by William Gilbert

“ The stronger fortifies the weaker, not as though aught were taken away from its own substance, or its proper vigour, nor because any corporeal substance is imparted, but the dormant virtue of the one is aroused by the other, without loss. For if with a single small stone you touch a thousand bits of iron for the use of mariners [100] , that loadstone attracts iron no less strongly than before; with the same stone weighing one pound, any one will be able to suspend in the air a thousand pounds of iron. ”

“ But if you rub with a loadstone any other metal, or wood, or bones, or glass, as they will not be moved toward any particular and determinate quarter of heaven, nor be attracted by any magnetick body, so they are able not to impart any magnetick property to other bodies or to iron itself by attrition, & by infection. Loadstone differs from iron ore, as also from some weaker magnets, in that when molten in the furnace into a ferric & metallick fused mass, it does not so readily flow & dissolve into metal ”

“ For earths, and iron stones, magnets abounding in metal, are the more imbued & marred with excrementitious metallick humours, and earthy corruptions of substance, as numbers of loadstones are weaker from the mine; hence they are a little further remote from the common mother, & are degenerate, & when smelted in the furnace undergo fusion more easily, & give out a more certain metallick product, & a metal that is softer, not a tough steel. ”

“ Strong loadstones are dug up by themselves, weaker ones too have their own proper vein. Both are found in iron mines. Iron ore most often occurs alone, without strong loadstone (for the more perfect are rarely met with) . Strong loadstone is a stone resembling iron ”

“ And in fact they both are true & intimate parts of the earth, & as such retain the prime natural properties of mutually attracting, of moving, & of disposing themselves toward the position of the world, and of the terrestrial globe; which properties they also impart to each other, and increase, confirm, receive, and retain each other's forces. ”

“ Moreover we see that the best loadstone and the ore of iron are both as it were distressed by the same maladies & diseases, both run to old age in the same way & exhibit the same marks of it, are preserved & keep their properties by the same remedies & safeguards ”

“ For if any one were to fix high up on the walls so many iron nails of so great a weight, & were to apply to them the same number of nails touched, according to the art, by a loadstone, they would all be seen to hang in the air through the force of one small stone. ”

“ For both are impaired by the more acrid juices as by poisons, & the aqua fortis of the Chemists inflicts on both the same wounds, and when exposed too long to harm from the atmosphere, they both alike pine away, so to speak, & grow old; each is preserved by being kept in the dust & scrapings of the other; & when a fit piece of steel or iron is adjoined above its pole, the loadstone's vigour is augmented through the firm union. The loadstone is laid up in iron filings, not that iron is its food ”

“ Then both these allied bodies have a true & just form of one & the same species; a form which until this day was considered by all, owing to their outward unlikeness & the inequality of the potency that is the same innate in both, to be different & unlike in kind; the smatterers not understanding that the same powers, though differing in strength, exist in both alike. ”