead
of the unrestricted rights of the individual” 17 it has also
15. Mother Mary Bernard Bonhomme, Educational Implication}
of the Philosophy of Henri Bergson (Washington: Catholic Uni­
versity of America, 1944), p. 137.
16. Quoted by Edward A. Fitzpatrick, Philosophy of Education
(Milwaukee: Bruce, 1953), p. 808.
17. Alonzo F. Myers & Clarence D. Williams, Education in a
Democracy (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1954), p. 182.

124

taken away from man all that is spiritual and supernatural
and has reduced his dignity and superiority over the brute :
animal “to his superior cerebral equipment and the con­
sequent possibilities of mental development." 18 The so­
cialistic nature of man has also been put in these terms:
". . . Man becomes a man in the full sense of the term
through society in that he owes to society all that differen­
tiates him from the brute.” 19
COMMUNISM. The most extreme form of socialism
is that known as “radical socialism” or "bolshevistic or
atheistic communism.” In a consideration of the nature
of man and its implication in education we must allow
for a brief examination of communism since it is a growing evil and its effects will be felt for many years to come.
Communist influence has spread to the higher institutions
of learning in the United States as well as other places
of importance. One Catholic author describes the com­
munist conception of man as follows:

,

j
j
j

f

“Not rationality but the means of production distinguishes
man from lower animals. ‘They begin to differentiate themselves from animals,’ Marx wrote of men, 'as soon as they
begin to produce their means of subsistence.’ ” 20

|

The communists have made no secret of their opposition to religion. The numberless martyrs and persecutions
in communist-dominated lands are witnesses to this fact.

j
|
|

18. William C. Bagley, Education and Emergent Man (New
York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1934), p. 6.
19. P. Marique, The Philosophy of Education (New York:
Prentice-HalL 1939), p. 56.
20. Thomas P. Neil, 1859 In Review (Westminister, Md.: New­
man Press, 1959), p. 38.

125

i

In the schools there is a definite effort to disparage religion
and show it to be an enemy of the people. A government
directive which appeared in the official journal of the
Soviet Academy of Pedagogical Science opens with this
paragraph:
“The Soviet school, as an instrument for Communist educa­
tion of the rising generation, can, as a matter of principle,
take up no other attitude towards religion than one of ir­
reconcilable opposition: for Communist education has as its
philosophical basis Marxism, and Marxism is irreconcilably
hostile to religion. ‘Marxism is materialism," says V. I. Lenin;
'as such, it is as relentlessly hostile to religion as the mate­
rialism of the Encyclopaedists of the eighteenth century or
the materialism of Feuerbach.’”21

In such a philosophical system there is no room for
the true nature of man. Instead of the concept of the
whole man being the basis for the formation of philoso­
phy, philosophy is established first and man is made to fit
into it. There is no other interpretation of the nature of
man left to the communist than that of a solely material­
istic creature whose termination comes with death. “Man’s
origin and life, his past and present can be interpreted
only in the light of a materialistic evolution.” 22 How long
this error will continue before it flows into the oblivion
of past errors no one can tell; But because it is false we
can safely say that it will end just as so many false theories
have ended.
.
Mantain has given a very good picture of the philoso21. E. I. Petrovsky, “Atheistic Education in the School,” (trans.
Stephen J. Schmidt, S.J.), Sorvietskaya Pedagogika, No. 5 (1955), p.
3-19.
22- C. J. McFadden, The Philosophy of Communism (New York:
Benziger Bros., 1939), p. 175.
f

126

phy of communism and he feels that nothing can be
expected from it except human despair. He holds that it
is the remnant of the man-centered rationalism of the
past.
"On the other hand, if it is true that in the dialectic of cul­
ture, Communism is the final state of anthropocentric ration­
alism, it follows that by virtue of the universality inherent in
reason—even in reason gone mad—Communism dreams of
an all-embracing emancipation and pretends to substitute for
the universalism of the good tidings of Deception and Terror,
and of the immolation of man to the blind god of History." 2> ■

