103. The two capital problems: whence the intellectual representation, and whence its conformity to objects, have with us a most simple explanation. Our understanding, although limited, participates in the infinite light; this light is not that which exists in God himself, but a semblance communicated to a being created according to his image. Illumined by this light, objects shine upon the eyes of our mind, whether because they are in communication with it by means unknown to us, or because the representation is given to us directly by God, in the presence of objects. The conformity of the representation to the thing represented, results from the divine veracity. An infinitely perfect God cannot take pleasure in deceiving his creatures. Such is the theory of Descartes and Malebranche, eminent thinkers, who took no step in the intellectual order, without looking to the Author of all light, and who never wrote a page on which the name of God was not traced. 104. As will hereafter be seen, Malebranche admitted that man sees every thing in God, even in this life; but his system, far from identifying the human _me_ with the infinite being, carefully distinguishes them, not finding other means to sustain and enlighten the former than by approximating and uniting it to the second. To read the great metaphysician's immortal work is enough to convince one that his system was not that of this pure, primitive intuition, which is an act required of all empiricism, and which seems to rise within the limits of philosophy, from that intuition of the simple fact, the origin of all ideas and all facts, in which one of the dogmas of our religion, the beatific vision, seems realized upon earth in the domain of philosophy. These are senseless pretensions, and as far from the mind as from the system of Malebranche.(9) CHAPTER X. PROBLEM OF REPRESENTATION: MONADS OF LEIBNITZ. 105. The pretension to find a real truth, the fountain of all others, is dangerous in the extreme, however indifferent it may at first sight appear. Pantheism, and the deification of the _me_, two systems which coincide at bottom, are a consequence not easy to be avoided if it be attempted to establish all human science upon one fact. 106. The real truth or fact, which would serve as the basis of all science, should be immediately perceived, otherwise it would lack the character of origin and basis of other truths; because the medium by which it should be perceived would itself have the better right to the title of first truth. If this intermediate fact were the cause of the other, evidently this latter would not be primitive; and if the priority were given to the order of knowledge instead of the order of being, we should still have the same difficulty as now to explain the transition from subject to object, or the legitimacy of the medium by which we perceive the primitive fact.