(1) _Actual_ things furnish the basis of irrefragable proofs of the existence of God—the Supreme, Necessary, Eternal, Omniscient, and Omnipotent Being. But we are here inquiring whether a mind which has not yet so analysed actual being as to see how it involves this conclusion, or a mind which abstracts altogether from the evidence furnished by actual things for this conclusion, can prove the existence of such a being from the separate consideration of possible essences, their attributes and relations. Now it is not evident that to such a mind possible essences reveal themselves as having _eternal_ ideal being. Such a mind is, no doubt, conscious that it is not itself the cause of their possibility. But it sees that actual things _plus_ the abstract character of its own thought account sufficiently for all their features as it knows them. To the question: Is not their ideal being _eternal_? it can only answer: That will depend on whether the world of actual things can be shown to involve the existence of an Eternal Intelligence. Until this is proved we cannot say whether possible essences have any ideal being other than that which they have in human minds. (2) The actual things from which we get our concepts of possible essences do not exist _necessarily_. But, granted their existence, we know from them that certain essences are _de facto_ possible. They are not _necessarily_ given to us as possible, any more than actual things are necessarily given to us as actual. Of course, when they are thought of at all, they are, as objects of thought, necessarily and immutably identical with themselves, and related to one another as mutually compatible or incompatible, etc. But this necessity of relations, hypothetical as it is and contingent on the mental processes of analysis and comparison, involved as it is in the very nature of being and thought, and expressed as it is in the principles of identity and contradiction, is just as true of actual contingent essences as of possible essences;(100) and it is something very different from the sort of necessity claimed for possible essences by the contention that they must be conceived as having ideal being _necessarily_. The ideal being they have in the human mind is certainly not necessary: the human mind might never have conceived these possible essences.