Having looked at the nature of man as it is conceived
by four false philosophies we will now consider man as
he really is. We must put back in man what has been
taken away from him by Naturalism, Socialism, Experimentalism and Communism. It is only then that we can
speak of the education of the "whole child.” We will not
fall victims to the delusion that the pupil is a material ani­
mal that must learn to live with other material animals
without being a burden to society. This is the lop-sided
view that is currently being propagated by some in the
field of education. This consideration of the child as a
supernatural as well as a natural being becomes a necessity, not only as an apology for those in the opposite camp
but even for some who are engaged in teaching in Catho
lie schools since one author has found evidence of a utilitarian infiltration in some of our Catholic schools.
“Thousands of Catholic teachers attended State univeisities
and non-sectarian colleges, secured the coveted degrees, and
imbibed, in instances, an ‘out and out’ utilitarian attitude.
23. Jacques Maritain, The Range of Reason (New York: Scrib­
ners, 1952), p. 192.

127

j
?
j
!

It was impossible to escape this in centers where God was
ignored and man's origin, nature and destiny were not viewed
in the light of supernatural philosophy.” 24

Therefore no matter how slight, no matter how in­
direct the danger may be present in the attitude of some
of our Catholic teachers that might underestimate the
importance of this problem. Certainly no Catholic, worthy
of the name, would advocate the tenets of the false phi­
losophies that we have just examined by exterior promul­
gation of them yet it is possible they could unconsciously
be promoting ideas that are not in keeping with Catholic
philosophy and theology.
In our presentation of the nature of man we will
attempt to answer the fundamental questions which are
the solutions to many of man’s present day ills: What is
man? What is his purpose on this earth?
In a discussion on the true nature of man much is
presupposed. One must have a belief in the existence of
God and this God must be the God of Christianity, a lov­
ing Father and not a vague, ethereal being produced by
the mind of the deist. Secondly, God had a reason for creat­
ing man. That reason can be seen more clearly in the light
of man’s true nature.
"The first cause of all reality, God, is also the Cause of human
nature. Like any other doer, therefore, God has an end in
view in His creation of a human person. He impresses that
end in the very nature He creates. Just as a watchmaker’s
end can be extracted from the watch by an examination of

24. Sister Mary dePazzi Murphy, "An Analysis of the Utilitarian
Concept in Modern Education and Its Infiltration Into the Catholic
Educational System," (Unpublished master's thesis, Department of
Education, Catholic University of America, 1948), p. 58.

128

>

i

i
1
j

its nature, so also God's end in making man can be extracted
by a careful analysis of the nature of man.” 25

The nature of man as taught by the Catholic philoso­
phy of education is based on the teaching of St. Thomas
Aquinas. This is the whole child that is subject of education in the true sense. From the philosophical point of
view it is the concept of personality that must first be
considered in a treatment on the nature of man.
“Nature, properly speaking, does not begin to exist: rather
it is the person that begins to exist in some nature ... nature
designates that by which something is; whereas person desig­
nates something as having subsistent being.” 26

Man is not a mere physical, material being. His exist­
ence is higher than the brute. He is a spiritual being as
well as material. This subsistent being has an intellect and
will and this gives man a nobler and much richer existence
than other living creatures. “He has a spiritual super­
existence through knowledge and love.” 25
27 Man is able to
26
reason to conclusions and solutions. He is able to be him­
self through love. It is this fact that makes man like unto
God his Creator.
“Since man is said to be to the image of God by reason of
his intellectual nature, he is most perfectly like God according
to that in which he can best imitate God in his intellectual

25. Thomas Dubay, Philosophy of the State as Educator (Mil­
waukee: Bruce, 1959), p. 4.
26. Thomas Aquinas, Summa of Theology, III, 35, 1, and 3.
27. Jacques Maritain, Education at the Crossroads (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1960), p. 8.

129

nature. Now the intellectual nature imitates God chiefly in
this, that God understands and loves Himself.” 28

Thus the first fact we note is that man is made to the
image and likeness o£ God. This likeness is to be found
in the intellectual nature of man. This image is in those
human beings who do not even possess the use of reason
and in those whose souls are steeped in sin.
"The mind, in order to understand God, can make use of
reason, in which sense . . . the image of God abides ever in
the soul; whether this image of God be so obsolete, as it
were clouded, as almost to amount to nothing, as in those
who have not the use of reason; or clear and beautiful, as
in the just.” 29

How different is this concept of man from the teaching
of the experimentalist and the materialistic evolutionist
that conceive man almost on the level of the brute with
only an accidental difference. The "whole child” is a union
of body and soul, matter and form. It is this composition
that is forgotten by many of the educational psychologists
when they confuse animal training and psychological
.habits and then apply their observations to man and con­
clude that this is education. These experiments are of
value but one must keep in mind that man is not a mere
animal. ". . . education is not animal training. The edu­
cation of man is a human awakening . . . And what mat­
ters most in the educational enterprise is a perpetual
appeal to intelligence and free will in the young.”50 One
can readily see then that the whole aim of education
28. S.T. I, 93, 4, c.
29. S.T. I, 93, 8, ad 3.
30. Maritain, Education At The Crossroads, p. 9-10.

130

depends on the concept of man’s nature. To err at this
starting point would make everything else false.
Man’s fallen nature must also be a point considered
in the educational process. The intellect and will of the
subject of education has been weakened by original sin.
To ignore this fact would likewise lead to erroneous con­
clusions about the child and the education of that child.
“If Adam had not sinned, he would not have begotten
children of hell in the sense that they would contract
from him sin which is the cause of hell.” ” The heritage
of Adam has been the darkened intellect that man pos­
sesses which is less able to attain truth, a will which is
less able to attain good and an inclination to evil. Not all
educators will recognize this truth. Therefore many have
erred in the way in which they have presented the edu­
cational process.
“In opposition to this truth is the theory, prevalent especially
since the time of Rousseau, of man’s natural perfection and
perfectibility, which has led to the consequent overemphasis
in education of self-discovery and self-expression. Such a
theory fails to recognize the absolute need for self-repression
and discipline in the life experiences of the individual." &

:

We certainly do not want to underestimate the im­
portance of man’s body. It, too, is part of man just as his
soul. It is the union of the body and the soul that make
man. The body is necessary that man might be able to
acquire knowledge.
“It is natural for man to acquire knowledge through the
senses . . . and for this reason is the soul united to the body,
31. S.T. 1, 100, 2, ad 1.
32. Redden & Ryan, op. cit., p. 49.

131

that it needs it for its proper operation; and this would not
be so if the soul were endowed at birth with knowledge not
acquired through the sensitive powers.” 3334

Thus the body of man is as important as his soul from
the point of acquiring knowledge. In this way the soul is
dependent on the body. However, the body needs the soul
for its very life. For the soul is the “first principle of life
in those things which live.”54 Here we can see the inter­
relationship that exists between the body and soul. This
composite is man.
It is not too difficult to see, then, that man is not an
angel since angels do not have bodies and man does. But
wherein lies the difference between man and the brute?
The brute is animate. Therefore, it has united to its body
a principle of life.
“Man excels all animals by his reason and intelligence35 ...
The proper operation of man as man is to understand; be­
cause thereby he surpasses all other things.” 3637
39
38

Man is able to attain truth which the brute cannot do.
Man is able to have ideas and put them forth in the form
of literature, music and art. But the world is yet to witness
a concerto written By a dog or a beautiful canvas painted
by a cat Animals can be trained to jump through a hoop
but no animal has ever produced a hoop for a man to
jump through.
Man has a free will by which he is enabled to choose
a particular good or to reject it. “Choice belongs properly
S3.
34.
35.
36.

S.T.
S.T.
S.T.
S.T.

to the will, and not to the sensitive appetite which is all
the irrational animals have. Wherefore irrational animals
are not competent to choose.” 87 Again St. Thomas makes
the distinction between the delight we take in those
things that we desire naturally and in those things that
we desire as a result of reason. “But we do not speak of
joy except when delight follows reason; and so we do not
ascribe joy to irrational animals, but only delight.”88
Therefore, we apply the terms gladness, exultation, and
cheerfulness to rational creatures.
*.

