His next works deserving notice are those published on occasion of the new star which shone out with great splendour in 1604, in the constellation Cassiopeia.[181] Immediately on its appearance, Kepler wrote a short account of it in German, marked with all the oddity which characterises most of his productions. We shall see enough of his astronomical calculations when we come to his book on Mars; the following passage will probably be found more amusing.
After comparing this star with that of 1572, and mentioning that many persons who had seen it maintained this to be the brighter of the two, since it was nearly twice the size of its nearest neighbour, Jupiter, he proceeds as follows:—"Yonder one chose for its appearance a time no way remarkable, and came into the world quite unexpectedly, like an enemy storming a town, and breaking into the market-place before the citizens are aware of his approach; but ours has come exactly in the year of which astrologers have written so much about the fiery trigon that happens in it;[182] just in the month in which (according to Cyprian) Mars comes up to a very perfect conjunction with the other two superior planets; just in the day when Mars has joined Jupiter, and just in the place where this conjunction has taken place. Therefore the apparition of this star is not like a secret hostile irruption, as was that one of 1572, but the spectacle of a public triumph, or the entry of a mighty potentate; when the couriers ride in some time before, to prepare his lodgings, and the crowd of young urchins begin to think the time over-long to wait: then roll in, one after another, the ammunition, and money, and baggage waggons, and presently the trampling of horse, and the rush of people from every side to the streets and windows; and when the crowd have gazed with their jaws all agape at the troops of knights; then at last, the trumpeters, and archers, and lackeys, so distinguish the person of the monarch, that there is no occasion to point him out, but every one cries out of his own accord—'Here we have him!'—What it may portend is hard to determine, and thus much only is certain, that it comes to tell mankind either nothing at all, or high and weighty news, quite beyond human sense and understanding. It will have an important influence on political and social relations; not indeed by its own nature, but, as it were, accidentally through the disposition of mankind. First, it portends to the booksellers great disturbances, and tolerable gains; for almost every Theologus, Philosophicus, Medicus, and Mathematicus, or whoever else, having no laborious occupation intrusted to him, seeks his pleasure in studiis, will make particular remarks upon it, and will wish to bring these remarks to the light. Just so will others, learned and unlearned, wish to know its meaning, and they will buy the authors who profess to tell them. I mention these things merely by way of example, because, although thus much can be easily predicted without great skill, yet may it happen just as easily, and in the same manner, that the vulgar, or whoever else is of easy faith, or it may be, crazy, may wish to exalt himself into a great prophet; or it may even happen that some powerful lord, who has good foundation and beginning of great dignities, will be cheered on by this phenomenon to venture on some new scheme, just as if God had set up this star in the darkness merely to enlighten them."
It would hardly be supposed, from the tenor of this last passage, that the writer of it was not a determined enemy to astrological predictions of every description. In 1602 he had published a disputation, not now easily met with, "On the Principles of Astrology," in which it seems that he treated the professed astrologers with great severity. The essence of this book is probably contained in the second treatise on the new star, which he published in 1606.[183] In this volume he inveighs repeatedly against the vanity and worthlessness of ordinary astrology, declaring at the same time, that the professors of that art know that this judgment is pronounced by one well acquainted with its principles. "For if the vulgar are to pronounce who is the best astrologer, my reputation is known to be of the highest order; if they prefer the judgment of the learned, they are already condemned. Whether they stand with me in the eyes of the populace, or I fall with them before the learned, in both cases I am in their ranks; I am on a level with them; I cannot be renounced."
The theory which Kepler proposed to substitute is intimated shortly in the following passage: "I maintain that the colours and aspects, and conjunctions of the planets, are impressed on the natures or faculties of sublunary things, and when they occur, that these are excited as well in forming as in moving the body over whose motion they preside. Now let no one conceive a prejudice that I am anxiously seeking to mend the deplorable and hopeless cause of astrology by far-fetched subtilties and miserable quibbling. I do not value it sufficiently, nor have I ever shunned having astrologers for my enemies. But a most unfailing experience (as far as can be hoped in natural phenomena) of the excitement of sublunary natures by the conjunctions and aspects of the planets, has instructed and compelled my unwilling belief."
After exhausting other topics suggested by this new star, he examines the different opinions on the cause of its appearance. Among others he mentions the Epicurean notion, that it was a fortuitous concourse of atoms, whose appearance in this form was merely one of the infinite number of ways in which, since the beginning of time, they have been combined. Having descanted for some time on this opinion, and declared himself altogether hostile to it, Kepler proceeds as follows:—"When I was a youth, with plenty of idle time on my hands, I was much taken with the vanity, of which some grown men are not ashamed, of making anagrams, by transposing the letters of my name, written in Greek, so as to make another sentence: out of Ιωάννης Κεπλῆρος I made Σειρήνων κάπηλος;[184] in Latin, out of Joannes Keplerus came Serpens in akuleo.[185] But not being satisfied with the meaning of these words, and being unable to make another, I trusted the thing to chance, and taking out of a pack of playing cards as many as there were letters in the name, I wrote one upon each, and then began to shuffle them, and at each shuffle to read them in the order they came, to see if any meaning came of it. Now, may all the Epicurean gods and goddesses confound this same chance, which, although I spent a good deal of time over it, never showed me anything like sense even from a distance.[186] So I gave up my cards to the Epicurean eternity, to be carried away into infinity, and, it is said, they are still flying about there, in the utmost confusion among the atoms, and have never yet come to any meaning. I will tell these disputants, my opponents, not my own opinion, but my wife's. Yesterday, when weary with writing, and my mind quite dusty with considering these atoms, I was called to supper, and a salad I had asked for was set before me. It seems then, said I aloud, that if pewter dishes, leaves of lettuce, grains of salt, drops of water, vinegar, and oil, and slices of egg, had been flying about in the air from all eternity, it might at last happen by chance that there would come a salad. Yes, says my wife, but not so nice and well dressed as this of mine is."
FOOTNOTES:
[181] See Life of Galileo, p. [16].
[182] The fiery trigon occurs about once in every 800 years, when Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars are in the three fiery signs, Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius.
[183] The copy of this work in the British Museum is Kepler's presentation copy to our James I. On the blank leaf, opposite the title-page, is the following inscription, apparently in the author's hand-writing:—"Regi philosophanti, philosophus serviens, Platoni Diogenes, Britannias tenenti, Pragæ stipem mendicans ab Alexandro, e dolio conductitio, hoc suum philosophema misit et commendavit."
[184] The tapster of the Sirens.