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Gaunilon's criticism.---The above criticism was stated, for
substance, by the monk Gaunilon during Anselm's own lifetime.
Thus Gaunilon urged that if the argument were a valid
movement of thought, it would involve peculiar and wholly ridiculous
results: if God exists necessarily and objectively,
merely because He exists in my understanding as that than
which nothing greater can be conceived, "could it not with
equal justice be said that I have in my understanding all manner
of unreal objects, having absolutely no existence in themselves,
because I understand these things if one speaks of them, whatever
they may be?" (Footnote 3: Anselm, op. cit., p. 146) If I
can argue from my clear concept of God to His actual existence,
could I not create a whole universe in the same way? Nor is it a
sufficient answer to say that while such a passage of thought is
not legitimate in the case of any other concept, it is legitimate in
the case of the concept of God: for this is just what the argument
ought to prove and it fails to do so.
Nor can the ontological argument be urged by observing that
if such a being did not exist, it would not be that than which
nothing [[188]] greater can be conceived: for here again I have
smuggled in the objective existence that I ought to be proving.
If God does not exist, He is not God: that is true enough. But
whether He does actually exist is not established by the necessity
that my concept of Him involves the idea of Him as necessarily
existing. Thus unless we can begin our argument from
some conceded existential base, we might argue with Gaunilon
when he says: "I even deny or doubt that this being is greater
than any real object." (Footnote 4: Ibid., p. 150.) IN brief, all
that the argument proves is a conceptual and not an objective or
ontological necessity. Though Gaunilon failed to concede the
point, it ought to be admitted that when I conceive God, I must
conceive Him as necessarily existing. But only if I have already
assumed that such a conceptual necessity imposes or im-