Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/320

302 inscriptio, ut ex antique exemplari constat.' Possibly therefore the printed title De Substantiis physicis is an insertion of the editor. From the Secundaria we pass to a fourth title, namely, Secunda Philosophia, which appears in two manuscripts of the Staats- und Hof-Bibliothek at Munich. A fifth designation is found in a manuscript, nr xcv, of Corpus Christi college, Oxford, dating, according to Coxe's Catalogue, from the thirteenth century: 'Gulielmi de Conchis, alias Shelley, Universalis Philosophiae Libri III. per modum dialogi,' &c. Sixthly, in one of the Digby manuscripts in the Bodleian library, nr cvii, the work is entitled Summa Magistri Willelmi de Conchis super naturalibus Quaestionibus et Responsionibus, &c. In the following pages I shall cite the book as the Dragmaticon.

6. We have now to inquire in what way it bears upon the other works of its author. Here its testimony is precise and unambiguous. It is a new edition of a former work entitled Philosophia, modified in concession, as would appear, to certain complaints on the score of heresy; and the passages thus altered or expunged are to be found in that work which in the preceding excursus was recognised under the different names of Bede, William of Hirschau, and Honorius of Autun. It is also known that s objections were raised to a work of William of Conches, entitled the Philosophia, which objections are substantially the same with those enumerated in the following paragraph of the Dragmaticon. I have inserted in the margin the corresponding places in the Philosophia.

After announcing the subject of his treatise William proceeds:

t Est tamen de eadem materia libellus noster qui Philosophia inscribitur, quem in iuventute nostra imperfectum, utpote imperfecti, composuimus; in quo veris falsa admiscuimus, multaque necessaria praetermisimus. Est igitur nostrum consilium, quae in eo vera sunt hic apponere, falsa damnare, praetermissa supplere. Falsa vero illa quae contra fidem catholicam nobis in eo videntur esse, ante auspicium dictionis, nominatim