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Learning
to teach
Conditions for learning
We have overwhelming evidence to suggest that our current ways of learning, the
places of learning and what is being learnt have been changing and will continue
to change in times of global and technological accessibility and connectedness.
Learners as workers in all facets of life are required to think critically and
strategically to solve problems. These individuals need to be resilient—able to
learn in a variety of environments and equipped to select, evaluate and build
knowledge taken from multiple perspectives. New learners need to be risk-takers,
able to juggle multiple responsibilities and routinely make informed decisions.
They are able to negotiate with others locally and around the globe. They also need
to be deep and lifelong learners. Although we are often aware of current learners’
needs, educators continue to struggle with the means to achieve them.
Wrigley, Thomson and Lingard (2012) present a series of case studies of
schools that are reinventing what schools can become. What is evident in all these
cases is that productive and innovative change occurs when it is directly
responsive to the needs of the individual learning communities, when change is
made with all members of the learning community, and when innovative change
is implemented slowly.
Barrell’s words at the start of the Prologue to the first edition resonate in our
ears. The three fictional preservice teachers you are about to meet—Ashleigh
Shanahan, Nick Manis and Simone Bainbridge—weave their personal and
professional narratives through this third edition. They share their lives out of
school and their experiences in university classes, where they are exposed to new
ways of thinking about young people, teaching, and learning. They also share their
experiences on field placements, where at times they teach as they were taught,
and follow the lead of more experienced yet traditional mentors. And at other
times they take greater risks as they teach, being open to altering their beliefs,
seizing the reins and steering a greater collective course.
Their narratives were created to provide preservice teachers like you with
opportunities to learn ways to transform beliefs and practices for twenty-first-
century learners. We invite you to consider their teaching journeys and yours as a
third hybrid space —an idea initiated by Turner (1967) as ‘betwixt and between’
and popularised by Zeichner (2010). Zeichner argues that:
Third spaces involve a rejection of binaries such as
 practitioner and academic knowledge and theory and
practice and involve the integration of what are often
seen as competing discourses in new ways—an either/or
perspective is transformed into a both/also point of view.
(p. 92)
Third spaces can also help you confront power and oppression. A third space is
a boundary crossing, a rite of passage that can often make you feel uncomfortable
because you are leaving some of the known for the new.
We hope you will come to consider this third space in a range of ways.
Between the world as a complex entangled organism rapidly changing, spinning
unbound, adaptive and evolving alongside the bound, fixed and highly regulated nature
of schools.
How will you navigate this tension?
Between the learning that occurs at home and the learning that occurs in school.
How might you manage, learn more about and consider children’s learning out
of school, and what it might mean for your teaching, and for children’s learning, in
school?
Between your prior experience as a learner and the beliefs you seek to hold.
Hopefully, you will discover more about yourself in the process of becoming a
teacher as you question or strengthen your initial beliefs, and practices in a safe
non-threatening environment.
Between your academic learning at university and your field experience in schools.
This experience will allow you to discover, question and defend new
possibilities so that the theory/practice divide so often present, can begin to
merge.
Between the nature of the knowledge you bring and the knowledge that is silenced.
Your teaching journey will challenge ideas about whose knowledge counts.
What types of knowledge might be ‘biodegradable’—no longer useful, easily
broken down? What knowledge are you required to add?
Between process and product.
You will be afforded opportunity to discover and value the processes in
learning as well as the products, and the skills and knowledge you and your
students acquire that are developed in collaborative as well as solo pursuits.
 We invite you to read the preservice teachers’ stories and the ideas presented
through this text and use them as a space to remain open to new ideas—whether
generated by others or by you, on your own or in discussion with peers. Appearing
out of the walls of Lathner Primary (the school in focus) are dinosaurs. These
represent the grand, larger than life yet extinct beings. They appear from time to
time to remind you of old but no longer relevant teaching and learning practices.

To assist us (the authors), to better understand the people who are currently
going into teaching, we conducted an online survey across four Australian
university Schools of Education: Monash University; the University of Sydney; the
University of the Southern Coast; and RMIT University.

The structure of the book

The third edition of Learning to Teach is organised into five sections: Learning
about Today’s Learners; Learning about Teachers and Professional Practice;
Learning about Learning; Learning about Teaching; and What’s Next?
Following the same organisation as the second edition, each chapter opens
with an overview. The chapters are also filled with new and challenging questions
about teaching and learning. Unique to this edition are university assignments
and tasks that our three preservice teachers undertake, as well as assignments on
field placements. Several chapters also provide additional reading. At the end of
each chapter is a summary and autobiographical authors’ notes.
New to this edition are the three extended preservice teachers’ narratives
woven through the text. These fictional preservice teachers’ journeys into in-
service teaching are explored and interrogated. They tell their journeys through
Ashleigh’s thoughts and professional journal, Nick’s blog and Simone’s thoughts
and visual diary. There are also critical and reflective dialogues from members of
the teaching and learning community helping to frame the content from multiple
perspectives and modes. Images play a larger role in this edition. We present a
university teacher education program where educators are re-imagining their
courses and structure for these changing times. The primary school in focus,
Lathner Primary, is also undergoing transformation. A community teaching and
learning focus is one we advocate throughout the book for productive and
transformative change. We are all part of local, national and global communities.
We have provided your lecturer with extensive online resources.
This additional material extends the chapters’ content and will assist you on
your personal journeys into teaching.
The chapter changes in this edition were made to better reflect current and
emerging trends and policies and also to better reflect teachers’ and students’ lives
beyond school. Rather than devoting a chapter to teaching with technology, its
impact and uses run through all chapters in the text. Teacher identities and
teacher as learner have been combined into one chapter to better reflect their
unity, and there are four new chapters: Experience in Schools, Thinking Critically,
Going Rural (a Community of Practice) and Ready to Teach and Keep on Learning.

SUMMARIES
Part 1: LEARNING ABOUT TODAY’S LEARNERS: This part introduces, frames
and anchors the beliefs of the authors about education throughout Learning to
Teach. It describes and critiques a world rapidly changing and the lives of children
who inhabit this fragile world. It posits the myriad issues and challenges teachers
face and reflect on as they negotiate these global and local times. As well, it
narrates the concept of childhood from its inception to the present and into the
future, and how teachers must respond by pushing against and transforming
existing traditional boundaries.
In Chapter 1, Karen Malone discusses the Anthropocene, a new geological era
and its impact on teachers, young people and schools. She explains, ‘This chapter
explores the impacts of some of these changes on the ways we define what is
education, how we come to make sense of our role as educators, the visible and
invisible bodies of children as learners in the Anthropocene (Malone 2018), and
the means for responding to an uncertain future for humans and nonhumans
alike.’
In Chapter 2, Karen takes us into the world of childhood as it has been
constructed in the past and how it is viewed currently. She makes a compelling
argument that children are deeply connected and entangled in the world with
other humans and nonhumans. Out of school they have agency, and are designing
their own futures. The trope of the Climate Strike is used as an anchor in this
chapter and throughout the book in order to demonstrate children’s activism. The
three preservice teachers’ childhoods are also profiled, sharing their unique and
complex identities.
Part 2: LEARNING ABOUT TEACHERS AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE:
Gloria Latham takes us into novice teachers’ first field experience, viewed through
the lives (personal and professional) of our three fictional preservice teachers.
Their developing narratives flow through the text. Gloria also takes us into a
university teacher education program and into one school in particular, Lathner
Primary. The educators at this school and those in the teacher education program
are working to transform their practices for these radically changing times. This
section of the text examines current government initiatives and regulations as
well as illuminating a collaborative approach that enables normative and ingrained
practices to be contested and reimagined. Shelley Dole explores the often
uncomfortable and unpredictable journey of one of the preservice teachers, Nick
Manis, on a rural placement. Student and teacher well-being and the assistance
available through communities of practice are explored.
Chapter 3 reports on some of the current and formal regulatory practices
preservice teachers must adhere to in preparation for their first field experience
such as the Australian Curriculum, the Code of Ethics, and Teaching Standards.
Here we argue for non-standard practices that better meet the needs of new
learners.
Chapter 4 takes the reader into Lathner Primary, where all three preservice
teachers have a placement. The reader will gain insight into how these novice
teachers learn to unlearn, to teach, learn to observe the students, the environment
and the site teacher in new ways and in varied classrooms.
Chapter 5: In this chapter, Shelley Dole profiles one of the preservice teachers
Nick Manis as she discusses the concept of communities of practice for learning
and knowledge building as well as the challenges of isolation in teaching in rural
communities and its impact on mental health. We see children and teachers
become increasingly engaged and well-being improve as they learn with and from
one another during a project that is adaptive to the needs of this town.
Part 3: LEARNING ABOUT LEARNING: This part of Learning to Teach has
learning in focus: the learning belonging to teachers as well as young people. The
authors question notions of what it means to learn; deep and critical learning;
where learning resides; what is worth learning; and the beliefs novice teachers
hold about themselves and their learning.
In Chapter 6, Julie Faulkner examines teachers’ professional identity. All
three preservice teachers are brought into focus. She argues that ‘Identity is
discussed here as something not fixed or even stable. It is dependent upon a range
of ever-changing factors which we act upon, and which act on us, to create a range
of ways of being. How we can draw upon what we know and assert ourselves
within the circumstances that influence our teaching lives is the focus of this
chapter.’
In Chapter 7, Mindy Blaise demonstrates the relationship between theory and
practice. She explains, ‘By privileging practice, this chapter is showing that
teachers are theory makers, generating new ideas and practices as they interact
with diverse children, families, technologies and the changing world. Finally, this
chapter illustrates how all teachers enter classrooms with a set of worldviews, or
theories, about young people, learning and teaching, and that this influences what
is done.’
Chapter 8 (also by Mindy Blaise) complements the previous chapter by
introducing readers to the worldviews of teaching and learning from modern and
postmodern perspectives. The chapter shows how a range of theories fit within
dominant worldviews of knowledge and the implications they have for education.
In Chapter 9, Julie Faulkner returns to focus on Nick Manis and his Critical
Literacy course at university. The chapter explores our mediated world and looks
briefly at policy and the ways in which current curriculum documents frame
critical thinking. It examines the twenty-four-hour news cycle, and how learning is
acquired in a post-truth world. Through the chapter, we follow Nick Manis and see
how he is building knowledge and changing his thinking about what information
he consumes. Nick then considers what these implications are for his teaching.
Part 4: PART 4: LEARNING ABOUT TEACHING: This section looks critically at
and troubles many existing teaching practices. It explores how more responsive
practices can meet the needs of all young people. The authors examine, in
particular, classroom dialogue, learning with others and the environment,
planning for learning, and assessment for and of learning. As traditional practices
are contested, teaching and learning are reframed.
In Chapter 10, Gloria Latham focuses on preservice teacher Ashleigh
Shanahan in her last field experience at Lathner Primary and her site teacher Anna
Jones in a Year 4/5 classroom. This is a companion chapter to Chapter 11 also
focusing on the second half of Ashleigh’s final placement. Our mediated lives are
changing the very nature of face-to-face conversations. The chapter will examine
these changes and share ways to reconnect students. It also explores ways in
which the classroom environment can foster dialogue.
In Chapter 11, the companion to Chapter 10, Mindy Blaise repositions the
teacher as learning-with other teachers, learning-with the children and learning-with
the environment rather than learning about. Three learning-with events are
presented and discussed. These critical events make Ashleigh aware of the
complexities of difference and inclusion. Issues of identities, expectations, equity,
labelling, and grouping are explored in order to better understand how difference
is thought of as an asset, rather than a deficit and how it plays a significant role
towards creating an inclusive classroom.
In Chapter 12, Karen Malone explores conventional methods of planning and
then, overtly seeks to problematise and disrupt the whole notion of recipe-book
planning by encouraging an unlearning of these traditional ways. An artist in
residence is brought to Lathner Primary to assist teachers and young people
respond to planning in new ways and respond to the government’s STEM
(Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) agenda. The Lathner
Primary community believe it is essential to include the Arts (STEAM). The artist
they secure, Aviva Reed, describes herself as a visual ecologist and challenges the
very nature of traditional planning. Throughout the planning process, the artist
brings her own practice to the table, by providing a set of propositions that
disrupt the teachers’ ways of thinking about learning.
Assessment of and for learning is the focus of Chapter 13. Gloria Latham
contests old learning notions that assert that one type of assessment can
adequately monitor and/or assess the capabilities of all learners. In order for
learners to prosper in the information age they require skills in new ways of
thinking about and articulating their problem-solving, collaborating and creating.
Simone Bainbridge is the preservice teacher in focus. She confronts the normative
assessment and feedback she received as a student.
Part 5: WHAT’S NEXT? In Chapter 14, we come to the end (and a new
beginning) of the three preservice teachers’ journeys into teaching. As they are
about to graduate, they give their final talks, where they defend the understanding
and deep learning they have acquired over the duration of their teacher education
program. They also create a metaphor that best describes their learning. Their
talks are interrogated by university lecturers. They are asked, ‘What’s next for
their learning and what’s next for schools?’

References
Malone, K. (2018). Children in the Anthropocene. London: Palgrave.
Turner, V. W. (1967). Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage. In The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of
Ndembu Ritual, 93−111. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Wrigley, T., Thomson, P. and Lingard, B. (2012). Changing Schools: Alternative Ways to Make a World of Difference. London:
Routledge.
Zeichner, K. (2010). Rethinking the Connections Between Campus Courses and Field Experiences. In College and University-
Based Teacher Education. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1−2), 89–99.
About the Authors
Gloria Latham is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney. She
taught at Coburg Teachers’ College and RMIT University for thirty years. Her most
recent book is Generative Conversations for Creative Learning, which she co-wrote
with Robyn Ewing. Gloria also co-edits the journal Literacy Learning: The Middle
Years.

Karen Malone is Professor of Education and Research Director of the

Department of Education at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.
Professor Malone researches and teaches in childhood studies, teacher education,
science, sustainability and environmental education, geography and the urban
ecologies of childhood. She specifically focuses on children and young people’s
experiences of the everyday, including relationships between human and
nonhuman animals, plants, water, earth, toxins and weather. Most of her research
has been conducted in majority world nations funded by UNICEF under the
umbrella of her global research program Children in the Anthropocene. Professor
Malone is the author of eight books and more than 100 other publications. She is
editor of the Australian Journal of Environmental Education and an editorial
committee member of a number of ecological and educational journals.

Mindy Blaise is a Vice Chancellor’s Professorial Research Fellow at Edith Cowan

University, Western Australia. Her background in the early years and interest in
feminist and ‘post’ theories influences the way she approaches teaching and
research. She is interested in how the more-than-human and feminist speculative
research practices activate new meanings about childhood that sit outside the
narrow confines of developmentalism.

Julie Faulkner is a Senior Lecturer in teacher education at Monash University. As

a former English teacher, she is interested in literacy, literature, and young
people’s out-of-school literacy practices. Her research includes digital literacies,
cultural and professional identity. With Anne Keary, she is currently exploring
student resilience and global risk, and has co-written chapters for the recently
published Narratives of Catholic Mothers and Daughters (Springer).
Shelley Dole is Professor and Head of School of Education at the University of
the Sunshine Coast. Her research interests are focused on mathematics and
numeracy, but she also has a strong interest in initial teacher education and
supporting students in rural and remote placements. Shelley has published
chapters on numeracy in several books and is a co-author of Numeracy across the
Curriculum with Merrilyn Goos, Vince Geiger, Helen Forgasz and Anne Bennison.
Acknowledgments
In our desire to make this a collaborative, multi-voiced and multi-imaged text, we
have invited many people with a wide array of wisdom to contribute.
We would like to thank our families, colleagues, preservice teachers and
students at all levels for their generous support and valuable contributions. In
particular, we would like to thank the following individuals: Jessica Mead for her
playground designs; academics Peter H. Johnston, Gordon Wells, Jill Flack, Jackie
Manuel (critical friend), and Jennifer Clifton; and Nicky Carr for her analysis of
the preservice teachers’ survey.
We also thank visual ecologist Aviva Reed for allowing us to make use of her
work and to teachers at Brunswick South-West Primary for their assistance with
podcasts that are available with the resources that accompany the book.
Special thanks to The Educational Media Group at RMIT University for the
initial creation of the resources website (Kate Ebbott). And our gratitude to artist
and teacher Paula Frost, and to Karen Malone, for their illustrations, which make
our text come alive.

