_CHAP. I._
ANCIENT AND MODERN WRITINGS
on the Loadstone, with certain matters of mention only,
_various opinions, & vanities_.
At an early period, while philosophy lay as yet rude and uncultivated in
the mists of error and ignorance, few were the virtues and properties of
things that were known and clearly perceived: there was a bristling forest
of plants and herbs, things metallick were hidden, and the knowledge of
stones was unheeded. But no sooner had the talents and toils of many
brought to light certain commodities necessary for the use and safety of
men, and handed them on to others (while at the same time reason and
experience had added a larger hope), than a thorough examination began to
be made of forests and fields, hills and heights; of seas too, and the
depths of the waters, of the bowels of the earth's body; and all things
began to be looked into. And at length by good luck the magnet-stone was
discovered in iron lodes, probably by smelters of iron or diggers of
metals. This, on being handled by metal folk, quickly displayed that
powerful and strong attraction for iron, a virtue not latent and obscure,
but easily proved by all, and highly praised and commended. And in after
time when it had emerged, as it were out of darkness and deep dungeons, and
had become dignified of men on account of its strong and amazing attraction
for iron, many philosophers as well as physicians of ancient days
discoursed of it, in short celebrated, as it were, its memory only; as for
instance Plato in the _Io_[2], Aristotle in the _De Anima_[3], in Book I.
only, Theophrastus the Lesbian, Dioscorides, C. Plinius Secundus, and
Julius Solinus[4]. As handed down by them the loadstone merely attracted
iron, the rest of its virtues were all undiscovered. But that the story of
the {2} loadstone might not appear too bare and too brief, to this singular
and sole known quality there were added certain figments and falsehoods,
which in the earliest times, no less than nowadays, used to be put forth by
raw smatterers and copyists to be swallowed of men. As for instance, that
if a loadstone be anointed with garlick, or if a diamond be near, it does
not attract iron[5]. Tales of this sort occur in Pliny, and in Ptolemy's
_Quadripartitum_; and the errors have been sedulously propagated, and have
gained ground (like ill weeds that grow apace) coming down even to our own
day, through the writings of a host of men, who, to fill put their volumes
to a proper bulk, write and copy out pages upon pages on this, that, and
the other subject, of which they knew almost nothing for certain of their
own experience. Such fables of the loadstone even Georgius Agricola
himself, most distinguished in letters, relying on the writings of others,
has embodied as actual history in his books _De Natura Fossilium_. Galen
noted its medicinal power in the ninth book of his _De Simplicium
Medicamentorum Facultatibus_, and its natural property of attracting iron
in the first book of _De Naturalibus Facultatibus_; but he failed to
recognize the cause, as Dioscorides before him, nor made further inquiry.
But his commentator Matthiolus repeats the story of the garlick and the
diamond, and moreover introduces Mahomet's shrine vaulted with
loadstones[6], and writes that, by the exhibition of this (with the iron
coffin hanging in the air) as a divine miracle, the public were imposed
upon. But this is known by travellers to be false. Yet Pliny relates that
Chinocrates the architect had commenced to roof over the temple of Arsinoe
at Alexandria with magnet-stone[7], that her statue of iron placed therein
might appear to hang in space. His own death, however, intervened, and also
that of Ptolemy, who had ordered it to be made in honour of his sister.
