Proslogion: Chapter 2
PROSLOGION
hopefully again. I beseech you, Lord: my heart is made bitter with its desolation; sweeten it with your consolation. I beseech you, Lord: in my hunger I began to seek you; let me not depart from you empty. I have come to you starving; let me not leave unsatisfied. I have come as a beggar to one who is rich, as a pitiful wretch to one who has pity; let me not go back penniless and despised. If indeed "I sigh before I eat,"15 grant that I might eat after I sigh.
Lord, I am bent double; I can only look down. Raise me up so that I can turn my gaze upwards. "My sins are heaped up over my head" and entangle me;
"like a heavy burden" they weigh me down.16 Extricate me; lift my burdens, "lest like a pit they swallow me up."17 Let me look up at your light, whether from afar or from the depths. Teach me how to seek you, and show yourself to me when I seek. For I cannot seek you unless you teach me how, and I cannot find you unless you show yourself to me. Let me seek you in desiring you; let me desire you in seeking you. Let me find you in loving you; let me love you in finding you.
I acknowledge,Lord,and I thank you,that you have created in me this image of you so that I may remember you, think of you, and love you.Yet this image is so eroded by my vices, so clouded by the smoke of my sins, that it cannot do what it was created to do unless you renew and refashion it. I am not trying to scale your heights, Lord; my understanding is in no way equal to that.
But I do long to understand your truth in some way, your truth which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand in order to believe;
I believe in order to understand. For I also believe that "Unless I believe, I shall not understand."18
Chapter 2 That God truly exists Therefore, Lord, you who grant understanding to faith, grant that, insofar as you know it is useful for me, I may understand that you exist as we believe you exist, and that you are what we believe you to be. Now we believe that you are something than which nothing greater can be thought. So can it be that no such nature* exists, since "The fool has said in his heart,'There is no 15 Job 3:24.
16 Psalm 38:4 (37:5).
17 Psalm 69:15 (68:16).
18 Cf. Isaiah 7:9 in the Old Latin version: "Unless you believe, you will not understand."
Anselm is here indebted to Augustine, who frequently appealed to this verse in explaining his views on the relationship between faith and reason.