The reason, therefore, why things are ontologically true for our minds, why our minds can apprehend their essences, why we can have any true knowledge about them, is in fact because both our minds and all things else, being expressions of the Divine Essence, are in essential conformity with the Divine Intellect. Not that we must know all this in order to have any logical truth, any true knowledge, about things; or in order to ascribe to things the ontological truth which consists in their conformity with our conception of their nature. The atheist can have a true knowledge of things and can recognize in them their conformity with his mental conception of their nature; only he is unaware of the real and fundamental reason why he can do so. Nor can he, of course, while denying the existence of God, rise to the fuller conception of ontological truth which consists in the essential conformity of all reality with the Divine Intellect, and its essential dependence on the latter for its intelligibility to the human intellect. Naturally, it is this latter and fuller conception of ontological truth that has been at all times expounded by scholastic philosophers.(166) We may therefore, define ontological truth as _the essential conformity of reality, as an object of thought, with intellect, and primarily and especially with the Divine Intellect_. The conformity of reality with the Divine Intellect is described as _essential_ to reality, in the sense that the reality is dependent on the Divine Intellect for its intelligibility; it derives its intelligibility from the latter. The conformity of reality with the human intellect is also essential in the sense that _potential_ conformity with the latter is inseparable from reality; it is an aspect really identical with, and only logically distinct from, the latter. But inasmuch as the _actual_ conformity of reality with our human conception of it is contingent on the existence of human intelligences, and is not _ultimately_ dependent on the latter, inasmuch as reality does not derive its intelligibility _ultimately_ from this conception—seeing that rather this conception is derived from the reality and is ultimately dependent on the Divine Exemplar,—this conformity of reality with the human mind is sometimes spoken of as _accidental_ to reality in contrast with the relation of dependence which exists between reality and the Divine Mind.