 In fairness to Malebranche, we might point out that, in identifying necessary connections with genuine causality, Malebranche is presenting an attractive reductive analysis of causation, one that we, benefitting from the exposure to David Hume’s work, are already familiar with. In fact, it does not seem far-fetched to say that it is in part due to Hume that we are accustomed to such a clear-cut understanding of causation as necessary connection. But note that the intellectual climate of Malebranche’s time period was rather different: philosophers were trying to come to grips with the complicated task of understanding the nature of causality given the new scientific developments of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Moreover, this endeavor took place against the backdrop of the traditional approaches to causation, involving the confusing myriad of the four Aristotelian causes. Compared to the Aristotelian conception, Malebranche’s conception of causation is remarkably simple and unified, and does not face the question of how such diverse and distinct types of Aristotelian causes can come under a single conception of causation. Furthermore, there is some evidence that Malebranche might have responded to our challenge to produce a better argument for this conception of causation as necessary connections by noting how difficult it is to imagine what causation would be if not necessary connections, in much the same way that Hume did. That is, given his statement in the Search that “[a] true cause as I understand it [c’est ainsi que je l’etends] is one such that the mind perceives a necessary connection between it and its effect” (Search 450, my emphasis), Malebranche might have had something close to the Humean idea in mind—though not developed as clearly and emphatically as in Hume—that we have no conception of what a causal connection would be, if it is not a necessary connection. If so, this intuition could have provided a rationale for the claim that an event is a true cause if and only if there is a necessary connection between it and its effect. But given how controversial such a claim is within the context of considering divine causation in nature, one wonders whether this central claim identifying necessary connection with causation could have been further  motivated.[23]