who know well the principles which I have proven in Recherche de la
vérité and elsewhere have no need of reading the Additions which
follow'. But what is still more striking is the fact that Malebranche
preserved, even in the final edition of 1712, a preface ('extrait d'une
lettre') which clearly ruled out the interpolation of scriptural and
patristic 'supports'. 'The individual character of the author', this
preface asserts, 'is to speak clearly and with order, and to spread
enlightenment in attentive minds: something he would not have
been able to do, if he had been obliged to insert in his discourses a
mass of passages, which often need to be explained, and which cause
the sequence and the connection of his thoughts to be lost.' It is with
good reason, then, that the eminent Malebranchist Henri Gouhier
says that the original edition of Nature et grâce shows us the form that
Malebranche 'wanted to give to it', while the post-1684 versions only
reveal a transmogrified work 'which time imposed on him'.

No less a critic than Sainte-Beuve, in Port-Royal, described the
losses that this transmogrification brought about.

The Traité de la nature et de la grâce is divided into three discourses . . . Each
discourse, which itself has two parts, is composed of paragraphs which are
more or less long, but always well proportioned, [which are] species of
aphorisms, of metaphysical oracles, which move forward more or less like
strophes . . . Now, if you like, the whole book has the beauty of a temple. In
the later editions, the author caused each paragraph to be followed by
additions or commentaries which damaged the original beauty [of the
text] . . . One can imagine the annoyance of Malebranche in being obliged
thus to upset the beauty of his architectural order to prop up its solidity. It is
like an architect who, between every ornament and every column in a temple
built by himself, should be obliged by his critics to insert wooden supports,
on which would be posted the geometrical objections which are there
exhibited. ¹

And, as Ginette Dreyfus has correctly added, 'the original
plainness [nudité] of the Traité was in singular conformity to
the spirit of the Malebranchist effort. The constant concern of
Malebranche is that of making truth shine by consulting that
universal reason with which the human mind is consubstantially
united. By its presence alone, truth dissipates error.' ² If one adds in
Malebranche's conviction that Scripture is 'full of anthropologies',

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