158 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



that possessed by the great National Library of France, 1 

 there appeared an account of the magnet which did much 

 to retard the progress of the science. 



It was unearthed by both Albertus Magnus 2 and Vincent 

 de Beauvais, 3 who refer to it in their works, so that there 

 is still the further hypothesis that it was originally in- 

 vented by one of them, and hence not chargeable even to 

 the Arabs. It sets forth that the point of the magnet 

 which attracts iron is to the north, and the point which 

 repels it is to the south; and it asserts that if the iron be 

 held to the point which respects the north the iron will 

 turn to the north; which is untrue, for the pole of the 

 magnet which is directed to the north is the south pole, 

 and it will induce a north pole in the iron, and that north 

 pole will turn to the south, and not to the north. But the 

 substance of what is said, whether right or wrong, is of 

 much less moment than the historical fact that here prob- 

 ably began that complex tangle of relations between the 

 poles of the lodestone, the poles of the needle magnetized 

 from it by induction, the poles of the heavens, and, later, 

 the poles of the earth, 4 in which the philosophers of the 

 1 6th century were even more hopelessly enmeshed than 

 those of the I3th, and which is not clearly unraveled yet 

 in our own terminology; for we still persist in calling that 



1 MS. Arab., No. 402, St Germ., quoted by Kl-aproth, cit. sup., 52. 



2 De Mineralibus, lib. ii., tract iii., c. v.: Opera. Leyden, 1651. 



3 Vincent! Bellovacensis: Speculi Naturales, etc., torn, ii., lib. ix., c. 19. 

 *The modern confusion arises from referring to the magnet needle as 



having a north and south polarity. The end which points to the north 

 magnetic pole of the earth is, of course, south in polarity, although it is 

 often marked N, and spoken of as the north pole of the needle. French 

 writers frequently omit the inversion, and designate by north end of the 

 needle that which in fact points southerly. Maxwell proposed the 

 terms "positive" or "austral" magnetism to indicate that of the north 

 end of the magnet, and ''negative" or "boreal" magnetism that of the 

 south end. So also it has been suggested to speak of the poles alter- 

 nately as " red " and " blue." It is gradually becoming common to call 

 the extremity of the needle which turns to the north the "north seek- 

 ing" or "marked" end. 



