[Margin: The concord of the heaven from the Sacred letters.]

[I.] We have a most ancient testimony concerning the concord of the Heavens from the very Founder and Harmost [Tuner] of the Heavens, GOD Himself, when He thus speaks with Job [Job ch. 38]: “Who shall declare the reason of the Heavens, and who shall make the concord of heaven to sleep?” — which passage, although various men interpret variously, yet very many refer to the harmony that shines forth in the motions, and in the intervals and arrangement, of the stars. And so the Chaldee paraphrast: “Who established the stars of heaven in wisdom?” — or, who established the weeks of heaven in wisdom, and who dwelt in the revolution of heaven? But the Tigurine [Zurich] version: “Who shall dictate to the Aether by his wisdom what it should do, and who shall tilt the bottles of heaven?” But Pagninus: “Who has numbered the heavens in wisdom, and the bottles of heaven who [shall stay]; the waters which descend from heaven, who made to rest?” Again, Cajetan and Vatablus interpret thus: “Who so prudently made the heavens in the number in which they are?” And Philippus [of Aquino], in our Pineda upon that passage, interprets the concord of heaven as the arrangement and beauty of the heavens, for which men or Angels praise God; and thus “concord” is there taken objectively, for the object exciting the rational creature to the song and praises of God — in the manner it is said in Psalm 18[19]: “The heavens declare the glory of God.”

[Margin: The praises of the Cock.]

But St. Thomas and Lyra add that this saying can be referred to the preceding verse, in which God had said: “Who gave the cock understanding?” — for He subjoins: “Who shall declare the reason of the heavens?” — as if to say: who shall declare to the cock the proportion of the celestial motions, that thence it might discern the appointed hours for crowing? Since indeed the cock, by its own crowing, seems to mark off the four watches of the night at each set of three unequal hours, but most of all the fourth watch; on which account see the praises of the cock in Pliny (bk. 10, ch. 21). Now the word Concentus [concord], in Hebrew, is Nebel, from the root Nabal, which means “to flow down,” and, by synecdoche, the vessel by which flowing water is caught and carried — of which kind are wineskins; but since from vessels of this kind certain…

[…continues on p. 502 (PDF 537) with the catchword “aliqua” — “…certain [musical instruments] were made,” and the discussion of the Hebrew Nebel as a musical instrument continues.]

(printed p. 502 — Chapter II continues its survey of testimonies to world-harmony. The philology of the Hebrew Nebel and related scriptural passages (Joshua 10, Wisdom 19) is completed; then the Fathers are marshalled — Augustine, Ambrose, Philo, Boethius, Isidore, Bede, Anselm — on the heavens’ harmony and Boethius’s threefold division of music; finally the pagan witnesses, chiefly Pythagoras, Plato, and Cicero’s Dream of Scipio with its full music-of-the-spheres passage, and Macrobius on the nine Muses.)

[Header: BOOK IX. SECTION V. — 502]

…certain musical instruments [were made of such vessels], it is therefore taken for a Psaltery, or Nablum [Nabla], from the same root Nabal; and so for “concord,” as the Vulgate has it; or as Symmachus has it: “Who shall adorn the organs [instruments] of heaven?”; or, with St. Augustine: “Who shall tilt the organs of heaven?” Yet most of the Rabbis, in Pineda, interpret [the “bottles of heaven”] as clouds full of water, or wineskins; and the Royal Bible [Biblia Regia], “the flowing-down of the heavens” — especially when the rain-clouds [pour down] rains with a great sound, which God suddenly makes to fall silent when He brings on fair weather.

[Margin: The symphony of the elements.]

Besides, that [verse] of Joshua, ch. 10 — “Sun, be not moved,” and “the Sun stood still” — in Hebrew is dom and vajdom, namely (as the Royal Bible has it) “be silent” and “it was silent”: where, metaphorically, by “sound” or “voice” motion is signified, and by “silence,” the rest of the heaven; for the fabrications which the Rabbis there invent our [Father] Serarius has sufficiently refuted on that passage. And those words of Wisdom 19, verse 17[18], also make for our point: “For while the elements are turned among themselves, as in an instrument the sound of the quality is changed, and all keep their own sound [time]; whence it can be certainly estimated from the very sight” — which passage our [Fathers] John Lorin and John Pineda excellently interpret [of the harmony of the elements]; and it is most of all illustrated by what Fr. Athanasius Kircher (in bk. 10 of the Musurgia, on the symphony of the elements, from p. 367) adduces, among many other things — the Tetrachord of Orpheus, by whose testimony (with Bryennius) Hypate referred to Earth, Parhypate to Water, Paranete to Air, and Nete to Fire.

