The conception of spirit must contain the equivalent of the conception of matter, and the conception of matter must contain something the equivalent of which is contained in spirit. Else, they must be related as total opposites, which leads to the absurd conclusion that in the essence of God, which is the equivalent of all finite essences, total opposites and contradictions are contained. The same is affirmed by F. Billuart after the scholastic principles of the Thomists. "Supremum autem naturae inferioris attingitur a natura superiori." "The summit of the inferior nature is touched by the superior nature." [Footnote 7] Everything copies the essence of God and exists by its participation in his being. There is no reason therefore for any other distinction in creatures except the distinction of gradation in a series, or the distinction of a more or less intense grade of participation in being. God cannot create anything totally {9} dissimilar to himself, because the sole archetype imitable in the creative act, whose similitude is externised in creation, is himself. All things therefore being similar to his essence are similar to the essence of one another, each to each, each grade in the ascending series containing the equivalent of all below it. [Footnote 7: De Augelis. Diss. II. Art. I.] The material creation represents the real being of God, as distinguishable in thought from his life and intelligence, in an express and distinct manner. The being of God is the archetype of the material creation, and contains a reason why the material order was necessary to perfect the universe. All geometrical principles are intuitively seen by the reason to be eternal truths. As eternal and necessary they are included in the object of the divine contemplation. The complete and adequate object of the divine contemplation is the divine essence. It is therefore in his own essence that God sees these necessary geometrical truths, not as we see them, but as identical with the truth of his own being in some way above our human understanding. These eternal geometrical principles are the principles which lie at the basis of the structure of the material universe, which therefore represents something in the divine essence not immediately and distinctly represented by the spiritual world.