 Malebranche solicited written responses to the Recherche modeled on the sets of objections published with Descartes’s Meditations. Perhaps put off by Malebranche’s harsh treatment of Foucher and Desgabets, his critics offered instead only informal objections channeled through mutual friends. In 1678, Malebranche appended to the Recherche a set of sixteen Eclaircissements, or clarifications, that respond to these objections. Among the more important objections addressed are those that concern Malebranche’s assertion that we have a freedom to “consent” to certain motives for action (“Eclaircissement I”), his claim that reason provides no conclusive demonstration of the existence of the material world (“Eclaircissement VI”), his doctrine of the vision of ideas in God (“Eclaircissement X”), his conclusion that we know our own soul through a confused consciousness rather than through a clear idea of its nature (“Eclaircissement XI”), and his occasionalist thesis that God is the only true cause (“Eclaircissement XV”). The final 1712 edition includes the addition of a seventeenth Eclaircissement that defends the importance “not only for knowledge of nature but also for knowledge of religion and morals” of the view, only hinted at in the initial edition of the Recherche, that God acts for the most part through “general volitions” (volontez générales) and acts though “particular volitions” (volontez particulières) only in the exceptional case of miracles.