They are very general qualities or kinships of
a substance, and yet are not to be assigned as true causes, and, if I may
say so, those philosophizers utter some resounding words; but about the
thing itself prove nothing in particular. Nor does this attraction
accredited to amber arise from any singular quality of the substance or
kinship, since by more thorough research we find the same effect in very
many other bodies; and all bodies, moreover, of whatever quality, are
allured by all those bodies. Similarity also is not the cause; because all
things around us placed on this globe of the earth, similar and dissimilar,
are allured by amber and bodies of this kind; and on that account no cogent
analogy is to be drawn either from similarity or identity of substance. But
neither do similars mutually attract one another, as stone stone, flesh
flesh, nor aught else outside the class of magneticks and electricks.
Fracastorio would have it that "things which mutually attract one another
are similars, as being of the same species, either in action or in right
subjection. Right subjection is that from which is emitted the emanation
which attracts and which in mixtures often lies hidden on account of their
lack of form, by reason of which they are often different in act from what
they are in potency. Hence it may be that hairs and twigs move towards
amber and towards diamond, not because they are hairs, but because either
there is shut up in them air or some other principle, which is attracted in
the first place, and which bears some relation and analogy to that which
attracts of itself; in which diamond and amber agree through a principle
common to each." Thus far Fracastorio. Who if he had observed by a large
number of experiments that all bodies are drawn to electricks except those
which are aglow and aflame, and highly rarefied, would never have given a
thought to such things. It is easy for men of acute intellect, apart from
experiments and practice, to slip and err. In greater error do they remain
sunk who maintain these same substances to be not similar, but to be
substances near akin; and hold that on that account a thing moves towards
another, its like, by which it is brought to more perfection. But these are
{51} ill-considered views; for towards all electricks all things move[130]
except such as are aflame or are too highly rarefied, as air, which is the
universal effluvium of this globe and of the world. Vegetable substan