CHAPTER I: COME now, thou poor child of man, turn awhile from thy business, hide

The first treatise of Anselm's which I have chosen to translate is the greatest of all his works, the Proslogion, as he called it, or Address to God, in which he sought to show how by one irrefragable argument the being of God could be demonstrated against all who should say with the fool in the Psalms, [5] There is no God. It was not without much hesitation that I included the Proslogion in this selection. For it deals with an abstruse subject-matter, and though it deals with it in a style singularly simple, and almost wholly free from technical expressions, it is beyond doubt difficult to understand without a considerable effort of attention and thought. But it seemed to me that no selection from Anselm's devotional works could be considered representative, which did not include this very remarkable writing. For the justification of including Anselm among the masters of devotional literature lies in this, that no one has ever more strikingly shown how the disinterested search for metaphysical truth can be offered as a service of passionate devotion to God. The saying of Hegel, Das Denken ist auch Gottesdienst, might be the motto of the most part of Anselm's writings. The more richly endowed and many-sided intelligence of Augustine, in virtue of the very variety and breadth of its interests, illustrates less remarkably than that of Anselm "the saint as philosopher." The story of Anselm's death bed tells its own tale of the dominance of speculative interest in his spiritual life. "Palm Sunday had dawned," so Eadmer reports it, "and we were sitting round him according to our custom; one of us therefore said to him, Lord and Father, we understand that you are leaving the world and going to your Lord's Easter court.' He answered, If indeed this is His will, I will gladly obey His will. But if He should rather please that I should still remain among you at least long enough to be able to finish the working-out of a problem, which I am revolving in my mind, concerning the origin of the soul, I could gratefully accept it, in that I know not whether any will finish it, when I am gone.'" [6] The Proslogion, the principal monument of such a character, may thus be regarded as a work of high devotional as well as of high philosophical value. As a work of devotion it seemed to me not to need an elaborate philosophical commentary; I have, however, added in a supplementary Note some few observations upon the reasoning which it contains. The reader who cares enough for metaphysical speculation to follow them with attention will not fail to go further. It is probably true that the "ontological argument," as the argument of the Proslogion afterwards came to be called, is open to objection in the form which Anselm gave to it; and that, even if it does prove something, it does not prove all which Anselm intended it to prove. The contemporary criticism of the monk Gaunilo in his Apology for the Fool Anselm himself answered in a treatise which is a model at once of metaphysical acuteness and of controversial courtesy; Kant's criticism of the same argument, as it was revived at the inauguration of modern philosophy by Descartes, is a graver matter, and, however we may think that Kant may be answered on this point or on that, no doubt he showed the bankruptcy of all merely logical arguments to prove the existence of the God of religion. But the devotional value of the Proslogion does not stand or fall with the adequacy or inadequacy of the argument it contains; a perception of the inadequacy of the argument may even lend it a greater devotional value. Devout persons will often welcome a supposed proof of the truth of what they believe, less because they need proof for themselves, than because they wish to be able to silence objectors; and, if only the objectors are silenced, they are often not very careful to examine too closely the means by which it is done. Thus they fall into the error of the scholasticism which roused the indignation of Bacon, the scholasticism which seeks not the truth but only the refutation of an opponent. They became impatient with the philosophical enquirer who has an eye for difficulties, and is never done grubbing up the roots of his convictions. And the philosophical enquirer is apt on his side to fall out of sympathy with the devout, and all the more so if they adorn their doctrine with the language of a philosophy which is to them no more than apologetics. In Anselm's Proslogion, however, he will not find apologetics but genuine enquiry; yet this enquiry is conducted in a spirit of the most profound devotion. This may seem a strange claim to make for a treatise whose alternative title is Faith in search of Understanding, and which contains the famous saying, Credo ut intelligam, I believe in order that I may understand. Is not this the very opposite of free enquiry, to make faith the starting-point? I do not think so. A philosophy of religion is as little attainable without a religious experience, which the philosopher first has, and then endeavours to understand, as a philosophy of aesthetic without an experience denied to one who is insusceptible to the beauty of nature and of art. It is this living religious experience, rather than merely the acquiescence in an authoritative dogma, that Anselm has in view when he speaks of faith. No doubt to him, living in an age when only one creed was practically presented to his mind, the distinction between these two meanings of faith was not obvious as it is to us. But I do not believe that an acquaintance with the writings of Anselm at first hand will allow a candid reader to see in him a mere apologist. He has much of the same originality and independence of mind, the same aptitude for introspection, as the reviver of his argument, Descartes; and as a philosopher of religion he has the advantage of the modern thinker in a far richer and more thorough religious experience with which to start. [7]

