Forerunner of the Cosmographic Dissertations

...with order and a rule Latin: norma, a carpenter’s square or standard. He approached the construction of the world. He measured each thing in such a way that it was as if art were not imitating nature, but God Himself had looked toward the building style of the future human being.

However, why is it necessary to value the utility of divine things like food with a coin? For what, I ask, does the knowledge of natural things profit a hungry belly, or what does all the rest of Astronomy provide? Nevertheless, wise men do not listen to that barbarism which loudly demands that these studies be abandoned for that reason. We tolerate painters, who delight the eyes, and musicians, who delight the ears, even though they bring no material benefit to our affairs. And the pleasure taken from the works of both is considered not only human but even honorable. What inhumanity is it then, what foolishness, to envy the mind its own honorable joy, while not envying the eyes and ears? He who fights against these recreations fights against the nature of things. For did the Best Creator, who introduced nothing into nature for which He did not provide abundantly both for necessity and for beauty and pleasure—did He alone bless the human mind, the master of all nature and His own image, with no pleasure? On the contrary, just as we do not ask with what hope of profit a little bird chirps, since we know that pleasure is in its song because it was made for that song; so too we must not ask why the human mind takes so much labor in searching out these secrets of the heavens. For the mind was joined to the senses by our Maker for this reason: not only so that man might sustain himself—which many kinds of living creatures can do far more skillfully by the service of even a brutish mind—but also so that we might strive from those things which we perceive with our eyes to the causes of why they are and come to be, even if we were to gain no other utility from it. And just as other animals and the human body are sustained by food and drink, so the soul of man itself (3) Kepler’s marginal numbering for his points.—something distinct from the human person—is nourished, increased, and in a way grows up on this "fodder" of knowledge. It is more like a dead thing than a living one if it is touched by no desire for these things. Therefore, just as by the providence of Nature food never fails living creatures, so we can say not without merit that such great variety exists in things, and such hidden treasures in the fabric of the heavens, so that fresh fodder would never be lacking for the human mind, lest it grow weary of the old or become idle, (4) but might have in this world a perpetual workshop for exercising itself.

Nor indeed is the nobility of these feasts—which I bring forth from the most rich storehouse of the Founder in this little book, as if upon a table—any less because they will either not be tasted or will be rejected by the greatest part of the common people. More people praise the goose than the pheasant, because the former is common and the latter more rare. Yet the palate of no Apicius Marcus Gavius Apicius, a legendary Roman gourmet and lover of luxury. will rank the former below the latter. Thus, the dignity of this subject matter will be all the greater the fewer admirers it finds, provided they are intelligent ones. The same things do not suit the common people and princes; nor are these celestial matters the fodder of everyone indiscriminately, but at least of a noble soul—not by my wish or effort, nor by its own nature, nor by God's envy, but by the stupidity or laziness of most men. Princes are accustomed to have certain items of great price among the "second tables" The dessert course or delicacies served after the main meal. which they use only when they are full, for the sake of relieving boredom. So these and similar studies will taste good only to the most noble and wise person when he has ascended from his house through villages, towns, provinces, and kingdoms to the rule of the world, and has thoroughly examined everything; nor, since they are human things, has he found anything anywhere that is blessed, lasting, or of such a kind that his appetite can be ended and satisfied by it. For then he will begin to seek better things; then he will ascend from the earth here into heaven; then he will transfer his mind, weary with empty cares, to this rest; then he will say:

Happy souls, whose first care it was to know these things
And to climb into the heavenly dwellings, A quote from Ovid’s Fasti, Book I, praising the first astronomers.

wherefore he will begin to despise those things which he once judged most excellent, and will only esteem these works of God as ma-