Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/328

310 book and who declare that it bears this title z 'in most of the manuscripts.' But since writing this and the foregoing excursus I have had the advantage of reading M. Hauréau's admirable criticism contained in the eighth chapter of his Singularités historiques et littéraires. He there states positively that no such manuscript exists in France, nor to his knowledge elsewhere. Accordingly he conjectures that the bibliographers mistook some other book, published about the same time, for William of Conches's; and he suggests that the book in question is the De Universo of William of Auvergne. The precise identification will not serve, but there can be little doubt—as I think, a confusion with the Speculum naturale—that some blunder of this kind originated the whole theory which, it has already appeared, is so difficult to reconcile with the known facts about William of Conches.

 

1. has been generally regarded as a teacher who abandoned the thorough and honest system of the school of Chartres in order to compete with the shallower and more pretentious masters of his day. The a Histoire littéraire de la France illustrates this defection by the instance of his work, the Philosophia, which it supposes to be an abridgement of a previous book, the very existence of which the preceding excursus has shown to be more than doubtful. 'Ce qui l'engagea,' we are told, 'de composer cet abrégé, ce fut vraisemblement l'envie de se conformer, ou plutôt la nécessité où il se trouva de céder au torrent des philosophes de son temps, qui décrioient la prolixité de leurs prédécesseurs, et se piquoient de donner toute la philosophie en deux ans. Car il est certain par la témoignage de Jean de Sarisbéri, qu'après avoir longtemps résisté à ces 