276 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



when lie comes to recording his experiments, to testing 

 the results by negative arguments and contradiction, to 

 rising from particulars to the general, and thus deducing 

 new conclusions, we shall find in practical application the 

 principles of inductive reasoning which his great contem- 

 porary and critic, Francis Bacon, a few years later, formu- 

 lated for all time and all men. The discussion of Gilbert's 

 relations to Bacon, however, must be deferred to another 

 chapter, in order that our present review of his theories 

 may progress in an orderly way. 



If the magnetic earth-rotation theory be, for the mo- 

 ment, laid aside, Gilbert's primary thesis is that the globe 

 consists of a certain solid homogeneous substance, firmly 

 coherent and endowed with a primordial actualizing Form. 

 The various substances which appear on the surface of the 

 globe through contact with the atmosphere, waters, and by 

 influence of the heavenly bodies, have become more or less 

 deprived of the prime qualities and true nature of this ter- 

 rene Matter. But the lodestone and all magnetic bodies 

 contain the potency of the earth's core and of its inmost 

 viscera, in virtue of which the earth itself remains in posi- 

 tion and is directed in its movements. Thus the earth is 

 in fact a huge magnet, or the lodestone is a fragment of 

 the magnetic earth possessing the primal Form of things 

 terrestrial. Between Matter and Form he drew substan- 

 tially the Aristotelian distinctions. 



The investigations made by Gilbert in support of this 

 theory, consisted first in determining what is a magnet, 

 second, the cause and character of magnetic attraction, or 

 as he preferred to call it, coition, and third, the nature of 

 its polarity or directive quality, or to use his own word, 

 "verticity." Having found certain phenomena of the 

 lodestone true of the earth, and conversely certain terres- 

 trial phenomena true in a miniature earth made of lode- 

 stone, he concludes the globe to be itself a magnet, and 

 thence proceeds to the researches wherein he not only 

 passed in review all preconceived notions of magnetism, 



