The Magnetic Art

THEOREM III.

The magnet communicates its power to iron.

Another virtue, no less stupendous than the others, is observed in the magnet, namely that diffusive communication of its virtue into other iron tools; for when it has seized iron, it not only constrains it with a tenacious embrace, but by impregnating it in a certain way, it eructates and spits out the effluvium of its own virtues into it, not only into the extremities, but also into any internal parts, and even into the very middle; which is proven by this experiment.

Experiment III.

Having placed several needles upon a table, apply the magnet to one of them, which, having been seized and animated to the core by magnetic virtue, will immediately seize another one placed near it, and will diffuse the faculty granted to it into that one; this one, greedily conceiving the vigor from the powers of that one, and affected by the same force, will from near and far snatch others and others, so that by a certain reciprocal vibration of magnetic virtue, that which is held holds others, until, elevated on high in a long series, they seem to hang as if concatenated by no bond except the sympathetic one. St. Augustine once wondered at this in his book 21, On the City of God, chapter 4, when he says: "We know the magnet is a wondrous stone, a raper of iron, which when I first saw, I shuddered vehemently, etc." We give this reason for it: because iron receives verticity or direction, and a certain natural agreement from the presence of the magnet, from a powerful alteration and conversion into a perfect magnet, and an absolute metamorphosis, and it flies to the body of the magnet as a true part of the magnet. It is added that it tastes the nature of the mines from which it was cut, and is propagated into the iron just as a river from a fountain,