104 RICHARD MCKEON 



Finally, the sequence of the elements from fire to earth is 

 shown to involve an order of lightness and heaviness.^" 



The resolution of the second question, that of the place of 

 the elements in the creation of the universe, according to 

 William, is also worked out in opposition to a widely held 

 position. Almost all philosophers say that the elements did 

 not occupy fixed places in the first creation but were mixed 

 in one mass and therefore moved up or down together. This 

 position is derived from Ovid and Hesiod, but its proponents 

 add a reason for it (that the Creator might show how great 

 the confusion of things would be if they were not ordered by 

 his power and wisdom and goodness) , and they add the 

 authority of Plato who said that God reduced the elements 

 from an unordered scattering to order.^^ William argues that 

 the position is false, the argument invalid, and the authority 

 incorrectly interpreted. The position is false because elements 

 must be bodies, or spirits, or properties of bodies or of spirits; 

 he shows that they cannot be any of these except bodies, and 

 bodies occupy place. The argument is invalid because before 

 the creation there were neither angels nor men to show how 

 great the confusion of things would be. The quotation from 



forms is expounded and elaborated. The theory of the three quahties constituting 

 the elements is developed (Platonis Timaeus, Interprete Chalcidio cum eiusdem 

 Commentaria, XXI-XXII, ed. J. Wrobel, Leipzig, 1876, pp. 87-8) as commentary 

 on Plato's argument that the elements are required to explain how the world is 

 sensible (Timaeus 31C; it makes use, however, of distinctions from 55C-56C) , since 

 what comes into being must be material and capable of being seen and touched. 

 The treatment of the two qualities (hot or cold and dry or moist) constituting the 

 elements is part of the analysis of matter (silva or hyle) , which is without qualities, 

 and the transmutation of the elements (ibid., CCCXVII-CCCXXIX, pp. 341 fE.) . 

 The excerpt on the four elements which appears in Cassiodorus' Institutiones is 

 given without derivation (Mynor's note [p. 167] is " Quod unde dictum sit pudet 

 me nescire ") . The analysis set forth in the interpolated passage is clearly derived 

 from Chalcidius' Commentary on the Timaeus. 



^° William's analysis combines the three modes of treatment of the elements that 

 were observed in Nemesius — (1) two qualities, heavy and light, assigned to the 

 elements in pairs of elements, (2) four qualties, hot, cold, dry, wet, assigned two 

 to each element, and (3) six qualities, obtuse, acute, mobile, immobile, subtle, 

 coropreal, assigned three to each element. 



"^ Timaeus, 53B. 