[Margin: The Harmony of the World and the heavens, from the Fathers. — St. Augustine.]

[II.] Nor indeed do the Fathers dissent from the Scriptures. St. Augustine, on the harmony of the whole world (bk. 11 of the City of God, ch. 18), said: “God has graced the order of the ages as a most beautiful poem out of certain, as it were, antitheses; and just as contraries set against contraries render the beauty of speech, so, by a certain eloquence not of words but of things, the beauty of the age is composed by the opposition of contraries.” He too, on that [verse] of Psalm 148, “his praise is above heaven and earth,” says: “What is the praise of God? Is it that He Himself confesses? No, but that all things cry Him aloud — the beauty of all things is, in a manner, a confessing of God. Heaven cries, ‘Thou madest me, not I myself’; earth cries, ‘Thou foundedst me, not I myself,’” etc.

[Margin: St. Ambrose. — Philo.]

St. Ambrose agrees with him (bk. 4 of the Hexameron, and in the preface upon the Psalms), saying: “The powers of the heavens praise the Lord, they sing psalms to Him; the stars too sing psalms to the Lord.” The heaven’s more express utterance [tells] that it is engaged in a certain perpetual sweetness of concord, so that its sound is heard to the farthest parts of the earth, where there are certain secrets of nature; nor does this seem foreign to the reason of nature. But before him, Philo (in the book On Dreams) most eloquently: “The heaven, by its perpetual concord, renders a most sweet harmony; which, if it could reach our ears, would excite in us overpowering loves and a mad desire for them — stimulated by which, we would forget the other necessary things, and, leaving aside food and drink, as candidates for immortality, refreshed by the divine concords and songs: such as, when Moses had heard them, he is said for forty days and as many nights to have tasted neither bread nor water.” And a little after: “The heaven, the archetypal instrument of Music, seems to have been elaborated for no other reason than that hymns might be skillfully and musically sung to the Parent of things.”

[Margin: Boethius.]

Let there succeed to Philo the most knowing of musical proportions, Severinus Boethius (bk. 1 On Music, ch. 2), where he divides Music threefold — namely into Mundane, Human, and Instrumental — the Mundane comprehending the admirable order and consonance of divine providence, especially in the disposition of the heavens; and among other things he says: “How can it be that so swift a machine of heaven should be moved with a silent and noiseless course, even though that sound does not reach our ears?”

[Margin: St. Isidore. — Bede.]

Isidore (bk. 3 of the Origins [Etymologies], ch. 16) says: “Without Music no discipline can be perfect, for nothing is without it. For the World itself is said to be composed of a certain harmony of sounds, and the heaven itself revolves under the modulation of harmony.” But much more does Bede write (vol. 1, in the Musica Theorica, p. 406), saying: “While the celestial Music is made up of subtler [bodies], it is rendered most sonorous, without any incongruity, [and] is heard from the higher [bodies] down to the lower; for it is secretly poured forth [into the ears], although on account of habit we do not perceive it — just as those who dwell near the κατάβαθμόν [katabathmon], that is, near the descent [cataract] of the Nile, lack, on account of the magnitude of the sound, the sense of hearing it. But if anyone were born in another world (if that were possible) and should afterward come into this one, he would hear it without any hindrance, and it would please him beyond measure.”

[Margin: St. Anselm. — The poet Licentius.]

Similar things has St. Anselm (bk. 1, On the Image of the World): “The orbs of the seven heavens revolve with a most sweet harmony, and by their circuit the sweetest concords are produced. This sound therefore does not reach our ears, because it is made beyond the air, and its magnitude exceeds our narrow hearing.” To these is to be numbered Licentius, the Christian Poet, a disciple of St. Augustine, who (as in St. Augustine’s Epistle 39, and in Sixtus of Siena, bk. 5 of the Library, annotation 105), speaking of GOD, thus sang:

He fitted numbers to the heavens; and bade them ply / Sonorous measures, and drive on like choral dances.

[Margin: The praise of the number Seven.]

