Chapter I (2)

But this audacious diviner knew well the use of Hypothesis, and he applied it as an instrument of investigation as it had never been applied before. The vast significance of Hypothesis in the theory of Scientific Method has never been recognized. It would be a good piece of psychology to explore the principles of this subtile mental power, and might go far to give us a philosophy of Anticipation. The men of facts, men of the understanding, observers,--as we might suppose,--universally show a disposition to shun theorizing, as opposed to the exactness of demonstrative science. And yet it is quite certain, that, in proportion as one rises to a more liberal apprehension, the immense provisional power of speculative ideas becomes apparent. Laplace asserted that no great discovery was ever made without a great guess; and long before, Plato had intimated of these "sacred suspicions of truth," that descend dawn-like on the mind, sublime premonitions of beautiful gates of laws. It is these launching tentatives which bring phenomena to interior and metaphysical tests and bear the mind swift-winged to Nature. Of course, there are various kinds of conjecture, and its value will depend on the brain from which it departs. But a powerful spirit will justify Hypothesis by the high functions to which he puts it. His guesses are not for nothing. Many and long processes go to them.--The inexhaustible fertility displayed by Kepler is a psychologic marvel. He had that subtile chemistry that turns even failures to account, consumes them in its flaming ascent to new reaches. After years of labor on his theory of Mars, he found it failed in application to latitudes and longitudes "out of opposition." Remorselessly he let his hypothesis go, and drew from his failure an important inference, the first step towards emancipation from the ancient prejudice of uniform, circular motion.

Such a genius for Analogy the world never before saw. The perception of similitude, of correspondence, shot perpetual and prophetic in this man's glances. To him had been opened the subtile secret, key to Nature, that Man and the Universe are built after one pattern, and he had faith to believe that the laws of his mind would unlock the phenomena of the world.

The law of Analogy flows from the inherent harmonies of Nature. Of this wise men have ever been intuitive. The eldest Scriptures express it. It is in the Zend-Avesta, primal Japhetic utterance. It vivified that subtile Egyptian symbolism. The early Greeks and the Mystics of Alexandria knew it. Jamblicus reports of Pythagoras, that "he did not procure for himself a thing of this kind through instruments or the voice, but, by employing a certain inevitable divinity, and which it is difficult to apprehend, he extended his ears and fixed his intellect in the sublime symphonies of the world,--he alone hearing and understanding, as it appears, the universal harmony and consonance of the spheres and the stars that are moved through them, and which produce a fuller and more intense melody than anything effected by mortal sounds."

From the sublime intuitions of the harmonies of Nature and the unity of the Universe unfold the bright doctrines of Series and Degrees, of Correspondence, of Similitude. On these thoughts all wise spirits have fed. Indeed, you can hardly say they were ever absent. They are of those flaming thoughts the soul projects, splendid prophecies that become the light of all our science and all our day. Plato formulated these laws. Two thousand years after him, the cosmic brain of Swedenborg traced their working throughout the universal economies of matter and spirit, and Fourier endeavored to translate them into axioms of a new social organization.

These doctrines were ever present to the mind of Kepler; and to what fruitful account he turned Analogy as a means of inductive speculation his wonderful anatomy of his discoveries reveals. He fed on the harmonies of the universe. He has it, that "harmony is the perfection of relations." The work of his mature intellect was the "Harmonices Mundi," (Harmonies of the World,) in which many of the sublime leadings of Modern Science, as the Correlation of Sounds and Colors, the Significance of Musical Chords, the Undulatory Theory, etc., are prefigured. We must account him one of the chief of those prophetic spirits who, by attempting to give phenomena a necessary root in ideas, have breathed into Science a living soul. The new Transcendental Anatomy,--the doctrine of Homologies,--the Embryologic scheme, revealing that all animate forms are developed after one archetype,--the splendid Nebular guess of Laplace,--the thought of the Metamorphosis of Plants,--the attempts at profounder explanations of Light and Colors,--the rising transcendentalism of Chemistry,--the magnificent intuition of Correspondence, showing a grand unity of design in the nodes of shells, the phyllotaxism of plants, and the serialization of planets,--are all signs of the presence of a spirit that is to usher in a new dispensation of Science, fraught with divinest messages to the head and heart of man.

