So Anselm’s writings were intimately part of their author, and very part of his life-long meditation upon God. Led by the solicitations of others, as well as impelled by the needs of his own faculties and nature, he takes up one Christian problem after another, and sets forth his understanding of it with his conclusion. He is devout, an absolute believer; and he is wonderfully metaphysical. He is a beautiful, a sublimated, and idealizing reasoner, convinced that a divine reality must exist in correspondence with his thought, which projects itself aloft to evoke from the blue an answering reality. The inspiration, the radiating point of Anselm’s intellectual interest, is clearly given--to understand that which he first believes. It is a spontaneous intellectual interest, not altogether springing from a desire to know how to be saved. It does not seek to understand in order to believe; but seeks the happiness of knowing and understanding that which it believes and loves. Listen to some sentences from the opening of the _Proslogion_: “Come now, mannikin, flee thy occupations for a little, and hide from the confusion of thy cares. Be vacant a little while for God, and for a little rest in Him.... Now, O Lord my God, teach my heart where and how to seek thee, where and how to find thee. Lord, Lord, illuminate us; show us thyself. Pity us labouring toward thee, impotent without thee.... Teach me to seek thee, and show thyself to my search; for I cannot seek thee unless thou dost teach, nor find thee unless thou dost show thyself.... I make no attempt, Lord, to penetrate thy depths, for my intellect has no such reach; but I desire to understand some measure of thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. I do not seek to know in order that I may believe; but I believe, that I may know. For I believe this also, that unless I shall have believed, I shall not understand.”[347] So Anselm is first a believer, then a theologian; and his reason devotes itself to the elucidation of his faith. Faith prescribes his intellectual interests, and sets their bounds. His thought does not occupy itself with matters beyond. But it takes a pure intellectual delight in reasoning upon the God which his faith presents and his heart cleaves to. The motive is the intellectual and loving delight which his mind takes in this pursuit. His faith was sure and undisturbed, and ample for his salvation. His intellect, affected by no motive beyond its own strength and joy, delights in reasoning upon the matter of his faith.[348]