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Nihil obstat
H. B. RIES,
Censor Librorum

Imprimatur
* S. G. MESSMER,
Archiepiscopus Milwauchiensis
November 17, 1928

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Ο 2. TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART I
Editor’s Introduction.............................

PAGKS
1 38

The De Magistro and the Modem Phil­
osophy of Education—The Neglect of
the De Magistro—Epilogue.
PART II
St. Thomas Aquinas’s De Magistro. . ■

39-86

Translation of St Thomas Aquinas’s De
Magistro (On the Teacher): The First
Article—The Second Article—The Third
Article—The Fourth Article.
PART ΠΙ
The Philosophy of Teaching of St.
Thomas Aquinas................................... 87-162
St. Thomas and Modem Education—St
Thomas Aquinas and the Thirteenth Cen­
tury—Fundamental Principles of Aqui­
nas’s Philosophy of Teaching—Self-Activity, the Basis of Man’s Education—
The Function of Environment, and
Learning by Symbols—Learning, Teach­
ing, and Character Formation—A Liberal
Education and Character Architecture.

APPENDIX
Citations

and

Forms

vii

of

Citation. .. .163-164

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
St. Thomas Aquinas and Modern Educational
Theory

This book makes available St. Thomas Aquinas’s
work entitled De Magistro, for the first time in
English translation. Following it, is a truly remark­
able essay by the translator, putting this work of
St. Thomas into relation to his whole system. Both
the translation and the interpretation are genuine
contributions to education. To state the signifi­
cance of this contribution in the contemporary dis­
cussion of a philosophy of education will be one
purpose of this introduction. Another will be to
state the reasons for the neglect of the work.
The De Magistro and the Modern Philosophy
of Education

Deals with Modem Problems
The nature of the teaching process, the function
of method, and the nature of education as a process
of self-development through self-activity, which is
here stated more adequately than it had been in
the five centuries after St. Thomas, has many ad­
vantages as a philosophy over statements since
Pestalozzi. Certainly the problems which Dewey,

4

PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

for example, who dominates contemporary think­
ing, stresses in his philosophy of education—the
conception of education as growth, the function of
symbols in education, the meaning of reflective
thinking, the principle of self-activity in education,
the essential basis of experience needed for the
educational process, and the nature of the process
itself as self-development, are all stressed in this
brief work of St. Thomas.
No Teaching Without Learning

Teaching, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, is
not a transfusion nor transfer of knowledge. It is
not the presentation of symbols or signs. It is not
listening to the assertions of another. These are
his specific denials. On the positive side he states
that there can be no teaching without learning.
Learning is self-activity. The teacher is merely an
extrinsic proximate agent. What an amount of
modem pedagogical literature need not have been
written, and what devices, lesson plans, and schemes
of normal schools could have been dispensed with
if St. Thomas’s position had been a part of the
inheritance of the modem educator.
Learning is Self-Development through Self-Activity
Learning is the actualization of potentialities. It
is the development of germinal capacities. It is
progressive, evolutionary, and developmental. The
major factor in the process is the individual him­
self, and particularly his active intellect. It is a

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

5

process of self-development. No teacher can induce
it. No “presentations” in the Herbartian sense will
be effective in learning; self-activity is the essence
of the process. No symbols or other shorthand of
experience in themselves can be effective in trans­
ferring knowledge. That depends on the individual
himself,1 and the teacher’s function is exactly like
the doctor’s. The doctor may dress the wound, but
nature must heal it, and this comparison is funda­
mental in the whole discussion of the first article
on learning and teaching. St. Thomas states his
position in the body of the First Article, as follows :
“It must be kept in mind that in natural things
something may preexist potentially in a twofold
manner: In one way in active, complete poten­
tiality, that is, when the intrinsic principle is suf­
ficiently able to bring it to perfect actuality, as is
evident in healing, for through the efficacy of nature
in the sick person he is brought to health. In an­
other way, a thing can preexist in passive poten­
tiality as when the intrinsic principle is not sufficient
to educe it to actuality, as is evident when fire is
made from air, for this cannot be done through
any power existing in the air. When, therefore,
something exists in active, complete potentiality,
the extrinsic agent acts only by helping the intrinsic
agent and by ministering to it those things by means
of which it comes forth into actuality; just as a
1Pace, E. A., Educational Theorist of St. Thomas, Catholic Uni­
versity Bulletin, Vol. VIII (1902), pp. 209-303.

6

PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

doctor in healing is a minister to nature which does
the principal work—ministering by abetting nature
and by applying the medicines which nature uses as
instruments for healing.2 But when something preexists in passive potentiality only, then the extrinsic
agent is that which does the principal work in
bringing it from potency to act, just as fire makes
from air fire in act what is fire in potentiality.
Knowledge, therefore, preëxists in the learner, not
in purely passive potentiality, but in active poten­
tiality.” (See p. 52.)

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Education and the Evolutionary Hypothesis
A considerable effort was made toward the latter
half of the nineteenth century and the early years
of the twentieth century, to bring educational theory
within the scope of the evolution hypothesis. This
was so successful that in the twentieth century we
find it almost an axiom of educational theory.
President Butler, in his otherwise significant and
highly important title essay in the Meaning of
®Cf. Moore. Ernest Carroll. What is Education, pp. 16-17.
“I am profoundly convinced that, whatever else the teacher must
do, he is never called upon to get inside the mind and do any burnish»
ing or repairwork there. We use a figure of speech when we talk
of the gardener causing the plant to grow, and surely we use a figure
of speech, and a very misleading one, when we speak of education
as the process of molding^ sharpening, forming, or perfecting minds.
Much as it may contribute to our pride to think of ourselves as performing such a service, the thing is inconceivable. We have no such
creative power. In the Harvard Club in Boston there is one room
set apart for the use of the graduates of the Medical School, and
over the fireplace in that room there is an inscription, a motto, which
states in a sentence the philosophy of the medical profession. It
reads, *We dress the wound, God heals it.’ If a devoted student of
education should attempt to construct a similar motto which would
in like manner set forth the object of his profession, what form ought
it to take? This, I think: ‘we feed the mind, God makes it.”*

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EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

? 7

Education (originally published in 1898, revised in
1915), says:
“The point of view from which I shall speak of them is
the one given us by that remarkable generalization which has
come to be known as the doctrine of evolution, a theory which
we all associate with the nineteenth century, but which, never­
theless, was seen by the thinkers of the ancient world, by the
lightning flashes of their genius, in what is, after all, very much
the form in which the dear sunlight of modem scientific dem­
onstration9 presents it to us. The doctrine of evolution has
illuminated every problem of human thought and human
action. It is a mere truism to say that it has revolutionized
our thinking; but it is equally true that we have ih very many
cases failed to accept the consequences of the revolution and
to ' understand them in all their important applications. It
seems to me that in no department of our interest and activity
is this failure more complete, speaking generally, than in that
which relates to the great human institution of education.”
(pp. 13, 14.)

Professor MacVannel, in his Outline for a Course
in the Philosophy of Education (1912), says:
“The intellectual and spiritual vitality of every age as well
as of every individual is due to the dominating and fructifying
influence of some one comprehensive idea. The dominant
thought in the intellectual life of the present is the principle
of evolution—an idea which is fast becoming the atmosphere
of all inquiry in the domain of science, art, religion, and educa­
tion. As is true of all great ideas, this one in some form has
sThis is indeed strange language for so competent a scholar as
President Butler. Sir Bertram C. A. Windle’s extraordinarily succinct
The Evolutionary Problem as it is Today (Wagner, N. Y., 1927):
“Hobgen says that the theory is still in its infancy, but is becom­
ing more and more the nucleus of a living body of experimental
investigation, and so it is, but so far the crucial test of the develop­
ment of a new species is nowhere to be seen, and thus the evidence is
purely circumstantial. That is bjr no means enough to Prove the truth
of the theory, however strongly it may suggest it. In 1903, Professor
Morgan of Columbia University said that ‘however probable the theory
may appear, the evidence is indirect and exact proof is wanting1; and
that to my mind sums up the answer to this first question with com­
plete accuracy today.” (p. 13.)

8

PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

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been in the world from the first beginnings of thought. The
conception in its present fullness has been slowly developed
in the environment of the advancing human knowledge of
twenty-four centuries. Evolution is no longer a theory merely ;
it has become a creed; and it now lends such a living interest
to the past development of all organisms, institutions, and
beliefs that it is a difficult matter to adequately appreciate
the standpoint of those who were without the idea. No longer
can the saying of Goethe be accepted without reservation that
the history of the past is a book with seven seals. As the
theory of Copernicus enabled man to reconstruct the alphabet
of his relationships in space, so has the doctrine of evolution
forced him to reconstruct his knowledge of his relationships in
time. ...
“As was noted in the introduction, the doctrine is now
regarded as the legitimate scientific method in the search for
reasonableness in human experience.” (pp. 32, 33.)

-

The Thomistic Conception Evolutionary
The fundamental conception of St. Thomas is a
developmental or evolutionary one. The teaching
and the learning processes are both so conceived.
Learning is a passage from potentiality to actuality.
It is brought about in man by his own activity.
It is a process of self-activity, self-direction, and
self-realization of man’s highest potentialities. Ex­
trinsic agents—teachers, textbooks, and the whole
range of the social tradition, are merely the con­
ditions of its development. They are aids; the
process is one of self-development.
What may seem like a denial of this doctrine is
St. Thomas’s conception that knowledge of univer­
sals precedes knowledge of particulars, and this
would seem to be a denial of common experience.
But this is the fact. Our knowledge grows from

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EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

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vague, undifferentiated wholes to clearly differen­
tiated wholes.4 This is almost the precise formula
that Herbert Spencer uses in his formulation of the
evolutionary hypothesis: the passage from an in­
definite, incoherent homogenity to a definite, coher­
ent heterogenity. It is in accord with Professor
James’s description of the child’s mind as a "big,
blooming, buzzing confusion,” but it is a mind inwhich “the light of reason is implanted by God,
being, as it were, a likeness of uncreated Truth
reflected in us.” The potentialities are given by
God, man is the architect of his own development.’The mind is no mere wax tablet to be written
on by the stylus of experience. It is no inert thing
—the plaything of a so-called natural selection. It is
not a blank piece of paper to be written upon by
some extrinsic agent. It has germinal capacities;
it has potentialities—not the predetermined or ex­
teriorly determined capacity of the merely animal,but the self-determined, self-active potentiality of
a human being bearing the image and likeness of"
God.
* Moore» Ernest Carroll» What Is Education, p. 112.
“Professor James has described it as 'one big» blooming» buzzing
confusion.* ‘That confusion,* he declares, ‘is the baby’s universe;
and the universe of all of us is still to a great extent such a con*
fusion, potentially resolvable, and demanding to be resolved, but not
yet actually resolved into parts.* The process of learning, therefore,
which we each begin at birth and are bound to continue until we die,
is a process of bringing order out of the chaos of our own confused
impressions, of noting distinctions in feelings which at first were
only vague and indeterminate, and of systematizing these reports of
feeling into a world of articulated things. We always start with a
vague experience, and out of it, step by step, we carve the parts
which need demands—an order of procedure just the opposite of that
process of beginning with clear-cut things and elementary parts and
putting them together into wholes which education is commonly con*
ceived to be.**

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

It is, on the other hand, as we might have antici­
pated, in accord with the teleological conception of
the nature of a thing by Aristotle.
A Conception Without Biological Vagaries or Logical

Fallacies
Here is an evolutionary conception of human
development that may be readily accepted and is
not bound up, as in Fiske’s case, with a biological
hypothesis that is having its props more and more
“knocked” from under it, nor with a theory of the
transmission of acquired characteristics now prac­
tically universally rejected, nor based on an argu­
ment that furnishes obvious examples of fallacies.
The materialists may reject St. Thomas’s common­
sense decision that the potentialities implanted-in
beings come from God, and call the First Cause by
any euphemism or screen they will, but their atti­
tude does not affect the nature of the process.
An Orderly Universe
Consider briefly, in this connection, the funda­
mental aspects of the univejse as stated in the De
Magistro. St. Thomas rejects the opinion which
excludes immediate causes, and which, consequently,
assumes direct action from the first causes. St.
Thomas sees in this, a finer conception of creative
power than the direct action in every detail. He
sees the universe in “the order and connection of
causes.” The Thomistic conception should satisfy
the scientist who sees in the universe the dominion

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EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

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of law, the pervading influence of causality, and
man raised to a casual agency in his own growth and
development. This is St. Thomas’s fine language:
“But both of these opinions are without reason.
The first opinion excludes immediate causes, since
it attributes all·the effects appearing in lower things
to the first causes solely. This detracts from the
universal order which is woven together by the
order and connection of causes; while the first cause
from the abundance of its own goodness confers
upon other things not only that they may be, but
also that they may be causes. The second opinion
results in the same difficulties, since removing a
hindrance is only moving per accidens, as is said
in VIII Physics (com. 32). If lower agents do
nothing else than lead from a hidden state into
manifestation by removing the impediments with
which the forms and habits of virtue and of knowledge are hidden, it follows that all lower agents do
not act except per accidens.” (See p. 50.)8
And this growth, development, evolution, if you
please, applies not only to the growth of knowledge,
but to the growth of character. St. Thomas continues :

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5Darwin, Charles, Foundations of the Origins of Species i
** *It accords with what we know of the law impressed on matter
by the Creator, that the creation and extinction of forms, like the
birth and death of. individuals, should be the effect of secondary (laws)
means/ And again, speaking of the vastly complicated laws required
thus to produce living things : ‘The existence of such laws should
exalt pur notion of the power of the omniscient Creator? ” (Quoted
in Windle’s, Sir Bertram C. A., Ths Evolutionary Problem As It Is
Today, p. 10.)

12

PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

“Therefore, according to the teaching of Aristotle
(I Phys. com. 78), the middle course between these
two positions must be held in each of the foregoing
cases. Natural forms6 preëxist, indeed, in matter,
but not in act as the others held, but only in poten­
tiality from which they are educed to actuality by
an extrinsic proximate agent, not alone by the first
agent, as the other opinion supposes. Likewise,
according to his statement in VI Ethics (II, in
princ.) the habits of virtues6 preëxist in us in cer­
tain natural tendencies which are, as it were, be­
ginnings of virtue, and afterwards, through the ex­
ercise of activities, they are brought to their due
development. Likewise, we must say about the
acquisition of knowledge6 that there preëxist in us
certain potentialities of knowledge; namely, the
first concepts of the intellect which are recognized
immediately by the light of the active intellect
through the species abstracted from sense presenta­
tions, whether the concepts be complex as axioms
or simple as an idea of being, or unity, or something
of this nature which the intellect grasps immedi­
ately. From these universal principles all princi­
ples follow as from germinal capacities. When,
therefore, from these universal cognitions, the mind
is led to know particular things in actuality which
before were known potentially and, as it were, under
the aspect of the universal, then one is said to
acquire knowledge.” (See pp. 50-51.)
‘Italics are editor's.

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13

Anticipations of Modern Educators
The fact regarding the applications of the evolu­
tionary hypothesis to modern education is that such
applications are not made. The main conceptions
of the best contemporary educational theory, or of
the educational classics of the nineteenth century
are independent of any direct relation to the evolu­
tionary hypothesis in any strictly biological sense.
Even in its more general aspects, if Professor Judd’s
Psychology of Social Institutions is significant, the
explanation is passing from a biological to the socio­
logical phase—with the biological passé. We need
not pursue this subject further at this time, but we
will concern ourselves with some of the fundamental
notions and principles of contemporary education
to show how fully these are anticipated by St.
Thomas.

The Process One of Self-Education
When Pestalozzi said, “Let the child not only be
acted upon, but let him be an agent in intellectual
education,” and when Spencer said that “it cannot
be too strenuously insisted upon that in education
the process of self-development should be encour­
aged to the fullest extent,” the reader of this essay
would answer that St. Thomas Aquinas had long
ago pointed out that education was possible on no
other condition. When Froebel says that education
must be passive and following, and not active and
categorical, he was merely restating an educational

14

PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

principle that St. Thomas Aquinas had long ago
stated more positively.
Says St. Thomas, “There is a twofold manner of
acquiring knowledge, the one when the natural
reason of itself comes to a knowledge of the un­
known which is discovery, the other when someone!
extrinsically gives aid to the natural reason, which
is called instruction,” and he continues, “Similarly
it happens in the acquisition of knowledge, that the *
one teaching leads another to the knowledge of the
unknown in the same way as he (the learner) would
lead himself to a cognition of the unknown in dis­
covery.” And were an angel to instruct a man, as
shown in the Third Article, he must conform to the
man’s way of learning. So the process of education
is a process of self-education through self-activity,
whether it is (1) independent study or learning, or
(2) formal instruction or other tuition.
The Significance of Symbols in the Educational Process

One of the great difficulties in modem educational
theory and practice has been the failure to interpret
adequately the significance of symbols in the educa­
tional process. We seem to think that symbols are
a substitute for experience. They seem to pass
current in educational practice without anyone’s
suspecting the currency is counterfeit. Our lecture
method is apparently based on the assumption that
the presentation of symbols is an adequate educa­
tional process. The substitution of books for ex-

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

15

perience is another evidence of the same unfortunate
tendency. Making textbooks central in education
is another aspect of it. The significance of project
methods, and other proposals, to reinstate activity
as fundamental in education, is an effort to get at
realities instead of symbols. St. Thomas had put
this problem in the work under consideration quite
succinctly as follows:
“Hence, the words of the teacher, heard or seen
in writing, have the same relation to causing knowl­
edge in the intellect as anything outside the mind
has, because from both, the intellect takes the in­
telligible content (meaning) ; yet the words of the |
teacher have a closer relation to causing knowledge
than have the mere perceivable things outside the
mind, inasmuch as words are symbols of intelligible
content.” (See p. 58.)

Symbols Have Intelligible Content
"'-^Symbols have intelligible content (meaning);
there is the significant fact. Hence, knowledge can­
not be transfused by means of symbols. You cannot
pass it on directly. Not the symbols but the dis­
cursive reasoning is the immediate cause of knowl­
edge. The intellect must become self-active. It
must educe the knowledge from potentiality to
actuality by self-activity. The function of the
teacher is to propose the symbols, but the natural
reason of the individual must do the work. “Hence,
and according to this,” says St. Thomas Aquinas,

16

PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

“one man is said to teach another because the
teacher proposes to another by means of symbols
the discursive process which he himself goes through
by natural reason, and thus the natural reason, of
the pupil comes to a cognition of the unknown
through the aid of what is proposed to him as with
the aid of instruments. As, then, a doctor is said
to cause health in a sick person through the opera­
tion of nature, so man is said to cause knowledge
in another through the operation of the learner’s
natural reason—and this is to teach. Hence, one
man is said to teach another and to be his master.”
(See p. 53.)
In the passage quoted above, Aquinas calls sym­
bols or words superior in causing knowledge to
“mere perceivable things outside the mind.” This
would seem to run counter to what St. Thomas else­
where points out (e.g., Reply to Obj. 3, p. 55), that
the interpretation of the symbols “comes about
through preexisting knowledge.” Experience is de­
clared to be the basis for the use of symbols. This
is the key to the wider experience of others. The
personal experience of the individual is the indis­
pensable “open sesame” to the symbols which con­
tain, let us say, the social inheritance. If we under­
stand this, then we shall understand St. Thomas’s
statement of the superiority of symbols. They have
already impressed upon them the human intellect,
they are freighted with the meanings of the race,

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

17

they summarize the experience of all people in all
time so far as they have been transmitted. Conse­
quently, their superiority to mere naked things,
which things are not even environment until they
enter into a human consciousness. In any case,
mere experience is narrow, personal, with narrow
denotation and practically no connotation. The
symbol is rich in both connotation and denotation
to him who has the key to unlock it.
Educability and Plasticity
“Man not only is educable, but he needs educa­
tion to give a character to his fluid potentialities,”
says Miss Mayer. This is a plain statement of two
fundamental principles—the educability of man and
the significance of plasticity in the educational
process. The fact of plasticity is here adequately
accounted for. Recent generations, in attempting
to interpret the significance of this fact, have
achieved only such unsatisfactory explanations as
Fiske’s Meaning of Infancy. To St. Thomas
Aquinas this power of man’s educability and plas­
ticity is based on his power of abstraction. It is
psychic, not neural.7 It is his capacity to distill
the essence of experience, to acquire its intellectual
coefficients, to get its intelligible content. It is
’Pitner, Rudolph, Intelligence and Its Measurements, Journal of
Educational Psychology, XII, March, 1921, p. 139.
•‘I have always thought of intelligence as the ability of the indi­
vidual to adapt himself adequately to relatively new situations in
life. . . . This implies ease and rapidity in making adjustments,
and hence, ease in breaking old habits and in forming new ones.
Fundamentally this leads us back to the general modifiability of the
nervous -system.**

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essentially the apprehension of the meanings of ex­
perience, their translation into symbols, and their
utilization in the redirection of experience. In man’s
case, this is identified with the notion of active
potentiality. Things may be in active or passive
potentiality. In both cases they have capacity to
receive and attain perfection. In a passive poten­
tiality, an extrinsic agent brings the thing to its
actuality. In active potentiality the outside agent
Ii
is merely an aid, an instrumental efficient cause,
but the principal effective agent is the person him­
self through his active intellect. The teacher is
merely a mediator; the immediate cause is the
active intellect.
.
Modem Teaching Conceived of as Animal Training
' Such a conception would have helped modern
education and modem psychology to avoid a series
of capital errors. To a surprising degree, the teach­
ing processes of our large-scale education are taking
on the nature of animal training. We give cues
and children respond precisely as an animal does.
The intellectual content is lost in a scholastic ritual.
The child is injured intellectually in the process
instead of being helped.
In the language of St. Thomas, we have made the
fundamental mistake of conceiving the student as
existing in passive potentiality, not active poten­
tiality. We imposed our ways, our methods, our
plans; we robbed him of responsibility. We were

άΕβϋί

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

19

attempting merely to train him—that seemed to us
all that was possible. The errors of this funda­
mental misconception may be seen in our results as
indicated in such an educational textbook as, for
example, Burnham’s Normal Mind. Here we find
statements like these:

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“The carelessness of the parent, the mistake of a poor
teacher, or an unfortunate situation in the child’s environment,
is always likely to make a permanent association with lasting
injury. Whereas, in case of the animal we blame the trainer,
in case of the child we are apt to defend ourselves and say
that the child was defective, had an unfortunate heredity, or
was defective or feeble-minded.” (pp. 172-3.)
“The fault in many of our schools today is the lack of
serious purpose and the dawdling and instability of the pupils
in their occupations.” (p. 209.)
“Neither the teacher nor the mother have time for such
things [to permit the child to perform his task]. It is all
very well for you to say that one should wait for the child,
but when shall we get our work done?
“Well, what is your work? . . . I believe it is better
to teach a child what he wants to know at the time when he
wants to know it. I believe that in teaching him in that light
he will get on faster and so will you. ‘What good will it do
you to reach the end of the journey, panting and breathless,
only to find that you have lost the child on the way?’” (p.
216.)
“Teachers and parents alike are prone to interfere, and by
taking the tasks out of the hands of the children, largely
destroy the opportunity for responsibility and success.” (p.
228.)
“The-practical conditions in school that tend to disintegrate
the personality are largely summed up in a general statement
to the effect that whatever causes continued interference and
inhibition of one’s tasks, or robs a child of his task, tends to
disintegration.” (p. 234.)
“From the point of view of hygiene the standard scales
are looked upon with suspicion as putting attention in an

20

PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

unwholesome manner on the artificial and conventional prod­
ucts, instead of on the mental attitudes so important for the
mental health.” (p. 277.)
“But we give them information unconnected with experi­
ence, instruction with little training, knowledge without oppor­
tunity to apply it, tasks for which they have little ability, and
that they cannot do well, exercises in mathematical logic with­
out proper basis in concrete experience of real things, and de­
mand oral or written description without first-hand knowledge.
It is not strange that presently they become confused in their
thinking and the victims of interference of association or
acquire the habit of thinking of two things at once.” (p. 502.)

