The Sleepwalkers (114 page)

The
difficulty
was
to
find
out
how
exactly
this
influence
worked.
That
"the
sky
does
something
to
man"
was
self-evident;
but
specifically
what?
"Truly
in
all
my
knowledge
of
astrology
I
know
not
enough
with
certainty
that
I
should
dare
to
predict
with
confidence
any
specific
thing."
^21a
Yet
he
never
gave
up
hope:

"No
man
should
hold
it
to
be
incredible
/
that
out
of
the
astrologers'
foolishness
and
blasphemies
/
some
useful
and
sacred
knowledge
may
come
/
that
out
of
the
unclean
slime
/
may
come
a
little
snail
/
or
mussel
/
or
oyster
or
eel,
all
useful
nourishments;
/
that
out
of
a
big
heap
of
lowly
worms
/
may
come
a
silk
worm
/
and
lastly
/
that
in
the
evil-smelling
dung
/
a
busy
hen
may
find
a
decent
corn
/
nay,
a
pearl
or
a
golden
corn
./
if
she
but
searches
and
scratches
long
enough."
²²

There
is
hardly
a
page
in
Kepler's
writings
–
some
twenty
solid
volumes
in
folio
–
that
is
not
alive
and
kicking.

And
gradually,
a
vision
did
indeed
emerge
out
of
the
confusion.
At
twenty-four,
he
wrote
to
a
correspondent:

"In
what
manner
does
the
countenance
of
the
sky
at
the
moment
of
a
man's
birth
determine
his
character?
It
acts
on
the
person
during
his
life
in
the
manner
of
the
loops
which
a
peasant
ties
at
random
around
the
pumpkins
in
his
field:
they
do
not
cause
the
pumpkin
to
grow,
but
they
determine
its
shape.
The
same
applies
to
the
sky:
it
does
not
endow
man
with
his
habits,
history,
happiness,
children,
riches
or
a
wife,
but
it
moulds
his
condition..."
²³

Thus
only
the
pattern
is
cosmically
determined,
not
any
particular
event;
within
that
pattern,
man
is
free.
In
his
later
years,
this
Gestalt
concept
of
cosmic
destiny
became
more
abstract
and
purified
from
dross.
The
individual
soul,
which
bears
the
potential
imprint
of
the
entire
sky,
reacts
to
the
light
coming
from
the
planets
according
to
the
angles
they
form
with
each
other,
and
the
geometrical
harmonies
or
disharmonies
that
result,
just
as
the
ear
reacts
to
the
mathematical
harmonies
of
music,
and
the
eye
to
the
harmonies
of
colour.
This
capacity
of
the
soul
to
act
as
a
cosmic
resonator
has
a
mystic
and
a
causal
aspect:
on
the
one
hand
it
affirms
the
soul's
affinity
with
the
anima
mundi
,
on
the
other,
it
makes
it
subject
to
strictly
mathematical
laws.
At
this
point,
Kepler's
particular
brand
of
astrology
merges
into
his
all-embracing
and
unifying
Pythagorean
vision
of
the
Harmony
of
the
Spheres.

II
THE
"COSMIC
MYSTERY"

1.
The Perfect Solids

FROM
the
frustrations
of
his
first
year
in
Gratz,
Kepler
escaped
into
the
cosmological
speculations
which
he
had
playfully
pursued
in
his
Tuebingen
days.
But
now
these
speculations
were
becoming
both
more
intense,
and
more
mathematical
in
character.
A
year
after
his
arrival
–
more
precisely
on
9
July,
1595,
for
he
has
carefully
recorded
the
date
–
he
was
drawing
a
figure
on
the
blackboard
for
his
class,
when
an
idea
suddenly
struck
him
with
such
force
that
he
felt
he
was
holding
the
key
to
the
secret
of
creation
in
his
hand.
"The
delight
that
I
took
in
my
discovery,"
he
wrote
later,
"I
shall
never
be
able
to
describe
in
words."
¹
It
determined
the
course
of
his
life,
and
remained
his
main
inspiration
throughout
it.

The
idea
was,
that
the
universe
is
built
around
certain
symmetrical
figures
–
triangle,
square,
pentagon,
etc.
–
which
form
its
invisible
skeleton,
as
it
were.
Before
going
into
detail,
it
will
be
better
to
explain
at
once
that
the
idea
itself
was
completely
false;
yet
it
nevertheless
led
eventually
to
Kepler's
Laws,
the
demolition
of
the
antique
universe
on
wheels,
and
the
birth
of
modern
cosmology.
The
pseudo-discovery
which
started
it
all
is
expounded
in
Kepler
first
book,
the
Mysterium
Cosmographicum,
^*
which
he
published
at
the
age
of
twenty-five.