THE PLANETS. 433 



handed down to us in antique monuments, especially in 

 carved stones. Mention is constantly made of the harmony 

 of the spheres, although generally reproachfully, throughout 

 the writings of Christian antiquity, and all those of the 

 middle ages, from Basil the Great to Thomas Aquinas and 

 Petrus Alliacus. 22 



At the close of the sixteenth century, all the Pythagorean 

 and Platonic views of the system of the universe were again 

 reanimated in the person of the imaginative Kepler. He, in 

 the first instance, constructed the planetary system in the 

 Mysterium Cosmographicum, in accordance with the prin- 

 ciple of the five regular solids, which may be imagined as 

 situated between the planetary spheres, then in the Harmonica 

 Mundi, according to the intervals of tone. 23 Convinced of 

 the regularity of the relative distances of the planets, he 



the two geometrical progressions, 1. 2. 4. 8 and 1. 3. 9. 27 

 together, and thus alternately taken each successive number 

 from one of the two series, whence resulted the above-men- 

 tioned succession 1. 2. 3. 4. 9 Compare Bockh in the 



Studien von Daub und Creuzer, bd. iii. pp. 34-43 ; Martin, 

 Etudes sur le Timee, torn. i. p. 384, and torn. ii. p. 64. 

 (Compare also Prevost, Sur I'Ame d'apres Platon, in the 

 Mem. de T Acad. de Berlin for 1802, pp. 90 and 97; the same 

 in the Bibliotheque Britannique, Sciences et Arts. torn, xxxvii. 

 1108, p. 153. 



22 See the acute work of Professor Ferdinand Piper, Von 

 der Harmonie der Spharen, 1850, pp. 12-18. The sup- 

 posed relation of the seven vowels of the old Egyptian lan- 

 guage to the seven planets, and Gustav SeyfFarth's concep- 

 tion, already disproved by Zoega's and Tblken's investigations, 

 of the astrological hymns, rich in vowels, of the Egyptian 

 priests, according to passages of Pseudo-Demetrius Phakereus 

 (perhaps Demetrius of Alexandria,) an epigram of Eusebius, 

 and a Gnostic manuscript in Leyden, have been minutely 

 treated of with critical erudition by the younger Ideler, 

 (Hermapion, 1841, pars i. pp. 198-214). Compare also 

 Lobcck, Aglaoph. torn. ii. p. 232. 



23 On the gradual development of the musical ideas of 



