WILLIAM OF CONCHES: Philosopher of the twelfth century; b. at Conches (64 m. w. of Paris) toward the end of the eleventh century; d. at Paris about 1154. He taught at Chartres in the school of Bernhard Sylvester, where one of his pupils was John of Salisbury (q.v.), who calls him a grammarian. His works, however, show that he was interested especially in questions of natural philosophy. He was not a theologian. He held to the older Platonic views of the universe, applying these to the problems of natural philosophy. William of Thierry denounced him before St. Bernhard for holding certain heresies-the assumption of a world soul, the Sabellian doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of demons, and the creation of Eve. William thereupon wrote his Dragmaticou, clothing his earlier views in the dress of a dialogue.
The school of Chartres pursued a tendency other than Abelard's; it was not concerned with the dialectical reconciliation of reason and faith, but with the increase of human knowledge and the perception of verity. Bernhard Sylvester's De mundi universitate breathes the same spirit, and William of Conches followed this path. Philosophy, according to him, comprehends everything. Like Plato, he tries to understand the universe from God down to man by way of pure knowledge, following not the Church Fathers but the philosophers and physicists. Like Abelard, he submits to the authority of Scripture, but find's no contradiction with Scripture, if one expounds what the Bible affirms. According to his system, the basis of the world is God as creative power, wisdom, and will. The saints apply these three terms to three persons, designating power as God the Father, wisdom as God the Son, and will as the Holy Spirit. The divine power would have sufficed to deliver man from the power of Satan, but God willed that his wisdom should become man, since in this way the divinity was concealed from the devil, and he laid hands on it, thus forfeiting his power o·,--r man. In connection with the universe the wisdom and power of God are revealed, but its origin and continuance William explains as purely natural processes. The corporeal world is composed of the elements which are in all things, but according to the preponderance of certain elements there originates matter or the elementary bodies, earth, water, air, and fire. The fiery bodies of the stars moved and warmed the air and through it the water. From the heated water proceeded the birds and fishes. Land originated from the absorption of humidity by the heat. From the heated mud of the earth proceeded the animals and man. The bodies of the universe are inconstant movement, the firmament, i.e., the sky with its fixed stars, moving in the opposite direction of the planets, since otherwise the movement of the latter would be too violent. The earth is a sphere, since otherwise the time of the day would be the same everywhere and the same stars ought to be visible everywhere. The relation of the earth to the sun causes the change in seasons. Man consists of body and soul. The soul is the purely spiritual capacity of discerning and reasoning which is peculiar to man. From this spiritual soul are to be distinguished the natural powers, the spiritual and animal powers which move up and down in the arteries and nerves. The proper seat of the spiritual power is the heart, while the animal power is located in the brain, In general, William follows the Timceus of Plato, but he amplifies and modifies the views of Plato according to the learned tradition of the early Middle Ages, and makes use also of the works of Constantine the African.
The following works of William are extant: Quatuor libri de elemeutis philosophice or De philosophia muudi (printed in Bede's Opera, ii. 311-343, Basel, 1563; in the Maxima bibliotheca patrum, xx. 9951020, as the work of Honorius Augustodunensis; and as the work of William of Hirschau under the title, Philosophicarum et astronomicarum institutionum Guilielmi Hirsgauiensis olim abbatis, Basel, 1531); Dragmaticon phiLosophio,,, printed with the title, Dialogus de subslantiis physicis confectus a Wilhelmo
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Bibliography: Hist. litteraire de la France, vol. xii.; A. Charms, Guillaume de Conches, Paris, 1$57; B. Hauréau, Singularites historiques et litteraires, ib. 1861; C. Prantl, Geschichte der Logik im Abendland, ii. 127 sqq., Leipsic, 1861; C. Werner, Die Kosmologie . . . des Mittelalters mit . . Beziehung auf Wilhelm von Couches, in the Sitzungsberichte of the Vienna Academy, philosophical historical class, lxxv (1873), 309-403; H. Reuter , G e schichte der Aufklhrung im Mittelalter, ii. 6 sqq., Berlin, 1877; O. Zöckler, Geschichte der Beziehungen zvrischen Theologie and Naturwissenschaft, i. 411-412, Gütersloh, 1877; R. L. Poole, Illustrations of the Hist. of Medieval Thought, pp. 124 sqq., London, 1884; DNB, lxi. 355-356; KL, xii. 1599-1602.
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