Page - 5 - in Great Astronoms - Johannes Kepler

suitable sphere for his talents might be found in the Church, which, in those days, was almost the only profession that afforded an opening for an intellectual career. We thus find that by the time Johannes Kepler was seventeen years old he had attained a sufficient standard of knowledge to entitle him to admission on the foundation of the University at Tübingen.[3] In the course of his studies at this institution he seems to have divided his attention equally between astronomy and divinity. It not unfrequently happens that when a man has attained considerable proficiency in two branches of knowledge he is not able to see very clearly in which of the two pursuits his true vocation lies. His friends and onlookers are often able to judge more wisely than he himself can do as to which of the two lines it would be better for him to pursue. This incapacity for perceiving the path in which greatness awaited him, existed in the case of Kepler. Personally, he inclined to enter the ministry, in which a promising career seemed open to him. He yielded, however, to friends, who evidently knew him better than he knew himself, and accepted, in 1594, the important professorship of astronomy which had been offered to him in the University of Grätz.[4] It is difficult for us in these modern days to realise the somewhat extraordinary duties which were expected from an astronomical professor in the sixteenth century. He was, of course, required to employ his knowledge of the heavens in the prediction of eclipses, and of the movements of the heavenly bodies generally. This seems reasonable enough ; but what we are not prepared to accept is the obligation which lay on the astronomers to predict the fates of nations and the destinies of individuals. It must be remembered that it was the almost universal belief in those days, that all the celestial spheres revolved in some mysterious fashion around the earth, which appeared by far the most important body in the universe. It was imagined that the sun, the moon, and the stars indicated, in the vicissitudes of their movements, the careers of nations and of individuals. Such being the generally accepted notion, it seemed to follow that a professor who was charged with the duty of expounding the movements of the heavenly bodies must necessarily be looked to for the purpose of deciphering the celestial decrees regarding the fate of man which the heavenly luminaries were designed to announce. Kepler threw himself with characteristic ardour into even this fantastic phase of the labours of the astronomical professor; he diligently studied the rules of astrology, which the fancies of antiquity had compiled. Believing sincerely as he did in the connection between the aspect of the stars and the state of human affairs, he even thought that he perceived, in the events of his own life, a corroboration of the doctrine which affirmed the influence of the 5