270 PREFACE TO THE 



The divisions of natural history are then stated, and 

 are the same as in the De Augmentis ; and the remain- 

 der of the tract relates to one of these divisions, namely 

 the history of things celestial, or in other words to as- 

 tronomy. The problems which it should consider, and 

 the manner in which they ought to be solved, are 

 treated of at some length ; but even with respect to 

 astronomy much which it is proposed to do is left un- 

 done, the whole tract being merely a fragment. 



1 Bacon has nowhere else spoken so largely of astron- 

 omy ; the reason of which apparently is, that he was 

 writing just after Galileo's discoveries had been made 

 known in the Sydereus Nuncius, published in 1611 ; a 

 circumstance which makes the Descriptio Grlobi Intel- 

 lectuals one of the most interesting of his minor writ- 

 ings. The oracles of his mind were in this case evoked 

 by the contemplation, not of old errors, but of new 

 truths. 



The TJiema Cceli, which contains a provisional state- 

 ment of his own astronomical opinions, is immediately 

 connected with the astronomical part of the Descriptio 

 Grlobi Intellectualis. They are clearly of the same date, 

 and form in reality but one work. 



In the De Augmentis Bacon has expressed the same 

 general views on the subject of astronomy as in these 

 tracts ; and they are in truth views which it was nat- 

 ural for a man not well versed in the phenomena of 

 the science to entertain and to promulgate. What had 

 been done by the old astronomers seemed to him full of 

 useless subtleties and merely mathematical conceptions ; 

 men therefore were to be exhorted to cast all these 

 aside, and to study the phenomena of the heavens inde- 

 pendently of arbitrary hypotheses. Let us first obtain 



