After his call to Rome our subject continued his work on magnetism, and in 1641 issued a further treatise on the subject called "Magnes" or "De Arte Magnetica." While he continued to teach Oriental languages and issued in 1644 a book with the title "Lingua AEgyptiaca Restituta," he also continued to apply himself especially to the development of physical science. Accordingly in 1645 there appeared his volume "Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae." This was a treatise on light, illustrated, as was his treatise on magnetism, by many original experiments and demonstrations.
During the five years until 1650 the department of acoustics came under his consideration, so that in that year we have from his pen a treatise called "Musurgia Universalis," with the subtitle, "The Art of Harmony and Discord; a treatise on the whole doctrine of sound with the philosophy of music treated from the standpoint of practical as well as theoretic science." During the next five years astronomy was his special hobby, and the result was in 1656 a treatise on astronomy called "Iter Celeste." This contained a description of the earth and the heavens and discussed the nature of the fixed and moving stars, with various considerations as to the composition and structure of these bodies. A second volume on this subject appeared in 1660.
The variety of Father Kircher's interests in science was not yet exhausted, however. Five years after the completion of his two volumes on astronomy there came one on "Mundus Subterraneus." This treated of the modern subjects of geology, metallurgy, and mineralogy, as well as the chemistry of minerals. It also contained a treatise on animals that live under the ground, and on insects. This was considered one of the author's greatest books, and the whole of it was translated into French, whilst abstracts from it, especially the chapters on poisons, appeared in most of the other languages of Europe. Part of it was translated even into English, though seventeenth-century Englishmen were loath to draw their inspiration from Jesuit writers.
Jesuits were, however, at this time generally acknowledged on the Continent to be leaders in every department of thought, sympathetic coadjutors in every step in scientific progress. Strange as it may appear to those who will not understand the Jesuit spirit of love for learning, two of the most distinguished scientists whose names are immortal in the history of physical sciences in different departments during this century, Kepler and Harvey, were on intimate terms of friendship with the Jesuits of Germany. Harvey, on the occasion of a visit to the Continent, stopped for a prolonged visit with the Jesuits at Cologne, so that some of his English friends joked him about the possibility of his making converts of the Jesuits. These witticisms, however, did not seem to distract Harvey very much, for he returned on a subsequent occasion to spend some further days with his Jesuit scientific friends along the Rhine.
In the meantime Father Kircher was issuing notable books on his always favorite subject of the Oriental languages. In 1650 there appeared "Obeliscus Pamphilius," containing an explanation of the hieroglyphics to be found on the obelisk which by the order of Innocent X, a member of the Pamfili family, was placed in the Piazza Navona by Bernini. This is no mere pamphlet, as might be thought, but a book of 560 pages. In 1652 there appeared "OEdipus AEgyptiacus," that is, the revealer of the sphinx-like riddle of the Egyptian ancient languages. In 1653 a second volume of this appeared, and in 1655 a third [{124}] volume. It was considered so important that it was translated into Russian and other Slav languages, besides several other European languages. His book, "Lingua AEgyptiaca Restituta," which appeared in 1644, when Kircher was forty-two years of age, is considered to be of value yet in the study of Oriental languages, and was dedicated to the patron, Emperor Ferdinand III, whose liberality made its publication possible.
It is often a subject for conjecture just how science was studied and taught in centuries before the nineteenth, and just what text-books were employed. A little familiarity with Father Kircher's publications, however, will show that there was plenty of very suitable material for text-books to be found in his works. Under his own direction, what at the present time would be called a text-book of physics, but which at that time was called "Physiologia Experimentalis," was issued, containing all the experimental and demonstrative parts of his various books on chemistry, physics, music, magnetism, and mechanics, as well as acoustics and optics. This formed the groundwork of most text-books of science for a full century afterwards. Indeed, until the beginning of the distinctly modern science of chemistry with the discoveries of Priestley and Lavoisier, there was to be little added of serious import in science.
Perhaps the most commendable feature of Father Kircher's books is the fact that he himself seems never to have considered that he had [{125}] exhausted a subject. The first work he published was on magnetism. Some twelve years later he returned to the subject, and wrote a more extensive work, containing many improvements over the first volume. The same thing is true of his studies in sound. In 1650, when not quite fifty years of age, he issued his "Musurgia Universalis," a sub-title of which stated that it contains the whole doctrine of sound and the practical and theoretical philosophy of music. A little over twenty years later, however, he published the "Phonurgia Nova," the sub-title of which showed that it was mainly concerned with the experimental demonstration of various truths in acoustics and with the development of the doctrine he had originally stated in the "Musurgia."
It is no wonder that his contemporaries spoke of him as the Doctor centum artium--the teacher of a hundred arts--for there was practically no branch of scientific knowledge in his time in which he was not expert. Scientific visitors to Rome always considered it one of the privileges of their stay in the papal city to have the opportunity to meet Father Kircher, and it was thought a very great honor to be shown through his museum by himself.