ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 221 



acrid than the wine itself will likewise spirit of wine pro 

 portionally exceed itself in strength by another distillation ? 

 Bat the repetition also of experiments may deceive; thus 

 here the second exaltation does not equal the excess of the 

 first; and frequently, by repeating an experiment after a 

 certain pitch is obtained, nature is so far from going further, 

 that she rather falls back. Judgment, therefore, must be 

 used in this affair. So quicksilver put into melted lead, 

 when it begins to grow cold, will be arrested, and remain 

 no longer fluid; but will the same quicksilver, often served 

 so, become fixed and malleable ? 



For an example of extension, water made pendulous 

 above, by means of a long glass stem, and dipped into a 

 mixture of wine and water, will separate the water from 

 the wine, the wine gently rising to the top, and the water 

 descending and settling at the bottom. Now, as wine and 

 water, being two different bodies, are separable by this 

 contrivance, may likewise the more subtile parts of wine, 

 which is an entire body, be separated from the more gross 

 by this kind of distillation, performed as it were by gravity, 

 so as to have floating atop a liquor like spirit of wine, or 

 perhaps more subtile ? Again, the loadstone draws iron 

 in substance, but will loadstone plunged into a solution of 

 iron attract the iron and cover itself with it? So the mag 

 netic needle applies to the poles of the world; but does it 

 do this after the same course and order that the celestial 

 bodies move ? Suppose the needle held at the south point, 

 and then let go, would it now turn to the north by the west 

 or east? 1B Thus gold imbibes quicksilver contiguous to it; 

 but does the gold do this without increasing its own bulk, 

 so as to become a mass specifically heavier than gold? 

 Thus men help their memories by setting up pictures of 

 persons in certain places; but would they obtain the same 



15 This question is impossible to decide, as we are never certain at the 

 moment of the experiment that the needle has not been deflected from the south 

 point, and the slightest imperceptible degree, too fine for human instrument to 

 discover, would render the trial nugatory. Ed. 



