Sect. 6 is wholly Cartesian. Bossuet there demonstrates that the soul knows by the imperfection of its own intelligence that there is elsewhere a perfect intelligence.
In sect. 9, Bossuet elucidates anew the relation of truth to God.
"Whence comes to my intelligence this impression, so pure, of truth? Whence come to it those immutable rules that govern reasoning, that form manners, by which it discovers the secret proportions of figures and of movements? Whence come to it, in a word, those eternal truths which I have considered so much? Do the triangles, the squares, the circles, that I rudely trace on paper, impress upon my mind their proportions and their relations? Or are there others whose perfect trueness produces this effect? Where have I seen these circles and these triangles so true,—I who am not sure of ever having seen a perfectly regular figure, and, nevertheless, understand this regularity so perfectly? Are there somewhere, either in the world or out of the world, triangles or circles existing with this perfect regularity, whereby it could be impressed upon my mind? And do these rules of reasoning and conduct also exist in some place, whence they communicate to me their immutable truth? Or, indeed, is it not rather he who has everywhere extended measure, proportion, truth itself, that impresses on my mind the certain idea of them?... It is, then, necessary to understand that the soul, made in the image of God, capable of understanding truth, which is God himself, actually turns towards its original, that is to say, towards God, where the truth appears to it as soon as God wills to make the truth appear to it.... It is an astonishing thing that man understands so many truths, without understanding at the same time that all truth comes from God, that it is in God, that it is God himself.... It is certain that God is the primitive reason of all that exists and has understanding in the universe; that he is the true original, and that every thing is true by relation to his eternal idea, that seeking truth is seeking him, and that finding truth is finding him...."
Chap. v., sect. 14. "The senses do not convey to the soul knowledge of truth. They excite it, awaken it, and apprize it of certain effects: it is solicited to search for causes, but it discovers them, it sees their connections, the principles which put them in motion, only in a superior light that comes from God, or is God himself. God is, then, truth, which is always the same to all minds, and the true source of intelligence. For this reason intelligence beholds the light, breathes, and lives."
At the close of the seventeenth century, Leibnitz comes to crown these great testimonies, and to complete their unanimity.
Here is a passage from an important treatise entitled, Meditationes de Cognitione, Veritate et Idæis, in which Leibnitz declares that primary notions are the attributes of God. "I know not," he says, "whether man can perfectly account to himself for his ideas, except by ascending to primary ideas for which he can no more account, that is to say, to the absolute attributes of God."[67]
The same doctrine is in the Principia Philosophiæ seu Theses in Gratiam Principis Eugenii. "The intelligence of God is the region of eternal truths, and the ideas that depend upon them."[68]
Theodicea, part ii., sect. 189.[69] "It must not be said with the Scotists that eternal truths would subsist if there were no understanding, not even that of God. For, in my opinion, it is the divine understanding that makes the reality of eternal truths."
Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement Humain, book ii., chap. xvii. "The idea of the absolute is in us internally like that of being. These absolutes are nothing else than the attributes of God, and it may be said they are just as much the source of ideas as God is in himself the principle of beings."
Ibid., book iv., chap. xi. "But it will be demanded where those ideas would be if no mind existed, and what would then become of the real foundation of this certainty of eternal truths? That brings us in fine to the last foundation of truths, to wit, to that supreme and universal mind which cannot be destitute of existence, whose understanding, to speak truly, is the region of eternal truths, as St. Augustine saw and clearly enough expressed it. And that it may not be thought necessary to recur to it, we must consider that these necessary truths contain the determinating reason and the regulative principle of existences themselves, and, in a word, the laws of the universe. So these unnecessary truths, being anterior to the existences of contingent beings, must have their foundation in the existence of a necessary substance. It is there that I find the original of truths which are stamped upon our souls, not in the form of propositions, but as sources, the application and occasions of which will produce actual enunciations."