The author and the publisher wish to thank the following copyright holders for
reproduction of their material.
Shutterstock, cover and chapter openers; Alamy/ Christoph Sator/dpa, figure
9.3; Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development; National
Education Association of the United States for the quote from Nieto, S. (2009),
‘From surviving to thriving’ Educational Leadership, 65(5), 8–13; Extracts from
Australian Curriculum, © Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting
Authority (ACARA) 2009 to present, unless otherwise indicated. This material was
downloaded from the ACARA website (www.acara.edu.au). The material is licensed
under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). ACARA does
not endorse any product that uses ACARA material or make any representations
as to the quality of such products. Any product that uses material published on
this website should not be taken to be affiliated with ACARA or have the
sponsorship or approval of ACARA. It is up to each person to make their own
assessment of the product; The Australian Department of Education and Training,
for the quote from The Centre for Adolescent Health, Murdoch Children’s
Research Institute (2018), Student wellbeing, engagement, and learning across the
middle years, Canberra, Australian Government Department of Education and
Training, pp. 4–5, The material is licensed under CC BY 3.0
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/); Kinoshita and Wolley 2015,
figure 2.6, used with permission; Gloria Latham, figure 2.11; Karen Malone,
figures 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, 2.10, 2.12, 2.13, 2.14; The Opte Project,
figure 1.1, This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5
Generic license, (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/deed.en); Avia
Reed, figure 12.1, 12.5; RMIT © 2006 RMIT University, pp. ix, figures 3.1, 7.2.
Every effort has been made to trace the original source of copyright material
contained in this book. The publisher will be pleased to hear from copyright
holders to rectify any errors or omissions.
Guided Tour
Introduction
Dear Preservice Teachers,
Congratulations! You are about to begin the first leg of a long and challenging
journey towards becoming a teacher. As you travel, we will ask you to unpack the
large bag of thinking and learning and experiencing you have accumulated over
your educational lives in order to repack it. You will be redefining that learning for
dramatically different learners from the ones you were, and for very different
times.
Sadly, many children are still being prepared for a world that no longer exists
(Dintersmith 2018). In all facets of their lives, children will be required to work in
teams as they think critically and strategically to solve problems. New learners will
need to be resilient—able to learn in a wide variety of environments and equipped
to select, evaluate, adapt and build knowledge taken from multiple perspectives.
New learners also need to be risk-takers, able to juggle multiple responsibilities
and routinely make informed decisions. They will be able to negotiate with others
locally, nationally and around the globe. They also need to be deep and lifelong
learners who belong to the world. With these needs in mind, you will need to
think about what you will take with you on your travels, and what you will leave
behind in order to make room for other contents, other ideas, other ways of being.
On any return journey, the contents of your bag will have shifted. The time
spent unpacking and repacking will allow you to critically reflect on the content
and consider why you continue to carry each item. We ask that you keep an open,
critical and inquiring mind and keep your transforming thoughts stored safely as
you reflect upon the ideas you bring to teaching and the interrelated ideas you are
acquiring as you embark on your journey towards new discoveries. Your trip will
require courage and an ability to examine old practices in new ways.
Tradition plays such a strong role in how you will teach. You enter the
teaching profession with childhood memories and experiences and at least twelve
years of having been a student. Even if you have been critical of the ways in which
you were taught, you may well feel fated to repeat these practices. Novice teachers
tend not to see what is visible to the eye but, rather, what is expected. One way to
curb this habitual cycle is to engage in critical reflection. Reflective teachers learn
to identify and question their assumptions and regularly scrutinise their teaching.
Reflection allows you to see that teaching is far less about knowledge and far more
about knowing. The way you know has a profound effect on what knowledge you
believe is of most worth. Throughout this text you will be offered multiple ways of
knowing. We want you to know far more about yourself by knowing historically,
morally, ethically and culturally what you believe and how you learn. We want you
to engage in ongoing dialogues that will enable and foster your connectedness to
communities of practice, and to the world. We also want you to know the young
people you teach and discover what kind of knowing this entails.
There is currently such an abundance of research about how the brain learns
that new academic disciplines such as ‘educational neuroscience’ or ‘mind, brain,
and education science’ have been added. Some of the brain research has revealed
the plasticity of our brains. Experience sculpts the brain, and as Wolfe and Flewitt
(2010) explain, all modalities are involved in that experience. They are hooked
together by neurons. The more modalities we use, the more pathways we use to
retrieve the experience.
Although we are aware of current children’s needs, educators continue to
struggle with the means to achieve them. Perhaps, as Biesta (2015a) suggests, it is
because of the risks involved.
The risk is there because education is not an interaction
between robots but an encounter between human beings.
The risk is there because students are not to be seen as
objects to be moulded and disciplined, but as subjects of
action and responsibility. (p. 2)
And yet, Biesta (2015a) goes on to argue that the invested policy makers and
politicians want education to be ‘risk-free’.
The desire to make education strong, secure, predictable,
and risk-free is an attempt to forget that at the end of the
day education should aim at making itself dispensable—
no teacher wants their students to remain eternal
students—which means that education necessarily needs
to have an orientation toward the freedom and
independence of those being educated. (p. 2)
 Education is about transforming the individual.

Learning to teach
The first two chapters of this text frame its overall intention. Karen Malone
describes a world in motion: organic, constantly changing, evolving and adapting
to forces around us. It is a sympoietic (collectively producing) world that does not
have self-defined spatial or temporal boundaries. In this world, Malone describes
children out of school, naturally moving, exploring and learning in these
sympoietic relationships.
The author then contrasts this collectively producing world with a snapshot of
current schooling; controlling, fixed carved-up systems that tinker around the
edges of change. In the main, we argue throughout this text that schools continue
to remain autopoietic: a tight, centrally controlled (self-producing) system that
exists in autonomous units with self-defined boundaries that tend to be
homeostatic and predictable.
We argue that preservice teachers with a sympoietic mindset and renewed
orientations can, in small, manageable actions, start to shift schooling to best
relate to the adaptive, evolving world we live in and further develop children’s
strategies and skills to continue to adapt and belong to the world.
The question to ask is not, ‘How can I fit into school?’
Rather, ask, ‘What must school become and how can I help make this happen?’

The critically reflective teacher

With a renewed orientation to school and to teaching to assist you in your travels,
you will come to realise that reflection is an essential skill to develop.
Reorientation is a means of turning back on experience in the moments of
teaching (in action) or after them (upon action) (Schön 1991) in order to better
the choices that are made and to further or abandon the direction of that
experience. Almost a century ago, John Dewey (1933) suggested that people only
truly think when they are confronted with a problem. Without some kind of
dilemma to stimulate thought, it is easy (and dangerous) for behaviour to become
routine rather than thoughtful. Therefore, it is essential to guard against these
routines. It is often out of confusion and surprise that new awareness is fostered.
 You will also recognise the importance of your teacher judgment in relation to
what works. As Biesta (2015b) reminds us, we can only examine what works in
relation to our purpose for that undertaking.
During your teaching program you will have many opportunities to observe a
range of people teach, including your university lecturers and tutors, peers,
parents and teachers on field placement. How you cast your eyes as preservice
teachers and what you see are highly conditional. Therefore, throughout your
teaching program it will be necessary to revisit and re-examine your sociocultural
and educational past in order to consciously consider how your past experiences
are framing your current ones.
Stephen Brookfield (2015) warns us to be wary of assumptions, which are our
guides to truth embedded in our mental outlooks. Prescriptive assumptions can be
the most dangerous, as they are those where we think what ought to be happening
in a particular situation. ‘They are the assumptions that are surfaced as we
examine how we think teachers should behave, what good learning and educational
processes should look like, and what obligations students and teachers owe to each
other. Inevitably they are grounded in, and extensions of, our paradigmatic
assumptions’ (p. 49). All our assumptions need to be challenged using critical
thinking.
Brookfield (1995) offers four interconnecting lenses you might use to examine
your assumptions about learning and teaching:

• our autobiographical past

• our students’ eyes
• our colleagues’ (peers’) experiences
• the theoretical literature relating to education.

These lenses allow you to observe and reflect upon educational thought and
practices. Below are a few examples of reflective focus from preservice teachers to
ignite your reflective thought.

Zooming in
An autobiographical lens
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which we would claim him as a brother in Christ, were those which
were reprobated by the authorities of Rome; and that the following
Letters, for which he is so justly admired, were, by the same Church,
formally censured and ignominiously burnt, along with the Bible
which Pascal loved, and the martyrs who have suffered for “the truth
as it is in Jesus.”
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS.

LETTER I.

DISPUTES IN THE SORBONNE, AND THE INVENTION OF PROXIMATE POWER—A

TERM EMPLOYED BY THE JESUITS TO PROCURE THE CENSURE OF M.
ARNAULD.

Paris, January 23, 1656.

Sir,—We were entirely mistaken. It was only yesterday that I was
undeceived. Until that time I had labored under the impression that
the disputes in the Sorbonne were vastly important, and deeply
affected the interests of religion. The frequent convocations of an
assembly so illustrious as that of the Theological Faculty of Paris,
attended by so many extraordinary and unprecedented
circumstances, led one to form such high expectations, that it was
impossible to help coming to the conclusion that the subject was
most extraordinary. You will be greatly surprised, however, when you
learn from the following account, the issue of this grand
demonstration, which, having made myself perfectly master of the
subject, I shall be able to tell you in very few words.
Two questions, then, were brought under examination; the one a
question of fact, the other a question of right.
The question of fact consisted in ascertaining whether M. Arnauld
was guilty of presumption, for having asserted in his second letter[81]
that he had carefully perused the book of Jansenius, and that he had
not discovered the propositions condemned by the late pope; but
that, nevertheless, as he condemned these propositions wherever
they might occur, he condemned them in Jansenius, if they were
really contained in that work.[82]
The question here was, if he could, without presumption, entertain
a doubt that these propositions were in Jansenius, after the bishops
had declared that they were.
The matter having been brought before the Sorbonne, seventy-
one doctors undertook his defence, maintaining that the only reply
he could possibly give to the demands made upon him in so many
publications, calling on him to say if he held that these propositions
were in that book, was, that he had not been able to find them, but
that if they were in the book, he condemned them in the book.
Some even went a step farther, and protested that, after all the
search they had made into the book, they had never stumbled upon
these propositions, and that they had, on the contrary, found
sentiments entirely at variance with them. They then earnestly
begged that, if any doctor present had discovered them, he would
have the goodness to point them out; adding, that what was so easy
could not reasonably be refused, as this would be the surest way to
silence the whole of them, M. Arnauld included; but this proposal
has been uniformly declined. So much for the one side.
On the other side are eighty secular doctors, and some forty
mendicant friars, who have condemned M. Arnauld’s proposition,
without choosing to examine whether he has spoken truly or falsely
—who, in fact, have declared, that they have nothing to do with the
veracity of his proposition, but simply with its temerity.
Besides these, there were fifteen who were not in favor of the
censure, and who are called Neutrals.
Such was the issue of the question of fact, regarding which, I
must say, I give myself very little concern. It does not affect my
conscience in the least whether M. Arnauld is presumptuous, or the
reverse; and should I be tempted, from curiosity, to ascertain
whether these propositions are contained in Jansenius, his book is
neither so very rare nor so very large as to hinder me from reading it
over from beginning to end, for my own satisfaction, without
consulting the Sorbonne on the matter.
Were it not, however, for the dread of being presumptuous myself,
I really think that I would be disposed to adopt the opinion which
has been formed by the most of my acquaintances, who, though
they have believed hitherto on common report that the propositions
were in Jansenius, begin now to suspect the contrary, owing to this
strange refusal to point them out—a refusal, the more extraordinary
to me, as I have not yet met with a single individual who can say
that he has discovered them in that work. I am afraid, therefore,
that this censure will do more harm than good, and that the
impression which it will leave on the minds of all who know its
history will be just the reverse of the conclusion that has been come
to. The truth is, the world has become sceptical of late, and will not
believe things till it sees them. But, as I said before, this point is of
very little moment, as it has no concern with religion.[83]
The question of right, from its affecting the faith, appears much
more important, and, accordingly, I took particular pains in
examining it. You will be relieved, however, to find that it is of as
little consequence as the former.
The point of dispute here, was an assertion of M. Arnauld’s in the
same letter, to the effect, “that the grace without which we can do
nothing, was wanting to St. Peter at his fall.” You and I supposed
that the controversy here would turn upon the great principles of
grace; such as, whether grace is given to all men? or, if it is
efficacious of itself? But we were quite mistaken. You must know I
have become a great theologian within this short time; and now for
the proofs of it!
To ascertain the matter with certainty, I repaired to my neighbor,
M. N——, doctor of Navarre, who, as you are aware, is one of the
keenest opponents of the Jansenists, and my curiosity having made
me almost as keen as himself, I asked him if they would not formally
decide at once that “grace is given to all men,” and thus set the
question at rest. But he gave me a sore rebuff, and told me that that
was not the point; that there were some of his party who held that
grace was not given to all; that the examiners themselves had
declared, in a full assembly of the Sorbonne, that that opinion was
problematical; and that he himself held the same sentiment, which
he confirmed by quoting to me what he called that celebrated
passage of St. Augustine: “We know that grace is not given to all
men.”
I apologized for having misapprehended his sentiment, and
requested him to say if they would not at least condemn that other
opinion of the Jansenists which is making so much noise, “That
grace is efficacious of itself, and invincibly determines our will to
what is good.” But in this second query I was equally unfortunate.
“You know nothing about the matter,” he said; “that is not a heresy—
it is an orthodox opinion; all the Thomists[84] maintain it; and I
myself have defended it in my Sorbonic thesis.”[85]
I did not venture again to propose my doubts, and yet I was as far
as ever from understanding where the difficulty lay; so, at last, in
order to get at it, I begged him to tell me where, then, lay the
heresy of M. Arnauld’s proposition? “It lies here,” said he, “that he
does not acknowledge that the righteous have the power of obeying
the commandments of God, in the manner in which we understand
it.”
On receiving this piece of information, I took my leave of him;
and, quite proud at having discovered the knot of the question, I
sought M. N——, who is gradually getting better, and was sufficiently
recovered to conduct me to the house of his brother-in-law, who is a
Jansenist, if ever there was one, but a very good man
notwithstanding. Thinking to insure myself a better reception, I
pretended to be very high on what I took to be his side, and said:
“Is it possible that the Sorbonne has introduced into the Church such
an error as this, ‘that all the righteous have always the power of
obeying the commandments of God?’”
 “What say you?” replied the doctor. “Call you that an error—a
sentiment so Catholic that none but Lutherans and Calvinists impugn
it?”
“Indeed!” said I, surprised in my turn; “so you are not of their
opinion?”
“No,” he replied; “we anathematize it as heretical and impious.”[86]
Confounded by this reply, I soon discovered that I had overacted
the Jansenist, as I had formerly overdone the Molinist.[87] But not
being sure if I had rightly understood him, I requested him to tell me
frankly if he held “that the righteous have always a real power to
observe the divine precepts?” Upon this the good man got warm
(but it was with a holy zeal), and protested that he would not
disguise his sentiments on any consideration—that such was, indeed,
his belief, and that he and all his party would defend it to the death,
as the pure doctrine of St. Thomas, and of St. Augustine their
master.
This was spoken so seriously as to leave me no room for doubt;
and under this impression I returned to my first doctor, and said to
him, with an air of great satisfaction, that I was sure there would be
peace in the Sorbonne very soon; that the Jansenists were quite at
one with them in reference to the power of the righteous to obey
the commandments of God; that I could pledge my word for them,
and could make them seal it with their blood.
“Hold there!” said he. “One must be a theologian to see the point
of this question. The difference between us is so subtle, that it is
with some difficulty we can discern it ourselves—you will find it
rather too much for your powers of comprehension. Content
yourself, then, with knowing that it is very true the Jansenists will
tell you that all the righteous have always the power of obeying the
commandments; that is not the point in dispute between us; but
mark you, they will not tell you that that power is proximate. That is
the point.”
This was a new and unknown word to me. Up to this moment I
had managed to understand matters, but that term involved me in
obscurity; and I verily believe that it has been invented for no other
purpose than to mystify. I requested him to give me an explanation
of it, but he made a mystery of it, and sent me back, without any
further satisfaction, to demand of the Jansenists if they would admit
this proximate power. Having charged my memory with the phrase
(as to my understanding, that was out of the question), I hastened
with all possible expedition, fearing that I might forget it, to my
Jansenist friend, and accosted him, immediately after our first
salutations, with: “Tell me, pray, if you admit the proximate power?”
He smiled, and replied, coldly: “Tell me yourself in what sense you
understand it, and I may then inform you what I think of it.” As my
knowledge did not extend quite so far, I was at a loss what reply to
make; and yet, rather than lose the object of my visit, I said at
random: “Why, I understand it in the sense of the Molinists.” “To
which of the Molinists do you refer me?” replied he, with the utmost
coolness. I referred him to the whole of them together, as forming
one body, and animated by one spirit.
“You know very little about the matter,” returned he. “So far are
they from being united in sentiment, that some of them are
diametrically opposed to each other. But, being all united in the
design to ruin M. Arnauld, they have resolved to agree on this term
proximate, which both parties might use indiscriminately, though
they understand it diversely, that thus, by a similarity of language,
and an apparent conformity, they may form a large body, and get up
a majority to crush him with the greater certainty.”
This reply filled me with amazement; but without imbibing these
impressions of the malicious designs of the Molinists, which I am
unwilling to believe on his word, and with which I have no concern, I
set myself simply to ascertain the various senses which they give to
that mysterious word proximate. “I would enlighten you on the
subject with all my heart,” he said; “but you would discover in it
such a mass of contrariety and contradiction, that you would hardly
believe me. You would suspect me. To make sure of the matter, you
had better learn it from some of themselves; and I shall give you
some of their addresses. You have only to make a separate visit to
one called M. le Moine,[88] and to Father Nicolai.”[89]
“I have no acquaintance with any of these persons,” said I.
“Let me see, then,” he replied, “if you know any of those whom I
shall name to you; they all agree in sentiment with M. le Moine.”
I happened, in fact, to know some of them.
“Well, let us see if you are acquainted with any of the Dominicans
whom they call the ‘New Thomists,’[90] for they are all the same with
Father Nicolai.”
I knew some of them also whom he named; and, resolved to
profit by this counsel, and to investigate the matter, I took my leave
of him, and went immediately to one of the disciples of M. le Moine.
I begged him to inform me what it was to have the proximate power
of doing a thing.
“It is easy to tell you that,” he replied; “it is merely to have all that
is necessary for doing it in such a manner that nothing is wanting to
performance.”
“And so,” said I, “to have the proximate power of crossing a river,
for example, is to have a boat, boatmen, oars, and all the rest, so
that nothing is wanting?”
“Exactly so,” said the monk.
“And to have the proximate power of seeing,” continued I, “must
be to have good eyes and the light of day; for a person with good
sight in the dark would not have the proximate power of seeing,
according to you, as he would want the light, without which one
cannot see?”
“Precisely,” said he.
“And consequently,” returned I, “when you say that all the
righteous have the proximate power of observing the
commandments of God, you mean that they have always all the
grace necessary for observing them, so that nothing is wanting to
them on the part of God.”
 “Stay there,” he replied; “they have always all that is necessary for
observing the commandments, or at least for asking it of God.”
“I understand you,” said I; “they have all that is necessary for
praying to God to assist them, without requiring any new grace from
God to enable them to pray.”
“You have it now,” he rejoined.
“But is it not necessary that they have an efficacious grace, in
order to pray to God?”
“No,” said he; “not according to M. le Moine.”
To lose no time, I went to the Jacobins,[91] and requested an
interview with some whom I knew to be New Thomists, and I
begged them to tell me what “proximate power” was. “Is it not,” said
I, “that power to which nothing is wanting in order to act?”
“No,” said they.
“Indeed! fathers,” said I; “if anything is wanting to that power, do
you call it proximate? Would you say, for instance, that a man in the
night time, and without any light, had the proximate power of
seeing?”
“Yes, indeed, he would have it, in our opinion, if he is not blind.”
“I grant that,” said I; “but M. le Moine understands it in a different
manner.”
“Very true,” they replied; “but so it is that we understand it.”
“I have no objections to that,” I said; “for I never quarrel about a
name, provided I am apprized of the sense in which it is understood.
But I perceive from this, that when you speak of the righteous
having always the proximate power of praying to God, you
understand that they require another supply for praying, without
which they will never pray.”
“Most excellent!” exclaimed the good fathers, embracing me;
“exactly the thing; for they must have, besides, an efficacious grace
bestowed upon all, and which determines their wills to pray; and it is
heresy to deny the necessity of that efficacious grace in order to
pray.”
“Most excellent!” cried I, in return; “but, according to you, the
Jansenists are Catholics, and M. le Moine a heretic; for the
Jansenists maintain that, while the righteous have power to pray,
they require nevertheless an efficacious grace; and this is what you
approve. M. le Moine, again, maintains that the righteous may pray
without efficacious grace; and this is what you condemn.”
“Ay,” said they; “but M. le Moine calls that power proximate
power.”
“How now! fathers,” I exclaimed; “this is merely playing with
words, to say that you are agreed as to the common terms which
you employ, while you differ with them as to the sense of these
terms.”
The fathers made no reply; and at this juncture, who should come
in but my old friend the disciple of M. le Moine! I regarded this at
the time as an extraordinary piece of good fortune; but I have
discovered since then that such meetings are not rare—that, in fact,
they are constantly mixing in each other’s society.[92]
“I know a man,” said I, addressing myself to M. le Moine’s disciple,
“who holds that all the righteous have always the power of praying
to God, but that, notwithstanding this, they will never pray without
an efficacious grace which determines them, and which God does
not always give to all the righteous. Is he a heretic?”
“Stay,” said the doctor; “you might take me by surprise. Let us go
cautiously to work. Distinguo.[93] If he call that power proximate
power, he will be a Thomist, and therefore a Catholic; if not, he will
be a Jansenist, and therefore a heretic.”
“He calls it neither proximate nor non-proximate,” said I.
“Then he is a heretic,” quoth he; “I refer you to these good fathers
if he is not.”
I did not appeal to them as judges, for they had already nodded
assent; but I said to them: “He refuses to admit that word
proximate, because he can meet with nobody who will explain it to
him.”
Upon this one of the fathers was on the point of offering his
definition of the term, when he was interrupted by M. le Moine’s
disciple, who said to him: “Do you mean, then, to renew our broils?
Have we not agreed not to explain that word proximate, but to use it
on both sides without saying what it signifies?” To this the Jacobin
gave his assent.
I was thus let into the whole secret of their plot; and rising to take
my leave of them, I remarked: “Indeed, fathers, I am much afraid
this is nothing better than pure chicanery; and whatever may be the
result of your convocations, I venture to predict that, though the
censure should pass, peace will not be established. For though it
should be decided that the syllables of that word proximate should
be pronounced, who does not see that, the meaning not being
explained, each of you will be disposed to claim the victory? The
Jacobins will contend that the word is to be understood in their
sense; M. le Moine will insist that it must be taken in his; and thus
there will be more wrangling about the explanation of the word than
about its introduction. For, after all, there would be no great danger
in adopting it without any sense, seeing it is through the sense only
that it can do any harm. But it would be unworthy of the Sorbonne
and of theology to employ equivocal and captious terms without
giving any explanation of them. In short, fathers, tell me, I entreat
you, for the last time, what is necessary to be believed in order to be
a good Catholic?”
“You must say,” they all vociferated simultaneously, “that all the
righteous have the proximate power, abstracting from it all sense—
from the sense of the Thomists and the sense of other divines.”
“That is to say,” I replied, in taking leave of them, “that I must
pronounce that word to avoid being the heretic of a name. For, pray,
is this a Scripture word?” “No,” said they. “Is it a word of the
Fathers, the Councils, or the Popes?” “No.” “Is the word, then, used
by St. Thomas?” “No.” “What necessity, therefore, is there for using
it, since it has neither the authority of others nor any sense of
itself?” “You are an opinionative fellow,” said they; “but you shall say
it, or you shall be a heretic, and M. Arnauld into the bargain; for we
are the majority, and should it be necessary, we can bring a
sufficient number of Cordeliers[94] into the field to carry the day.”
On hearing this solid argument, I took my leave of them, to write
you the foregoing account of my interview, from which you will
perceive that the following points remain undisputed and
uncondemned by either party. First, That grace is not given to all
men. Second, That all the righteous have always the power of
obeying the divine commandments. Third, That they require,
nevertheless, in order to obey them, and even to pray, an efficacious
grace, which invincibly determines their will. Fourth, That this
efficacious grace is not always granted to all the righteous, and that
it depends on the pure mercy of God. So that, after all, the truth is
safe, and nothing runs any risk but that word without the sense,
proximate.
Happy the people who are ignorant of its existence!—happy those
who lived before it was born!—for I see no help for it, unless the
gentlemen of the Academy,[95] by an act of absolute authority, banish
that barbarous term, which causes so many divisions, from beyond
the precincts of the Sorbonne. Unless this be done, the censure
appears certain; but I can easily see that it will do no other harm
than diminish the credit[96] of the Sorbonne, and deprive it of that
authority which is so necessary to it on other occasions.
Meanwhile, I leave you at perfect liberty to hold by the word
proximate or not, just as you please; for I love you too much to
persecute you under that pretext. If this account is not displeasing
to you, I shall continue to apprize you of all that happens.—I am,
&c.
 LETTER II.

