HORIZON LINES 



health or friends or climate, as real, but of another 

 kind. 



Time itself is an illusion. The future does not 

 exist nor the past; yet how are our lives influenced 

 by the memory of the one and our anticipations of 

 the other! 



The world is, indeed, full of illusion. We fancy 

 that luminous bodies shoot out rays of light such as 

 we appear to see when we look at them. We see 

 beams and scintillations when we look at the stars 

 and the sun; but is it not all a trick of the eye? The 

 light from a luminous body goes out in all directions, 

 not in separated rays, but as vibrations in the ether. 

 When we throw a stone into a still pool of water a 

 wave motion is set up which spreads in concentric 

 circles. But the vibrations called "light," considered 

 as a whole, assume the form of a sphere; they go 

 from the luminous body to every point of a hollow 

 sphere. We see a star as a bright point in the sky, 

 but if the universe were full of eyes, every eye could 

 see that star; its light goes to every point of the hol- 

 low sphere of Infinity. But no more than does the 

 light of the candle in your hand, or the lamp on 

 your table go to Infinity, if unobstructed. Stars 

 which cannot be seen by the most powerful tele- 

 scope must yet radiate their light into infinite space. 

 Is that light lost? Modern science seems to hold to 

 the view that in the ether of space no rays of light 

 can ever be lost. What becomes of them? It is cer- 



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