[2][4][5] A Latin translation, Inquisitio Veritatis per Lumen Naturale, was published in 1683 as part of Renati Des-Cartes Musicae compendium (Blaviana printing house, Amsterdam)[6] and again in 1701 as part of R. Des-Cartes Opuscula posthuma, physica et mathematica (Apud Janssonio-Waesbergios, Boom et Goethals, Amsterdam);[7] it was also included in a Dutch translation of a collection of letters from Descartes published in 1684 by J.H.
[2][a] The opening passage (translated by Norman Kemp Smith to English in 1957) "is a helpful commentary on the argument of Articles 74-78" of The Passions of the Soul.
[3] Descartes begins by observing that "even though all the science that we can desire is to be found in books, what they contain of good is mixed with so many uselessness, and dispersed in the mass of so many large volumes, that for it would take longer to read than human life gives us, and to recognize what is useful in it, more talent than to find it ourselves.
He therefore adds: "This is what makes me hope that the reader will not be sorry to find here a more abbreviated way, and that the truths which I will put forward will be acceptable to him, although I do not borrow them from Plato or to Aristotle."
Descartes provides, in this reply by Eudoxus to Epistemon, his only statement of the cogito per se, and admits that his insight is also expressible as dubito, ergo sum:[8]