The story of the composition of the Proslogion is thus told by Anselm's companion and biographer, the monk Eadmer. "After this it came into his mind to enquire whether it would be possible to demonstrate by one short argument alone what is believed and taught concerning God, namely, that He is eternal, unchangeable, almighty, everywhere wholly present, in comprehensible, righteous, gracious, merciful, true, truth, goodness, righteousness, and so forth, and how all these attributes are one in Him. And this matter, as he told us, he found one of great difficulty. For the consideration thereof not only often robbed him of appetite and of sleep but, which vexed him more, distracted the direction of his thoughts to God at matins and at other services of the Church. When therefore he perceived this, and could not fully achieve the discovery of that which he sought, he concluded that this train of thought was a temptation of the devil, and strove to dismiss it from his mind. But the more he laboured to do this, the more did the thought haunt his mind. And all at once one night during the office of nocturns
[8] the grace of God shone into his heart, and the thing which he sought became plain to his understanding, and filled all his inward parts with an infinite joy and delight. Considering then in himself that the same reasoning if it were known to others might be pleasing to them also, he did not grudge them this satisfaction, but wrote down his argument on tablets and delivered them to a brother of the monastery for more careful custody. When some days had passed, he asked this brother for the tablets. Search was made in the place where they had been put by, but they could not be found. The brethren were asked after them, lest one of them should have taken them, but in vain. Nor could any one be found who acknowledged that he had known anything of them. Then Anselm wrote another discourse concerning the same matter on other tablets, and delivered them to the same brother to be kept more carefully. The brother laid them up in the innermost part of his bed-chamber, and the next day, though he had no suspicion of any mischief, found them lying about on the floor in front of his bed, the wax broken into fragments and scattered on every side. The tablets were picked up, the wax collected, and brought to Anselm; he put together the wax and, though with difficulty, recovered the writing. But fearing lest it should altogether be lost through carelessness, he commanded that it should be transcribed on parchment in the name of the Lord. And so he composed a book, small in bulk but great in the importance of the wise judgments and subtle reasonings which it contained, and this he called Proslogion or The Address. For herein he addresses either him self or God throughout. Now this work came into the hands of a certain person, who was not a little dissatisfied with some of the reasoning therein, and thinking it insufficient, desired to refute it. He composed therefore a treatise against it and wrote it at the end of Anselm's own work. This was then sent to Anselm by a friend; and when he had considered it, he was glad, and thanking his censor, he devised an answer to the censure, and adding that to the treatise which had been sent him, he returned to the friend who had sent it the censure and the reply together, in the hope that not only this friend but others who desired to possess his book, would wish it so, that to his own work should be added the censure of his reasoning, and to the censure his own answer thereunto." [9] [10]

The critic whose adverse judgment of his treatise Anselm received with such pleasure (showing thereby how far more he was in love with the truth than with his own opinion) is known to have been Gaunilo, a monk of Marmoutier, whose work under the title An Apology for the Fool (that is, for the Psalmist's fool who said, There is no God) is still found in editions of Anselm following the Proslogion, and followed in its turn by Anselm's rejoinder.

