immediately appointed him to succeed his patron as imperial mathematician, although at a reduced salary of 500 florins; the invaluable treasure of Tycho’s observations was placed at his disposal; and the laborious but congenial task was entrusted to him of completing the tables to which the grateful Dane had already affixed the title of Rudolphine. The first works executed by him at Prague were, nevertheless, a homage to the astrological proclivities of the emperor. In De fundamentis astrologiae certioribus (Prague, 1602) he declared his purpose of preserving and purifying the grain of truth which he believed the science to contain. Indeed, the doctrine of “aspects” and “influences” fitted excellently with his mystical conception of the universe, and enabled him to discharge with a semblance of sincerity the most lucrative part of his professional duties. Although he strictly limited his prophetic pretensions to the estimate of tendencies and probabilities, his forecasts were none the less in demand. Shrewd sense and considerable knowledge of the world came to the aid of stellar lore in the preparation of “prognostics” which, not unfrequently hitting off the event, earned him as much credit with the vulgar as his cosmical speculations with the learned. He drew the horoscopes of the emperor and Wallenstein, as well as of a host of lesser magnates; but, though keenly alive to the unworthy character of such a trade, he made necessity his excuse for a compromise with superstition. “Nature,” he wrote, “which has conferred upon every animal the means of subsistence, has given astrology as an adjunct and ally to astronomy.” He dedicated to the emperor in 1603 a treatise on the “great conjunction” of that year (Judicium de trigono igneo); and he published his observations on a brilliant star which appeared suddenly (Sept. 30, 1604), and remained visible for seventeen months, in De stella nova in pede Serpentarii (Prague, 1606). While sharing the opinion of Tycho as to the origin of such bodies by condensation of nebulous matter from the Milky Way, he attached a mystical signification to the coincidence in time and place of the sidereal apparition with a triple conjunction of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
The main task of his life was not meanwhile neglected. This was nothing less than the foundation of a new astronomy, in which physical cause should replace arbitrary hypothesis. A preliminary study of optics led to the publication, in 1604, of his Astronomiae pars optica, containing important discoveries in the theory of vision, and a notable approximation towards the true law of refraction. But it was not until 1609 that, the “great Martian labour” being at length completed, he was able, in his own figurative language, to lead the captive planet to the foot of the imperial throne. From the time of his first introduction to Tycho he had devoted himself to the investigation of the orbit of Mars, which, on account of its relatively large eccentricity, had always been especially recalcitrant to theory, and the results appeared in Astronomia nova αἱτιολογητός, seu Physica coelestis tradita commentariis de motibus stellae Martis (Prague, 1609). In this, the most memorable of Kepler’s multifarious writings, two of the cardinal principles of modern astronomy—the laws of elliptical orbits and of equal areas—were established (see Astronomy: History); important truths relating to gravity were enunciated, and the tides ascribed to the influence of lunar attraction; while an attempt to explain the planetary revolutions in the then backward condition of mechanical knowledge produced a theory of vortices closely resembling that afterwards adopted by Descartes. Having been provided, in August 1610, by Ernest, archbishop of Cologne, with one of the new Galilean instruments, Kepler began, with unspeakable delight, to observe the wonders revealed by it. He had welcomed with a little essay called Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo Galileo’s first announcement of celestial novelties; he now, in his Dioptrice (Augsburg, 1611), expounded the theory of refraction by lenses, and suggested the principle of the “astronomical” or inverting telescope. Indeed the work may be said to have founded the branch of science to which it gave its name.
The year 1611 was marked by Kepler as the most disastrous of his life. The death by small-pox of his favourite child was followed by that of his wife, who, long a prey to melancholy, was on the 3rd of July carried off by typhus. Public calamity was added to private bereavement. On the 23rd of May 1611 Matthias, brother of the emperor, assumed the Bohemian crown in Prague, compelling Rudolph to take refuge in the citadel, where he died on the 20th of January following. Kepler’s fidelity in remaining with him to the last did not deprive him of the favour of his successor. Payments of arrears, now amounting to upwards of 4000 florins, was not, however, in the desperate condition of the imperial finances, to be hoped for; and he was glad, while retaining his position as court astronomer, to accept (in 1612) the office of mathematician to the states of Upper Austria. His residence at Linz was troubled by the harsh conduct of the pastor Hitzler, in excluding him from the rites of his church on the ground of supposed Calvinistic leanings—a decision confirmed, with the addition of an insulting reprimand, on his appeal to Württemberg. In 1613 he appeared with the emperor Matthias before the diet of Ratisbon as the advocate of the introduction into Germany of the Gregorian calendar; but the attempt was for the time frustrated by anti-papal prejudice. The attention devoted by him to chronological subjects is evidenced by the publication about this period of several essays in which he sought to prove that the birth of Christ took place five years earlier than the commonly accepted date.
Kepler’s second courtship forms the subject of a highly characteristic letter addressed by him to Baron Stralendorf, in which he reviews the qualifications of eleven candidates for his hand, and explains the reasons which decided his choice in favour of a portionless orphan girl named Susanna Reutlinger. The marriage was celebrated at Linz, on the 30th of October 1613, and seems to have proved a happy and suitable one. The abundant vintage of that year drew his attention to the defective methods in use for estimating the cubical contents of vessels, and his essay on the subject (Nova Stereometria Doliorum, Linz, 1615) entitles him to rank among those who prepared the discovery of the infinitesimal calculus. His observations on the three comets of 1618 were published in De Cometis, contemporaneously with De Harmonice Mundi (Augsburg, 1619), of which the first lineaments had been traced twenty years previously at Gratz. This extraordinary production is memorable as having announced the discovery of the “third law”—that of the sesquiplicate ratio between the planetary periods and distances. But the main purport of the treatise was the exposition of an elaborate system of celestial harmonies depending on the various and varying velocities of the several planets, of which the sentient soul animating the sun was the solitary auditor. The work exhibiting this fantastic emulation of extravagance with genius was dedicated to James I. of England, and the compliment was acknowledged with an invitation to that island, conveyed through Sir Henry Wotton. Notwithstanding the distracted state of his own country, he refused to abandon it, as he had previously, in 1617, declined the post of successor to G. A. Magini in the mathematical chair of Bologna.
The insurmountable difficulties presented by the lunar theory forced Kepler, after an enormous amount of fruitless labour, to abandon his design of comprehending the whole scheme of the heavens in one great work to be called Hipparchus, and he then threw a portion of his materials into the form of a dialogue intended for the instruction of general readers. The Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae (Linz and Frankfort, 1618–1621), a lucid and attractive textbook of Copernican science, was remarkable for the prominence given to “physical astronomy,” as well as for the extension to the Jovian system of the laws recently discovered to regulate the motions of the planets. The first of a series of ephemerides, calculated on these principles, was published by him at Linz in 1617; and in that for 1620, dedicated to Baron Napier, he for the first time employed logarithms. This important invention was eagerly welcomed by him, and its theory formed the subject of a treatise entitled Chilias Logarithmorum, printed in 1624, but circulated in manuscript three years earlier, which largely contributed to bring the new method into general use in Germany.
His studies were interrupted by family trouble. The restless
