For it is easy to see that all the other circumferences will touch the same BN, from B up to the point of contact N, which is the same point where AN falls perpendicularly on BN.
It is then BN, which is formed by small arcs of these circumferences, which terminates the movement that the wave AC has communicated within the transparent body, and where this movement occurs in much greater amount than anywhere else.

And for that reason this line, in accordance with what has been said more than once, is the propagation of the wave AC at the moment when its piece C has reached B.For there is no other line below the plane AB which is, like BN, a common tangent to all these partial waves.

And if one would know how the wave AC has come progressively to BN, it is necessary only to draw in the same figure the straight lines KO parallel to BN, and all the lines KL parallel to AC.

Thus one will see that the wave CA, from being a straight line, has become broken in all the positions LKO successively, and that it has again become a straight line at BN.

This being evident by what has already been demonstrated, there is no need to explain it further.
Now, in the same figure, if one draws EAF, which cuts the plane AB at right angles at the point A, since AD is perpendicular to the wave AC, it will be DA which will mark the ray of incident light, and AN which was perpendicular to BN, the refracted ray: since the rays are nothing else than the straight lines along which the portions of the waves advance.
Whence it is easy to recognize this chief property of refraction, namely that the Sine of the angle DAE has always the same ratio to the Sine of the angle NAF, whatever be the inclination of the ray DA: and that this ratio is the same as that of the velocity of the waves in the transparent substance which is towards AE to their velocity in the transparent substance towards AF.