" Ever welcome is the
perception of this truth,--as the sublime audacity of Paracelsus, that
"those who would understand the course of the heavens above must first
of all recognize the heaven in man"; and the affirmation, that "the
laws of Nature are the same as the thoughts within us: the laws of
motion are such as are required by our understanding." It remains to
say that Kepler, too, had intuition of this lofty thought. At the
conclusion of his early work, "The Prodromus Dissertationum
Cosmographicarum," he wrote,--"As men enjoy dainties at the dessert, so
do wise souls gain a taste for heavenly things when they ascend from
their college to the universe and there look around them. Great Artist
of the World! I look with wonder on the works of Thy hands, constructed
after five regular forms, and in the midst the sun, the dispenser of
light and life. I see the moon and stars strewn over the infinite field
of space. Father of the World! what moved Thee thus to exalt a poor, weak
little creature of earth so high that he stands in light a far-ruling
king, almost a god?--_for he thinks Thy thoughts after Thee_."
[Footnote 1: OERSTED: _Soul in Nature._]
It is impossible not to feel freer at the accession of so much power as
these laws bring us.
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