Preamble

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| Actors, taught not to let any embarrassment show
| on their faces, put on a mask.  I will do the same.
| So far, I have been a spectator in this theatre which
| is the world, but I am now about to mount the stage,
| and I come forward masked.
|
| René Descartes, 'Praeambula', CSM 1, p. 2.
|
| René Descartes, 'The Philosophical Writings of Descartes', Volume 1,
| Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch,
| Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1985.

Those whose mutter courage is bolder in French, I find,
Far better mind the meaning of preamble than elsewhere,
At least, they did, upon a time, when Latin they spoke.
And so I will beg their indulgence for my propadeutsch,
Or if all else in elsewhere fail, hit the road to Rome.

0*

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