" He marries far and near, brings planetary
eclipses into conjunction with pecuniary penumbras, and his treatise on
the perturbations of Mars reveals equal perturbations in his domestic
economy. It may be to this candor, this _gemueth_, that we are to
ascribe the powerful personal magnetism he exercises in common with
Rousseau, Rabelais, and other rich and ingenuous natures. Who would be
otherwise than frank, when frankness has this power to captivate? The
excess of this influence appears in the warmth betrayed by writers over
their favorite. The cool-headed Delambre, in his "Histoire de
l'Astronomie," speaks of Kepler with the heat of a pamphleteer, and
cannot repress a frequent sneer at his contemporary, Galileo. We know
the splendor of the Newtonian synthesis; yet we do not find ourselves
affected by Newton's character or discoveries. He touches us with the
passionless love of a star.
Kepler puts the same _naivete_ into his speculative activity, with a
subtile anatomy laying bare the _metaphysique_ of his science. It was
his habit to illumine his discoveries with an exhibition of the path
that led to them, regarding the method as equally important with the
result,--a principle that has acquired canonical authority in modern
scientific research.
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