112 RICHARD MCKEON 



elements, water and earth; and they were created " in the 

 beginning," because the first confusion or congeries of elements 

 constituted the matter for the formation of other bodies. Fire 

 and earth marked off the limits within which the other elements 

 provided connecting bonds and limiting differentiations, and 

 the whole constitution of the world consisted in the four 

 elments/® The Trinity is expressed in the beginning of Genesis, 

 and is developed more fully in the creation of man in the image 

 of God on the sixth day, for it is in power, wisdom, and love 

 that the likeness of the human soul to God is apparent.^" The 

 moral interpretation is based on the same distinctions as the 

 historical interpretation. Much as the confused congeries of 

 elements is later ordered, so too man, composed of soul and 

 body, but in the beginning unformed and incomposite in moral 

 character, is transformed from the initial confusion (symbolized 

 by the fluid element water) first by the light of faith, then by 

 hope, and finally by charity.®^ The mystical interpretation is 

 an allegory of cultural history proceeding through six ages, in 

 which the first age of primitive culture without law or art is 

 symbolized by the confused congeries of elements, and sub- 

 sequent ages follow like analogies to the days of creation, until 

 in the sixth age the future is extrapolated from the history of 

 the past.®^ 



It is apparent that the problem of elements is a problem of 

 parts and wholes, not in the simple sense that a whole is 

 compounded of parts, but in the more complex sense that a 

 whole persists through changes of parts and that a whole 

 is identifiable although characterized by different properties. 

 When changing wholes or inclusive wholes are under considera- 

 tion, the problem of part and whole becomes a problem of same 

 and other. Abailard distinguishes three senses of same and 

 other {idem et diversum) : as likeness, as essential sameness 

 but not same in number, and as sameness in property,^^ for the 



" Ibid., 733C-7B. " Ibid., 770C-1D. 



•° Ibid., 739B, 760B-1D. " Ibid., 771D-3A. 



" Introductio ad Theologiam, 11, 12, PL 178, 1065. 



