 The conception of God as being in general also offended the philosophical sensibilities of the seventeenth century, which tended to favor a nominalist or conceptualist account of universals. According to this anti-Platonistic view, which had adherents among rationalists (e.g., Descartes) and empiricists (e.g., Locke) alike, the only things that exist are particulars, and so-called universals such as numbers or geometric objects are merely concepts or names. To conceive God as a universal violates this creed and, in the view of Locke specifically, makes God a bare abstraction (McCracken 1983, 139). Malebranche, however, maintains that the existence of God or being in general is necessary to explain the very possibility of abstract thought: