line of nodes and the inclination of the orbit. The last he found to be constant, thus corroborating his theory that the plane of the orbit passed through the sun. He repeated his calculations no fewer than seventy times (and that before the invention of logarithms), and at length adopted values for the mean longitude and longitude of aphelion. He found no discordance greater than two minutes of arc in Tycho's observed longitudes in opposition, but the latitudes, and also longitudes in other parts of the orbit were much more discordant, and he found to his chagrin that four years' work was practically wasted. Before making a fresh start he looked for some simplification of the labour; and determined to adopt Ptolemy's assumption known as the principle of the bisection of the excentricity. Hitherto, since Ptolemy had given no reason for this assumption, Kepler had preferred not to make it, only taking for granted that the centre was at some point on the line called the excentricity (see Figs. 1, 2).
A marked improvement in residuals was the result of this step, proving, so far, the correctness of Ptolemy's principle, but there still remained discordances amounting to eight minutes of arc. Copernicus, who had no idea of the accuracy obtainable in observations, would probably have regarded such an agreement as remarkably good; but Kepler refused to admit the possibility of an error of eight minutes in any of Tycho's observations. He thereupon vowed to construct from these eight minutes a new planetary theory that should account for them all. His repeated failures had by this time convinced him that no uniformly described circle could possibly represent the motion of Mars. Either the orbit could not be circular, or else the angular velocity could not be constant about any point whatever. He determined to attack the "second inequality," i.e. the optical illusion caused by the earth's annual motion, but first
