GILBERT'S LOGIC. 285 



although results which have taken place in the past can 

 be definitely stated and recorded, those still in the future 

 defy all power of prediction. 1 One example may be cited 

 which will serve to show how Gilbert applied this hypo- 

 thesis, while incidentally it may indicate how, being as I 

 have said on the middle ground between the old and new 

 philosophies, he wandered, even in the face of the simplest 

 experimental proof, from the path of logical inductive 

 reasoning. 



He repeats, in exactly the same way, the experiment of 

 Peregrinus, showing the mutual repulsion of like poles of 

 two parts of a divided lodestone floating in water. "By 

 such a position of the parts," he says, "nature is crossed 

 and the form of the stone is perverted. But nature ob- 

 serves strictly the laws which it imposes on bodies, hence 

 the flight of one part from the undue position of the other, 

 and hence the discord unless everything is arranged ex- 

 actly in accordance with nature." 



This obviously is the Aristotelian idea of necessity 

 the constant sequence or conjunction the fixed means 

 through which the fixed ends of nature only can be ob- 

 tained. To place like poles in juxtaposition is to place 

 them wrongly, and then Gilbert avers nature is perverted, 

 and the Form of the stone disturbed, and hence there is 

 discord : nor can there be any compromise but only war 

 until the stones acquiesce as nature decrees. He does not 

 assert that under given circumstances, shown by a multi- 

 tude of experiments, like magnetic poles mutually repel, 

 and that thence a general law may be inferred from which 

 their similar behavior under similar circumstances may 

 be predicted; but that, when everything is arranged ex- 

 actly according to nature that is, unlike poles juxtaposed 

 then these parts attract one another. It has all been 

 "settled by nature." 



Gilbert speculated, as I have said, with the logic of 

 Aristotle, but he made experiments and interpreted the 



'De Interpretatioue: Grote, cit. sup., vol. i., 166, book i, chap. vi. 



