While Tycho Brahe, at the age of fifty-four, was making
his memorable observations at Prague, Kepler, at the age of thirty, was
applying his fiery mind to the determination of the orbit of Mars, and
Galileo, at thirty-six, was bringing his telescope to the revelation of
new celestial intervals and orbs. Within the succeeding century Huygens
made the application of the pendulum to clocks; Napier invented
Logarithms; Descartes and Galileo created the analysis of curves, and
the science of Dynamics; Leibnitz brought the Differential Calculus;
Newton decomposed a ray of light, and synthesized Kepler's Laws into
the theory of Universal Gravitation.
Into this age, when the Old and New met face to face, came the
questioning and quenchless spirit of Kepler. Born into an age of
adventure, this new Prometheus, this heaven-scaler, matched it with an
audacity to lift it to new reaches of realization.
A singular _naivete_, too, marked this august soul. He has the
frankness of Montaigne or Jean Jacques. He used to accuse himself of
gabbling in mathematics,--"_in re mathematica loquax_,"--and claimed to
speak with German freedom,--"_scripsi haec, homo Germanicus, more et
libertate Germanica_.
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