Fire.... and light

In the fifth century BC, Empedocles postulated that everything was composed of four elements; fire, air, earth and water.

He believed that Aphrodite made the human eye out of the four elements and that she lit the fire in the eye which shone out from the eye making sight possible. If this were true, then one could see during the night just as well as during the day, so Empedocles postulated an interaction between rays from the eyes and rays from a source such as the sun.

186,282 miles per second does seem pretty fast, by the way...