A NEW ASTRONOMY 217 



the frontispiece of an immortal code ; who shall be able to exclaim 

 in dithyrambic language, and without incurring the reproach of any- 

 one, ' The die is cast ; I have written my book ; it will be read either 

 in the present age or by posterity, it matters not which ; it may well 

 await a reader, since God has waited six thousand years for an inter- 

 preter of his words.' Arago. 



The philosophical significance of Kepler's discoveries was not 

 recognized by the ecclesiastical party at first. It is chiefly this, that 

 they constitute a most important step to the establishment of the 

 doctrine of the government of the world by law. But it was im- 

 possible to receive these laws without seeking for their cause. The 

 result to which that search eventually conducted not only explained 

 their origin, but also showed that, as laws, they must, in the necessity 

 of nature, exist. It may be truly said that the mathematical exposi- 

 tion of their origin constitutes the most splendid monument of the 

 intellectual power of man. Draper. 



GALILEO. Columbus discovered America when Copernicus 

 was but 19, and before the birth of Tycho Brahe, Magellan had 

 completed the proof of the earth's rotundity by actually 

 sailing around it, while Luther had stirred up the great religious 

 revolt of Protestantism. The later years of Kepler and Galileo 

 fell within the period of the Thirty Years' War, of which neither 

 was to witness the close. Permanent English settlements in 

 America had just begun. Galileo (1564-1642), born on the day 

 of Michael Angelo's death, " nature seeming to signify thereby the 

 passing of the sceptre from art to science," and in the same year 

 with Shakespeare, exerted a mighty influence on the development 

 of science in many fields, and in particular laid the foundations 

 of modern dynamics. 



It is a remarkable circumstance in the history of science that 

 astronomy should have been cultivated at the same time by three such 

 distinguished men as Tycho, Kepler and Galileo. While Tycho in 

 the 54th year of his age was observing the heavens at Prague, Kepler, 

 only 30 years old, was applying his wild genius to the determination 

 of the orbit of Mars, and Galileo, at the age of 36, was about to direct 

 the telescope to the unexplored regions of space. The diversity of 

 gifts which Providence assigned to these three philosophers was no 



