20 COSMOS. 



enly 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 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 Mersenne, we frequently find him complaining of hia 

 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 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 

 Deventer, and a pious desire not to treat irreverentially the 

 decrees pronounced by the Holy Chair against the planetary 

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

 death of the philosopher, some fragments were first printed 

 under the singular title of Le Monde, ou Traite de la Lu- 

 miere."i. 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 Philosophic. 



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 cos- 

 mical bodies, and especially of the modifications of form which 



See La Vie de M. Descartes (par Baillet), 1691, Part i., p. 197, 

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

 p. 101. 



t Lsttres de Descartes au P. Mersenne, du, 19 Nov., 1633, et du 5 Jan- 

 vier, 1634. (Baillet, Part i., p. 244-247.) 



\ The Latin translation bears the title Mundus give Dissertalio de 

 Lwmine itt et de aliis Sensuum Objectis primariis. See Descartes, Optu~ 

 cula posthuma Physka et Mathematica, Amst., 1704. 



