ue place: still I deem him
worthy of high praise for having attempted so great a subject (as he has
done with sufficient success and no mean result in many other instances),
and for having given occasion for further research. All these
philosophizers of a previous age, philosophizing about attraction from a
few vague and untrustworthy experiments, drawing their arguments from the
hidden causes of things; and then, seeking for the causes of magnetick
directions in a quarter of the heavens, in the poles, the stars,
constellations, or in mountains, or rocks, space, atoms, attractive or
respective points beyond the heavens, and other such unproven paradoxes,
are whole horizons wrong, and wander about blindly. And as yet we have not
set ourselves to overthrow by argument those errors and impotent reasonings
of theirs, nor many other fables told about the loadstone, nor the
superstitions of impostors and fabulists: for instance, Franciscus
Rueus'[34] doubt whether the loadstone were not an imposture of evil
spirits: or that, placed underneath the head of an unconscious woman while
asleep, it drives her away from the bed if an adulteress: or that the
loadstone is of use to thieves by its fume and sheen, being a stone born,
as it were, to aid theft: or that it opens bars and locks, as Serapio[35]
crazily writes: or that iron held up by a loadstone, when placed in the
scales, added nothing to the weight of the loadstone, as though the gravity
of the iron were absorbed by the force of the stone: or that, as Serapio
and the Moors relate, in India there exist certain rocks of the sea
abounding in loadstone, which draw out all the nails of the ships which are
driven toward them, and so stop their sailing; which fable Olaus Magnus[36]
does not omit, saying that there are mountains in the north of such great
powers of attraction, that ships are built with wooden pegs, lest the iron
nails should be drawn from the timber as they passed by amongst the
magnetick crags. Nor this: that a white loadstone may be procured as a love
potion: or as Hali Abbas[37] thoughtlessly reports, that if held in the
hand it will cure gout and spasms: Or that it makes one acceptable and in
favour with princes, or eloquent, as Pictorio[38] has {7} sung; Or as
Albertus Magnus[39] teaches, that there are two kinds of loadstones, one
which points to the North, the other to the South: Or that iron is directed
toward the Northern stars by an influence imparted by the