Editor's Comments to the French Edition
The French edition of Descartes’s Passions de l’Ame provided here is based on the 1649 first edition published in French simultaneously by Henry Le Gras in Paris and Louys Elzevier in Amersterdam. The text we used was the 1664 re-printing of the Paris Le Gras first edition. To see the text in pdf form click here.
The spelling and punctuation have been modernized with as few changes to the original as was possible. The principle employed was to change semi-colons to commas or semi-colons and colons to periods where the meaning was not altered and made clearer by the change. In cases where a shift in meaning was possible, the original punctuation was retained. Archaic phrases such as “au même temps” were retained. Articles are numbered in Arabic rather than Roman numerals. Grammatical changes were left to a minimum: no attempt was made to change verbs from the indicative to subjunctive and vice versa; hyphens were added where the verb and its subject were inverted, such as “voit on” to “voit-on”. I have made a few minor alterations to Professor Gombay's text, and these are indicated by square brackets .
CSM John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, eds. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985-1991. Three volumes.
OED Concise Oxford English Dictionary, New York: Oxford University Press, seventh edition, 1982.
Suggestions and corrections are welcome. Please send to Patricia.Easton@cgu.edu.