Chapter VI
Truth, Freedom, and EvU Chapter VI On the truth of the senses.
Do you think that we have discovered all the instances of truth, aside from the Supreme Truth?
I've just recalled a certain truth weVe not yet mentioned.
T. What is it?
S. There is sometimes truth in our bodily senses—but not always, for at times they deceive us. Sometimes when I am looking at an object through a glass, my sight is mistaken, because it reports to me that the object I see through the glass is the same color as the glass; yet it really is a different color. And sometimes my sight leads me to believe that the glass is the color of the object on the other side of it, when really the object and not the glass has this color. And there are many other occasions when sight and the other senses deceive us.
It seems to me that this truth or falsity is not in our senses, but in our belief about them. The outer sense does not report lies to the inner sense, but the latter deceives itself.
This is sometimes easy to realize, other times difficult. For when a boy is afraid of the statue of a dragon posed as if to eat him up, we easily recognize that the sight of the dragon doesn't cause his fear (for the boy's sight reports to him nothing more than an older person's sight reports to him); rather, it is caused by his childish inner sense, which does not yet know well enough how to distinguish between a real thing and its likeness. The same thing happens when we see a person who resembles someone else and we mistake him for that other person—or, again when someone mistakenly thinks he hears the voice of a man, though, in fact, it only sounds like a man's voice. His inner sense causes these mistakes.
Now, what you said about glass happens the way it does because when sight passes through a body which has the color of air, it is no more prevented from receiving the likeness of the color it sees beyond the glass than when it passes through the air.^ And this is always the case except insofar as the body it 8 Anselm's theory of vision is that the eyes emit a ray which goes forth to receive or assume (accipere or assumere) the color of its object.
Cf. DL, Ch. 7. S-218. 27ff. (I).
Concerning Truth
passes through is denser or darker than air. For example, this is the case when sight passes through glass which has no color admixed to its own, or when we look through very clear water or through a crystal or through something having a similar color.
But when sight passes through some other color (for example, through tinted glass), it receives the color which it first encounters. Thus, having received and been modified by the color of the medium, either it receives imperfectly whatever additional color it encounters, or else it doesn't receive it at all.
Therefore, sight reports the color it apprehends first, and reports it to the inner sense either by itself or in combination with the color it apprehends subsequently. So if sight is modified by the first color up to its full capacity for receiving color, then it cannot at the same time sense an additional color. But if sight is not affected by the color in the medium so as to exhaust its capacity to sense color, then it can still sense another color. For example, if sight passes through a certain body, say glass, which is so thoroughly red that sight is fully modified by this redness, then it is unable to be modified by another color at the same time. But if sight first encounters a pane of glass, or something like it, which is not shaded a deep enough red to exhaust the capacity of sight to sense color, then it will be able to sense an additional color at the same time, up to its full capacity to receive color. Whoever is unaware of this fact thinks that sight reports that all the things it perceives in addition to the first color are either partially or entirely the same color. Thereby the inner sense imputes its own error to the outer sense.
We have the same kind of case when an unbroken stick, partly in water, partly not, is thought to be broken; or when we think that the faces we see in a mirror are real. So when sight and the other faculties of sense seem to report to us many things as being other than they really are, the fault is not with the senses, which report in accordance with their natural powers, but must be attributed to the souFs faculty of judgment, which does not clearly discern what the faculties of sense can and should do.
I don't think I will take the time to show this in any more detail, since for our purposes it would be more tedious than profitable. Let it suffice to say that whatever the senses seem to report, whether as a result of their nature or for some
Truth, Freedom, and Evil other cause [for example, because of a tinted glass], they function as they should. Therefore, they do what is right and true, and their truth falls under the category of the truth which is in actions.
S. Your answer has satisfied me.
I see no need to prolong discussing this question.
Chapter VII On the truth of the essence of things.
T. Now consider—still setting aside the question about Supreme Truth—whether we should think truth to be in anything other than the things we've already mentioned.
S. What could that be?
T. Do you think that there is anything, at any time or place, which is not in the Supreme Truth, or has not received what it is (insofar as it is) from the Supreme Truth? And do you think that there is anything which could be other than what it is in the Supreme Truth Itself?
S. No, we must not think so.
T. Therefore, whatever is, truly is—insofar as it is what it is in the Supreme Truth.
S. Absolutely. Everything which is, truly is—since it is nothing other than what it is in the Supreme Truth.
Therefore, there is truth in the essence of all that exists, because all things are what they are in the Supreme Truth.^
S. Truth is in the essence of things to such an extent that no falsehood can be there, since what exists falsely does not exist at all.
T. That's a good answer. But tell me whether anything should be different from what it is in the Supreme Truth.
S. No.
T. Well, if all things are what they are in the Supreme Truth, then without doubt they are what they ought to be.
' essentiae" Here "essentia" = essence, or being.
In DCD it frequently refers to a being, or to the class of all beings. Anselm also uses "essentia" interchangeably with "exisientia." Cf. S-190.10 (I).