 As we have seen, there are no particular beings in God, for God is simple and general. But still Malebranche will insist that we see material objects in God. How is this possible? The answer to this question involves another aspect of his doctrine not yet broached – the theory of ideas. Malebranche defends a representational theory of ideas, which holds that we don’t see material objects directly but only via the ideas that represent them. On his version of this theory, material objects are unintelligible in themselves and can be known only via something spiritual and immediately present to the mind. Malebranche was not alone in the seventeenth-century in endorsing representationalism; in fact, it is often thought that he inherited this position from Descartes. Where they clearly differ is in the ontological status they accord to ideas. Descartes develops a ‘Christianized’ version of the Platonic theory of innate ideas, according to which ideas are created with us at birth and constitute the very structure of our mind. Malebranche, in contrast, vehemently denies that ideas are created or that they are modifications of finite minds, and instead regards them as eternal, necessary, and immutable realities that reside in God. To say, then, that we perceive material things in God means that we immediately perceive ideas in God, and via these ideas, we indirectly perceive corporeal objects. Ideas in God are the ‘archetypes’ or models that he uses to create things. Thus, we can be assured that our knowledge of material things is of the highest order.