PREFACE

indicates to distinguish his corrections—namely, the liberties taken in relation to the 1637 text—is clearly insufficient for reliably identifying minor refinements when the author only sought, through the choice of an expression, to clarify his thought a bit better. Under these conditions, it must be said that to ensure whether Descartes, for a specific passage of the Essays original: "Essais"; referring to the three essays (Dioptrics, Meteors, and Geometry) published with the Discourse on Method. that one wishes to study deeply, did not have a change of heart before 1644, one must always carefully compare the text of the Specimina The Latin translation titled Specimina Philosophiae, published in 1644.. We have therefore judged it necessary to provide it in its entirety, in small print; merely indicating the differences in notes on the French text would have led to either excessive minutiae or arbitrary exclusions. Furthermore, the frequency of references to the text of the Specimina in philosophical literature made a re-edition of this text desirable.

Regarding the numerous editions of Descartes' first work that followed his death, we did not have to take them into account, as our plan is limited to the reproduction of the original editions. But we provide these in full, from the title to the tables of contents and the privileges|Official legal grants or licenses from the authorities giving a publisher or author the exclusive right to print a work for a specified duration.. Exception was only made for the errata original Latin: "errata"; a list of printing errors to be corrected., which we have naturally corrected in their proper place.

Suitable typographical arrangements have been made to indicate the beginning and end of each page of the original editions and to establish the correspondence between the pages of this edition for the French text and the Latin text¹.

It remains for us to say a few words about the principles we followed regarding spelling, particularly for the French text, which alone may be a matter of question. The Remarks on the Orthography of Descartes, inserted on pages LXXIX-CV of Volume I of the Correspondence, spare us from further elaborations on this subject, but we must justify the apparent deviations from the announcement made there that

1. For the French text, the original page numbers appear on the line of the running title; for the Latin text, see the note on page 540.