ORIGINS OF THE PROBLEM OF UNITY OF FORM 125 



origins and to consider its impact on the early masters in Paris 

 and Oxford. 



* * 



The origin of the problem under discussion is obscure. On 

 the assumption that it could arise only on the basis of Aristo- 

 telian principles, it would serve no purpose to search for its 

 beginning before the rediscovery of the libri naturales and the 

 Metaphysics. The twelfth-century thinkers, failing to under- 

 stand the problem of change and becoming, could not perceive 

 the value of the question of forms. They posited primary mat- 

 ter, not as the potential principle of which things are essentially 

 constituted, but rather as a chaotic mass of the four elements, 

 as something actual, and therefore already informed.- Simi- 

 larly, they had no clear notion of the distinction between sub- 

 stantial and accidental forms. The substantial form was, for 

 them, not the constitutive principle by which things are what 

 they are, but more truly the collection of all the attributes by 

 which a thing is discriminated from other things.^ With a con- 

 fused notion of matter and form, the question of the unity or 

 of the plurality of substantial forms does not even arise. The 

 times were not yet ripe for so refined a discussion. 



To trace, then, the origin of the dispute and to investigate 

 how and when the Schoolmen came for the first time into 

 contact with it, we must turn to another field of inquiry. 



In the height of the conflict against Aristotelianism in the 

 last decades of the thirteenth century, there appeared a list 

 entitled Errores philosophorum, written, in all probability, by 



* See, for example, Alanus de Insulis, Distinctiones dictionum theologicalium, s. v. 

 silva (PL 210,944 C); see also s. v. aqua (704 A); and Regulae de sacra theologia, 

 reg. 5 (626 A). 



^ " Forma dicitur proprietas rei, unde Boetius: ' Considerat enim corporum 

 formas,' id est proprietates." Alan de Insulis, Distinctiones, s. v. forma (796 D) . 

 " Forma est quae ex concursu proprietatum adveniens a qualibet alia substantia 

 facit suum subiectum aliud." Nicholas of Amiens, De arte seu articulis catholicae 

 fidei, Prologus (PL 210,597-8). Cf. among others, M. Baumgartner, Die Philosophie 

 des Alanus de Insulis itn Zusammenhange mit den Anschauungen des 12. Jahr- 

 hunderts (B.G.P.M., II. 4). Miinster i. W., 1896, particularly pp. 47-60. 



