 When Pascal offered this explanation, Descartes wrote Christian Huygens (8 December 1647) that the hasty young man had the vacuum too much on his mind. (A more amusing translation of the letter has Descartes complaining that Pascal had too much vacuum in his head; alas, Descartes’ writing loses something in the original.) Descartes identified bodies with extension and so had no room for vacuums. If there were nothing between two objects, then they would be touching each other. And if they are touching each other, there is no gap between them.