

INTRODUCTION, 21 



Descartes, who was endowed with greater versatility of 

 physical knowledge than Kepler, and who laid the foundation 

 of many departments of mathematical physics, undertook to 

 comprise the whole world of phenomena, the heavenly sphere 

 and all that he knew concerning the animate and inanimate 

 parts of terrestrial nature, in a work entitled Traite du Monde. 

 and also Summa, Philosophies. The organisation of animals, and 

 especially that of man a subject to which he devoted the 

 anatomical studies of eleven years 34 was to conclude the 

 work. In his correspondence with Father Mersenne, we 

 frequently find him complaining of his slow progress, and of the 

 difficulty of arranging so large a mass of materials. The Cosmos 

 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 Galileo, which was first made generally known four 

 months afterwards, in October, 1633, by Gassendi and 

 Bouillaud, at once put a stop to his plans, and deprived pos- 

 terity 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 Deventer, and a pious desire not to treat irreveren- 

 tially the decrees pronounced by the Holy Chair, against the 

 planetary movement of the earth. 35 In 1664, fourteen years 

 after the death of the philosopher, some fragments were first 

 printed under the singular title of Le Monde, ou Traite dc la 

 Lumiere. 26 The three chapters which treat of light, scarcely, 



34 See La Vie de M. Descartes, (par Baillet) 1691, P. 1, 

 p. 197, and CEuvres de Descartes, publiees par Victor Cousin, 

 tom.i. 1824, p. 101. 



35 Lettres de Descartes au P. Mersenne, du 19 Nov. 1633, 

 ct du 5 Janvier 1634. (Baillet, P. 1. pp. 244-247.) 



16 The Latin translation bears the title, Mundus sive Dis- 

 sertatio de Lumine ut et de aliis Sensuum Objectis primanis. 

 See Descartes, Opuscula posthuma physica et mathematica. 

 Amst. 1704. 



