BASA

34 J. Hapkins thus did not accuse Gaunilo of a double inconsistency. Moreover, at the beginning of his Reply he refers to the writer of On Behalf of the Pool as a believing Christian even though he admits to not knowing who the author is (Anselm did not so much as know Gaunilo's name). 16 Thus, that Gaunilo was a believer Anselm could only have learned from Sections 7 and 8. Of course, someone might protest that Section 8 by itself is sufficient to reveal that Gaunilo was a Christian, and that therefore Anselm still might have overlooked the switch in viewpoint in Section 7. But such a protest would be gratuitous given the fact that Anselm does not charge Gaunilo with an inconsistency between Sections 2 and 7. 2. Systematization of Anselm's text. For all the fault that Anselm finds with Gaunilo, he nonetheless regards him as raising criticisms which others might also be prone to espouse. Therefore, he requests that Gaunilo's attack, together with his own rebuttal, be appended to future transcriptions of the Proslogion. 17 More– over, his Reply parcels Gaunilo's criticisms into two groups: those which are regarded as having merit and those which are not. 18 This judgment about the merit, or force, of Gaunilo's objections determines the order of Anselm's Reply and is the reason for his not dealing with the objections in the order they were presented. Moreover, any attempt to rearrange the order of the Reply 19 will eclipse Anselm's weighting of bath Gaunilo's objec– tions and his own defenses. For instance, one reason for the brevity of the response (in Section 8) about the artist and the painting is Anselm's appraisal of the relative meritlessness of Gaunilo's criticism. This evaluation is readily evident from the fact that Anselm places it after Section 4; but this placing is lost sight of when the text of the Reply is broken up in order to map it over against On Behalf of the Pool. One justification proffered for this truncation is that the Reply is but « a series of notes which Anselm put together without 18 ln the Proslogion Preface Anselm explains why at first he did not append his name to his manuscript. « Modesty » of the same sort probably induced Gaunilo to publish his objections anonymously. 17 The Life of St Anselm by Eadmer, 31. 18 For this division see the opening sentences of Reply 5. 19 as do Hick and McGill.