perceived by the intellect,
it now appears manifest and conspicuous even to the eyes through this
essential activity which proceeds from it as light from a lamp. And here it
must be noted that a magnetick needle, moved on the top of the earth or of
a terrella or of the effused orbes, makes two complete rotations in one
circuit of its centre, like some epicycle about its orbit.

* * * * *

{208} CHAP. XII.

Magnetick force is animate, or imitates life; and in
many things surpasses human life, while this is bound
_up in the organick body_.

A loadstone is a wonderful thing in very many experiments, and like a
living creature. And one of its remarkable virtues is that which the
ancients considered to be a living soul in the sky, in the globes and in
the stars, in the sun and in the moon. For they suspected that such various
motions could not arise without a divine and animate nature, immense bodies
turned about in fixed times, and wonderful powers infused into other
bodies; whereby the whole universe flourishes in most beautiful variety,
through this primary form of the globes themselves. The ancients, as
Thales, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Archelaus, Pythagoras, Empedocles,
Parmenides, Plato, and all the Platonists, and not only the older Greeks,
but the Egyptians and Chaldaeans, seek for some universal life in the
universe, and affirm that the whole universe is endowed with life.
Aristotle affirms that not the whole universe is animate, but only the sky;
but he maintains that its elements are inanimate; whilst the stars
themselves are animate. We, however, find this life in globes only and in
their homogenic parts; and though it is not the same in all globes (for it
is much more eminent in the sun and in certain stars than in others of less
nobility) yet in very many the lives of the globes agree in their powers.
For each several homogenic part draws to its own globe in a similar manner,
and has an inclination to the common direction of the whole in the
universe; and the effused forms extend outward in all, and are carried out
into an orbe, and have bounds of their own; hence the order and regularity
of the motions and rotations of all the planets, and their courses, not
wandering away, but fixed and determined. Wherefore Aristotle concedes life
to the sphaeres themselves and to the orbes of the heavens (which he
feigns), because they are suitable and fitted for a circular motion and
act