Now those authors who hold that the ideal order of possible essences contemplated by the human mind is seen by the latter, as so contemplated, to have some being, some ideal being, really independent of the human mind itself, and of the actual contingent things from which they admit that the human mind derives its knowledge of such essences,—these authors _do not hold_, but _deny_, that this independent ideal being, which they claim for these essences, is _anything Divine_, that it is the Divine Essence as seen by the Divine Intellect to be imitable _ad extra_.(105) Hence they cannot fairly be charged with the error of ontologism. Renouncing Plato’s exaggerated realism, and holding that our knowledge of the ideal order of possible essences is derived by our mind from its consideration of _actual_ things, they yet hold that this ideal order is seen to have some sort of being or reality independent both of the mind and of actual things.(106) This is not easy to understand. When we ask, Is this supposed independent being (or reality, or possibility) of possible essences the ideal being they have in the Divine mind?—we are told that it is not;(107) but that it is something from which we can _infer, by reasoning_, this eternal, necessary, and immutable ideal being of these same essences in the Divine Mind. The considerations urged in the foregoing paragraphs will, however, have shown that the validity of this line of reasoning from possible essences to the reality of an Eternal, Divine, Immutable Intelligence is by no means evident or free from difficulties. Of course, when the existence of God has been proved from actual things, the conception of the Divine Intelligence and Essence as the ultimate source of all possible reality, no less than of all actual reality, will be found to shed a great deal of new light upon the intrinsic possibility of possible essences. Since, however, our knowledge of the Divine is merely analogical, and since God’s intuition of possible essences, as imitations of His own Divine Essence, completely transcends our comprehension, and is totally different from our abstractive knowledge of such essences, our conception of the manner in which these essences are related to the Divine Nature and the Divine Attributes, must be determined after the analogy of the manner in which our own minds are related to these essences.