OF SUFFICIENT GRACE.

Paris, January 29, 1656.

Sir,—Just as I had sealed up my last letter, I received a visit from
our old friend M. N——. Nothing could have happened more luckily
for my curiosity; for he is thoroughly informed in the questions of
the day, and is completely in the secret of the Jesuits, at whose
houses, including those of their leading men, he is a constant visitor.
After having talked over the business which brought him to my
house, I asked him to state, in a few words, what were the points in
dispute between the two parties.
He immediately complied, and informed me that the principal
points were two—the first about the proximate power, and the
second about sufficient grace. I have enlightened you on the first of
these points in my former letter, and shall now speak of the second.
In one word, then, I found that their difference about sufficient
grace may be defined thus: The Jesuits maintain that there is a
grace given generally to all men, subject in such a way to free-will
that the will renders it efficacious or inefficacious at its pleasure,
without any additional aid from God, and without wanting anything
on his part in order to acting effectively; and hence they term this
grace sufficient, because it suffices of itself for action. The
Jansenists, on the other hand, will not allow that any grace is
actually sufficient which is not also efficacious; that is, that all those
kinds of grace which do not determine the will to act effectively are
insufficient for action; for they hold that a man can never act
without efficacious grace.
Such are the points in debate between the Jesuits and the
Jansenists; and my next object was to ascertain the doctrine of the
New Thomists.[97] “It is rather an odd one,” he said; “they agree with
the Jesuits in admitting a sufficient grace given to all men; but they
maintain, at the same time, that no man can act with this grace
alone, but that, in order to this, he must receive from God an
efficacious grace which really determines his will to the action, and
which God does not grant to all men.” “So that, according to this
doctrine,” said I, “this grace is sufficient without being sufficient.”
“Exactly so,” he replied; “for if it suffices, there is no need of
anything more for acting; and if it does not suffice, why—it is not
sufficient.”
“But,” asked I, “where, then, is the difference between them and
the Jansenists?” “They differ in this,” he replied, “that the
Dominicans have this good qualification, that they do not refuse to
say that all men have the sufficient grace.” “I understand you,”
returned I; “but they say it without thinking it; for they add that, in
order to action, we must have an efficacious grace which is not
given to all; consequently, if they agree with the Jesuits in the use of
a term which has no sense, they differ from them, and coincide with
the Jansenists in the substance of the thing.” “That is very true,” said
he. “How, then,” said I, “are the Jesuits united with them? and why
do they not combat them as well as the Jansenists, since they will
always find powerful antagonists in these men, who, by maintaining
the necessity of the efficacious grace which determines the will, will
prevent them from establishing that grace which they hold to be of
itself sufficient?”
“The Dominicans are too powerful,” he replied, “and the Jesuits
are too politic, to come to an open rupture with them. The Society is
content with having prevailed on them so far as to admit the name
of sufficient grace, though they understand it in another sense; by
which manœuvre they gain this advantage, that they will make their
opinion appear untenable, as soon as they judge it proper to do so.
And this will be no difficult matter; for, let it be once granted that all
men have the sufficient graces, nothing can be more natural than to
conclude, that the efficacious grace is not necessary to action—the
sufficiency of the general grace precluding the necessity of all
others. By saying sufficient we express all that is necessary for
action; and it will serve little purpose for the Dominicans to exclaim
that they attach another sense to the expression; the people,
accustomed to the common acceptation of that term, would not
even listen to their explanation. Thus the Society gains a sufficient
advantage from the expression which has been adopted by the
Dominicans, without pressing them any further; and were you but
acquainted with what passed under Popes Clement VIII. and Paul V.,
and knew how the Society was thwarted by the Dominicans in the
establishment of the sufficient grace, you would not be surprised to
find that it avoids embroiling itself in quarrels with them, and allows
them to hold their own opinion, provided that of the Society is left
untouched; and more especially, when the Dominicans countenance
its doctrine, by agreeing to employ, on all public occasions, the term
sufficient grace.
“The Society,” he continued, “is quite satisfied with their
complaisance. It does not insist on their denying the necessity of
efficacious grace; this would be urging them too far. People should
not tyrannize over their friends; and the Jesuits have gained quite
enough. The world is content with words; few think of searching into
the nature of things; and thus the name of sufficient grace being
adopted on both sides, though in different senses, there is nobody,
except the most subtle theologians, who ever dreams of doubting
that the thing signified by that word is held by the Jacobins as well
as by the Jesuits; and the result will show that these last are not the
greatest dupes.”[98]
I acknowledged that they were a shrewd class of people, these
Jesuits; and, availing myself of his advice, I went straight to the
Jacobins, at whose gate I found one of my good friends, a staunch
Jansenist (for you must know I have got friends among all parties),
who was calling for another monk, different from him whom I was in
search of. I prevailed on him, however, after much entreaty, to
accompany me, and asked for one of my New Thomists. He was
delighted to see me again. “How now! my dear father,” I began, “it
seems it is not enough that all men have a proximate power, with
which they can never act with effect; they must have besides this a
sufficient grace, with which they can act as little. Is not that the
doctrine of your school?” “It is,” said the worthy monk; “and I was
upholding it this very morning in the Sorbonne. I spoke on the point
during my whole half-hour; and but for the sand-glass, I bade fair to
have reversed that wicked proverb, now so current in Paris: ‘He
votes without speaking, like a monk in the Sorbonne.’”[99] “What do
you mean by your half-hour and your sand-glass?” I asked; “do they
cut your speeches by a certain measure?” “Yes,” said he, “they have
done so for some days past.” “And do they oblige you to speak for
half an hour?” “No; we may speak as little as we please.” “But not as
much as you please,” said I. “O what a capital regulation for the
boobies! what a blessed excuse for those who have nothing worth
the saying! But, to return to the point, father; this grace given to all
men is sufficient, is it not?” “Yes,” said he. “And yet it has no effect
without efficacious grace?” “None whatever,” he replied. “And all
men have the sufficient,” continued I, “and all have not the
efficacious?” “Exactly,” said he. “That is,” returned I, “all have
enough of grace, and all have not enough of it—that is, this grace
suffices, though it does not suffice—that is, it is sufficient in name,
and insufficient in effect! In good sooth, father, this is particularly
subtle doctrine! Have you forgotten, since you retired to the cloister,
the meaning attached, in the world you have quitted, to the word
sufficient?—don’t you remember that it includes all that is necessary
for acting? But no, you cannot have lost all recollection of it; for, to
avail myself of an illustration which will come home more vividly to
your feelings, let us suppose that you were supplied with no more
than two ounces of bread and a glass of water daily, would you be
quite pleased with your prior were he to tell you that this would be
sufficient to support you, under the pretext that, along with
something else, which, however, he would not give you, you would
have all that would be necessary to support you? How, then, can
you allow yourselves to say that all men have sufficient grace for
acting, while you admit that there is another grace absolutely
necessary to acting which all men have not? Is it because this is an
unimportant article of belief, and you leave all men at liberty to
believe that efficacious grace is necessary or not, as they choose? Is
it a matter of indifference to say, that with sufficient grace a man
may really act?” “How!” cried the good man; “indifference!—it is
heresy—formal heresy. The necessity of efficacious grace for acting
effectively, is a point of faith—it is heresy to deny it.”
“Where are we now?” I exclaimed; “and which side am I to take
here? If I deny the sufficient grace, I am a Jansenist. If I admit it, as
the Jesuits do, in the way of denying that efficacious grace is
necessary, I shall be a heretic, say you. And if I admit it, as you do,
in the way of maintaining the necessity of efficacious grace, I sin
against common sense, and am a blockhead, say the Jesuits. What
must I do, thus reduced to the inevitable necessity of being a
blockhead, a heretic, or a Jansenist? And what a sad pass are
matters come to, if there are none but the Jansenists who avoid
coming into collision either with the faith or with reason, and who
save themselves at once from absurdity and from error!”
My Jansenist friend took this speech as a good omen, and already
looked upon me as a convert. He said nothing to me, however; but,
addressing the monk: “Pray, father,” inquired he, “what is the point
on which you agree with the Jesuits?” “We agree in this,” he replied,
“that the Jesuits and we acknowledge the sufficient grace given to
all.” “But,” said the Jansenist, “there are two things in this expression
sufficient grace—there is the sound, which is only so much breath;
and there is the thing which it signifies, which is real and effectual.
And, therefore, as you are agreed with the Jesuits in regard to the
word sufficient, and opposed to them as to the sense, it is apparent
that you are opposed to them in regard to the substance of that
term, and that you only agree with them as to the sound. Is this
what you call acting sincerely and cordially?”
“But,” said the good man, “what cause have you to complain,
since we deceive nobody by this mode of speaking? In our schools
we openly teach that we understand it in a manner different from
the Jesuits.”
“What I complain of,” returned my friend, “is, that you do not
proclaim it everywhere, that by sufficient grace you understand the
grace which is not sufficient. You are bound in conscience, by thus
altering the sense of the ordinary terms of theology, to tell that,
when you admit a sufficient grace in all men, you understand that
they have not sufficient grace in effect. All classes of persons in the
