 In sense perception the mind ‘projects’ its sensations onto intelligible extension, or some determinate part of it, thereby rendering sensible what is otherwise abstract and general. It was a common view in the seventeenth century that sensations of color and light, in particular, also serve another function in sense perception: they enable us to discriminate shapes and, correlatively, individual bodies. As illusionists of the age were well aware, one can make a woman appear headless if her head is covered with something that blends into the background (such as a black hood against a black curtain) and she is dressed in clothing that is color-contrasting. In these passages, Malebranche applies this general point to explain how the sensations of color and light individuate intelligible extension and thereby yield sensory perceptions of particular objects. Sensations both ‘sensualize’ and ‘particularize’ intelligible extension, and thus make it possible for us to see particular sensible objects in it.