NATURAL HISTORY. 



CENTURY IX. 



Experiments in consort touching perception in bodies 

 insensible, tending to natural divination or subtile 

 trials. 



IT is certain that all bodies whatsoever, though 

 they have no sense, yet they have perception : for 

 when one body is applied to another, there is a 

 kind of election to embrace that which is agreeable, 

 and to exclude or expel that which is ingrate : and 

 whether the body be alterant or altered, evermore a 

 perception precedeth operation ; for else all bodies 

 would be alike one to another. And sometimes 

 this perception, in some kind of bodies, is far more 

 subtile than the sense ; so that the sense is but a 

 dull thing in comparison of it : we see a weather 

 glass will find the least difference of the weather 

 in heat or cold, when men find it not. And this 

 perception also is sometimes at distance, as well as 

 upon the touch ; as when the loadstone draweth 



