Monologion: Chapter 2
BASIC WRITINGS
seem that strength is the same thing as speed.Yet if a horse is good because it is strong or fast, how is it that a strong and fast robber is bad? So instead, just as a strong and fast robber is bad because he is harmful, so too a strong and fast horse is good because it is useful.And indeed, nothing is ordinarily considered good except either because of some usefulness, as health and things that contribute to health are called good, or because of some intrinsic value, as beauty and things that contribute to beauty are regarded as good.
But since the argument we have already considered cannot be refuted in any way, it must also be the case that all useful or intrinsically valuable things, if they are genuinely good, are good through the very same thing—whatever that is—through which all goods must exist. Now who would doubt that this thing, through which all goods exist, is itself a great good? Therefore, he is good through himself, since every good exists through him. It follows, therefore, that all other things are good through something other than what they themselves are, and he alone is good through himself. Now no good that exists through another2 is equal to or greater than that good who is good through himself. And so only he who alone is good through himself is supremely good. For something is supreme if it surpasses others in such a way that it has neither peer nor superior.Now that which is supremely good is also supremely great. There is, therefore, some one thing that is supremely good and supremely great—in other words, supreme among all existing things.
Chapter 2 On the same thing Now just as it has been found that there is something supremely good, since all good things are good through some one thing that is good through itself, in the same way it is inferred with necessity that there is something supremely great, since whatever great things exist are great through some one thing that is great through itself. Now I do not mean great in size, as a given body* is great; rather, [I mean great in the sense] that the greater something is, the better or worthier it is,as wisdom is great.And since only what is supremely good can be supremely great, there must be something greatest and best, that is, supreme among all existing things.
2 The expression "through another" appears frequently throughout the Monologion.Wherever it appears, it should be regarded as a shorthand form of "through something other than itself." Thus, when Anselm says that something "is good (or exists) through another," he means that the source of its goodness (or existence) is something other than itself.The contrast, sometimes merely implied but often expressed, is with God, who is whatever he is, not through another, but through himself.