Première Partie.

Cousin's edition gives no sub-titles to the various parts.

4. Le bon sens Le sens commun. Innate reason, natural good judgment.

5. en être. The constant recurrence of the pronoun en, in order to gain conciseness, militates against Descartes' style.

Page 2. - I. n'ont point coutume, etc. n'en désirent point ordinairement. Also avoir de coutume in other authors of the time. 2. plus qu'ils en ont. The omission of ne, which usually follows plus or moins, is due to the fact that the principal clause here is negative. On page 1, line 15, the principal clause is affirmative, as well as the subordinate.

This opening sentence would have been suggested, according to Brunetière (cf. Études Critiques, Quatrième Série, p. 117), by a work of the Jesuit, François Garasse (1585-1630), which was published in 1623 under the title of La Doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits de ce temps, etc. The wording in the two writers is almost the same.

3. et distinguer. Notice the omission of de. Also in line 9 the omission of que nous, etc.

4. en tous les hommes: 5. davantage = plus.

= chez tous les hommes.

6. accidents, attributes, not essential to the substance to which they belong.

7. formes. The principles which impart their essence to things and give them their characteristics common to the species.

These are terms of the scholastic philosophy.

8. heur = bonheur. The noun heur continued in use (apart from mal and bon) far into the century.

2. purement hommes, as human beings, not as souls to be saved. Descartes, warned by the fate of Galileo, was always on his guard in reference to church doctrines.

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3. il se peut faire il se peut. - This whole paragraph, and the following as well, was evidently written with the object of allaying religious susceptibilities. See also page 7, lines 15 etc., page 13, note 3, and pages 20-21.

Page 4.- 1. J'ai été nourri aux lettres. Descartes entered the Jesuit college of La Flèche (departement of Sarthe) in 1604, just after its foundation by Henry IV. He was but eight years old. He staid aux dans les.

there eight years.

2. pource=parce.

3. plus célèbres écoles. La Flèche had professors of law, medicine and surgery, besides the regular academic faculty.

Page 5.

- 1. fables, narratives, stories in the ancient authors. 2. les plus fausses. Evidently alchemy, astrology and magic, to which Descartes returns on page 8, lines 13-19.

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Page 6. -I. que nous afin que nous. Montaigne also considers that travel is an essential part of education. Cf. his Essays, Book I, c. 25.

Cf.

2. on demeure, etc. Descartes is a realist as compared with the romantic writers of his day, such as Corneille and the novelists. La Bruyère, "De la Société et de la Conversation," No. 74, page 217. 3. les plus basses et moins illustres circonstances. Philosophical history was still in its infancy, at this time, and social history was unknown.

4. d'où vient. The omission of the pronoun subject, especially when it was impersonal, was of common occurrence in the older language. Cf. page 14, line 2.

5. paladins de nos romans. A reference to the popular prose versions of the old epic poems on Charlemagne and his knights, and possibly also to the adventures in Amadis of Gaul.

6. l'éloquence. From what follows, Descartes' idea of éloquence is clearness, logical reasoning.

7. amoureux de la poésie. Descartes wrote Latin poetry in his leisure moments.

8. bas-breton. The Gaelic dialect which is still the mother-tongue of a large number of the peasants of Brittany.

9. l'art poétique. The very year that this indifference to the rules of poetic art was printed, the quarrel over Corneille's Cid was bringing home the question of dramatic construction and literary expression to every educated Parisian.

Page 7. -1. et souvent ce qu'ils appellent, etc. Possible allusions to definite instances in the history of Rome, as Brutus ordering the execution of his sons, and Cato committing suicide.

2. comme chose. Note the omission of the article, quite common at the time.

Page 8. 1. de condition. Descartes inherited his mother's dowry when he came of age. She had died shortly after his birth. 2. le grand livre du monde. A frequently quoted phrase.

3. j'employai le reste de ma jeunesse à voyager. After leaving La Flèche in 1612, Descartes studied law at Poitiers, where he took his degree, November 10, 1614. The next two years of his life have left no record, but in 1617 he enlisted under Maurice of Nassau, and passed four years in camp. Near the end of 1621 he resigned his commission and spent the next four years in European travel. See Introduction, note for page v.

4. diverses expériences. Some of these were problems in physics suggested by Alpine phenomena. Cf. Part Six of the Discours for Descartes' system and methods.

Page 9.-1. lumière naturelle. Evidently the bon sens of page 1, line 17.

Deuxième Partie.

Cousin has "Seconde Partie," and omits the sub-title.

