148 HISTORY OF PHYSICAL ASTRONOMY. 



soon that this temptation had no attraction for those 

 who looked at the problem in its true light, as the 

 Italian and English philosophers already did. Vol- 

 taire has observed, far more truly, that Newton's 

 edifice rested on no stone of Descartes' foundations. 

 He illustrates this by relating that Newton only once 

 read the work of Descartes, and, in doing so, wrote 

 the word " error','' repeatedly, on the first seven or 

 eight pages; after which he read no more. This 

 volume, Voltaire adds, was, for some time in the 

 possession of Newton's nephew 13 . 



(Gassendi). Even in his own country, the system 

 of Descartes was by no means universally adopted. 

 We have seen that though Gassendi was coupled 

 with Descartes as one of the leaders of the new 

 philosophy, he was far from admiring his work. 

 Gassendi's own views of the causes of the motions of 

 the heavenly bodies are not very clear, nor even very 

 clearly referrible to the laws of mechanics; although 

 he was one of those who had most share in showing 

 that those laws apply to astronomical motions. In 

 a chapter, headed 14 "Quae sit motrix siderum causa," 

 he reviews several opinions ; but the one which he 

 seems to adopt, is that which ascribes the motion of 

 the celestial globes to certain fibres, of which the 

 action is similar to that of the muscles of animals. 

 It does not appear, therefore, that he had distinctly 

 apprehended, either the continuation of the move- 

 ments of the planets by the First Law of Motion, 

 13 Cartesianism, Enc. Phil. " Gassendi, Opera, vol. i. p. 639. 



