Kepler on the Soul of the Earth

Johannes Kepler · Mystic Verse and Insights Series · 2 pages

Two pages of passages from Kepler's Harmonices Mundi in which he argues that the earth has a soul, with the original Latin of each quotation given in the footnotes so it can be checked against the translation.

The claim is stated first in general terms — that the globe of the earth is a body such as that of some animal, and that what its own soul is to an animal, the sublunary nature he is investigating will be to the earth. The argument for it is an extended set of correspondences, and it is deliberately unsqueamish. As an animated body produces hairs on the surface of the skin, so the earth produces plants and trees; as lice are generated in the one, so caterpillars, grasshoppers, insects and marine monsters in the other. As the body produces tears, mucus and the wax of the ears, so the earth produces amber and bitumen; as the bladder produces urine, so mountains pour forth rivers; as the body produces sulphurous matter that may be inflamed, so the earth produces sulphur, subterranean fires, thunder and lightning; and as blood and sweat are generated in the veins of an animal, so metals, fossils and rainy vapour are generated in the veins of the earth. Kepler is then quoted as going further, saying that the earth has a sense of touch, that it respires, that it is subject in certain parts to languors and internal upsets of the viscera, and that subterranean heat proceeds from its soul. The last quotation is the one that matters most for this series: that a certain image of the zodiac, and so of the whole firmament, shines in that soul, and is the bond of sympathy between things celestial and terrestrial.

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