Let the author speak for himself. "The terms _verum_ and _factum_, _the true_ and _the made_, are used one for the other, in the Latin language, or, as the schoolmen say, are convertible. _Intelligere_, to understand, is the same as to read with clearness and to know with evidence. They used _cogitare_ in the sense of the Italian _pensare e andar raccogliendo_; _ratio_ with them meant a collection of numerical elements, and also the gift by which man is distinguished from, and made superior to, the brute. They defined man to be an animal participating of reason; _animal rationis particeps_: and consequently not absolutely possessed of it. As words are the signs of ideas, so also are ideas the signs and representations of things. Thus, as to read, _legere_, is to unite the elements of writing, which form the words; so to understand, _intelligere_, is to unite all the elements which constitute the perfect idea of anything. Hence we infer that the doctrine of the ancient Italians concerning truth was as follows: Truth is the same as fact; and consequently God is the first truth, because he is the first maker, _factor_; the infinite truth, because he made all things; the absolute truth, because he represents all the elements of things, both internal and external, for he contains them. To know is to unite the elements of things: hence it follows that thought, _cogitatio_, is a property of the human mind; and intelligence a property of the divine mind, because God contains all the internal and all the external elements of things, and therefore he unites them, and he it is that disposes them; whereas the human mind limited as it is, and separated from all that is not itself, may bring together extreme points, but cannot unite them; it may think of things, but cannot understand them; and this is why it is said to participate of reason, but not to possess it. Let us explain these ideas by a comparison. Divine truth is a solid image of things, a sort of plastic figure; human truth is an image on a plane, it has no depth, but is a sort of painting. Divine truth is true, because God knows in the same act by which he disposes and produces; human truth is in relation to things which man in like manner disposes and creates. Science is the cognition of the mode in which the thing is made; a cognition in which the mind makes its object, since it recomposes its elements. For God, who understands every thing, the object is a solid; but it is a surface for man who understands only the exterior. These points being settled, in order that we may more easily make them harmonize with our religion, let us observe that the ancient philosophers of Italy identified truth and fact, for they believed the world to be eternal. Thus the pagan philosophers adored a God who always operated _ad extra_, a point rejected by our theology. Wherefore in our religion, in which we profess that the world was created in time, and out of nothing, it