De docta ignorantia

The maximum, than which there cannot be a greater, simply and absolutely, since it is greater than can be comprehended by us, because it is infinite truth, we attain in no other way than incomprehensibly. For since it is not of the nature of those things which admit exceeding and exceeded, it is above all that can be conceived by us; for all things whatever that are apprehended by sense, reason, or intellect differ within themselves and from one another in such a way that there is no precise equality among them. The maximal equality, therefore, which is other or diverse from nothing, exceeds every intellect; wherefore the absolute maximum, since it is all that is or can be, is wholly in act, and just as there cannot be a greater, by the same reason neither can there be a less, since it is all that can be.

But the minimum is that than which there cannot be a less. And since the maximum is of this sort, it is manifest that the minimum coincides with the maximum. And this will be clearer to you if you contract the maximum and the minimum to quantity. For the maximal quantity is maximally great; the minimal quantity is maximally small.

Absolve, therefore, the maximum and the minimum from quantity by mentally subtracting the great and the small, and you clearly discern that the maximum and the minimum coincide. For thus the maximum is a superlative just as the minimum is a superlative. Absolute quantity, therefore, is no more maximal than minimal, since in it the minimum and the maximum coincide.

Oppositions, therefore, admit only exceeding and excess in these things, and belong to them differently, but in no way to the absolute maximum, since it is above all opposition.

Since, therefore, the absolute maximum is absolutely in act all things that can be, in such a way without any opposition that in the maximum the minimum coincides, then it is above every affirmation alike and negation. And everything that is conceived to be, is no more than is not. And everything that is conceived not to be, is no more not than is.

But thus it is this which is all things, and thus all things so that it is none, and thus maximally this so that it is minimally itself. For to say otherwise: God, who is absolute maximality itself, is light, than: God is maximally light, who is minimally light. For otherwise absolute maximality would not be all possibles in act, if it were not infinite and the term of all things and terminable by none of all things, as we shall explain afterwards in what follows, by the loving-kindness of God himself.

This, however, transcends all our intellect, which cannot combine contradictories in its principle by way of reason, since we walk by those things which are manifest to us from nature itself, which, falling far short of this infinite power, cannot connect contradictories at once, distant from each other by infinity. Above every discourse of reason, therefore, we see the absolute maximality incomprehensibly to be infinite, to which nothing is opposed, with which the minimum coincides.

But the maximum and the minimum, as they are taken in this little book, exist as transcendent terms of absolute signification, so that above every contraction to quantity of mass or of power they embrace all things in their absolute simplicity.