The Sleepwalkers (124 page)

Here
at
last
was
the
jubilant
refutation
of
Plato's
cave.
The
living
world
no
longer
is
a
dim
shadow
of
reality
but
Nature's
dance
to
which
God
sets
the
tune.
Man's
glory
lies
in
his
understanding
of
the
harmony
and
rhythm
of
the
dance,
an
understanding
made
possible
through
his
divine
gift
of
thinking
in
numbers:

"...
these
figures
pleased
me
because
they
are
quantities,
that
is,
something
which
existed
before
the
skies.
For
quantities
were
created
at
the
beginning,
together
with
substance;
but
the
sky
was
only
created
on
the
second
day...
²⁶
The
ideas
of
quantities
have
been
and
are
in
God
from
eternity,
they
are
God
himself;
they
are
therefore
also
present
as
archetypes
in
all
minds
created
in
God's
likeness.
On
this
point
both
the
pagan
philosophers
and
the
teachers
of
the
Church
agree."
^26a

By
the
time
Kepler
wrote
down
this
credo,
the
first
stage
in
the
young
pilgrim's
progress
was
completed.
His
religious
doubts
and
anxieties
had
been
transformed
into
the
mystic's
mature
innocence
–
the
Holy
Trinity
into
a
universal
symbol,
his
craving
for
the
gift
of
prophecy
into
the
search
for
ultimate
causes.
The
sufferings
of
a
mange-eaten,
chaotic
childhood
had
left
a
sober
thirst
for
universal
law
and
harmony;
memories
of
a
brutal
father
may
have
influenced
his
vision
of
an
abstract
God,
without
human
features,
bound
by
mathematical
rules
which
admitted
of
no
arbitrary
acts.

His
physical
appearance
had
undergone
an
equally
radical
change:
the
adolescent
with
the
bloated
face
and
spindly
limbs
had
grown
into
a
sparse,
dark,
wiry
figure,
charged
with
nervous
energy,
with
chiselled
features
and
a
somewhat
Mephistophelian
profile,
belied
by
the
melancholia
of
the
soft,
short-sighted
eyes.
The
restless
student
who
had
never
been
able
to
finish
what
he
began,
had
changed
into
a
scholar
with
a
prodigious
capacity
for
work,
for
physical
and
mental
endurance,
and
a
fanatical
patience
unequalled
in
the
annals
of
science.

In
the
Freudian
universe,
Kepler's
youth
is
the
story
of
a
successful
cure
of
neurosis
by
sublimation,
in
Adler's,
of
a
successfully
compensated
inferiority
complex,
in
Marx's,
History's
response
to
the
need
of
improved
navigational
tables,
in
the
geneticist's,
of
a
freak
combination
of
genes.
But
if
that
were
the
whole
story,
every
stammerer
would
grow
into
a
Demosthenes,
and
sadistic
parents
ought
to
be
at
a
premium.
Perhaps
Mercury
in
conjunction
with
Mars,
taken
with
a
few
cosmic
grains
of
salt,
is
as
good
an
explanation
as
any
other.

III GROWING
PAINS

1.
The Cosmic Cup

THE
inspiration
about
the
five
perfect
solids
had
come
to
Kepler
when
he
was
twenty-four,
in
July
1595.
During
the
next
six
months
he
had
worked
feverishly
on
the
Mysterium
.
He
reported
on
every
stage
of
his
progress
to
Maestlin
in
Tuebingen,
pouring
out
his
ideas
in
long
letters
and
asking
for
his
former
teacher's
help,
which
Maestlin
gave
in
a
grumbling
but
generous
manner.

Michael
Maestlin
was
a
kind
of
inverted
Rheticus
to
Kepler.
He
was
twenty
years
Kepler's
senior,
yet
was
to
outlive
him.
A
contemporary
engraving
shows
him
as
a
bearded
worthy
with
a
jovial
and
somewhat
vacant
face.
He
had
held
the
chair
of
mathematics
and
astronomy
at
Heidelberg,
then
at
his
native
Tuebingen,
and
was
a
competent
teacher
with
a
solid
academic
reputation.
He
had
published
a
textbook
of
astronomy
of
the
conventional
type,
based
on
the
Ptolemaic
system,
although
in
his
lectures
he
spoke
with
admiration
of
Copernicus,
and
thus
ignited
the
spark
in
young
Kepler's
inflammable
mind.
After
the
manner
of
good-natured
mediocrities
who
know
and
accept
their
own
limitations,
he
had
a
naive
admiration
for
the
genius
of
his
former
pupil
and
went
to
considerable
trouble
to
help
him,
though
with
an
occasional
growl
at
Kepler's
unceasing
demands.
When
the
book
was
finished
and
the
Senate
of
Tuebingen
asked
for
Maestlin's
expert
opinion,
he
enthusiastically
recommended
that
it
should
be
published;
and
when
permission
was
granted,
he
supervised
the
printing
himself.
This,
in
those
days,
was
practically
a
full-time
job;
as
a
result
Maestlin
was
reprimanded
by
the
University
Senate
for
neglecting
his
own
work.
He
complained
about
this
to
Kepler
in
understandably
peeved
tones;
Kepler
replied,
among
his
usual
effusions
of
gratitude,
that
Maestlin
shouldn't
worry
about
the
reprimand
since,
by
seeing
the
Mysterium
through
print,
Maestlin
had
acquired
immortal
fame.