11. The character of the supposed Magna de Naturis Philosophia, as described, is in itself such as to arouse suspicion. For in William's known writings we do not find very many patristic quotations. His authorities are Hippocrates, Plato and Aristotle, Cicero, Pliny, Ptolemy, Galen, Solinus, Macrobius, Boëthius, Constantine, etc.; he draws illustrations from Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Seneca, Juvenal. But engaged as he was in the pursuit of natural philosophy and natural history, he had small occasion to quote the fathers, and his references to them seem to be limited to Augustin, Ambrose, Gregory, and Bede. In fact he expressly declares his independence, as a philosopher, of the fathers. In eis, he says, quae ad fidem catholicam vel ad morum institutionem pertinent, non est fas Bedae vel alicui alii sanctorum patrum (citra scripturae sacrae authoritatem) contradicere: in eis tamen quae ad philosophiam pertinent, si in aliquo errant, licet diversum affirmare. This statement occurs in the y Dragmaticon, a work which we have seen to be scrupulously modified in deference to orthodox objections. It is therefore the less likely that, even before his plain-spoken Philosophia, William should have written a great philosophical work chiefly constructed of select passages from the fathers. Besides, if such be the nature of this Magna Philosophia, how can it contain the material which he subsequently, ex hypothesi, 'abridged', so as to form the Philosophia as we know it? The latter, as I believe on account of this assumed chronological arrangement, the authors of the Histoire littéraire designate the Philosophia minor, a title, however, which they do not assert to be found in any manuscript or edition of it.[1] I believe further that the entire basis of their theory rests on a misunderstanding of a passage in John of Salisbury, on which I shall comment in the ensuing excursus.
12. I have spoken of the Magna de Naturis Philosophia on the authority of those who profess to have seen the
- ↑ William excuses the imperfections of this book by the plea that, 'studiis docendi occupati, parum spacii ad scribendum habeamus,' lib. iii. praef. (Bed. 2. 330; Hon., p. 1010 b). This is scarcely the way in which an author would speak of abridgement.
