 While not stated explicitly, Cordemoy’s reason for accepting atomism seems to be based on his understanding of the concept of substance. Following Descartes, Cordemoy takes substance to be that which requires nothing else for its existence. Strictly speaking, this would make God the only substance, but in the created world, Descartes held that we may consider minds and body to be substances in a qualified sense. Each of these substances has a principle attribute distinguishable from it only by reason. It is this attribute through which we conceive the substance, and it is that to which all of the substance’s other properties are referred. For minds this attribute is thought, and for body it is, as mentioned above, extension.