To the Proslogion I have added renderings of certain of the Meditations, Prayers, and Letters of Anselm. My choice has been made with a view to the devotion of Anglican Christians of to-day, for whom this series is primarily intended. I have thus not chosen for translation meditations and prayers, the language of which would be entirely uncongenial to modern Anglican feeling, prayers (for example) addressed to St Mary or to other saints. But what I have chosen, I have given in full.

I take this opportunity of acknowledging with grateful thanks the help which I have received in the preparation of this book for the press from my sister, Miss Mildred Webb, and from my friend, Mr Guy Kendall, of Magdalen College, who read the whole of it in proof.

St Anselm does not appear to me to rank, except in one kind, that of which the Proslogion is an example, among the great masters of devotional literature. His meditations and prayers are often indeed characteristic of their writer. The student of his theological and philosophical works will often notice in them phrases which show how deeply his thought entered into his personal religion and coloured its expression. They are in spirit exceedingly free from any taint of superstition; in many of his prayers addressed to saints there is a perfunctoriness and conventionality which show that, while he could use on occasion without misgiving the language of a view which made of God the image of an earthly king whose ear might be gained by the means of powerful favourites at court, this kind of devotion remained somewhat external to his inner life, the truer expression of which is found else where in prayers which breathe a genuinely evangelical spirit of trust in God through Christ alone.

The second Meditation (which I have included in this selection) is especially admired by Mr Rule. It is a striking example of mediæval piety in one of its most characteristic moods. In it a profound horror of sin and an intimate sense of personal sinfulness find expression under the vividly realised scriptural imagery of a great assize. Those who are acquainted with the history of Luther will remember how the great thought of justification by faith alone came to him as a deliverance from the spirit of distrustful and unloving anxiety which was a natural temptation of the monastic life. Isolated from the ordinary occupations, duties, and trials of human life, spending much time in self-examination, inspired with the ambition to exemplify as perfectly as possible in his own person a certain somewhat one-sided ideal of living, which was deliberately regarded as an ideal in itself higher than that of the secular Christian, the earnest religious had much to invite him now to a reliance on his own works, now (by reaction) to an unrelieved horror of the judgment which must be passed by a perfectly just Judge on an obedience so imperfect as self-examination showed him that his was. Thus the terror of the Lord has perhaps more than its due place in works of the class to which St Anselm's second Meditation belongs. Nevertheless this fear and horror of judgment is a normal stage in the development of the Christian life. Even where the Christian life has advanced beyond it, the moods of the Christian, like those of other men, are not always on a level with his highest spiritual attainment. The sincere expression of an important part of spiritual experience does not quickly lose its value, even though its form have fallen out of fashion. It has often been remarked that the middle ages, in their preoccupation with the thought of Christ as Judge, sometimes forgot to think of Him as Saviour, and therefore devised other mediators to stand between the guilty sinner and His wrath; and many representations of the Last Judgment in art give support to this observation. But however this may be, in this work of St Anselm's there is no such matter; he flies for refuge only to the Judge who is at the same time his Saviour.

The same is even more emphatically true of our third (Gerberon's sixth) Meditation. This is written in a style more simple than Anselm's is wont to be, but it is well attested for his, and is conceived entirely in his spirit. Through whatever changes the language of Christian devotion has passed or is yet to pass, the revelation of God in the life and death of Jesus Christ has been and is to thousands of Christians as to Anselm here, a revelation at once of sin condemned and salvation freely offered, in the light of which no thought either of the bargaining which derogates from the holiness of God, or of the merit which gives an occasion to human pride, can for a moment find a place.

