 To defeat doubts of the latter variety, Malebranche thinks, ‘It is … necessary to know by simple perception and not by inference that God is not a deceiver, because reasoning can always be mistaken if we assume God to be a deceiver’ (ibid., OC 2:371; LO 481). Malebranche is indicating here his own analysis of, and solution to, the infamous Cartesian Circle. As he sees it, the Circle results from ‘ordinary proofs of the existence and the perfections of God’ that involve inferences and hence are subject to the very doubts that their conclusions are designed to dispel. Since on his view, simple perceptions are not subject to doubts of this or any kind, the only way to defeat the omnipotent deceiver doubt is by establishing that God exists and is perfectly benevolent from ‘proofs’ by simple perception. The term ‘proofs’ here may seem confusing, given Malebranche’s distinction between simple perception and inference, but he uses it loosely to refer to his version of the ontological ‘argument,’ where God’s existence is established directly from the idea of an infinite or supremely perfect being. Malebranche thinks that one of the virtues of the doctrine of Vision in God is that it provides such a proof by simple perception. Recall from our earlier discussion in section 4 that Malebranche thinks we have an infinite cognitive capacity; for example, we can think of any one of an infinite number of geometrical figures. A precondition for this capacity, he maintains, is that we be in constant and immediate union with the idea of being in general, which we then delimit in various ways when thinking ‘square,’ ‘circle,’ etc. But the idea of being in general or the infinite can’t be in any finite thing such as our mind. It can only be in God – more precisely, it can only be God himself, for there can be only one infinite or all-encompassing being: