garlick. Cardinal Cusan[156] also is not to be despised.
"Iron has," he says, "in the loadstone a certain principle of its own
effluence; and whilst the loadstone by its own presence excites the heavy
and ponderous iron, the iron is borne by a wonderful yearning, even above
the motion of nature (by which in accordance with its weight it ought to
tend downwards) and moves upwards, in uniting itself with its own
principle. For if there were not in the iron a certain natural foretaste of
the loadstone itself, it would not move to the loadstone any more than to
any other stone; and unless there were in the stone a greater inclination
for iron than for copper, there would not be that attraction." Such are the
opinions expressed about the loadstone attracting (or the general sense of
each), all dubious and untrustworthy. But those causes of the magnetical
motions, which in the schools of the Philosophers are referred to the four
elements and the prime qualities, we relinquish to the moths and the worms.

* * * * *

{65} CHAP. IIII.

On Magnetick Force & Form, what it is; and on the
_cause of the Coition_.

Relinquishing the opinions of others on the attraction of loadstone, we
shall now show the reason of that coition and the translatory nature of
that motion. Since there are really two kinds of bodies, which seem to
allure bodies with motions manifest to our senses, Electricks and
Magneticks, the Electricks produce the tendency by natural effluvia from
humour; the Magneticks by agencies due to form, or rather by the prime
forces. This form is unique, and particular, not the formal cause of the
Peripateticks, or the specifick in mixtures, or the secondary form; not the
propagator of generating bodies, but the form of the primary and chief
spheres and of those parts of them which are homogeneous and not corrupted,
a special entity and existence, which we may call a primary and radical and
astral form; not the primary form of Aristotle, but that unique form, which
preserves and disposes its own proper sphere. There is one such in each
several globe, in the Sun, the moon, and the stars; one also in the earth,
which is that true magnetick potency which we call the primary vigour.
Wherefore there is a magnetick nature peculiar to the earth and implanted
in all its truer parts in a primary and astonishing manner; this is neither
derived nor produced from the whole heaven by sympathy or influence o