Behaviorism, Pragmatism, and Wisdom
It may be said that such educational results are
inevitable in a society in which a behavioristic psy­
chology is fashionable. But St. Thomas would say
to behaviorism what Miss Mayer says he would
say to pragmatism: “You are mere scientists.” On
your level of fact, you are doing useful work in
collecting data. Pile up your facts. But you are
not a wise man. or a philosopher. Wisdom is not
your characteristic and philosophy is not your field.
You do not consider things in their highest causes,
you cannot, on your level, “set things in order.”
Animal Training and Human Education
The translator has pointed out in detail the fact
that man is no mere animal. An animal cannot
be educated in any human sense. It can be trained.
It can be sent through the motions by setting up
and controlling conditioned reflexes, but it cannot
be educated. The reason for this is that the animal
is not self-active, can create no personal problems,

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EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

21

is not intellectually plastic, is not free, cannot in­
tegrate a personality, nor form a character. But
the practical thing for teacher and for animal
trainer to have and to hold is the distinction between
the passive potentiality which animals have, and
the active potentiality which animals do not have
and human beings do. No animal trick will ever
be mistaken for human intelligence, and no animal
training will ever be regarded as a genuine human
education.
A Self-Active, Self-Directed, Self-Determined Cooperation
And so we have the place of the teacher in the
educational process. The child is the star. He is,
as Professor Dewey says, the center of gravity in
the educational system. He is the learner—and
teaching is for learning. The cooperation of the
student is essential—a self-active, self-directed, self­
motivated cooperation. The teacher’s efforts are
counterfeit, unless they have the stamp of the
learner. The symbols of learning cannot be trans­
ferred nor transfused. More than the learner’s
presence is required, and more than a merely acqui­
escent listening. The teacher cannot induce the
process by efforts at intense sensations or vivid word
pictures.

Teacher's Need far Scholarship, and Capacity to Stimulate
Self-Activity
Apparently there are two main characteristics of
the teacher, (1) scholarship, and (2) capacity to

22

PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

induce or stimulate the process of self-activity. As
for the first, the teacher must have the knowledge
in actuality that the student has only in poten­
tiality. “Instruction,” says Aquinas, “implies per­
fect action of knowledge in the teacher or master,”
(see p. 65), and again, “the teacher must have ex­
plicitly and perfectly the knowledge which he causes
in another” (see p. 65), and still again, in replying
to an objection, he says that complete knowledge
must preexist in the teacher. (See p. 65.) This
is the basis of the requirement of high scholarship.
And in comparing the two methods of discovery and
instruction which is the essence of the Second Arti­
cle, he calls discovery more perfect “on the part of
the one receiving knowledge,” and instruction more
perfect “on the part of what causes knowledge.”
(See p. 66.)8 Translating this into our terms,
methods of trial and error, according to the second
view, are inferior to instruction because the latter
leads to knowledge more quickly and easily. Imme­
diately at least, the teacher in her own personal
attainments expresses the limit of what may be
*“It may be useful to remark, more or less parenthetically, that
the muc^-despised process of trial and error has, up to the present
time, produced better results in every field, from mechanics to nation*
building, than any other method.
“Experience seems to have proved that no mind is great enough
to understand in advance all the factors that are at work in the
production of any single result. No mind, therefore, is capable of
predicting in advance exactly what will happen as the result of any
experiment or disturbance of an existing balance. Owing to the com*
plexities of every problem and the limitations of the human mind,
men have been compelled to fall back upon the method of trial and
of experiment, preserving those methods that turn out well and reject­
ing those that turn out badly.” (Carver, Thomas Nixon, The Maga>sine of Business, April, 1928, pp. 414-16.)

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

23

accomplished in the teaching process.® As we put it,
the results cannot be greater than their source. Or
more directly, as the teacher, so the school. She
conditions the whole process of instruction. But
for teacher or angel (the Third Article), there is
only one way to instruct or cause knowledge in
man. And that is in “man’s own way.”
The Teacher as Mediator Between Child and Curriculum

>

St. Thomas’s principle furnishes an opportunity
to emphasize a point neglected ordinarily in educa­
tional discussion, namely, that the teacher is the
mediator between the child and the curriculum. No'
matter what may be printed in the official curricu­
lum, nor what directions are sent out by adminis­
trative or supervisory authority, so far as the child
is concerned in the process of instruction, the actual
curriculum is determined by the classroom teacher.
It is true, as St. Thomas says, that the actuality of
the child’s potentiality depends on the completeness
and perfection of the teacher’s knowledge. The
potential curriculum is the teacher’s, the actual or
effective curriculum depends on the self-activity of
the child.

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Dewey’s Child and the Curriculum
In an essay that has had extensive vogue in modem education since its publication in 1902, Dewey’s
----------

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the statement is true.

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

The Child and the Curriculum, the same idea is
expressed as is shown below.
So St. Thomas says, the teacher’s knowledge in a
particular process of instruction expresses the possibility or actuality of the students’ present possibility. What a curriculum or course of study is, is
determined in any case by what the teacher is and
knows.
Dewey formulates the problem thus: “From the side of
the child, it is a question of seeing how his experience already
contains within itself elements—facts and truths—of just the
same sort as those entering into the formulated study; and,
what is of more importance, of how it contains within itself
the attitudes, the motives, and the interests which have operated in developing and organizing the subject matter to the
plane which it now occupies. From the side of the studies,
it is a question of interpreting them as outgrowths of forces
operating in the child’s life, and of discovering the steps that
intervene between the child’s present experience and their
richer maturity.” (The Child and the Curriculum, pp. 15-16.)
And his essay concludes: “It is his (the child’s) present
powers which are to assert themselves; his present capacities
which are to be exercised; his present attitudes which are to
be realized. But save as the teacher knows, knows wisely and
thoroughly, the race experience which is embodied in that
thing we call the Curriculum, the teacher knows neither what
the present power, capacity, or attitude is, nor yet how it is
to be asserted, exercised, and realized.” (The Child and the
Curriculum, p. 40.)

Why the Logical is Emphasized
It may, apparently with great reason, be objected
that the whole process of teaching, as St. Thomas
conceives it, is purely logical and not psychological.
We waive for the immediate point the fact that St.

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EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

25

Thomas was dealing in his actual instruction with
advanced students. His point is that the teacher
will follow the syllogism in the presentation of his
material because that is the way the mind works.
This is the only way to influence the self-determin­
ing activity of the student for his enlightenment.
“Demonstration,” says Aquinas, “is a syllogism that
causes knowledge.” (See p. 53.) Where there is
not this relation to principles, the teacher “does not
cause knowledge in him [student] but perhaps
opinion or belief.” (See p. 54.) We have learned
long since that the “logical nexus” is not the only
way to influence people, or even to improve them,
but it is, in a strict sense, the way to educate them.
Their experience must be permeated by ideas, they
must see things in their relations, they must intellectualize their experience. This, as Professor
Dewey puts it in another connection, “serves as a
guide to future experience, it gives direction, it
facilitates control, it economizes effort.” (The
Child and the Curriculum, p. 27.)
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The Disputatio and the Lecture Method
If we examine the actual process of the disputatio as outlined by DeWulf, and illustrated in the
work under consideration, we find the psychological
factors given even greater consideration than in any
of our own universities. What is the general method
characterizing our higher academic instruction ? It
is the lecture method. And what is there more

26

PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

futile as a regular procedure ! And what justifica­
tion is there for it, for the most part, in this age of
textbooks and reference books, mimeographs and
multigraphs, and the incessant activity of printing
presses! And how superior is the medieval method!
If we put in contrast with this the medieval dis­
putando, we can appreciate the force of the com­
ment by the translator that “whatever the medieval
university did not do, it certainly fostered thinking,
and that whatever the medieval student could not
do, he certainly could think.” (See p. 102.)
The Logical as the Culmination of the Psychological
It should be borne in mind also that the logical
is the last phase of the psychological. It is the cul­
mination of a psychological procedure. Somewhere
in the teaching and in the learning process there
must be a formulation, a putting in order, an or­
ganization, a systematization, even an effort at unity
and organization. This comes after the tortuous
procedures of trial and error or other experimental
method, and at the end of a more orderly process
of instruction where personal experience helps us to
utilize vicarious experience. But this logical formu­
lation must come. Then, exactly as St. Thomas does
in the De Magistro, it can be fixed or developed by
the process of reviewing the whole material.

Enrichment of Experience
One of the educational ideas particularly fashion­
able at this time is contained in the phrase, “enrich-

•"«Ί·ιιι»ΙΜ

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EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

27

ment of experience.” It is a happy phrase, and its
currency is largely due to Dewey. The initial step
in the educational process is the personal experience
of the pupil. This is what gives rise to problems,
this is what helps to give interest and motivation
for the educational process. But this process,
through the rational powers of man, or through
reflective thinking, or by means of the discursive
reason, brings to bear upon this experience the en­
richment of the insight of the class, the teacher, or
the social inheritance, through the mediation of the
teacher. And the experience now permeated by
ideas, or principles, is enriched.

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“Here is,” as Professor Dewey says, “the organic relation
of theory and practice; the child not simply doing things, but
getting also the idea of what he does; getting from the start
some intellectual conception that enters into his practice and
enriches it; while every idea finds, directly or indirectly, some
application in experience and has some effect upon life. This,
I need hardly say, fixes the position of the ‘book* or reading
in education. Harmful as a substitute for experience, it is allimportant in interpreting and expanding experience.” (.School
and Society, p. 76).

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Now,.let St. Thomas Aquinas from his seven centuries of seclusion say the same thing : “It must be
recognized that the active life precedes the contemplative in regard to those acts which are in no way
compatible with the contemplative life, but in re­
gard to those acts which take their subject matter
from the contemplative life, it is necessary that the
active follow the contemplative.” (See p. 85.)

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

The Process of Reflective Thinking

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In the process of self-development through self­
activity, the crux of the whole matter, as conceived
by St. Thomas, is found in the process of reflection.
In fact, teaching is a means of stimulating the re­
flective process in the individual through his own
activity. It is, apparently, sharply distinguished
from the process of presenting" to the imagination,
sensible objects. The presentation of these is ap­
parently regarded as the essential condition prior
to any genuinely educative process. There is noth­
ing in the mind that was not first in the senses.10
It is only when these sensible objects in the imagi­
nation (phantasms) are operated on by the dis­
cursive reason in the process of reflection, that
learning can really be said to take place. “To
merely stimulate the pupil to review the contents
of his memory is not teaching.” To present him
these sensible objects which are ultimately used in
the reflective process is, in itself, not teaching, essential and fundamental as it may be. Habituation
by custom is not teaching on the part of the master,
nor education on the part of the pupil. These are
the raw materials of the learning process. By bringing to bear upon them the reflective power, by intellectualizing and generalizing them, and raising
them to the level of reason or insight, they become,
10A scholastic principle which historians of education credit to
later writers—the sense realists; the latter nay, however, have made
a more conscious educational application of the principle.

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

29

in a real sense, learning, and the efficient instrumen­
tal cause of the learning would be teaching.

Need for a Philosophy of Education in Relation to a
Philosophy of Life
One of the significant contributions of this work
is that the philosophy of learning, of teaching, and
of education is put into relation to a complete phi­
losophy of life. The full significance of this is re­
vealed not so much in the work itself as in the
translator’s critical essay, and the relation of it
to the whole problem of medieval civilization is
indicated. “If there is one general characteristic
of medieval society, it is its absorption in a problem,
the problem of man’s relation to God. ... This
was the problem which the scholars of the Middle
Ages were earnestly engaged upon, to know the
relation of man to the universe and to his Creator.”
(See pp. 93-94.) The consideration of every ques­
tion, as is too often the case today, in itself, in the
light of the specific situation only, without relation,
is the antithesis of the Thomistic idea.11 “Nothing,”
as Cardinal Newman says, “has a drift or relation,
lxCf. Branford*» Interpretations and Forecasts, p. 351.
“I perceive» then, that the modem university has not produced
among its philosophers a Thomas Aquinas to tell them in the language
of their own time and generation how the world of God» the world
of Man, and the world of Nature are interrelated in one orderly
universe.
**Assuredly if an Aquinas did appear he would not be understood
by the Faculties. The theologian and the scientist have each devel·
oped a specialized language all but unintelligible to the other, and
but feebly comprehended by the man of letters. The universities have
discouraged translation from the language of one Faculty into that
of another. And all endeavors toward a common language for the
three Faculties of Theology, Arts, and Science they have stoutly
repressed.*’

30

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

nothing has a history or a promise.” St. Thomas,
in the Fourth Article, is not insensible to the de­
mands of the active life—in fact, his own life showed
it.12 For St. Thomas, the active life is activity di­
rected to the utility of the neighbor. But the active
'life is more perfectly pursued when the contempla­
tive life has inflamed the mind. (See p. 85.) And
the subject matter of contemplative life is'the
‘^knowable reasons for things^' as its end is the “com
sideration of truth.” (See p. 83.) It is this knowing things in their higher causes, and in their highest
that marks this essay so apart from much of our
fractional, unrelated theory. St. Thomas integrates,
relates, systematizes, unifies. And an extraordinary
illumination of the immediate problems of educa­
tion follows, because they are seen sub specie
aeternitatis.

The Contemporary Chaos '
There is in contemporary education an insistent
demand for a philosophy of education instead of
^Branford’s Interpretations and Forecasts» pp. 293-4.
*‘A remarkable succession of moral and intellectual leaders devoted
themselves to the grand problem of unifying the whole culture re­
sources of Christendom for the guidance and uplift of life. In the
division of labor requisite for so immense an undertaking, the Cloister
specialized on the moral approach to the problem, and the University
on the intellectual approach—each thus following the bent of its
respective rustic or urban origin. So far from the monastic and
academic methods of the Middle Ages being purely dialectical and
abstract, as the eighteenth century historians thought, we are begin­
ning to see that they were, at their best and in reference to their
time, concrete and experimental, i.e., evolutionary. This is, indeed,
in a degree, now generally recognized as regards the monastery and
friary, but less so as regards the universities. Othenvise» historians
of philosophy would make more use (for example) of the significant
fact that Thomas Aquinas failed to complete his systematisation be­
cause of the too frequent calls to leave his chair in the University
of Pans» and take his seat at the Council Boards of Christendom A
(Italics are editors.)

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EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

31

the fractional, unrelated, merely personal discus­
sions which are so characteristic of the time.
Dr. C. A. Courtis, for example, objects to the
basic statement of the Committee on Curriculum
of the National Society for the Study of Education,
that “curriculum makers are obliged to consider
definitely the merits and deficiencies of American
civilization” as weak and obscure, and goes on to
say, “I want the statement to say in unequivocal
terms: ‘The first step in curriculum-making is to
set up a basic philosophy. This philosophy should
be derived from a study of cosmic evolution and
should formulate the purpose of life, and the destiny
of man, as far as these ultimate goals may be dis­
cerned. Then all selection and organization of
curriculum materials should be in terms of the basic
philosophy.’ ”13 This is precisely what St. Thomas
did for the problem he was discussing. But six
pages later we find Courtis saying, “We must build
our individual philosophies of education according
to the answers, the facts yield to our individual per­
sonalities, and grant to the other fellow a similar
right.”14 This is not what St. Thomas did. And the
general result of the contemporary demand for a
philosophy of life results in the extraordinary
vagaries of behaviorism or the rationalizations of
the Freudian wish, or the social expediency of
3STA^ Twenty-sixth Yearbook of the National Society for the
Study of Education, Part II. The Foundations of Curriculum-Making,
p. 92.
“Ibid, p. 96.

32

PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

Dewey, or the motiveless mechanism of Harry
Elmer Barnes:
“We now recognize that every human thought or act is
strictly determined by a long process of antecedents, including
our physico-chemical nature, our biological heredity, our en­
docrinal and metabolic processes, and our personal experiences
in human association from the time of parturition to the
moment of the particular act or thought. There is not the
slightest iota of choice allowed to any individual in any act
or thought from birth to the grave. If better and saner types
of conduct are to be achieved, this must be brought about by
giving the individual a better set of experiences through
heredity, education, and association.”15

The Neglect of the De Magistro

These, then, are the fundamental conceptions to
be found in this little work of St. Thomas Aquinas.
The break in the continuity of European civiliza­
tion which came in the sixteenth century explains
to a considerable degree the neglect or ignorance of
such a work as is here presented in English for the
first time. Supplementing this explanation is the
unfortunate attitude or provinciality of American
scholarship, or what goes by that name, to neglect
Catholic sources and Catholic contributions. The
creation of an institution such as the Medieval
Academy fostered at Harvard University, is an evi­
dence of the recognition of the need for the recovery
of this neglected medieval material. There are, how­
ever, certain difficulties in the way of recovery.
“Barnes, H. C. The History and Prospects of the Social Sciences.
Introduction, p. XV»

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

33

They are threefold: (1) The difficulty of the lan­
guage, (2) the difficulty of the scholastic termi­
nology, and (3) the difficulty of the form of presen­
tation.
The Language Difficulty

The De Magistro, like practically all the signifi­
cant work in the Middle Ages, is in the Latin lan­
guage—the Latin language of the thirteenth cen­
tury, and not the first. To a nation which is too
largely unilingual generally, and even among its
college and university teachers, if not among its
scholars, this is almost an insuperable difficulty.
The present translation of the work removes this
difficulty.

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The Terminology Difficulty
At least ever since Bacon’s day when he wrote in
The Advancement of Learning, “This kind of de­
generate learning did chiefly reign among the
schoolmen, who having sharp and strong wits, and
abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading,
but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few
authors (chiefly Aristotle, their dictator) as their
persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries
and colleges, and knowing little history, either of
nature or time, did out of no great quantity of
matter and infinite agitation of wit spin out unto
us those laborious webs of learning which are extant
in their books. For the wit and mind of man, if

34

PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

it work upon matter, which is the contemplation
of the creatures of God, worketh according to the
stuff and is limited thereby; but if it work upon
itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is end­
less, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning,
admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but
of no substance or profit,” there has been a preju­
dice against the scholastic system by people averse
to the definitions of terms and averse to the refine­
ment of thought through distinctions—which is the
essential technic for a development of an organon
of thought. As St. Thomas himself says, “we
progress from vague wholes by a knowledge of the
parts.” One can readily understand that a person
not disciplined in the scholastic thinking, whether
he agrees with it or not, would be annoyed at the, to
us unusual, requirement of sticking to specific defi­
nitions and distinctions. It should also be recalled
that these distinctions were developed as a result of
human experience and reflection in the progressive
occupation with the philosophical problem. The dis­
paragement of refinement of thought, “admirable
for the fineness of thread and work” ; the disdain of
distinction, generally speaking, can result only in
intellectual stultification. In a scholar it can result
only in continued work on the descriptive, without
ever reaching the explanatory level.
In our time when a method of thinking in evolu­
tionary terms is dominant, the conception of passing
from potentiality to actuality, which is the basic

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

35

Thomistic conception underlying this essay, should
cause no great difficulty. Nor should there be any
difficulty in the subordinate conception in the dis­
tinction between an active potentiality and a
passive one. But the rigorousness of the distinc­
tion, and the pursuit of all its implications, makes
the whole thing seem formal and empty to a gen­
eration unused to such discipline. They want con­
tent, not method, organization, or systematization.
Not sensing the problem concretely or having
worked through personally the steps in building up
the philosophy, the need is not apparent. This is
inevitably bound to be the effect, even in our mod­
em teaching of the scholastic philosophy where it
is taught in toto as a ready-made philosophy, pre­
pared, predigested, without even the necessity of
heating it a little before taking. When thus served
cold, it is no wonder there is revulsion. In the
instant case, Miss Mayer has done an excellent
service in the explanation of the whole system.

The Difficulty of the Form of Presentation
The third difficulty is the difficulty in the formal
presentation and development of the propositions.
To one acquainted only with modem thought, it
must seem to be futility itself to set up, for example,
in the First Article, the seventeen objections to the
thesis, and then, like tenpins, to bowl them over at
the end of the essay. Surely this is a Quixotic
enterprise. Let us see.

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The Objections Stated. If one would keep in
mind that these objections are in fact a summary
of the historical positions of the problem in hand,
and include citations from the authorities in the
history of thought, dealing with the particular problem as well as a statement of the contemporary
errors, one might be struck by the modernity of
the presentation. In fact, this is the very modern
thing, the psychological approach. There is also
clearly revealed a characteristic, that in modem
times, I fear, is followed more in the breach than
in the observance, that the history of a problem *
is studied in order to get the setting for the problem
in its contemporary form. Apparently the scholastics would indorse the wisdom of Professor James’s
statement that, to study anything historically, is the
best way to understand it.
The Contraries. These introductory objections
are immediately followed by a number of state­
ments that take a contrary position, and these ob­
jections and their contraries are stated with extraordinary intellectual detachment and intellectual
honesty.
The Body of the Article. The next part of the
essay opens with the statement, “I answer that."
This is the master’s statement of his own position,
after the students have stated their difficulties, have
presented the problem as they have seen it his­
torically, and have undergone a genuine motivated

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37

self-activity. This is referred to as the body of the
article. It states the positive teaching. This func­
tion of the teacher in the medieval university is
undoubtedly at the basis of St. Thomas’s statement
that the teacher must have in actuality—must be
genuine scholar and master—the knowledge which
the student has only in potentiality.
The Reply to Objections. Then follows the ap­
plication of the position of the master to the various
objections stated in the introductory part of the
essay. Each objection is then analyzed in the light
• of the body of the article and its weakness or in­
applicability exposed.
Teaching Procedure Conforms to Modern Teaching
Requirements
This procedure is in conformity with the funda­
mental requirements of the best educational method
of our day. The problems are the students’ prob­
lems or are made their own by study and the “give
and take of discussion.” They are the results of

the self-activity. They furnish an adequate motiva­
tion. They reveal the need for instruction, and the
specific nature of the instruction needed. The replies
to objections furnish the test of the teaching by its
application to the objections stated at the begin­
ning. Thus, do the principles of self-activity, of
motivation, of apperception, of “felt need,” of ap­
plication, of review in new situations, find appro­
priate scope in the teaching process.

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING
Epilogue

18

We are pleased to publish thus early in this series
a work that it seems to us will help particularly to
test practically, one of the purposes which this series
aims to promote. It is no less than a rapprochement
between Catholic and non-Catholic scholars. We
do not quite understand the attitude among reputed
scholars by which they neglect, overlook, and dis­
regard Catholic sources or Catholic contributions.
We do not believe that if this material is readily
available, it will not be consulted, and cited not
because it is Catholic, but because it is significant—
significant historically and significant contempo­
raneously.16
The editor expresses here his gratitude to Father
John McCormick, S.J., for reading this introduc­
tion, and for his critical review of Miss Mayer’s
work, and her critical essay, and to George N.
uster, managing editor of the Commonweal, for
reading this introduction.
Graduate School,

Edward A. Fitzpatrick.

Marquette University,
August 1, 1928.
Pnw ’Da™ ThMns'a?!?st««™ents in Zybura, John L.
pp. 3-98.
* Ond >he
Scholasticism. Herder (1926).

