292 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



energy is concentrated at the poles. All his deductions, 

 however, lead to the conviction, on his part, that the mag- 

 net emits no true effluvium nothing corporeal and that 

 its whole action, whether attractive or directive, depends 

 upon its capacity to impart its Form to the iron. As soon 

 as the metal conies within the lodesto lie's sphere of influ- 

 ence, even if at some distance from the stone, the Form 

 the soul of the iron is renewed: that which before was 

 dormant and inactive becomes lively and active, and the 

 Form, being now arranged and ordered, again joins forces 

 with the lodestone, and the two bodies enter into alliance, 

 "whether joined by bodily contact or standing within 

 their sphere of influence." 



The most curious conclusions to which Gilbert's ideas 

 of the magnetic field of force led him, are those which are 

 recounted in his posthumous volume. 1 Here he asserts 

 that the earth's orb of magnetic virtue extends to the 

 moon, and ascribes the moon's irregularities to the effects 

 which it produces ; that the moon is magnetically bound 

 to the earth because its face is always turned earthwards, 

 and that there is a magnetic coition between our globe and 

 its satellite, the seas being drawn toward the moon and the 

 moon reciprocally to the earth. For the effused lunar 

 forces he says reach to the earth and act on fluids, while 

 the magnetic virtues of the earth surround the moon, both 

 bodies agreeing and consenting in motion, although the 

 earth, by reason of the greater mass, predominates. 



Perhaps more interesting than all else is his assertion 

 of a relation which the greatest modern minds have sus- 

 pected, have sought to prove, but so far with only negative 

 results. All that is of the earth and is homogeneous with 

 it, says Gilbert, belongs to it so of the sun, and the moon, 

 and other bodies. Such belongings adhere to and do 

 not spontaneously leave their globes ; and if they are re- 

 moved by external force they seek to return, because each 



*De Novo Mundo, Amsterdam, 1651. 



