Opinions of others on Magnetick Coition,
_which they call Attraction_.
Discussion having now been made concerning electricks, the causes of
magnetick coition must be set forth. We say coition, not attraction[146].
The word attraction unfortunately crept into magnetick philosophy from the
ignorance of the ancients; for there seems to be force applied where there
is attraction and an imperious violence dominates. For, if ever there is
talk about magnetick attraction, we understand thereby magnetick coition,
or a primary running together. Now in truth it will not be useless here
first briefly to set forth the views given by others, both the ancient {61}
and the more modern writers. Orpheus in his hymns[147] narrates that iron
is attracted by loadstone as the bride to the arms of her espoused.
Epicurus holds that iron is attracted by a loadstone just as straws by
amber; "and," he adds, "the Atoms and indivisible particles which are given
off by the stone and by the iron fit one another in shape; so that they
easily cling to one another; when therefore these solid particles of stone
or of iron strike against one another, then they rebound into space, being
brought against one another by the way, and they draw the iron along with
them." But this cannot be the case in the least; since solid and very dense
substances interposed, even squared blocks of marble, do not obstruct this
power, though they can separate atoms from atoms; and the stone and the
iron would be speedily dissipated into such profuse and perpetual streams
of atoms. In the case of amber, since there is another different method of
attracting, the Epicurean atoms cannot fit one another in shape. Thales, as
Aristotle writes, _De Anima_, Bk. I., deemed the loadstone to be endowed
with a soul of some sort, because it had the power of moving and drawing
iron towards it. Anaxagoras also held the same view. In the _Timæus_ of
Plato there is an idle fancy[148] about the efficacy of the stone of
Hercules. For he says that "all flowings of water, likewise the fallings of
thunderbolts, and the things which are held wonderful in the attraction of
Amber, and of the Herculean stone, are such that in all these there is
never any attraction; but since there is no vacuum, the particles drive one
another mutually around, and when they are dispersed and congregated
together, they all pass, each to its proper seat, but with changed places;
and it is forsooth, on account of these intercomplicated affections that
the effects seem to arouse the wonder in him who has rightly investigated
them." Galen does not know why Plato should have seen fit to select the
theory of circumpulsion rather than that of attraction (differing almost on
this point alone from Hippocrates), though indeed it does not agree in
reality with either reason or experiment. Nor indeed is either the air or
anything else circumpelled; and the bodies themselves which are attracted
are carried towards the attracting substance not confusedly, or in an orbe.
Lucretius, the poet of the Epicurean sect, sang his opinion of it thus:
[149]_First, then, know,_
_Ceaseless effluvia from the magnet flow,--_
_Effluvia, whose superior powers expel_
_The air that lies between the stone and steel._
_A vacuum formed, the steely atoms fly_
_In a link'd train, and all the void supply;_
_While the whole ring to which the train is join'd_
_The influence owns, and follows close behind. &c._
{62} Such a reason Plutarch also alleges in the _Quæstiones Platonicæ_:
That that stone gives off heavy exhalations, whereby the adjacent air,
being impelled along, condenses that which is in front of it; and that air,
being driven round in an orbe and reverting to the place it had vacated,
drags the iron forcibly along with it. The following explanation of the
virtues of the loadstone and of amber is propounded by Johannes Costæus of
Lodi[150]. For he would have it that "there is mutual work and mutual
result, and therefore the motion is partly due to the attraction of the
loadstone and partly to a spontaneous movement on the part of the iron: For
as we say that vapours issuing from the loadstone hasten by their own
nature to attract the iron, so also the air repelled by the vapours, whilst
seeking a place for itself, is turned back, and when turned back, it impels
the iron, lifts it up, as it were, and carries it along; the iron being of
itself also excited somehow. So by being drawn out and by a spontaneous
motion, and by striking against another substance, there is in some way
produced a composite motion, which motion would nevertheless be rightly
referred to attraction, because the terminus from which this motion
invariably begins is the same terminus at which it ends, which is the
characteristic proper of an attraction." There is certainly a mutual
action, not an operation, nor does the loadstone attract in that way; nor
is there any impulsion. But neither is there that origination of the motion
by the vapours, and the turning of them back, which opinion of Epicurus has