Our fourth Meditation (Gerberon's eleventh) is thoroughly characteristic of Anselm. In great part it embodies the doctrine of the Atonement which is set forth at length in his famous theological work Cur Deus Homo. That doctrine is open to the charge of conceiving the whole matter from a legal standpoint, which gives to the notions connected with the owing and paying of debts an ultimate and absolute value that they cannot possess. It holds, however, an important place in the history of theology by reason of its decided rejection of the views which some had put forward that the death of Christ was a price paid to the devil, or even a trick played upon him. The latter view Anselm sees clearly to be inconsistent with holding God to be the Truth; it is indeed a low and heathenish notion, already before the days of Christianity condemned by Plato, who made it a canon of theology to attribute no deceitfulness to God. But even the theory that a price due to the devil had to be paid was false; for it gave to the power of evil an independent place over against God which believers in One God could not consistently concede to it. These theories Anselm rightly puts aside; but his own theory also falls short of what is required in a doctrine of the Atonement. It does not turn upon the love of God, but, as was said above, upon a legal conception of His justice. Distinctions between the divine and the human nature, between the Redeemer and the redeemed, are more present to his thought (though not to his feeling) than the unity in which the religious experience of reconciliation and atonement finds them overcome. Yet it must not be forgotten that the Christian sense of forgiveness differs from that which might be enjoyed by one who thought of God as a kindly being who forgets, rather than forgives, what is done amiss, just in this very point, that for the Christian full justice (as we say) is done to the forgiven sin; it is faced, known, "naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do." Thus forgiven, it is indeed, as sin, taken away; whereas, were it only passed over and ignored, it might be there still, poisoning the air; we should not really have done with it. A deep sense of sin and a genuine faith in its remission go together. Hence the readiness of the true penitent to bear the punishment of his sin, so he may be rid of the sin; the false penitent desires less to be rid of the sin than to escape the punishment. It is this aspect of the experience of atonement to which Anselm's language about a debt to be paid aims at giving expression.

Into the history of these devotional writings of Anselm I have not thought it my business to enter here. It will be found perhaps most fully treated by Mr Rule; or in the "Historical Notice " prefixed by Dr Pusey to a translation of Meditations and Prayers addressed to the Holy Trinity and our Lord Jesus Christ by S. Anselm, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, which was published by Parker at Oxford in 1856. I have translated from Gerberon's edition, which is reprinted in Migne's Patrologia Latina. The translation is a new one; but it is not in all cases the first offered to English readers. In 1708 Dean Stanhope of Canterbury published a book called Pious Breathings, Being the Meditations of St Augustine, his Treatise of the Love of God, Soliloquies and Manual, to which are added Select Contemplations from St Anselm and St Bernard: and in 1856 appeared the Oxford translation mentioned above, under the auspices of Dr Pusey. To this last I have occasionally been indebted for a word or phrase.

The devotion of St Anselm is of course the devotion of his age and circumstances. He was a monk, and his Christianity has a monastic cast; those who use this series for the most part take their share in the occupations of family, social, civil life, and their Christianity is affected by their experience as Anselm's was by his. The tone neither of his Christianity nor of theirs is exactly that of the New Testament. In one point the Christianity of the middle ages and that of our own time are alike contrasted with that of the Apostles; both recognise, ours, however, more completely than that of the middle ages, that the scientific life and the political life are spheres in which Christians may be expected to move. In another point our Christianity is contrasted with the mediæval and the apostolic, in that there, and especially in mediæval Christianity, the imagination dealt more confidently with the hopes and fears of a future life than is easy or possible for us. But, in spite of all this, there is a fundamental likeness among all the products of the Christian spirit: in all there is a contempt of the world which is not proud or bitter, but humbled by the consciousness of sin, and sweetened by the love of Christ. We have much reason to fear the warning addressed to those who say Lord, Lord, and do not the things that He said; but even to say Lord, Lord, to Christ, is to own a standard and an ideal which are not those of this world. The discontent with what falls short of that standard and that ideal, which it is the function of devotional writing to arouse, is aroused by Anselm in tones which are, as I have already suggested, especially worthy the attention of those whose natural bent is towards philosophical reflection. Two opposite dangers beset such persons: the indulgence in contemplation, which weakens the sense of personal sinfulness; and the fear of consequences, which refuses to follow the argument, in Plato's words, whithersoever it leads us. The study of Anselm, a pattern of humble penitence and of indefatigable intellectual curiosity, should discourage both these perilous tendencies, and encourage at once sound thought and genuine devotion. __________________________________________________________________

[1] His letters, of course, excepted.

