If you look at a luminous body in the far distance through a smallhole it will seem to grow less, and if you look at it near at hand it will not undergo any change. That is that if you look at this light atadistance of one or two braccia from the aforesaid hole it will not undergo any change whether you are looking at it through this hole or outside of it.

All bodies together, and each by itself, give off to the surrounding air an infinite number of images which are all-pervading and each complete, each conveying the nature, colour and form of the body which produces it.

Here forms, here colours, here the character of every part of the universe are concentrated to a point; and that point is so marvellous a thing ... Oh! marvellous, O stupendous Necessity - by thy laws thou dost compel every effect to be the direct result of its cause, by the shortest path. These are miracles.

No small hole can so modify the convergence of rays of light as to prevent, at a long distance, the transmission of the true form of the luminous body causing them.

Because, if it were all-pervading and the same in every part, there would have been no need to make the instruments of the senses meet in one centre and in one single spot; on the contrary it would have sufficed that the eye should fulfil the function of its sensation on its surface only, and not transmit the image of the things seen, to the sense, by means of the optic nerves, so that the soul - for the reason given above - may perceive it in the surface of the eye.

Light is the chaser away of darkness. Shade is the obstruction of light. Primary light is that which falls on objects and causes light and shade. And derived lights are those portions of a body which are illuminated by the primary light. A primary shadow is that side of a body on which the light cannot fall.