Page:Reflections upon ancient and modern learning (IA b3032449x).pdf/290

 Besides these occasional Uses of the Magnet, its Nature, abstractedly taken, has been nicely enquired into, thereby to discover both its own Qualities, and its Relation to other Bodies that are round about it. And here indeed one may justly wonder, that when Flavio Amalphi (g) had discovered that Iron touched with a Magnet, always points towards the North, that all the Philosophers of that Age did not immediately try all Manner of Experiments upon that strange Stone, which was found to be so exceedingly useful in Matters of common Life: The Portuguezes, who first made daring Voyages by the Help of the Compass into the Southern and South-Eastern Seas, better knew the Value of that rich Discovery; but Philosophy was in those darker Ages divided between the School-men and the Chymists; the former presently salved the Business with their Substantial Forms, and what they could not comprehend came very properly under the Notion of an Occult Quality: The latter found nothing extraordinary in their Crucibles when they