VII. This faculty necessarily produces an effect, and consequently involves a kind of superiority of the object over the intelligence. VIII. An intelligent being is not necessarily immediately intelligible. IX. Immediate intelligibility seems to require greater perfection than intelligence. X. Although not every intelligent being is intelligible, yet every intelligible being is intelligent. XI. God, who is in every sense infinite activity, is infinitely intelligent and infinitely intelligible by himself. XII. God is intelligible by all created intellects, provided it be his will to present himself immediately to them, and strengthen and elevate them as may be necessary. XIII. There is no repugnance in immediate intelligibility being communicated to some beings, which are consequently intelligible by themselves. XIV. Our soul, while united to our body, is not immediately intelligible, and we know it only by its acts. XV. In this want of immediate intelligibility is found the reason of the difficulty of ideological and psychological studies, and the obscurity which we experience in passing from direct to reflex knowledge. XVI. Therefore, the philosophy of the _me_, or that which seeks to explain the internal and external world by starting from the _me_, is impossible; it commences by denying one of the fundamental facts of psychology. XVII. Therefore, the doctrine of universal identity is also absurd, since it gives both intelligence and immediate intelligibility to matter, which can have neither. XVIII. Spiritualism, therefore, is a truth which springs as well from subjective as from objective philosophy, from intelligence as from intelligibility. XIX. We must, therefore, go beyond ourselves, and even rise above the universe to find the origin of either subjective or objective representation. XX. Therefore, we must ascend to a primitive, infinite activity, which places intelligences in communication among themselves and with the corporeal world. XXI. Therefore, purely ideological and psychological philosophy leads us to God. XXII. Therefore, philosophy cannot commence by a single fact, the origin of all other facts, but must, and does end with this supreme fact, the infinite existence, which is God.(12) CHAPTER XIII. REPRESENTATION OF CAUSALITY AND IDEALITY. 126. Besides the representation of identity, there is what I have called the representation of causality. A being may represent itself, a cause its effect. Productive activity is inconceivable, if the principle of the productive act does not in some manner contain the thing produced. Therefore we say that God, the universal cause of all that does or can exist, contains in his essence all real and possible beings in a virtual or eminent manner. A being can just as well present whatever it contains in itself, as it can represent itself; causality, therefore, under the conditions above explained, may be an origin of representation.