 Adequate ideas, on the other hand, are formed in a rational and orderly manner, and are necessarily true and revelatory of the essences of things. “Reason”, the second kind of knowledge (after “random experience”), is the apprehension of the essence of a thing through a discursive, inferential procedure. “A true idea means nothing other than knowing a thing perfectly, or in the best way”(IIp43s). It involves grasping a thing’s causal and conceptual connections not just to other objects but, more importantly, to the attributes of God, the infinite modes (the laws of nature) that follow immediately from them, and the “common notions” that pick out features present in all modes of an attribute. The adequate idea of a thing clearly and distinctly situates its object in all of its causal nexuses and conceptual relations, and shows not just that it is, but what it is and how and why it is. The person who truly knows a thing sees the reasons why the thing was determined to be and could not have been otherwise. “It is of the nature of Reason to regard things as necessary, not as contingent” (IIp44). The belief that some thing is accidental or spontaneous can be based only on an inadequate grasp of the thing’s causal explanation, on a partial and “mutilated” familiarity with it. To perceive by way of adequate ideas is to perceive the necessity inherent in Nature.