COGITATIONES DE SCIENTIA HUMANA. 431 



tenth of the Cogitationes de Rerum Naturd, exactly as 

 they are given by Gruter ; except a few verbal differ 

 ences which I have pointed out where they occur. In 

 the last mentioned (which forms the seventh article of 

 the first fragment), the passage about the new star in 

 Cassiopeia appears in the same words and with the same 

 context precisely ; and therefore the reasons which I 

 have given for presuming that the Cogitationes de Re- 

 rum Naturd were written before 1605 are equally ap 

 plicable to this fragment. It is on this account that 

 I place it first in the series; not that some of the 

 other pieces contained in this part may not have been 

 written earlier than 1605, but that there is none 

 among them concerning which I have such good 

 grounds for concluding that it cannot have been writ 

 ten later. 



The Cogitatio in which this passage occurs is imme 

 diately followed by one on the true relation between 

 natural philosophy and natural history ; in which the 

 kind of natural history on which a sound and active 

 philosophy may be built is particularly described. If 

 we could be sure that this also was written before 1605, 

 the fact would be valuable ; as showing that this part 

 of the design was no after thought, but was as clearly 

 conceived, and its essential importance as fully recog 

 nised, in 1605 as in 1620. In the Parasceve and in 

 the admonition prefixed to the Historia Ventorum (mo- 

 nendi sunt homines, &c.), the impossibility of carrying 

 the work on without such a collection of natural his 

 tory, though more fully and anxiously insisted upon, 

 is not more distinctly understood. The presumption 

 however which fixes the date of the preceding Cogi 

 tatio does not necessarily hold with regard to this, 



