  Desgabets claimed that the corporeal form of all particular bodies results from an assemblage of the local dispositions of matter, and that these dispositions of matter in turn come from extended matter. Thus, in the same way that sensible qualities are nothing outside us but the local dispositions of matter, sensible objects are nothing outside us but assemblages of local dispositions of matter. If sensible qualities such as heat, colour and light are really modes of the mind which have no resemblance to the modes or accidents of matter that cause them then, for the same reason, sensible bodies such as earth, water and animals must also be modes of the mind that have no resemblance to the assemblages of local dispositions of matter that cause them. This is a simple but perspicuous consequence of the Cartesian doctrine of sensible qualities and its conception of matter. It treats particular bodies as assemblages of local dispositions of matter, and it treats sensible bodies as our grasp of those assemblages. Hence, sensible bodies are beings of the mind which are merely caused by assemblages of local dispositions of matter. The analogy between sensible qualities such as heat, light etc., and sensible bodies such as earth, water, animals etc., is meant to be an exact one. Just as sensible qualities are the immediate effects of local dispositions of matter acting upon the senses, sensible bodies are the immediate effects of assemblages of local dispositions of matter acting upon the senses.