 In developing his own position, Arnauld appeals to Descartes’ distinction in “Meditation III” between the formal reality of an idea as a perceptual modification of mind and its objective reality as something that represents an object. Arnauld insists that a representative idea is simply the objective reality of a perception, and thus not something distinct from that perception. However, it is important to note that Malebranche’s definition of an idea does not rule out such a position from the start. As he himself insists to Arnauld, the claim that we must perceive external objects through ideas leaves open the question of whether an idea is “a modality of the soul, according to the opinion of M. Arnauld; an express species, according to certain philosophers, or an entity created with the soul, according to others; or finally intelligible extension rendered sensible by color or light, according to my opinion” (Malebranche [OC], 6:95).