PART II
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS’S DE MAGISTRO

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS’S DE MAGISTRO1
THE four articles or divisions of the De Magistro

deal with four points of inquiry, namely: (1)
Whether man can teach and be called a teacher, or
God alone? (2) Whether anyone can be called a
teacher of himself? (3) Whether man can be taught
by an angel? (4) Whether to teach is a function
of the active or of the contemplative life?
The First Article

Whether Man Can Teach Another and be Called a
Teacher, or God Alone? (Cf. Sum. Theol. I, U7, A. I.)
Objection 1. The question is on the teacher, and
the first point of inquiry is whether man can teach
and be called a teacher, or God alone ; and it seems
that God alone teaches and ought to be called a
*A “disputation” held at the University of Paris about 1257,
of which St. Thomas Aquinas was master. The text used was: S.
Thomae Aquinatis, Doctoris Angelici Ord. Praed., Quaestiones Dis­
putatae et Quaestiones Duodecim Quodlibetales, Ad Fidem Optimarum
Editionum, Diligenter Recusae (5 volumes). Editio Quinta Taurinensis, Taurini—Romae. Ex Officina Libraria Marietti anno 1820
condita nunc Marii E. Marietti Sanctae Sedis Apostolicae, S. RR.
Congr. et Archiepiscopi Taurinensia Typographi, MCMXXVII. (This
is the fifth Taurin Edition.)
The De Magistro is found in Volume III, De Veritate (1) Quaestion XI, De Magistro (in quatuor articulos divisa), pp. 263-276.
Both the editor and the translator are very grateful to Father
John McCormick, S.J., Professor of Philosophy at Marquette Uni­
versity, for reviewing the translation and comparing it with the
original.

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

teacher. (Matt, xxiii. 8.) “One is your master,”
and preceding this, “Be not you called Rabbi,” on
which the gloss says, “Lest you attribute divine
honor to men, or usurp to yourselves what belongs
to God." Therefore, to be a teacher or to teach
seems to belong to God alone.
Objection 2. Further, if man teaches, he does so
only through sonjp symbols. For even if some
things seem to be taught by themselves (for exampie, if when somebody asks what it is to walk, someone walks), yet this is not sufficient to teach him
unless some symbol is added, as Augustine says in
his book Ds Magistro (c. iii, ad fin.) ; and he explains why this is so, for this reason, that in the
same thing there are many elements, so that it would
not be known how far the demonstration held in
regard to any aspect of that object, whether in regard to the substance of the object or in regard to
some accident in it. But it is not possible to arrive
at a knowledge of things through a symbol, because
the knowledge of things is more potent than the
knowledge of symbols, because the knowledge of
symbols stands in relation to the knowledge of
things as a means to an end. But an effect is not
greater than its cause. Therefore, no one can give
to another a knowledge of some things, and hence,
cannot teach him.
Objection 3. Further, if the symbols of some
things are proposed to someone by a man, either he

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to whom they are proposed knows those things of
which they are the symbols, or he does not. If he
knows them, he is not taught concerning them ; but
if he does not know them, then because the things
are unknown, the meanings of the symbols cannot
be known, for he who does not know this thing
which is a rock, cannot know what this name “rock”
signifies. When the signification of the symbols is
unknown, we cannot learn anything through them.
If, then, man does nothing more for instruction than
propose symbols, it seems that man cannot be
taught by man.
Objection 4. Further, to teach is nothing else ’ V
than to cause knowledge in someone else. Now,
the subject of knowledge is the intellect. But sen­
sible symbols, through which alone it seems that
man can be taught, are not received into the intel­
lect but remain in the sensitive faculty. Therefore,
man cannot be taught by man.
Objection 5. Further, if knowledge in one is
caused by another, either the knowledge was in the
one learning or it was not. If it was not in him and
is caused in one by another, then one man causes
knowledge in another, which is impossible. But if
it was in him, it was either in perfect actuality and
so cannot be caused, because what is does not be­
come, or it was as a germ of knowledge. But germi­
nal capacities cannot be reduced to actuality by any
created power, but are planted in nature by God
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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

alone, as Augustine says (super Genes, ad Litt.)2.
Therefore, it remains that one man can in no way
teach another.
Objection 6. Further, knowledge is a kind of ac­
cident. But an accident does not change from one
subject to another. Hence, since teaching seems to
be nothing else than a transfusion of knowledge
from teacher to pupil, one cannot teach another.
Objection 7. Further (Romans x), the gloss on
“Faith cometh by hearing,” says, “Though God
teaches interiorly, yet the preacher proclaims from
without.” But knowledge is caused interiorly in
the mind, not exteriorly in the sense. Therefore,
man is taught by God alone and not by another
man.
Objection 8. Further, Augustine says in the book
De Magistro, “God alone has a teaching chair in
heaven, Who teaches truth interiorly, but another
man stands in the same relation to the teaching
chair as a farmer does to a tree.” But the farmer
is not the maker of the tree, but its cultivator.
Therefore, man cannot be called the giver of knowl­
edge, but the disposer to knowledge.
Objection 9. Further, if man is a true teacher,
he must teach the truth. But whoever teaches the
truth illumines the mind, since truth is the light
of the mind. Therefore, man illumines the mind
if he teaches. But this is false, since God is He

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“Who enlighteneth every man that cometh into this
world.” (John i. 9.) Therefore, one man cannot
truly teach another.
Objection 10. Further, if one man teaches an­
other, the teacher must change him from knowing
potentially to knowing actually. Therefore, the
pupil’s knowledge must be reduced from poten­
tiality to actuality. But what is reduced from
potency to act must of necessity be changed. There­
fore, knowledge or wisdom will be changed, which
is contrary to Augustine (lib. Ixxxiii Quaest.), who
says, “Wisdom coming to man is not itself changed
but changes man.”
Objection 11. Further, knowledge is a representa­
tion of things in the mind, since knowledge is said
to be an assimilation of the knower to the thing
known. But one man cannot represent in another’s
mind the likenesses of things, for thus he would
operate interiorly in him, which belongs to God
alone. Therefore, one man cannot teach another.
Objection 12. Further, Boethius says in the book
(de Consol. V, prosa 5, in princ.), that through
teaching, the mind of man is only stimulated to
know. But he who stimulates the intellect to know­
ing does not make it know, just as one who stimu­
lates another to seeing with his bodily sight does
not make him see. Therefore, one man does not
make another know and hence, cannot properly be
said to teach him.

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

Objection 13. Further, there is required for
knowledge a certitude of cognition; otherwise it
would not be knowledge but opinion or belief, as
Augustine says in the book De Magistro. But one
man cannot cause certitude in another through the
sensible symbols which he proposes, for what is in
the sense is more oblique than what is in the intellect, and certitude is always produced in relation
to something more direct. Therefore, one man can­
not teach another.
Objection 14. Further, for knowledge there is
needed only the intellective light and the species,
but neither of these can be caused in one man by
another; because this would necessitate that man
create something, since it seems that simple forms
of this kind cannot be produced except through
creation. Therefore, man cannot cause knowledge
in another, and hence, cannot teach him.
Objection 15. Further, nothing can form the
mind of man except God alone, as Augustine says
(lib. I de liber. Arb. c. xvii), But knowledge is a
certain form of the mind. Therefore, God alone
causes knowledge in the mind.
Objection 16. As guilt is in the mind, so is igno­
rance. But God alone purges the mind of guilt.
(Isa. xliii. 2S.) “I am He that blow out thy iniqui­
ties for my own sake.” Therefore, God alone purges
the mind of ignorance, and He alone teaches.
Objection 17. Further, since knowledge is cogni­

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tion with certitude, a man receives knowledge from
that one through whose assertion he is made certain.
But a man cannot be made certain by that which
he hears another asserting; otherwise it would be
necessary that whatever is said to anyone by a man
should be held as certain. But a man is made cer­
tain only inasmuch as he hears truth speaking in­
teriorly, to which truth he refers even about those
things which he hears from man, so that he may be
sure. Therefore, man does not teach, but truth
which speaks interiorly, which is God.
Objection 18. Further, no one learns through the
assertion of another what even before the assertion
he could have answered if asked. But a disciple,
even before the master speaks, could answer, if
asked about those things which the master proposes.
For he would not be taught by the assertion of the
master unless he was confident that it was just as
the master proposes. Therefore, one man is not
taught by the assertion of another.
On the contrary, it is said (II Tim. i. 11):
“Wherein I am appointed a preacher, . . . and
a teacher.” Therefore, man can be and is called a
teacher.
Further, (II Tim. iii. 14), “But continue thou in
those things which thou hast learned, and which
have been committed to thee.” The gloss says,
“From me as though from a true teacher.” There­
fore, the same as before.

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

Further, (Matt, xxiii. 8-9), it is likewise said, “For
one is your master . . . and one your Father.”
But the fact that God is the Father of all does not
exclude man from being called father. Therefore,
neither by this is man excluded from being called
teacher;
Further, on this (Rom. x. 15), “How beautiful
are the feet of them that preach the gospel of
peace,” the gloss says, “Those are the feet that
illumine the church.” It is spoken of the Apostles.
Since, therefore, to illumine is the function of the
teacher, it seems that it belongs to man to teach.
Further, it is said in III Metaphysics that a
thing is perfect when it can generate things like to
itself. But knowledge is a kind of perfect cognition.
Therefore, a man who has knowledge can teach
another.
Further, Augustine says in the book contra
Munich. (II cap. iv), “As the earth, which before
sin was watered by a fountain, after sin depended
on rain descending from the clouds, so the human
mind, which is typified by the earth, before sin was
enriched from the fountain of truth, but after sin
needed the teaching of others as the rain descending
from the clouds.” Therefore, after sin man is taught
by man.
I answer that there is found the same diversity
of opinion about the three processes; namely, the
eduction of forms into existence, the acquisition of
virtues, and the acquisition of knowledge.

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Some have said that all sensible forms are from
without, that is, from a substance or separate form,
which they call the giver of forms, or the active
intelligence ; and that all inferior natural agents are
nothing more than agents which prepare matter for
the reception of forms. Similarly, Avicenna says in
his Metaphysics that the cause of the morally good
habit is not our action, but the action impedes the
contrary of the habit and prepares for it, so that the
habit comes to us from the substance which perfects
the souls of men, which substance is the active in­
telligence, or a substance like it. In the same way
they say that knowledge is not caused in us except
by a separate agent; wherefore, Avicenna says (in
VI de Naturalibus, IV, cap. ii a med.), that the
intelligible forms flow into the mind from the active
intelligence.
Certain ones are of the opposite opinion ; namely,
that all forms are innate in things and that they
do not have an outside cause, but only are mani­
fested by external action. For they suppose that
all natural forms lie hidden in matter in actuality,
and that the natural agent does nothing else than
draw these out from their latent state into mani­
festation. In the same way, some even suppose that
all habits of virtue are innate in us by nature but
through exercise of activities the impediments are
removed, by which, as it were, the aforesaid habits
are hidden, just as rust is removed by polishing to
show the brightness of the metal. Similarly, some

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

have said that knowledge of all things is connatural
to the soul and that through teaching and outside
aids to knowledge of this kind nothing else happens
than that the mind is led to a remembrance-or a
consideration of those things which it knew before.
Hence, they say that to learn is nothing else than
to remember.
But both of these opinions are without reason.
The first opinion excludes immediate causes, since it
attributes. all the effects appearing in lower things
to the first causes solely. This detracts from the
universal order which is woven together by the order
and connection of causes ; while the first cause from
the abundance of its own goodness confers upon
other things not only that they may be, but also
that they may be causes. The second opinion re­
sults in the same difficulties, since removing a
hindrance is only moving per accidens, as is said
in VIII Physics (com. 32). If lower agents do
nothing else than lead from a hidden state into
manifestation by removing the impediments with
which the forms and habits of virtue and of knowl­
edge are hidden, it follows that all lower agents do
not act except fer accidens.
Therefore, according to the teaching of Aristotle
(I Phys. com. 78), the middle course between these
two positions must be held in each of the foregoing
cases. Natural forms preexist, indeed, in matter,
but not in act as the others held, but only in poten­
tiality from which they are educed to actuality by

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an extrinsic proximate agent, not alone by the first
agent, as the other opinion supposes. Likewise,
according to his statement in VI Ethics (II, in
princ.), the habits of virtues preexist in us in certain
natural tendencies which are, as it were, beginnings
of virtue, and afterwards, through the exercise of
activities, they are brought to their due develop­
ment. Likewise, we must say about the acquisition
of knowledge that there preexist in us certain poten­
tialities of knowledge; namely, the first concepts
of the intellect which are recognized immediately
by the light of the active intellect through the
species abstracted from sense presentations, whether
the concepts be complex as axioms or simple as an
idea of being, or unity, or something of this nature
which the intellect grasps immediately. From these
universal principles all principles follow as from
germinal capacities. When, therefore, from these
universal cognitions, the mind is led to know par­
ticular things in actuality which before were known
potentially and, as it were, under the aspect of the
universal, then one is said to acquire knowledge.
It must be kept in mind that in natural things,
a thing may preexist potentially in a twofold manner: in one way in active, complete potentiality,
that is, when the intrinsic principle is sufficiently
able to bring it to perfect actuality, as is evident
in healing, for through the efficacy of nature in the
sick person, he is brought to health. In another
way a thing can preexist in passive potentiality as

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

when the intrinsic principle is not sufficient to educe
it to actuality, as is evident when fire is made from
air, for this cannot be done through any power ex­
isting in the air. When, therefore, something exists
in active, complete potentiality, the extrinsic agent
acts only by helping the intrinsic agent and by min­
istering to it those things by means of which it
comes forth into actuality, justas a doctor in heal­
ing is a-minister to nature which does the principal
work—ministering by abetting nature and by apply­
ing the medicines which nature uses as instruments
for healing. But when something preexists in pas­
sive potentiality only, then the extrinsic agent is
that which does the principal work in bringing it
from potency to act, just as fire makes from air
fire in act what is fire in potentiality. Knowledge,
therefore, preexists in the learner, not in purely
passive potentiality, but in active potentiality.
Otherwise man could not by himself acquire
knowledge.
Just as a person may be cured in a twofold man-,
ner,- through the operation of nature alone or
through nature with the aid of medicine, so there is
a twofold maimer , of acquiring knowledge, the one
when the naturéf^Bson of itself comes to a knowl­
edge of the uAkndWn, which is called “discovery,”
the other when Someone extrinsically gives aid to
the natural reason, which is called “instruction.”
Now, in those things which are done by nature and
art, art works in the same way and by the same

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means that nature does, for just as nature in one
suffering from cold induces health by warming him,
go does the doctor. Hence,· art is said to imitate
nature. Similarly, it happens in the acquisition of
knowledge that the one teaching leads another to a
knowledge of the unknown in the same way as he
(the learner) would lead himself to a cognition of
an unknown in discovery. Now, the process of
reason in one who arrives at a cognition of an un­
known in discovery is the application of general,
self-evident principles to definite matters, and pro­
ceeding from them to particular conclusions and
from these to others. Hence, and according to this,
one man is said to teach another because the teacher
proposes to another by means of symbols the dis­
cursive process which he himself goes through by
natural reason, and thus the natural reason of the
pupil comes to a cognition of the unknown through
the aid of what is proposed to him as with the aid
of instruments. As, then, a doctor is said to cause
health in a sick person through the operation of
nature, so man is said to cause knowledge in an­
other through the operation of the learner’s natural
reason—and this is to teach. Hence, one man is
said to teach another and to be his master. And
according to this the Philosopher says (I Posterio­
rum com. 5), that a demonstration is a syllogism
that causes knowledge. But if someone proposes to
another those things which are not included in selfevident principles, or though included are not evi-

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

dent, he does not cause knowledge in him but per­
haps opinion or belief. However, even belief is
caused from innate principles, because from selfevident principles themselves, a man considers that
those things which necessarily follow from these
must be held as certain, and that those that are
contrary, to them must be rejected entirely; but
that to other consequents he may either assent or
not. But this kind of light of reason by which
principles of this kind are known to us is implanted
in us by God, being, as it were, a likeness of un­
created truth reflected in us. Hence, since no human
teaching can have efficacy except by virtue of this
light, it is evident that God alone is He Who teaches
interiorly and principally, just as nature heals itself
interiorly and even principally. Nevertheless, man
is properly said to cure and to teach in the afore­
said manner.
Reply to Objection 1. Because the Lord pre­
scribed that the disciples should not be called mas­
ters, it cannot be understood that this was pro­
hibited absolutely; and the gloss explains how it is
to be understood. We are forbidden to call man a
teacher in a way that attributes to him the prin­
cipal part of teaching which belongs to God, as it
were putting our hope in the wisdom of men, and in
regard to those things which we hear from men,
not referring them rather to the divine truth which
speaks in us by the impression of His likeness, by
which we are able to judge concerning all things.

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Reply to Objection 2. The cognition of things is
not brought about in us through a cognition of
symbols but through a cognition of other more cer­
tain things, that is, of principles which are proposed
to us through certain symbols and which are applied
to other things previously unknown to us in the
strict sense, although known after the fashion
spoken of in the body of the article: for the cogni­
tion of principles, not the cognition of symbols
causes in us a knowledge of conclusions.
Reply to Objection 3. Those things about which
we are taught through symbols, we know to some
degree, but to some degree we do not know. For
example, if we are being taught what man is, we
must know beforehand something about him, either
the fact of his animality or of his substantiality, or
at least of his existence, which cannot be unknown
to us. In like manner, if we are being taught any
conclusion, we must first know regarding the sub­
ject and its property, what they are, even though
the principles from which the conclusion is being
taught are known beforehand; for all learning
comes about from preexisting knowledge, as is said
j
in I Posteriorum (in prim). Hence, the reasoning
i
in the third objection does not follow.
I.
Reply to Objection 4. From the sensible symbols,
ί
which are received in the sense faculty, the intellect
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takes the essence which it uses in producing knowl-

edge in itself, for the immediate, efficient cause of
knowledge is not the symbols but the process of

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

discursive reasoning from principles to conclusions,
as was said in the body of the article.
Reply to Objection 5. In the one who is being
taught, knowledge preêxists not in complete actu­
ality but, as it were, in germinal capacities, because
the universal concepts, the cognition of which is
naturally implanted in us, are as seeds of all sub­
sequent cognitions. Although germinal capacities
are not educed to actuality through a created power
as though they were infused by a created power,
yet that which is in them originally and virtually
can be educed to actuality by the action of a created
power.
Reply to Objection 6. He who teaches is not said
to transfer knowledge to the pupil, as though the
same knowledge numerically which is in the teacher
should be produced in the pupil ; but through teach­
ing there is produced in the pupil knowledge like
that which is in the teacher, educed from poten­
tiality to actuality, as was said in the body of the
article.
Reply to Objection 7. Just as a doctor, although
he works exteriorly while nature alone works in­
teriorly, is said to cause healing; so man is said to
teach, although he announces exteriorly while God
teaches interiorly.
Reply to Objection 8. Augustine, in that he
maintains in the De Magistro that God alone
teaches, does not mean to deny that man teaches

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exteriorly but to insist that God alone teaches in­
teriorly.
Reply to Objection 9. Man can truly be called
a true teacher teaching truth and enlightening the
mind, not as though infusing the light of reason, v
butaiding the light of reason to the perfection of
knowledge through those things which he proposes
exteriorly according to the manner spoken of:
(Ephes, iii. 8-9) : “To me, the least of all the saints,
is given this grace, . . .' to enlighten all men
that they may see what is the dispensation of the
mystery which hath been hidden from eternity in
God."
Reply to Objection 10. Wisdom is twofold, cre­
ated and uncreated. Both are infused in man. Be­
cause of the infusion of this wisdom, man can be
changed for the better by developing. Uncreated
wisdom cannot, indeed, be changed ; created wisdom
is changed in us per accidens but not per se; for
wisdom itself may be considered in a twofold man­
ner: on the one hand, in respect to the eternal
things with which it is concerned, wisdom is entirely
unchangeable ; on the other hand, in respect to the
existence which it has in the subject, it is changed
per accidens when the subject is changed from having wisdom in potentiality to having it in actuality.
For the intelligible forms, of which wisdom con­
sists, are both likenesses of things and forms which
perfect the intellect.
Reply to Objection 11. The intelligible forms, of

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

which knowledge received from teaching is com­
posed, are impressed in the pupil immediately
through the active intellect but mediately through
the teacher ; for the( teacher proposes the symbols
of intelligible things from which the intellect takes
the abstractions and impresses them on the passive
intellect. Hence, the words of the teacher, heard
or seen in writing, have the same relation to causing
knowledge in the intellect as anything outside the
mind has, because from both, the intellect takes the
intelligible content (meaning) ; yet the words of
the teacher have a closer relation to causing knowl­
edge than have the mere perceivable things outside
the mind, inasmuch as words are symbols of in­
telligible content.
Reply to Objection 12. The intellect and bodily
vision are not the same, for bodily vision is not a
logical power so that from certain of its objects
it arrives at others; but all of its objects are visible
to it as quickly as it is turned toward them. Hence,
the one who has the power of sight has the same
relation to looking toward all things visible as one
having habitual knowledge has to directing atten­
tion toward what he habitually knows. Hence, the
one looking does not need to be excited by another
to see, except, inasmuch as his gaze may be directed
by someone to something visible as with the point­
ing of the finger or something of that sort. But
the intellective power, since it is discursive, does
infer some things from others. Hence, it has not

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precisely an equal relation to all intelligible objects
to be considered, but it sees certain things imme­
diately, as those which are self-evident in which are
contained implicitly other things which it cannot see
except by making explicit through the office of rea­
son that which is implicitly contained in these
principles. Hence, before it has habitual knowl­
edge, the intellect is not only in accidental poten­
tiality to knowing things of this kind but even in
essential potentiality, for it needs a mover which
will lead it into actuality through teaching, as is
said in VIII Physics (com. 32). He who knows
something habitually, however, does not need this
service of a mover. The teacher, then, excites the
intellect to knowing those things which he is teach­
ing as an essential mover, leading it from poten­
tiality to actuality; but he who shows something
to the bodily sight excites it as an accidental mover,
according as one having habitual knowledge can be
aroused to think about something.
Reply to Objection 13. The whole certitude of
knowledge arises from the certitude of principles.
Conclusions are then known to be valid when they
are resolved into their principles. Therefore, the
fact that anything is known with certitude is pos­
sible from theJightof reason divinely implanted in
us, by which God speaks in us. It does not arise
from man’s teaching from without, except inasmuch
as in teaching he resolves conclusions into princi­
ples; from him, however, we could not reach a cer-

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titude of knowledge if there were not in us certitude
of principles into which conclusions are resolved.
Re-ply to Objection 14. Man teaching exteriorly
does not infuse the light of the intellect, but is, ÿi
some way, the cause of the intelligible species, in­
asmuch as he proposes to us certain symbols of
intelligible content which the intellect receives from
the symbols and stores in its very self.
Reply to Objection 15. When it is said that noth­
ing can form the mind except God, its ultimate form
is referred to, without which it is considered form­
less, whatever other form it may have. But this is
that form by which it is toned to the Word and
clings to It, through which alone the rational nature
is said to be formed, as is evident in Augustine.
{Super Genes, ad lit., lib. I, c. xxv, and lib. Ixxxiii,
Qq. Quaest. S.)
Reply to Objection 16. Guilt is in the affective
faculty, on which God alone can make an impres­
sion, as will be evident in the next article, but igno­
rance is in the intellect on which a created power
can make an impression, since the active intellect
impresses the intelligible species on the possible in­
tellect, through the medium of which from sense
impressions and man’s instruction, knowledge is
caused in our minds, as was said in the body of the
article.
Reply to Objection 17. Certitude of knowledge,
as was said, man has from God alone, Who endowed
us with the light of reason through which we know

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61

the principles from which certitude arises. And yet
knowledge is caused in us by man in some sense
way, as was said in the body of the article.
Reply to Objection 18. A pupil questioned by the
teacher before instruction might answer regarding
the principles through which he is being taught, but
not regarding the conclusions which someone is
teaching him. Therefore, he does not learn the
principles from the teacher but only the conclusions.

The Second Article
Whether Anyone Can be Called a Teacher of Himself?

Objection 1. The second point of inquiry is
whether anyone can be said to be a teacher of him­
self, and it seems that no one can ; because an action
ought to be attributed to a principal rather than
to an instrumental cause. But the principal cause,
as it were, of knowledge caused in us is the active
intellect ; and man who teaches exteriorly is a kind
of instrumental cause, proposing to the active in­
tellect the instruments by means of which it leads
us to knowledge. Therefore, the active intellect
teaches, rather than a man from without. If, there­
fore, on account of instruction from without the
one who speaks is said to be the teacher of the one
who hears, much more ought he who hears on ac­
count of the light of the active intellect, be called
a teacher of himself.
Objection 2. Further, no one leams anything
except as he comes to a certitude of knowledge.
But certitude of knowledge is in us through prin­
ciples naturally known by the light of the intellect
Therefore, it is particularly proper to the active in­
tellect to teach, and hence, the same conclusion as
before.

