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ue place: still I deem him worthy of high praise for having attempted so great a subject (as he has done with sufficient success and no mean result in many other instances), and for having given occasion for further research. All these philosophizers of a previous age, philosophizing about attraction from a few vague and untrustworthy experiments, drawing their arguments from the hidden causes of things; and then, seeking for the causes of magnetick directions in a quarter of the heavens, in the poles, the stars, constellations, or in mountains, or rocks, space, atoms, attractive or respective points beyond the heavens, and other such unproven paradoxes, are whole horizons wrong, and wander about blindly. And as yet we have not set ourselves to overthrow by argument those errors and impotent reasonings of theirs, nor many other fables told about the loadstone, nor the superstitions of impostors and fabulists: for instance, Franciscus Rueus'[34] doubt whether the loadstone were not an imposture of evil spirits: or that, placed underneath the head of an unconscious woman while asleep, it drives her away from the bed if an adulteress: or that the loadstone is of use to thieves by its fume and sheen, being a stone born, as it were, to aid theft: or that it opens bars and locks, as Serapio[35] crazily writes: or that iron held up by a loadstone, when placed in the scales, added nothing to the weight of the loadstone, as though the gravity of the iron were absorbed by the force of the stone: or that, as Serapio and the Moors relate, in India there exist certain rocks of the sea abounding in loadstone, which draw out all the nails of the ships which are driven toward them, and so stop their sailing; which fable Olaus Magnus[36] does not omit, saying that there are mountains in the north of such great powers of attraction, that ships are built with wooden pegs, lest the iron nails should be drawn from the timber as they passed by amongst the magnetick crags. Nor this: that a white loadstone may be procured as a love potion: or as Hali Abbas[37] thoughtlessly reports, that if held in the hand it will cure gout and spasms: Or that it makes one acceptable and in favour with princes, or eloquent, as Pictorio[38] has {7} sung; Or as Albertus Magnus[39] teaches, that there are two kinds of loadstones, one which points to the North, the other to the South: Or that iron is directed toward the Northern stars by an influence imparted by the
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