e 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