CLERSELIER’S PREFACE

1664

"If I had not been obliged to provide a Preface, to make known to everyone how little a part I have in this whole Work, and to give the honor due to those who have taken the trouble to work on the Figures and the Remarks that accompany it, I would have been satisfied with the one that Mr. Schuyl Florentius Schuyl (1619–1669) was a Dutch physician and professor. He published the first edition of Descartes' Treatise on Man in Latin in 1662, two years before this French edition. has already placed before the Latin version he made of the Treatise on Man by Mr. Descartes; for it is so full and so beautiful that, besides leaving me almost nothing to say, it has entirely taken away my hope of doing better... If he had been as successful in the figures of the muscles and the brain which he invented, as he was in his Preface, and if he had worked from a more faithful copy to produce his version, I would have wanted to do nothing more than to return this Treatise to its Natural language Meaning the original French in which Descartes wrote, as opposed to the Latin translation., and would have used his own figures, which are undoubtedly far superior to those I have had placed here, if one considers only the engraving and the printing; but which I believe for the most part to be less intelligible than these, and less suited to the understanding of the text."

"As these Figures are not by me, I can speak my mind more freely about them, and that will not prevent others from making their own judgment. This is why I beg him to excuse me if, after having thanked him for the overly kind praises with which he overwhelmed and honored me in his Preface, I must nonetheless say here that he was a bit too hasty in the printing of this Treatise, and that if he had done me the favor of alerting me, I would have asked him to postpone it (as was, it seems to me, quite reasonable) until I had it printed here in French—I, who possessed the original manuscript; and I would have at the same time prevented him from falling, as he did, into several errors that were inevitable for him due to the flaws in his copy, which undoubtedly would have made his Book better."

"I do not wish to list them all here: those who take the trouble to confront his Latin with the French will easily be able to notice them. I will only say that, for having wanted to correct the..."