The intellectual revolution caused by the discovery
of the double motion of our planet was undoubtedly the mightiest that
man had ever experienced, and its effect was to change the entire
aspect of his speculative and practical activity. What a proof that
ideas rule the world! Two hundred and fifty years ago, certain new
sidereal conceptions arose in the minds of half a dozen philosophers,
(isolated and utterly destitute of political or social influence,
powerful only in the possession of a sublime and seminal
thought,)--conceptions which, during these two centuries, have
succeeded in overthrowing a doctrine as old as the human mind, closely
interknit with the entire texture of opinions, authority, politics, and
religion, and establishing a theory flatly contradicted by the
universal dictates of experience and common sense, and true only to the
transcendental and interpretative Reason!
At the advent of Modern Astronomy, the apparition of the German, John
Kepler, presents itself. Familiarly associated in general apprehension
with that inductive triad known as "Kepler's Laws," which form the
foundation of Celestial Geometry, it is much less generally known that
he was an august and oracular soul, one of those called Mystics and
Transcendentalists, perhaps the greatest genius for analogy that ever
lived,--that he led a truly epic life, a hero and helper of men, a
divine martyr of humanity.
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