Very little was written by the ancients as to the causes of attraction of
iron; by Lucretius and others there are some short notices; others only
make slight and meagre mention of the attraction of iron: all of these are
censured by Cardan for being so careless and negligent in a matter of such
importance and in so wide a field of philosophizing; and for not supplying
an ampler notion of it and a more perfect philosophy: and yet, beyond
certain received opinions and ideas borrowed from others and ill-founded
conjectures, he has not himself any more than they delivered to posterity
in all his bulky works any contribution to the subject worthy of a
philosopher. Of modern writers some set forth its virtue in medicine only,
as [8]Antonius Musa Brasavolus, Baptista Montanus, Amatus Lusitanus, as
before them Oribasius in his thirteenth chapter _De Facultate
Metallicorum_, Aetius Amidenus, Avicenna, Serapio Mauritanus, Hali Abbas,
Santes de Ardoynis, Petrus Apponensis, Marcellus[9], Arnaldus. Bare mention
is made of certain points relating to the loadstone in very few words by
Marbodeus Callus, Albertus, {3} Matthæus Silvaticus, Hermolaus Barbarus,
Camillus Leonhardus, Cornelius Agrippa, Fallopius, Johannes Langius,
Cardinal Cusan, Hannibal Rosetius Calaber; by all of whom the subject is
treated very negligently, while they merely repeat other people's fictions
and ravings. Matthiolus compares the alluring powers of the loadstone which
pass through iron materials, with the mischief of the torpedo, whose venom
passes through bodies and spreads imperceptibly; Guilielmus Pateanus in his
_Ratio Purgantium Medicamentorum_ discusses the loadstone briefly and
learnedly. Thomas Erastus[10], knowing little of magnetical nature, finds
in the loadstone weak arguments against Paracelsus; Georgius Agricola, like
Encelius[11] and other metallurgists, merely states the facts; Alexander
Aphrodiseus in his _Problemata_ considers the question of the loadstone
inexplicable; Lucretius Carus, the poet of the Epicurean school, considers
that an attraction is brought about in this way: that as from all things
there is an efflux of very minute bodies, so from the iron atoms flow into
the space emptied by the elements of the loadstone, between the iron and
the loadstone, and that as soon as they have begun to stream towards the
loadstone, the iron follows, its corpuscles being entangled. To much the
same effect Johannes Costæus adduces a passage from Plutarch; Thomas
Aquinas[12], writing briefly on the loadstone in Chapter VII. of his
_Physica_, touches not amiss on its nature, and with his divine and clear
intellect would have published much more, had he been conversant with
magnetick experiments. Plato thinks the virtue divine. But when three or
four hundred years afterwards, the magnetick movement to North and South
was discovered or again recognized by men, many learned men attempted, each
according to the bent of his own mind, either by wonder and praise, or by
some sort of reasonings, to throw light upon a virtue so notable, and so
needful for the use of mankind. Of more modern authors a great number have
striven to show what is the cause of this direction and movement to North
and South, and to understand this great miracle of nature, and to disclose
it to others: but they have lost both their oil and their pains; for, not
being practised in the subjects of nature, and being misled by certain
false physical systems, they adopted as theirs, from books only, without
magnetical experiments, certain inferences based on vain opinions, and many
things that are not, dreaming old wives' tales. Marsilius Ficinus ruminates
over the ancient opinions, and in order to show the reason of the direction
seeks the cause in the heavenly constellation of the Bear, supposing the
virtue of the Bear to prevail in the stone and to be transferred to the
iron. Paracelsus asserted that there are stars, endowed with the power of
the loadstone, which attract to themselves iron. Levinus Lemnius describes
and praises the compass[13], and infers its antiquity on certain grounds;
he does not divulge the hidden miracle which he propounds. In the kingdom
{4} of Naples the Amalfians were the first (so it is said) to construct the
mariners' compass: and as Flavius Blondus says the Amalfians[14] boast, not
without reason, that they were taught by a certain citizen, Johannes Goia,
in the year thirteen hundred after the birth of Christ. That town is
situated in the kingdom of Naples not far from Salerno, near the promontory
of Minerva; and Charles V. bestowed that principality on Andrea Doria, that
great Admiral, on account of his signal naval services. Indeed it is plain
that no invention of man's device has ever done more for mankind than the
compass: some notwithstanding consider that it was discovered by others
previously and used in navigation, judging from ancient writings and
certain arguments and conjectures. The knowledge of the little mariners'
compass seems to have been brought into Italy by Paolo, the Venetian[15],
who learned the art of the compass in the Chinas about the year MCCLX.; yet
I do not wish the Amalfians to be deprived of an honour so great as that of
having first made the construction common in the Mediterranean Sea.
