34. It is thus that mathematicians by analysis reduce speculative theorems and practical canons to definitions, axioms and postulates.
35. And finally, there are simple ideas of which no definition can be given; there are also axioms and postulates,—in one word, ultimate principles, which cannot and need not be proved. And these are “Identical Propositions,” of which the opposite contains an express contradiction.
36. But there must also be a sufficient reason for truths contingent, or truths of fact—that is, for the series of things diffused through the universe of creatures—or else the process of resolving into particular reasons might run into a detail without bounds, on account of the immense variety of the things of nature, and of the infinite division of bodies. There is an infinity of figures and of movements, present and past, which enter into the efficient cause of my present writing; and there is an infinity of minute inclinations and dispositions of my soul, present and past, which enter into the final cause of it.
37. And as all this detail only involves other anterior or more detailed contingencies, each one of which again requires a similar analysis in order to account for it, we have made no advance, and the sufficient or final reason must be outside of the series of this detail of contingencies,[[4]] endless as it may be.
38. And thus the final reason of things must be found in a necessary Substance, in which the detail of changes exists eminently as their source. And this is that which we call God.
39. Now this Substance being a sufficient reason of all this detail, which also is everywhere linked together, there is but one God, and this God suffices.
40. We may also conclude that this supreme Substance, which is Only,[[5]] Universal, and Necessary—having nothing outside of it which is independent of it, and being a simple series of possible beings—must be incapable of limits, and must contain as much of reality as is possible.
41. Whence it follows that God is perfect, perfection being nothing but the magnitude of positive reality taken exactly, setting aside the limits or bounds in that which is limited. And there, where there are no bounds, that is to say, in God, perfection is absolutely infinite.
42. It follows also that the creatures have their perfections from the influence of God, but they have their imperfections from their proper nature, incapable of existing without bounds; for it is by this that they are distinguished from God.
43. It is true, moreover, that God is not only the source of existences, but also of essences, so far as real, or of that which is real in the possible; because the divine understanding is the region of eternal truths, or of the ideas on which they depend, and without Him there would be nothing real in the possibilities, and not only nothing existing, but also nothing possible.