 From the claim that ideas are necessary, eternal, immutable, etc., Malebranche draws his first and most important anti-Cartesian conclusion, namely, that ideas must reside in God and be ‘coeternal and consubstantial with Him’ (Elucidation 10, OC 3:131; LO 614). Indeed, since Descartes affirms some or all of these properties himself, consistency would seem to require that he abandon his view that ideas are created modes of finite minds. If ideas are necessary and eternal then they cannot be created, as created things are contingent and have a beginning. Ideas also cannot be modes of the soul, for ‘it is clear that the soul’s modes are changeable but ideas are immutable; that its modes are particular, but ideas are universal and general to all intelligences; that its modes are contingent, but ideas are eternal and necessary….’ (Search, OC 2:103; LO 322–3). Malebranche expresses his positive conclusion at times by referring to God once again as ‘universal Reason’ or the intelligible realm of ideas: