In the French edition of 1647, the reader finishes the Fourth Replies. The next expected item is Gassendi’s Fifth Objections. In that place stands a short notice instead.

The author’s account

Its title identifies it as the author’s notice concerning the Fifth Objections.

Descartes begins by restating the original arrangement. Before the first edition, he wanted the meditations examined not only by the doctors of the Sorbonne but by any learned people willing to take the trouble. Their objections and his replies would follow the meditations in the order received, helping truth become clearer.

He did not consider the fifth set the most important, and it was very long. Still, he printed it in sequence rather than slight its author. He even had the proofs shown to Gassendi, so that nothing would appear under Gassendi’s name without his approval.

Then the account turns. Gassendi has since published a large book complaining about the publication, as though Descartes had acted against his wishes and the objections had been sent only for private instruction. Descartes says he will now gladly accommodate that wish and relieve the volume of them. When he learned that a gentleman was translating the other objections, he asked him to omit this set.

Readers need not regret the omission, he adds. He has recently reread the objections and the new rejoinders in the large book, looking for anything requiring an answer. He found nothing that someone understanding the meditations could not readily answer without him.

“As though,” and “in this place”

Two small features deserve attention. The first is “as though.” He has just said that Gassendi saw the proofs. He does not simply accept the later complaint as accurate, but neither does he pause to refute it. He says he will act in accordance with it.

The other is the notice’s address to the reader at this very point in the book. The statement knows where it stands. It occupies the position of the missing objections and speaks on behalf of the space they leave.

Keep turning the pages

The Sixth Objections and Replies end, but the book does not. Another notice follows, this time written by the translator, Claude Clerselier.

He says he began translating for his own satisfaction, to master the reasoning. When he reached the fourth set, the work was passed through Mersenne to Descartes. Descartes sent compliments and asked him to continue.

The request also offered encouragement by saving him some work: he could leave out the fifth set. Descartes had particular reasons for detaching it from the new French edition. The author’s notice, placed where it had been, bore witness to the request.

Clerselier then explains why he continued anyway. The objections came from a man of great learning and deserved to be available to everyone. Their omission might suggest Descartes could not answer them. It would also deprive readers of a substantial part of the book.

He translated them. The Fifth Objections, Descartes’ replies and a related letter were printed at the end.

One request, two accounts

The same volume records two accounts of the same decision. The author says he requested omission to accommodate Gassendi. The translator says the request would spare his labour and rested on particular reasons.

Both are first-person reports by participants, and both are printed. The difference has not been edited away.

The translator’s reason for retaining the exchange follows the author’s original rationale: a weighty critic should be heard, and removal could look like failure to answer. The author’s notice reports his own assessment that no further answer is needed. The translator puts the material for judging that assessment back before the reader.

As the first essay observed, announcing that a test was passed is not the same as exhibiting the test.

Neither secrecy nor disobedience

It would be easy to turn this into a story of a translator acting behind the author’s back, or defying his prohibition. That is not what the editorial account says.

The Adam–Tannery editors explain that Clerselier translated the material despite Descartes’ advice and obtained permission to include it—not in its original position, but after the sixth set, at the end of the book.

Their formulation keeps both facts: contrary to Descartes’ opinion, but with his permission.

Thus the 1647 volume preserves a sequence of decisions: a request to omit, followed by permission to print. The material survives by changing places.

The editors who came much later

In 1904, when those editors produced the volume containing the French text, they omitted the fifth set. Their criterion was the author’s own revision and approval. Permission to publish the translation, in their account, did not mean Descartes had personally reviewed and approved its wording.

They nevertheless printed the documents surrounding it: the author’s notice, the translator’s notice and the letter. Statements about the fifth set survive in a volume from which the set itself is absent.

The editors explain that removing it would make the French edition conform to the book Descartes originally wanted in that language—a volume approved by him throughout. That exact arrangement was not the one the 1647 publication ultimately took.

In the Latin volume, the same editors made a different choice. They retained the fifth set in its earlier position, describing this as fidelity to his original plan. They allowed that his subsequent wish to remove it might have escaped him in a moment of ill humour.

Both decisions appeal to the author’s involvement. The 1642 Latin edition was produced near him and, the editors suggest, under his supervision; the French translation of the fifth set was not personally revised by him. Yet the two volumes appeal to different moments of his intention.

An editorial principle can be consistent while still requiring a choice about which act of the author is decisive. The page does not make that choice on its own.

A box in the cupboard

After an older relative dies, someone has to sort the possessions. A box sits in the cupboard. Several times its owner said it could go. Yet they never threw it away. On another occasion, when asked, they said to keep it for now and put it at the bottom.

The person clearing the cupboard stands before the box. Both instructions were the owner’s. Which one is to govern what happens next?

At the end

The book began with an arrangement: print the objections so that the grounds of the author’s claim can be examined.

It leaves us with a disputed place. Speaking for that place are a request, a permission, an original plan and a later reconstruction of what the author would have wanted.

All are attached to his name. They do not send the Fifth Objections to the same location. The words recording those choices remain there for us to read.