re confused and uncertain, by the
approach of a loadstone are called back to life, as if to a kind of
disponent form and integrity. The material is thus awakened and moves
together into unity, the bond of the universe and the essential for its
conservation. On this account and by the purging of the material into a
cleaner body, the loadstone gives to the iron a greater force of attracting
than there is in itself. For if iron dust * or an iron nail be placed over
a large loadstone, a piece of iron joined to it takes away the filings and
nail from the loadstone and retains them so long as it is near the
loadstone; wherefore iron attracts iron more than loadstone does, if it
have been conformed by a loadstone and remains within the orbe of its
communicated form. A piece of iron even, skilfully placed near the pole of
a loadstone, lifts up more than the loadstone. Therefore the material of
its own ore is better, and by the force of fire steel and iron are
re-purged; and they are again impregnated by the loadstone with its own
forms; therefore they move towards it by a spontaneous {70} approach as
soon as they have entered within the orbe of the magnetick forces, because
they were possessed by it before, connected and united with it in a perfect
union; & they have immediately an absolute continuity within that orbe, &
have been joined on account of their harmony, though their bodies may have
been disjoined. For the iron is not taken possession of and allured by
material effluvia, after the manner of electricks, but only by the
immaterial action of its form or an incorporeal progression, which in a
piece of iron as its subject acts and is conceived, as it were, in a
continuous homogeneous body, and does not need more open ways. Therefore
(though the most solid substances be interposed) the iron is still moved
and attracted, and by the presence of loadstone the iron moves and attracts
the loadstone itself, and by mutual forces a concurrency is made towards
unity, which is commonly called attraction of the iron. But those formal
forces pass out and are united to one another by meeting together; a force
also, when conceived in the iron, begins to flow out without delay. But
Julius Scaliger, who by other examples contends that this theory is absurd,
makes in his 344th Exercise a great mistake. For the virtues of primary
bodies are not to be compared with bodies formed from and mixed with them.
He would now have been able (had he bee