so often been quoted by others. Galen errs in his _De Naturalibus
Facultatibus_, Book I., chap. 14, when he expresses the view that whatever
agents draw out either the venom of serpents or darts also exhibit the same
power as the loadstone. Now of what sort may be the attraction of such
medicaments (if indeed it may be called attraction) we shall consider
elsewhere. Drugs against poisons or darts have no relation to, no
similitude with, the action of magnetical bodies. The followers of Galen
(who hold that purgative medicaments attract because of similitude of
substance) say that bodies are attracted on account of similitude, not
identity, of substance; wherefore the loadstone draws iron, but iron does
not draw iron. But we declare and prove that this happens in primary
bodies, and in those bodies that are pretty closely related to them and
especially like in kind one to another, on account of their identity;
wherefore also loadstone draws loadstone and likewise iron iron; every
really true earth draws earth; and iron fortified by a loadstone within the
orbe of whose virtue it is placed draws iron more strongly than it does the
loadstone. Cardan asks why no other metal is attracted by any other stone;
because (he replies) no metal is so cold as iron; as if indeed cold were
the cause of the attraction, or as if iron were much colder than lead,
which neither follows nor is deflected towards a loadstone. {63} But that
is a chilly story, and worse than an old woman's tale. So also is the
notion that the loadstone is alive and that iron is its food. But how does
the loadstone feed on the iron, when the filings in which it is kept are
neither consumed nor become lighter? Cornelius Gemma, _Cosmographia_, Bk.
X.[151], holds that the loadstone draws iron to it by insensible rays, to
which opinion he conjoins a story of a sucking fish and another about an
antelope. Guilielmus Puteanus[152] derives it, "not from any property of
the whole substance unknown to any one and which cannot be demonstrated in
any way (as Galen, and after him almost all the physicians, have asserted),
but from the essential nature of the thing itself, as if moving from the
first by itself, and, as it were, by its own most powerful nature and from
that innate temperament, as it were an instrument, which its substance, its
effective nature uses in its operations, or a secondary cause and deprived
of its intermediary"; so the loadstone attracts the iron not without a
physical cause and for the sake of some good. But there is no such thing in
other substances springing from some material form; unless it were primary,
which he does not recognize. But certes good is shown to the loadstone by
the stroke of the iron (as it were, association with a friend); yet it
cannot either be discovered or conceived how that disposition may be the
instrument of form. For what can temperament do in magnetical motions,
which must be compared with the fixed, definite, constant motions of the
stars, at great distances in case of the interposition of very dense and
thick bodies? To Baptista Porta[153] the loadstone seems a sort of mixture
of stone and iron, in such a way that it is an iron stone or stony iron.
"But I think" (he says) "the Loadstone is a mixture of stone and iron, as
an iron stone, or a stone of iron. Yet do not think the stone is so changed
into iron, as to lose its own Nature, nor that the iron is so drowned in
the stone, but it preserves itself; and whilst one labours to get the
victory of the other, the attraction is made by the combat between them. In
that body there is more of the stone than of iron; and therefore the iron,
that it may not be subdued by the stone, desires the force and company of
iron; that being not able to resist alone, it may be able by more help to
defend itself.... The Loadstone draws not stones, because it wants them
not, for there is stone enough in the body of it; and if one Loadstone draw
another, it is not for the stone, but for the iron that is in it." As if in
the loadstone the iron were a distinct body and not mixed up as the other
metals in their ores! And that these, being so mixed up, should fight with
one another, and should extend their quarrel, and that in consequence of
the battle auxiliary forces should be called in, is indeed absurd. But iron
itself, when excited by a loadstone, seizes iron no less strongly than the
loadstone. Therefore those fights, seditions, and conspiracies in the
stone, as if it were nursing up perpetual quarrels, {64} whence it might
seek auxiliary forces, are the ravings of a babbling old woman, not the
inventions of a distinguished mage. Others have lit upon sympathy as the
cause. There may be fellow-feeling, and yet the cause is not
fellow-feeling; for no passion can rightly be said to be an efficient
cause. Others hold likeness of substance, many others insensible rays as
the cause; men who also in very many cases often wretchedly misuse rays,
which were first introduced in the natural sciences by the mathematicians.
