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.

By ancestry, I was born to rule.

All objects transmit their image to the eye in pyramids and the nearer to the eye these pyramids are intersected the smaller will the image appear of the objects which cause them.

The reason of this is that if you look at the movement of the wateryour eye will not be able to fix on anything, but its action is as that of things seen in your shadow when you are walking; for if the eyeat-tempt to distinguish the nature of the shadow, the wisps of strawor other things contained in it appear of rapid movement and it seems that these are much more swift to flee from the said shadow than the shadow is to proceed.

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.

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.