Six metaphysical meditations: $b Wherein it is proved that there is a God and that mans mind is really distinct from his body — Descartes — John Shaqi
Six metaphysical meditations: $b Wherein it is proved that there is a God and that mans mind is really distinct from his body
Descartes · en
_And certainly I might well have expected the same chance, had this
been the Translation of an History, Play or Romance; wherein there is
requisite not onely a bare version but a conformation of Idiom and
language, manner and customary expression; But the nature of this
present Work will not admit of the like liberty, and therefore, I hope,
amongst Judicious Readers it may be exempt from the common Fate of
Translations; for if we look upon it as a Philosophical or Metaphysical
Tract, or rather as (really it is) a Physico-Mathematical Argumentation,
we shall find that a great strictness of Expression is requisite to be
observed therein. So that had a Translator taken upon him to use his own
liberty of Phrase, he would thereby have endanger’d the sense and force
of the Arguments; for Politeness of language might as well be expected in
a Translation of ~Euclide~ as in this. And all that are acquainted with
this famous Authors design, do very well know, that it was his intention
in these Meditations ~Mathematically to demonstrate~, that there is a
~God~, and that mans ~mind~ is ~incorporeal~. And it was his opinion,
that metaphysicks may as clearly be demonstrated as mathematicks, as
witness his expression in the Dedicatory Epistle of this Work to the
~Sorbone~ Doctors, ~Eas~ (Rationes scilicet) ~quibus hic utor certitudine
& evidentiâ Geometricas æquare, vel etiam superare existimem~; That he
reputed his Arguments used in these Meditations, to equal if not excell
Geometrical certainty._
_And this, I suppose, is sufficient to make the Reader, not expect herein
any smoothness of phrase or quaintness of Expression; what is here
delivered in English is immediately taken, as it is naturally in the
Original. The words, we hope, may be apposite enough, and fit to express
what is here designed, and I think it a derogation from the Authors skill
to draw the Picture of his mind in any other Colours, than what his own
Copy expresses._
_Thus far in vindication of the Philosophical plain stile and rough
Language of the following Translation. I shall add a line or two, first
relating to the Readers, secondly of the Author, and lastly of the
Meditations themselves, together with the Motives which excited me to
this Work._