 The question of Descartes’ debt to Gómez Pereira will be found again among the Enlightenment writers, as we can see in the Dictionaries of Calmeto, Moreri, Brucker, etc. (see Bandrés &amp; Llavona 1993: 133–134). In the Encyclopedia of Diderot and D’Alembert, particularly in the article devoted to the soul of beasts, we may read that Descartes was the first who dared to treat animals as mere machines, even if Gómez Pereira had said something similar before him, but he arrived at this concept by pure chance. The Enlightenment authors echoed the opinion of Bayle in pointing out that Pereira did not draw his doctrine from any principle, and therefore his name had scant relevance: he suffered the saddest thing that can happen to an innovator, “il ne fit point de Secte” (Bayle 1730: vol. III, pp. 651).