  Some critics, including Arnauld, had charged Malebranche with Spinozism because he claimed God has the idea of intelligible extension. Such critics reasoned that the only way for God to contain extension is for God to be extended. Norris reconciles God's possession of intelligible extension with the immateriality of God by using the notion of eminent containment. There are two ways a thing can be contained in another, formally or eminently. Norris notes formal and eminent containment are usually discussed in the context of causation. Generally, formal containment explains cause and effect sequences amongst similar causes and effects. For example, the cause of a child's fear might be the recollection of a frightening image. The child's fear is formally contained in the recollection. Eminent containment explains dissimilar causes and effects. When an architect designs a building, and several months later the architect's vision is realized in a physical structure, that physical structure was eminently contained, or contained in a higher manner, in the mind of the architect. All human actions, as long as they are planned, are eminently contained in the human mind. Analogously, Norris states God eminently contains extension as a divine idea just as the architect eminently contains the building. Intelligible extension, then, is a divine idea. Norris believes that the ideal philosophy can settle the meaning of ‘eminent containment’, and thus settle the dispute about intelligible extension. This view is found in “POSTSCRIPT, Concerning the Distinction of Formaliter and Eminenter, as applied to the manner of the Perfection of Things being in God,” appended to Theory I.