John Kepler [pp. 161-164]

THE
LADI ES REPOSITORY.
SEPTEMBER, i 8 6 8.
JOHN KEPLER.
N the i5th of May, exactly two hundred and
fifty years after his latest and greatest discovery, the brazen statue of John Kepler was
unvailed at Weil, his native city, and well may
Prof. Sigwart, of Tiibingen, say, anticipating
the event: "It will be a melancholy occasion
for us when John Kepler, who was tossed about
so much during his life-time, who died on a
journey, solitary and forsaken, and whose fresh
grave was covered by the ruins of a sister city,
stormed in X civil war, shall thus again return into our midst. All the nameless misery
which that most unfortunate period of Germany's history brought upon John Kepler and
his whole country is painfully called to our
minds. He for whose gigantic intellect the
limits of Wiirtemberg were too narrow, had to
serve masters who persecuted his religion and
made war upon the country of his youth; he
had to struggle daily against crushing poverty,
was misjudged and rejected even by those with
whom he was connected by the strongest and
most sacred ties."
"Yet," continues the Professor, "it would be
wrong for us to indulge in these sad reflections
alone. We have also cause to rejoice and to be
proud that amid all this misery this man remained inwardly free and uniformly consistent
with himself, that he never for a moment lost
sight of the great object proposed to himself;
that he never lost faith in his country, declining
honorable calls both to Italy and England.'As
long,' he said,'as Germany does not repudiate
me, I can not and shall not turn my back upon
her."
But as John Kepler belonged, after all, not to
Germany alone, but to the world, which has
been realizing for two and a half centuries the
fruits of his labors, it may not be amiss to draw
a skletch of his life for the readers of the Re VoL. XXVIII.-II
pository. As his discoveries in astronomy and
optics are pretty generally known, we shall content ourselves here with acquainting our readers with the process of these discoveries, and
then introduce to them John Kepler as a man,
as a student, as a Christian.
John Kepler was born in the free city of
Weil, December 27, I57i. He was descended
from an ancient noble family, that had, however,
at that time lost its nobility again. To an
Italian count that one day boasted before Kepler of his ancestry, he replied promptly that one
of his ancestors had been rewarded by the
Emperor Sigismond on the Tiber bridge at
Rome for his bravery by being made a Knight
of the Golden Fleece. His great grandfathler
fought under the banners of Charles V before
Pavia against the French, and his four sons
served under Ferdinand I. His grandfather
Sebold settled as a commoner at Weil, where
he was elected city mayor, and there his father
Henry also settled first. The latter, however,
had so much martial blood in his veins that he
did not relish civil pursuits; hle went to the
Netherlands and fought under Albo's banners.
His wife followed him to the camp, and their
grandfather had to take charge of the children.
The parents returned, and kept for some time
a tavern at Weil; but his father soon afterward
joined an expedition against the Turks, from
which hle never returned.
Under these circumstances Jolhn's primary
education wvas greatly neglected; instead of
going to school hle had to work in the field, and
his own words are,'"I was a very bad boy."
When thirteen years of age he was sent to
one of Wiirtemberg's cloister-schools, that is,
cloisters converted into schools, and there and
then his regular training commenced. In September, I589, he went to Tiibingen, and domiciled himself as a ducal stipendiary in the old
convent of the Augustines. Here hle applied
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