Introduction

First published in Paris in 1609, then 1614, with subsequent printings in several European cities, including Geneva (1638) and Cambridge (1640), this comprehensive manual was a widely used textbook in the first half of the seventeenth century, and was praised by Descartes as “the best of its type ever produced.” At one time Descartes planned to have it reproduced alongside an exposition of his own philosophical system (later issued as the Principles of Philosophy), in order to show how his own position compared with orthodox Scholasticism. Eustachius a Sancto Paulo (Eustache Asseline) belonged to the Feuillants, a Cistercian order, and was professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne. He died in 1640.

The Summa is in four parts (the subtitle reads “Concerning Dialectic, Morals, Physics, and Metaphysics” [De rebus dialecticis, moralibus, physicis, et metaphysicis]) and each part is subdivided into progressively smaller sections: part, treatise, discourse, question. These divisions are common to all editions, and the appropriate references are supplied in square brackets after each extract included here. The page references in parentheses are to the 1640 Cambridge edition (to be found in the Bodleian Library, Oxford) on which the present translation is based. The titles or headings preceding each extract are generally those supplied by Eustachius himself, though some have been modified for the purposes of this anthology. In order to give an idea of the range and scope of the Compendium, an abbreviated table of contents for the complete work is supplied first, followed by individual extracts from throughout the work, chosen for their relevance to Cartesian themes.