On the Magnet

DE MAGNETE, BOOK I.

as the heliotrope does; or as the astrologer Luca Gaurico posits that the magnetic stone is subject to the tail of the Great Bear; he also wishes it to be assigned to the planet Saturn, just as the sardonyx and onyx; and also the magnet to Mars, along with the diamond, jasper, and ruby; so that it is ruled by two planets. Moreover, the magnet is said by him to pertain to the sign of Virgo: he protects many such shameful follies of this kind with the veil of a learned mathematician: or that the image of a bear should be carved on the magnet when the moon has looked upon the northern regions, so that, suspended by an iron thread, it might procure the power of the celestial bear, as Gaudentius Merula mentions; or that the magnet draws iron and directs it to the north because it is superior in order to iron near the bear, as Ficinus writes and Merula recites; or that it has this power of drawing iron by day, but is weak or rather null by night; or that its languid and sleeping power is restored with goat's blood, as Ruellius writes; or that goat's blood would free the magnet from the poisoning of the diamond, so that the extinguished power revives when washed with goat's blood, because of the discord between that blood and the diamond; or that it removes witchcraft from women and puts demons to flight, as Arnold of Villanova dreams; or that it can reconcile husbands to wives, or call back married women to their husbands, as the precentor of vanities, Marbod of Rennes, teaches; or that there is a power in a magnet preserved in the gall of an eheneis remora/sucking fish to extract gold that has fallen into the deepest wells, from the relations of Celio Calcagnini.

With such trifles and fictitious fables, common philosophers delight themselves and satisfy greedy readers of hidden things and unlearned gluttons for nonsense. But after the magnetic nature has been revealed in the following discourse, and cultivated by our labors and experiments, the certain causes of such a great effect will stand forth, proven, shown, and demonstrated; at the same time, all shadows will vanish, and all fibers of errors will be torn out and lie neglected; and the foundations of the noble magnetic philosophy will be laid and will appear anew, so that noble minds are no longer eluded by idle opinions. There are other learned men who have observed the differences of magnetic variation in distant voyages: the most learned Thomas Harriot, Robert Hues, Edward Wright, and Abraham Kendall, all Englishmen; others have found and published magnetic instruments and ready methods of observing, necessary for those navigating and traveling far: such as William Borough in his booklet on the variation of the compass, William Barlow in his supplement, and Robert Norman in his new Newe Attractive New Attractive. And this is that Robert Norman (a skilled sailor and ingenious craftsman) who first found the inclination of magnetic iron. Knowing them, I pass over many others: the more recent French, Germans, and Spaniards, who in their mostly vernacular writings either abuse the findings of others and, like hucksters, send forth old things dressed up with new titles and words as if with a harlot's finery; or they bring forth things not even worth mentioning; who, having stolen some book from other authors, grasp at them for themselves and beg for some patron, or angle for some name for themselves among the unskilled and the young, who seem to pass on errors as if hand-to-hand in all sciences, and sometimes add something false of their own.