But because I have essayed to expound the chief of these discoveries in a
treatise which certain considerations prevent me from publishing, I cannot
make the results known more conveniently than by here giving a summary of
the contents of this treatise. It was my design to comprise in it all
that, before I set myself to write it, I thought I knew of the nature of
material objects. But like the painters who, finding themselves unable to
represent equally well on a plain surface all the different faces of a
solid body, select one of the chief, on which alone they make the light
fall, and throwing the rest into the shade, allow them to appear only in
so far as they can be seen while looking at the principal one; so, fearing
lest I should not be able to compense in my discourse all that was in my
mind, I resolved to expound singly, though at considerable length, my
opinions regarding light; then to take the opportunity of adding something
on the sun and the fixed stars, since light almost wholly proceeds from
them; on the heavens since they transmit it; on the planets, comets, and
earth, since they reflect it; and particularly on all the bodies that are
upon the earth, since they are either colored, or transparent, or
luminous; and finally on man, since he is the spectator of these objects.
Further, to enable me to cast this variety of subjects somewhat into the
shade, and to express my judgment regarding them with greater freedom,
without being necessitated to adopt or refute the opinions of the learned,
I resolved to leave all the people here to their disputes, and to speak
only of what would happen in a new world, if God were now to create
somewhere in the imaginary spaces matter sufficient to compose one, and
were to agitate variously and confusedly the different parts of this
matter, so that there resulted a chaos as disordered as the poets ever
feigned, and after that did nothing more than lend his ordinary
concurrence to nature, and allow her to act in accordance with the laws
which he had established.
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