"[W]hat sharpness of mind was employed by John Kepler... when, from there being just five regular solids... he inferred that the number of the planets was six, and by inscription of spheres within these solids and circumscription of spheres around them related the distances and ratios of the orbits. It can scarcely be said with what power of prophecy and by what labours he succeeded in arriving at that great theorem of the elliptical planetary orbits with a common focus at the sun... in such a way that the areas that the radius vector of the planet from the sun traverses are proportional to the times. Nevertheless... so great a man... owned himself unequal to... solving directly the problem of determining for a given time the place of the planet in the elliptical orbit. Here geometry, his goddess-mother, was of no avail... But... he brought forward a conjecture of great use, namely, that the squares of the periodic times are in the same ratio as the cubes of the distances between the planets and the sun. Finally, he discovered a marvellous property of bodies by which in the minimally resisting ether they seek each other and as it were attract. From this he also deduced the tides in a clear but brief discourse in his immortal Commentaries on the star Mars, and was as it were a prophet and a precursor of a great geometer born among the English."