41. ONTOLOGICAL TRUTH CONSIDERED SYNTHETICALLY, FROM THE STANDPOINT OF ITS ULTIMATE REAL BASIS.—So far we have explained ontological truth as a relation of reality to the human intelligence; but this relation is not one of dependence. The objective term of the relation, the reality itself, is anterior to the human mind, it is not constituted by the latter. The subjective term, the abstract concept, is indeed as a vital product dependent on the mind, but as representative of reality it is determined only by the latter. Is there, however, an Intelligence to which reality is _essentially_ conformed, other than the human intelligence? Granted the actual existence of contingent realities, and granted that the human mind can derive from these realities rational principles which it sees to be necessarily and universally applicable to all the data of experience, we can demonstrate the existence of a Necessary Being, a First and Self-Existent Intelligence. Realizing, then, that God has created all things according to Infinite Wisdom, we can see that the essences of things are imitations of exemplar ideas in the Divine Mind (20). On the Divine Mind they depend essentially for their reality and intelligibility. It is because all created realities, including the human mind itself, are adumbrations of the Divine Essence, that they are intelligible to the human mind. Thus we see that in the ontological order, in the order of real gradation and dependence among things, as distinct from the order of human experience,(164) the reason why reality has ontological truth for the human mind is because it is antecedently and essentially in accord with the Divine Mind from which it derives its intelligibility. Although, therefore, ontological truth is for us proximately and immediately the conformity of reality with our own conceptions, it is primarily and fundamentally the essential conformity of all reality with the Divine Mind. All reality, actual and possible, including the Divine Essence itself, is actually comprehended by the Divine Mind, is actually in conformity with the exemplar ideas in the Divine Mind, and has therefore ontological truth even independently of its relation to created minds; but “in the (impossible) hypothesis of the absence of all intellect, such a thing as truth would be inconceivable”.(165)