296 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



primordial Matter? But what impairment is it which 

 excludes one essential quality (verticity) and not the other 

 (attraction)? Why are not both qualities equally impaired, 

 or both absent, as in inferior magnets or in most sub- 

 stances? Why does amber or jet (then supposed to be 

 black amber) alone, out of all the vast number of terrene 

 bodies, exhibit this strange attraction ? How is the draw- 

 ing of all light bodies by amber to be reconciled with the 

 selective property of the magnet, which enables it to draw 

 only iron and steel? How is it that the magnet, being 

 wholly or mainly primordial terrene Matter, can effuse and 

 excite a new Form in iron alone ; when amber, which, if 

 primordial terrene Matter at all, lacks a chief capacity 

 thereof, is able, on the same reasoning, to excite a new 

 Form in any substance which is light and minute in size? 

 If amber does not excite such a Form in the thing attracted, 

 where is there coition in the attractive action? if it does, 

 why is there not some residual attractive power left in the 

 straw or chaff, such as the lodestone leaves in the iron? 

 If there be two effused Forms respectively different, one 

 proceeding from the amber and the other from the magnet, 

 which is the true Form effused by primordial terrene Mat- 

 ter? Which the true effused Form of the earth? How is 

 it that this attractive capacity is always present and in- 

 herent in the lodestone, and not so in the amber unless the 

 resin be excited? If magnetic attraction is a primordial 

 terrene characteristic, implanted by creative act, why is 

 human aid necessary to develop it in a certain substance? 

 What is the effused Form of a heavenly body if it under- 

 goes attrition in space? that of amber, or that of lodestone, 

 or a combination of both? 



It is needless to multiply such questions, for, the instant 

 the doubt fell into the placid pool of theory, it roughened 

 the surface in circle after circle, ever widening until the 

 smooth quiescence was gone. The issue no longer was 

 one limited by the mere observation that a bit of amber 

 attracts a particle of chaff only when rubbed, and a bit of 



