Chapter 14. How and why God is seen and yet not seen by those who seek ... (Proslogium (Discourse on the existence of God)) (Anselm of Canterbury, St.)

Have you found what you did seek, my soul? You looked for God. You have found him to be a being which is the highest of all beings, a being than which nothing better can be conceived; that this being is life itself, light, wisdom, goodness, eternal blessedness and blessed eternity; and that it is every where and always.

For, if you have not found your God, how is he this being which you have found, and which you have conceived him to be, with so certain truth and so true certainty? But, if you have found him, why is it that you do not feel you have found him? Why, O Lord, our God, does not my soul feel you, if it has found you? Or, has it not found him whom it found to be light and truth? For how did it understand this, except by seeing light and truth? Or, could it understand anything at all of you, except through your light and your truth?

Hence, if it has seen light and truth, it has seen you; if it has not seen you, it has not seen light and truth. Or, is what it has seen both light and truth; and still it has not yet seen you, because it has seen you only in part, but has not seen you as you are? Lord my God, my creator and renewer, speak to the desire of my soul, what you are other than it has seen, that it may clearly see what it desires. It strains to see you more; and sees nothing beyond this which it has seen, except darkness. Nay, it does not see darkness, of which-there is none in you; but it sees that it cannot see farther, because of its own darkness.

Why is this, Lord, why is this? Is the eye of the soul darkened by its infirmity, or dazzled by your glory? Surely it is both darkened in itself, and dazzled by you. Doubtless it is both obscured by its own insignificance, and overwhelmed by your infinity. Truly, it is both contracted by its own narrowness and overcome by your greatness.

For how great is that light from which shines every truth that gives light to the rational mind? How great is that truth in which is everything that is true, and outside which is only nothingness and the false? How boundless is the truth which sees at one glance whatsoever has been made, and by whom, and through whom, and how it has been made from nothing? What purity, what certainty, what splendor where it is? Assuredly more than a creature can conceive.