proofs. In the heaven astronomers assign a pair of poles for each moving
sphere: so also do we find in the terrestrial globe natural poles
preeminent in virtue, being the points that remain constant in their
position in respect to the diurnal rotation, one tending to the Bears and
the seven stars; the other to the opposite quarter of the heaven. In like
manner the loadstone has its poles, by nature northern and southern, being
definite and determined points set in the stone, the primary boundaries of
motions and effects, the limits and governors of the many actions and
virtues. However, it must be understood that the strength of the stone does
not emanate from a mathematical point, but from the parts themselves, and
that while all those parts in the whole belong to the whole, the nearer
they are to the poles of the stone the stronger are the forces they acquire
and shed into other bodies: these poles are observant of the earth's poles,
move toward them, and wait upon them. Magnetick poles can be found in every
magnet, in the powerful and mighty (which Antiquity used to call the
masculine) as well as in the weak, feeble and feminine; whether its figure
is due to art or to chance, whether long, flat, square, three-cornered,
polished; whether rough, broken, or unpolished; always the loadstone
contains and shows its poles. * But since the spherical form, which is also
the most perfect, agrees best with the earth, being a globe, and is most
suitable for use and experiment, we accordingly wish our principal
demonstrations by the stone to be made with a globe-shaped magnet as being
more perfect and adapted for the purpose. Take, then, a powerful loadstone,
solid, of a just size, uniform, hard, without flaw[61]; make of it a globe
upon the turning tool used for rounding crystals and some other stones, or
with other tools as the material and firmness of the stone requires, for
sometimes it is difficult to be worked. The stone thus perpared is a true,
homogeneous offspring of the earth and of the same shape with it:
artificially possessed of the orbicular form which nature granted from the
beginning to the common mother earth: and it is a physical corpuscle imbued
with many virtues, by {13} means of which many abstruse and neglected
truths in philosophy buried in piteous darkness may more readily become
known to men. This round stone is called by us a [Greek: mikroge] or
_Terrella_[62]. To find, then, the poles conformable to the e