DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18733#0094
[ 7° ]
Darkness was anterior to lights and seems
more intimately connected with this lower
world; since so soon as the great dispenser and
cause of light withdraws his beams, obscurity
returns, and continues till the adlivity of the
solar rays again dispels the gloom.
But though “ light is pleasant, and it be a
chearful thing to behold the sun,” yet is too
much of this invaluable blesling not only use-
less, but injurious : so that, befide the won-
derful p'rovision made in our visual organs for
excluding redundance, we are also not a little
refreshed by reviving lhade.
If shadows are merely interruptions of lu-
minous rays, we may, without reludlance, be-
llow a sew minutes attention on some of the
properties of light. Its rapidity is so vehe-
ment, that it may be considered as to us inslan-
taneous but, that principle whereby its course
is determined, more nearly concerns the sub-
je£t of our attention. For if, inslead of con-
stantly keeping a diredt line, its courfe was
oblique, or spiral, or volutory in any manner,
we should be to seek for difserent principles
whereby to ascertain its progress : but as by
the Almighty fiat, which said ‘‘Light be, and
light was,” it takes invariably the nearesl course
from point to point, we acquire, by a simple
2 expe-
Darkness was anterior to lights and seems
more intimately connected with this lower
world; since so soon as the great dispenser and
cause of light withdraws his beams, obscurity
returns, and continues till the adlivity of the
solar rays again dispels the gloom.
But though “ light is pleasant, and it be a
chearful thing to behold the sun,” yet is too
much of this invaluable blesling not only use-
less, but injurious : so that, befide the won-
derful p'rovision made in our visual organs for
excluding redundance, we are also not a little
refreshed by reviving lhade.
If shadows are merely interruptions of lu-
minous rays, we may, without reludlance, be-
llow a sew minutes attention on some of the
properties of light. Its rapidity is so vehe-
ment, that it may be considered as to us inslan-
taneous but, that principle whereby its course
is determined, more nearly concerns the sub-
je£t of our attention. For if, inslead of con-
stantly keeping a diredt line, its courfe was
oblique, or spiral, or volutory in any manner,
we should be to seek for difserent principles
whereby to ascertain its progress : but as by
the Almighty fiat, which said ‘‘Light be, and
light was,” it takes invariably the nearesl course
from point to point, we acquire, by a simple
2 expe-