Goropius[16] attributes the discovery to the Cimbri or Teutons, forsooth
because the names of the thirty-two winds inscribed on the compass are
pronounced in the German tongue by all ship-masters, whether they be
French, British, or Spaniards; but the Italians describe them in their own
vernacular. Some think that Solomon, king of Judæa, was acquaint with the
use of the mariners' compass, and made it known to his ship-masters in the
long voyages when they brought back such a power of gold from the West
Indies: whence also, from the Hebrew word _Parvaim_[17], Arias Montanus
maintains that the gold-abounding regions of Peru are named But it is more
likely to have come from the coast of lower Æthiopia, from the region of
Cephala, as others relate. Yet that account seems to be less true, inasmuch
as the Phoenicians, on the frontier of Judæa, who were most skilled in
navigation in former ages (a people whose talents, work, and counsel
Solomon made use of in constructing ships and in the actual expeditions, as
well as in other operations), were ignorant of magnetick aid, the art of
the mariners' compass: For had it been in use amongst them, without doubt
the Greeks and also Italians and all barbarians would have understood a
thing so necessary and made famous by common use; nor could matters of much
repute, very easily known, and so highly requisite ever have perished in
oblivion; but either the learning would have been handed down to posterity,
or some memorial of it would be extant in writing. Sebastian Cabot was the
first to discover that the magnetick iron varied[18]. Gonzalus Oviedus[19]
is the first to write, as he does in the _Historia_, that in the south of
the Azores it does not vary. Fernelius in his book _De Abditis Rerum
Causis_ says that in the loadstone there is a hidden and abstruse cause,
elsewhere calling it celestial; and he brings forth nothing but the unknown
by means of what is still more unknown. {5} For clumsy, and meagre, and
pointless is his inquiry into hidden causes. The ingenious Fracastorio, a
distinguished philosopher, in seeking the reason for the direction of the
loadstone, feigns Hyperborean magnetick mountains attracting magnetical
things of iron: this view, which has found acceptance in part by others, is
followed by many authors and finds a place not in their writings only, but
in geographical tables, marine charts, and maps of the globe: dreaming, as
they do, of magnetick poles and huge rocks, different from the poles of the
earth. More than two hundred years earlier than Fracastorio there exists a
little work, fairly learned for the time, going under the name of one Peter
Peregrinus[20], which some consider to have originated from the views of
Roger Bacon, the Englishman of Oxford: In which book causes for magnetick
direction are sought from the poles of the heaven and from the heaven
itself. From this Peter Peregrinus, Johannes Taisnier of Hainault[21]
extracted materials for a little book, and published it as new. Cardan
talks much of the rising of the star in the tail of the Greater Bear, and
has attributed to its rising the cause of the variation: supposing that the
variation is always the same, from the rising of the star. But the
difference of the variation according to the change of position, and the
changes which occur in many places, and are even irregular in southern
regions, preclude the influence of one particular star at its northern
rising. The College of Coimbra[22] seeks the cause in some part of the
heaven near the pole: Scaliger in section CXXXI. of his _Exercitationes_ on
Cardan suggests a heavenly cause unknown to himself, and terrestrial
loadstones nowhere yet discovered. A cause not due to those sideritic
mountains named above, but to that power which fashioned them, namely that
portion of the heaven which overhangs that northern point. This view is
garnished with a wealth of words by that erudite man, and crowned with many
marginal subtilities; but with reasonings not so subtile. Martin Cortes[23]
considers that there is a place of attraction beyond the poles, which he
judges to be the moving heavens. One Bessardus[24], a Frenchman, with no
less folly notes the pole of the zodiack. Jacobus Severtius[25], of Paris,
while quoting a few points, fashions new errors as to loadstones of
different parts of the earth being different in direction: and also as to
there being eastern and western parts of the loadstone. Robert Norman[26],
an Englishman, fixes a point and region respective, not attractive; to
which the magnetical iron is collimated, but is not itself attracted.
Franciscus Maurolycus[27] treats of a few problems on the loadstone, taking
the trite views of others, and avers that the variation is due to a certain
magnetical island mentioned by Olaus Magnus[28]. Josephus Acosta[29],
though quite ignorant about the loadstone, nevertheless pours forth vapid
talk upon the loadstone. Livio Sanuto[30] in his Italian _Geographia_,
discusses at length the question whether the prime magnetick {6} meridian
and the magnetick poles are in the heavens or in the earth; also about an
instrument for finding the longitude: but through not understanding
magnetical nature, he raises nothing but errors and mists in that so
important notion. Fortunius Affaytatus[31] philosophizes foolishly enough
on the attraction of iron, and its turning to the poles. Most recently,
Baptista Porta[32], no ordinary philosopher, in his _Magia Naturalis_, has
made the seventh book a custodian and distributor of the marvels of the
loadstone; but little did he know or ever see of magnetick motions; and
some things that he noted of the powers which it manifested, either learned
by him from the Reverend Maestro Paolo, the Venetian[33], or evolved from
his own vigils, were not so well discovered or observed; but abound in
utterly false experiments, as will be clear in due place: still I deem him
worthy of high praise for having attempted so great a subject (as he has
done with sufficient success and no mean result in many other instances),
