Anselm's Apologetic, Chapters I - X Summary and Analysis

Anselm responds to Gaunilo in ten brief chapters. Anselm first denies it is a fallacy to deduce the existence of a being in reality from one that exists in the understanding. On Anselm's view, what we can conceive and cannot conceive is a guide to what can and cannot exist. Thus, our understanding somehow links up with the world and is not wholly severed from it. Our inability to conceive of God not existing can tell us whether He exists. He continues to maintain that God can be conceived of, since this is something Gaunilo briefly doubted.

Anselm also disputes Gaunilo's island example, arguing that the Island is not analogous to God because God possesses existence by definition, whereas the island does not. He continues to press the argument that there...