MEDICINE AND PHILOSOPHY 11TH AND 12TH CENTURIES 111 



is the discovery of the marks of the Trinity; and he analogizes 

 that knowledge to the perception, when a bronze statue is set 

 before the eyes, that the bronze and the bronze statue are the 

 same thing essentially and numerically and yet are diverse in 

 their properties.^^ His rhetorical method is apparent in his 

 Expositio in Hexaemeroji, in which he undertakes a threefold 

 interpretation — historical, moral, and mystic — " of the abyss 

 of profundity " of Genesis. As first step in the historical inter- 

 pretation, one must take into account the fact that Moses 

 addressed a carnal and uneducated people and sought to raise 

 them to a consideration of divine things. Moses therefore began 

 his exposition with the creation and disposition of the world, 

 for " God, who is invisible and incomprehensible in himself, 

 conveyed to us the first knowledge of himself from the mag- 

 nitude of his works, since all human knowledge arises from the 

 senses." ^^ To begin with creation is to follow the natural order 

 in addressing a carnal people, committed to the corporeal 

 senses, and not far advanced in spiritual understanding. 



Christian philosophers had learned from Platonic and Stoic 

 philosophers to treat problems of wholes and parts by distin- 

 guishing the artificer or the efficient principle causing the unity 

 and the material principles compounded into wholes. Abailard's 

 exposition of the creation marks off the stages of formation by 

 means of the four elements and finds in the structure and 

 embellishments of the world evidence for the unity and trinity 

 of the Creator. The opening statement of Genesis, " In the 

 beginning God created the heaven and the earth," means that 

 the four elements were created first, " heaven " signifying the 

 light elements, fire and air, " earth " signifjang the heavy 



" Ibid., I, PL 178, 802D-5A. The doctrine of the Trmity is developed in detail 

 in Abailard's Theologia Christiana, I, 2 and £f. (PL 178, 1124 fl.) . Abailard says 

 at the beginning of the second book of the Theologia Christiana that he has 

 assembled in the previous book quotations from the prophets and the philosophers 

 concerning the Trinity; in the second book he examines the relation between the 

 philosophical disciplines and religion. (Ibid., 1165 ff.) Cf. Introdiictio ad Theo- 

 logiam, I, 8-10 and 11. (Ibid., 989C-95B, and 1035 ff.) 



^* Expositio in Hexaemeron, PL 178, 733A. 