Kepler regarded Analogy as the soul of Science, and he has made it an instrument of prophecy and power. Thus, he inferred from Analogy that the sun turned on its axis, long before Galileo was able to direct his telescope to the solar spots and so determine this rotation as an actual fact. He anticipated a planet between Mars and Jupiter too small to be seen; and his inference that the obliquity of the ecliptic was decreasing, but would, after a long-continued diminution, stop, and then increase again, afterwards acquired the sanction of demonstration. A like instance of anticipation is afforded in the beautiful experiment of the freely-suspended ball revolving in an ellipse under the combined influence of the central and tangential forces, which Jeremiah Horrocks devised, when pursuing Kepler's theory of planetary motion,--his intuition being, that the motions of the spheres might be represented by terrestrial movements. We may mention the observation which the ill-starred Horrocks makes, in a letter,[1] on the occasion of this experiment, as one of the sublimities of Science:--"It appears to me, however, that I have fallen upon the true theory, and that it admits of being illustrated by natural movements on the surface of the earth; for Nature everywhere acts according to a uniform plan, and the harmony of creation is such that small things constitute a faithful type of greater things." Another instance is afforded in the grand intuition of Oken, who, when rambling in the Hartz Mountains, lit upon the skull of a deer, and saw that the cranium was but an expansion of vertebrae, and that the vertebra is the theoretical archetype of the entire osseous framework,--the foundation of modern Osteology. And still another is the well-known instance of the change in polarization predicted by Fresnel from the mere interpretation of an algebraic symbol. This prophetic insight is very sublime, and opens up new spaces in man.

[Footnote 1: _Correspondence,_ 1637]

Of the discoveries of Kepler, we can here have to do with their universal and humanitary bearings alone. It is to be understood, however, that the three grand sweeps of Deduction which we call Kepler's Laws formed the foundation of the higher conception of astronomy, that is, the dynamical theory of astronomical phenomena, and prepared the way for the "Mécanique Céleste." Whewell, the learned historian of the Sciences, speaks of them as "by far the most magnificent and most certain train of truths which the whole expanse of human knowledge can show"; and Comte declares, that "history tells of no such succession of philosophical efforts as in the case of Kepler, who, after constituting Celestial Geometry, strove to pursue that science of Celestial Mechanics which was by its very nature reserved for a future generation." These laws are, first, the law of the velocities of the planets; second, the law of the elliptic orbit of the planets; and, third, the harmonic law, that the squares of the times of the planetary revolutions are proportional to the cubes of their mean distances from the sun. They compass the whole sweep of Celestial Geometry, and stamp their seer as unapproachably the greatest of astronomers, as well as one of the chief benefactors of mankind.

The announcement of Kepler's first two laws was made in his New Astronomy,--"Astronomia Nova, seu Physica Caelestis, tradita Commentariis de Motibus Stellae Martis: Ex Observationibus G.V. Tychonis Brahe." Folio. Prague: 1609. This he published in his thirty-eighth year. The title he gave to this work, "Celestial Physics," must ever be regarded as a stroke of philosophical genius; it is the prediction of Newton and Laplace, and prefigures the path on which astronomical discovery has advanced these two hundred and fifty years.

An auspicious circumstance conspired to forward the astronomical discoveries of Kepler. Invited to Prague in 1600 by Tycho Brahe, as Assistant Royal Astronomer, he had access to the superb series of observations which Tycho had been accumulating for twenty-five years. Endowed with a genius for observation unsurpassed in the annals of science, the noble Dane had obtained a grant from the king of Denmark of the island of Hven, at the mouth of the Baltic. Here he erected a magnificent observatory, which he named _Uranienborg_, City of the Heavens. This he fitted up with a collection of instruments of hitherto unapproached size and perfection, and here, for twenty years, he pursued his observations. Thus it was that Kepler, himself a poor observer, found his complement in one who, without any power of constructive generalization, was yet the possessor of the richest series of astronomical observations ever made. From this admirable conjunction admirable realizations were to be expected. And, indeed, the "Astronomia Nova" presents an unequalled illustration of observation vivified by theory, and theory tested and fructified by observation.

To appreciate the significance of the discovery of the elliptical orbit of the planets, it is necessary to understand the complicated confusion that prevailed in the conception of planetary motions. The primal thought was that the motions of the planets were uniform and circular. This intuition of circular orbits was a happy one, and was, perhaps, necessitated by the very structure of the human mind. The sweeping and centrifugal soul, darting manifold rays of equal reach, realizes the conception of the circle, that is, a figure all of whose radii are equidistant from a central point. But this conception of the circle afterwards came to acquire superstitious tenacity, being regarded as the perfect form, and the only one suitable for such divine natures as the stars, and was for two thousand years an impregnable barrier to the progress of Astronomy. To account for every new appearance, every deviation from circular perfection, a new cycloid was supposed, till all the simplicity of the original hypothesis was lost in a complication of epicycles:--

"The sphere,
With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er,
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb."

By the end of the sixteenth century the number of circles supposed necessary for the seven stars then known amounted to seventy-four, while Tycho Brahe was discovering more and more planetary movements for which these circles would not account.

