 Can it be demonstrated by natural reason that God is by his essence an absolutely perfect being? This question is immediately complicated by the fact that Suárez recognizes two central senses of ‘perfection’ (DM XXX.1.1). In one sense, which he calls ‘privative’, what is perfect is whole and lacks nothing required by its nature; in these sense we could speak, for instance, of a perfect horse. In a second sense, which Suárez calls ‘negative or absolute’, we refer to what is absolutely perfect—perfect, that is, not relative to the standard set by a thing’s nature but in absolute terms. Such perfect entities necessarily have or contain every other perfection. Suárez wishes to demonstrate that it belongs to the essence of God to be perfect in both of these senses.