[2] See for example Rémusat, Anselme de Canterbury, p. 366.

[3] Rémusat, Anselme de Canterbury, p. 348.

[4] Historia Novorum, i. (Migne, Patrologia Latina, clix. col. 385 B.

[5] Ps. xiv. 1.

[6] Eadmer, Vita Anselmi, ii. 7, § 72 (Migne, P.L., clviii. col. 115 B).

[7] I have discussed the comparison and contrast of Anselm and Descartes in a paper on Anselm's Ontological Argument for the Existence of God, published in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1895 (vol. iii. No. 2, pp. 25 foll.).

[8] I so translate inter nocturnas vigilias with Mr Rule. But it may mean only "during the watches of the night."

[9] The whole of this last sentence is somewhat obscure; but the general meaning is plain.

[10] Eadmer, Vita Anselmi, i. 3, § 26 (Migne, P.L, clviii. col. 63, 64). __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________

THE DEVOTIONS OF
ST ANSELM
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PROSLOGION
OR

ADDRESS TO GOD CONCERNING
HIS EXISTENCE
__________________________________________________________________

PREFACE

I FORMERLY published, at the instance of certain of my brethren, a little work, in which, assuming the person of one who by silent reasoning with himself is searching for a knowledge he does not yet possess, I gave an example of the manner in which we may meditate concerning the grounds of our faith. But afterwards, when I considered that this work was put together by the interweaving of a great number of arguments, I began to ask myself whether there might not perhaps be found some one argument which should have no need of any other argument beside itself to prove it, and might suffice by itself to demonstrate that God really exists and is the Supreme Good, which needeth nothing beside itself to give it being or well-being, but without which nothing else can have either the one or the other; and whereof all other things are true which we believe concerning the divine essence. And when after many times earnestly directing my thoughts to this matter, it sometimes seemed to me that what I sought was just within my grasp, but sometimes that it eluded my mind's sight altogether, at last I resolved in despair to renounce the search for a thing, the discovery whereof was beyond my powers. But this train of thought, so soon as I desired to lay it aside lest it should hinder my mind while vainly occupied therein from attending to other matters which might be more profitable to me, at once began to press itself as it were importunately upon me, unwilling and reluctant as I was to entertain it. And so one day, when I was wearied out with violently resisting this importunity, in the midst of the struggle of my thoughts, there so presented itself to me the very thing which I had given up hope of finding, that I hastened to embrace that very train of thought which I was but a moment ago anxiously thrusting from me. Thinking therefore that if I wrote down what I so greatly rejoiced to have found, it would please others who might read it, I wrote the following little work, treating of this and of some other matters, in the character of one striving to raise his thoughts to the contemplation of God and seeking to understand what he already believes. And because neither this nor the other treatise which I mentioned before, seemed to me worthy to be called a book or to have the writer's name set in the front of it, and yet I thought I must not let them go without some title to invite those to read into whose hands they might come, I gave a name to each, calling the former An example of meditation on the grounds of faith and the latter Faith in search of Understanding. But, when both had been often transcribed under these titles by divers persons, was constrained by many and especially by Hugh the reverend Archbishop of Lyons and Legate of the Apostolic See in Gaul, who laid his commands upon me in virtue of his apostolical authority, to prefix my name to them. And so that this might be done more fittingly, I have called the former Monologion, that is, The Soliloquy, and this Proslogion, that is, The Address. __________________________________________________________________

