  Since Descartes died before he had completed even the first of these three stages, La Forge decided to fill the lacuna by developing what he believed Descartes would have written about the human mind and its union with the body had he had time to complete his theory, and he did so by borrowing extensively from Descartes’ published and unpublished work. The result was the Traité de l’Esprit de l’Homme, which was composed contemporaneously with La Forge’s commentary on Descartes’ Traité de l’Homme, and in which he referred on numerous occasions to a work in progress on the human mind (H 172, 262, 299, 315, 334, 335). This treatise was printed in Paris in November 1665, although the publication date on the title page was 1666.