E d i t o r ' s  c o m m e n t

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The French edition of Descartes' Passions de l'Ame provided here is based on the 1649 Paris first edition published by Henry Le Gras. The text is virtually identical to the 1649 Amsterdam first edition published by Louys Elzevier.

I have modernized the spelling throughout the text, and I have modernized much but not all of the punctuation. 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. Where a word was added, such as "ne" before "personne", square brackets are used. 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".

Suggestions and corrections are welcome. Please send to Patricia.Easton@cgu.edu.

Patricia Easton
Claremont Graduate University