Chapter 14
347 | Text and Translation Chapter 14 How and why God is both seen and not seen by those seeking him Have you found, O my soul, what you were seeking? You were seeking God, and you found him to be something which is the highest of all, than which nothing better can be thought, and to be life itself, light, wisdom, goodness, eternal blessedness, and blessed eternity, and to exist everywhere and always. But if you have not found your
God, how is he this which you have found, and which you have understood with certain truth and true certitude?
But if you have found him, why is it that you do not experience what you have found? Why, O lord God, does my sou! not experience you if it has found you? Has it not found that which it found to be the light and the truth?
But how did it understand this except by seeing the light and the truth? Could it understand anything at all about you except through your light and your truth? If it saw the light and the truth, it saw you. If it did not see you, it did not see the light or the truth.
Or are the truth and the light what it saw, and yet it did not see you, since it saw you to a certain extent, but did not see you as you are?
Lord my God, you who have formed and reformed me, tell my desiring soul what else you are other than what it has seen, so that it may see clearly what it desires. It strives so that it may see more, and it sees nothing beyond what it has seen except darkness. Indeed, it does not see darkness, which is in no way in you, but it sees that it can see no more because of its own darkness.
Why is this, lord, why is this?
Is its eye darkened by its own weakness, or dazzled by your brilliance?
But surely it is both darkened within itself and dazzled by you.
Certainly, it is both darkened by its own shallowness and overwhelmed by your immensity.
Truly, it is both constricted by its own narrowness and overcome by your vastness.
348 | PROSLOGION
Quanta namque est lux illa, de qua micat omne verum, quod rationali menti lucet!
Quam ampla est illa veritas, in qua est omne quod verum est et extra quam non nisi nihil et falsum est!
Quam immensa est, quae uno intuitu videt, quaecumque facta sunt, et a quo et per quem et quomodo de nihilo facta sunt!
Quid puritatis, quid simplicitatis, quid certitudinis et splendoris ibi est!
Certe plus quam a creatura valeat intelligi.
CAPITULUM XV
Quod maior sit quam cogitari possit Ergo, Domine, non solum es quo maius cogitari nequit, sed es quiddam maius quam cogitari possit. Quoniam namque valet cogitari esse aliquid huiusmodi: si tu non es hoc ipsum, potest cogitari aliquid maius te; quod fieri nequit.