[III.] Let us now hear the outsiders [the pagans], of whom the most ancient, Pythagoras, is said to have attained such fame for this reason — that he taught the whole World to be harmonically arranged (as Athenaeus asserts, bk. 14, ch. 13); but also Plato and Archytas, of whom Plutarch (at the end of the opuscule On Music) said: “But now, friends — what is the highest of all, and what most declares that Music is to be cultivated, has been passed over by you. For Pythagoras, Archytas, Plato, and the rest of the ancient Philosophers proclaimed that the motions of all things and the revolutions of the stars can neither come to be nor subsist without Music: for they contend that GOD the Maker fashioned all things with harmony.” Certainly Plato (bk. 10 of the Republic) said that upon each of the celestial orbs sits a Siren; and from the Platonic springs flowed that [saying] of Cicero (bk. 1 of the Tusculans): “When Archimedes bound together in a sphere the motions of the Moon, the Sun, and the five wandering [planets], he accomplished the same thing as He who, in Plato’s Timaeus, built the World — GOD — namely, that one revolution should govern motions most unlike in slowness and swiftness.” But more fully in the Dream of Scipio, where Scipio himself says:

“‘What,’ I said, ‘what is this sound, so great and so sweet, that fills my ears?’ And [Paulus, his father], answering: ‘This is that which, produced by the impulse and motion of the orbs themselves — separated by unequal intervals, yet distinguished in due proportion — tempering high notes with low, evenly produces various concords. For such great motions cannot be sped on in silence; and nature brings it that the extremes sound, on the one side low, on the other high. For which reason that highest course of the star-bearing heaven, whose revolution is swifter, is moved with a high and rapid sound; but this lowest, the Lunar, with the lowest. For the earth, the ninth, remaining immovable, always clings in the lowest seat, embracing the middle place of the world. But those eight courses, in two of which is the same force [pitch], produce seven sounds distinguished by intervals: which number is well-nigh the knot of all things. Learned men, imitating this with strings and songs, have opened for themselves a return to this place — as have others who, with outstanding talents, have cultivated divine studies in human life. The ears of men, filled with this sound, have grown deaf; nor is there in you any duller sense: just as, where the Nile rushes down from the highest mountains to the place called Catadupa [the Cataracts], the nation that dwells near the place lacks, on account of the magnitude of the sound, the sense of hearing. But so great is this sound, [made] by the most rapid revolution of the whole world, that the ears of men cannot take it in; just as you cannot gaze upon the Sun with eyes set against it, and your sight and sense are overcome by its rays.’”

[Margin: Macrobius.]

Subscribing to whom, Macrobius (bk. 2, On the Dream of Scipio, ch. 1) [treats] of that sound: “For from the very circuit of the orbs a sound must necessarily be born; because the struck air itself emits a crash; by the very violent collision of the two bodies… From these things, by an unconquerable reasoning, it is gathered that sounds proceed from the revolution of the spheres, and that sound must arise from motion, and that the proportion which is in divine things becomes the cause of the modulation.” — This, Pythagoras, first of all the men of the Greek nation, conceived in his mind; and he goes on to narrate by what reasoning Pythagoras, having heard the strokes of hammers in the workshop of an ironsmith, discovered the harmonic proportions. And in ch. 3: “Hence [arises], from the revolution of the celestial spheres…”

[Margin: The ninth Muse.]

Plato, in his Republic, when he treated of the revolution of the spheres, said that upon each sits a Siren — signifying that song is produced by the motion of the spheres; for “Siren,” by the Greek interpretation, sounds [as] “singing to God.” To this point look also the Fables [Apologues] of the nine Muses: the eight sounds of the spheres, and one greatest concord which consists of all [the rest]. The Theologians too [hold] the musical songs of the spheres, and that ninth Muse which consists of all, to be…

[…continues on p. 503 (PDF 538) with the catchword “esse” — the discussion of the nine Muses and the spheres’ concord continues, still within Chapter II.]

(printed p. 503 — Chapter II continues and turns to its central question. The survey of testimonies to celestial harmony concludes with the nine Muses, Pliny, Ptolemy, and others; then the chapter asks whether the heavens’ “concord” is proper or metaphorical, under the heading whether the celestial bodies produce a real sound by their motion. The debate is set out: the affirmative ascribed to Pythagoras and reported by Aristotle (who judges it impossible), with lists of authorities for and against, including St. Basil and St. Ambrose.)

[Header: ON THE HARMONIC SYSTEM OF THE WORLD — 503]

…[the Theologians hold the spheres’ songs, and that ninth Muse which consists of all, to] be [the song of the world]. He adds, moreover, from Hesiod, that the eighth of the Muses, who presides over the star-bearing sphere, is Urania; and the ninth is the concord from the sound of all the spheres, and is called Calliope from the beauty of [her] voice; and he concludes: “That the Muses are the song of the world, even the Etruscans know, who called them Camenae, as it were ‘the singers,’ from singing [canere].” Therefore the Theologians too, approving that the heaven sings, employed musical sounds in [their] sacrifices, etc. And soon after: “In the very hymns of the Gods also, the meters [were composed] by strophe and antistrophe in melodious verses; so that by the strophe the direct [motion] of the star-bearing orb [was imitated], and by the antistrophe the diverse retrograde course of the wandering [planets] was signified — from which two motions the first hymn in nature, to be dedicated to God, took its beginning.” He alludes to the passage of Macrobius and of Plato — that hemistich of Angelo Poliziano: “To each his own harmless Siren.”

[Margin: The strophe [is] an imitation of the twofold motion of the heaven.]

Furthermore, Pliny (bk. 2, ch. 3), speaking of the motion of the stars, says: “Whether there be an immense sound — and therefore one easily exceeding the sense of [our] ears — from the assiduous whirling of so great a mass rotated, I would not indeed easily say: no more, by Hercules, than [whether there be] the jingling of the stars whirled around together and of their orbs rolling them; or whether it be a concord of sweet and incredible suavity. To us who act within, the world glides by in silence alike by day and by night.” In the same book, ch. 22, he reports the Pythagorean distribution of the celestial intervals according to the Musicians’ canons, of which below.

[Margin: Psellus. — Censorinus. — Dorylaus. — Martianus Capella.]

Michael Psellus (at the beginning [of his work] on Music) says: “The ancients say that Music contains all things.” But more ancient than he, Censorinus (On the Birthday, ch. 11, toward the end), speaking of Pythagoras, said: “Besides many other things which the Musicians treat, he reported that [Pythagoras] showed the stars and this whole World to be εὐαρμόνιον [well-harmonized].” Wherefore Dorylaus wrote that the World is the organ [instrument] of God; the rest concerning Pythagoras, from Censorinus, let us reserve for ch. 7, num. 2. Accordingly, not incongruously, Martianus Capella (On the Nuptials of Philology and Mercury), after the 8th book, which is wholly on Astronomy, immediately subjoined the 9th, which is on Music and is so entitled, where he introduces Harmony thus speaking of herself: “Long ago indeed [I left] the earth-born… I strike the starry orbs of heaven… since the very rapidity of the machine [of heaven] going its round sings together, and acknowledges a melody fitting to its all-sounding pulses.”

[Margin: Ptolemy.]

But we have almost forgotten our [own author] Ptolemy, who (bk. 1 of the Harmonics, ch. 2) thus lays down: “It is the Harmonist’s aim everywhere to conserve the rational positions of the canon [scale], in no way repugnant to the senses, according to the opinion of the majority; as it is the Astronomer’s [aim] to conserve the consonant positions of the celestial motions, the revolutions being observed.” And in bk. 3, ch. 8, he refers the configurations [aspects] of the celestial [bodies] to musical laws; and in chs. 9, 10, 11, and 12, he compares the celestial motions to harmonics.

[Margin: Cælius Rhodiginus. — Pietro Gregorio of Toulouse. — Zarlino.]

Cælius Rhodiginus (bk. 5 of the Ancient Readings, ch. 25) asks, or wonders: “In what way it comes about that the rotated whirling of such great orbs is carried in a silent and noiseless circuit — even though, we hearing it less, the wondrous pleasantness of the sounds passes [us] by?” Similarly Pietro Gregorio of Toulouse (bk. 12 of the Syntaxis, ch. 7), defining celestial Music, says: “Celestial Music is that which arises from the ordered disposition of the orbs and Planets, by a concordant and recurring motion, in a definite space.” Joseph Zarlino too (part 1 of the Harmonic Institutions, ch. 6) brings forward, according to his erudition, many things concerning the sound of heaven — though unheard by us on account of habituation — and concerning the harmony in the motions and distances of the heavens.

It now remains, from what has been said, to settle the question whether the sound and concord of the heavens is to be taken properly, or rather metaphorically.

Whether the Celestial bodies produce a Real Sound by their motion?

[Margin: The argument for the real sound of the heavens.]

[IV.] The affirmative opinion is attributed to Pythagoras by Macrobius, as we have already seen (bk. 2, on the Dream of Scipio, ch. 3); but much earlier by Aristotle, who treats this very controversy in bk. 2 On the Heaven, from text 52. For at text 52 he says: “It seems to some necessary that a sound be made by the carrying-along of such great bodies; since [a sound] arises from the carrying-along of the bodies which are among us, which nevertheless have neither such a mass nor such a velocity as do the Sun and the Moon. How then, when so many stars, so great in multitude and magnitude, are borne along with such velocity, is it impossible that some immense sound be made? Nor does it stand in the way that the sound is not perceived by us; for the cause is, that straightway from [our] birth this sound is present and occupies the ears, so that — by the lack of comparison with its contrary, silence — it is not manifest; since the discernment of sound and silence is mutual.” He adds the likeness from the ears of smiths, accustomed to the sound — alluding to that workshop in which Pythagoras, by the hearing of hammers, learned the harmonic proportions (on which see Macrobius, bk. 2 on the Dream of Scipio, ch. 1). These [words] of Aristotle are at the end of text 52.

Wherefore: “just as to smiths, on account of habituation, nothing seems [to be heard], the same happens to all men: these things, which were said from the beginning, are wittily and musically said; [but] it is impossible that this should really be so.” — This is at text 54, where Aristotle himself reports and rejects the Pythagorean opinion (he did not, however, name the earth; namely at text 52, saying that it was “wittily and excellently said by those who affirmed this,” yet not true).

[V.] The same [persuasion] Censorinus most anciently attributes to Pythagoras (in the book On the Birthday, ch. 11), which we shall adduce below (ch. 7, num. 2). This persuasion of Pythagoras concerning celestial Music — to speak with the Conimbricenses (On the Heaven, ch. 9, q. 1) — occupied the minds of very many by its sweetness, so that most [philosophers] asserted, in particular, that a sound is excited from the mutual collision of the celestial bodies, which we do not perceive — whether on account of distance, or of habituation, or because our hearing has been dulled already from infancy. Among whom [who held this opinion], openly indeed, were: Philo (the book On Dreams) and Cicero (in the Dream of Scipio); and — though he may seem to doubt — Macrobius (bk. 2 on the Dream of Scipio, chs. 1 and 3); Martianus Capella (bk. 9 on the Nuptials of Philology); Bede (in the Musica Theorica); Anselm (bk. 1 On the Image of the World); Cælius Rhodiginus (bk. 5 of the Ancient Readings, ch. 25); and Joseph Zarlino (part 1 of the Harmonic Institutions, ch. 6), as is plain from their words reported under numbers 2 and 3; and to the same opinion are favorable St. Ambrose (in the preface on the Psalms), St. Isidore (bk. 3 of the Origins, ch. 16), Plutarch (in the opuscule on Music), and finally reason itself, drawn from those things which we experience in other bodies.

[Margin: The Authors against the real sound of the heavens.]

Yet the contrary opinion — denying a real sound from the heavens — together with the Philosopher [Aristotle], the Peripatetics have followed: Aristotle himself from text 53 to 56; the Conimbricenses (2 On the Heaven, ch. 9); Amici (tract 5 On the Heaven, q. 6, dub. 10); the Abulensis (on the chapter of Joshua, q. 14); Vallés (On Sacred Philosophy, ch. 36); Salinas (bk. 5 of the Harmonics, chs. 4 and 8); Serarius (on ch. 10 [of Joshua], q. 13); Lorin (on Psalm 18[19], at that verse “their sound went out into all the earth”); likewise Sixtus of Siena (bk. 5 of the Holy Library, annotation 105); and [the commentators] on ch. 38 of Job, verse 37; and not a few of the Fathers — including St. Basil (in the scholia on Psalm 18[19]), where, expounding that [verse] “There are no speeches nor languages,” he subjoins: “they emit no speech, nor utter any word, but by the showing-forth of their order they call the whole earth to the praise of God”; and in Homily 1 of the Hexameron he calls the Pythagorean opinion a “sorcerous imposture,” and “flabby with rot.”

[Margin: St. Ambrose [against].]

But more fully St. Ambrose (bk. 2 of the Hexameron, ch. 2): when he had reported the opinion of the Philosophers, who affirmed that a sweet sound is rendered by the impulse and motion of the celestial globes but is not perceived by us — just as neither [is] the roar of the Nile [perceived] by the dwellers at the cataracts — he subjoins: “But the truth itself easily answers these things. We who hear thunders, generated by the collision of clouds [— why do we not also hear] the revolutions of the orbs, which surely, the greater [they are], so much the more vehement sounds would they excite, just as they are reckoned [to move] by [a greater] motion?” — Although this holy Doctor brings forward another reason for [the imperceptibility of] this imperceptible sound, nor does he dissolve [the difficulty], while he sub-…

[…continues on p. 504 (PDF 539) with the catchword “sub-” — St. Ambrose’s further reasoning, and the resolution of the question, within Chapter II.]

