Archimedes Texts

78
towards the Sun it is bounded by the lucid horns of the Moon,
and on the other part, its confining term is the obscure tract of the
twilight; whose relation makes us think the candor of the Moons
Discus to be so much the clearer; the which happens to be ob
fuscated in the opposite part, by the greater clarity of the cres
cents; but if this modern Author had essaied to make an inter

position between the eye and the primary splendor, by the ridg of
some house, or some other screen, so as to have left visible only
the grose of the Moon, the horns excluded, he might have seen
it all alike luminous.

The secondary
light of the Moon
appears in form of
a Ring, that is to
say, bright in the
extreme circumfe
rence, and not in
the midst, and why.

SIMPL, I think, now I remember, that he writes of his
making use of such another Artifice, to hide from us the false
Incidum.

SALV. Oh! how is this (as I believed) inadvertency of his,
changed into a lie, bordering on rashnesse; for that every one
may frequently make proof of the contrary. That in the next

place, at the Suns Eclipse, the Moons Discus is seen otherwayes
than by privation, I much doubt, and specially when the E
clipse is not total, as those must necessarily have been, which
were observed by the Author; but if also he should have discove
red somewhat of light, this contradicts not, rather favoureth our
opinion; for that at such a time, the whole Terrestrial Hemi
sphere illuminated by the Sun, is opposite to the Moon, so that
although the Moons shadow doth obscure a part thereof, yet this
is very small in comparison of that which remains illuminated.
That which he farther adds, that in this case, the part of the
limb, lying under the Sun, doth appear very lucid, but that
which lyeth besides it, not so; and that to proceed from the co
ming of the solar rayes directly through that part to the eye, but
not through this, is really one of those fopperies, which disco
ver the other fictions, of him which relates them: For if it be
requisite to the making a secondary light visible in the lunar Dis
cus, that the rayes of the Sun came directly through it to our
eyes, doth not this pitiful Philosopher perceive, that we should ne
ver see this same secondary light, save onely at the Eclipse of the
Sun? And if a part onely of the Moon, far lesse than half a de
gree, by being remote from the Suns Discus, can deflect or de
viate the rayes of the Sun, so that they arrive not at our eye;
what shall it do when it is distant twenty or thirty degrees, as it is
at its first apparition? and what course shall the rayes of the Sun
keep, which are to passe thorow the body of the Moon, that

they may find out our eye? This man doth go successively consi
dering what things ought to be, that they may serve his purpose,
but doth not gradually proceed, accommodating his conceits to
the things, as really they are. As for instance, to make the light