INTRODUCTION. 13 



any mechanical bond or connection extending from it to 

 them; when it was recognized, in brief, that nature held a 

 lifeless thing showing an attribute of life. 



This was more than a mere impression. It was an en- 

 igma demanding resolution, and thus endowed with inher- 

 ent and eternal vitality. 



At some other time, perhaps not until after the advent 

 of an Iron Age, a similar power to that of the amber was 

 seen in the attraction of the lodestone for iron. Because 

 of this similitude the ancients somewhat hazily imagined 

 both effects to be essentially one. Progress in discovery 

 concerning either was therefore progress in knowledge 

 concerning both. This is also true from our modern point 

 of view, for not only are the phenomena of magnetism and 

 of electricity directly correlated and interconvertible, but 

 the concept of magnetism perhaps most widely accepted at 

 the present time, holds it to be merely an electric state; 

 the condition of electricity in whirling or vortex motion. 



The attempt to account for magnetic attraction as the 

 working of a soul in the stone led to the first attack of 

 human reason upon superstition and the foundation of 

 philosophy. 



After the lapse of centuries, a new capacity of the lode- 

 stone became revealed in its polarity, or the appearance of 

 opposite effects at opposite ends ; then came the first util- 

 ization of the knowledge thus far gained, in the mariner's 

 compass, leading to the discovery of the' New World, and 

 the throwing wide of all the portals of the Old to trade 

 and civilization. 



The predominance of the magnet in human thought was 

 yielded to the amber, when the strange power of the latter 

 was found to exist also in other things. The keen-eyed 

 discoverers saw this new force annihilate time and space, 

 and flash into light ; pursued it even to its hiding-place in 

 the clouds ; beheld it grow from the feeble amber-soul into 

 the mighty thunderbolt ; watched it until the whole uni- 

 verse showed itself pervaded with it. 



