Among the French writers, Malebranche, perhaps, reminds us with the least disadvantage, although very imperfectly still, of the manner of Plato: he sometimes expresses its elevation and grace; but he is far from possessing the Socratic good sense, and, it must be confessed, no one has clouded more the theory of ideas by exaggerations of every kind which he has mingled with them.[59] Instead of establishing that there is in the human reason, wholly personal as it is by its intimate relation with our other faculties, something also which is not personal, something universal which permits it to elevate itself to universal truths, Malebranche does not hesitate to absolutely confound the reason that is in us with the divine reason itself. Moreover, according to Malebranche, we do not directly know particular things, sensible objects; we know them only by ideas; it is the intelligible extension and not the material extension that we immediately perceive; in vision the proper object of the mind is the universal, the idea; and as the idea is in God, it is in God that we see all things. We can understand how well-formed minds must have been shocked by such a theory; but it is not just to confound Plato with his brilliant and unfaithful disciple. In Plato, sensibility directly attains sensible things; it makes them known to us as they are, that is to say, as very imperfect and undergoing perpetual change, which renders the knowledge that we have of them almost unworthy of the name of knowledge. It is reason, different in us from sensibility, which, above sensible objects, discovers to us the universal, the idea, and gives a knowledge solid and durable. Having once attained ideas, we have reached God himself, in whom they have their foundation, who finishes and consummates true knowledge. But we have no need of God, nor of ideas, in order to perceive sensible objects, which are defective and changing; for this our senses are sufficient. Reason is distinct from the senses; it transcends the imperfect knowledge of what they are capable; it attains the universal, because it possesses something universal itself; it participates in the divine reason, but it is not the divine reason; it is enlightened by it, it comes from it,--it is not it. Fenelon is inspired at once by Malebranche and Descartes in the treatise, _de l'Existence de Dieu_. The second part is entirely Cartesian in method, in the order and sequence of the proofs. Nevertheless, Malebranche also appears there, especially in the fourth chapter, on the nature of ideas, and he predominates in all the metaphysical portions of the first part. After the explanations which we have given, it will not be difficult for you to discern what is true and what is at times excessive in the passages which follow:[60]