 “Eclaircissement X” also introduces the notion of “intelligible extension” mentioned in Malebranche’s claim to Arnauld quoted above concerning his own opinion. According to this Eclaircissement, God has a single ideal extension that serves to represent particular bodies to Him. Arnauld objects that this position involves a retraction of the claim in the Recherche that we perceive bodies by means of distinct ideas in God. In response, Malebranche insists that his view all along was that God represents particular bodies by means of His own simple “absolute being.” For Arnauld, however, the view that God contains extension in this way is objectionable since it is connected to the heretical view in the work of the Dutch thinker Benedict Spinoza that God is extended substance. The charge of Spinozism reappears in Malebranche’s 1713–14 correspondence with one of his former students, J.J. Dortous de Mairan (1678–1771), who later became the Secretary of the Académie des sciences. As in the case of Arnauld, so in this correspondence Malebranche vigorously denies this charge. In both cases, he responds by emphasizing that the infinite and indivisible ideal extension that exists in God differs from the finite and divisible extension in the material world. (For more on Malebranche’s notion of intelligible extension, see Reid 2003; cf. the different interpretation of this notion in Nolan 2012.)