DESCARTES, RENÉ.

Les principes de la Philosophie, ecrits en latin, par rené Descartes. Et traduits en Francois par un de ses Amis. 4 Parties. (Des principes de la connaissance humaine - Des principes des choses materielles - Du Mone visible - De la terre).

Paris, Henry Le Gras et Edme Pepingvé, 1651. 4to. Contemp. full calf with 5 raised bands, profusely gilt compartments. Covers slightly rubbed. A small nick to lower edge of backcover. Engraved title-page (and printed). (60),420,(1) pp. and 20 engraved plates. Pastedown inside frontcover a bit soiled. Front-free endpaper with some calculations in old hand. Old name in lower right corner of title-page partly erased. A small faint brownspot in upper margin of the first leaves. A few leaves with faint brownspots, otherwise fine and clean. The plates having a brownspot in upper left corners, but outside image.

Second French edition (translated from the first edition (Latin) of "Principia philosophiae", 1644 by L'Abbe Picot). Descartes here published his general system of epistemology and physics - including his Vortice-theory, the impossibility of a vacuum, etc. - with its Copernicanism mitigated by the idea that all motion is relative.

In Descartes’s letter prefaced to this French translation of the Principles, he writes that two, and only two, conditions determined whether the first principles proposed could be accepted as true: "First they must be so clear and evident that the mind of man cannot doubt their truth when it attentively applies itself to consider them"; and secondly, everything else must be deducible from them. But he went on to admit,"It is really only God alone who has perfect wisdom, that is to say, who has a complete knowledge of the truth of all things."

Brunet II:611.

Order-nr.: 49200