Kozmografik Sır

Almost the entire summer was lost to this cross. Finally, on a slight occasion, I happened upon the matter more closely. I judged it to have happened to me by divine providence, that I should obtain by chance what I could never reach by any labor. I believed this all the more because I had always prayed to God that if Copernicus had spoken the truth, these things might succeed. Thus, on the 9th or 19th day of July in the year 1595, when I was about to demonstrate to my students the "jumps" of the great conjunctions through eight signs, and how they gradually pass from one trigon to another, I inscribed many triangles, or quasi-triangles, in the same circle, so that the end of one was the beginning of the next. Therefore, at the points where the sides of the triangles intersected each other, a smaller circle was sketched. For the radius of a circle inscribed in a triangle is half the radius of the circumscribed circle. The proportion between the two circles appeared to the eye almost similar to that which exists between Saturn and Jupiter; and the triangle was the first of the figures, just as Saturn and Jupiter are the first planets. I immediately tried a square for the second distance between Mars and Jupiter, a pentagon for the third, and a hexagon for the fourth. And since even the eyes cried out against the second distance—which is between Jupiter and Mars—I joined a square to the triangle and the pentagon. It would be endless to pursue each attempt. And the end of this failed effort was the same as the beginning of the final and successful one. Namely, I thought that by this path—if indeed I wished to preserve the order among the figures—I would never reach the Sun, nor would I have a reason why there should be six moving spheres rather than twenty or a hundred. And yet the figures pleased me, being quantities, and things prior to the heavens. For quantity was created in the beginning with the body, while the heavens were created on the second day. But if (I thought), instead of the Quantity and proportion of the six Heavens established by Copernicus, only Five figures could be found among the infinite others which had certain peculiar properties beyond the rest, the matter would be according to my wish. And yet I pressed on again: what are plane figures doing among solid spheres? Solid bodies should rather be consulted. Behold, Reader, this discovery and the matter of this entire little work! For if someone even lightly skilled in Geometry were told this in so many words, the Five regular bodies with the proportion of their circumscribed to their inscribed spheres would immediately come to his mind.