Page:Philosophical Review Volume 20.djvu/446

432 expresses the opinion in opposition to Jourdain and Cousin that Boethius translated all the books of the Organon, and also the scientific and metaphysical works of Aristotle. The first statement seems to be proved from Boethius's own remark, "quod, qui priores posterioresque nostros analyticos quos ab Aristotele transtulimus, legit, minime dubitat," and other passages. The second point is not yet established. The fact that Boethius makes out a program of translating all the works does not prove that he carried it out. Nor is this proved by the fact that he cites the scientific works of Aristotle and shows a knowledge of their contents. The phrase, however, "de quibus melius in Physicis tractavimus" is important, though implicit faith cannot be put in the superscription of the Ms. Par. Nat. Lat. 14694—"Decem libri Metaphysicæ ex Versione Boethici," and the citation of Thomas Aquinas, "ut patet ex exemplaribus Græcis et translatione Boetii." How account for the fact that up to and including Abelard no one seems to have known Aristotle except as a logician? Abelard says he does not know any works of Aristotle except the Categories and the Interpretation. Mandonnet thinks they were lost for a time, and then rediscovered in Italy. Of interest, too, is his discovery that the condemnation by the Bishop of Paris in 1277 of two hundred and nineteen heretical propositions affected also Roger Bacon and Ægidius (Gilles) Romanus, though he proves at the same time that Renan and Haureau were wrong in making Roger Bacon out to be an Averroist, that on the contrary he was a true Augustinian, and behind his day in understanding or appreciating the Aristotelian doctrines. His doctrine of the human soul is only superficially similar to that of Averroes, and is really derived from Augustine. The teachings which brought him under the ban of Etienne Tempier were not Averroistic, but had reference to his belief in astrology and the occult sciences. To defend himself against the attack of the Church, which he thought unjustified, he wrote the Speculum astronomiæ, which, according to Mandonnet, has been wrongly attributed to Albertus Magnus and incorporated in his works.

The second volume containing Sigerian and Averroistic texts has been increased by some important additions. The Impossibilia, which was omitted from the first edition, coming as it did in the wake of Baeumker's memoir on the subject, has now been added so as to complete the works of Siger in one collection. There has been added also for the first time an anonymous treatise of the Averroistic school, to judge from its doctrine, entitled, De necessitate et contingentia causarum. The De erroribus philosophorum, of which only the first