imagination to one of the nearest fixed stars, and looking back we
should see what was happening ten years ago; going still further to a
far-off cluster, the light would only just now be arriving there,
which started from the earth at the time when man first appeared; or
we might go to so remote a distance that the scene of the formation of
the Solar System would be only now arriving there, and all the events
which have taken place from that remote time to the present would, as
time rolled on, reach there in exactly the same succession as they
have happened on this earth; and remember that we should be looking,
from that great distance, at all these past events with the same
intuitional advantage as though we were actually present here in time,
for however near we are to an object, we never see it as it is but
only as it was in the past.

Let us but turn to any point of space and we shall find at each point,
according to its remoteness, the actual scenes of the past being
enacted, in fact it may be said that throughout infinite space every
event in past eternity is now indelibly recorded.

A murder committed hundreds of years ago, in a country house, may
never have been found out, the criminal and his victim have alike
turned to dust, the blood has been washed from the floor, the very
house and its surroundings have crumbled and disappeared, and in their
place a waving corn field is all that can be seen, but at this very
moment if we were at a certain point in space, we should now be
witnessing there, the whole actual living scene from beginning to end,
as though we were present _here_ hundreds of years ago: the murderer
standing over his victim, the knife driven in and the blood gushing
out. If we went further away we should at this same moment be seeing
the criminal just arriving and knocking at the door of that house,
then going upstairs into the room, and the same terrible scene with
all its minutiae would again be enacted. From a point still further
removed, we should now see him, say, having lunch at a country inn
some miles away, concocting his villainy, then he would be seen
walking across the fields towards the house, again knocking at the
door, mounting the staircase, and once more would that murderous scene
be enacted before our eyes, and so on for ever; the scene, with the
house and its surroundings, have indeed been completely swept away
from the present _here_, but the whole tragedy will always be acting