DE MAGISTRO

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Objection 3. To teach is more proper to God than
to man. Hence (Matt, xxiii. 8), “One is your mas­
ter.” But God teaches us, inasmuch as He gives
us the light of reason by which we can judge con­
cerning all things. Therefore, the action of teaching
ought to be attributed especially to that light.
Objection 4. To know something by discovery is
more perfect than to learn from another, as is evi­
dent in I Ethics (caç. iv, ad fin.). If, therefore, the
name of teacher is assumed from that manner of
acquiring knowledge by which one learns from an­
other, so that one may be called a teacher of an­
other,' much more should the name of teacher be
assumed from the way of learning by discovery so
that one may be called his own teacher.
Objection 5. Just as one is led to virtue by him­
self and by others, so he is led to knowledge both
by himself in discovery and by another in instruc­
tion. But those who arrive at the works of virtue
without an extrinsic instructor are said to be a law
unto themselves. (Rom. ii. 14.) “When the Gen­
tiles, who have not the law, do by nature those
things that are of the law . . . (they) are a
law to themselves.” Therefore, he also who acquires
knowledge through himself ought to be called a
teacher of himself.
Objection 6. Further, the teacher is the cause of
knowledge as the doctor is of health, as was said.
But the doctor heals himself; therefore, man can
teach himself.*

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64
PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING
On the contrary, the Philosopher says (VIII
Physics com. 32), that it is impossible for the one
teaching to learn because it is necessary for the
teacher to have knowledge and for the learner not
>
to have it. Therefore, man cannot teach himself nor
I
be called his own teacher.
Further, teachership implies a relation of super­
ordination and subordination, as lordship does. But
,
relations of this kind cannot be of someone to himj
self, for one cannot be father of himself or lord of
himself. Therefore, man cannot be called a teacher
of himself.
I answer that without doubt a man can, through
his implanted light of reason and without a teacher
or aid of outside instruction, come to a knowledge
of many unknown things, as is evident in everyone
who acquires knowledge by discovery. A man is
thus in a way a cause of his own knowledge; he
|
cannot, however, be called his own teacher or be
j
said to teach himself. For we find two kinds of
principal agents in nature, as is evident in the
Philosopher (VII Metaphysics com. 22 and 28).
One kind of agent is that which has in itself every­
thing which in the effect is caused by it, either in
the same way, as in the case of univocal agents,
or in a superior way, as in the case of equivocal
agents. But there are certain agents in which there
preexists only a part of the results which are
brought about, just as movement or some warming
medicine in which the heat is found either actually
or virtually causes healing; but the heat is not the

DE MAGISTRO
healing entirely but only partially. Now, in
first kind of agent the virtue of action is perfect,
but not in the second, because a thing acts accord­
ing as it is actual. Hence, since the second is not
actual as the cause of the effect, except partially,
it will not be a perfect agent. Instruction implies
perfect action of knowledge in the teacher or master.
Hence, he who is the teacher must have explicitly
and perfectly the knowledge which he causes in
another, as in one learning through instruction. But
when knowledge is acquired through the intrinsic
principle, that' which is the active cause of knowl­
edge does not have the knowledge to be acquired
except partially, that is, as much as is understood
by the germinal capacities or potentialities for
knowledge, which are the general principles; and,
therefore, from such causality the name of teacher
or master, properly speaking, cannot be assumed.
Reply to Objection 1. Although the active intel­
lect is a more principal cause in some respects than
is a man teaching extrinsically, yet complete knowl­
edge does not preexist in it as in the teacher ; hence,
the reasoning does not follow.
Reply to Objection 2. The solution is evident
from what has been said.
Reply to Objection 3. God knows explicitly every­
thing which man is taught by Him; hence, the
function of teaching can be fittingly attributed to
Him. But it is otherwise with regard to the active
intellect for the reason just given (Objection 1).

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING
On
p^eply to Objection 4. Although the mode of the
requisition of knowledge through discovery is more
perfect on the part of the one receiving the knowl­
edge, inasmuch as he is thereby distinguished as
being more gifted for learning, nevertheless, on the
part of what causes the knowledge, the more perfeet mode is through instruction, because 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, because of this fact
that the pupil knows the principles of knowledge
only in generality (vaguely).
Reply to Objection 5. Law in practical matters
has the same relation as a principle has in specu­
lative matters, but not as a teacher to a pupil.
Hence, it does not follow that if one is a law to
himself he can be a teacher to himself.
Reply to Objection 6. The doctor heals not in­
asmuch as he has health in actuality beforehand,
but inasmuch as he has health in the knowledge of
his art; but the teacher teaches inasmuch as he has
knowledge in actuality. Hence, he who does not
have health in actuality can cause health in himself
because he has health in the knowledge of the art
of healing ; but it is not possible that one have
knowledge in actuality and yet not have it, so that
thus he could be taught by himself.

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The Third Article

Whether Man Can be Taught by an Angel?
(Cf. Sum. Theol. i, 117 A2)

Objection 1. The third point of inquiry is
whether man can be taught by an angel, and .it
seems that he cannot. Now, if an angel teaches,
he must teach either interiorly or exteriorly. But
he does not teach interiorly, for that belongs to God
alone, as Augustine says, nor exteriorly, it seems,
because to teach exteriorly, is to teach through some
sensible signs, as Augustine says in the De Magistro
(last chapter). But the angels do not teach us
with sensible signs of this kind unless they appear
sensibly, which happens outside the ordinary course
of nature and is, as it were, miraculous.
Objection 2. But, it will be said that angels
teach us interiorly, inasmuch as they make an im­
pression on the imagination. But on the contrary,
a species impressed on the imagination is not suf­
ficient for the actual function of the imagination
unless attention accompanies, as is evident in
Augustine’s book de Trinitate (lib. Ixxxiii, Qq., q.
SI). But an angel cannot force our attention,
because attention is an act of the will, on which
God alone can make an impression. Therefore, not
even by making an impression on the imagination
can an angel teach us, since we cannot be taught

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

through the medium of the imagination except by
actually imagining something.
Objection 3. Further, we cannot be taught by
angels without their sensible appearance except
inasfar as they enlighten the intellect, which it
seems they cannot do because neither do they give
the light of reason, which is from God alone, natural
to the mind, nor do they give even the light of
grace which God alone infuses. Therefore, angels
without visible appearance cannot teach us.
Objection 4. When one is taught by another, one
must comprehend the concepts of the teacher so that
in this way there is a procedure to knowledge in the
mind of the pupil just as there is a procedure in
the mind of the teacher. But man cannot see the
concepts of an angel for he cannot see the concepts
themselves, just as he cannot see them in another
man; much less, therefore, could he see them in
an angel because of the greater difference. Nor,
again, can he see their concepts in sensible symbols
unless the angel appears to the senses, which phe­
nomenon we are not treating. Therefore, an angel
cannot teach us in any other way.
Objection 5. Further, that to teach belongs to the
One Who enlightens every man bom is evident in
the gloss (Matt, xxiii). “One is your teacher.” But
this is not proper to an angel but to the Uncreated
Light alone, as is evident in John I. Therefore,
angels cannot teach us.

DE MAGISTRO
69
Objection 6. Further, whoever teaches another
leads him to truth and thus causes truth in his mind.
But God alone has causality over truth; because,
since truth is an intelligible light and a simple form,
it does not come into existence successively and
hence, cannot be produced except by creation,
which is proper to God alone. Since, therefore,
angels are not creators, as Damascene says (lib. II
orth. Fidei, cap. iii, in fin.), it seems that they can­
not teach.
Objection 7. Further, an unfailing illumination
can proceed only from an unfailing light, for when
the light is removed the subject ceases to be illumi­
nated. But in teaching, a certain unfailing light
is needed because knowledge is about necessaries
which are always. Therefore, teaching proceeds
from an unfailing light only. But the angelic light
is not of this kind, since their light would fail if it
were not divinely preserved. Therefore, an angel
cannot teach.
Objection 8. Further, it is said (John i. 38) that
two of the disciples of John followed Jesus and
when He asked them, “What seek you?” they an­
swered, “Master, where dwellest thou?” The gloss
at this place says, “He asked them not in ignorance
but that they might have the reward for answering ;
and that they might answer Him when He asked
them what they wanted, not merely the thing that
they wanted but also the person.” From this it is
held that in that response they confessed that He
was a certain person and that by this confession

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

they showed their faith and in this respect gained
merit. But the merit of Christian faith consists
in this, that we confess that Christ is a divine per­
son. Therefore, to be a teacher belongs to a divine
person alone.
Objection 9. Further, whoever teaches must
manifest truth. But, since truth is a certain in­
telligible light, it is more known to us than an
angel is. Therefore, we are not taught by an angel
since the more known is not manifested through
the less known.
Objection 10. Further, Augustine says in the
book De Trinitate that our mind is formed imme­
diately by God through the mediation of no crea­
ture. But an angel is a creature. Therefore, there
is not interposed between God and the mind for
forming it anything superior to the mind and in­
ferior to God. Hence, man cannot be taught by an
angel.
Objection 11. Further, as our wills reach even
to God Himself, so our intellect can reach to the
contemplation of His essence. But God Himself
immediately forms our will through the infusion of
grace with no angel mediating. Therefore, He
forms our intellect by instruction with no mediating
angel.
Objection 12. Further, all cognition is through
some species. If, therefore, an angel teaches man,
he must cause some species in him through which
he may know. But this is not possible except by

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71

creating the species, which is in no way proper to
an angel, as Damascene says (lib. II, cap. iii, in
fin.); or by enlightening the phantasms so that
intelligible species may result in the possible human
intellect. But this would be to return to that error
of those philosophers who propose that the active
intellect, whose office it is to enlighten the phan­
tasms, is a separate substance. Hence an angel can­
not teach.
Objection 13. Further, the intellect of an angel
is more removed from the intellect of man than
man’s intellect is from the human imagination. But
the imagination cannot receive that which is in the
human intellect, for the imagination can only re­
ceive particular forms such as the intellect does not
contain. Therefore, the human intellect has not a
capacity for those things which are iri' the angelic
intellect; and, therefore, man cannot be taught by
an angel.
Objection 14. Further, the light by which a thing
is illumined ought to be a suitable light as a cor­
poreal light is for colors. But the angelic light,
since it is purely spiritual, is not a suitable light
for the phantasms which are in a way corporeal, as
they are seated in a corporeal organ. Therefore,
the angels cannot teach us by enlightening our
phantasms, as was claimed.
Objection 15. Further, everything that is known,
is known either through its essence or through its
similitude. But cognition by which a thing is

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72

PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

known through its essence by the human mind,
cannot be caused by an angel, for thus it would
be necessary that virtues and other things which
are contained within the mind be impressed by the
angels themselves, since such things are known
through their essence. Similarly, neither could
cognition of things which are known through their
similitudes be caused by them, since the things to
be known are more closely related to their simili­
tudes which are in the knower than an angel is.
Hence, in no way can an angel be the cause of
man’s cognition, that is, teach him.
Objection 16. Further, although a farmer exte­
riorly urges nature to natural effects, he is not
called a creator, as is evident in Augustine (Z>e
Genes, lib. I, cap. xiii). Therefore, with equal
reason angels ought not to be called teachers and
masters although they urge the intellect of man to
knowledge.
Objection 17. Further, since an angel is superior
to a man, if he teaches, his teaching ought to be
superior to man’s teaching. But this is not possible,
for man can teach about those things which have
causes determined in nature ; but other things, such
as future contingencies, cannot be taught even by
angels, since by their natural knowledge they are
ignorant of these things, because God alone has
knowledge of the future. Therefore, angels cannot
teach man.

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DE MAGISTRO

73

On the contrary, Dionysius says (Caelest. Hier­
arch., cap. iv). “I see that the angels first taught the
divine mystery of the humanity of Christ and after­
wards through them the grace of that knowledge
descended to us.”
Further, what an inferior can do, a superior can.
But an angel is superior to man, therefore an angel
can teach a man.
Further, the order of divine wisdom is not less in
the angels than in the heavenly bodies which in­
fluence things lower than themselves ; therefore, an
angel can teach a man.
Further, that which is in potentiality can be
educed to actuality by that which is in actuality,
and that which is in less actuality by that which
is in more perfect actuality. But an angelic intel­
lect is more in actuality than man’s intellect. There­
fore, the human intellect is educed to actuality of
knowledge through the angelic intellect ; and, there­
fore, an angel can teach.
Further, Augustine says in his book De Bono
Perseverantiae that some receive the teaching of
salvation immediately from God, some from angels,
some from men ; therefore, an angel can teach.
Further, both sending in the light as the sun does
and opening a window which obstructs the light are
said to be illuminating a house. But, although God
alone infuses the light of truth in our mind, yet an
angel or a man can remove an obstruction to re­
ceiving the light. Therefore, not only God but also
an angel or a man can teach.

74

PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

1 answer that: Angels in their dealings with men
operate in a twofold manner. In one way according
to our capacity, that is, when an angel appears to
man sensibly either by assuming a body or some
other way and instructs him with audible words.
About this mode of teaching by an angel we will
not inquire because in this way an angel does not
teach otherwise than a man does. But in another
way an angel deals with us in its own way, that is,
invisibly. How far man can be taught by an angel
in this manner is the object of this question.
It must be kept in mind that since an angel is
an intermediate between God and man, according
to its rank an intermediate manner of teaching is
proper to the angel, inferior to God’s teaching but
superior to man’s. But the nature of an angel’s
teaching cannot be understood unless the nature of
God’s and man’s teaching is seen.
To make this clear we'must recognize that there
is this difference between the intellect and bodily
sight: to bodily sight all its objects are equally
immediate for knowing, for the sense is not a dis­
cursive power as to be obliged from one of its ob­
jects to arrive at another; but to the intellect not
all intelligible things are equally immediate for
knowing, but certain things it sees immediately,
and certain other things it does not see except by
examining other principles. Thus, then, man gains
a knowledge of the unknown through these two,
namely, the intellective light, and the first concepts

DE MAGISTRO

75

intuitively known which are compared to the light
of the active intellect, as tools to a builder. With
regard to both, God is the cause of man’s knowl­
edge in the most excellent way possible^ because He
endows the mind itself with the intellective light
and impresses on it the knowledge of first principles,
which are as certain germs of knowledge ; just as He
impresses on other natural things the germinal
capacities of all the effects to be produced. But
man, being equal according to the order of nature
to other men in the kind of intellective light, can
in no way be the cause of knowledge in another
man by increasing the light in him. But in view
of the fact that knowledge of unknown things is
caused through principles intuitively known, man
is, in a way, the cause of another’s knowing, not
giving the knowledge of principles but by educing
into actuality that which is implicitly and in a cer­
tain way potentially contained in the principles, by
means of sensible signs shown to the external senses,
as has been said in the preceding article. But be­
cause an angel has naturally a more perfect intel­
lective light than man, he can be the cause of
knowing in man in both ways, although in an in­
ferior way, than God is the cause and in a superior
way than man is. On the part of the light, although
an angel cannot infuse the intellective light as God
does, he can, however, strengthen the infused light
to a more perfect function of intellection; for when
anything which is imperfect in some way comes in

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

contact with something more perfect in that respect,
its virtue is strengthened. This is seen even in
bodies; a body at rest is strengthened by a body
in motion, which is compared to it as actuality to
potentiality, as is held in IV Physics. On the part
of the principles, an angel can teach man, not in­
deed by giving a knowledge of principles as God
does, and not by proposing the deduction of con­
clusions from principles with the aid of sensible
signs as man does, but by forming certain species
in the imagination, which can be formed by a move­
ment of the corporeal organ, as is evident in those
asleep and the insane, who, according to the diver­
sity of the phantasms, rising to their minds, ex­
perience different images. Thus, by the mingling
together of species it comes about that an angel
shows what he knows through images of this kind,
to the one in whom the species are mingled, as
Augustine says. (Chap. XII De Genes, ad litteram,
xii, near the end.)
Reply to Objection 1. An angel teaching invisibly
does indeed teach interiorly in comparison to the
instruction of man who proposes his teaching to
the exterior senses, but in comparison to the teach­
ing of God, Who works within the mind by infusing
light, the angel’s instruction is to be considered
exterior.
Reply to Objection 2. Although the attention of
the will cannot be forced, yet the attention of the
sensitive part can be prevailed on ; as when someone

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77

is pricked, he must of necessity pay attention to the
wound. Thus it is with all other sensitive powers
which employ corporeal organs : and such (involun­
tary) attention suffices for imagination.
Reply to Objection 3. An angel infuses neither
the light of grace nor the natural light but strength­
ens the natural light divinely infused, as was said
in the body of the article.
Reply to Objection 4. Just as in natural things
a univocal agent is one which impresses the form
in the same way in which it has it, and an equivocal
agent is one which impresses it in another way than
it has it, so it is with instruction. Man teaches
man as a univocal agent ; he gives knowledge· to
another in the same way as he has it, that is, by
deducing causes from the effects. Hence, it is nec­
essary that the concepts of the teacher be made
evident to the one learning through some symbols.
But an angel teaches as an equivocal agent, for the
angel understands intellectually what to man is
manifested by way of reasoning. In being taught
by an angel, the angel’s concepts are not made
manifest to man, but in man’s own way there is
caused in him the knowledge of the things which
the angel knows in a far different way.
Reply to Objection 5. The Lord is speaking of
that way of instructing which is proper to God
alone, as is evident in the gloss on that passage,
and this way of teaching we do not ascribe to an
angel.

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

Reply to Objection 6. He who teaches does not
cause truth, but the cognition of truth in the learner,
for propositions which are taught are true before
they are known, because truth does not depend
upon our knowledge but upon the existence of
things.
Reply to Objection 7. Although knowledge which
is acquired through instruction is concerning un­
failing things, yet the knowledge itself can fail;
therefore, it is not necessary that the enlightenment
of teaching be from an unfailing light. Even if it
is from an unfailing light, as from a first principle,
the fallible, created light, which can be, as it were,
a middle principle, is not at all excluded.
Reply to Objection 8. In the disciples of Christ
there is noted a certain development of faith so that
at first they respected Him as a wise man and a
teacher but afterwards looked upon Him as God
teaching. Hence, a gloss a little below that passage
says, “Because Nathanael learned that Christ,
though absent, had seen what he had been doing in
another place, which is a sign of Deity, he con­
fessed that Christ was not only a teacher but the
Son of God.”
Reply to Objection 9. An angel does not make
manifest an unknown truth to us by making known
its own substance, but by proposing to us another
more-known truth or by strengthening the light of
the intellect. Hence, the reasoning does not follow.

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DE MAGISTRO
79
Reply to Objection 10. Augustine did not intend
to say that the angelic mind is not of a more ex­
cellent nature than man’s but that the angel did
not so come between God and the human mind,
that the human mind, through union with the angel,
should receive its ultimate form as certain ones
proposed that man’s ultimate blessedness consisted
in this, that our intellect should be joined to an
intelligence whose blessedness consists in being
joined to God Himself.
Reply to Objection 11. In us certain powers are
subjectively determined to act, such as the sensitive
powers which are excited both through union with
the organ and through the formation of an object
in the sense. But the intellect is not subjectively
determined, since it does not employ a bodily organ,
but it does yield to an objective force because from
the efficacy of a demonstration a man is forced to
assent to a conclusion. The will, however, is not
forced either subjectively or objectively but by its
own instigation is moved to this or that. Hence,
only God, Who works interiorly, can make an im­
pression on the will, but on the intellect, man or
' angel can make an impression in a way by repre­
senting the objects by which the intellect is forced.
Reply to Objection 12. An angel does not create
species in our mind nor illumine the phantasms
immediately; but by a continuation of the angel’s
light with the light of our intellect, our intellect
can more effectively enlighten the phantasms. Even
if an angel did enlighten the phantasms directly, it

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

would not follow that the position of those phi­
losophers was true ; although it is part of the active
intellect to enlighten the phantasms, yet it can be
said that it is not the part of God alone.
Reply to Objection 13. The imagination can re­
ceive that which is in the human intellect but after
another fashion. Similarly, the human intellect can
receive that which is in the angelic intellect, but
after its own fashion. Although the human intellect
is more adapted to the imagination in the subject,
inasmuch as they are both powers of one soul, yet
in kind it is more adapted to the angelic intellect
because they are both immaterial.
Reply to Objection 14. The fact that something
is spiritual does not prevent it from being suitable
to act on something corporeal because nothing pre­
vents the lower from being affected by the higher.
Reply to Objection 15. An angel is not the cause
of man’s cognition, inasmuch as man knows things
through their essence, but inasmuch as he knows
them through their similitudes; not that an angel
is nearer to things than their similitudes are, but
inasmuch as an angel causes the similitudes to result
in the mind either by moving the imagination or by
strengthening the intellect.
Reply to Objection 16. To create implies first
causality which is due to God alone, but to make
implies general causality. It is the same with
teaching in reference to knowledge; God alone is

/

DE MAGISTRO
called a creator, but God, an angel, or a man can
be called a maker or a teacher.
Reply to Objection 17. Even in regard to those
things which have causes determined in nature, an
angel can teach more things than a man can, since
an angel knows more things, and those things which
an angel teaches he teaches in a superior manner.
Hence, the reasoning does not follow.

The Fourth Article
Whether to Teach isa Function of the Active or of the Con­
templative Life? (Sum. Theol. Ι1ΊΙ, 181.3)

Objection 1. The fourth point of inquiry is
whether to teach is a function of the active or of
the contemplative life, and it seems that it is a
function of the contemplative life, for “The active
life fails with the body,” Gregory says (super
Ezechielem. homily III). But to teach does not
fail with the body because the angels, who have no
bodies, teach. Therefore, it seems that it pertains
to the contemplative life.
Objection 2. Further, as Gregory says (super
Ezech. horn. XIV), “He is busy with the active life
so that he may come later to the contemplative
life.” But instruction follows and contemplation
precedes; therefore to teach does not pertain to
active life.
Objection 3. Further, Gregory also says in the
same work that while the active life is busy with
work, it sees less. But he who teaches must see
more than he who merely contemplates. Hence,
to teach is more of the contemplative than of the
active life.
Objection 4. Further, everything is through the
same thing both perfect in itself and a giver of
similar perfection to another, as fire through the

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83

same heat is both warm and warming. But for
someone to be perfect in the consideration of divine
elements in himself, pertains to the contemplative
life. Therefore, instruction, which is the trans­
ferring of that same perfection to another, pertains
to the contemplative life.
Objection 5. Further, active life deals with tem­
poral things; while instruction deals particularly
with eternal things, and the teaching of these things
is more excellent and more perfect. Therefore,
teaching does not pertain to the active but to the
contemplative life.
On the contrary, Gregory says in the same homily
{super Ezech. XIV), “The active life is to give
bread to the hungry, to teach the ignorant with the
word of wisdom.” Moreover, the works of mercy
pertain to the active life. But to teach is num­
bered among the spiritual works of mercy; there­
fore, it is of the active life.
I answer that: The contemplative life and the
active life are distinguished from each other by their
subject matter and by their end. The subject mat­
ter of the active life is temporal things with which
human life deals. The subject matter of the con­
templative life is the knowable reasons for things
upon which the contemplative dwells. And this
diversity of material arises from the diversity of
ends; as in all things the material is determined
by the requirement of the end. The end of the
contemplative life is the consideration of truth,

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

according as we are now treating about the con­
templative life. I mean the consideration of un­
created truth according to the capacity of the one
contemplating, which in this life is beheld imper­
fectly but in the future life perfectly. Hence,
Gregory says (horn. XIV in Ezech., near the mid­
dle), that the contemplative life begins here so that
it may be consummated in the future life. But
the end of the active life is activity which is
directed to the utility of the neighbor. In the
function of teaching we find a twofold subject mat­
ter, as a sign of which the function of teaching
unites a twofold act. One of its materials is the
matter which is taught ; the other is he to whom the
knowledge is given. By reason of the first subject
matter, teaching pertains to the contemplative life;
by reason of the second ta the active life. But in
view of its end, instruction seems to pertain to the
active life alone, because the ultimate subject mat­
ter, in which it attains its intended end, is the
material of the active life. Hence, teaching per­
tains more to the active than to the contemplative
life, although it also pertains to the contemplative
life in the way mentioned.
Reply to Objection 1. The active life fails with
the body in that it is practiced with labor and min­
isters to the infirmities of the neighbor, according
to which Gregory says, “The active life is weari­
some because it is spent in the sweat of the brow,
which two things will not be in the future life.”