More eruditely does Scaliger[154] say that the iron moves toward the
loadstone as if toward its parent, by whose secret principles it may be
perfected, just as the earth toward its centre. The Divine Thomas[155] does
not differ much from him, when in the 7th book of his _Physica_ he
discusses the reasons of motions. "In another way," he says, "it may be
said to attract a thing, because it moves it to itself by altering it in
some way, from which alteration it happens that when altered it moves
according to its position, and in this manner the loadstone is said to
attract iron. For as the parent moves things whether heavy or light, in as
far as it gives them a form, by means of which they are moved to their
place; so also the loadstone gives a certain quality to the iron, in
accordance with which it moves towards it." This by no means ill-conceived
opinion this most learned man shortly afterwards endeavoured to confirm by
things which had obtained little credence respecting the loadstone and the
adverse forces of garlick. Cardinal Cusan[156] also is not to be despised.
"Iron has," he says, "in the loadstone a certain principle of its own
effluence; and whilst the loadstone by its own presence excites the heavy
and ponderous iron, the iron is borne by a wonderful yearning, even above
the motion of nature (by which in accordance with its weight it ought to
tend downwards) and moves upwards, in uniting itself with its own
principle. For if there were not in the iron a certain natural foretaste of
the loadstone itself, it would not move to the loadstone any more than to
any other stone; and unless there were in the stone a greater inclination
for iron than for copper, there would not be that attraction." Such are the
opinions expressed about the loadstone attracting (or the general sense of
each), all dubious and untrustworthy. But those causes of the magnetical
motions, which in the schools of the Philosophers are referred to the four
elements and the prime qualities, we relinquish to the moths and the worms.
* * * * *
{65} CHAP. IIII.
On Magnetick Force & Form, what it is; and on the
_cause of the Coition_.
Relinquishing the opinions of others on the attraction of loadstone, we
shall now show the reason of that coition and the translatory nature of
that motion. Since there are really two kinds of bodies, which seem to
allure bodies with motions manifest to our senses, Electricks and
Magneticks, the Electricks produce the tendency by natural effluvia from
humour; the Magneticks by agencies due to form, or rather by the prime
forces. This form is unique, and particular, not the formal cause of the
Peripateticks, or the specifick in mixtures, or the secondary form; not the
propagator of generating bodies, but the form of the primary and chief
spheres and of those parts of them which are homogeneous and not corrupted,
a special entity and existence, which we may call a primary and radical and
astral form; not the primary form of Aristotle, but that unique form, which
preserves and disposes its own proper sphere. There is one such in each
several globe, in the Sun, the moon, and the stars; one also in the earth,
which is that true magnetick potency which we call the primary vigour.
Wherefore there is a magnetick nature peculiar to the earth and implanted
in all its truer parts in a primary and astonishing manner; this is neither
derived nor produced from the whole heaven by sympathy or influence or more
occult qualities, nor from any particular star; for there is in the earth a
magnetick vigour of its own, just as in the sun and moon there are forms of
their own, and a small portion of the moon settles itself in moon-manner
toward its termini and form; and a piece of the sun to the sun, just as a
loadstone to the earth and to a second loadstone by inclining itself and
alluring in accordance with its nature. We must consider therefore about
the earth what magnetical bodies are, and what is a magnet; then also about
the truer parts of it, which are magnetical, and how they are affected as a
result of the coition. A body which is attracted by an electrick is not
changed by it, but remains unshaken and unchanged, as it was before, nor
does it excel any the more in virtue. A loadstone draws magnetical
substances, which eagerly acquire power from its strength, not in their
extremities only, but in their inward parts and * their very marrow. For
when a rod of iron is laid hold of, it is magnetically excited in the end
by which it is laid hold of, and that {66} 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 {67} 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[157] 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[158] 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 {68} perfect and homogeneous parts of the
spheres of the universe to the whole, and a mutual concurrency of the
principal forces in them, tending to soundness, continuity, position,
direction, and to unity. Wherefore in the case of such wonderful action and
such a stupendous implanted vigour (diverse from other natures) the opinion
of Thales of Miletus[159] was not very absurd, nor was it downright
madness, in the judgment of Scaliger, for him to grant the loadstone a
