MEDICINE AND PHILOSOPHY IITH AND 12TH CENTURIES 113 



examination of data in a universe, which is a whole charac- 

 terized by properties of dynamism, wisdom, and goodness, 

 requires an analytic device by which to identify the wholes 

 which remain the same essentially although characterized by 

 different properties. One analogy runs through his works, the 

 comparison of the distinction of Persons in the unity of God 

 to the distinction of properties in a physical object: in his 

 Covimentary on S. Paul he uses the analogy of a bronze statue; 

 in his Introductio ad Theologiam, a bronze seal; in his Theo- 

 logia Christiana, a wax image. In the later two works he adds 

 a third analogy, the characterization of man, to these two.^^ 



Bronze is the " matter " on which an artificer works to form 

 a seal; the seal, thus " mattered " (materiatum) and formed 

 (formatum) , is " scalable " (sigillabile) , that is, adapted to 

 impress an image on a soft substance like wax; when it is 

 actually used, it is " sealing " (sigillans) , that is, its act is the 

 transfer of the form to another matter. When the wax is being 

 sealed, the single bronze substance has three diverse predi- 

 cates: bronze, scalable, and sealing; bronze is matter, scalable 

 and sealings are " mattered." Abailard argues that the relation 

 of the persons of the Trinity is similar: wisdom is a kind of 

 power, as the bronze seal is a kind of bronze; benignity reforms 

 the image of God in us that we may conform to the image of 

 the Son of God, as sealing comes to be from bronze and the 

 scalable. In the same way the genus, animal, is the matter of 

 the species, man, for man is a kind of animal as the bronze 

 seal is a kind of bronze.®^ " Matter " and " mattered " in a 

 given image are the same, essentially, yet the matter precedes 

 the mattered; and a like precedence is found in each of the 

 related pairs of terms — constituent and constituted, cause and 

 effect, generating and generated.*^® The distinction and the 

 terms in which it is expressed are found in the eleventh century 



** Expositio in Epistolam ad Romanos, PL 178, 804B-5A; Introductio ad Theo- 

 logiam, II, 13-14, PL 178, 1068C-70B, 1073A-5A; Theologia Christiana, III, IV, 

 PL 178, 1248B-9A, 1288A-90C. 



«^ Introductio ad Theologiam, II, 13-14, 1068C-70B, 1073A-5A. 



*» Theologia Christiana, IV, 1288A-90C. 



