  Another notable feature of this list of properties is that it signals Gassendi's rejection of the cartesian view that extension is sufficient to characterize what is essential to the least bit of matter. Descartes is wrong, then, for the same reason that the Scholastics are wrong to talk about featureless matter in the context of physical theory. As Gassendi argues, while we might abstractly conceive of matter with one feature such as extension (or none at all, per the Scholastics), matter cannot actually come into existence without the features that God assigns at Creation—namely, size, shape, weight, and solidity.