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
_These Things Consider’d, I need not make any long Apologies for my
undertaking a translation thereof; The excellency of the Original is
sufficient to vindicate my endeavours to present the English World with
a Copy, and he that shall blame my Intentions of Communicating the
Methods of Truth to those that have only the English Tongue, may as well
find fault with those English that propagate the Christian Religion
among savage Indians, and translate the Scriptures into their Language,
because they have not the English Tongue. To understand Latin is no (or
at most a very small) part of Learning, and that which certainly every
Cobler in ~Rome~ was once endow’d with; and therefore must there then
be no translations out of Greek into Latin? I doubt not, but there are
many Persons in our Nations, who tho wanting Latin, are notwithstanding
very capable of the most abstracted speculations; the late disturbances
of our Kingdomes occasion’d many Youths, who were then in a fair way
of Instruction, to forsake their learning, and divert their intentions
from Literature to Arms, and yet many of these have afterwards become
Men of extraordinary nary abilities and qualifications for learning
notwithstanding their deficiency in the Roman Tongue. And I see no Reason
why it should not be the desire, and consequently the endeavour of
every true English man, to make his language as universal as is now the
~French~, into which the best Books in all sorts of Learning, both Poetry
and Prose, are daily translated out of all languages, but especially
out of Greek and Latine. Among which these Meditations are to be found,
entituled, ~Les Meditations Metaphysiques De Rene Des Cartes touchant
la Premiere Philosophie~. This was translated out of the Authors Latine
into French by ~Monsieur le D. D. L. N. S.~ The several Objections also,
which were made by divers learned Persons against these Meditations, with
the Authors Answers, were translated into French by ~M. B. L. R.~ And, I
hope, no one will assert, that the French are more fit to receive those
metaphysical Notions delivered herein than the English Nation._