 The First Discourse of the Discernement opens with five claims about bodies which lay the ground for Cordemoy’s physics (which he goes on to discuss in Discourses Two and Three). He tells us that bodies are: (1) limited in their extension, and this limit is called the ‘figure’ of the body; (2) inasmuch as each body is a substance, bodies are not divisible into smaller bodies, nor are bodies penetrable by other bodies; (3) the relation a body has to other bodies is called its ‘place’; (4) a change in this relation is the motion of the body; and (5) when the relation continues unchanged, the body is at rest. Cordemoy then declares that matter is clearly and distinctly understood as an assembly of bodies. Properly considered, bodies are parts of matter, and depending how these bodies are related to each other determines what sort of portion of matter the collection is: if they are very near each other, it is a heap (un tas); if they are “changing their position incessantly” (1968, 96), it is a fluid (une liqueur); and if the bodies are not moving and cannot be separated from each other, it is a mass (une masse).