(printed p. 504 — Chapter II concludes, then Chapter III begins. The case against a real celestial sound is finished: Ambrose’s final-cause reason (the sound withheld lest men abandon their business), Aristotle’s physical arguments from On the Heaven, and additions from the Conimbricenses, Riccioli, and Kepler, who denies any sounds in heaven. Chapter III, “On Proportions, and especially on Harmonic ones,” then opens the mathematical groundwork with definitions of part, ratio, and proportion, and the five genera of rational proportion, beginning with the Multiplex and Superparticular.)

[Header: BOOK IX. SECTION V. — 504]

…he subjoins: “They add, besides, that this sound therefore does not reach the earth, lest men, captivated by its sweetness and by the charm which that most swift motion of the heavens produces from the Eastern parts to the West, should abandon their proper business and labors, and all things here remain idle, [the human soul being carried away] to the celestial sounds by an ecstasy of the mind.” — Which reason, drawn from the final cause, we have already reported from Philo above. The same St. Ambrose (in the book On Isaac and the Soul), at that version of Aquila, “Sounding like the Sun,” hints that by that revolution of the celestial axis, and by the course of the Sun and Moon and stars, the song of the globes is expressed. By which [words] he too seems [to be one] of ours; who, since [the opinion] finds no credence, yet on account of the charm of its sweetness is not rejected outright. And in the preface to the Psalms of David he says: “The discourse of certain men holds that the very axis [of heaven] is engaged in a certain perpetual sweetness of concord, so that, if habituation permitted, its sound would be heard in the farthest parts of the earth,” etc. — from which it is clear that he speaks [in reporting] another’s opinion. Besides these, St. Irenaeus (in his work Against Heresies) and St. Epiphanius (bk. 1 of the Panarion) reckon this too among the heresies of the Marcosians [the followers of Marcus]: that they ascribed a real sound of the stars to the heavens.

[Margin: Arguments against the real sound of the heavens.]

[VI.] But the Arguments of Aristotle are these (bk. 2 On the Heaven, texts 53 and 54): “If [the bodies] of the heaven emitted as great a sound as befits them, it would come about that, although we should not perceive it by the sense of hearing, yet by touch, so to speak, we should perceive it; for sounds, when they exceed [measure], destroy even inanimate bodies — as the sound of thunder shatters certain stones, or makes them tremble and shakes them. Since, then, we perceive no such sound either by hearing or by any other sense, we say, more reasonably, that there is no [such] sound.” Again, at texts 54, 55, and 56, he teaches that the stars themselves do not produce a sound, because they are not moved by themselves but by the motion of their orbs (as a sailor by the motion of his ship); and that the orbs themselves are not in air or in fluid Fire — [that is], in a medium suited to sound; and finally, that in that which is carried [smoothly] and makes no stroke [blow], it is impossible that a sound be made. For not any mutual rubbing of two bodies suffices for sound, especially if their surfaces are most polished; but there is required a cutting of air or water or of some intercepted fluid body, struck by an interrupted [percussive] motion.

The Conimbricenses add that it would come about that the sound of the heavens would be perceived by those who, having for many years lacked the use of hearing (the organ being corrupted by some disease), [should] recover their hearing [— if there were such a sound]. I add, for my part, that just as the perpetuity of light does not hinder the eye, whereby it should discern it the less, so the perpetuity of sound would not hinder [the ear], so that we should not hear the sound; nor for that is silence or rest required. It seems, however, [a thing to be examined], whether any sound at last, in the fluid Aether, [reaching] as far as the sphere of the Fixed [stars], could be produced — whether from the Firmament itself, or from the bodies of the Planets themselves — [and whether it] could reach us: both on account of the thinness of the Aether itself, which yields to their motion with almost no resistance, and on account of their huge distance from us. But Kepler, who thinks the sphere of the Fixed [stars] immobile, says thus of the others (bk. 5 of the Harmonics, ch. 4): “Now there are no sounds in the heaven, nor is the motion so turbulent that a shriek is elicited from the friction of the celestial breeze.”