was by an examination of these results that Kepler was led to the
discovery of his immortal laws.

After the death of King Frederick the observatories of Tycho Brahe
were not supported. The gigantic power and industry displayed by this
determined man were accompanied, as often happens, by an overbearing
manner, intolerant of obstacles. This led to friction, and eventually
the observatories were dismantled, and Tycho Brahe was received by the
Emperor Rudolph II., who placed a house in Prague at his disposal.
Here he worked for a few years, with Kepler as one of his assistants,
and he died in the year 1601.

It is an interesting fact that Tycho Brahe had a firm conviction that
mundane events could be predicted by astrology, and that this belief
was supported by his own predictions.

It has already been stated that Tycho Brahe maintained that
observation must precede theory. He did not accept the Copernican
theory that the earth moves, but for a working hypothesis he used a
modification of an old Egyptian theory, mathematically identical with
that of Copernicus, but not involving a stellar parallax. He says
(_De Mundi_, etc.) that

the Ptolemean system was too complicated, and the new one which that
great man Copernicus had proposed, following in the footsteps of
Aristarchus of Samos, though there was nothing in it contrary to
mathematical principles, was in opposition to those of physics, as
the heavy and sluggish earth is unfit to move, and the system is
even opposed to the authority of Scripture. The absence of annual
parallax further involves an incredible distance between the