Note 596 — Chapter VI · COSMOGONY, COSMOLOGY, AND COSMOGRAPHY

Bede and Hugh of St. Victor also held that the elements were thus segregated at the moment they were called into existence by God (Zöckler, op. cit., vol. i, 1877, pp. 248, 401).

William of Conches argues specifically against the Aristotelian doctrine of a fifth element of which the heavenly bodies are composed (Dragmaticon philosophiae, III, 80–83, cited by Schneider, Abendländische Spekulation, 1915, p. 40, note 1). Duhem (Système, vol. iii, 1915, pp. 105, 194) saw in William’s De philosophia mundi what seemed to be a remarkable analogy between the ideas there expressed and those expressed by Aristotle in the fourth book of his Physics. Schneider (op. cit., pp. 40–42) points out that Duhem, through failure to take into account the passage in the Dragmaticon to which we have just referred, was led to think that William was actually a believer in the main theories set forth in the Physics. On the contrary, in referring to the elements in the Dragmaticon William merely adopted the traditional Platonic doctrine, and he went on to explain Aristotle’s theory of the fifth element and vigorously to denounce it. Though this shows that William may not have agreed with Aristotle in essentials, it would seem to be, nevertheless, an argument in favor of the existence of an Aristotelian trend of thought in William’s time. See above, p. 401, note 58.