... to show one certain point, by liis own nature and 

 appetite . . . and by the same vertuc, the Needle is turned 

 upon his own Center. I mean the Center of his Circular 

 and invisible \'ertue . . . .And surely I am of opinion, 

 that if this would be found in a Sphcricall form, extending 

 round about the Stone in Great Compass, and the dead body 

 Stone in the middle thcrof: Whose center is the center of 

 his aforesaid \'ertuc. .And this I have partly proved, 

 and made visible to be seen in the same manner, and God 

 sparing me life, I will herein make further Experience. 



Again, one can infer that the hea\ens impart a 

 guidina; principle to the iron which acts under the 

 inlhience of this Superior Cau.se. 



One of the points made in St. Thomas' argument 

 on motion due to the loadstone was that there is a 

 limit to the "virtus" of the loadstone, but he did not 

 specify the nature of it. Norman refined the Thomist 

 concept of a bound by making it spherical in forin, 

 foreshadowing Gilbert's "orbis virtutis." 



Gilbert's philosophy of nature does not move far 

 from scholastic philosophy, except away from it in 

 logical consistency. As the concern of Aristotle and 

 of St. Thomas was to understand being and change 

 by determining the nature of things, so Gilbert 

 sought to write a logos of the physis, or nature, of the 

 loadstone — a physiology.'"' This physiology was 

 not formally arranged into definitions obtained by 

 induction from experience, but nevertheless there 

 was the same search for the quiddity of the loadstone. 

 Once one knew this nature then all the properties 

 of the loadstone could be understood. 



Gilbert described the nature of the loadstone in the 

 terms of being that were current with his scholarly 

 contemporaries. This was the same ontology that 

 scholasticism had taught for centuries — the doctrine 

 of form and matter that we have already found in 

 St. Thomas and Nicholas of Cusa. Thus we find 

 Richard Hooker *' remarking that form gives being 

 and that "form in other creatures is a thing propor- 

 tionable unto the soul in living creatures." I'raiicis 

 Bacon, ^'■' in speaking of the relations between causes 

 and the kinds of philosophy, said: "Physics is the 

 science that deals with eflicicnt and material causes 



while Metaphysics deals with formal and final 

 cau.ses." John Donne ■" expressed the problem of 

 scholastic philosophy succinctly: 



This twilight of two yeares. not past or next. 



Some emljleme is of me, . . . 

 ... of stufl'c and forme perplext, 



Whose what and where, in disputation is . . . 



As we shall .see, Gilbert continued in the same tradi- 

 tion, hut his interpretation of form and Ibriiial cause 

 was much more anthropomorphic than that of his 

 predecessors. 



Gilbert began his Dr rriagnele by cxpoundint; the 

 natural history of that portion of the earth with 

 which we are familiar.'" 



Having declared the origin and nature of the loadstone, 

 we hold it needful first to give the history of iron also . . . 

 before we come to the explication of difficulties connected 

 with the loadstone . . . we shall better understand what 

 iron is when we shall have developed . . . what are the 

 causes and the matter of metals . . . 



His treatment of the origin of minerals and rocks 

 agreed in the main with that of .\ristotle,^'^ but he 

 departed somewhat from the peripatetic doctrine of 

 the four elements of fire, air, water, and earth. ^^ 

 Instead, he replaced them by a pair of elements.*' 

 (If the rejection of the four Aristotelian elements were 

 clearer, one might consider this a part of his rejection 

 of the geocentric universe but he did not define his 

 position suflicientlv.)** 



According to Gilbert the primaiy source of matter 

 is the interior of the earth, where exhalations and 

 "spiritus" arise from the bowels of the earth and 

 condense in the earth's veins.*' If the condensations, 

 or humors, are hoinogeneous, thev constitute the 



'"M: p. 14. 



" Richard Hooker. 0/ the laws of ecclesiastical polity, bk. 1, 

 ch. 3, sect. 4 {Works, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1865, vol. 1, 

 p. 157) 



*^ Francis Bacon, De augmentis scientiarum, bk. 3, ch. 4, in Works, 

 cd. J. Spcdding, R. L. Elli.s, and D. D. Heath, Boston, n.d. 

 (1900?), vol. 2, p. 267. 



^^ 1 he poems of John Dontie, cd. H. J. C. Grierson, London, 

 Oxford University Press, 1933, p. 175 ("To the Countesse of 

 Bedford, On New Yeares Day"). 



" M: pp. 33, 34. 



*' M: pp. 34, 35. Aristotle, Works, ed. \V. U. Ross, Oxford, 

 1908-1952, vol. 2, De generatione et corruptione, translated by 

 H. H. Joachim, 1930, vol. 3, Meteorologica, translated by 

 E. W. Webster, 1931. 



" M: pp. 34, 35, 64, 65, 69, 81. Dr. H. Guerlac has kindly 

 brought to my attention the similarity between the explanation 

 given in Gilbert and that gi\'en in the Meteorologica, bk. 3, ch. 6 

 p. 378. 



*" M: p. 83. 



*' A statement of the relation between Aristotle's four ele- 

 ments and place can be found in Maier, op. cit. (footnote 17), 

 pp. 143-182. 



" M: pp. 21, 34, 35, 36, 45. 



130 



BULLETIN 218: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM ()!• HLSTORV AND TECHNOLOGY 



