r more
occult qualities, nor from any particular star; for there is in the earth a
magnetick vigour of its own, just as in the sun and moon there are forms of
their own, and a small portion of the moon settles itself in moon-manner
toward its termini and form; and a piece of the sun to the sun, just as a
loadstone to the earth and to a second loadstone by inclining itself and
alluring in accordance with its nature. We must consider therefore about
the earth what magnetical bodies are, and what is a magnet; then also about
the truer parts of it, which are magnetical, and how they are affected as a
result of the coition. A body which is attracted by an electrick is not
changed by it, but remains unshaken and unchanged, as it was before, nor
does it excel any the more in virtue. A loadstone draws magnetical
substances, which eagerly acquire power from its strength, not in their
extremities only, but in their inward parts and * their very marrow. For
when a rod of iron is laid hold of, it is magnetically excited in the end
by which it is laid hold of, and that {66} force penetrates even to the
other extremity, not through its surface only, but through the interior and
all through the middle. Electrical bodies have material and corporeal
effluvia. Is any such magnetical effluvium given off, whether corporeal or
incorporeal? or is nothing at all given off that subsists? If it really has
a body, that body must be thin and spiritual, since it is necessary that it
should be able to enter into iron. Or what sort of an exhalation is it that
comes from lead, when quicksilver which is bright and fluid is bound
together by the odour merely and vapour of the lead, and remains, as it
were, a firm metal? But even gold, which is exceedingly solid and dense, is
reduced to a powder by the thin vapour of lead. Or, seeing that, as the
quicksilver has entrance into gold, so the magnetical odour has entrance
into the substance of the iron, how does it change it in its essential
property, although no change is perceptible to our senses in the bodies
themselves? For without ingression into the body, the body is not changed,
as the Chemists not incorrectly teach. But if indeed these things resulted
from a material ingression, then if strong and dense and thick substances
had been interposed between the bodies, or if magnetical substances had
been inclosed in the centres of the most solid and the densest bodies, the
iron particles would not have suff