Take away the mode, and God alone remains. According to Malebranche, God is the abode of spirits, as space is the abode of bodies. He is to the soul what light is to the eye. Just as this organ dwells in the light, so the mind is in God, thinks in God, sees in God. We do not perceive the material things themselves, but the idea-types of the things, their ideal substance as it exists in God.
Mind can see nothing except mind.
These thinkers combined extreme rationalism with the mysticism of Pascal. But the system had only to be divested of its theological shell to become Spinozistic naturalism. Publisher of Opera posthuma Descartis. Tractatus de mente humana, ejus facultatibus et functionibus , Amsterdam, 1669. Philosophical works published by Jourdain, 1845.