: so in other iron lodes the homogenic matter that goes together is
somewhat more imperfect; just as many parts of the earth, even the high
ground, is homogenic but so much more deformate. Smelted iron is fused and
smelted out of homogenic stuffs, and cleaves to the earth more tenaciously
than the ores themselves. Such then is our earth in its {43} inward parts,
possessed of a magnetick homogeneal nature, and upon such more perfect
foundations as these rests the whole nature of things terrestrial,
manifesting itself to us, in our more diligent scrutiny, everywhere in all
magnetick minerals, and iron ores, in all clay, and in numerous earths and
stones; while Aristotle's simple element, that most empty terrestrial
phantom of the Peripateticks, a rude, inert, cold, dry, simple matter, the
universal substratum, is dead, devoid of vigour, and has never presented
itself to any one, not even in sleep, and would be of no potency in nature.
Our philosophers were only dreaming when they spoke of a kind of simple and
inert matter. Cardan does not consider the loadstone to be any kind of
stone, "but a sort of perfected portion of some kind of earth that is
absolute; a token of which is its abundance, there being no place where it
is not found. And there is" (he says) "a power of iron in the wedded Earth
which is perfect in its own kind when it has received fertilizing force
from the male, that is to say, the stone of Hercules" (in his book _De
Proportionibus_). And later: "Because" (he says) "in the previous
proposition I have taught that iron is true earth." A strong loadstone
shows itself to be of the inward earth, and upon innumerable tests claims
to rank with the earth in the possession of a primary form, that by which
Earth herself abides in her own station and is directed in her courses.
Thus a weaker loadstone and every ore of iron, and nearly all clay, or
clayey earth, and numerous other sorts (yet more, or less, owing to the
different labefaction of fluids and slimes), keep their magnetick and
genuine earth-properties open to view, falling short of the characteristic
form, and deformate. For it is not iron alone (the smelted metal) that
points to the poles, nor is it the loadstone alone that is attracted by
another and made to revolve magnetically; but all iron ores, and other
stones, as Rhenish slates and the black ones from Avignon (the French call
them _Ardoises_) which they use for tiles, and many more of other colours
a