Page:On the Magnet - Gilbert (1900 translation of 1600 work).djvu/89

 longish stay in the fire, loses the powers of attracting implanted and innate in it, and any other magnetick powers. And although certain veins of loadstone exhale when burnt a dark vapour of a black colour, or of a sulphurous foul odour, yet that vapour was not the soul, or the cause of its attraction of iron (as Porta thinks), nor do all loadstones whilst they are being baked or burnt smell of or exhale sulphur. It is acquired as a sort of inborn defect from a rather impure mine or matrix. Nor does anything analogous penetrate into the iron from that material corporeal cause, since the iron conceives the power of attracting and verticity from the loadstone, even if glass or gold or any other stone be interposed. Then also cast iron acquires the power of attracting iron, and verticity, from the verticity of the earth, as we shall afterwards plainly demonstrate in Direction. But fire destroys the magnetick virtues in a stone, not because it takes away any parts specially attractive, but because the consuming force of the flame mars by the demolition of the material the form of the whole; as in the human body the primary faculties of the soul are not burnt, but the charred body remains without faculties. The iron indeed may remain after the burning is completed and is not changed into ash or slag; nevertheless (as Cardan not inaptly says) burnt iron is not iron, but something placed outside its nature until it is reduced. For just as by the rigour of the surrounding air water is changed from its nature into ice; so iron, glowing in fire, is destroyed by the violent heat, and has its nature confused and perturbed; wherefore also it is not attracted by a loadstone, and even loses that power of attracting in whatever way acquired, and acquires another verticity when, being, as it were, born again, it is impregnated by a loadstone or the earth, or when its form is revived, not having been dead but confused, concerning which many things are manifest in the change of verticity. Wherefore Fracastorio does not confirm his opinion, that the iron is not altered; "for if it were altered," he says, "by the form of the loadstone, the form of the iron would have been spoiled." This alteration is not generation, but the restitution and reformation of a confused form. There is not therefore anything corporeal which comes from the loadstone or which enters the iron, or which is sent back from the iron when it is stimulated; but loadstone disposes loadstone by its primary form; iron, however, which is closely related to it, loadstone at the same time recalls to its conformate strength, and settles it; on account of which it rushes to the loadstone and eagerly conforms itself to it (the forces of each in harmony bringing them together). The coition also is not vague or confused, not a violent inclination of body to body, no rash and mad congruency; no violence is here applied to the bodies; there are no strifes or discords; but there is that concord (without which the universe would go to pieces), that analogy, namely, of the