Monologium, on the Being of God27 Chapter XXVII. It is not included among substances as commonly treated, yet it is a substance and an indivisible spirit.

sant'Anselmo d'Aosta († 1109) · Monologion · 1075-1076

Chapter XXVII. It is not included among substances as commonly treated, yet it is a substance and an indivisible spirit.

It is, therefore, evident that in any ordinary treatment of substance, this Substance cannot be included, from sharing in whose essence every nature is excluded. Indeed, since every substance is treated either as universal, i. e., as essentially common to more than one substance, as being a man is common to individual men; or as individual, having a universal essence in common with others, as individual men have in common with individual men the fact that they are men; does any one conceive that, in the treatment of other substances, that supreme Nature is included, which neither divides itself into more substances than one, nor unites with any other, by virtue of a common essence?

Yet, seeing that it not only most certainly exists, but exists in the highest degree of all things; and since the essence of anything is usually called its substance, doubtless if any worthy name can be given it, there is no objection to our calling it substance.

And since no worthier essence than spirit and body is known, and of these, spirit is more worthy than body, it must certainly be maintained that this Being is spirit and not body. But, seeing that one spirit has not any parts, and there cannot be more spirits than one of this kind, it must, by all means, be an indivisible spirit. For since, as is shown above, it is neither compounded of parts, nor can be conceived of as mutable, through any differences or accidents, it is impossible that it is divisible by any form of division.

Constat igitur quia illa substantia nullo communi tractatu substantiarum includitur, a cujus essentiali communione omnis natura excluditur. Nempe, cum omnis substantia tractetur aut esse universalis, quae pluribus substantiis essentialiter communis est, ut, hominem esse, commune est singulis hominibus; aut esse individua, quae universalem essentiam communem habet cum aliis, quemadmodum singuli homines commune habent cum singulis, ut homines sint; quomodo aliquis summam naturam in aliarum substantiarum tractatu contineri intelligit, quae nec in plures substantias se dividit, nec cum aliqua alia per essentialem communionem se colligit? Quoniam tamen ipsa non solum certissime existit, sed etiam summe omnium existit, et cujuslibet rei essentia dici solet substantia; profecto, si quid digne dici potest, non prohibetur dici substantia. Et quoniam non noscitur dignior essentia quam spiritus aut corpus; et ex his dignior est spiritus quam corpus: utique eadem asserenda est esse spiritus, non corpus. Quoniam autem nec ullae partes sunt ejusdem spiritus, nec plures esse possunt ejusmodi spiritus, necesse est ut sit omnino individuus spiritus. Quoniam enim, sicut supra constat, nec partibus est compositus, nec ullis differentiis vel accidentibus intelligi potest esse mutabilis, impossibile est ut qualibet sectione sit divisibilis.

Sidney Norton Deane (1878–1943), Chicago: Open Court, 1903. Fonte del testo digitale: English Wikisource transcription of the 1903 edition (each chapter checked against the OCR of the Internet Archive scan stanselmeproslog00anseuoft). Testo originale: Corpus Corporum (University of Zurich) TEI of the Patrologia Latina, via the CatholicCorpus mirror. Public domain in the US and Canada: published 1903; translator died 1943. Latin: Migne, PL 158 (1853), public domain.

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