  A cousin of Malebranche’s occasionalism is worth noting here. Margaret Cavendish agrees with Malebranche that bodies do not cause change in one another, but she disagrees with him about whether nature is self-moving. Where Malebranche takes created things to possess no causal power at all, Cavendish takes them to possess the power of self-motion. On her view, when bodies interact, there is no transfer of motion. Cavendish’s commitment to this view is grounded in her belief that properties cannot be transferred between bodies. Because motion is a property, she argues, motion cannot be transferred between bodies. Following this line of reasoning, when bodies come into contact, they act as occasional causes, that is, causes that merely occasion a change. In an interaction, one body will serve as occasional cause, and the second body will serve as a “principal” cause, which brings about, in itself, the  appropriate effect (see Detlefsen 2006 and the entry on  Cavendish).  Both thinkers also hold the view, ubiquitous in the period, that motion is issued into the created world as a result of God’s willing it. Cavendish is careful to note that this issuance is the result not of “an immediate action of God” but rather by an “all-powerful command” (Cavendish, 209). She rejects the former option on the grounds that such continual, immediate action is unsuitable to “an immovable and immutable essence” (Cavendish, 209). On this point, she and Malebranche are in agreement.