world understand the word sufficient in one and the same sense; the
New Thomists alone understand it in another sense. All the women,
who form one-half of the world, all courtiers, all military men, all
magistrates, all lawyers, merchants, artisans, the whole populace—in
short, all sorts of men, except the Dominicans, understand the word
sufficient to express all that is necessary. Scarcely any one is aware
of this singular exception. It is reported over the whole earth, simply
that the Dominicans hold that all men have the sufficient graces.
What other conclusion can be drawn from this, than that they hold
that all men have all the graces necessary for action; especially
when they are seen joined in interest and intrigue with the Jesuits,
who understand the thing in that sense? Is not the uniformity of
your expressions, viewed in connection with this union of party, a
manifest indication and confirmation of the uniformity of your
sentiments?
“The multitude of the faithful inquire of theologians: What is the
real condition of human nature since its corruption? St. Augustine
and his disciples reply, that it has no sufficient grace until God is
pleased to bestow it. Next come the Jesuits, and they say that all
have the effectually sufficient graces. The Dominicans are consulted
on this contrariety of opinion; and what course do they pursue?
They unite with the Jesuits; by this coalition they make up a
majority; they secede from those who deny these sufficient graces;
they declare that all men possess them. Who, on hearing this, would
imagine anything else than that they gave their sanction to the
opinion of the Jesuits? And then they add that, nevertheless, these
said sufficient graces are perfectly useless without the efficacious,
which are not given to all!
“Shall I present you with a picture of the Church amidst these
conflicting sentiments? I consider her very like a man who, leaving
his native country on a journey, is encountered by robbers, who
inflict many wounds on him, and leave him half dead. He sends for
three physicians resident in the neighboring towns. The first, on
probing his wounds, pronounces them mortal, and assures him that
none but God can restore to him his lost powers. The second,
coming after the other, chooses to flatter the man—tells him that he
has still sufficient strength to reach his home; and, abusing the first
physician who opposed his advice, determines upon his ruin. In this
dilemma, the poor patient, observing the third medical gentleman at
a distance, stretches out his hands to him as the person who should
determine the controversy. This practitioner, on examining his
wounds, and ascertaining the opinions of the first two doctors,
embraces that of the second, and uniting with him, the two combine
against the first, and being the stronger party in number, drive him
from the field in disgrace. From this proceeding, the patient naturally
concludes that the last comer is of the same opinion with the
second; and, on putting the question to him, he assures him most
positively that his strength is sufficient for prosecuting his journey.
The wounded man, however, sensible of his own weakness, begs
him to explain to him how he considered him sufficient for the
journey. ‘Because,’ replies his adviser, ‘you are still in possession of
your legs, and legs are the organs which naturally suffice for
walking.’ ‘But,’ says the patient, ‘have I all the strength necessary to
make use of my legs? for, in my present weak condition, it humbly
appears to me that they are wholly useless.’ ‘Certainly you have not,’
replies the doctor; ‘you will never walk effectively, unless God
vouchsafes some extraordinary assistance to sustain and conduct
you.’ ‘What!’ exclaims the poor man, ‘do you not mean to say that I
have sufficient strength in me, so as to want for nothing to walk
effectively?’ ‘Very far from it,’ returns the physician. ‘You must, then,’
says the patient, ‘be of a different opinion from your companion
there about my real condition.’ ‘I must admit that I am,’ replies the
other.
“What do you suppose the patient said to this? Why, he
complained of the strange conduct and ambiguous terms of this
third physician. He censured him for taking part with the second, to
whom he was opposed in sentiment, and with whom he had only the
semblance of agreement, and for having driven away the first doctor,
with whom he in reality agreed; and, after making a trial of his
strength, and finding by experience his actual weakness, he sent
them both about their business, recalled his first adviser, put himself
under his care, and having, by his advice, implored from God the
strength of which he confessed his need, obtained the mercy he
sought, and, through divine help, reached his house in peace.”
The worthy monk was so confounded with this parable that he
could not find words to reply. To cheer him up a little, I said to him,
in a mild tone: “But, after all, my dear father, what made you think
of giving the name of sufficient to a grace which you say it is a point
of faith to believe is, in fact, insufficient?” “It is very easy for you to
talk about it,” said he. “You are an independent and private man; I
am a monk, and in a community—cannot you estimate the
difference between the two cases? We depend on superiors; they
depend on others. They have promised our votes—what would you
have to become of me?” We understood the hint; and this brought
to our recollection the case of his brother monk, who, for a similar
piece of indiscretion, has been exiled to Abbeville.
“But,” I resumed, “how comes it about that your community is
bound to admit this grace?” “That is another question,” he replied.
“All that I can tell you is, in one word, that our order has defended,
to the utmost of its ability, the doctrine of St. Thomas on efficacious
grace. With what ardor did it oppose, from the very commencement,
the doctrine of Molina? How did it labor to establish the necessity of
the efficacious grace of Jesus Christ? Don’t you know what
happened under Clement VIII. and Paul V., and how the former
having been prevented by death, and the latter hindered by some
Italian affairs from publishing his bull, our arms still sleep in the
Vatican? But the Jesuits, availing themselves, since the introduction
of the heresy of Luther and Calvin, of the scanty light which the
people possess for discriminating between the error of these men
and the truth of the doctrine of St. Thomas, disseminated their
principles with such rapidity and success, that they became, ere
long, masters of the popular belief; while we, on our part, found
ourselves in the predicament of being denounced as Calvinists, and
treated as the Jansenists are at present, unless we qualified the
efficacious grace with, at least, the apparent avowal of a sufficient.
[100]
In this extremity, what better course could we have taken for
saving the truth, without losing our own credit, than by admitting
the name of sufficient grace, while we denied that it was such in
effect? Such is the real history of the case.”
This was spoken in such a melancholy tone, that I really began to
pity the man; not so, however, my companion. “Flatter not
yourselves,” said he to the monk, “with having saved the truth; had
she not found other defenders, in your feeble hands she must have
perished. By admitting into the Church the name of her enemy, you
have admitted the enemy himself. Names are inseparable from
things. If the term sufficient grace be once established, it will be
vain for you to protest that you understand by it a grace which is not
sufficient. Your protest will be held inadmissible. Your explanation
would be scouted as odious in the world, where men speak more
ingenuously about matters of infinitely less moment. The Jesuits will
gain a triumph—it will be their grace, which is sufficient, in fact, and
not yours, which is only so in name, that will pass as established;
and the converse of your creed will become an article of faith.”
“We will all suffer martyrdom first,” cried the father, “rather than
consent to the establishment of sufficient grace in the sense of the
Jesuits. St. Thomas, whom we have sworn to follow even to the
death, is diametrically opposed to such doctrine.”[101]
To this my friend, who took up the matter more seriously than I
did, replied: “Come now, father, your fraternity has received an
honor which it sadly abuses. It abandons that grace which was
confided to its care, and which has never been abandoned since the
creation of the world. That victorious grace, which was waited for by
the patriarchs, predicted by the prophets, introduced by Jesus
Christ, preached by St. Paul, explained by St. Augustine, the greatest
of the fathers, embraced by his followers, confirmed by St. Bernard,
the last of the fathers,[102] supported by St. Thomas, the angel of the
schools,[103] transmitted by him to your order, maintained by so many
of your fathers, and so nobly defended by your monks under popes
Clement and Paul—that efficacious grace, which had been
committed as a sacred deposit into your hands, that it might find, in
a sacred and everlasting order, a succession of preachers, who might
proclaim it to the end of time—is discarded and deserted for
interests the most contemptible. It is high time for other hands to
arm in its quarrel. It is time for God to raise up intrepid disciples of
the Doctor of grace,[104] who, strangers to the entanglements of the
world, will serve God for God’s sake. Grace may not, indeed, number
the Dominicans among her champions, but champions she shall
never want; for, by her own almighty energy, she creates them for
herself. She demands hearts pure and disengaged; nay, she herself
purifies and disengages them from worldly interests, incompatible
with the truths of the Gospel. Reflect seriously on this, father; and
take care that God does not remove this candlestick from its place,
leaving you in darkness, and without the crown, as a punishment for
the coldness which you manifest to a cause so important to his
Church.”[105]
He might have gone on in this strain much longer, for he was
kindling as he advanced, but I interrupted him by rising to take my
leave, and said: “Indeed, my dear father, had I any influence in
France, I should have it proclaimed, by sound of trumpet: ‘Be it
known to all men, that when the Jacobins SAY that sufficient grace is
given to all, they MEAN that all have not the grace which actually
suffices!’ After which, you might say it as often as you please, but
not otherwise.” And thus ended our visit.
You will perceive, therefore, that we have here a politic sufficiency
somewhat similar to proximate power. Meanwhile I may tell you,
that it appears to me that both the proximate power and this same
sufficient grace may be safely doubted by anybody, provided he is
not a Jacobin.[106]
I have just come to learn, when closing my letter, that the
censure[107] has passed. But as I do not yet know in what terms it is
worded, and as it will not be published till the 15th of February, I
shall delay writing you about it till the next post.—I am, &c.
 REPLY OF THE “PROVINCIAL” TO THE FIRST TWO
LETTERS OF HIS FRIEND.