Page 10.1. en Allemagne. As soldier in the service of the Duke of Bavaria (from 1619).

2. des guerres. The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648).

3. du couronnement de l'empereur. The emperor was Ferdinand II (1619–1637), chosen at Frankfort, August 28, 1619.

4. en un quartier. At Neuburg in Bavaria.

5. un poêle. The room which held the stove.

6. usants de raison = se servant de la raison. Notice that the participle varies in the earlier syntax. See page 160, line 1.

Page 11. —1. Ainsi je m'imaginai, etc. This comparison shows how much more importance Descartes attached to theory than to the results of experience. It breaks down entirely when he proceeds to illustrate his point by citing religion, since Christianity is now seen to be the outgrowth of Judaism.

2. Sparte. Sparta was a military state purely. The laws under which it developed were given by Lycurgus ("un seul," line 18) in prehistoric times. They were entirely devoted to furthering military supremacy.

3. ce= = cela.

4. au moins celles, etc. The non-mathematical sciences.

5. avant que d'être. In the seventeenth century avant de was used only by second-rate writers. The sixteenth century shows many instances of avant alone. Later avant de was preferred, but Vaugelas in his Remarques sur la langue française (1647) decides in favor of avant que de. See avant de on page 20, line 1.

6. le meilleur. Neuter absolute, in imitation of a Latin construction.

7. ni for ou. Malherbe also uses ni after impossible.

Page 12. — 1. Il est vrai, etc. This statement was true until the eighteenth century, when Paris set the example of street demolition and reconstruction.

2. par après = après, ensuite.

Par in combination has fallen out of

use, save in a few set expressions, as par-dessus, etc. Vaugelas declared par après already antiquated.

The method presented here by Descartes is that of producing a mental tabula rasa, voluntary with the individual.

3. la seule diversité la diversité seule.

Page 13.

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1. quantité. Still to be found without an article and having the sense of beaucoup.

2. ne serait. Now usually ne le serait.

In this omission Descartes

again agrees with certain instances in Malherbe. Cf. line 31, ne sont; but ne le soit, page 17, line 9.

3. et si je pensais, etc. Descartes was but a timid reformer, at least in the application of his principles. He is always on the watch not to offend authority. Notice the reservations of this whole paragraph.

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4. marri fâché.

5. Que si, But if.

see page 136, line 7.

Antiquated to-day.

Quite frequent at this time. Also in Bossuet;

6. il refers to exemple.

Page 14. —1. qu'on ne saurait rien, etc. A paraphrase of Cicero's often quoted: “Sed, nescio quomodo, nihil tam absurde dici potest, quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum" (De Divinatione, lib. ii, cap. 58). Cf. for lines 18-21, La Bruyère, "Des Jugements," No. 22, page 245.

2. et ayant considéré, etc. Notice this statement of the modern doctrine of the influence of environment on character. Descartes may have inherited the idea from Montaigne, who goes further than our author and makes even morality relative. Cf. La Bruyère, “Du Cœur,” No. 82, page 207.

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3. entre parmi, which is found in a like phrase, page 20, line 23. Page 15.

I. que = à moins que.

2. étudié seems to have often been neuter at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Cf. examples in Malherbe, and y étudient, page 33, line 26.

3. la logique. The scholastic logic, or the science of deduction.

4. Lulle. Raymond Lully (1235-1315), of Majorica, had invented a system of logic to be used in the conversion of the Moors. He had also devised a schedule of knowledge, called "universal art," from which he expected to mechanically deduce all known ideas, and even to discover truths.

5. parmi =parmi eux. The preposition avec is still colloquially used without an object.

6. l'analyse des anciens. The geometrician Euclid (about 300 B. C.) defined analysis to be the granting of the thing sought for, and the deduction therefrom of consequences which lead to some conceded truth (Elements, Book xiii, Prop. i, Scholium).

7. l'algèbre des modernes. This method is to find the value of an unknown quantity by a proportion made between it and known quantities.

Page 16.1. Le premier était, etc. Here Descartes rejects all authority save that of his own reason, a contrast to his politic reservations of a few pages back. This phrase marks the beginning of a revolution in thought and in society. Cf. Mais ce qui me contentait, etc., on page 19, line 4, etc.

Page 17.- 1. beaucoup en peine. Être en peine is frequent in

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Malherbe, and is still used.

Page 18.

1. de les pouvoir. Notice how far les is removed from the verb which governs it, appliquer, in obedience to the usage instanced in page 1, note 3.

2. j'emprunterais tout le meilleur. Descartes would make use of his own studies in analytical geometry (dating perhaps from 1619).