"Truth must somewhere be very perfectly understood, and man is to himself an indubitable proof of this. For, whether he considers himself or extends his vision to the beings that surround him, he sees every thing subjected to certain laws, and to immutable rules of truth. He sees that he understands these laws, at least in part,--he who has neither made himself, nor any part of the universe, however small, and he sees that nothing could have been made had not these laws been elsewhere perfectly understood; and he sees that it is necessary to recognize an eternal wisdom wherein all law, all order, all proportion, have their primitive reason. For it is absurd to suppose that there is so much sequence in truths, so much proportion in things, so much economy in their arrangement, that is to say, in the world, and that this sequence, this proportion, this economy, should nowhere be understood:--and man, who has made nothing, veritably knowing these things, although not fully knowing them, must judge that there is some one who knows them in their perfection, and that this is he who has made all things...." Sect. 6 is wholly Cartesian. Bossuet there demonstrates that the soul knows by the imperfection of its own intelligence that there is elsewhere a perfect intelligence. In sect. 9, Bossuet elucidates anew the relation of truth to God. "Whence comes to my intelligence this impression, so pure, of truth? Whence come to it those immutable rules that govern reasoning, that form manners, by which it discovers the secret proportions of figures and of movements? Whence come to it, in a word, those eternal truths which I have considered so much? Do the triangles, the squares, the circles, that I rudely trace on paper, impress upon my mind their proportions and their relations? Or are there others whose perfect trueness produces this effect? Where have I seen these circles and these triangles so true,--I who am not sure of ever having seen a perfectly regular figure, and, nevertheless, understand this regularity so perfectly? Are there somewhere, either in the world or out of the world, triangles or circles existing with this perfect regularity, whereby it could be impressed upon my mind? And do these rules of reasoning and conduct also exist in some place, whence they communicate to me their immutable truth? Or, indeed, is it not rather he who has everywhere extended measure, proportion, truth itself, that impresses on my mind the certain idea of them?... It is, then, necessary to understand that the soul, made in the image of God, capable of understanding truth, which is God himself, actually turns towards its original, that is to say, towards God, where the truth appears to it as soon as God wills to make the truth appear to it.... It is an astonishing thing that man understands so many truths, without understanding at the same time that all truth comes from God, that it is in God, that it is God himself.... It is certain that God is