Page:Newton's Principia (1846).djvu/562

 and, lastly, others, that they are a sort of clouds or vapour constantly rising from the comets' heads, and tending towards the parts opposite to the sun. The first is the opinion of such as are yet unacquainted with optics; for the beams of the sun are not seen in a darkened room, but in consequence of the light that is reflected from them by the little particles of dust and smoke which are always flying about in the air; and hence it is that in air impregnated with thick smoke they appear with greater brightness, and are more faintly and more difficultly seen in a finer air; but in the heavens, where there is no matter to reflect the light, they are not to be seen at all. Light is not seen as it is in the beams, but as it is thence reflected to our eyes; for vision is not made but by rays falling upon the eyes, and therefore there must be some reflecting matter in those parts where the tails of comets are seen; and so the argument turns upon the third opinion; for that reflecting matter can be no where found but in the place of the tail, because otherwise, since all the celestial spaces are equally illuminated by the sun's light, no part of the heavens could appear with more splendor than another. The second opinion is liable to many difficulties. The tails of comets are never seen variegated with those colours which ever use to be inseparable from refraction; and the distinct transmission of the light of the fixed stars and planets to us is a demonstration that the æther or celestial medium is not endowed with any refractive power. For as to what is alledged that the fixed stars have been sometimes seen by the Egyptians environed with a coma or capillitium because that has but rarely happened, it is rather to be ascribed to a casual refraction of clouds, as well as the radiation and scintillation of the fixed stars to the refractions both of the eyes and air; for upon applying a telescope to the eye, those radiations and scintillations immediately disappear. By the tremulous agitation of the air and ascending vapours, it happens that the rays of light are alternately turned aside from the narrow space of the pupil of the eye; but no such thing can have place in the much wider aperture of the object-glass of a telescope; and hence it is that a scintillation is occasioned in the former case which ceases in the latter; and this cessation in the latter case is a demonstration of the regular transmission of light through the heavens without any sensible refraction. But, to obviate an objection that may be made from the appearing of no tail in such comets as shine but with a faint light, as if the secondary rays were then too weak to affect the eyes, and for this reason it is that the tails of the fixed stars do not appear, we are to consider that by the means of telescopes the light of the fixed stars may be augmented above an hundred fold and yet no tails are seen; that the light of the planets is yet more copious without any tail, but that comets are seen sometimes with huge tails when the light of their heads is but faint and dull; for so it happened in the comet of the year 1680, when in the month of December