Arnauld’s objections have three parts: the nature of the mind, God, and matters that may trouble theologians. Descartes’ replies follow the same divisions. At the opening of the third part, he pauses to characterize how he has handled the whole exchange.

Four boxes, filled in by the author

His account amounts to this: I opposed the first arguments; I evaded the second; I agree entirely with what follows, except for the last point, where I hope to persuade him to agree with me.

Four boxes: opposed, evaded, agreed, not yet agreed. The author fills them in himself, in the book he publishes alongside the objections. The second box catches the eye. He puts his own evasion on record.

What that word does—and does not—say

The Latin word is declinavi, from declinare: to turn aside, to avoid a blow rather than meet it directly.

It has already appeared in the discussion. At the start of the section on God, Descartes says he has so far tried to break his opponent’s arguments and withstand his attacks. Now he will imitate someone facing a stronger adversary: instead of confronting the blows, he will turn aside from them. First he announces the movement; later he reports that he made it.

This identifies the “second” arguments as the section on God. It does not mean he left them unanswered. He wrote a substantial response. Turning aside describes his chosen approach, not a blank space where an answer should be.

Immediately after announcing that approach, he says Arnauld discusses three matters whose meaning, as Arnauld understands it, he can readily accept. Descartes had intended his words differently, and regards that other meaning as true too. The circularity objection is also answered in this section, outside those three matters, by referring back to an earlier reply.

The French version handles the retrospective sentence differently: Descartes says he tried to parer à the second arguments. That phrase can suggest parrying, warding off, or dealing with an attack. It need not mean a direct confrontation, but it is not a mechanically identical rendering of the Latin image; the French also explicitly says he tried.

Earlier in the French section, the advance announcement still speaks of avoiding the blows rather than confronting their force. The two formulations sit in the same book. Their shades of meaning differ, but that sentence alone cannot establish a changed assessment of the argument’s success.

Nor does the difference establish interference by a translator. According to the Adam–Tannery editors, the French text, apart from the Fifth Objections and Replies, was revised by Descartes himself. On their account, this difference at least passed through his review.

What he openly concedes

After describing his replies, Descartes makes a larger concession. Not every mind is equipped to take in the contents of the First Meditation, or indeed the later ones. He readily acknowledges this. He has said it before and will say it again.

That, he explains, is why he did not include these matters in the Discourse on Method, which was written in the vernacular. He reserved them for the meditations and repeatedly warned that these should be read only by the strongest minds.

Why not leave them unwritten, then? Because he regards them as too important: without them, philosophy can establish nothing secure.

Iron and fire are dangerous in the hands of children or the rash. Yet their usefulness in life does not lead us to discard them. That is his comparison.

A warning translated into the vernacular

The passage just described is also present in French. After 1647, a French reader could buy a book saying: these matters were omitted from the vernacular Discourse because not everyone can handle them; they were reserved for readers of exceptional ability.

The warning now appears in a publicly sold vernacular book.

The language barrier has changed. The warning about the reader remains printed on the threshold. Descartes took part in that French edition: an authorial notice appears within it, and he communicated with its translator about whether one group of objections should be included.

Answering a letter point by point

Someone sends a letter listing objections. You answer what you can, often in considerable detail. One awkward point gets deferred while you work through the others, then never finds its way back into the reply. This need not be a deliberate trick. It may simply be where you got stuck.

The finished letter can look complete. It does not label the omission. Discovering it requires someone to place the original and the response side by side. That comparison does not happen by itself.

This is where the cost lies. Leaving a point aside can remain invisible; writing that you turned aside leaves a sentence anyone can cite later. Descartes wrote such a sentence in advance and again afterwards. That observation must be kept together with the qualification: his substantial answer is still there.

At the end

His assessment is not a single colour. He names different ways of responding, and he also acknowledges that the book is not for every reader. He offers a firm reason and the comparison with iron and fire.

Those two acknowledgments then travel differently. The retrospective “evaded” acquires a different shading in French. The warning about the strongest minds survives in a book publicly available in that language.