97. To The Monk Maurice.
242 The Letters of St. Anselm
97. TO THE MONK MAURICE.
Anselm advises Maurice and the other monks at Conflans Sainte-Honorine how to deal with the long stay ofTheduinus at the French royal court and his disobe dience to the Rule. He informs Maurice that he has recently completed a tract on 'evil' and appends it to the letter.
BROTHER ANSELM, STYLED ABBOT OF BEC: TO HIS BELOVED
BROTHER AND SON, MAURICE, GREETING AND THE BLESSING OF
GOD.
FROM NOW ON I WANT YOU and the other brothers with you1 to behave in the following way towards that brother2 you wrote me about, as circumstances required, who, fol lowing the fancy of his own will, neglects the cloistral life and lingers at the king's court.3 If he comes to you I permit you to receive him and treat him with brotherly charity.
Show him, however, that on your own account you are afraid this might displease me. Make clear to him, with all due reserve, the extent of his foolhardiness and disobe dience. He is already delaying without either our command or permission; indeed he does not hesitate openly to con travene our command. I neither command him to return home, nor do I give him permission to stay at court. I sense that there are certain reasons which compel me to tolerate this presumption of his a little longer by pretending not to see it. But, unless he corrects himself fairly soon, then put ting aside all the reasons for which I have waited for him till now, I shall be forced to apply the severity of the Rule to him. I would, however, prefer him to correct himself on his own initiative rather than have me bring any more rigorous measures of punishment down on him.
Moreover, at the request of certain brothers repeatedly begging me to do so—as you know—I recently completed that treatise4 which deals with the question of how, when evil is said to be nothing, the word 'evil' signifies some thing. I have arranged for it to be attached to this letter as you requested and brought to you by the bearer.
The Letters of St. Anselm
If evil is nothing, how does the word for it signify some thing? Again, if in hearing the word 'evil' we understand something which horrifies us and which we think should be avoided, how is it that either evil is nothing or the word
'evil' signifies nothing? But then what is nothing itself? In deed since 'to be nothing' and 'not to be something' in no way differ, how can we say a thing that is is not something?
The very noun we call 'nothing', if it signifies nothing, that is, if it does not signify something, is not a noun. But it is a noun. Therefore, although no one could say that nothing is something (rather we are always forced to admit that noth ing is 'nothing') nevertheless, no one can deny that the noun 'nothing' is meaningful.
On the contrary, if this very noun signifies not nothing but something, it seems that what is signified cannot be nothing but [is] rather something. If, therefore, what is sig nified is not nothing, but something, how can it be true that it is signified by this noun? Indeed, what is truly called
'nothing' truly is nothing and therefore it is not something.
Hence, if what is signified by this noun is something and not-nothing—as the argument seems to show—then the noun is applied falsely and inappropriately. Still, on the con trary, if in everyone's judgement what is called 'nothing' really is nothing and not in any way something, does it not seem altogether more logical that the noun would signify nothing, that is, that it does not signify something? How then can it be that this noun 'nothing' does not signify noth ing, but something, and yet does not signify something but nothing?
Or perhaps there is no conflict in the significance of 'something' and 'nothing'? But if they are not in conflict, either something would have to be found which is both something and nothing, which cannot be conceived, or else the word in question signifies nothing and something in different respects. It is clear that this word 'nothing' is no different, as far as its significance goes, to the expression
'not-something'. Nothing is more obvious than that this
The Letters of St. Anselm word 'not-something' signifies in its utterance that entirely every thing, and whatever is something, is to be set aside from the understanding and that nothing whatever, not any thing at all that is something is to be posited. But since the exclusion of a thing cannot be signified at all except by way of the signification of the very thing whose removal is sig nified, it is necessary that the word 'not-something', in ex cluding what is something, signifies something. But since in removing whatever is something it signifies no essence which the hearer's mind can hold as something existent, it follows that the word 'not-something' does not signify a reality or does not signify what is something.
Thus for these different reasons this word 'not-something' to some extent signifies a reality and something, and [equally] does not at all signify a reality or something. For it signifies by way of negation; it does not signify by way of affirmation. For this reason the word 'nothing', which excludes whatever is something, in its eliminative role sig nifies not nothing but something, and in its constitutive role signifies not something but nothing. It follows that there is no need for nothing to be something on the grounds that the word for it signifies something in a general way; what is necessary instead is that nothing is nothing, since the word for it signifies something in this particular way. In this manner there is no contradiction in saying that evil is nothing and that the word 'evil' has significance; it refers to something by exclusion while being constitutive of nothing.
By this reasoning, however, evil and nothing may really signify something, and yet what is thus signified is not evil or nothing. There is yet a further reason by which they sig nify something and what is signified is something, albeit not really something but quasi-something. Indeed, many expressions belong to the formal mode without being real.
The verb 'to fear' is said to be active in form though it is passive in reality. So too 'blindness' refers to something in the formal mode of speech though it is not something in
The Letters of St. Anselm
reality. For as we say of someone that he has sight and sight is in him so we say that a person has blindness and blind ness is in him, even though blindness is not something but is instead not-something. To have blindness is not to have something, indeed it is rather to lack what is something.
Blindness, now, is nothing but non-sight, or the absence of sight where sight should be present. But non-sight or the absence of sight is no more something in situations where sight should be present than in situations where it does not belong. Thus blindness is no more something in the eye because sight should be present there than non-sight or the absence of sight is something in a stone, where it has no place. A great many other things are also expressed in the formal mode of speech, things which are not some thing, even though we speak of them in the same way we do of existing things. In this manner evil and nothing sig nify something, though what is signified is something not in reality, but in the formal mode of speech. For nothing does not signify something other than not-something or the absence of those things which are something. And evil is not something other than not-good or the absence of good where good ought to be or would be appropriate. But what is not other than the absence of what is something is cer tainly not something. Evil therefore is really nothing and nothing is not something. And yet they are something in some way, because we speak of them as if they were some thing as when we say: 'he did nothing or evil', or 'what he did is nothing or is evil'. This is the same when we say:
'he did something or good', or: 'what he did is something or it is good'. c. 1083.
NOTES 1. Maurice and the other brothers were at Conflans Sainte-Honorine, where a dependency of Bee was founded in 1080; see also Ep 104.
It is situated north-west of Paris where the river Oise joins the river Seine.