al action of their powders, do their extremities waste
away, but are cherished & preserved, like by like. For just as in their own
places, in the mines, bodies like to each other endure for many ages entire
and uncorrupt, when surrounded by bodies of the same stuff, as the lesser
interior parts in a great mass: so loadstone and ore of iron, when inclosed
in a mound of the same material, do not exhale their native humour, do not
waste away, but retain their soundness. A loadstone lasts longer in filings
of smelted iron, & a piece of iron ore excellently also in dust of
loadstone; as also smelted iron in filings of loadstone & even in those of
iron. Then both these allied bodies have a true & just form of one & the
same species; a form which until this day was considered by all, owing to
their outward unlikeness & the inequality of the potency that is the same
innate in both, to be different & unlike in kind; the smatterers not
understanding that the same powers, though differing in strength, exist in
both alike. And in fact they both are true & intimate parts of the earth, &
as such retain the prime natural properties of mutually attracting, of
moving, & of disposing themselves toward the position of the world, {38}
and of the terrestrial globe; which properties they also impart to each
other, and increase, confirm, receive, and retain each other's forces. The
stronger fortifies the weaker, not as though aught were taken away from its
own substance, or its proper vigour, nor because any corporeal substance is
imparted, but the dormant virtue of the one is aroused by the other,
without loss. For if with a single small stone you touch a thousand bits of
iron for the use of mariners[100], that loadstone attracts iron no less
strongly than before; with the same stone weighing one pound, any one will
be able to suspend in the air a thousand pounds of iron. For if any one
were to fix high up on the walls so many iron nails of so great a weight, &
were to apply to them the same number of nails touched, according to the
art, by a loadstone, they would all be seen to hang in the air through the
force of one small stone. So this is not solely the action, labour, or
outlay of the loadstone; but the iron, which is in a sense an extract from
loadstone, and a fusion of loadstone into metal, & conceives vigour from
it, & by proximity strengthens the magnetick faculties, doth itself, from
whatever lode it may have come, raise its own inborn