142 Life and Matter [chap.vih. 



into existence somehow, at date unknown. 

 It could also be said, and it can be said still, 

 that, given an initial magnet, any number 

 of others can be made, without loss to the 

 generating magnet. By influence or induc- 

 tion exerted by proximity on other pieces 

 of steel, the properties of one magnet can 

 be excited in any number of such pieces, 

 the amount of magnetism thus producible 

 being infinite ; that is, being strictly without 

 limit, and not dependent at all on the very 

 finite strength of the original magnet, which 

 indeed continues unabated. It is just as if 

 magnetism were not really manufactured 

 at all, but were a thing called out of some 

 infinite reservoir : as if something were 

 brought into active and prominent existence 

 from a previously dormant state. 



And that indeed is the fact. The process 

 of magnetisation, as conducted with a steel 

 magnet on other pieces of previously inert 

 steel, in no case really generates new lines of 

 magnetic force, though it appears to generate 

 them. We now know that the lines which 



