,
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, p