The Magnetic Art

Experiment II.

Having sculpted a small cork ship, place a magnet upon it with such art that the magnetic poles respond exactly to the prow and the stern. Having done these things, allow it to flow freely and without impediment upon water held in a basin or another vessel; and suddenly, not without pleasure, you will see that the ship, wherever it is turned, can rest nowhere except in its own polar line and with the magnetic poles turned toward the poles of the world, the northern indeed to the southern, but the southern to the northern. You will observe the same thing also in a magnet suspended by a thin thread. In what, however, this occult force of nature consists, must be investigated. Some think it is from the polar star, as Fracastorius with Cardanus Book on Sympathy, which most frequent declination of the magnet varying from the polar star in different parts of the world shows to be false Book 7 on Subtleties. Others from magnetic mountains near the pole, as Olaus Magnus and Maurolycus in their problems Book 13 of the History of the Northern Peoples, which is clear to be false from the fact that such mountains are found not only under the poles, but also in other parts of the world, such as on the Island of Ilva, on the shore of Guinea, Crete, and other islands of the Mediterranean Sea and their shores, and yet no inclination of the nautical compass toward them is observed. It must be said, therefore, that it is done through that radical vigor and formal efficiency of the magnet, by which, just as it attracts iron, so because of the concert of the world, and the analogy of the perfect and homogeneous parts of the world to the whole, and the mutual agreement of the principal powers in them, it directs itself to the poles of the world for the sake of continuation, position, direction, and unity.