To push aside forever this complicated chaos and evoke celestial order and harmony, came Kepler. Long had the sublime intuition possessed him, that numerical and geometrical relations connect the distances, times, and revolutions of the planets. He began his studies on the planet Mars,--a fortunate choice, as the marked eccentricity of that planet would afford ready suggestions and verifications of the true law of irregularity, and on which Tycho had accumulated copious data. It had long been remarked that the angular velocity of each planet increases constantly in proportion as the body approaches its centre of motion; but the relation between the distance and the velocity remained wholly unknown. Kepler discovered it by comparing the maximum and minimum of these quantities, by which their relation became more sensible. He found that the angular velocities of Mars at its nearest and farthest distances from the sun were in inverse proportion to the squares of the corresponding distances. This law, deduced, was the immediate path to the law of orbital ellipticity. For, on attempting to apply his newly-discovered law to Mars, on the old assumption that its orbit was a circle, he soon found that the results from the combination of the two principles were such as could not be reconciled with the places of Mars observed by Tycho. In this dilemma, finding he must give up one or the other of these principles, he first proposed to sacrifice his own theory to the authority of the old system,--a memorable example of resolute candor. But, after indefatigably subjecting it to crucial experiment, he found that it was the old hypothesis, and not the new one, that had to be sacrificed.[1] If the orbit was not a circle, what, then, was it? By a happy stroke of philosophical genius he lit on the ellipse. On bringing his hypothesis to the test of observation, he found it was indeed so; and rising from the case of Mars to universal statement, he generalized the law, that the planetary orbits are elliptical, having the sun for their common focus.

[Footnote 1: ROBERT SMALL: _Astronomical Discoveries of Kepler_.]

Kepler had now determined the course of each planet. But there was no known relation between the distances and times; and the evolution of some harmony between these factors was to him an object of the greatest interest and the most restless curiosity. Long he dwelt in the dream of the Pythagorean harmonies. Then he essayed to determine it from the regular geometrical solids, and afterwards from the divisions of musical chords. Over twenty years he spent in these baffled efforts. At length, on the 8th of March, 1618, it occurred to him, that, instead of comparing the simple times, he should compare the numbers expressing the similar powers, as squares, cubes, etc.; and lastly, he made the very comparison on which his discovery was founded, between the squares of the times and the cubes of the distances. But, through some error of calculation, no common relation was found between them. Finding it impossible, however, to banish the subject from his thoughts, he tells us, that on the 8th of the following May he renewed the last of these comparisons, and, by repeating his calculations with greater care, found, with the highest astonishment and delight, that the ratio of the squares of the periodical times of any two planets was constantly and invariably the same with the ratio of the cubes of their mean distances from the sun. Then it was that he burst forth in his memorable rhapsody:--"What I prophesied twenty-two years ago, as soon as I discovered the five solids among the heavenly orbits,--what I firmly believed long before I had seen Ptolemy's harmonics,--what I had promised my friends in the title of this book, which I named before I was sure of my discovery,--what sixteen years ago I urged as a thing to be sought,--that for which I joined Tycho Brahe, for which I settled in Prague, for which I have devoted the best part of my life to astronomical contemplation,--at length I have brought to light, and have recognized its truth beyond my most sanguine expectations. It is now eighteen months since I got the first glimpse of light, three months since the dawn, very few days since the unveiled sun, most admirable to gaze upon, burst out upon me. Nothing holds me; I will indulge in my sacred fury; I will triumph over mankind by the honest confession, that I have stolen the golden vases of the Egyptians to build up a tabernacle for my God far away from the confines of Egypt. If you forgive me, I rejoice; if you are angry, I can bear it: the die is cast; the book is written, to be read either now or by posterity, I care not which: it may well wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer!"

These laws have, no doubt, a universal significance, and may be translated into problems of life. For, after the farthest sweep of Induction, a question yet remains to be asked: Whence comes the power to perceive a law? Whence that subtile correspondence and consanguinity, that the laws of man's mental structure tally with the phenomena of the universe? To this problem of problems our science as yet affords but meagre answers. It seems though, so far in the history of humanity, it had been but given man to recognize this truth as a splendid idealism, without the ability to make it potential in his theory of the world. Yet what a key to new and beautiful gates of laws!

"Who can be sure to find its true degree,
_Magister magnus in igne_ shall he be."

Antique and intuitive nations--Indians, Egyptians, Greeks--sought a solution of this august mystery in the doctrines of Transmigration and Anamnesis or Reminiscence. Nothing is whereto man is not kin. He knows all worlds and histories by virtue of having himself travelled the mystic spiral descent. Awaking through memory, the processes of his mind repeat the processes of the visible Kosmos. His unfolding is a hymn of the origination of the world.

