BACON AND GILBERT. 323 



But where an acceptance of any general theory advanced 

 by Gilbert might lead, even indirectly, to a tolerance of the 

 Copernican doctrine, which Bacon regarded as extravagant 

 and claimed to be able to demonstrate as most false, 1 he is 

 willing to go to great, if not illogical lengths, in his de- 

 nials. He limits his sweeping endorsement of Gilbert's 

 verticity doctrine by confining the assertion "to the ex- 

 terior concretions about the surface of the earth and not 

 extending it to the interior;" and then dissents from 

 Gilbert's discovery that the earth is a magnet, which he 

 ridicules as "hastily taken up from a very light fancy." 2 

 But observe the over-strained argument with which he 

 supports this contrary opinion: "It is impossible that 

 things in the interior of the earth can be like any sub- 

 stance exposed to the eye of man ; for with us all things 

 are relaxed, wrought upon and softened by the sun and 

 heavenly bodies, so that they cannot correspond to things 

 situated in a place where such a power does not penetrate." 

 As Gilbert expressly says that lodestones vary in all 

 degrees in purity, and hence in efficiency, through the 

 primordial matter becoming more or less combined with 

 other substances, it is evident that Bacon's answer to Gil- 

 bert is far from pertinent. Even more labored is his 

 endeavor to avoid the conclusion of the earth's rotation, 

 which he sees is liable to follow the admission of the ver- 

 ticity doctrine. "The upper incrustations or concretions 

 of the earth," and not the whole sphere, he explains, 

 "appear to correspond to the rotations of the heaven, air 

 and water, as far as consistent and determinate bodies can 

 correspond to liquids and fluids ; that is, not that they 

 revolve upon poles, but that they direct and turn them- 

 selves upon poles ... so that the direction and verticity 

 of the poles in rigid bodies is the same thing as revolving 

 upon the poles in fluid," which may be left without fur- 

 ther comment than that the most determined advocate 

 of the Chancellor will probably find in it no higher evi- 



J De Aug., B. iii, c. iv. 2 De Fluxu et Refluxu Maris. 



