 Cordemoy was one of the first, if not the first, to argue that Cartesian metaphysics leads to occasionalism, the doctrine that God is the one true cause active in the world. (Louis de La Forge’s Traité de l’esprit de l’homme et de ses facultez et fonctions, et de son union avec le corps (Treatise on the mind of man and its faculties and functions, and on its union with the body), which also argued for occasionalism on Cartesian grounds, appeared just months before the Discernement, though Cordemoy claims to have accepted occasionalism as early as 1658 (1968, 145). It is unlikely that either Cordemoy or de La Forge influenced the other.)