 Book One of La Géométrie is entitled “Problems the construction of which requires only straight lines and circles,” and it is in this opening book that Descartes details his geometrical analysis and describes how geometrical problems are to be explicated algebraically. In this respect, what we find in Book One is similar to the algebraic elaboration of geometrical problems presented by Viète in his 1594 Supplement of geometry as he explains the stage of exegetics. That said, Descartes’ approach to analysis rests on innovations in notation and formalism as well as in the merging of geometry and arithmetic which move him beyond Viète’s analysis, lending some credence to Descartes’ remark to Mersenne that, in La Géométrie, his program for geometry begins where Viète’s left off (To Mersenne, December 1637, AT I, 479; CSMK 77–79; See Macbeth 2004 for discussion of the relationship between Viète’s “analytical art” and Descartes’ use of analysis in geometry).