Page:Mathematical collections and translations, in two tomes - Salusbury (1661).djvu/397

 causes of the true conclusions observed by himself. Which reasons (freely speaking) do not knit and bind so fast, as those undoubtedly ought to do, in that of natural, necessary, and lasting conclusions may be alledged. And I doubt not, but that in processe of time this new Science will be perfected with new observations, and, which is more, with true and necessary Demonstrations. Nor ought the glory of the first Inventor to be thereby diminished; nor do I lesse esteem, but rather more admire, the Inventor of the Harp (although it may be supposed that the Instrument at first was but rudely framed, and more rudely fingered) than an hundred other Artists, that in the insuing Ages reduced that profession to great perfection. And methinks, that Antiquity had very good reason to enumerate the first Inventors of the Noble Arts amongst the Gods; seeing that the common wits have so little curiosity, and are so little regardful of rare and elegant things, that though they see and hear them exercitated by the exquisite professors of them, yet are they not thereby perswaded to a desire of learning them. Now judge, whether Capacities of this kind would ever have attempted to have found out the making of the Harp, or the invention of Musick, upon the hint of the whistling noise of the dry sinews of a Tortois, or from the striking of four Hammers. The application to great inventions moved by small hints, and the thinking that under a primary and childish appearance admirable Arts may lie hid, is not the part of a trivial, but of a super-humane spirit. Now answering to your demands, I say, that I also have long thought upon what might possibly be the cause of this so tenacious and potent union, that we see to be made between the one Iron that armeth the Magnet, and the other that conjoyns it self unto it. And first, we are certain, that the vertue and strength of the stone doth not augment by being armed, for it neither attracts at greater distance, nor doth it hold an Iron the faster, if between it, and the arming or cap, a very fine paper, or a leaf of beaten gold, be interposed; nay, with that interposition, the naked stone takes up more Iron than the armed. There is therefore no alteration in the vertue, and yet there is an innovation in the effect. And because its necessary, that a new effect have a new cause, if it be inquired what novelty is introduced in the act of taking up with the cap or arming, there is no mutation to be discovered, but in the different contact; for whereas before Iron toucht Loadstone, now Iron toucheth Iron. Therefore it is necessary to conclude, that the diversity of contacts is the cause of the diversity of effects. And for the difference of contacts it cannot, as I see, be derived from any thing else, save from that the substance of the Iron is of parts more subtil, more pure, and more compact-