324 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



deuce of genius than such as may attend an imaginable 

 premonition of the relatively recent discovery of the flow 

 of solids. Bacon's own opinion of it, as an argument, may 

 perhaps be gathered from the following from the Novum 

 Organum : "But if the motion of the earth from west to 

 east be allowed, the same question (why bodies appear to 

 desire peculiar situations) may be put; for it must also re- 

 volve around certain poles, and why should they be placed 

 where they are rather than elsewhere? The polarity and 

 variation of the needle come under our present head." 1 



Bacon's inefficiency in practical experimentation is so 

 well known, that it need not be dwelt upon here. His 

 little treatise of Inquiry on the Magnet is mainly composed 

 of efforts to answer the questions which he suggests in the 

 De Augmentis as subjects for experiment. They involve 

 no special ingenuity, nor reveal any important discoveries. 

 The principal conclusions are that the lodestone attracts 

 steel-filings or its own dust as well as it does iron filings; 

 a re verification of Gilbert's discovery of the effect of the 

 iron pole-piece; that rubbing a magnet ( u as we do amber") 

 or heating it, does not increase its powers, and that the 

 magnet attracts iron at equal distances through water, 

 wine, air and oil. Perhaps the most interesting proceed- 

 ing of all is the taking of a magnet to the top of St. Paul's 

 Cathedral in London to see whether its power became di- 

 minished in consequence of its distance from the ground: 

 another instance of the possibility of interconnection of 

 gravity and magnetism making itself felt. 



Despite Gilbert's electrical discoveries having been 

 made in the course of a digression, it is clear that Bacon 

 had by no means failed to perceive their novelty and im- 

 portance. Among the u Physiological Remains" gathered 

 by Tenison in 1679 the residue of the collection of Nat- 

 ural History notes and memoranda which Rawley had pre- 

 viously winnowed there is a so-called catalogue of bodies 

 attractive and non-attractive, written partly in English 

 'Nov. Org., B. ii, 48. 



