are nothing but empirics. For instance, when we expect that there will
be daylight to-morrow, we do so empirically, because it has always
so happened until now. It is only the astronomer who thinks it on
rational grounds.

  29. But it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths that
distinguishes us from the mere animals and gives us Reason and the
sciences, raising us to the knowledge of ourselves and of God. And
it is this in us that is called the rational soul or mind [esprit].

  30. It is also through the knowledge of necessary truths, and
through their abstract expression, that we rise to acts of
reflexion, which make us think of what is called I, and observe that
this or that is within us: and thus, thinking of ourselves, we think
of being, of substance, of the simple and the compound, of the
immaterial, and of God Himself, conceiving that what is limited in
us is in Him without limits. And these acts of reflexion furnish the
chief objects of our reasonings. (Theod. Pref. [E. 469; G. vi. 27].)

  31. Our reasonings are grounded upon two great principles, that of
contradiction, in virtue of which we judge false that which involves a
contradiction, and true that which is opposed or contradictory to
the false; (Theod. 44, 169.)

  32. And that of sufficient reason, in virtue of which we hold that
there can be no fact real or existing, no statement true, unless there
be a sufficient reason, why it should be so and not otherwise,
although these reasons usually cannot be known by us. (Theod. 44,
196.)

  33. There are also two kinds of truths, those of reasoning and those
of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is
impossible: truths of fact are contingent and their opposite is
possible. When a truth is necessary, its reason can be found by
analysis, resolving it into more simple ideas and truths, until we
come to those which are primary. (Theod. 170, 174, 189, 280-282,
367. Abrege, Object. 3.)

  34. It is thus that in Mathematics speculative Theorems and
practical Canons are reduced by analysis to Definitions, Axioms and
Postulates.

  35. In short, there are simple ideas, of which no definition can
be given; there are also axioms and postulates, in a word, primary
principles, which cannot be proved, and indeed have no need of
proof; and these are identical propositions, whose opposite involves
an express contradiction. (Theod. 36, 37, 44, 45, 49, 52, 121-122,
337, 340-344.)

  36. But there must also be a sufficient reason for contingent truths
or truths of fact, that is to say, for the sequence or connexion of
the things which are dispersed throughout the universe of created
beings, in which the analyzing into particular reasons might go on
into endless detail, because of the immense variety of things in
nature and the infinite division of bodies. There is an infinity of
present and past forms and motions which go to make up the efficient
cause of my present writing; and there is an infinity of minute
tendencies and dispositions of my soul, which go to make its final
cause.

  37. And as all this detail again involves other prior or more
detailed contingent things, each of which still needs a similar
analysis to yield its reason, we are no further forward: and the
sufficient or final reason must be outside of the sequence or series
of particular contingent things, however infinite this series may be.

  38. Thus the final reason of things must be in a necessary
substance, in which the variety of particular changes exists only
eminently, as in its source; and this substance we call God. (Theod.
7.)

  39. Now as this substance is a sufficient reason of all this variety
of particulars, which are also connected together throughout; there is
only one God, and this God is sufficient.

  40. We may also hold that this supreme substance, which is unique,
universal and necessary, nothing outside of it being independent of
it,- this substance, which is a pure sequence of possible being,
must be illimitable and must contain as much reality as is possible.

  41. Whence it follows that God is absolutely perfect; for perfection
is nothing but amount of positive reality, in the strict sense,
leaving out of account the limits or bounds in things which are
limited. And where there are no bounds, that is to say in God,
perfection is absolutely infinite. (Theod. 22, Pref. [E. 469 a; G. vi.
27].)

  42. It follows also that created beings derive their perfections
from the influence of God, but that their imperfections come from
their own nature, which is incapable of being without limits. For it
is in this that they differ from God. An instance of this original
imperfection of created beings may be seen in the natural inertia of
bodies. (Theod. 20, 27-30, 153, 167, 377 sqq.)

  43. It is farther true that in God there is not only the source of
existences but also that of essences, in so far as they are real, that
is to say, the source of what is real in the possible. For the
understanding of God is the region of eternal truths or of the ideas
on which they depend, and without Him there would be nothing real in
the possibilities of things, and not only would there be nothing in