This follows from the fact that the ideal is real. The ideas of the universal, the infinite, the perfect, the necessary, the immutable, the eternal cannot be either the intelligible object or the intelligible light, unless they are being. As abstractions, or as abstracted from being, they are simple nullities. {158} To think them is to think real, universal, infinite, perfect, necessary, immutable, and eternal being, the _ens perfectissimum_ of St. Anselm, the _ens necessarium et reale_ of the theologians, a greater than which or the contrary of which cannot be thought. That this _ens_, intuitively affirmed to every intellect, is God, is amply shown in the papers on "The Problems of the Age," and also that _ens_ or being creates existences, and hence there is no occasion for us to show it over again. But it will not do to say, as many do, that we have intuition of God. The idea is intuitive; and we know by intuition that which is God, and that he is would be indemonstrable if we did not; but we do not know by intuition that what is affirmed or presented in intuition is God. When Descartes says, "I think God, therefore God is," he misapprehends St. Anselm, and assumes what is not tenable. St. Anselm does not say he thinks God, and therefore God is; he says, "I think most perfect being, a greater than which cannot be thought," and therefore most perfect being is. The intuition is not God, but most perfect being. So the ideal formula, _ens creat existentias_ so ably defended in the papers on "The Problems of the Age," would be indefensible, if _Deus _were substituted for _ens_, and it read, God creates existences. That is true, and _ens_, no doubt, is _Deus_; but we know not that by intuition, and it would be wrong to understand St. Augustine, who seems to teach that we know that God is by intuition, in any other sense than that we have intuition of that which can be demonstrated to be God. We know by intuition that which is God, but not that it is God. St. Thomas seems to us to set this matter right in his answer to the question, _Utrum Deum esse sit per notum?_--He holds that _ens_ is _per se notum_, or self-evident, and that first principles in knowing, as well as in being, evidence themselves, but denies that _Deum esse sit per se notum_, because the meaning of the word _Deus_ or God is not self-evident and known by all. His own words are: "_Dico ergo haec propositio, DEUS EST, quantum in se est, per se nota est, quia praedicatum est idem cum subjecto Deus enim est suum esse, ut infra patebit. Sed qua nos non scimus de Deo QUID EST, non est per se nota est, sed indiget demonstrari._" [Footnote 39] [Footnote 39: Summa, pars. 1, quaest. 1 a. ln c.]