"From the Moon, light comes to the earth in 1-1/4 second " the Sun " " in 8 minutes " Jupiter " " in 52 " " Uranus " " in 2 hours " a fixed Star of 1st magnitude -- 3 to 12 years " " 2d " 20 " " " 3d " 30 " " " 4th " 45 " " " 5th " 66 " " " 6th " 96 " " " 7th " 180 " " " 12th " 4000 " "Now, as we see objects by the rays of light passing from those objects to our eye, it follows that we do not perceive the heavenly bodies, _as they are_ at the moment of our seeing them, but _as they were_ at the time the rays of light by which we see them left those bodies. Thus when we look at the moon, we see her, not as she is at the moment of our beholding her disc, but as she was a second and a quarter before; for instance, we see her not at the moment of her rising above the horizon, but 1-1/4 second after she has risen. The sun also when he appears to us to have just passed the meridian, has already passed it by 8 minutes. So, in like manner, of the planets and the fixed stars. We see Jupiter, not as he is at the moment of our catching a sight of him, but as he was 52 minutes before. Uranus appears to us, not as he is at the moment of our discovering him, but as he was 2 hours previously. And a star of the 12th magnitude presents itself to our eye as it was 4,000 years ago: so that, suppose such a star to have been annihilated 3,000 years back, it would still be visible on the earth's surface for 1,000 years to come: or, suppose a star of the same magnitude had been created at the time the Israelites left Egypt, it will not be perceptible on the earth for nearly 700 years from this date." Beautiful, and at first sight unanswerable as this argument is, it falls to the ground before the spear-touch of our Ithuriel, the doctrine of prochronism. There is nothing more improbable in the notion that the sensible undulation was created at the observer's eye, with all the pre-requisite undulations prochronic, than in the notion that blood was created in the capillaries of the first human body. The latter we have seen to be a fact: is the former an impossibility?