74 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



Klaproth states that abundant deposits of the resin exist 

 in the empire, but also records that it was imported, in 

 various manufactured forms, as presents to the emperor 

 from Rome and western countries, during the first and 

 second centuries B. C. De Lacouperie says that the 

 knowledge of amber came to the Chinese from the west 

 Kabulistan and points out the similarity between the 

 Chinese and Persian names for it. The earliest reference 

 to its attractive property is also apparently the first men- 

 tion of the like property of the magnet, and appears in a 

 44 Eulogy of the magnet," written by Kouo pho in 324 

 A. D., in the following words: 



44 The magnet draws the iron, and the amber attracts 

 mustard seeds. There is a breath which penetrates 

 secretly and with velocity, and which communicates itself 

 imperceptibly to that which corresponds to it in the other 

 object. It is an inexplicable thing." 1 



But this is nothing more than a restatement of the Euro- 

 pean notion of the flow, or virtue, or current, or soul, 

 emanating from the stone or the amber, with which the- 

 ory the western civilized world was then familiar, and 

 which, it is safe to say, involves a power of abstract con- 

 ception which the Chinese mind has never possessed. In 

 fact, the originator of such an interpretation of a physical 

 happening, of necessity finds in it an explanation satis- 

 factory at least to his own mind; and it does not seem 

 logically possible, as a part of one and the same mental 

 process, that he could regard the effect as "inexplicable." 



The attraction of the lodestone is referred to in a later 

 Chinese work on natural history, in which the magnet is 

 said to draw iron u like a tender mother who causes her 

 children to come to her, and it is for this reason that it has 

 received its name." 2 



It is necessary to distinguish clearly between the land 



Klaproth, cit. sup., p. 125. 



2 Pen-thsao-chy-i of Tchin thsang khi, published 727 A. D., noted by 

 Klaproth, cit. sup. 



