WILLIAM THE CLERK. 151 



"Who would of his course be sure, 

 When the clouds the sky obscure, 

 He an iron needle must 

 In the cork wood firmly thrust. 

 Lest the iron virtue lack 

 Rub it with the lodestone black, 

 In a cup with flowing brim, 

 Let the cork on water swim. 

 When at length the tremor ends, 

 Note the way the needle tends; 

 Though its place no eye can see 

 There the polar star will be." 



This is apparently the first attempt to account for the 

 north and south pointing of the needle, and represents 

 probably the generally-accepted notion of the time; for we 

 can hardly imagine the poet as the originator of it. The 

 reasoning seems to have been that the needle points to the 

 star because it has been rubbed by the stone. Therefore 

 it receives a virtue from the stone. Whence does the 

 stone get its virtue? Clearly from the Pole star, else why 

 should the needle point to that star in preference to any 

 other object in the universe say the moon. 



This is a long stride ahead in scientific reasoning, in that 

 it seeks to explain a natural phenomenon by natural 

 causes, and not by the intervention of supernatural ma- 

 chinery, or by an appeal to faith, or by the exercise of 

 dialectic irigenuity. Whether the hypothesis be right or 

 wrong is therefore of no consequence; it was an effort at 

 straight rectilinear thought, made at a time when minds 

 ran around in small circles; and as such it denoted pro- 

 gress. It was, moreover, encouraging to the intellects 

 who had begun to feel the influence of the new centrifugal 

 force, of which they could not understand the meaning, 

 pulling them out of their little orbits. 



While William the Clerk was bewailing the shortcomings 

 of the world which he had left, the world in turn even the 

 Church itself was scourging the iniquities of the clergy. 1 



a The Lateran Council of 1215. See Lea: History of the Inquisition', 

 cit. infra. 



