THE BEGINNING OF MODERN ELECTRICITY. 299 



erate, orderly effort to study electricity as a separate and . 

 distinct entity in the economy of nature. The second 

 chapter of the second book of De Magnete opens with a 

 characteristic onslaught upon the whole tribe of commen- 

 tators, theologians and metaphysicians ; or, perhaps more 

 correctly, upon that variety of them who spent their lives 

 in glossing one another's errors, or in spinning cobweb 

 learning from their own brains and entangling their wits 

 in self-contrived labyrinths. For especially keen reproach, 

 however, are singled out the modern authors who had 

 written about amber and jet because they had contented 

 themselves with stating the attractive qualities in an occult 

 way and never presented any experimental proof of them. 

 This is sweeping enough to include Fracastorio, but 

 whether it properly applies to Cardan, who, however occult 

 he might have been in describing other things, was un- 

 deniably explicit and straightforward in his description of 

 the amber (and who, moreover, in his De Subtilitate, makes 

 a strong plea for more experimental proof than was cus- 

 tomary among his congeners), may be fairly questioned. 

 But, as Gilbert had evidently determined not to recognize 

 Cardan in the matter of the diamond discovery, the casting 

 of him into outer darkness, in respect to more debatable 

 achievements, was not difficult. Hence, he makes no 

 reservations'in favor of the Italian or of any one else. All 

 are embraced in one inclusive "they." 



The famous announcement which begins the modern 

 science is as follows: 



"For not only amber and jet, as they think," he says, 

 "attract corpuscles, but so also do (and now he sets first 

 foot upon the great new field which still stretches so far 

 before us) the diamond, the sapphire, the carbuncle, the 

 iris stone, the opal, the amethyst, the vincentina, the 

 English gem or Bristol stone, the beryl, rock crystal, 

 glass, false gems made of crystal or paste glass, fluor spars, 

 antimony, glass, belemnites, sulphur, antimony glass, 

 mastic, lac sealing wax, hard resin, orpiment, rock salt, 

 mica and rock alum." 