‘Dileçtion implies, in addition to love, a choice made before- ·
hand, as the,very word denotes; and therefore dilection is not
in the concupiscible power, but only in the will, and only in
the rational nature." »

Modern psychology has denied or ignored the spiritual
soul of man in many schools of thought It is for this
reason that many modem psychologists have found diffi­
culty in coming to a definition of man’s most important
faculty, his intelligence.
‘To err on the subject of the intellect, St. Thomas tells us,
is the most unfortunate of all errors." 40

One can see the wisdom of this statement when all the
false conclusions of modem psychology are taken into ac­
count. Vagueness and confusion seem to reign supreme in
regard to the very fundamental of the whole science.
Without a true concept of the nature of intelligence no
37. S.T. Ill, 12, 5, c.
38. S.T. I II, 31, 3, c.
39. S.T. HI, 26, 8, c.
40. Jacques Maritain, Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism
(New York: Philosophical Library Inc., 1955), p. 114.

I, 101, 1, c.
I, 75, 1, c
I, 3, 1, ad 2.
I, 76, 1, c

132

133

psychologist has any right to put forth any conclusions.
It would seem that this would be the first step in the
field of psychology since its principal aim is the study of
man’s mind. Yet the disagreement among the authors is
seen in this statement:
"There is no general agreement among the psychologists at
present concerning the meaning of intelligence. In fact, con­
siderable confusion exists concerning the meaning of this
word." 4 >

In conclusion on this treatment of the nature of man
we can see how important a true concept is when one
attempts to set up aims and goals for education. The
needs of the child to be fully recognized depends in large
part upon the answer to the question: What is Man? To
deny this is to base all of one’s conclusions on a false
premise. Truth is founded only on truth. Truth can never
be bom of that which is false. Therefore we should never
feel satisfied with education until it admits the true nature
of the child: a creature composed of body and soul.

41. William A. Kelly, Educational Psychology (Milwaukee:
Bruce, 1945), p. 596.

134

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UNPUBLISHED MATERIALS
Bannan, John F. "Exemplar Causality in the Philosophy of St.
Thomas,” Unpublished master’s thesis, Catholic University of
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Collins, Russell J. "The Metaphysical Basis of Finality in St.
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of America, School of Philosophy, 1947.
Darnei, Denis N.“The Causality of the Instrumental Cause in the
■ Metaphysics of St. Thomas,” Unpublished master’s thesis, Catho­
lic University of America, School of Philosophy, 1950, pp. i-54.
DeAndrea, Joseph. "Philosophy of Man According to Karl Marx
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tional Theory," Unpublished master’s thesis, Catholic Univeisity
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Donohue, S. J., John W. “The Teaching-Learning Process According
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Endslow, Rev. Bart, “The Educational Theories of Jacques Maritain,” Unpublished master's thesis. Catholic University of Amer­
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Halbert, Μ. M., John. “John Dewey’s Concept of Democrary in
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pp. 1-22.
Hart, O. P., John L· “Teacher Activity in the De Magistro of St
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can House of Studies, School of Theology, Washington, 1944,
pp. 1-89.
Hemighaus, Henry J. “Internal Finality As An Indirect Proof of
Divine Providence,” Unpublished master’s thesis. Catholic Uni­
versity of America, School of Philosophy, 1948, pp. iii-38.
Lauer, S.J., J. Quentin. ’The Art of Teaching According to the
Principles of St Thomas,” Unpublished master’s thesis, Uni­
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Linzmeyer, Robert A. "An Appraisal of the Five-Step Thought
Method of John Dewey in the Light of Some Thomistic Prin­
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America, Department of Education, 1956, pp. iii-49.
Madra, O.P., Benedict Joseph. “The Nature of the Natural Image
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Poggi, James E. ’The Gifts of the Holy Ghost and Their Implica­
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versity of America, Dept, of Education, 1955, pp. v-154.
Roether, Sister Mary Claritas, “Education for Action and Education
for Being and Becoming,” Unpublished master’s thesis. Catholic
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Murphy, Sister Mary de Pazzi, “An Analysis of the Utilitarian Con­
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Smith, O.P.,Stephen K. “Education As Intended by Nature," Un­
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Sullivan, Rev. Emmanuel, “Instrumental Causality and the Pro/ duction of the Total Effect,” Unpublished master’s thesis, Catho­
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; pp. iii-67.
Tos, Àldo J. “Finality and Its Implications for Education,” Unpub­
lished master’s thesis, Catholic University of America, Depart­
inent of Education, 1955, pp. iii-68.

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