DE MAGISTRO

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Nevertheless, there is a hierarchical activity among
the celestial spirits, as Dionysius says (Caelest.
Hierarch., cap. iv), and it is another activity dif­
ferent from the active life which we pass on earth.
Hence, the teaching which will take place there will
be diSerent from teaching in this life.
Reply to Objection 2. As Gregory says, in the
same place, “As it is a good order of living that
tends from the active to the contemplative, so it is
useful to the majority of men that the mind should
turn from the contemplative to the active, so that
the active life may be more perfectly pursued be­
cause the contemplative life has inflamed the mind.”
It must be recognized that the active life precedes
the contemplative in regard to those acts which are
in no way compatible with the contemplative life,
but in regard to those acts which take their subject
matter from the contemplative life, it is necessary
that the active follow the contemplative.
Reply to Objection 3. The vision of the teacher
is a principle of teaching, but teaching itself con­
sists more in the transfusion of the knowledge of
the things seen than in the vision of the things.
Hence, the vision of the teacher pertains more to
action than to contemplation.
Reply to Objection 4. That argument proves that
the contemplative life is a principle of teaching,
just as heat is not the act of warming but the principle of warming, inasmuch as it determines it. So,

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

conversely, the active life disposes for the contem­
plative life.
Reply to Objection 5. The solution is evident
from what has been said because, in respect to the
first subject matter, teaching is compatible with
the contemplative life, as was said in the body of
the article.

INTRODUCTORY
The Thomistic Philosophy and the Persistent
Problems of Education

Some Modern Educational Problems
MODERN educational theorist proposes that
learning is the reorganization of experience which
takes place in the solution of a problem that arises
in the process of living, and that the school is to
provide a true life setting. Another holds that the
pupil is dependent upon instruction for the integra- -.v
tion of his experience, and that it is the duty of '
the teacher to'present an organized subject matter
that will insure many-sided interest. Another be­
lieves that the proper method of learning is the x
self-active process of habit-forming reflection, and
that teaching technic must conform. Still another
insists that the free performance of a worth-while
task is essential for integration of character and
happiness, and that it is the duty of the school to
prevent unhealthful conditions which result in dis­
orderly association.

A

St. Thomas Deals with the Persistent Problems of Education
Seven centuries ago, Saint Thomas Aquinas pub­
lished a treatise on education entitled De Magistro
(On the Teacher), in which he dealt specifically with
each of these points. All of these problems he con­
sidered as aspects of his theory of the educability
of man, the potentiality for self-stabilization of

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

human plasticity into an integrated character under
the influence of an ideal. Educability, Aquinas held
to be a gift from God to man alone. Man alone
has insight, the power to see problems. He alone
has an intuition of relation, the power to solve
problems, to know truth. He alone can form in­
tellectual habits, and benefit thereby from experi­
ence. He alone is capable of deliberately wishing
to integrate his acquired powers for the solving of
one supreme problem—the meaning of life.
Aquinas acknowledges God as man’s Head
Teacher. He, in His wisdom, arranged the universe
so that man would sense problems. He ordered the
universe so that it would suggest a solution. He
allowed man to reflect upon the problem, but as a
prudent Teacher, made it easy for man to distin­
guish error from truth by speaking to man in rev­
elation and by establishing a teaching Church.

The Form of the De Magistro
The De Magistro is a short work of four articles.
It is to be expected, therefore, that the principles
will be succinctly stated. It is the report of a
philosophical disputation which Aquinas, as Mas­
ter, conducted at the University of Paris about the
year 1257 aj>. It is to be expected that the prin­
ciples will be theoretical and presented in the
plulosophical terminology of that day. The De
Magistro is one of a course of disputations entitled
De Veritate (On Truth), dealing with Aquinas’s

MODERN EDUCATION

91

theory of knowledge. It is to be expected that some
knowledge of this theory will be supposed. Because
of these facts, despite the completeness and intrinsic
worth of the work, the De Magistro, even in an
English translation, may perhaps not be fully under­
stood.

Plan of Procedure
A philosophy is a way of living. A philosophy of
teaching is, then, a mode of school life. With no
pretense of treating the subject exhaustively, I shall
first suggest the manner of school life of the thir­
teenth century of which the De Magistro is the
articulate philosophy.
In the second place, I shall restate in a summary
way, the general principles of St. Thomas Aquinas,
as he presents them in his major works, the Summa
Theologica, the Summa Contra Gentiles, the Quaes­
tiones Disputatae, and the Quodlibeta,1 particularly
the principle which forms the basic assumption for
the De Magistro, as it must for any philosophy of
education—the educability of man.
The whole discussion will also be related to our
main interest, the significance of St. Thomas for
modern educational philosophy.
1The text used for the citations from the Summa Theologica and
the Contra Gentiles is the literal translation of these works by the
Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Second and revised
edition) Burns, Oates & Washbourne, Ltd, The citations from the
Quaestiones Disputatae are my translations from the text of the fifth
Turin Edition (see p. 41, footnote).

I
St. Thomas Aquinas and the Thirteenth
Century

De Magistro a Handbook °f eHwmistic Philosophy o
Education
In the De Magistro, Aquinas presents in a few
pages the principles which underlie his conception
of learning as self-activity, and of the relation of
a teacher to such activity. The main points I may
summarize as follows, corresponding in general to
the four articles in the treatise:
1. The pupil must have a problem. He must
be in potentiality to knowledge. The teacher is to
minister to the pupil and to guide him to a knowl­
edge of truth.
2. The pupil is in need of a teacher to help him
organize his experience. The teacher must have
perfected knowledge of his subject matter.
3. A description of method is a description of
the reflective process.
4. The pupil is capable of self-determination.
The teacher should respect the pupil’s freedom, but
he must also realize the disintegrating effects of
error. The teacher’s philosophy of life will deter­
mine his attitude toward what is truth.

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Living the Philosophy
I know of no age that would serve as a better
illustration of Aquinas’s conception of a pupil, de­
sirous of truth, self-active, reflective, free, than does
the age of Scholasticism. I know of no teacher
that would better illustrate Aquinas’s conception of
an ideal teacher, devoted to truth, having a keen
insight into the nature of his pupils, respecting
their freedom yet protecting them from error, than
the great master of the thirteenth century, Saint
Thomas himself.
The Middle Ages Had a Problem
If there is one general characteristic of medieval
society, it is its absorption in a problem, the prob­
lem of man’s relation to God. By natural reason,
it saw that the universe consisted of a hierarchy
of beings, the lower existing for the higher. Be­
cause of his rational nature, man seemed to be the
natural lord of this creation. Yet the universe was
clearly planned, and man seemed to be a part of
the plan. This was the problem which the scholars
of the Middle Ages were earnestly engaged upon,
to know the relation of man to the universe and
to his Creator. The Middle Ages had the first
requisite for a pupil ; they had a problem.
Desire for Integration
The second characteristic of a pupil is his feeling
of a need for a teacher. If there is a characteristic
that is distinctive of the intellectual life of the age

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

of Scholasticism, it is its desire for everything that
would help meh to integrate their experience.

Comprehensive Systematized Knowledge
The medieval mind seemed almost obsessed by
the passion for a complete unification of truth. "The
desire to include all the questions to which phi­
losophy gives rise, to explore the complete cycle
of the natural, moral, and judicial sciences in order
to give an account of facts and documents, and the
constant endeavor to study the vast mass of detail
in the light of principles of a rigorous unity, are
the essential characteristics of the thirteenth-cen­
tury Scholasticism.”2 What led them on in their
search for truth was their love of knowledge for
itself, and, after they had attained it, their desire
to express it in order to hand it down as a heritage
of truth to the future. Pope Leo XIII says, “Then
the Doctors of the Middle Ages, whom we call
Scholastics, set themselves to do a work of very
great magnitude. There are rich and fruitful crops
of doctrine scattered everywhere in the mighty vol­
umes of the Holy Fathers. The aim of the Scholas­
tics was to gather these together diligently, and to
store them up, as it were, in one place, for the use
and convenience of those who would come after.”3
Their field of search was indeed vast, including,
besides the teachings of the Fathers and of the
•De Wulf, M. History of Medieval Philosophy, Vol. 1, p. 313.
•Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter, Aeterni Patns, ou the Restoration
of Christian Philosophy.

I

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Councils, the available writings of Aristotle and of
Plato, of their followers, translators, and com­
mentators, the more recent opinions of those struggling over the problem of universals.4 All of these,
the Scholastics essayed to master, to relate to their
own fundamental concepts, and to synthesize in
some perfected plan.
The Prince of the Scholastics

If the Age of Scholasticism was an ideal pupil,
Aquinas was no less its ideal teacher.5 That he was
in sympathy with his pupils’ problem is clearly
shown by his saintly life and his professorial works.
That he was a competent guide to the solution of
his pupils’ problem—the relation of man to the uni­
verse and to his Creator—is evidenced by the fact
that his solution is officially recognized by the
Catholic Church. That he had a perfected, that
is, an integrated, knowledge of his subject matter
is abundantly proved by his works, especially the
‘Turner, W., History "of Philosophy, pp. 243-244.
®He was born (1225 a.d.) of princely Swabian and Norman blood,
and received his early education on Italian soil at the Benedictine
monastery of Monte Cassino and at the University of Naples. When
eighteen, be entered the Dominican Order and went first, to Paris
and later to Cologne as the pupil of the great master, Albert. At
the University of Paris in 1256 A.D., he was made Master. He
composed over thirty folio volumes ot philosophical and theological
works in the defense of truth against its enemies and in building
the most complete and systematic presentation of philosophy and
theology that nas ever been written. Besides, he was constantly
engaged in teaching. His fame spread from the University of Paris
and he was called to teach successively at Rome, Bologna, Viterbo,
Perugia, and Naples. In 1274 A.D., although in poor health, he set
out to attend a council that was to take place at Lyons. On the way
he fell ill and died at the Cistercian monastery of Possanuova, near
Terracina in Italy. Even when dying he was fulfilling the office of
a teacher, expounding the Canticle of Canticles.

MÜm*

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

Summa Theologica, which won for him the title of
the Prince of the comprehensively systematizing
Scholastics. He had the first two characteristics
of an ideal teacher. He had thoroughly grasped
the problems of his day and of the preceding cen­
turies. He was a genius in applying to proposed,
solutions his touchstones of conformity with Chris­
tian dogma, Aristotle, and his own critical reason.
He had a habit of linking up "even the slightest
point with the fundamental doctrine and indicating
its place in the whole system.”®

Method of Presentation
The third requirement for a teacher which
Aquinas demands and exemplifies is an appropriate
method of presentation. Once more, if there is a
characteristic that is distinctive of Scholasticism, it
is its logical method, its “serried syllogistic struc­
ture.”7 This, mode of presentation was both an
expression of their intellectualism and a natural
evolution to meet an exigency. For the Scholastics,
the intellect of man was equipped to deal with
abstractions, and in dealing with them it was essen­
tially logical. On the other hand, there was the
vast doctrinal heritage which they were filled with
desire to hand down to posterity. To ease the
mind of the intellectual burden that was theirs, the
measured, precise, impersonal style of the dialectical
method was a boon.
•Taylor, ΙΓ. O., Medieval Hind, Vol. II, p. 296.
TDe Wulf, M., op. cit., Vol. II, p. 6.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

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Aquinas and Method
The Scholastic style and method approached per­
fection in the works of Saint Thomas. His lan­
guage, despite the difficult subject matter, is pre­
cise and lucid. It has a certain elegance but is never
emotional, although at times it gains a “certain
fervor from the clarity and import of the statement
which it so lucidly conveys.”8 Anyone who has
attempted to translate his writings readily appre­
ciates his “condensed precision of thought and preg­
nant felicity of diction.”9 The dialectical method
of presenting authorities for, and against, a proposi­
tion was carried over from the classroom procedure
that was used in the University by Saint Thomas
with pedagogical intent, as he himself states in the
prologue to the first part of the Summa Theologica.
Example of Scholastic Method

An analysis of an article of the De Magistro,
that is, a subdivision of a question of a treatise,
will show how closely the Angelic Doctor’s method
conforms with the psychology of problem solving.
The question opens with a statement of the points
which will be discussed in the various articles. At
the beginning of each article the topic is stated
again in the form of a definite problem.
•Taylor, H. O., Medieval Mind, Vol. II, p. 120.
•Wicksteed, P. H., Danit and Aquinas,

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

The Statement of Objections. Although Saint
Thomas was writing for, and teaching, mature
minds, still in treating such intellectual and un­
emotional subjects as those with which he had to
deal, there was a need to appeal to the interests of
the reader or pupil—“the psychological mode of
approach.” The successive objections to the thesis,
which open each article, supply this need. They
usually review -the historic solutions of the prob­
lem; e.g., in the first article of the De Magistro,
Augustine’s opinion on whether one can teach
through symbols without a knowledge of things.
The objections also summon any relevant knowledge
which the pupil has gained in the past, make the
problem appear “worthy of the effort required in
its solution,” and through the uneasiness aroused
and the desire to know the answer attain “one of
the major objectives of higher education,” the
bringing of the pupil to “welcome the logical mode
of presentation rather than a less concise and logical
mode.”
In the statement of objections, Saint Thomas was
a master. He was, as Maurice10 points out, an in­
veterate disputant, and took delight in making the
opposing sides as evenly matched as possible. This
may seem to us mere quibbling, but Brother Azarias
says, “The very words in which he formulates ob­
jections are understood only in the light of the
19Maurice, F. D.» Medieval Pküoiopky, VoL I» p. 610.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

99

history of contemporary error. He fought no wind­
mills; he set up no men of straw in order to knock
them down. He dealt with living issues. He was in
touch with his age upon all its intellectual wants
and aspirations.”11 In the statement of objections
Saint Thomas was unflinchingly honest. Dr. J. J.
Walsh, in, one of his historical writings, says that
nowhere is there such a compendium of objections
against the Catholic faith as is the armory of Saint
Thomas Aquinas; Wicksteed says that "again and
again we read with amazement his concise and force­
ful expression of objections against which he per­
haps has nothing equally clear and penetrating to
urge.”12 We might mark in the first article of the
De Magistro the statement of Boethius’ position
that since the pupil is self-active in learning, the
teacher does not cause learning any more than one,
by pointing out an object, could be said to cause
another to see the object.
The Counter Objections. At the conclusion of the
objections the counter proposition is stated and
supported by citations usually from the same source
from which the objections were taken. In the first
article they are from the Scriptures, from Aristotle,
and from Augustine.
The Body oj the Article. Now, Saint Thomas
enters upon his elucidation of the true proposition,
not attempting “to extract the new information”
iiAxarias, Br., Errayr Educational, p. 89.
“Wickiteed, P. H., Dante and Aquinat, p. 98.

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

but giving it “through direct statement, illustration,
and explanation.” Sometimes the medieval illus­
trations from the contemporary physics are not very
enlightening, but the analogies in the De Magistro
are quite aptly drawn ; for example, Saint Thomas
describes the service of the teacher as similar to
that of a doctor ministering to a self-active nature.
Wherever possible, Thomas casts his statements into
syllogistic form of which the premise is usually
some formula from Aristotle; e.g., “A thing acts
inasmuch as it is actual.” That this is legitimate,
Turner points out in reference to Saint Thomas’s
empirical psychology.
“The method of St. Thomas’s philosophy fa, therefore,
empirical and not, as is too frequently alleged, a priori. It is
true that St. Thomas appeals to such maxims and formulas
as ‘Agere sequitur esse.’ But it should be remembered that
such formulas are not a priori principles or premises arbitrarily
assumed; they are conclusions established by empirical or
rational investigation, and as such, are perfectly legitimate
principles of rational psychology—in the same way as the law
of the conservation of energy, the law of the divirion of
physical labor, or any other generalization inductively estab­
lished, has its legitimate application in physics or biology.”13

It is in the body of the article that the Angelic
Doctor displays his skill in teaching by keeping his
material at every moment under control, by saying
everything he says in relation to every other thing
he has said on the subject, by linking up the subject
under discussion with as many other subjects as
possible, and by relating every point to his fundaieTurner, W., History of Philosophy, pp. 362*363·

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

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mental tenets. This is well illustrated in the De
Magistro where the basis of the educative process
is the principle of the actualizing of potentialities.
It is in the body of the article that Saint Thomas
proves that he deserves the name of The Great Mas­
ter who “possessed the keenest of minds, the most
capacious of memories; he could with facility take
up any tangled skein, unravel it and with a master­
ship that might make ordinary men despair, display
its whole complexity in such a manner that the
student could, with the greatest ease, take in the
entire bearing of the question.”14
At the close of the body of the article a “state­
ment of the solution of the problem in a helpful
and concise manner” is given. For example, the
close of the first article of the De Magistro is:
“Hence, since no human teaching can have efficacy
except by virtue of this light, it is evident that God
alone is He Who teaches interiorly and principally
just as nature heals itself interiorly and even prin­
cipally. Nevertheless, man is properly said to cure
and to teach in the aforesaid maimer.”
Reply to Objections. The refutation of the false
arguments is then begun. These answers to the
objections offer an opportunity to summarize and
impress by repetition the principles established in
the body of the article. They also afford a val­
uable test of the understanding of the principles by
«Vaughan, Archbishop, Lifo end Labor: of St. Thoma:, pp. 173-

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

the application of them to related problems, and
establish a definite attitude toward the false
positions.15
Freedom, Thinking, Intellectual Activity
The fourth requirement for a teacher is that he
respect the freedom of the pupil and yet shield him
from error. If there is a characteristic that is dis­
tinctive of the university life of the Middle Ages,
it is the intense intellectual activity on the part of
the students and the respect on' the part of the
university for this activity. When we read of the
students’ disputations and of the subjects on which
the university permitted them to dispute, we feel
that whatever the medieval university did not do,
it certainly fostered thinking, and that whatever
the medieval student could not do, he certainly
could think.
Risults of Learning by Problem Solving
The lives of the peôple of thg. Middle Ages and
the personality of Saint Thomas furnish a concrete
example of the wholesome results of a free and
whole-hearted engagement in the solving of a worth­
while problem. The religious philosophy of life,
the childlike attitude, the conception of the dignity
of workmanship, the ’ optimistic, whole-hearted
1BCf. Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Vol.
I» especially on University of Paris, passim. For a full discussion
of the whole problem of this section, the indispensable Biblwthtqa*
Thomiste, should be consulted. The new researches of Mandonnet,
Glorieux Pelster, Grabmann, and others have thrown new light on
the problem.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

103

activity, the orderly association that arises from
dear insight and wise planning, the objective atti­
tude toward feeling, the desire for serenity of mind
manifesting itself in a tendency to reverence
authority, the scholarly, scientific attitude toward
reality—all the characteristics of an integrated per­
sonality which the mental hygienists and particu­
larly Burnham in his Normal Mind details, read
as if they had been written to describe life in the
age of both Scholasticism and Faith.

II
Fundamental Principles of Aquinas’s
Philosophy of Teaching ·

Aquinas's Defense of Mans Educability
The fundamental assumption in the De Magistro
is that man is educable, that is, self-active, plastic,
and free. Man’s knowledge is in “active, complete
potentiality.” Because Aquinas believed that a
teacher should combat error, he opposed the theories
which he thought denied man’s educability and con­
sequently his responsibility for his own character.
Two of these theories are taken up briefly in the
first article of the De Magistro. These*. ·ό, and a
number of variations of these, Aquinas states and
refutes in the second volume of the Contra Gentiles.
One is struck by the similarity which these theories
have to the positions which are held today by the
idealists, the empiricists, the materialists, and even
the proponents of the “new emergent” or the
“gestalt” points of view. Each theory of the self
has its corresponding theories of knowledge, and
it is with these false philosophies of education that
Aquinas is particularly concerned.

Different Actions from One Soul
The first theory that Aquinas takes up and re­
futes is Plato’s psycho-physical theory of the nature

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES

105

of man. Plato held that man had various souls
but that his real self was his rational soul. The
various souls were distinct and separate from one
another. There was order among them but no direct
interaction. The intellective soul used the body as
a “sailor in a boat.” Aquinas replies to this pro­
posal of the nature of the self that there is an ob­
served interaction between the body and the mind,
that, in fact, there is what Spearman in Abilities
of Man describes as “universal mental competition,”
among the various activities of the soul.
“Different forces that are not rooted in one principle do not
hinder one another in acting unless perhaps their action be
contrary, which does not happen in the case in point. Now
we find that the various actions of the soul hinder one another,
since when one is intense another is remiss. It follows, there­
fore, that these actions and the forces that are their proximate
principles, must be reduced to one principle . . . some one
form, by which this body is such a body; and this is the soul.
Therefore, it follows that all the soul’s actions which are in
us, proceed from one soul.” (C. G., II, 58.)16

Aquinas, then, rejects the theory that the self is
divided up into a mosaic of faculties, each separate
from the other.

Man Has a Spiritual Soul
The second theory which Aquinas takes up and
refutes is that of the Arabian pantheists, Avicenna
and Averroès. They held that the intellective soul
which Plato said used man’s body as a “sailor in
a boat” was entirely separate from the body. It
’•Gmfre Gmtûes, Book II, Chap. 58. References to this work
will appear hereafter in the abbreviated form. All citations from
the Contra Gentiles, and the Suma Theologica are taken from the
literal translation of these works by the English Dominican Fathers.
(Burns, Oates, and Washbourne, Ltd.)

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

was a separate intellect, a world-soul which they
called the active intellect. In this intellect, man
could, when properly disposed, participate. Man’s
real self was his sensitive soul, and his individuality
consisted in his empirical self, or the images which
he gained from experience.
Aquinas replies that that which gives a thing its
species is its own characteristic operation. If this
operation is performed by something outside the
being, the being cannot take its species from that
operation. Thus, if man’s real self were his sensi­
tive soul (as the Arabian philosophers said it was),
and his intellectual acts were not acts of his own
soul but merely a participation in a world-soul, he
would not be an intelligent being, but merely an
animal.
"That which is a passion of the sensitive part cannot place
a thing in a higher kind of life than the sensitive life: just as
that which is a passion of the nutritive soul, does not place
a thing in a higher kind of life than the nutritive. Now, it is
clear that the imagination and the like powers which are con­
sequent upon it, such as the memory and so forth, are passions
of the sensitive faculty, as the Philosopher proves in his book
De Memoria (i). Consequently an animal cannot be placed
by these powers or any of them, in a higher kind of life than
the sensitive.” (C. G., II, 60.)

Aquinas, then, holds that the self has a higher
operation than mere sensation, and that it has a
“higher kind of life,” a spiritual life.
Life Cannot be “Evolved”
Alexander, an interpreter of Aristotle, denied the
existence of a separate intellect either in man'or

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES

107

as a world-soul. He held that the self was the
result of the mixture of the elements in the body.
Out of the nature of the elements and their related­
ness there emerged the intellective soul, as a con­
versation springs up uncaused from the relatedness
of the members of a group. To this theory Aquinas
answers that the effect cannot exceed the sum of
its causes.
“Even the operation of the nutritive soul exceeds the power
of the elemental qualities. . . . Consequently the vegetative
soul cannot be produced by the mixture of the elements, and
much less, therefore, the sense and possible intellect.” (C. G.
11,62.)

