 So each of us is capable of thinking of an infinite number of things and, more importantly, in thinking of any particular thing one must grasp this infinity. It is at this point that Malebranche concludes (for the reason given above) that this infinity of beings must be in God, and that it is only through our union with God that these beings are present to us in thought. How does God contain this infinity? Not by literally being composed of an infinity of particular ideas, for again God is perfectly simple. On Malebranche’s conception, God is ‘being in general,’ ‘infinite being,’ or ‘being without restriction’ (3.2.8, OC 1:456; LO 241). In him, ‘all beings [are] contained in one’ precisely because he is infinite and indeterminate. This point allows him to further clarify the nature of cognition: ‘not only does the mind have the idea of the infinite, it even has it before that of the finite…. In order for us to conceive of a finite being, something must necessarily be eliminated from this general notion of being, which consequently must come first’ (3.2.6, OC 1:441; LO 232). Here Malebranche follows Descartes in affirming that the idea of the infinite is conceptually prior to the idea of the finite, but then adds a twist that pushes him away from Descartes (and closer to Spinoza), namely that we conceive particular things by limiting or negating the idea of the infinite.