DEFENSE

...placed. For although to me, who am accustomed to mathematical demonstrations, your hieroglyphics Fludd used "hieroglyphics" to refer to his symbolic and mystical illustrations. in the Harmonics pour forth much darkness, it is still possible—and I believe it to be the case—that you thought you were depicting everything very clearly. Indeed, I would not even have dared to say what you wish to be believed about yourself on page 12: that you have manifested the hidden as much as possible; for I would prefer to believe that you are capable of more here Page 20. than you were pleased to provide at one time.

As for the precepts of the wise that you object to yourself regarding the revealing of physical mysteries, I would like them to be resolved by you yourself. For perhaps you will assert something by which I myself might be protected, as I bring the celestial harmonies into the light and refuse to remain silent in the face of secret science.

Line 10. Furthermore, answer yourself when you ask: why do you go about publicizing physical secrets to the World, yet use riddles instead of speech?

I ask in turn: why are you angry with me for attributing riddles to you, when you thought you had to defend yourself so laboriously on this very matter, starting from line 16? Do you not, therefore, admit that the riddles are dark? If you contend they were used correctly by you? If you protect yourself with great examples? Is it permitted for me to act as your interpreter in such an inequality of speech? You wish to say that you reveal mysteries, and yet you do so cautiously through riddles by which the "gapers" Kepler uses "oscitantes" (the yawning or negligent ones) to refer to those who do not study deeply. are kept away. This is certainly the sincere speech of all mystics: I praise this as I do other things; but in Harmonics, a mathematical discipline, I do not accept it. If you please, you who provide the interpretation, state the cause: why then are you angry with me for attributing to you a way of writing through riddles? Why have I deserved such reproaches, that you should call me an ape original: "simiam me"—using that common epithet for art itself—and call my Cosmographic Mystery Kepler’s first major work, published in 1596. a name without a reality; that you should reproach me for ignorance of secrets, attribute to me an imaginary intellect and a deceptive light, and object to my vanity? I wish you would look back at yourself more carefully in the future, lest you damage your own reputation. For as far as I am concerned, I need neither your recantation nor your contrary praise; nor will you, by this persistence, make me refuse to skirmish with you as often as I can do so without expense to myself and with some benefit to the reader.

How much bile, by the immortal God, is now in the second part of your Analysis! Though I have barely pricked Chemistry original: "Chymia," referring here to alchemy and the chemical arts. with the doctrine of Hermes and Paracelsus Paracelsus was a 16th-century physician and occultist who pioneered the use of chemicals and minerals in medicine. even with a tiny word; except that I relate a thing well known to all—that it is obscure and dark; though I did not attribute the title of Hermetic Followers of Hermes Trismegistus, associated with ancient mystical and alchemical wisdom. for the sake of hatred or mockery, but so that by naming the sect, I might more clearly describe to future readers the manner of philosophizing which I discovered in your book; though I by no means placed it in the category of disgrace or infamy to be a disciple of Hermes; though I neither hated, nor condemned, nor held this faculty as nothing: yet you rise up against me in full armor, calling Mathematics original: "Mathesis" and all mathematicians into a contest with Chemistry and with Hermes. In vain, indeed, as far as I am concerned: for I exhort the readers to read and examine what you have written in this place—the encomiums of Chemistry and its allied disciplines, and of Hermes himself. But concerning Mathematics, when you proclaim Geometry to be "vain" and the investigation of the stars to be "dead and fantastical," let them not listen to you; unless you write those things out of total rashness. For what greater madness and senselessness is there (look, I use your own words) than to condemn and hold as nothing that science in which you have achieved absolutely nothing?

Page 13. Robert, Mathematics and Chemistry are not so divided that they cannot reside in the same man, one who delivers Mathematics clearly, at length, through letters and diagrams, yet treats Chemical matters in the manner of his sect. Do you want to know an example of this marriage? Take Tycho Brahe The famous Danish astronomer (1546–1601) whom Kepler served as an assistant., whom I succeeded in a part of his Work. As much as he was a faithful guardian of silence in Hermetic matters, he was just as faithful and clear a teacher whenever he took up something in Mathematics to be brought before the public. At those times, he was not accustomed to devise any riddles; he handed down nothing in pictures; he did not promise to teach celestial motions without quantities; he did not disdain to help weaker minds, even by the very form of calculation and published shortcuts.

I decided to cast this back at you separately in this place for the sake of greater clarity: that you have boiled over with great injury toward me by attributing to me two impious and blasphemous opinions—one of which was expressed with a different typeface so that the reader might believe my own formal words were being quoted (page 12, line 41): That I found all these things by my own innate genius original: "ingenio meo proprio". For I understand this to be opposed by you to the preceding line, in which you said the secrets of the sciences are granted through the acquisition of the Holy Spirit, whose role alone it is to truly teach all these things. Again: that I, while making the sun the source...