20 COS3I03. 



eiily sphere and all that he loiew coiicernmg the ammate 

 and inanimate parts of terrestrial nature, in a work entitled 

 Traite dii Mo7ide, and also Summa PhilosGijliice. The or- 

 ganization of animals, and especially that of man — -a subject 

 to which he devoted the anatomical studies of eleven years^ 

 —was to conclude the work. In his correspondence with 

 Father Merseune, we frequently find him complaining of his 

 glow progress, and of the difficulty of arranging so large a 

 [mass of materials. The Cosinos which Descartes always 

 called " his world'' (son monde) was at length to have been 

 sent to press at the close of the year 1633, when the report 

 of the sentence passed by the Inquisition at Rome on Gali- 

 leo, which was first made generally known four months aft- 

 erward, in October, 1633, by Gassendi and Bouillaud, at 

 once put a stop to his plans, and deprived posterity of a great 

 work, completed with much pains and infinite care. The 

 motives that restrained him from publishing the Cosmos 

 were, love of peaceful retirement in his secluded abode at 

 De venter, and a pious desire not to treat irreverentially the 

 decrees pronounced by the Holy Chair against the planetary 

 movement of the earth. f In 1664, fourteen years after the 

 death of the philosopher, some fragments were first printed 

 under the singular title of Le Mo?tde, ou Traite de la Lu- 

 miere.''t The three chapters which treat of light scarcely, 

 however, constitute a fourth part of the work ; while those 

 sections which originally belonged to the Cosmos of Des- 

 cartes, and treated of the movement of the planets, and their 

 distance from the sun, of terrestrial magnetism, the ebb and 

 flow of the ocean, earthquakes, and volcanoes, have been 

 transposed to the third and fourth portions of the celebrated 

 work, Principes de la PJdlosophie. 



Notwithstanding its ambitious title, the Ccsmotlicoros of 

 Huygens, which did not appear till after his death, scarcely 

 deserves to be noticed in this enumeration of cosmological 

 efibrts. It consists of the dreams and fancies of a great man 

 on the animal and vegetable worlds, of the most remote cos- 

 raical bodies, and especially of the modifications of form which 



* See La Vie de M. Descartes (par Baillet), 1691, Part i., p. 10?, 

 End CEuvres de Descartes, publiees par Victor Cousin, torn, i., 1824, 

 p. 101. 



t Lzttres de Descartes au P. Mersenne, du 19 Nov., 1G33, et du 5 Jan* 

 vier, 1G34. . (Baillet, Fart i., p. 244-247.) 



X The Latin translation bears the title Mundus sive Dissertaiio de 

 Litmiyie ut ct de aliis Sensmim Ohjectis primariis. See Descartes, Oj.'tiS' 

 ttula posllmma Physica et Mathematlca, Arast., 1704. 



