630 KOVUM ORGANUM. [BOOK II. 



ro\\- sphere, hut if there be any magnetic power emanating from 

 the earth a little below its surface, and affecting the needle in 

 its polarity, it must act at a great distance. 



Again, if there be any magnetic force which acts by sympathy 

 between the globe of the earth and heavy bodies, or between 

 that of the moon and the waters of the sea (as seems most pro- 

 bable from the particular floods and ebbs which occur twice in 

 the month), or between the starry sphere and the planets, by 

 which they are summoned and raised to their apogees, these 

 must all operate at very great distances. 6 Again, some cor- 

 ilagrations and the kindling of flames take place at very con 

 siderable distances with particular substances, as they report cf 

 the naphtha of Babylon. Heat, too, insinuates itself at wid3 

 distances, as docs also cold, so that the masses of ice which ar? 

 broken off and float upon the Northern Ocean, and are born ; 

 through the Atlantic to the coast of Canada, become perceptible 

 by the inhabitants, and strike them with cold from a distance. 

 Perfumes also (though here there appears to be always somo 

 corporeal emission) act at remarkable distances, as is experienced 

 by persons sailing by the coast of Florida, or parts of Spain, 

 where there are whole woods of lemons, oranges, and other 

 odoriferous plants, or rosemary and marjoram bushes, and the 

 like. Lastly, the rays of light and the impressions of sound ac , 

 at extensive distances. 



e Observe the approximation to Newton s theory. The same notior 

 repeated still more clearly in the ninth motion. Newton believec 

 that the planets might so conspire as to derange the earth s annua 

 revolution, and to elongate the line of the apsides and ellipsis that 

 the earth describes in its annual revolution round the sun. In 

 the supposition that all the planets meet on the same straight line, 

 Venus and Mercury on one side of the sun, and the earth, moon, 

 Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn on the side diametrically opposite ; then 

 Saturn would attract Jupiter, Jupiter Mars, Mars the moon, which 

 must in its turn attract the earth in proportion to the force with 

 which it was drawn out of its orbit. The result of this combined 

 action on our planet would elongate its ecliptic orbit, and so far draw it 

 from the source of heat, as to produce an intensity of cold destructive 

 to animal life. But this movement would immediately cease with the 

 planetary concurrence which produced it, and the earth, like a com- 



f ressed spring, bound almost as near to the sun as she had been drawn 

 rom it, the reaction of the heat on its surface being about as intense 

 as the cold caused by the first removal was severe. The earth, until 

 it gained its regular track, would thus alternately vibrate between each 

 side of its orbit, with successive changes in its atmosphere, proportional 

 to the square of the variation of its distance from the sun. In no place 

 is Bacon s genius more conspicuous than in these repeated guesses at 

 truth. He would have been a strong Copernican, had not Gilbert 

 defended the system. Sd 



