Thinking about a necessary being › Being understood and being real

The painter in chapter II explains a distinction that Anselm accepts. Before making the picture, the painter has the planned work in the understanding. After making it, the painter understands that it also exists in reality. Thinking about something and recognizing its real existence are different conditions.

The denial of God is supposed to concede at least the first condition. According to Anselm, someone hearing and understanding the description has its subject in the understanding even while denying that it exists in reality. The argument does not begin by saying that every intelligible description already has an external instance.

This terminology can mislead a modern reader. A picture planned in the mind is not a tiny physical canvas inside the painter's head. Having something in the understanding names its availability to thought. Whether that availability licenses every later step is a further issue, rather than a fact settled by the spatial word in.

The distinction also gives a critic a starting point. Anselm must show why the unsurpassability condition changes the case. Repeating that the concept is understood cannot by itself supply that explanation, since the painter's unmade picture is understood too. The work of the proof occurs in the move from understood content to a contradiction in denying real existence.