22 COSMOS. 



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

 sections which originally belonged to the Cosmos of Descartes, 

 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 Philosophie. 



Notwithstanding its ambitious title, the Cosmotheoros of 

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

 deserves to be noticed in this enumeration of cosmological 

 efforts. It consists of the dreams and fancies of a great 

 man on the animal and vegetable worlds, of the most 

 remote cosmical bodies, and especially of the modifications 

 of form which the human race may there present. The reader 

 might suppose he were perusing Kepler's Somnium Astrono- 

 micum, or Kircher's Iter Extaticus. As Huygens, like the 

 astronomers of our own day, denied the presence of air and 

 water in the moon, 87 he is much more embarrassed regarding 



37 " Lunam aquis carere et acre : Marium similitudinein 

 in Luna nullam reperio. Nam regiones planas qua? montosis 

 multo obscuriores sunt, quasque vulgo pro maribus haberi 

 video et oceanorum nominibus insigniri, in his ipsis, 

 longiore telescopic inspectis, cavitates exiguas inesse com- 

 perio rotundas, umbris intus cadentibus ; quod maris 

 superficiei convenire nequit; turn ipsi campi illi latiores 

 non prorsus aequabilem superficiem praeferunt, cum diligen- 

 tius eas intuemur. Quod circa maria esse non possunt, sed 

 materia constare debent minus candicante, quam qua3 est 

 partibus asperioribus in quibus rursus qusedam viridiori 

 lurnine caeteras proecellunt." Hugenii Cosmotheoros^ ed. alt. 

 1699, lib. 11, p. 114. Huygens conjectures however that 

 Jupiter is agitated by much wind and rain, for " ventorum 

 flatus ex ilia nubium Jovialium mutabili facie cognoscitur," 

 (lib. i. p. 69). These dreams of Huygens, regarding the 

 inhabitants of remote planets, so unworthy of a man versed 

 in exact mathematics, have, unfortunately, been revived by 

 Emanuel Kant, in his admirable work Allgemeine Naturge- 

 schichte und Theorie des Himmels, 1755 (s. 173-192). 