February 2, 1656.
Sir,—Your two letters have not been confined to me. Everybody
has seen them, everybody understands them, and everybody
believes them. They are not only in high repute among theologians
—they have proved agreeable to men of the world, and intelligible
even to the ladies.
In a communication which I lately received from one of the
gentlemen of the Academy—one of the most illustrious names in a
society of men who are all illustrious—who had seen only your first
letter, he writes me as follows: “I only wish that the Sorbonne, which
owes so much to the memory of the late cardinal,[108] would
acknowledge the jurisdiction of his French Academy. The author of
the letter would be satisfied; for, in the capacity of an academician, I
would authoritatively condemn, I would banish, I would proscribe—I
had almost said exterminate—to the extent of my power, this
proximate power, which makes so much noise about nothing, and
without knowing what it would have. The misfortune is, that our
academic ‘power’ is a very limited and remote power. I am sorry for
it; and still more sorry that my small power cannot discharge me
from my obligations to you,” &c.
My next extract is from the pen of a lady, whom I shall not
indicate in any way whatever. She writes thus to a female friend who
had transmitted to her the first of your letters: “You can have no
idea how much I am obliged to you for the letter you sent me—it is
so very ingenious, and so nicely written. It narrates, and yet it is not
a narrative; it clears up the most intricate and involved of all possible
matters; its raillery is exquisite; it enlightens those who know little
about the subject, and imparts double delight to those who
understand it. It is an admirable apology; and, if they would so take
it, a delicate and innocent censure. In short, that letter displays so
much art, so much spirit, and so much judgment, that I burn with
curiosity to know who wrote it,” &c.
You too, perhaps, would like to know who the lady is that writes in
this style; but you must be content to esteem without knowing her;
when you come to know her, your esteem will be greatly enhanced.
Take my word for it, then, and continue your letters; and let the
censure come when it may, we are quite prepared for receiving it.
These words, “proximate power,” and “sufficient grace,” with which
we are threatened, will frighten us no longer. We have learned from
the Jesuits, the Jacobins, and M. le Moine, in how many different
ways they may be turned, and how little solidity there is in these
new-fangled terms, to give ourselves any trouble about them.—
Meanwhile, I remain, &c.
 LETTER III.

