 In Arnauld’s direct attack on TNG, he says again and again that Malebranche relies on principles that have neither a proper theological basis in Scripture and tradition, nor a proper philosophical basis in reason. Clearly he thought that this criticism applied as well to Malebranche’s theory of ideas. But if Arnauld took seriously the remark at the beginning of the Logic, “The reflections we can make on our ideas are perhaps the most important part of logic, since they are the foundation of everything else,” he may well have thought that Malebranche’s theory of ideas was an important source of the confusion of theology with philosophy that plagues TNG. That, in turn, would help explain his decision to begin his attack on TNG with a treatise on the nature of  ideas.[22]