Aquinas held, then, that life cannot be evolved.
The self must be created by God.
The Self Not a Mere Mechanism
Lastly, Thomas dismisses as unworthy of con­
sideration the materialists who held that the self
was merely a body. They, he said,
“were moved to take up this position through believing that
there is nothing that is not a body, being unable to outstrip
their imagination which is only about bodies. Wherefore, this
opinion is put forward in the person of the foolish as saying
of the soul (Wis. ii. 2), ‘The breath in our nostrils is smoke,
and speech is a spark to move our heart.’ ” (C. G. II, 65.)

One would almost think that Aquinas were re­
ferring to the modem materialists and behaviorists
who feel certain that their self of selves is some­
where in the region of their vocal cords and that
deliberation is the interval of time consumed by a
deadlock between language mechanisms.

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

Philosophies of Education Based on False Theories of Self

Aquinas objects to these theories of the nature
of the self particularly because of the corresponding
theories of knowledge which he believed, as he states
in the De Magistro, did not account for man’s self­
activity, freedom, plasticity, and responsibility for
the formation of his own character.
Plato's Learning as Self-Realization
Plato held that ideas, intellectual habits, or
“forms” as they are called in the De Magistro, are
innate in the rational soul. Learning was the com­
ing to consciousness of these ideas or intellectual
habits, an unfoldment of latent perfections—self­
realization. There was no potentiality to form
habits in the intellective soul. There was only
negation of opportunity to manifest the existing
actuality.
“But since that which has a form actually, is sometimes
unable to act according to that form on account of some
hindrance, as a light thing may be hindered from moving
upward; for this reason did Plato hold that naturally man’s
intellect is filled with all intelligible species, but that, being
united to the body, it is hindered from the realization of its
act.” (S. T. I, 84, 3.)17

Sensation and other motor activity roused the in­
tellective soul to remember or become conscious of
its ideas or habits.
Summa Tktologica, Part I, Question 84, Article 3. References
to this work will appear hereafter in the abbreviated form. (See
form of citations in appendix.)

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FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES

109

The Results of this Theory on Educational Method

Such an interpretation of the origin of concepts
as Plato held, naturally paves the way in educa­
tional practice for emphasis on symbolism, object
lessons, motor activity or “busy-work,” and the
maieutic method of periodic extraction to see, as
Dewey says in Democracy and Education in his
criticism of some of the results of Froebel’s theory
of unfoldment, if the perfection has advanced
enough to satisfy the teacher. Aquinas points out
in the De Magistro that Plato’s theory holds that
“the natural agent does nothing else than draw these
(forms) out from their latent state into manifesta­
tion . . . just as by polishing, rust is removed
and the brightness of the metal is made manifest.”
Plato’s self-realization, Aquinas did not consider
to be self-activity.
“Intelligibles which the human intellective soul understands,
were asserted by Plato to be intelligible of themselves, namely,
ideas: wherefore it was unnecessary for him to admit an active
intelligence in respect to intelligibles.” (C. G. Π, 77.)

The abstraction of meanings from things, the
making of them intelligible, is self-activity accord­
ing to Aquinas. Mere yielding to suggestions com­
ing from the environment he assigned to vegetative
life, not even as high a “kind of life” as animals
have. Aquinas would have no sympathy with “plant
metaphors” to describe the development of man.

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

Avicenna's Learning as the Acquirement of Many-Sided
Interest
Avicenna, who held that the self was empirical
and that man participated, when properly disposed,
in the knowledge of the separate intellect, the “giver
of forms” (as Aquinas says in the De Magistro the
active intellect is called by Avicenna), observing
the individual differences in intellectual capacity
and knowledge even among those who had had
similar experiences and who, according to the Pla­
tonic teaching, should have reached the same stage
of self-consciousness, proposed a psychology of
learning that would explain this difference. He held
that by sense experience man collected images, or
phantasms, in his imagination. When these phan­
tasms had reached sufficient numbers and had been
properly arranged, then the “giver of forms” infused
knowledge into the mind of man. No intellectual
habit was retained by man, but the sensitive power
through exercise gained a certain aptitude in dis­
posing the phantasms for the reception of the in­
fused form.
Aquinas Criticizes Avicenna's Psychology
“If we consider it carefully, this position, as regards its
origin, differs little or not at all from that of Plato. For
Plato asserted that intelligible forms are separate substances,
from which knowledge flows into our souls; while he (Avi- '
cenna) affirms that knowledge flows into our souls from one
separate substance which, according to him, is the active intel­
lect.” (C. G. Π, 74.)

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES

111

“The statement that through considering singulars which
are in the imagination, the possible intellect is enlightened with
the light of the active intellect so as to know the universal;
and that the actions of the lower powers, namely, the imagina­
tion, memory, and cogitative powers, adapt the soul to receive
the emanations of the active intellect is a pure invention.”
(C. G. II, 74.)

Of his “faculty” psychology, Aquinas says:
“If some species (habits) were not preserved in the passive
intellect, but only the aptitude of turning to the active intel­
lect, man would be equally adapted for knowing anything
whatsoever. According to this, man might leam one science
and yet not know it more than other sciences.”18

Aquinas Defends Mans Moral Freedom
Thomas threw all his strength into his struggle
against the theories of these Arabian pantheists be­
cause in denying man his own intellective soul, they
denied to him self-activity, and moral responsibility.
According to the theory of the empirical self and
the separate intellect, man is a mere slave of his
environment and of the world-soul.
“A thing that cannot set about its proper operation unless
it be moved by an outward principle, is moved to operate
rather than moves itself; wherefore, irrational animals are
moved to operate rather than move themselves, since their
every operation depends on the outward principle which moves
them; for their sense, moved by an outward sensible, makes
an impression on their imagination and thus there is an orderly
process in all their powers down to the motive powers. Now,
man’s proper operation is intelligence, the first principle of
which is the active intellect which produces the intelligible
species, to which in a sense the possible intellect is passive,
and this being made actual moves the will. If, then, the active
intellect is a substance outside man, all man’s operation de’•Translated from Qq. Disp. (i.e., Quaesttmus DijpHtatae) Dt
Vrritatt X, 2.

112

PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

5

pends on an outward principle; and consequently he will not
move himself but will be moved by another. Hence, he will
not be the master of his own operations, nor will he be de­
serving of praise or blame; and there will be an end to all
moral science and social intercourse, which is absurd. Therefore, the active intellect is not a substance separate from man.”
(C. G. II, 76.)

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Aquinas's Conception of Mans Educability
Having criticized very briefly in the De Magistro
Plato’s and Avicenna’s theory of knowledge, Aquinas
sets forth his own theory which accounts for man’s
educability, his self-activity, plasticity, and capacity
to form habits. He does this in these words :
“Therefore, according to the teaching of Aristotle (I Physics
com. 78), the middle course between these two positions must
be held. . . . Natural forms preëxist indeed in matter, not
in actuality as the others held, but in potentiality only, from
which they are reduced to actuality by an extrinsic proximate
agent, not alone by the first agent, as the other opinion sup­
poses. ... It must be kept in mind that in natural things
a thing may preëxist potentially in a twofold manner; in one
way in active, complete potentiality, that is, when the intrinsic principle [agent] is sufficiently able to bring it to perfeet actuality, as is evident in healing. . . . Knowledge
preëxists in the learner, not in purely passive potentiality, but
in active potentiality. Otherwise man could not by himself
acquire knowledge.” (De Magistro, Art. I.)

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Fundamental Theory of Matter and Form
Aquinas solves this problem of man’s nature and

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educability as he solved almost every problem he
dealt with, by an application of the Aristotlean
theory of matter and form.
To illustrate the general notion of matter and
form, we may fall back upon an example used by

I

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES

113

Aristotle. A piece of bronze in the hands of a
sculptor may turn out to be a statue of Socrates
or a statue of Jupiter. As far as the bronze is con­
cerned, it could be either. Therefore, we say that,
in relation to the result to be attained, the bronze
is potential, it is capable of receiving the form given
to it. It corresponds to the idea of matter or the
material cause. But that which determines what
the result is going to be, whether a statue of Socrates
or a statue of Jupiter, is the form which the sculptor
gives to the bronze. Both form and matter con­
tribute something to the result, but it is the form
which determines what the nature of the result is
going to be.
Matter is any kind of potentiality ; form is the
actualization of that potentiality. From matter
comes the limitation of potentiality ; from form
comes the determination of the species of a thing,
what it is and does. A form is developed or gen­
erated (educed) from a potentiality by an agent
which is said to move the being to act. If a being
moves itself to act, it is a self-mover. It causes
itself to act and thus develops its own self out of
the potentialities that have been given it in its own
matter. Substance with its potentialities, accord­
ing to Aquinas, was created by God, but He does
not directly develop all the forms to correspond
to these potentialities. He allows beings to develop
themselves or to cause other beings to develop
themselves by causing them to act.

114

PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

“The first Cause from the abundance of His own goodness
confers upon other things not only that they may be but also
that they may be causes.” (De Magistro, Art. 1.)

t

The Self as a Person
The intellective soul of man, according to St.
Thomas, is a spiritual form substantially united to
a particular body, forming together with the body
an integrated, unique person.

“From the operation of the human soul, its being can be
known. Inasmuch as it has an operation transcending material
things, its existence is elevated above the body, not depending
on it ; but inasmuch as its nature is to acquire immaterial
knowledge from material things it is clear that the soul cannot
be the complement of its own species without union with the
body. For a thing is not complete in species unless it has that
which is required for the proper operation of that species. If,
then, the human soul, inasmuch as it is united to the body as
a form, has being, elevated above the body, not depending on
it, it is clear that it is constituted on the confines of things
corporeal and incorporeal.” (Translated from Qq. De Anima
I, i )

The Self as Unique
Since limitation of potentiality comes from mat­
ter, individual differences between persons are
accounted for by hereditary differences in bodies,
both because only such potentialities as exist can
be actualized, and because the intellect uses the
body in acquiring knowledge.
“It is plain that the better the disposition of a body, the
better the soul allotted to it; which clearly appears in things
of different species; and the reason thereof is that act and
form are received into matter according to matter’s capacity;
thus because some men have bodies of better dispositions their
souls have a greater power of understanding. ... Secondly,

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES

115

this occurs in regard to the lower powers of which the intellect
has need in its operation; for those in whom the imaginative;
cogitative, and memorative powers are of better disposition,
are better disposed to understand.” (S. T. I, 85, 7.)

The Self as Integrated
The self is unique through the body; it is in­
tegrated through the soul, the one source of all
activity. It is true that a finite being cannot be
the principle of its own activity immediately, that
is, through its essence. God alone can be that. A
finite form acts through powers, or properties.
“The essence of the soul is not the immediate principle of its
operations, but it operates through mediating, accidental prin­
ciples or forms; hence the faculties [powers] of the soul are
not the very essence of the soul, but are its properties.” (Trans­
lated from Qq. De Anima I, 12.)

These powers or faculties are distinct from the
essence of the soul but they are not separate from
it, as the faculty psychologists supposed. These
faculties “spring from the essence of the soul as
boughs on the trunk of a tree, distinct from it but
natural products of it" This distinction does not
divide the self up into a mosaic, for the faculties
and all of their developments by habits are all
actualizations generated from the potentialities of
the self through action.
The Acquired Self as a Character
An abiding actualization, or form, generated by
action from a potentiality of a faculty is a habit.
The ability to form a habit is the criterion of educa­
bility. We may say that: '

116

PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

1. A being that can form a habit through its
own agency is self-active.
2. A being that has a potentiality to be actual­
ized is plastic.
3. A being that can retain its self-acquired
habits can form a character.
4. A being that can integrate its character into
an organized structure is educable.

Can Animals be Educated?
At first glance one might think that animals have
these conditions for educability, since animals con­
sciously react to sensations, have some power to
adapt themselves to changing conditions in the
environment, and have some capacity to retain these
adaptations. Aquinas, however, denies that an ani­
mal can be educated.
An Animal is not Self'Active
First of all, an animal is not self-active. Self­
activity is the power to educe a form from a poten­
tiality through self-movement. An animal is moved
by the object which it senses and by its nature or
instinct. An animal devises for itself no problem.
Every problem is forced upon the animal from with­
out ; every solution of a problem is prescribed from
within.
“The principle of every operation is the form whereby a
thing is actual, since every agent acts as far as it is actual...
[For form here we might substitute hypothesis, or a proposed
plan of action in the solution of a problem.]19
^Bracketed remarks are anther’s.

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES

117

Hence a form that does not proceed from that which acts
by that form, causes an operation over which the agent has no
dominion. ... In dumb animals, the forms, sensed or imagined,
which result in movement, are not discovered by the dumb
animals themselves, but are received by them from exterior
sensibles which act on their senses, and judged of by their
natural estimative faculty [instinctive judgment]. Hence,
though they are said after a fashion to move themselves, insofar
as one part of them moves, and another is moved, yet the
actual moving is not from themselves, but partly from external
objects sensed and partly from nature.” (C. G. II, 47.)

An Animal has no Insight—It Creates no Problems
An animal has no insight. It can see no problems
for itself which will act as ideals soliciting solution.
The environment imposes on the animal its prob­
lems; the animal adapts itself to an environment
which it does not make. Hence, to train an animal,
tasks must be imposed; their instincts must be
appealed to; they must be habituated by custom.
This leads to the second point :
Are Animals Plastic?
Plasticity means the ability to react in a variety
of ways to the same stimulus. Plasticity means
potentiality from which various forms or habits
may be generated. Is an animal’s instinct, or in­
tuition of what is advantageous or harmful, plastic

or potential ? Can an animal form a general habit,
an attitude, as Bagley would say, or a free idea, as
Dewey would say ? Aquinas does not think so. He
does not consider even a “conditioned reflex” any
index of plasticity on the part of the animal.

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

“The sensitive powers of dumb animals do not act at the
command of reason; but if they are left to themselves, such
animals act from natural instinct ; and so in them there are no
habits ordained to operations [that is, ideals]. . . . But
whereas by man’s reason brutes are disposed by a sort of cus­
tom to do things in this way or that way, so in this sense, to
a certain extent, we can admit the existence of habits in dumb
animals. . . . But the habit is incomplete as to the use of
the will, for they have not that power of using or refraining,
which seems to belong to the notion of habit; and, therefore,
properly speaking, there can be no habits in them.” (S. T.
Π-Ι, 50, 3, ad 3.)

An Animal has no Intuition of Relation—Is not Free
An animal is determined by nature to take one
attitude, one problem from each object of sense.
It has intuition of only one meaning for each object.
An animal has no repertoire of hypotheses to choose
from in the solving of its imposed task. An animal
is not plastic ; an animal is not free.

Can an Animal Form a Character?
A character is an acquired self. It consists in a
set of habits. To form a character, then, a being
must be able to retain its acquired habits. A char­
acter is “changed with difficulty,” Aquinas says. We
have seen that an animal cannot form a habit in
the true sense because it cannot conceive an ideal.
Even if an animal could acquire a habit, because
of the instability of the nervous system of an ani­
mal, the habit would not be a stable quality. It
has been noted in experiments that the “conditioned
reflexes” which animals form are very easily de-

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES

119

stroyed. This, Aquinas says, is because the sense
powers have “thresholds”; they are corrupted by
age and by excessive stimulation.
“The sense is corrupted... through being excelled by its
object, for instance the sight by very brilliant objects... and
also on account of its subject being corrupted.” (C. G. II, 55.)

Can an Animal Form an Integrated Self?
An integrated self is a personality. It is a char­
acter organized under an ideal. Since an animal
cannot conceive an ideal nor form a character, it
cannot be a personality. An animal, then, is not
self-active, plastic, character forming, nor educable.

ni
Self-Activity,

the

Basis

of

Man’s Education

The De Magistro and the Educability of Man
The four articles of the De Magistro are a brief
statement of Aquinas’s conception of the educability
of man. The first article represents man as self­
active ; the second as plastic, needing the help of a
teacher, yet able to make good use of the help
given; the third as free and self-determining yet
amenable to the influence of ideals; and the fourth
as a character architect. These conceptions are
treated in seeking a solution to the following prob­
lems:
1. Whether man can teach and be called a
teacher, or God alone?
2. Whether anyone can be called a teacher of
himself?
3. Whether man can be taught by an angel?
4. Whether to teach is a function of the active
or of the contemplative life?
The First Article—Learning, Self-Active
Development of God-Given Potentialities

The first article of the De Magistro is entitled,
“Whether man can teach and be called a teacher,
or God alone ?” We have seen that according to the

SELF-ACTIVITY

121

theory of matter and form, every development is
the generation of a form from a potentiality by
some agent. The question may, then, be read,
“Whether man can generate a form or God alone?”
We have already seen how Aquinas, in the first part
of the article, rejected Plato’s and Avicenna’s theory
that forms are given by an outside force exclusively.
Aquinas holds that an outside force, God, gives
potentialities, but that “from the abundance of His
goodness,” He allows beings to acquire actuality by
action, either by being moved by another being or
by moving themselves.
Man is a Self'Mover
Man is a self-mover. By his own action he gen­
erates forms from his potentialities.
“The form understood, whereby the intellectual substance
acts, proceeds from the intellect itself, being conceived and after
a fashion thought out by it; as may be seen in the form of
art, which the craftsman conceives and thinks out, and whereby
he works. Accordingly, intellectual substances move them­
selves to act, as having dominion over their actions. (C. G.
H, 47.)
“The apprehended form is a moving principle according as
it is apprehended under the aspect of good or fittingness.
Wherefore those alone move themselves to judge who appre­
hend the common notion of goodness or fittingness. And these
are intellectual beings alone.” (C. G. Π, 48.)

Thomistic Psychology
In order to understand the process of self-activity
we must know Aquinas’s psychology. He describes
the equipment:

122

PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

“There are higher actions of the soul which transcend the
actions of natural forms [e.g. the form of a plant or an ele­
ment] to such a degree that the soul is made to act inasmuch
as there is present in the soul an object immaterially. For the
soul is in a certain way everything by sense and intellect. But
there are various degrees of this immaterial existence. One
degree is when an object is in the mind without matter, under
the singular and individuating conditions which follow matter;
this degree is of the sense faculty which is receptive of individual
representations without matter, but in a corporeal organ. A
higher and most perfect degree is of the intellect which re­
ceives representations entirely abstracted· from matter and
individuating conditions, and without a corporeal organ. Just
as through a natural form a thing has an inclination to some­
thing (as through its form fire has a tendency to rise), and
has a movement and an action to attain that to which it is
inclined; so upon the apprehension of a sensible or an intelli­
gible form there follows an inclination toward the thing ap­
prehended by the sense or the intellect. This inclination per­
tains to the appetitive power [manifested in attention]. Again
it follows necessarily that there be a power of movement
through which the thing desired is reached; and this pertains
to the locomotive power. For a complete cognition on the part
of the sense faculty, such as suffices for an animal, five powers
are required. The first power is that the sense may receive a
representation from sensibles; and this pertains to the proper
sense. The second power is that it may discern the sensibles
perceived, and discriminate among them. It .is necessary that
this take place through a power to which all sensations come
[and in which all are fused], which is called the common sense.
The third power is that the perceived representations of the
sensibles may be preserved. For an animal needs to apprehend
things not only at the time of the actual sensation, but also
when the sensibles are absent. This makes necessary another
power, for in corporeal things there is one principle for re­
ceiving and another for preserving, for what is well able to be
received is at times ill able to be preserved. This power is
called the imagination or the phantasy. Fourthly, certain
meanings are required which the outer sense does not appre­
hend, such, for example, as harmfulness, or usefulness or some­
thing of that kind. Man comes to a knowledge of these mean­

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123

ings by inquiring and comparing, but other animals know them
by a certain natural instinct, as a sheep naturally flees from
a wolf as harmful; hence for this in other animals the natural
estimative power is apposited, which in man is called the
cogitative power which compares particular meanings; whence
it is called the particular reason and the passive intellect.
Fifthly, it is required that those things which have previously
been apprehended through the senses, and preserved in the
interior power, be again recalled for actual consideration. This
pertains to the memorative power, which in other animals
operates without inquiry, but in man with inquiry and with a
conscious desire for recollection. Hence in man there is not
only memory but reminiscence.” (Translated from Qq. De
Anima, XIII.) 2θ

These powers, we remember, are not considered
by Aquinas as being separate from the soul, but as
properties of the essence, potentialities for action.
The Agent of Self'Activity
Besides the sense powers, man has a distinctively
human power which not merely receives forms as
they are presented to it, but abstracts intelligible
forms from sense representations of experience, or
“phantasms,” as they are called. This aspect of the
human intellect is the intellect considered as act­
ing, and is called the “active” intellect. The intel­
lect considered as receiving the abstracted form is
called the “possible” intellect.
“The intellective soul is not in potentiality to the likenesses
of things which are in the phantasms, according to the mode
in which they are there, but according as these images are raised
to something higher, by being abstracted from the individual­
izing conditions of matter, so that they become actually in­
telligible. Consequently, the action of the active intellect on
■•Italics are translator’s.

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

the phantasm precedes the reception by the possible intellect.
Wherefore the preeminence of the action is ascribed, not to the
phantasms but to the active intellect. For this reason Aristotle
says that it is compared to the possible intellect as art to
matter.
“We should have a perfect example of this if the eye, be­
sides being a diaphanous body and receptive of colors, had
sufficient light to make colors actually visible; even as certain
animals are said to throw sufficient light on objects by the
light of their eyes.” (C. G. II, 77.)

Comparison of Sense and Intellect
The operation of the sensitive faculty may be
taken as furnishing analogies for the understanding
of the operation of the intellective faculty. The
proper sense, analogous to the active intellect
(although it is acted upon and does not initiate
action as the active intellect does), receives sensible
forms from each of the five exterior sense organs.
These various sensations fuse in the common sense
which discriminates what the object is which is
causing the sensations. A representation of the dis­
criminated object forms in the imagination. This
imagined form is analogous to a concept and serves
as a kind of suggestion soliciting action—a problem.
Because, as Aquinas says, a tendency follows every
• form, when the sensible form appears in the imagination, the attention is aroused, and a judgment is
made of what the object means, whether it is a
good or
an evil, that is, a judgment of what
the object being sensed does. An animal knows
instinctively what each object means in terms of
harmful or beneficial, and immediately the animal

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SELF-ACTIVITY.

125

takes a definite attitude toward the object, and
either moves toward it to appropriate it if it is good,
or moves away to avoid it if it is evil. By this act
of judgment a habit is formed in the memory.
Since, in the animal, each habit is the result of a
particular judgment instinctively determined there
are no “free meanings” which can serve as a basis
for association and consequently for the organiza­
tion or integration of habits. Hence, an animal
cannot recall by “reasoning back” to an experience
which took place in the past. Since, through his
active intellect, man can abstract for consideration
any number of meanings from a single object and
can take as many attitudes toward the object, man
can compare these aspects and associate and or­
ganize them in any order that he desires. Hence,
man is responsible for the order of his intellective
memory, his intellectual habits, his character.
Causes of False Interpretations
In this act of thinking there is a possibility of
false inference and a consequent disorderly asso­
ciation. If man judges from external appearances
immediately and does not resort to his power of
“collating ideas” from the memory of past experi­
ences, that is, to test in imagination the “sugges­
tion” which first appears in the imagination, he may
be deceived, especially about things which resemble
each other. Lack of concentrated attention is also
an occasion for false interpretation. “As to com­

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

mon objects of sense, and accidental objects, even
a rightly disposed sense may have a false judgment,
because it is referred to them not directly, but acci­
dentally, or as a consequence of being directed to
other things.” (S. T. I, 17, 2.)
Only a rational being can know truth, according
to Aquinas. Only a rational being can be conscious
of the “equation of the thought and the thing.”
The abstraction, the intelligible form, is not a
knowledge of truth or of falsity. Intellectual hab­
its, the result of a judgment, are “truth as known.”
“Now since everything is true according as it has the form
proper to its nature, the intellect, in so far as it is knowing,
must be true, so far as it has the likeness of the thing known,
* this being its form as knowing. For this reason truth is de­
fined by the conformity of intellect and things; and hence to
know this conformity is to know truth. But in no way can
the sense know this. For although sight has the likeness of a
visible thing, yet it does not know the comparison which
exists between the thing seen and that which itself apprehends
concerning it. But the intellect can know its own conformity
with the intelligible thing; yet it does not apprehend it by
knowing of a thing what a thing is. When, however, it judges
that a thing corresponds to the form which it apprehends about
that thing, then first it knows and expresses truth. This it
does by composing and dividing; for in every proposition it
either applies to or removes from the thing signified by the
subject, some form signified by the predicate. . . . Therefore,
properly speaking, truth resides in the intellect composing and
dividing, and not "in the senses, nor in the intellect knowing
what a thing is. (S. T. 16, 2.)

