The first edition of the Meditations was published in Latin by Michael Soly of Paris “at the Sign of the Phoenix” in 1641 cum Privilegio et Approbatione Doctorum. The Royal “privilege” was indeed given, but the “approbation” seems to have been of a most indefinite kind. The reason of the book being published in France and not in Holland, where Descartes was living in a charming country house at Endegeest near Leiden, was apparently his fear that the Dutch ministers might in some way lay …