Monologion: Chapter 9/Chapter 10
MONOLOGION
nothing, or that all things were made by him from nothing, these statements can quite sensibly be understood in this sense—that is, the things that once were nothing are now something. And the expression "he made them" or "they were made" is understood to mean that when he made them, he made something, and that when they were made, they were indeed made to be something. For in the same way, when we see someone whom some man has raised from a very lowly state to great riches or honors, we say,"Look! That man made him from nothing," or "He was made from nothing by that man"—that is, he who once was regarded as nothing is now thought to be truly something, because that man has made him so.
Chapter 9 That with respect to the reason of their maker, the things that were made from nothing were not nothing before they were made
But I seem to see something that forces me to distinguish carefully the sense in which the things that were made can be said to have been nothing before they were made. After all, there is no way anyone could make something rationally unless something like a pattern (or, to put it more suitably, a form or likeness or rule) of the thing to be made already existed in the reason of the maker. And so it is clear that what they were going to be, and what sorts of things, and how they were going to be, was in the reason of the supreme nature before all things were made.
Therefore,it is clear that the things that were made were nothing before they were made, in the sense that they were not what they now are and there was not anything from which they were made. Nonetheless, they were not nothing with respect to the reason of their maker, through which and in accordance with which they were made.
Chapter 10 That this reason is an utterance of things, as a craftsman says within himself what he is going to make Now what is that form of things that existed in his reason before the things to be created, other than an utterance of those things in his reason, just as, when a craftsman is going to make some work of his art, he first says it within himself by a conception of his mind? Now by an "utterance" of the mind or reason, I do not mean what happens when one thinks of the words that signify those things, but what happens when the things themselves (no matter whether they are yet to exist or already exist) are examined within the mind by the gaze of thought.
BASIC WRITINGS
For we know from frequent experience that we can say one and the same thing in three ways. For either we say a thing by making perceptible use of perceptible signs, that is, signs that can be perceived by the bodily senses; or by thinking imperceptibly within ourselves the very same signs that are perceptible when they are outside ourselves; or by not using these signs at all, whether perceptibly or imperceptibly, but rather by saying the things themselves inwardly in our mind by either a corporeal image or an understanding of reason that corresponds to the diversity of the things themselves. For example, in one way I say a man when I signify him by the word 'man', in another way when I think that same word silently, and in yet another way when my mind sees the man himself either through an image of a body (as when it imagines his sensible appearance) or through reason (as when it thinks his universal essence, which is rational, mortal animal).
Each of these three kinds of utterance corresponds to its own kind of word.
But the words of the kind of utterance that I put third and last, when they are about things that are not unknown, are natural; they are the same among all peoples. Now all other words were invented on account of these natural words. Therefore, where there are natural words, no other word is necessary to know a thing; and where natural words are impossible, no other word will serve to make a thing known. And it makes good sense to say that words are truer the more similar they are to, and the more distinctly they signify, the things of which they are words. Now except for those things that we use as their own names in order to signify themselves (like certain sounds: for example, the vowel 'a')—except for those, I say, no other word seems as similar to the thing of which it is a word, or expresses it in the same way, as the likeness that is expressed in the gaze of the mind of someone who is thinking the thing itself.6 And so that should by right be called the most proper and principal word for the thing.
So no utterance of anything whatsoever comes as close to the thing as that which consists of words of this sort. Furthermore, no other word in anyone's
6 Anselm's point here is that natural words resemble the things of which they are words, whereas conventional words do not. For example, the natural word (that is, the concept) of a lion actually resembles the lion, since it is simply the mind's conception of the lion itself.
The word 'lion', by contrast, does not resemble the lion much at all. It is only by convention that the word 'lion' calls up an image of a lion rather than of some other thing. There is one sort of case, however, in which conventional words do resemble the things of which they are words, and that is when we use a thing as its own name. To take Anselm's example, we use the letter 'a' as its own name. Obviously, the letter 'a' is like the letter 'a', and so the word is like the thing. But this is a limited and fairly uninteresting class of exceptions to the general rule that it is natural words that most closely resemble and most distinctly express the things of which they are words.