soul; for the loadstone is incited, directed, and orbitally moved by this
force, which is all in all, and, as will be made clear afterwards, all in
every part; and it seems to be very like a soul. For the power of moving
itself seems to point to a soul; and the supernal bodies, which are also
celestial, divine, as it were, are thought by some to be animated, because
they move with admirable order. If two loadstones be set one over against
the other, each in a boat, on the surface of water, they do not immediately
run together, but first they turn towards one another, or the lesser
conforms to the greater, by moving itself in a somewhat circular manner,
and at length, when they are disposed according to their nature, they run
together. In smelted iron which has not been excited by a magnet there is
no need for such an apparatus; since it has no verticity, excepting what is
adventitious and acquired, and that not stable and confirmed (as is the
case with loadstone, even if the iron has been smelted from the best
loadstone), on account of the confusion of the parts by fire when it flowed
as a liquid; it suddenly acquires polarity and natural aptitude by the
presence of the loadstone, by a powerful mutation, and by a conversion into
a perfect magnet, and by an absolute metamorphosis; and it flies to the
body of the magnet as if it were a real piece of loadstone. For a loadstone
has no power, nor can a perfect loadstone do anything which iron when
excited by loadstone cannot perform, even when it has not been touched but
only placed in its vicinity. For when first it is within the orbe of virtue
of the loadstone, though it may be some distance away, yet it is
immediately changed, and has a renovated form, formerly indeed dormant and
inert in body, now lively and strong, which will be clearly apparent in the
demonstrations of _Direction_. So the magnetick coition is a motion of the
loadstone and of the iron, not an action of one[160]; an [Greek:
entelecheia], of each, not [Greek: ergon]; a [Greek: sunentelecheia] or
conjoint action, rather than a sympathy. There is properly no such thing as
magnetick antipathy. For the flight and declination of the ends, or an
entire turning about, is an action of each towards unity by the conjoint
action and [Greek: sunentelecheia] of both. It has therefore newly put on
the form, and on account of this being roused, it then, in order that it
may more surely acquire it, rushes headlong on the loadstone, not with
curves and turnings, as a loadstone to a loadstone. For since in a
loadstone both verticity and the power disponent have existed through many
ages, or from the very beginnings, {69} have been inborn and confirmed, and
also the special form of the terrestrial globe cannot easily be changed by
another loadstone, as iron is changed; it happens from the constant nature
of each, that one has not the sudden power over another of changing its
verticity, but that they can only mutually come to agreement with each
other. Again, iron which has been excited by a loadstone, * if that iron on
account of obstacles should not be able to turn round immediately in
accordance with its nature, as happens with a versorium, is laid hold of,
when a loadstone approaches, on either side or at either end. Because, just
as it can implant, so it can suddenly change the polarity and turn about
the formal energies to any part whatever. So variously can iron be
transformed when its form is adventitious and has not yet been long
resident in the metal. In the case of iron, on account of the fusion of the
substance when magnetick ore or iron is smelted, the virtue of its primary
form, distinct before, is now confused; but an entire loadstone placed near
it again sets up its primal activity; its adjusted and arranged form joins
its allied strength with the loadstone; and both mutually agree and are
leagued together magnetically in all their motions towards unity, and
whether joined by bodily contact or adjusted within the orbe, they are one
and the same. For when iron is smelted out of its own ore, or steel (the
more noble kind of iron) out of its ore, that is, out of loadstone, the
material is loosed by the force of the fire, and flows away, and iron as
well as steel flow out from their dross and are separated from it; and the
dross is either spoiled by the force of the fire and rendered useless, or
is a kind of dregs of a certain imperfection and of mixture in the
prominent parts of the earth. The material therefore is a purified one, in
which the metallick parts, which are now mixed up by the melting, since
those special forces of its form are confused and uncertain, by the
approach of a loadstone are called back to life, as if to a kind of
disponent form and integrity. The material is thus awakened and moves
together into unity, the bond of the universe and the essential for its
conservation. On this account and by the purging of the material into a
cleaner body, the loadstone gives to the iron a greater force of attracting
than there is in itself. For if iron dust * or an iron nail be placed over
a large loadstone, a piece of iron joined to it takes away the filings and
