this star in the darkness merely to enlighten them." It would hardly be supposed, from the tenor of this last passage, that the writer of it was not a determined enemy to astrological predictions of every description. In 1602 he had published a disputation, not now easily met with, "On the Principles of Astrology," in which it seems that he treated the professed astrologers with great severity. The essence of this book is probably contained in the second treatise on the new star, which he published in 1606.[183] In this volume he inveighs repeatedly against the vanity and worthlessness of ordinary astrology, declaring at the same time, that the professors of that art know that this judgment is pronounced by one well acquainted with its principles. "For if the vulgar are to pronounce who is the best astrologer, my reputation is known to be of the highest order; if they prefer the judgment of the learned, they are already condemned. Whether they stand with me in the eyes of the populace, or I fall with them before the learned, in both cases I am in their ranks; I am on a level with them; I cannot be renounced." The theory which Kepler proposed to substitute is intimated shortly in the following passage: "I maintain that the colours and aspects, and conjunctions of the planets, are impressed on the natures or faculties of sublunary things, and when they occur, that these are excited as well in forming as in moving the body over whose motion they preside. Now let no one conceive a prejudice that I am anxiously seeking to mend the deplorable and hopeless cause of astrology by far-fetched subtilties and miserable quibbling. I do not value it sufficiently, nor have I ever shunned having astrologers for my enemies. But a most unfailing experience (as far as can be hoped in natural phenomena) of the excitement of sublunary natures by the conjunctions and aspects of the planets, has instructed and compelled my unwilling belief."