EARLY IDEAS ON MAGNETIC INTERCOMMUNICATION. 385 



But it was doomed to be ridiculed. Cabseus 1 although 

 giving to it an air of reality by actually depicting tlie disk 

 with the alphabet around it, denounces it as an absurd 

 error and an instance of the outrageous things which here- 

 tics are willing to credit, although they reject the miracles 

 of the faith. Galileo dealt with it in a way which has 

 served ever since as an example to be followed by the 

 skeptical capitalist besieged by the sanguine inventor. 



"You remind me," he makes Sagredo say in one of the 

 famous dialogues, 2 u of a man who wanted to sell me a 

 secret of communication through the sympathy of mag- 

 netized needles, so that it would be possible to converse 

 over a distance of three thousand miles. I told him that 

 I would willingly purchase it, provided he would show me 

 an experiment, and that it would suffice if I remained in 

 one room while he went in another. He replied that the 

 distance was too short to exhibit the operation of the in- 

 vention properly; so I dismissed him, saying that it was 

 not convenient for me to travel just then to Cairo or Mos- 

 cow to test the matter, but that if he would go there him- 

 self I would remain in Venice and do the rest." 



Yet, despite all the contradictions and ridicule, the con- 

 ception that people far separated might find a way of com- 

 municating with one another, perhaps, through the mag- 

 net, or through some means depending upon the magnet 

 or magnetic relations, persisted. There was Cardan's old 

 notion of the magnetism of flesh, which became expanded 

 by the Rosicrucians into the conception that if pieces of 

 muscle cut from the arms of two persons were mutually 

 transplanted, there would be such a community of feeling 

 between the parties that if the alphabet were tattooed on 

 the foreign flesh in the arm of each it would be simply 

 necessary for one individual to prick with a needle the 

 appropriate letter on his own arm to cause a similar sensa- 



1 Cabseus: Philosophia Magnetica. Ferrara, 1629, pp. 3O~-6. 



2 Galileo: Dialogo Intorno ai Due Massimi System! del Mondo, etc., 



25 