nail from the loadstone and retains them so long as it is near the
loadstone; wherefore iron attracts iron more than loadstone does, if it
have been conformed by a loadstone and remains within the orbe of its
communicated form. A piece of iron even, skilfully placed near the pole of
a loadstone, lifts up more than the loadstone. Therefore the material of
its own ore is better, and by the force of fire steel and iron are
re-purged; and they are again impregnated by the loadstone with its own
forms; therefore they move towards it by a spontaneous {70} approach as
soon as they have entered within the orbe of the magnetick forces, because
they were possessed by it before, connected and united with it in a perfect
union; & they have immediately an absolute continuity within that orbe, &
have been joined on account of their harmony, though their bodies may have
been disjoined. For the iron is not taken possession of and allured by
material effluvia, after the manner of electricks, but only by the
immaterial action of its form or an incorporeal progression, which in a
piece of iron as its subject acts and is conceived, as it were, in a
continuous homogeneous body, and does not need more open ways. Therefore
(though the most solid substances be interposed) the iron is still moved
and attracted, and by the presence of loadstone the iron moves and attracts
the loadstone itself, and by mutual forces a concurrency is made towards
unity, which is commonly called attraction of the iron. But those formal
forces pass out and are united to one another by meeting together; a force
also, when conceived in the iron, begins to flow out without delay. But
Julius Scaliger, who by other examples contends that this theory is absurd,
makes in his 344th Exercise a great mistake. For the virtues of primary
bodies are not to be compared with bodies formed from and mixed with them.
He would now have been able (had he been still alive) to discern the nature
of effused forms in the chapter on forms effused by spherical magneticks.
But if iron is injured somewhat by rust, it is affected either only
slightly or not at all by the stone. For the metal is spoiled when eaten
away and deformed by external injuries or by lapse of time (just as has
been said about the loadstone), and it loses its prime qualities which are
conjoined to its form; or, being worn out by age, retains them in a languid
and weak condition; indeed it cannot be properly re-formed, when it has
been corrupted. But a powerful and fresh loadstone attracts sound and clean
pieces of iron, and those pieces of iron (when they have conceived
strength) have a powerful attraction for other iron wires and iron nails,
not only one at a time, but even successively one behind another, three,
four or five, end to end, sticking and hanging in order like a chain. The
loadstone, however, would not attract the last one following in such a row,
if there were no nails between. [Illustration] A loadstone placed as at A
draws a nail or a bar B; similarly behind B it draws C; and after C, D. But
the nails B and C being removed, the loadstone A, if it remain at the same
distance, does not raise the nail D into the air. This occurs for this
reason: because in the case of a continuous row of nails the presence of
the loadstone A, besides its own powers, raises the magnetick natures of
the iron works B and C, and makes them, as it were, forces auxiliary to
itself. But B and C, like a continuous magnetical body, extend as far as
{71} D the forces by which D is taken and conformed, though they are weaker
than those which C receives from B. And those iron nails indeed from that
contact only, and from the presence of the loadstone even without contact,
acquire powers which they retain in their own bodies, as will be
demonstrated most clearly in the passage _on Direction_. For not only
whilst the stone is present does the iron assume these powers, and take
them, as it were, vicariously from the stone, as Themistius lays down in
his 8th book on Physicks[161]. The best iron, when it has been melted down
(such is steel), is allured by a loadstone from a greater distance, is
raised though of greater weight, is held more firmly, assumes stronger
powers than the common and less expensive, because it is cast from a better
ore or loadstone, imbued with better powers. But what is made from more
impure ore turns out weaker and is moved more feebly. As to
Fracastorio's[162] statement that he saw a piece of loadstone draw a
loadstone by one of its faces, but not iron; by another face iron, but not
loadstone; by another both; which he says is an indication that in one part
there is more of the loadstone, in another more of the iron, in another
both equally, whence arises that diversity of attraction; it is most
incorrect and badly observed on the part of Fracastorio, who did not know
how to apply skilfully loadstone to loadstone. A loadstone draws iron and
also a loadstone, if both are suitably arranged and free and unrestrained.
That is removed more quickly from its position and place which is lighter;
for the heavier bodies are in weight, the more they resist; but the lighter
both moves itself to meet the heavier and is allured by the other.
* * * * *