no RICHARD MCKEON 



matter in order to inform and order it, in a relation similar 

 to that which Plato, Hermes Trismegistus, and Virgil found 

 between God or spirit or world-soul and matter or hyle or 

 world. Having presented the two primordial causes of the 

 creation, matter and operative power (inateria et virtus opera- 

 trix) , Moses went on to demonstrate how and in what order 

 the spirit of the Lord operated on matter, but Thierry pauses 

 to examine the knowledge that man can have of the Creator 

 from creation. He distinguishes four kinds of demonstrations 

 {genera rationum) which lead from things to their creative 

 cause — arithmetical, musical, geometrical, and astronomical 

 proofs, but our manuscripts break off after an arithmetical 

 analysis of unity and equality and their bearing on the existence 

 of things. 



Peter Abailard (1079-1142) developed a theory concerning 

 the nature of universals in his treatises on logic and dialectic, 

 and he drew conclusions concerning the nature of the artificer 

 and the elements of the world in the treatises in which he used 

 rhetoric or dialectic to interpret statements of Scripture and 

 facts of history or to interpret doctrines of prophets and phi- 

 losophers. He opens his Commejitary on the Epistle of S. Paul 

 to the Romans by observing that all Sacred Scripture has the 

 objective of teaching and moving like a rhetorical oration,^® and 

 that the two Testaments are therefore divided into three parts: 

 the law, to teach what should be done and avoided; the 

 Prophets or the Epistles, to dissuade from evils or persuade 

 to goods; and the histories, to provide examples. He interprets 

 Paul's statement that the invisible things of God are understood 

 by the things that are made, to mean that knowledge of the 

 universe as a vast fabrication or as effects may lead to knowl- 

 edge of its artificer as power, wisdom, and goodness. In his 

 interpretation of the passage from Paul, Abailard finds a similar 

 treatment of creation in Plato and Cicero; he argues that the 

 perception of the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator 



^* Comvientariorum super S. Pauli ad Romanos Libri Quinque, Prologus 

 PL 178, 783B. 



