Plan and Division of the Treatise

Abstract

I have no doubt that those who have read the writings of Mr Descartes and noticed the clarity and facility with which he explained all the phenomena of the macroscopic world and all the movements of the microscopic world will be very sad that death prevented him from providing what he still required to demonstrate in order to inform us fully about human nature. I am very much afraid however that, instead of consoling them for that loss, this treatise — which I offer to substitute for what he could have done — will further increase their unhappiness when they compare my unstylish writing and the feebleness of my reasoning with the clarity of his words and the force of his demonstrations, and that they will accuse me of temerity in having dared to touch his work On Man, especially since the part which was supposed to treat of the mind is the most difficult. They may say that I should have followed the example of the disciples of those famous painters, Apelles and Parrhasius,¹ by simply adding ‘written by Descartes’ at the end of his book, just as they were content to put ‘done by Parrhasius’, ‘done by Apelles’ at the end of the final sketches of their masters rather than supply the slightest brush-stroke to complete them.