INJUSTICE, ABSURDITY, AND NULLITY OF THE CENSURE ON M. ARNAULD.

Paris, February 9, 1656.

Sir,—I have just received your letter; and, at the same time, there
was brought me a copy of the censure in manuscript. I find that I
am as well treated in the former, as M. Arnauld is ill-treated in the
latter. I am afraid there is some extravagance in both cases, and that
neither of us is sufficiently well known by our judges. Sure I am,
that were we better known, M. Arnauld would merit the approval of
the Sorbonne, and I the censure of the Academy. Thus our interests
are quite at variance with each other. It is his interest to make
himself known, to vindicate his innocence; whereas it is mine to
remain in the dark, for fear of forfeiting my reputation. Prevented,
therefore, from showing my face, I must devolve on you the task of
making my acknowledgments to my illustrious admirers, while I
undertake that of furnishing you with the news of the censure.
I assure you, sir, it has filled me with astonishment. I expected to
find it condemning the most shocking heresy in the world, but your
wonder will equal mine, when informed that these alarming
preparations, when on the point of producing the grand effect
anticipated, have all ended in smoke.
To understand the whole affair in a pleasant way, only recollect, I
beseech you, the strange impressions which, for a long time past,
we have been taught to form of the Jansenists. Recall to mind the
cabals, the factions, the errors, the schisms, the outrages, with
which they have been so long charged; the manner in which they
have been denounced and vilified from the pulpit and the press; and
the degree to which this torrent of abuse, so remarkable for its
violence and duration, has swollen of late years, when they have
been openly and publicly accused of being not only heretics and
schismatics, but apostates and infidels—with “denying the mystery
of transubstantiation, and renouncing Jesus Christ and the
Gospel.”[109]
After having published these startling[110] accusations, it was
resolved to examine their writings, in order to pronounce judgment
on them. For this purpose the second letter of M. Arnauld, which
was reported to be full of the greatest errors,[111] is selected. The
examiners appointed are his most open and avowed enemies. They
employ all their learning to discover something that they might lay
hold upon, and at length they produce one proposition of a doctrinal
character, which they exhibit for censure.
What else could any one infer from such proceedings, than that
this proposition, selected under such remarkable circumstances,
would contain the essence of the blackest heresies imaginable. And
yet the proposition so entirely agrees with what is clearly and
formally expressed in the passages from the fathers quoted by M.
Arnauld, that I have not met with a single individual who could
comprehend the difference between them. Still, however, it might be
imagined that there was a very great difference; for the passages
from the fathers being unquestionably catholic, the proposition of M.
Arnauld, if heretical, must be widely opposed[112] to them.
Such was the difficulty which the Sorbonne was expected to clear
up. All Christendom waited, with wide-opened eyes, to discover, in
the censure of these learned doctors, the point of difference which
had proved imperceptible to ordinary mortals. Meanwhile M. Arnauld
gave in his defences, placing his own proposition and the passages
of the fathers from which he had drawn it in parallel columns, so as
to make the agreement between them apparent to the most obtuse
understandings.
 He shows, for example, that St. Augustine says in one passage,
that “Jesus Christ points out to us, in the person of St. Peter, a
righteous man warning us by his fall to avoid presumption.” He cites
another passage from the same father, in which he says, “that God,
in order to show us that without grace we can do nothing, left St.
Peter without grace.” He produces a third, from St. Chrysostom, who
says, “that the fall of St. Peter happened, not through any coldness
towards Jesus Christ, but because grace failed him; and that he fell,
not so much through his own negligence as through the
withdrawment of God, as a lesson to the whole Church, that without
God we can do nothing.” He then gives his own accused proposition,
which is as follows: “The fathers point out to us, in the person of St.
Peter, a righteous man to whom that grace without which we can do
nothing, was wanting.”
In vain did people attempt to discover how it could possibly be,
that M. Arnauld’s expression differed from those of the fathers as
much as truth from error, and faith from heresy. For where was the
difference to be found? Could it be in these words, “that the fathers
point out to us, in the person of St. Peter, a righteous man?” St.
Augustine has said the same thing in so many words. Is it because
he says “that grace had failed him?” The same St. Augustine, who
had said that “St. Peter was a righteous man,” says “that he had not
had grace on that occasion.” Is it, then, for his having said, “that
without grace we can do nothing?” Why, is not this just what St.
Augustine says in the same place, and what St. Chrysostom had said
before him, with this difference only, that he expresses it in much
stronger language, as when he says “that his fall did not happen
through his own coldness or negligence, but through the failure of
grace, and the withdrawment of God?”[113]
Such considerations as these kept everybody in a state of
breathless suspense, to learn in what this diversity could consist,
when at length, after a great many meetings, this famous and long-
looked for censure made its appearance. But, alas! it has sadly
baulked our expectation. Whether it be that the Molinist doctors
would not condescend so far as to enlighten us on the point, or for
some other mysterious reason, the fact is, they have done nothing
more than pronounce these words: “This proposition is rash,
impious, blasphemous, accursed, and heretical!”
Would you believe it, sir, that most people, finding themselves
deceived in their expectations, have got into bad humor, and begin
to fall foul upon the censors themselves? They are drawing strange
inferences from their conduct in favor of M. Arnauld’s innocence.
“What!” they are saying, “is this all that could be achieved, during all
this time, by so many doctors joining in a furious attack on one
individual? Can they find nothing in all his works worthy of
reprehension, but three lines, and these extracted, word for word,
from the greatest doctors of the Greek and Latin Churches? Is there
any author whatever whose writings, were it intended to ruin him,
would not furnish a more specious pretext for the purpose? And
what higher proof could be furnished of the orthodoxy of this
illustrious accused?
“How comes it to pass,” they add, “that so many denunciations are
launched in this censure, into which they have crowded such terms
as ‘poison, pestilence, horror, rashness, impiety, blasphemy,
abomination, execration, anathema, heresy’—the most dreadful
epithets that could be used against Arius, or Antichrist himself; and
all to combat an imperceptible heresy, and that, moreover, without
telling us what it is? If it be against the words of the fathers that
they inveigh in this style, where is the faith and tradition? If against
M. Arnauld’s proposition, let them point out the difference between
the two; for we can see nothing but the most perfect harmony
between them. As soon as we have discovered the evil of the
proposition, we shall hold it in abhorrence; but so long as we do not
see it, or rather see nothing in the statement but the sentiments of
the holy fathers, conceived and expressed in their own terms, how
can we possibly regard it with any other feelings than those of holy
veneration?”
Such is a specimen of the way in which they are giving vent to
their feelings. But these are by far too deep-thinking people. You
and I, who make no pretensions to such extraordinary penetration,
may keep ourselves quite easy about the whole affair. What! would
we be wiser than our masters? No: let us take example from them,
and not undertake what they have not ventured upon. We would be
sure to get boggled in such an attempt. Why it would be the easiest
thing imaginable, to render this censure itself heretical. Truth, we
know, is so delicate, that if we make the slightest deviation from it,
we fall into error; but this alleged error is so extremely fine-spun,
that, if we diverge from it in the slightest degree, we fall back upon
the truth. There is positively nothing between this obnoxious
proposition and the truth but an imperceptible point. The distance
between them is so impalpable, that I was in terror lest, from pure
inability to perceive it, I might, in my over-anxiety to agree with the
doctors of the Sorbonne, place myself in opposition to the doctors of
the Church. Under this apprehension, I judged it expedient to
consult one of those who, through policy, was neutral on the first
question, that from him I might learn the real state of the matter. I
have accordingly had an interview with one of the most intelligent of
that party, whom I requested to point out to me the difference
between the two things, at the same time frankly owning to him that
I could see none.
He appeared to be amused at my simplicity, and replied, with a
smile: “How simple it is in you to believe that there is any difference!
Why, where could it be? Do you imagine that, if they could have
found out any discrepancy between M. Arnauld and the fathers, they
would not have boldly pointed it out, and been delighted with the
opportunity of exposing it before the public, in whose eyes they are
so anxious to depreciate that gentleman?”
I could easily perceive, from these few words, that those who had
been neutral on the first question, would not all prove so on the
second; but anxious to hear his reasons, I asked: “Why, then, have
they attacked this unfortunate proposition?”
“Is it possible,” he replied, “you can be ignorant of these two
things, which I thought had been known to the veriest tyro in these
matters?—that, on the one hand, M. Arnauld has uniformly avoided
advancing a single tenet which is not powerfully supported by the
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