Page:Mathematical collections and translations, in two tomes - Salusbury (1661).djvu/400

 shining more than any other matter doth shew) do not all, nay but very few of them incounter pure Magnet; and the contacts being few, the union is but weak. But because the cap of the Load-stone, besides the contact of a great part of its superficies, invests its self also with the virtue of the parts adjoyning, although they touch not; that side of it being exactly smoothed to which the other face, in like manner well polisht of the Iron to be attracted, is applyed, the contract is made by innumerable minute particles, if not haply by the infinite points of both the superficies, whereupon the union becometh very strong. This observation of smoothing the surfaces of the Irons that are to touch, came not into the thoughts of Gilbert, for he makes the Irons convex, so that their contact is very small; and thereupon it cometh to passe that the tenacity, wherewith those Irons conjoyn, is much lesser.

I am, as I told you before, little lesse satisfied with this reason, that if it were a pure Geometrical Demonstration; and because we speak of a Physical Problem, I believe that also Simplicius will find himself satisfied as far as natural science admits, in which he knows that Geometrical evidence is not to be required.

I think indeed, that Salviatus with a fine circumlocution hath so manifestly displayed the cause of this effect, that any indifferent wit, though not verst in the Sciences, may apprehend the same; but we, confining our selves to the terms of Art, reduce the cause of these and other the like natural effects to Sympathy, which is a certain agreemet and mutual appetite which ariseth between things that are semblable to one another in qualities; as likewise on the contrary that hatred & enmity for which other things shun & abhor one another we call Antipathy.

And thus with these two words men come to render reasons of a great number of accidents and effects which we see not without admiration to be produced in nature. But this kind of philosophating seems to me to have great sympathy with a certain way of Painting that a Friend of mine used, who writ upon the Tele or Canvasse in chalk, here I will have the Fountain with Diana and her Nimphs, there certain Hariers, in this corner I will have a Hunts-man with the Head of a Stag, the rest shall be Lanes, Woods, and Hills; and left the remainder for the Painter to set forth with Colours; and thus he perswaded himself that he had painted the Story of Acteon, when as he had contributed thereto nothing of his own more than the names. But whether are we wandred with so long a digression, contrary to our former resolutions? I have almost forgot what the point was that we were upon when we fell into this magnetick dis-