 According to the second qualification of the vision in God—which is found in the original edition of the Recherche—we perceive the nature of our soul not through a clear idea in God, but only through a confused “consciousness or inner sensation” (conscience ou sentiment intérieur). Malebranche accepts the Cartesian commonplace that consciousness reveals immediately the existence of the soul. He allows that we know the nature of our soul to consist in thought, moreover, and he embraces the Cartesian conclusion that the soul as a thinking thing is distinct from body as an extended thing. Yet he insists that we know that the soul is distinct from the body not by means of any direct insight into the nature of thought, but rather by seeing that thought is not contained in the idea of matter. More generally, Malebranche claims that our lack of access to a clear idea of the soul is evident from the fact that we do not have knowledge of thought that matches our knowledge of the mathematical features of bodies. This last point turns on its head Descartes’ own conclusion in “Meditation II” that the nature of the human mind is “better known” than the nature of body; for Malebranche, it is the nature of body that is better known than the nature of mind.