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 Hip
pocrates, Plato and Aristotle, Cicero, Pliny, Ptolemy, Galen,
Solinus, Macrobius, Boethius, Constantino, 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 adfidem catholicam vel
ad morum institutionem pertinent, non est fas Bedae vel
alicui alii sanctorum patrum (citra scripturae sacrae authori-
tatem) contradicere : in eis tamen quae ad philosophiam
pertinent, si in aliquo errant, licet diversum qffirmare. 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 litteraire 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 imper- fections of this book by the plea that, ’studiis docendi occupati, parum spacii ad scribendum ha bea- mus,’ lib. iii. praef. (Bed. 2. 330 ; Hon., p. 1010 B). This is scarcely the way in which an author would speak of abridgement.