COME now, thou poor child of man, turn awhile from thy business, hide thyself for a little time from restless thoughts, cast away thy troublesome cares, put aside thy wearisome distractions. Give thyself a little leisure to converse with God, and take thy rest awhile in Him. Enter into the secret chamber of thy heart: leave everything without but God and what may help thee to seek after Him, and when thou hast shut the door, then do thou seek Him. Say now, O my whole heart, say now to God, I seek Thy face; Thy face, Lord, do I seek. [11] Come now then, O Lord my God, teach Thou my heart when and how I may seek Thee, where and how I may find Thee? O Lord, if Thou art not here, where else shall I seek Thee? but if Thou art everywhere, why do I not behold Thee, since Thou art here present? Surely indeed Thou dwellest in the light which no man can approach unto. [12] But where is that light unapproachable? or how may I approach unto it since it is unapproachable? or who shall lead me and bring me into it that I may see Thee therein? Again, by what tokens shall I know Thee, in what form shall I look for Thee? I have never seen Thee, O Lord my God; I know not Thy form. What shall I do then, O Lord most high, what shall I do, banished as I am so far from Thee? What shall Thy servant do that is sick for love of Thee, and yet is cast away from Thy presence? [13] He panteth to behold Thee, and yet Thy presence is very far from him. He longeth to approach unto Thee, and yet Thy dwelling-place is unapproachable. He desireth to find Thee, yet he knoweth not Thy habitation. He would fain seek Thee, yet he knoweth not Thy face. O Lord, Thou art my God, Thou art my Lord; and I have never beheld Thee. Thou hast created me and created me anew, and all good things that I have, hast Thou bestowed upon me, and yet I have never known Thee. Nay, I was created to behold Thee, and yet have I never unto this day done that for the sake whereof I was created. O miserable lot of man, to have lost that whereunto he was created! O hard and terrible condition! Alas, what hath he lost? what hath he found? what hath departed from him? what hath continued with him? He hath lost the blessedness whereunto he was created, and he hath found the misery whereunto he was not created; that without which nothing is happy, hath departed from him, and that hath continued with him which by itself cannot but be miserable. Once man did eat angels' food, [14] after which he now hungereth; now he eateth the bread of affliction, which then he knew not. Alas for the common woe of man, the universal sorrow of the children of Adam! Our first father was filled with abundance, we sigh with hunger; he was rich, we are beggars. He miserably threw away that in the possession whereof he was happy, and in the lack whereof we are miserable; after which we lamentably long and alas! abide unsatisfied. Why did he not keep for us, when he might easily have kept it that the loss whereof so grievously afflicts us? Wherefore did he so overcloud our day, and plunge us into darkness? Why did he take from us our life, and bring upon us the pains of death? Wretches that we are, whence have we been driven out and whither? From our native country into banishment, from the vision of God into blindness, from the joy of immortality into the bitterness and horror of death. How sad the change from so great good to so great evil! Grievous is the loss, grievous the pain, grievous everything. But alas for me, one of the miserable children of Eve, cast far away from God! What did I begin? and what have I accomplished? At what did I aim? and unto what have I attained? To what did I aspire? and where am I now sighing? I sought good, and behold, trouble. [15] I aimed at God, and have stumbled upon myself. I sought rest in my secret chamber, and I have found tribulation and grief in the inmost parts. I desired to laugh for gladness of spirit and am constrained to roar for the disquietness of my heart. [16] I hoped for joy and behold increase of sorrow. How long, O Lord, how long? How long, O Lord, wilt Thou forget us, how long wilt Thou hide Thy face from us? [17] When wilt Thou turn and hearken unto us? When wilt thou enlighten our eyes and show us Thy face? When wilt Thou restore Thy presence to us? Turn and took upon us, O Lord: hearken unto us, enlighten us, show us Thyself. Restore to us Thy presence that it may be well with us; for without Thee it goeth very ill with us. Have pity upon our labours and strivings after Thee, for without Thee we can do nothing. Thou callest us; help us to obey the call. I beseech Thee, O Lord, that I may not despair in my sighing, but may draw full breath again in hope. My heart is embittered by its desolation; with Thy consolation, I beseech Thee, O Lord, make it sweet again. I beseech Thee, O Lord, for in my hunger I have begun to seek Thee, suffer me not to depart from Thee fasting. I have come to Thee fainting for lack of food; let me not go empty away. I have come to Thee, as the poor man to the rich, as the miserable to the merciful, let me not return unsatisfied and despised: and if before I be fed, I sigh, grant me that, though after I have sighed, I may be fed. O Lord, I am bent downwards, I cannot look up: raise me up, that I may lift mine eyes to heaven. My iniquities are gone over my head, they overwhelm me; they are like a sore burden too heavy for me to bear. [18] Deliver me, take away my burden, lest the pit of my wickedness shut its mouth upon me: grant unto me that I may look upon Thy light, though from afar off, though out of the deep. I will seek Thee, with longing after Thee. I will long after Thee in seeking Thee, I will find Thee by loving Thee, I will love Thee in finding Thee. I confess to Thee, O Lord, and I give thanks unto Thee, because Thou hast created in me this Thine image, that I may remember Thee, think upon Thee, love Thee [19] : but so darkened is Thine image in me by the smoke of my sins that it cannot do that whereunto it was created, unless Thou renew it and create it again. I seek not, O Lord, to search out Thy depth, but I desire in some measure to understand Thy truth, which my heart believeth and loveth. Nor do I seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand. For this too I believe, that unless I first believe, I shall not understand. [20] __________________________________________________________________

