  The importance of this discovery and its interpretation in Desgabets’s thought is paramount, since he believed that because of it, the way had been opened at last to lay the foundations of a true philosophy. Based on Descartes’s conception of matter, and his consequent discovery of the true nature of sensible qualities, Desgabets concluded that our perception of sensible qualities and sensible objects does not constitute knowledge of the true state of exterior things. In fact, sensible qualities and objects considered in relation to their being as modes of the mind are not the true objects of knowledge or of science, since they are only modal beings subject to change. In this, Descartes would concur. But Desgabets went on to argue that all (true) knowledge depends on the senses, and hence on our perception of these sensible qualities and objects; this is a point of great contention in Descartes scholarship, and one of much significance and growing contention in understanding Desgabets’s marriage of Cartesianism and empiricism. The story is a somewhat complicated and intricate, and scholars disagree about the nature of the empiricism. There is a long tradition of interpreting Desgabets as an empiricist from Victor Cousin (1852), and Francisque Bouillier (1868), to Genevieve Rodis-Lewis (1981, 1993), Patricia Easton and Thomas Lennon (1992), Tad Schmaltz (2002a; 2002b) and Sean Allen-Hermenson (2008). Monte Cook (2008) has raised an important challenge to the empiricist reading, questioning whether the senses provide any real content to our ideas. Despite the ongoing disagreements, there is consensus that Desgabets held that the eternal truths are contingent not necessary, rejected hyperbolic doubt and pure intellection, and insisted on the necessary role of sensible signs in the formation of all ideas. Each of these positions leans away from Descartes in varying degrees and while perhaps not a Lockean-type empiricism can be seen as an attempt to develop a position somewhere in between, a kind of Cartesian empiricism. 