To the Readers
Had honor or applause and not the publick advantage of English Readers been the design of this Undertaking, the consideration of the common Fate of Translations had discouraged Me from permitting this even to have seen the light; for meer Versions do alwayes carry with them this Property, that if not well done they may much disgrace, but if well, not much commend the doers.
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.