If the intellect has no direct intuition of a relation
between “the form which it apprehends about a
thing” and the thing from which the form was ab­
stracted, it resorts to reasoning. The active intellect

ΐ·η|Ιΐ0Η^6··8αΜΜ····α··ΜΜ··ΜΗΜ

SELF-ACTIVITY

127

holds up another aspect for consideration or com­
bines several aspects until a relation is self-evident.
For example, in the application of the term mor­
tality to man in the proposition, “Man is mortal,”
if the equivalence is not immediately evident, the
active intellect can resolve “man” into a more uni­
versal notion “organism, or a thing composed of
parts,” and “mortality” into “dissoluble into parts.”
This is “tracing back to first principles,” as it is
called in the De Magistro. The intuition of the
relation expressed in first principles, such as “the
whole is equal to the sum of its parts,” man has as
a potentiality “infused by God.’,’
Man’s Knowledge is in Active Potentiality
Through the two potentialities, the active intel­
lect, or “the light of the mind” and reason, or in­
tuition “the first principles intuitively known,” the
“light of uncreated truth reflected in us,” man’s
knowledge is held to be in “active potentiality.”

Conclusion Reached in the First Article
The conclusion reached in the First Article of the
De Magistro is, then, that God teaches man prin­
cipally in giving him his potentialities, but that man
can develop his potentialities through himself in
the method of discovery, or he may accept the aid
of a teacher who ministers to his nature as a physi­
cian does to a patient, “applying medicines which
nature uses as instruments in healing.”

!

IV

j

The Second Article—The Function of Environ­
ment, and Learning by Symbols

The second question in the De Magistro is :
Whether one can be called a teacher of himself?
Learning is a process of self-activity by which an
intellectual habit is formed. Teaching is the helping of that process by ministering material and
tools. The question, then, may be read, Can one
supply himself with all the materials and tools nec.essary for an act of knowledge? Can man, as Bacon
said the Scholastics did, spin knowledge out of his
own substance? Can a blind man teach himself to
know colors? Aquinas says that according to
Plato’s theory he could ; man’s intellectual habits,
according to Plato, were already formed at birth,
just as an animal’s instincts are. An animal teaches
itself; it is in a way self-active. An animal, however, cannot learn; it cannot profit by experience;
an animal is not plastic. Man is plastic. He “is
all things by sense and intellect.” His intellect “is
naturally apprehensive of the universal,” and the
“universal is potentially infinite” because it repre­
sents an infinite number of particulars. The price
man pays for his plasticity is that man cannot teach
himself. Not having any knowledge at birth, man

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MAN’S EDUCATIONAL PLASTICITY 129
has no material upon which to start to work. He
cannot supply the material for himself, but when
it is supplied he can use it effectively, through the
use of symbols as tools. Man cannot teach him­
self, but he can learn, he can profit by his own ex­
perience and by the experience of the race.
A Review of the Psychology of Reflection
“The external objects which we understand, do not exist in
our intellect according to their own nature, but it is necessary
that our intellect contain their species whereby it becomes
intellect in act. And being in act by this species as by its
proper form, it understands the object itself. And yet the act
of understanding is not an act passing into the intellect, as
heating passes into the object heated, but it remains in the one
who understands; although it bears a relation to the object
understood, for the very reason that the aforesaid species, which
is the formal principle of intellectual operation, is the image
of that object. It must furthermore be observed that the in­
tellect informed by the species of the subject, by understand­
ing produces in itself a kind of intention of the object under­
stood, which intention reflects the nature of that object and is
expressed in the definition thereof.” (C. G. I, S3.)

It will be noted that, in the process, an object is
required both when the intellect makes the abstrac­
tion and when it reflects or judges. This object
is supplied by a phantasm, a sense record of an
experience.
“In the present state of life in which the soul is united to
a passive body, it is impossible for our intellect to understand
anything actually, except by turning to the phantasms. It is
clear that for the intellect to understand actually, not only
when it acquires fresh knowledge, but also when it applies
knowledge already acquired, there is need for the act of the
imagination and of the other powers: for instance, when the
act of the imagination is hindered by a lesion of the corporeal

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

organ, as in a case of frenzy; or when the act of memory is
hindered from actually understanding things of which he had
a previous knowledge. Secondly, anyone can experience this
of himself, that when he tries to understand something, he
forms certain phantasms to serve him by way of examples, in
which, as it were, he examines what he is desirous of under­
standing. For this reason it is, that when we wish to help
someone to understand something we lay examples before him,
from which he forms phantasms for the purpose of under­
standing.” (S. T. I, 84, 7.)

Man Cannot Teach Himself
Since the phantasms are the results of sensé ex­
perience, it is evident that man does not entirely
supply for himself the material for his knowledge.
He is dependent in this respect upon his environ­
ment, a teacher in some form. “All learning comes
from previous knowledge,” Aquinas quotes from
Aristotle. This is true even if we must trace back
to the knowledge of God, the ideas in His mind
which were the exemplary causes of the things in
the environment.

Why Experience is Necessary for Learning
The reason why sense experience is necessary for
a perfect act of knowledge is that without this
experience the mind knows only about an object of
thought, not of it. To know a thing thoroughly the
mind must know not only what a thing is but also
what it does.
Our intellect’s proper and proportionate object is the nature
of a sensible thing. Now a perfect judgment concerning any­
thing cannot be formed, unless all that pertains to that thing’s
nature be known; especially if that be ignored which is the

MAN’S EDUCATIONAL PLASTICITY 131
term and end of judgment. Now the Philosopher says (De
Cad. iii), that as the end of a practical science is action, so the
end of natural science is that which is perceived principally
through the senses; for the smith does not seek knowledge of
a knife except for the purpose of action, in order that he may
produce a certain individual knife; and in like manner the
natural philosopher does not seek to know the nature of a
stone and of a horse, save for the purpose of knowing the
essential properties of those things which he perceives with his
senses. Now it is clear that a smith cannot judge perfectly of
a knife unless he knows the action of the knife; and in like
manner the natural philosopher cannot judge perfectly of
natural things, unless he knows sensible things. But in the
present state of life whatever we understand, we know by
comparison to natural sensible things. Consequently, it is not
possible for our intellect to form a perfect judgment, while the
senses are suspended, through which sensible things are known
to us.” (S. T. I. 84, 8.)

Is Aquinas a Pragmatic Psychologist?
It is the contention of the pragmatists also that a
definition of a thing is functional, not structural,
that it expresses not what a thing is, but what it
does. They are relativists. They hold that there
is no being-as-such, and that what a thing does
may be interpreted differently by each individual
mind. There is no “changeless in the midst of
change.” Aquinas would hold that the modern
pragmatists are mere scientists. They do not know
things through their ultimate causes; they are not
wise men or philosophers.
“In regard to that which is last in this or that genus of
knowable matter, it is science that perfects the intellect. . . .
That which is last with respect to all human knowledge, is that
which is knowable first and chiefly in its nature. And above
these things is wisdom, which considers the highest causes, as

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

stated in Metaph. (i, 1, 2). Wherefore it rightly judges all
things and sets them in order, because there can be no perfect
universal judgment that is not based on the first causes.” (S. T.
Π-Ι, 57, 2.)

The pragmatists, then, cannot attain to perfect
integration of their knowledge. They keep the
various sciences in mutually exclusive compart­
ments. It is only through philosophy, “which
judges all things and sets them in order,” that
integration of knowledge is attained.
Philosophy and Character Formation
Since knowledge is composed of intellectual hab­
its, and habits are the elements of a character, it
would seem that a perfectly integrated character,
one that is not divided up into “scientific” selves,
mutually exclusive, can be attained only by having
a philosophy of life, one that recognizes the “highest
causes,” the ultimate meaning of life.
The Units of Integration
Although man cannot teach himself because he
is not a “perfect agent,” “which has in itself every­
thing which is in the effect caused by it,” as Aquinas
says in the De Magistro, yet he can see order in the
material that is given him and can cause order in
his own character. The potentiality which makes
this possible is intuition, a natural sensitiveness to
relation, to principles. Through intuition man is
able to judge, and an act of judgment, as we have
seen, generates an intellectual habit. An intellectual

MAN’S EDUCATIONAL PLASTICITY 133
habit may be thought of as resulting in a concept,
a known order.21 The concepts are the elements of
an integrated character.
“The virtues [habits] of the speculative intellect are those
which perfect the speculative intellect for the consideration of
truth; for this is its good work. Now a truth is subject to a
twofold consideration—as known in itself, and as known
through another. What is known in itself, is as a principle,
and is at once understood by the intellect; wherefore the habit
that perfects the intellect for the consideration of such truth
is called understanding which is the habit of principles.” (S. T.
Π-Ι, 57, 2.)

Understanding is a God-given potentiality—
“The understanding of first principles is called a natural
habit. For it is owing to the very nature of the intellectual
soul that man, having once grasped what is a whole and what
is a part, should at once perceive that every whole is larger
than its part; and in like manner—with regard to other such
principles. Yet· what is a whole, and what is a part—this he
cannot know except through the intelligible species which he
has received from phantasms.” (S. T. Π-Ι, 51, 1.)

A concept, or a known order,21 contains poten­
tially other relations. For example, the concept, “an
animal is mortal,” contains potentially, “a lion, a
bird, etc., is mortal.” As the concept is thus devel­
oped, it itself becomes more distinctly understood,
and, at the‘same time, serves as an organizing prin­
ciple, since all the particular orders developed from
it are grouped in a class under that concept. The
concept that contains potentially all the items of
knowledge that can, be known is the concept of
nAn order consists of related beings. The simplest order possible
is two beings and their relation, as a mother and a father and their
relation to each other. The concept of this order would be Parent­
hood.

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

being which, according to Aquinas, is the first con­
cept or intellectual habit that a human infant forms.
All learning is a development of this concept.
Learning, then, is called the actualization of first
principles.
“As sense, like the intellect, proceeds from potentiality to
act, the same order of knowledge appears in the senses. For
by sense we judge of the more common before the less com­
mon, in reference to both place and time; in reference to place,
when a thing is seen afar off, it is seen to be a body before it
is seen to be an animal; and to be an animal before it is seen
to be a man; and to be a man before it is seen to be Socrates
or Plato; and the same is true as regards time, for a child can
distinguish man from not-man before he distinguishes this man
from that, and therefore ‘children at first call all men fathers,
and later on distinguish each one from the other* (Phys. i. 1).
The reason of this is clear; because he who knows a thing in­
distinctly is in a state of potentiality as regards its principle
of distinction; as he who knows genus is in a state of poten­
tiality as regards difference.” (S. T. I, 85, 3.)

The Problem—To Retain Integration
The child with his first potential habit, the con­
cept of being, is integrated. He is a homogeneous
whole. The problem is for him to develop his
knowledge ; to make it heterogeneous but still retain
unity. We saw how disorderly association was the
result of false judgments. If every judgment made
by man from his cradle to his grave were a true
judgment, he would retain his original state of in­
tegration. This raises the question :
What is the Basis for Truth?
What is truth and what is its relation to charac­
ter? If there is no objective basis for truth, and

MAN’S EDUCATIONAL PLASTICITY 135
“truth is within,” then knowledge becomes purely
subjective, virtue becomes self-knowledge. On the
other hand, if there is no subjective basis for truth,
knowledge becomes aggregates of sensations, and
virtue becomes social efficiency. In the first case,
character could be distorted but not disintegrated,
as a plant can be distorted but cannot be disin­
tegrated without perishing. In the second case,
there is no integration possible, because there is no
natural order in sensations just as there is no order
in an animal’s instincts. Each sensation is a “self.”
“The thought is the thinker.” Order cannot come
from society because society’s standards are always
shifting. For the better, the evolutionists will say.
But whence did the “social mind” derive its poten­
tiality to develop?
Aquinas and Truth

Aquinas is a moderate realist. He combines the
best features of both of the mentioned positions.
‘‘Moderate realism, in the spirit of true synthesis, maintained
universalia ante rem, the types of things existing in the mind
of God, universalia post rem concepts existing in the human
mind, and universalia in rem, the potentially universal essences
existing in things.”22

Truth, according to Aquinas, exists first in the
mind of God who conceived the universe ; secondly,
in things, the embodied ideas of God, the symbols
of His concepts; and thirdly, in the mind of man,
’’Turner, W., History of Philosophy, p. 267.

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

who in abstracting the meaning from the universe
and interpreting it, knows the mind of God.

Truth and Symbolic Teaching
We may represent truth as a message. God con­
ceives it and embodies it in symbols which are in
orderly sequence—intelligible. To man he gives, in
endowing him with insight and intuition, the poten­
tiality to read and to interpret. Men of all ages
have read and interpreted the message. They have
embodied their interpretations (concepts) again in
symbols, in books. Some have had keen insight and
faithful intuition. These are the great philosophers.
But to one philosopher there are thousands of illit­
erates, who, nevertheless, cannot build an integrated
character unless they know the right plan which
is prescribed in the message. God in His love for
these illiterates, supplemented His “correspondence
course” with direct visitations to His pupils, through
the Prophets, and His Word. Again, this inter­
preted truth is embodied in symbols in the Scrip­
tures. It remains to be interpreted, however much
it has been annotated and expounded. Man is not
his own teacher. He does not supply himself with
objective truth, the embodied or re-embodied con­
cepts of God, but he must be a learner. He must
read the symbols in order to know; he must inter­
pret them aright in order to keep an integrated
character.
i

MAN’S EDUCATIONAL PLASTICITY 137
What is a Symbol?
In order to understand how a symbol can be in­
terpreted, we must understand what a symbol is.
A symbol is an expressed concept, a word. It is
some kind of embodiment of a known order.
“We must know that our own word taken in its proper
sense has a threefold meaning. The dearest and most common
sense is when it is said of the word spoken by the voice; and
this proceeds from an interior source as regards two things
found in the exterior word—that is the vocal sound itself and
the signification of the sound. For, according to the Philoso­
pher (Peri. Herm. i), vocal sound signifies the concept of the
intellect. Again the vocal sound proceeds from the'signification
of the imagination as is stated in the De Anima (ii, text 90.)
The vocal sound, which has no signification, cannot be called
a word; wherefore the exterior vocal sound is called a word
from the fact that it signifies the interior concept of the mind.
Therefore it follows that, first and chiefly, the interior concept
of the mind is called a word; secondarily the vocal sound itself,
signifying the interior concept, is so called; and thirdly, the
imagination of the vocal sound is called a word.”. (S. T. 1,34,1.)

A Word is a Self-Expression

We see that Aquinas holds that the imagination
is the medium between the concept and the spoken
word, and we shall see later that it is also the
medium between the spoken word and the concept,
that is, when a symbol is interpreted. To under­
stand fully the nature of a word, we must under­
stand what is meant by the concept.

Self-Consciousnesi and Self-Knowledge
The reflective process has been described. The
active intellect abstracts from a sense experience,

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

(a phantasm), an intelligible form, a hypothesis of
the true. Then it turns about and tests the hypothe­
sis by examining the phantasm again. When the in­
tellect has an intuition that the phantasm repre­
sents the order that the intellect is seeking, it enun­
ciates a judgment or a mental word. As a result
of the process the intellect is formed or habituated.
The intellect may now take its own actualized
potentiality, the intellectual habit, as an object of
thought. In such an act of self-knowledge, Aquinas
holds that the mind must go through exactly the
same process as it does in any act of reflection.
First the imagination pictures the habit—embodies
the concept. From this phantasm of its own habit
the intellect abstracts the intelligible form, or what
order it thinks a habit ought to belong to. Then
it reflects and judges whether or not the habit be­
longs to that order.

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“Everything is knowable so far as it is in act, and not, so
far as it is in potentiality {Metaphy, ix.) : for a thing is a being,
and is true, and therefore knowable, according as it is actual.
This is quite clear as regards sensible things, for the eye
does not see what is potentially, but what is actually colored.
In like manner it is clear that the intellect, so far as it knows
material things, does not know save what is in act. . . .
Now the human intellect is only a potentiality in the genus
of intelligible things ... hence it is called possible. There­
fore, in its essence the human mind is potentially understand­
ing. Hence it has in itself the power to understand, but
not to be understood, except as it is made actual. . . . There­
fore the intellect knows itself not by its essence, but by its act.
This happens in two ways: In the first place, singularly, as
when Socrates or Plato perceives that he has an intellectual
soul because he perceives that he understands [self-conscious-

MAN’S EDUCATIONAL PLASTICITY 139
ness]. In the second place, universally, as when we consider
the nature of the human mind from knowledge of the intellec­
tual act. It is true, however, that the judgment and force of
this knowledge, whereby we know the nature of the soul,
comes to us according to the derivation of our intellectual light
from the Divine Truth which contains the types of all things
as above stated (Q. LXXXIV., A. 5). Hence Augustine says
(De Trinitate, IX, 6) ‘We gaze on the inviolable truth whence
we can as perfectly as possible define, not what each man’s
mind is, but what it ought to be in the light of the eternal
types.’ ” (S. T. I., 87, 1.)

The expression of this act of self-knowledge is a
word. This explains fully the conclusion reached
in the second article of the De Magistro, that man
cannot be his own teacher, a perfect agent of his
own knowledge. To be a perfect agent he must be
able to make an act of self-knowledge without first
having actualized a habit, which is a kind of “lay
figure” of himself. God alone is a perfect agent,
His act of self-knowledge is the Second Person of
the Blessed Trinity, God’s Word.

The Spoken Word
A natural tendency follows every form. The
form of fire, is followed by a tendency to rise and
a movement to “act out” the tendency. A sensible
form appearing in the imagination is followed by
a tendency to act out the form, to express it. The
vocal expression of a sensible form in the imagina­
tion is a spoken word. When the sensible form is
an image of a concept in the mind, the spoken word
is the symbol of that concept, an embodied concept.

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

The Constructive Imagination
The power that makes it possible for man to
imagine his own concepts, “to receive that which
is in the intellect,” Aquinas calls it in the De Mag­
istro, is the constructive imagination. This, man
alone has.
“Avicenna assigns between the estimative and the imagina­
tive, a fifth power, which combines and divides imaginary
forms: as when from the imaginary form of gold, and the
imaginary form of a mountain, we compose the one form of
a golden mountain, which we have never seen. But this opera­
tion is not found in animals other than man, in whom the
imaginative power suffices thereto.” (S. T. I, 78, 4.)

This imaginative power is under the control of
the will.

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“It is in our power to form phantasms adapted to the con­
sideration we wish to make. ... By the command of the in­
tellect there is formed in the imagination a phantasm cor­
responding to. such and such an intelligible species, and in this
phantasm the intelligible species is reflected as an exemplar in
the exemplate or image.” (C. G. II, 73.)

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If the object of thought is immaterial, as a con­
cept is, the phantasm is constructed by comparison
to things of which we have had some sense expe­
rience.
“Incorporeal things, of which there are no phantasms, are
known to us by comparison with sensible bodies of which there
are phantasms. Thus we understand truth by considering a
thing of which we possess the truth. . . . And therefore, when
we understand something about these things, we need to turn
to phantasms of bodies, although there are no phantasms of
the things themselves.” (S. T. I, 84, 7, ad 3.)

Imagination and Learning
The tremendous importance of having an imagi­
nation well stocked with phantasms, or records of

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sense experience, is easily seen. The advantageous­
ness in learning of having an aptitude for combining images is equally evident. This is undoubtedly the “gift” that Aquinas refers to in the reply
to the fourth objection in the Second Article of the
De Magistro.
“Although the mode of acquisition of knowledge through
discovery is more perfect on thé^part of the one receiving the
knowledge inasmuch as he is thereby distinguished as being
more gifted for learning, nevertheless on the part of what
causes the knowledge the more perfect mode is through in­
struction, because 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, because of this fact that
the pupil knows the principles of knowledge only in generality
[vaguely].”

Symbols and Learning
The reason why a teacher "can lead to knowledge
more quickly and easily than anyone can lead him­
self,” is because the teacher, having completed an
act of knowledge, presents his concept with a sym­
bol, and “the words of the teacher have a closer
relation to causing knowledge than have the mere
perceivable things outside the mind.” The words
of the teacher represent his concepts, and concepts
are the distilled wisdom of a reflective mind. The
economy of the use of symbols, and the superiority
of teaching by symbols when there is a sufficient
basis of experience to interpret them is shown in
the second objection of the First Article of the De
Magistro.

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

“Even if some things seem to be taught by themselves (for
example, if when somebody asks what it is to walk, someone
walks) yet this is not sufficient to teach him unless some sym­
bol is added, as Augustine says in his book De Magistro (iii)
and he explains why this is so—for the reason that in the same
thing there are many elements, so that it would not be known
how far the object-lesson held in regard to any aspect of that
object; whether in regard to the substance of the object or in
regard to some accident in it.’’

Conclusion of the Second Article
Man cannot teach himself, but he has excellent
teachers, namely: the symbols; the orderly uni­
verse; the embodied concepts of God; Revelation,
the spoken word of God; the books of all ages,
man’s interpretations of the symbols of God. This
inheritance of symbols, man sees with his imagina­
tion, reads with his insight, and interprets with his
intuition. Man cannot teach himself, but he is an
efficient student.

V
The Third Article—Learning, Teaching, and
Character Formation

The last article emphasized the learner.· The
Third Article deals with the teacher, representing
the human teacher as a colleague on the faculty with
God and the angels. The Second Article empha­
sized the necessity for scholarship, the Third Article
brings out the inspirational value of a teacher’s
personality. The previous article pictured man as
dependent upon a teacher for his scientific knowl­
edge. -yThis one represents man as free and undeter­
mined in his interpretation of facts. Man may be
influenced by his reverence for authority and
motivated by the ideals of his heroes, but individual
thinking is his privilege and his duty. The analogy
offered in the First Article is pertinent herez There
the teacher is compared to a physician ministering
to an ill, but self-active, nature. However much a
patient may need the aid of a physician, however
much he may realize that the physician will help
him, he may yet refuse assistance, and he feels
morally responsible for the results of his refusal.
Even when a patient accepts the aid of a physician,
his nature must do the principal work in healing.
The question which entitles the Third Article may

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

then read, “Can even a teacher with a most in­
spiring personality and the most profound scholar­
ship cause a pupil to learn if the pupil refuses to
cooperate and to think?”

