BASA

32 J. Hopkins illud existere. Gaunilo's meaning would stand out better with the use of parentheses: non [passe] hoc aliter cogitare, nisi intelligendo (id est scientia comprehendendo) re ipsa illttd existere. In other words, Anselm supposes that Gaunilo is defining « understanding x » as « apprehending with certainty that x really exists » - whereas all he is doing is defining « understanding » as « apprehending with certainty. » This confusion on Anselm's part leads him to say that Gaunilo's position is inconsistent, inasmuch as the definition is incom– patible with stating, as Gaunilo did a few lines earlier, that sometimes (discourse about) unreal things can be understood. Furthermore, Anselm fails to realize that Gaunilo at this stage is not advocating the definition but is simply hypothesizing about a move Anselm might want to make, and about the consequences thereof. But how do we know that Anselm's reading is wrong? Surely, it may be contended, he better than we could make sense of Gaunilo's Latin; he better than we knew how to read the pericope beginning with Nisi forte (S I , 125 :17). Nonetheless, that Anselm is mistaken is clear. In the first place, we may disqualify the a priori principle that Anselm must have interpreted the passage rightly simply because he understood the Latin of his day better than we do; for the correct interpretation of Gaunilo does not depend merely upon familiarity with ecclesiastical Latin of the eleventh century. It depends as well upon detecting the structure of an argument. And at this perhaps we today excel Anselm (as, for that matter, someone today might also surpass him in the knowledge of eleventh-century ecclesiastical Latin). Secondly, if there is any a priori principle involved, it is the a priori improbability that Gaunilo contradicted himself within the scope of a few lines. Any such apparent contradiction should lead us to question whether we are correctly interpreting his words. For such an apparent contradiction casts a prima facie doubt upon the interpretation and (in our case) the translation. All other things being equal, we are obliged to choose the interpretation which makes sense out of the passage since we recognize from the remainder of the treatise that Gaunilo was too clever to write so incoherently as Anselm's interpretation requires. A further subtlety now arises. Given Anselm's construal of the definition of intelligere in On Behalf of the Pool 2, what does