their time gambling and hunting, he does not envy them, for though sprung from ancient races both on the father's and on the mother's side, he does not value it, and calls nothing his but what has originated with himself.[1] But his mind is planning great things, and happy above all men is he who thinks more of celestial than of earthly things.
I have given a very full account of the contents of Tycho's little book, not only because it is now extremely scarce, but also because it is very characteristic of him, and presents us with a perfect picture of the young author, his plans and his difficulties. We see him thoroughly aware of the great desideratum of astronomy, a stock of accurate observations, without which it could not possibly advance a single step further, and hoping that life and means might be granted him to supply this deficiency; we see in him at the same time a perfect son of the sixteenth century, believing the universe to be woven together by mysterious connecting threads which the contemplation of the stars or of the elements of nature might unravel, and thereby lift the veil of the future; we see that he is still, like most of his contemporaries, a believer in the solid spheres and the atmospherical origin of comets, to which errors of the Aristotelean physics he was destined a few years later to give the death-blow by his researches on comets; we see him also thoroughly discontented with his surroundings, and looking abroad in the hope of finding somewhere else the place and the means for carrying out his plans. At the same time the book bears witness to the soberness of mind which distinguishes him from most of the other writers on the subject of the star. His account of it is very short, but it says all there could be said about it—that it had no parallax, that it remained immovable in the same place,
- ↑ "Nil tamen his moveor. Nam qvæ non fecimus ipsi
Et genus et proavos, non ego nostra voco."
