Note 23 — Chapter VIII

What is said in Art. 15, that in consequence of the time employed in the transmission of visual impressions, our seeing a star is evidence, not that it exists now, but that it existed, it may be, many thousands of years ago; may seem, to some readers, to throw doubts upon reasonings which we have employed. It may be said that a star which was a mere chaos, when the light, by which we see it, set out from it, may, in the thousands of years which have since elapsed, have grown into an orderly world. To which bare possibility, we may oppose another supposition at least equally possible:—that the distant stars were sparks or fragments struck off in the formation of the Solar System, which are really long since extinct; and survive in appearance, only by the light which they at first emitted.