[11] Ps. xxvii. 9.
[12] 1 Tim. vi. 16.
[13] Ps. li. ii.
[14] Ps. lxxviii. 26.
[15] Jer. xiv. 19.
[16] Ps. xxxviii. 8.
[17] Ps. xiii. 1.
[18] Ps. xxxviii. 4.

[19] St Anselm is here thinking of a favourite thought of his. I will try to state it as simply as I can. If a man at any time looks into himself, he is aware that he is thinking of something; he is conscious of two things; himself who thinks and what he is thinking of. This last may be himself too; he may be thinking of himself. Nay, it must always be himself in a sense, because it is his own idea or thought of other things that he has before him, when he thinks of them; not the things as they may be unthought of, but as they are in his mind. Now the consciousness of self as thinking, St Anselm always calls memory or memory of self; because it is in memory that we are chiefly aware of ourselves as being the same who yesterday did or felt one thing and to-day do or feel something else, and yet are the same in both cases; and the consciousness of what we are thinking about, our thought as distinguished from our self, he calls our understanding or understanding of self; because that is the end and upshot of our thinking, thoroughly to understand what we think about, and at last, so to put it, to understand ourselves and all that is in our minds and thoughts. But we should not care to do this if we did not have an interest in what we think about, and unless this interest carried us through as it were, and so St Anselm says that there would be no use or purpose in memory and understanding unless the object of them were either loved or else hated or rejected. And so the permanent nature of the mind is a trinity of self-consciousness (or, as St Anselm says, memory), understanding, and love; for love is the intensest form of the interest which continues without rejecting to contemplate any object. And therein he sees in the human mind an image of the Divine. For if we try to think of a Being which is eternally all which we are trying to be, and perfectly that which we are imperfectly (and we are of course only conscious of our imperfection in virtue of the notion of such a perfect Being with which we contrast ourselves) we shall think of this Being as conscious of Himself, as having before Him all that is in His mind, not as something not perfectly grasped or comprehended, hut as wholly land completely what He is in Himself, indissolubly united with Himself; a Thought not unexpressed but adequately uttered and so called a Word; a Word the complete expression of Himself, as real a person as Himself, as a Son with His Father; and this Word or Son loved with a love which is no mere feeling of the lover who remains distinct from the love he bears; but a love which is all that Himself is: and is fully and adequately reciprocated by its object: a Spirit of mutual Love, therefore, proceeding equally from both the Father and the Son: in other words a Trinity such as the Christian theology describes. Hence St Anselm sees in the trinity of memory, understanding and love in the human mind the truest image of the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost in God.

[20] Is. vii. 9, rendered in our version, If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established; and in the Vulgate, Si non credideritis, non permanebitis; but here, as often by mediæval writers, quoted from St Augustine in the form Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis, If ye will not believe, ye shall not understand, according to the Septuagint version of the words. __________________________________________________________________