the study of the ellipse. Then came a new era in the history of this
curve. Hitherto it had been an abstract form, a geometrical
speculation. But Kepler, by some fortunate guess, was led to examine
whether the orbits of the planets might not be elliptical, and, lo! it
was found that this curve, whose beauty had so fascinated so many men
for so many ages, had been deemed by the great Architect of the Heavens
beautiful enough to introduce into Nature on the grandest scale; the
morning stars had been for countless ages tracing diagrams beforehand
in illustration of Apollonius's conic sections. It seemed that this
must have been the design of Providence in leading Plato and his
followers to investigate the ellipse, that Kepler might be prepared to
guide men to a knowledge of the movements of the heavenly bodies.
"And," said Kepler, "if the Creator has waited so many years for an
observer, I may wait a century for a reader." But in less than a
century a reader arose in the person of the English Newton. The ellipse
again appeared in human history, playing a no less important part than
before. For, as it was only by a profound knowledge of ellipses that
Kepler could establish his three beautiful facts with regard to the
motions of the planets, so also was it only through a still more
perfect and intimate acquaintance with the minute peculiarities of that
curve that Sir Isaac Newton could demonstrate that these three facts
were perfectly accounted for only by his theory of universal
gravitation,--the most beautiful theory ever devised, and the most
firmly established of all scientific hypotheses. If the ellipse, as a
simply geometrical speculation, has had so much power in the education
of the race, what are the intellectual relations of its beauty through
its connection with astronomy? Who can estimate the influence which
this oldest of physical sciences has had upon human destiny? Who can
tell how much intellectual life and self-reliance, how much also of
humility and reverential awe, how much adoration of Divine Wisdom, have