and for having given occasion for further research. All these
philosophizers of a previous age, philosophizing about attraction from a
few vague and untrustworthy experiments, drawing their arguments from the
hidden causes of things; and then, seeking for the causes of magnetick
directions in a quarter of the heavens, in the poles, the stars,
constellations, or in mountains, or rocks, space, atoms, attractive or
respective points beyond the heavens, and other such unproven paradoxes,
are whole horizons wrong, and wander about blindly. And as yet we have not
set ourselves to overthrow by argument those errors and impotent reasonings
of theirs, nor many other fables told about the loadstone, nor the
superstitions of impostors and fabulists: for instance, Franciscus
Rueus'[34] doubt whether the loadstone were not an imposture of evil
spirits: or that, placed underneath the head of an unconscious woman while
asleep, it drives her away from the bed if an adulteress: or that the
loadstone is of use to thieves by its fume and sheen, being a stone born,
as it were, to aid theft: or that it opens bars and locks, as Serapio[35]
crazily writes: or that iron held up by a loadstone, when placed in the
scales, added nothing to the weight of the loadstone, as though the gravity
of the iron were absorbed by the force of the stone: or that, as Serapio
and the Moors relate, in India there exist certain rocks of the sea
abounding in loadstone, which draw out all the nails of the ships which are
driven toward them, and so stop their sailing; which fable Olaus Magnus[36]
does not omit, saying that there are mountains in the north of such great
powers of attraction, that ships are built with wooden pegs, lest the iron
nails should be drawn from the timber as they passed by amongst the
magnetick crags. Nor this: that a white loadstone may be procured as a love
potion: or as Hali Abbas[37] thoughtlessly reports, that if held in the
hand it will cure gout and spasms: Or that it makes one acceptable and in
favour with princes, or eloquent, as Pictorio[38] has {7} sung; Or as
Albertus Magnus[39] teaches, that there are two kinds of loadstones, one
which points to the North, the other to the South: Or that iron is directed
toward the Northern stars by an influence imparted by the polar stars, even
as plants follow the sun, as Heliotrope does: Or that there is a
magnet-stone situated under the tail of the Greater Bear, as Lucas Gauricus
the Astrologer stated: He would even assign the loadstone, like the
Sardonyx and onyx, to the planet Saturn, yet at the same time he assigns it
with the adamant, Jasper, and Ruby, to Mars; so that it is ruled by two
planets. The loadstone moreover is said by him to pertain to the sign
Virgo; and he covers many such shameful pieces of folly with a veil of
mathematical erudition. Such as that an image of a bear is engraved on a
loadstone when the Moon faces towards the north, so that when hung by an
iron wire it may conciliate the influence of the celestial Bear, as
Gaudentius Merula[40] relates: Or that the loadstone drew iron and directed
it to the north, because it is superior in rank to iron, at the Bear, as
Ficinus writes, and Merula repeats: Or that by day it has a certain power
of attracting iron, but by night the power is feeble, or rather null: Or
that when weak and dulled the virtue is renewed by goats' blood, as
Ruellius[41] writes: Or that Goats' blood sets a loadstone free from the
venom of a diamond, so that the lost power is revived when bathed in goats'
blood by reason of the discord between that blood and the diamond: Or that
it removed sorcery from women, and put to flight demons, as Arnaldus de
Villanova dreams: Or that it has the power to reconcile husbands to their
wives, or to recall brides to their husbands, as Marbodeus Gallus[42],
chorus-leader of vanities, teaches: Or that in a loadstone pickled in the
salt of a sucking fish[43] there is power to pick up gold which has fallen
into the deepest wells, according to the narratives of Cælius Calcagninus.
With such idle tales and trumpery do plebeian philosophers delight
themselves and satiate readers greedy for hidden things, and unlearned
devourers of absurdities: But after the magnetick nature shall have been
disclosed by the discourse that is to follow, and perfected by our labours
and experiments, then will the hidden and abstruse causes of so great an
effect stand out, sure, proven, displayed and demonstrated; and at the same
time all darkness will disappear, and all error will be torn up by the
roots and will lie unheeded; and the foundations of a grand magnetick
philosophy which have been laid will appear anew, so that high intellects
may be no further mocked by idle opinions. Some learned men there are who
in the course of long voyages have observed the differences of magnetick
variation: the most scholarly Thomas Hariot[44], Robert Hues, Edward
Wright, Abraham Kendall, all Englishmen; Others there are who have invented
and produced magnetical instruments, and ready methods of observation,
indispensable for sailors and to those travelling afar: {8} as William
Borough[45] in his little book on the _Variation of the Compass_ or
Magneticall Needle, William Barlowe[46] in his _Supply_, Robert Norman in
his _Newe Attractive_. And this is that Robert Norman[47] (a skilful seaman
and ingenious artificer) who first discovered the declination of the
magnetick needle. Many others I omit wittingly; modern Frenchmen, Germans,
and Spaniards, who in books written for the most part in their native
tongues either misuse the placets of others, and send them forth furbished
with new titles and phrases as tricky traders do old wares with
meretricious ornaments; or offer something not worthy of mention even: and
these lay hands on some work filched from other authors and solicit some
one as their patron, or go hunting after renown for themselves among the
inexperienced and the young; who in all branches of learning are seen to
hand on errors and occasionally add something false of their own.
* * * * *