 The first volume of the Recherche, containing the first three books, drew an immediate response in 1675 from the abbé Simon Foucher (1644–1696), canon of Sainte Chapelle of Dijon. Foucher was an “academic skeptic” who attacked the assumption that ideas in us can represent objects distinct from us (see Foucher 1675). The Cartesian Benedictine Robert Desgabets (1610–1678) replied to Foucher by insisting that the Cartesian rule that clear and distinct ideas are true presupposes that our thoughts correspond to real external objects. In brief prefaces added to the second volume of the Recherche, Malebranche chastised both thinkers for failing to read the work they were discussing, noting in particular that he had explicitly argued in the Recherche that the ideas we perceive exist in God rather than in us.