Nature and man having sprung from the same spiritual source, a perfect agreement subsists between the phenomena of the world and man's mentality. This is necessary to the very conception of Science. If the laws of reason did not exist in Nature, we should vainly attempt to force them upon her: if the laws of Nature did not exist in our reason, we should not be able to comprehend them.[1] There is a saying reported of Zoroaster, and, coming from the deeps of fifty centuries, still authentic and intelligible, that "the congruities of material forms to the laws of the soul are divine allurements." 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. They carry farther on the bounds of humanity. The stars are the eternal monitions of spirituality. Who can estimate how much man's thoughts have been colored by these golden kindred? It seems as though it were but required to show man space,--space, space, space,--there is that in him will fill and pass it. There is that in the celestial prodigies--in gulfs of Time and Space--that seems to mate the greed of the soul. There is that greed in the soul to pass through worlds and ages,--through growths, griefs, desires, processes, spheres,--to travel the endless highways,--to pass and resume again. O Heavens, you are but a splendid fable of the elder mind! Centripetal and centrifugal are in man, too, and primarily; and an aspiring soul will ascend into the sweeps and circles, and pass swift and devouring through baffling intervals and steep-down strata of galaxies and stars.

The thought that overarches the centuries with firmamental sweep is the thought of the Ensemble. To this all has led along,--but the disclosures of Astronomy especially. The discovery of the earth's revolution, at once transporting the stars to distances outside of all telluric connection, broke the old spell, and replaced the petty provincialism of the earth as the All-Centre by the vast, sublime conception of the Universe. Laplace has pointed this out, showing how to the fantastic and enervating notion of a universe arranged for man has succeeded the sound and vivifying thought of man discovering, by a positive exercise of his intelligence, the general laws of the world, so as to be able to modify them for his own good, within certain limits. Dawning prophetic on modern times, the thought of the Ensemble holds the seeds of new humanitary growths. This is the vast similitude that binds together the ages,--that balances creeds, colors, eras. Through Nature, man, forms, spirit, the eternal conspiracy works and weaves. This is the water of spirituality. All is bound up in the Divine Scheme. The Divine Scheme encloses all.

PLEASURE-PAIN.

"Das Vergnügen ist Nichts als ein höchst angenehmer Schmerz."--HEINRICH HEINE

I.

Full of beautiful blossoms
Stood the tree in early May:
Came a chilly gale from the sunset,
And blew the blossoms away,--

Scattered them, through the garden,
Tossed them into the mere:
The sad tree moaned and shuddered,
"Alas! the fall is here."

But all through the glowing summer
The blossomless tree throve fair,
And the fruit waxed ripe and mellow,
With sunny rain and air;

And when the dim October
With golden death was crowned,
Under its heavy branches
The tree stooped to the ground.

In youth there comes a west wind
Blowing our bloom away,--
A chilly breath of Autumn
Out of the lips of May.

We bear the ripe fruit after,--
Ah, me! for the thought of pain!--
We know the sweetness and beauty
And the heart-bloom never again.

II.

One sails away to sea,--
One stands on the shore and cries;
The ship goes down the world, and the light
On the sullen water dies.

The whispering shell is mute,--
And after is evil cheer:
She shall stand on the shore and cry in vain,
Many and many a year.

But the stately, wide-winged ship
Lies wrecked on the unknown deep;
Far under, dead in his coral bed,
The lover lies asleep.

III.

In the wainscot ticks the death-watch,
Chirps the cricket in the floor,
In the distance dogs are barking,
Feet go by outside my door.

From her window honeysuckles
Stealing in upon the gloom,
Spice and sweets embalm the silence
Dead within the lonesome room.

And the ghost of that dead silence
Haunts me ever, thin and chill,
In the pauses of the death-watch,
When the cricket's cry is still.

IV.

She stands in silks of purple,
Like a splendid flower in bloom;
She moves, and the air is laden
With delicate perfume.

The over-vigilant mamma
Can never let her be:
She must play this march for another,
And sing that song for me.

I wonder if she remembers
The song I made for her:
"_The hopes of love are frailer
Than lines of gossamer_":

Made when we strolled together
Through fields of happy June,
And our hearts kept time together,
With birds and brooks in tune,--

And I was so glad of loving,
That I must mimic grief,
And, trusting in love forever,
Must fable unbelief.

I did not hear the prelude,--
I was thinking of these old things.
She is fairer and wiser and older
Than----What is it she sings?

"_The hopes of love are frailer
Than lines of gossamer_."
Alas! the bitter wisdom
Of the song I made for her!

V.

All the long August afternoon, The little drowsy stream Whispers a melancholy tune, As if it dreamed of June And whispered in its dream.

The thistles show beyond the brook Dust on their down and bloom, And out of many a weed-grown nook The aster-flowers look With eyes of tender gloom.

The silent orchard aisles are sweet With smell of ripening fruit. Through the sere grass, in shy retreat, Flatter, at coming feet, The robins strange and mute.

There is no wind to stir the leaves, The harsh leaves overhead; Only the querulous cricket grieves, And shrilling locust weaves A song of summer dead.

THE PROFESSOR'S STORY.