he other, they mutually attract each other, and when freed from obstacles
and relieved of their own weight, as upon the surface of water, they run
together and are conjoined. But if you direct the part or point A to C in
the other stone, the one repels or turns away from the other: for so were
nature perverted, and the form of the stone perturbed, a form that strictly
keeps the laws which it imposed upon bodies: hence, when all is not rightly
ordered according to nature, comes the flight of one from the other's
perverse position and from the discord, for nature does not allow of an
unjust and inequitable peace, or compromise: but wages war and exerts force
to make bodies acquiesce well and justly. Rightly arranged, therefore,
these mutually attract each other; that is, both stones, the stronger as
well as the weaker, run together, and with their whole forces tend to
unity, a fact that is evident in all magnets, not in the Aethiopian only,
as Pliny supposed. The Aethiopian magnets if they be powerful, like those
brought from China, because all strong ones show the effect more quickly
and more plainly, attract more strongly in the parts nearest the pole, and
turn about until pole looks directly at pole. The pole of a stone more
persistently attracts and more rapidly seizes the corresponding part (which
they term the adverse part) of another stone; for instance, North pulls
South; just so it also summons iron with more vehemence, and the iron
cleaves to it more firmly whether it have been previously excited by the
magnet, or is untouched. For thus, not without reason hath it been ordained
by nature, that the parts nearer to the pole should more firmly attract:
but that at the pole itself should be the seat, the throne, as it were, of
a consummate and splendid virtue, to which magnetical bodies on being
brought are more vehemently attracted, and from which they are with utmost
difficulty dislodged. So the poles are the parts which more particularly
spurn and thrust away things strange and alien perversely set beside them.

* * * * *

{18} CHAP. VI.

Loadstone attracts the ore of iron, as well as iron
_proper, smelted and wrought_.

Principal and manifest among the virtues of the * magnet, so much and so
anciently commended, is the attraction of iron; for Plato states that the
magnet, so named by Euripides, allures iron, and that it not only draws
iron rings but also indues the rings with p