  That Gassendi is primarily concerned here with the character of Descartes's reasoning is plain enough: in the end and broadly speaking, the two are actually close in their views about mind and body. They are both dualists of one stripe or another, and the particulars of Gassendi's physically-rooted psychology are reasonably similar to those of Descartes's model.  Gassendi's model of the mind is often taken to be wholly materialist in design, particularly as seen through the prism of his critique of Descartes. Yet only one facet of the Gassendist soul is the material anima, the locus of physically-determined pleasure and pain.  He also posits an immaterial animus, the seat of the intellect or rational understanding. This cognitive faculty is the locus of spiritually-determined pleasures and pains we associate with, for example, love of God or fear of evil. Here we have an echo of the Thomist interpretation of De Anima, according to which vegetative and motive facets of the soul perish with the body though an intellective facet lives on forever.