 Descartes is very explicit about the importance of employing (what some might regard as a not completely honest) pedagogical method. In order to maneuver his readers into a position in which they are able to understand his metaphysics, he needs to help them to clear up their ideas. If he simply tells us his view, we will hear it against the background of confused ideas that (on his view) it is imperative we discard. The view that we would walk away with would not be Descartes’ view but something else. Descartes therefore opts for a special strategy for presenting his metaphysics: he puts things in terms of the confusions that we understand, otherwise we will not understand him. If we object (as does Gassendi) to this kind of maneuver, Descartes insists that under the circumstances it is only appropriate. He does not see anything objectionable in guiding us to truth by way of conceptions that are false or incoherent. Instead, he is providing a service: