ORIGINS OF THE PROBLEM OF UNITY OF FORM 139 



ters; but he has purposely, it seems, avoided the subject to 

 devote himself entirely to cosmology and astronomy: ostenso 

 itaque ex quihus diversitatihus homo constet, turn in anima 

 tuiii in cor pore, quoniam ad praesens non spectat negotium in 

 huiusmodi diutius jnorari, ad constitutionem mundi, unde 

 sermo venit, prius stilum iiiclino.'^^ 



Alexander Nequam taught in Paris at the school of Petit 

 Pont in the last quarter of the twelfth century, and about 1190 

 was lecturing in theology at Oxford. Seemingly he was in a 

 position to know the main questions of the day. Yet in the 

 De naturis rerum and in the De laudihus divinae sapientiae 

 summing up the problems concerning man, which were then 

 current in the schools,*" he has not a word on our topic, though 

 he was familiar with the connected question, whether the soul 

 and the body are united by means of a medium.*^ Moreover, 

 in Books III and IV of his theological work, the Speculum 

 speculatio?ium,** he has a short treatise on the soul, which 

 would have offered him a good opportunity of introducing the 

 point at issue, considering especially his acquaintance with 

 Avicenna's De anima. Again, in Chapter XC, De viribus 

 animae, he has a long discourse on the powers of the soul, and 

 in Chapter XCIV, De sensualitate, under which heading theo- 

 logians generally discussed our question, he makes no allusion 



*' Ibid., p. 9. 



*■ Alexandri Neckam De naturis rerum lihri duo, with the -poem of the same 

 author, De laudibus divinae sapientiae, ed. T. Wright (R. S.) , London, 1863, cap. 

 173, p. 299. Another set of similar questions is found in De laud. div. sap., dist. X, 

 p. 499. M.-D. Chenu (" Grammaire et theologie aux XII^ et XIII^ siecles," 

 Archives d'hist. doctr. et litt. du M.-A., X (1935-36), 5-28; and " Disciplina. Notes 

 de lexicographie philosophique medievale," Rev. So. phil. et thiol., XXV (1936) , 

 686-92) has shown the great profit that can be derived from these topics in order 

 to trace the origin and development of much medieval speculation. 



** " Nonne maior est contrarietas inter animam et corpus, quae tamen sine aliquo 

 medio coniuncta sunt? " De naturis rerum, cap. 16, ed. cit., p. 55. 



^* The Speculum speculationum, written between 1204 and 1213, is extant in 

 one manuscript, British Museum, MS Royal 7 F. I. On Alexander Nequam and 

 other early masters, see R. W. Hunt, " English Learnmg in the late twelfth 

 century," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th ser., XIX (1936), 19-42; 

 D. A. Callus, Introduction of Aristotelian Learning to Oxford (Proceedings of 

 the British Academy, XXIX, 1943). 



