Page:On the Magnet - Gilbert (1900 translation of 1600 work).djvu/88

 force penetrates even to the other extremity, not through its surface only, but through the interior and all through the middle. Electrical bodies have material and corporeal effluvia. Is any such magnetical effluvium given off, whether corporeal or incorporeal? or is nothing at all given off that subsists? If it really has a body, that body must be thin and spiritual, since it is necessary that it should be able to enter into iron. Or what sort of an exhalation is it that comes from lead, when quicksilver which is bright and fluid is bound together by the odour merely and vapour of the lead, and remains, as it were, a firm metal? But even gold, which is exceedingly solid and dense, is reduced to a powder by the thin vapour of lead. Or, seeing that, as the quicksilver has entrance into gold, so the magnetical odour has entrance into the substance of the iron, how does it change it in its essential property, although no change is perceptible to our senses in the bodies themselves? For without ingression into the body, the body is not changed, as the Chemists not incorrectly teach. But if indeed these things resulted from a material ingression, then if strong and dense and thick substances had been interposed between the bodies, or if magnetical substances had been inclosed in the centres of the most solid and the densest bodies, the iron particles would not have suffered anything from the loadstone. But none the less they strive to come together and are changed. Therefore there is no such conception and origin of the magnetick powers; nor do the very minute portions of the stone exist, which have been wrongly imagined to exist by Baptista Porta, aggregated, as it were, into hairs, and arising from the rubbing of the stone which, sticking to the iron, constitute its strength. Electrick effluvia are not only impeded by any dense matter, but also in like manner by flames, or if a small flame is near, they do not allure. But as iron is not hindered by any obstacle from receiving force or motion from a loadstone, so it will pass through the midst of flames to the body of the loadstone and adhære to the stone. Let there be a flame or a candle near the stone; bring up a short piece of iron wire, and when it has come near, it will penetrate through the midst of the flames to the stone; and a versorium turns towards the loadstone nor more slowly nor less eagerly through the midst of flames than through open air. So flames interposed do not hinder the coition. But if the iron itself became heated by a great heat, it is demonstrable that it would not be attracted. Bring a strongly ignited rod of iron near a magnetized versorium; the versorium remains steady and does not turn towards such iron; but it immediately turns towards it, so soon as it has lost somewhat of its heat. When a piece of iron has been touched by a loadstone, if it be placed in a hot fire until it is perfectly red hot and remain in the fire some considerable time, it will lose that magnetick strength it had acquired. Even a loadstone itself through a