Aquinas and the Physician Analogy
The physician analogy of the nature of the rela­
tion of teacher and pupil is perhaps the best that
can be found in educational literature. Plato’s and
Froebel’s self-realization, illustrated by the plant
metaphor, is mere passivity in comparison. A plant
has only capacity to adapt. Its “character” is de­
termined by nature, it cannot be improved either
by the efforts of the plant or of the gardener. The
plant is helpless against either a favorable or un­
favorable environment. The physician analogy
represents man not only as self-active but plastic,
habit forming, responsible for his own character
and for the plan of his character.
The Persistence of the Analogy
The physician analogy is not a mere fortuitous
or extemporaneous illustration with Aquinas. That
it embodies his firm conviction of the nature of the
educative process is evident from the fact that
wherever he mentions the relations of a teacher to
a pupil he repeats the analogy. Attention may be
called to Question 117 of Part I of the Summa
Theologica and Chapter 75 of Book II of the Contra
Gentiles. In the last mentioned reference he says;

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CHARACTER FORMATION

145

“For his [Averroës] statement that knowledge in the disciple
and in the master is numerically one, is partly true and partly
false. It is numerically one as regards the thing known, but
not as regards the intelligible species whereby it is known, nor
again as regards the habit itself of knowledge. And yet it
does not follow that the master causes knowledge in the disciple
in the same way as fire generates fire: since tilings are not in
the same way generated by nature as by art. For fire gen- 3
erates fire naturally, by reducing matter from potentiality to
the act of its form, whereas the master causes knowledge in
his disciple after the manner of art, since to this purpose is
assigned the art of demonstration which Aristotle teaches in
the Posterior Analytics, for a demonstration is a syllogism that
makes us know.
“It must, however, be observed, in accordance with Aris­
totle’s teaching in 7 Metaph., that there are some arts in which
the matter is not an active principle productive of the art’s
effect; such is the art of building, since in timber and stone
there is not an active force tending to the production of a
house, but merely a passive aptitude. On the other hand there
is an art the matter of which is an active principle tending to
produce the effect of the art; such is the medical art, since in
the sick body there is an active principle conducive to health.
Consequently the effect of an art of the first kind is never pro­
duced by nature but is always the result of the art. But the
effect of an art of the second kind is the result both of art,
and of nature without art: for many are healed by the action X
of nature without the art of mediane. In those things that
can be done both by art and by nature, art copies nature', for
if a person is taken ill through a cold cause, nature cures him
by heating. Now the art of teaching is like to knowledge,
namely, the intellect, and those things which are naturally
understood, namely, first principles. Wherefore knowledge is i ,
acquired in two ways, both by discovery without teaching, !i
and by teaching. Consequently the teacher begins to teach in 1Λ
the same way as the discoverer begins to discover, namely, by 11
offering to the disciple’s consideration principles known by I
him, since all learning results from preexisting knowledge ; and |
by drawing conclusions from those principles; and again by
proposing sensible examples, from which there result, in the
disciple’s mind, the phantasms which ate necessary that he

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

may understand. And since the outward action of the teacher
would have no effect, without the inward principle of knowl­
edge, which is in us from God, hence among theologians it is
said that man teaches by outward ministration, but God by
inward operation: even so the physician is said to minister to
nature when he heals. Accordingly knowledge is caused in the
disciple by his master, not by way of natural action, but after
the manner of art, as stated.” (C. G. II, 75.)

Aquinas and the Logical Method
It should be kept in mind that Aquinas is con­
cerned with higher education only. His emphasis
upon the logical method of teaching is natural.
The university students, in times anterior to ours,
were expected to have all the phantasms and all
the skill with the use of tools that they needed in
thinking. The university was an opportunity for
interpreting, determining, and disputing, not for
memorizing and reciting. À great amount of mem­
orizing was involved because of the scarcity of
books, but it was not an end in itself. The “authori­
ties” of the past were memorized only to provide a
basis for individual interpretation.

Aquinas on Elementary-School Method
Aquinas dearly indicates his attitude toward
sense training or physical habit formation by
pladng his rules for memory training under his
treatment of prudence, the virtues of the practical
intellect The first prindple of the practical intel­
lect is the memory of what was best in the majority
of cases. Sense training is, then, for the provision

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of materials and the attaining-of skill in the use of
tools.

Rules for Habit Formation
Aquinas’s rules for memory training may be taken
as his recommendation for elementary-school
method. The first rule calls attention to what
Bagley calls the “focalizing” of attention on the
thing to be learned ; the second, to the importance
of orderly sequence in presentation of matter; the
third, to the need for motivation; and the fourth,
to drill.
“Just as aptitude for prudence is in our nature, while its
perfection comes through practice or grace, so too, according
to Tully, memory is perfected not by nature alone, but also by
art and diligence.
“There are four things whereby a man perfects his memory.
First, when a man wishes to remember a thing, he should take
some unwonted illustration of it, since the unwonted makes us wonder more and so makes a greater and stronger impres­
sion on the mind; and this explains why we remember better
what we saw when we were children. Now, the reason for the
necessity of finding these illustrations or images, is that simple
and spiritual impressions easily slip from the mind, unless they
be tied, as it were, to some corporeal image, because human
knowledge has a greater hold on sensible objects. For this
reason, memory is assigned to the sensitive part of the soul.
Secondly, whatever a man wishes to retain in his memory, he
must carefully consider and set in order, so that he may pass
easily from one memory to another. Hence the Philosopher
says (De Mem. ii), ‘Sometimes a place brings memories back
to us; the reason being that we pass quickly from one to
another.* Thirdly, we must be anxious and earnest about the
things we wish to remember, because the more the thing is
impressed on the mind, the less it is liable to slip out of it.
Wherefore Tully says (Ad Meren, de arte rket. iii) that ‘anx­
iety preserves the figures of images entire.' Fourthly, we should

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

often reflect on the things we wish to remember. Hence the
Philosopher says (De Mem. i) that ‘reflection preserves mem­
ories,’ because he remarks, (ibid), ‘custom is a second nature’:
wherefore when we reflect on a thing frequently, we quickly
call it to mind through passing from one to another by a kind
of natural order.” (S. T. Π-Π, 4, 1, ad 2.)

The two important points in sense training are
the two things which Burnham in his Norman Mind
stresses, namely, concentrated attention and orderly
association.

Secondary Method a Complete Act of Reflection
A description of secondary method is a descrip­
tion of a complete act of thought, or the formation
of an intellectual habit, written large in classroom
procedure. It will be remembered that, in the re­
flective process, the active intellect first abstracts
an intelligible form from a sense experience. Be­
cause of the natural tendency which follows a form,
the abstraction becomes a problem of a hypothesis.
Then the intellect reflects and tries out various solu­
tions in the imagination. Finally, through an in­
tuition of relation and order, a conclusion is reached.
By a further act of reflection upon the habit just
formed, it is incorporated into the character, in view
of a final end, a true, ideal self.
Aquinas's Application of his Theory of Method
The De Magistro is not a treatise on educational
practice. It is purely theoretical, but mirroring, as
it does, the classroom procedure which Aquinas
actually used, the form of the treatise is in itself

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149

a demonstration of the application of the theory of
method which he proposed, “teaching in the same
way as the discoverer begins to discover.” De Wulf
summarizes the results of investigations to ascertain
the exact manner of conducting a disputatio, as the
classroom procedure was called in the medieval
universities.
“The disputatio was a cooperative form of teaching. It was
a sort of living lesson, to which each one contributed according
to his ability. . . . The disputatio ordinaria like the disputatio
de quodlibet, consisted of two acts: First there was a passage
at arms between one or many objectors and a person replying
different from the one charged with the final defense. When
the discussion had gone on sufficiently long, the master entered
upon the scene, and in another part of the function (Pelster)
or on another day (Madonnet) he took up again in a
methodic way each question proposed, grouped the opinions
and arguments, summed up the objections and replies, dealt
with certain difficulties which the person replying had inten­
tionally left in suspense, and finally presented a definitive
solution or determinatio, introduced by the words "respondeo
dicendum" or a similar formula.”23

An analysis of a question and of its divisions,
the articles (i.e., of a medieval disputatio), shows a
remarkable combination of what are today consid­
ered the best procedures: namely, the inductive,
psychological, or developmental discussion lesson;
the deductive, logical, or authoritative lesson; and
the application or review lesson.
Every question opens with a statement of the
questions which are to be discussed in the various
articles. This gives a bird’s-eye view of the work
*’De Wulf, History of Medieval PhUojofhy, Vol. I, p. 225.

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

to come. The opening of the first objection states
the “resolved that.” For example, in the First Arti­
cle of the De Magistro the question is, “Whether
one man can teach another and be called a teacher,
or God alone?” and the opening of the first objec­
tion states, “It seems that God alone teaches and
alone ought to be called a teacher.” Part of the
students, or their representative, then supports this
position, and the other part offers the counter ob­
jections. This part of the lesson corresponds to the
first part of the reflective process, the testing of
hypotheses in an effort to arrive at a true solution
of a problem which is “apprehended under the
aspect of goodness or fittingness.” This is the psy­
chological method of approach. On the part of the
pupils, the projecting of hypotheses causes the
pupils to apperceive the question and the aspects
which it has. It induces the pupils to summon all
the relevant knowledge they have and to review the
historical solutions which have been given to the
problem in order to support their hypotheses. For
example, in the First Article of the De Magistro, in
the objections and counter objections, Augustine,
the Scriptures, and Boethius are quoted, and the
theories of Plato and of Aristotle are mentioned to
support the contention that man is entirely self­
active and has God alone for a teacher. On the
part of the teacher, the preliminary discussion by
the pupils provides a point of departure, because
the students' objections reveal their experience,

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their previous knowledge and their interests. Most
important of all, the psychological method of ap­
proach, by arousing the pupils’ desire to know an
authoritative answer to the question, brings the
pupils to welcome the teacher’s logical presentation
of the solution.
The teacher now, in the body of the article which
opens with “I answer that,” presents the solution
by logically integrating the facts. Aquinas does
this by making the entire solution hinge on his
theory of the origin of forms. He clearly enunciates
the principles and deduces the conclusions, giving,
wherever necessary, illustrations and examples. For
example, in the First Article, Aquinas states that
knowledge exists in active, complete potentiality,
and deduces the conclusion that the learning process
is a self-active realization of forms from this poten­
tiality, and that the teacher is the minister to the
process. He illustrates by the physician analogy. _ ______
It is in this logical presentation of facts alone
that a teacher can justly be said to teach according
to Aquinas. The psychological approach only pro­
Andes an occasion for the pupils to form concepts
or to dear up the concepts which they have, and to
desire an authoritative statement of the truth. The
teacher’s work is to integrate these concepts by
showing their logical connection. To do this, the
teacher must have the knowledge which he is to
teach “perfectly and explicitly.” He must see the
question whole, the materials which he has to use,

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and especially the attitude which he wishes the
pupils finally to take. Hence the importance that
the teacher have a philosophy of life, a knowledge
of "the highest causes,” so that he may judge rightly
and “set all things” in the right order.
This teaching is not merely stimulating the pupils
to recite or to review the contents of their mem­
ories. It is the soliciting of them to reflect, to
judge, to integrate their knowledge. It is the caus­
ing of the pupils to actualize their potential knowl­
edge, to form their minds.
The body of the article closes with a concise state­
ment of the teacher’s solution, and then the answers
to the objections are entered upon. This is the sum­
mary, or review lesson. The principles established
in the body of the article are used to solve the ob­
jections and thereby are repeated and impressed.
The applications to the various objections widen
the pupil’s viewpoint and show the validity of the
principles. Above all, they leave the students with
a definite attitude toward the false positions, with
a state of satisfaction with their orderly associated
knowledge—with their possession of truth.

Teaching and Learning as Integrations
In every case, learning is an organization of ex­
perience. In discovery, the learner, by trial and
error, methods on the sense level, or by “composing
and dividing” on the intellectual level, gropes his
way toward an intuition of order in the midst of

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153

confused elements. In every case, teaching is an
organization of elements for the purpose of making
it possible for another to have an “intuition with
certitude” of order. This is done by a teacher, on
the sense level, by arranging the actual environment
in such a way that the learner will form orderly
associated phantasms, or records of sense experience.
On the intellectual level, it is done by arranging
symbols of concepts, the elements of the intellectual
order, in such a way that the learner will, through
“intuition with certitude,” form true intellectual
habits, the elements of a character. Learning is
character building, and teaching is character architecturing.

CHAPTER VI
The Fourth Article—A Liberal Education
Character Architecture

and

The title of the Fourth Article is, “Whether
teaching is a function of the active or of the con­
templative life?” In order to understand this arti­
cle we should review the second act of reflection
mentioned in the discussion of the Second Article.
After an intellectual habit has been formed, it can
be made the object of thought, and the result of
the process is self-knowledge. The formation of the
habits is the subject matter of the active life. The
second act of reflection is the contemplative life,
“the consideration of truth (i.e., known truth or an
intellectual habit) by which we dwell in reflection
on ‘the knowable causes of things.’ ”

Contemplation—A Complete Act of Reflection
We saw how, through the constructive imagina­
tion, a contemplator can construct an image of one
of his own concepts or intellectual habits. In the
same way, he can construct an image of his entire
character—his acquired self. This image is a kind
of “lay figure” of himself. Then the active intellect
abstracts from the image the intelligible form, what
he ought to be—his ideal self. Again, the intellect
reflects on the image and judges whether or not the

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CHARACTER ARCHITECTURE

]

contemplator is justified in asserting that his char­
acter is as it ought to be, that is, conforms to his
hypothetical ideal of himself.

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The Result of Contemplation—A Principle of Action
The result of this act of self-knowledge, the contemplator’s concept of himself, is a principle of
action. We have seen how a concept is a synthesis,
the result of an intuition of an order, two beings
and their relation to one another. A principle of
action is a concept of a moral order, the contemplator’s character and his relation to his ideal or
standard or end. We saw also how a concept could
‘ contain potentially other relations, and that, as
these relations were developed, the concept itself
became more distinctly known and the developed
relations were integrated by the concept from which
they were developed. Such is also the function of
a principle in character development and integration.
The Importance of Habits
The tremendous importance of the subject matter of the active life, the intellectual habits, is êvident. First of all, there can be no act of self-knowledge unless there is in existence a character to be
known. In the second place, the existing organization of the habits will determine what ideal will
be abstracted from them, just as the organization
of accidental qualities, such as color and size in a
concrete object, determine, to a large extent, what

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notion of the nature of object will be abstracted
from it. This is what Aristotle means when he in­
sists that one must first be habituated to right action
before he can conceive a right moral principle. ·
“As by the habit of natural understanding or of science, a
man is made rightly disposed in regard to the universal prin­
ciples of action; so, in order that he be rightly disposed with
regard to the particular principles of action, viz., the ends, he
needs to be perfected by certain habits, whereby it becomes
connatural, as it were, to man to judge aright to the end. This
is done by moral virtue: for the virtuous man judges aright of
the end of virtue, because such as a man is, such does his end
seem to him. (Ethic, iii 5.) (S. T. Π-Ι, 58, 5.)

Ideals
Since man is responsible for his habits, he is also
responsible for his ideals. The influence of great
models of virtue upon the formation of ideals is
exercised in the process of the formation of the lay
figure of the self in the imagination. It will be
remembered that a derived image is constructed out
of previous images. If the contemplator has images
of great heroes, when he constructs an image of
himself, he will incorporate them to represent any
virtues he thinks that he has. If the lay figure is
too sublime and the mind cannot agree that its char­
acter corresponds to his ideal of himself, the con­
templator cannot come to a decision and cannot
form a principle of action.

I

Character Architecture
Such, then, is the process of character architec­
ture, the evolution by contemplation of oneself of

..........

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principles of action, which become plans for in­
tegrating the elements of character—intellectual
habits. When the result of the building is well
done, it is called a work of art, and the architect
is a craftsman. Motivation for building well, comes
from either a sense of a duty, of justice, or of love,
due to either one’s fellow men or to God. “A
craftsman is inclined by justice, which rectifies the
will, to do his work faithfully.” (S. T. II-I, 57, 3.)
"A virtue which perfects the will, as charity or jus­
tice, confers the right use of these speculative hab­
its. And in this way, too, there can be merit in the
acts of these habits, if they are done out of charity;
thus Gregory says {Moral, vi) that the contempla­
tive life has greater merit than the active life.”
(S. T. II-I, 57, 1.) ‘

Liberal Education is Good Character Formation
Work is the making of something, and art "con­
fers an aptness for good work.” The art that con­
fers aptness for the good work of the intellect, the
knowledge of truth or character formation, is a lib­
eral art.
"Whatever habits are ordained to suchlike works of the
speculative reason, are, by a kind of comparison, called arts,
indeed, but liberal arts, in order to distinguish them from those
arts that are ordained to works done by the body, which arts
are, in a fashion, servile, inasmuch as the body is in servile
subjection of the soul, and man, as regards his soul, is free
[liberl. On the other hand, those sciences which are not
ordained to any suchlike work [the production of something},
are called sciences simply, and not arts. Nor, if the liberal arts

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

be more excellent, does it follow that the notion of art is more
applicable to them.” (S. T. Π-I, 57, 4, ad 3.)

Teaching the Best Example of a Liberal Education
Teaching (and contemplation is in a way teach­
ing oneself), combining as it does a twofold act (as
Aquinas says in the De Magistro), habit formation
and character architecture, is the best example of a
liberal education.
Aquinas's Conception of a Liberal Education

In the introductions to the first two volumes of
the Contra Gentiles, Aquinas describes his concep­
tion of a liberally educated man—a wise man—a
character architect who, in his personality, is a har­
monious union of a scientist, a philosopher, an art­
ist, and a saint.

The Scientific Self
First of all, a wise man will have a wide basis
of experience, a comprehensive knowledge of facts,
and an open-minded, scientific attitude toward
reality.
‘‘The consideration of creatures is likewise necessary not only
for the building up of faith, but also for the destruction of
error. For errors about creatures sometimes lead one astray
from the truth of faith, insofar as they disagree with the true
knowledge of God. This happens in several ways:
“First, because through ignorance of the nature of creatures,
men are sometimes so far misled as to deem that which can
but derive its being from something else, to be the first cause
and God, for they think that nothing exists besides visible
creatures. . . .

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“Second, because they ascribe to certain creatures that
which belongs to God alone. This also results from error about
creatures for one does not ascribe to a thing that which is
incompatible with its nature, unless one is ignorant of its
nature ; for instance, if we were to ascribe three feet to man....
“Third, because something is withdrawn from the Divine
Power in its workings on creatures, through ignorance of the
crature’s nature. ...
“Fourth, man, who is led by faith to God as his last end,
through ignoring the natures of things, and consequently the
order of his place in the universe, thinks himself to be beneath
certain creatures above whom he is placed. ...
“Accordingly it is clear that the opinion is false of those who
asserted that it mattered not to the truth of faith what opinions
one holds about creatures, so long as one has a right opinion
about God.” (C. G. II, 4.)

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The Philosopher Self
In the second place, the liberally educated man
will be a philosopher. In reflecting upon the meaning of life, he will gain a clearer insight and a
greater appreciation of beauty and harmony, and a
religious spirit of reverence for God. In his social
life he, from his experience with the “rivulets of
goodness which we find in creatures,” conceives a
longing for the source of all goodness. LastlyJ by
his combination of the active and the contemplative
life he will be “transformed into the image of God” ;
he will become Christlike.
“Through meditation on His works we are able somewhat
to admire and consider the Divine Wisdom. For things made
by art are indications of the art itself, since they are made in
likeness to the art. Now God brought things into being by
His Wisdom: for which reason it is said in the psalm (Ps:
dii. 24) 'Thou hast made ail things in wisdom.’ Hence we are
able to gather the wisdom of God from the consideration of

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PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

His works, since by a kind of communication of His likeness it
is spread abroad in the things He has made. . . .
“Second, this consideration leads us to admire the sublime
power of God, and consequently begets in men’s hearts a
reverence for God. For we must needs conclude that the power
of the maker transcends the things made. Wherefore it is said
(Wis. xiii. 4) : ‘If they (the philosophers, to wit) admired
their power and their effects,’ namely of the heavens, stars, and
elements of the world, ‘let them understand . . . that He That
made them is mightier than they. . . .’
“Third, this consideration inflames the souls of men to
the love of the Divine Goodness. For whatever goodness and
perfection is generally apportioned among various creatures, is
all united together in Him universally, as in the source of all
goodness, as we proved in the First Book (Chaps, xxviii. xl).
Wherefore if the goodness, beauty, and sweetness of creatures
are so alluring to the minds of men, the fountain head of the
goodness of God Himself, in comparison with the rivulets of
goodness which we find in creatures, will draw the entranced
minds of men wholly to itself. . » .
“Fourth, this consideration bestows on a man a certain
likeness to the Divine Perfection. For it was shown in the
First Book (Chap, xlix) that God, by knowing Himself, beholds
all other things in Himself. Since then the Christian faith
teaches man chiefly about God, and makes him know creatures
by the light of Divine Revelation, there results in man a cer­
tain likeness to the Divine Wisdom. Hence it is said (2 Cor.
in. 18), ‘But we all beholding the glory of the Lord with open
face, are transformed into the same image.’ ” (C. G. II, 2.)

Not only will the liberally educated man be in­
terested in scholastic pursuits and in the esthetic
aspect of social life, but he will also produce. He
will be a teacher; a character architect, and he will
do his work well.
“The general use which, in the Philosopher’s opinion (2 Top.
i, 5) should be followed in naming things, has resulted in those
men being called wise who direct things themselves and govern
them well. Wherefore among other things which men conceive
of the wise man, the Philosopher reckons it belongs to the wise

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man to direct things (Metaph. ii, 3.) Now the rule of all
things directed to the end of government and order must needs
be taken from their end; for then is a thing best disposed when
it is fittingly directed to its end, since the end of everything is
its good.... These arts which govern others are called master­
arts (architectonicae), that is principal arts, for which reason
their craftsmen, who are called master craftsmen (architectores) are awarded the name of wise men. Since, however,
these same craftsmen, though being occupied with the ends of
certain singular things, do not attain to the universal end of
all things, they are called wise about this or that, in which
sense it is said, (I Cor. iii. 10) ‘As a. wise architect, I have laid
the foundation’; whereas the name of being wise simply is
reserved to him alone whose consideration is about the end of
the universe: wherefore, according to the Philosopher (I, Metaph.
i, 12) it belongs to the wise man to consider the highest causes.
... Wherefore the twofold office of the wise man is fittingly
declared from the mouth of Wisdom in the words quoted
above24, namely to meditate and publish truth ... and to
refute the error contrary to truth.” (C. G. I, 1.)

The Saint Self
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Such a liberally educated man will be happy; in
building his character he has made a work of art,
a model of his Teacher, through which by grace,
a gift of the Teacher, may be transformed into a
living model—a child of the Teacher.
“Now of all human pursuits, that of wisdom is the most

perfect, the most sublime, the most profitable, the most delightfuL It is the most perfect, since in proportion as a man de­
votes himself to the pursuit of wisdom, so much does he already
share in true happiness, wherefore the wise man says (Eccles,
xiv. 22) ‘Blessed is the man that shall continue in wisdom.’ It
is the most sublime because thereby especially does man approach to a likeness to God, Who 'made all things in wisdom’
(Ps. dii. 24) ; wherefore since likeness is the cause of love, the
****For this was I born, and for this came I into the world; that I
should give testimony to the truth.** (John xviiL 37.)

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pursuit of wisdom especially unites man to God by friendship:
hence it is said (Wis. vii. 14) that wisdom ‘is an infinite treasure
to men; which they that use, become the friends of God.’ It
is the most profitable because by wisdom itself man is brought
to the kingdom of immortality, for ‘the desire of wisdom bringeth to the everlasting kingdom’ (Wis. vi. 21). And is the most
delightful because ‘her conversation hath no bitterness, nor her
company any tediousness, but joy and gladness’ ” (Wis. viii. 16).
(C. G. I, 2.)
FINIS

APPENDIX
CITATIONS
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Commentaries:
C. G. — St. Thomas Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles
Qq. = One of the Quaestiones Disputatae by St. Thomas
S. T. = St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
the De Magistro, the titles of the works referred to are:
Aristotle, the Philosopher:
Analytica Posteriora
De Memoria et Reminiscentia
Ethica Nichomachea
Physics
Metaphysics
Politica
Topica
Augustine:
Contra Manichaeos
De Bono Perseverantiae
De Libero Arbitrio
De Trinitate
Quaestionum
De Genesi* ad litteram
Avicenna:
De Naturalibus
Metaphysics
Boethius:
De Consolatione Philosophiae
the

Damascene:
De Fide Orthodoxa
Dionysius:
De Caelesti et Ecclesiastica Hierarchia

Gregory:
Super Ezechielem

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