16 SPECIAL RESULTS OF OBSEKVATION IX THE DOMAIN 



existence of perturbations, the Deity employs a number of 

 astral Spirits to maintain the planets in their eternal ap- 

 pointed courses. ( 26 ) The stars display the image of the 

 Divinity in the visible world. The small pseudo- Aristotelian 

 book of the Cosmos, which is certainly of Stoic origin, is 

 not mentioned here, notwithstanding its name. It presents, 

 it is true, in a descriptive manner, and often with animated 

 rhetoric and vivacity of colouring, both the heavens and the 

 earth, mid the currents of the ocean and of the atmosphere ; 

 but it manifests no tendency to reduce the phenomena of 

 the Cosmos to general physical principles, i. e., to principles 

 founded in the properties of matter. 



I have dwelt the longer on the most brilliant epoch of 

 antiquity, as respects views of Nature, in order to place in 

 opposition the earliest and the more recent attempts at 

 generalisation. In the intellectual movement which has 

 taken place in the course of centuries, and which in reference 

 to the enlargement of the domain of cosmical contemplation 

 was described in another portion ( 27 ) of the present work, 

 the end of the 13th and beginning of the 14th centuries 

 were particularly distinguished; but the Opus Majus of 

 Eoger Bacon, the Mirror of Nature of Vincentius of Beau- 

 vais, the Physical Geography (Liber Cosmographicus) of 

 Albertus Magnus, the Picture of the World (Imago Muiidi) 

 of Cardinal Petrus de Alliaco, (Pierre d'Ailly), are works 

 which, however powerfully they may have influenced their 

 cotemporaries, do not correspond in their contents to the 

 titles which they bear. Among the Italian opposers of 

 Aristotle's Physics, Bernardino Telesio of Cosenza was the 

 founder of a "Rational" system of natural science, in which 

 he regarded all the phaenomena of matter, itself passive, as 



