THE WORLD.

Treatise on Light, which dates from an earlier period, when Descartes still preferred the form of the Discourse A reference to Descartes' famous Discourse on Method, published in 1637, which established his style of philosophical presentation., as seen in the 1637 publication.

For the Treatise on Man, which follows, we shall do the same; and we will be all the more justified in doing so because any division into chapters was missing there, both in the copies and in the original. This is what the editors declare, and to be convinced of it, one need only compare the numbering that Schuyl Florentius Schuyl (1619–1669), who published the first Latin translation of this work. added regardless (without, moreover, providing titles for the 33 chapters he thus distinguishes), and that of Clerselier Claude Clerselier (1614–1684), Descartes' friend and literary executor., in 93 chapters, which are much better justified, and which we reproduce, along with the conjectured titles—though we place them at the end (p. 203-209), as they are not by Descartes himself.

The general arrangement thus being decided, which text shall we choose? For the Treatise on Light, we cannot, following what Clerselier declared, fail to prefer the edition of 1677, which reproduces the original manuscript, over that of 1664, which only reproduces a copy. However, the difference between the two is not as great as Clerselier announced in his Preface to the Treatise on Man in 1664. And indeed, to tell the truth, neither one seems to us a faithful reproduction of Descartes' own text, at least regarding the spelling and certain idioms locutions familières These are characteristic ways of speaking or turns of phrase unique to Descartes' 17th-century French style. familiar to the philosopher. In this regard, both substitute the more fashionable forms that had replaced them for ways of speaking and writing that were already a bit outdated in 1664 and even more so in 1677. What is curious, however, is that on certain points the 1677 text is rather behind the times, while on others, that of 1664 is ahead. Here are some examples. Descartes usually wrote pour ce que original: "pour ce que" and d’autant que original: "d’autant que" These are archaic French conjunctions meaning "because" or "inasmuch as.": this form d'autant que is generally preserved in the 1677 edition; but that of 1664 replaces it everywhere, not even with the phrase pource que, which likely seemed to also need modernizing, but with the quite recent form of parce que original: "parce que": only once had the typesetter left pource (p. 102); but parce is caref—