LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 SANTA CRUZ 
 
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THE INTELLECTUAL RISE 
 IN ELECTRICITY 
 
 A HISTORY 
 
 BY 
 PARK BENJAMIN, PH.D., LL. B. 
 
 MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS, AMERICAN SOCIETY 
 
 OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS. ASSOCIATE MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY OF 
 
 NAVAL ARCHITECTS AND MARINE ENGINEERS, ETC. 
 
 " Not the fact, but sc much of man as is in the fact." 
 
 EMERSON. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 
 1895 
 
PKINTKD is AMKKICA. 
 CCPYBIGHT, 1895, BV PAKK BBNJAMIN. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
Qc 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IN this work I attempt to show how there came into the 
 world the knowledge of the natural force, which we call 
 electricity ; a force which, within the memory of many 
 now living, has found its most important applications to 
 the needs of mankind, and which exhibits a promise and 
 potency of future benefit, the full extent of which no one 
 can safely venture to predict. 
 
 The research has taken many years, has necessitated the 
 gathering of a large collection of ancient, and now ex- 
 ceedingly scarce, writings, not commonly found even in 
 great libraries, and the sifting of an immense mass of 
 recorded facts and theories, often arising in fields far re- 
 moved from those in which it might naturally be supposed 
 the requisite data would be discovered. The Greek and 
 Roman classics, the results of modern investigation into 
 the old civilizations of Phoenicia, Egypt and even of 
 people of prehistoric epochs, the Norse histories, the an- 
 cient writings of the Chinese and Arabs, the treatises of 
 the Fathers of the Church, the works of mediaeval monks, 
 magicians, cosmographers and navigators, the early poetry 
 of modern France and Italy ; these, mentioned at random, 
 are some of the sources which have been drawn upon, 
 together with the records of the experiments and discoveries 
 of the natural philosophers of all ages. I have made it a 
 rule to note the original founts wherever it seemed to me 
 that such references would be of benefit to others desiring 
 to verify facts or to go over the same ground, and as pro- 
 viding a useful bibliography ; while, at the same time, I 
 have endeavored to avoid a multiplicity of annotations 
 
 (3) 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 relative to immaterial points, which impose only needless 
 labor and uncertainty upon the student. 
 
 Above all things, I have sought to write a straight, 
 plain, simple, and, I hope, fairly logical and interesting 
 story. I have rigidly excluded technicalities and scien- 
 tific demonstrations, which, however interesting to the 
 professional electrician, are as Greek to the general reader ; 
 for I address this no more to the wise men of the \vires 
 and the dynamos and the batteries, than to the great pub- 
 lic whom we all serve, and for whose good we all labor. 
 Popular science, so called, is too often dilute science. 
 Scientific discussions of a didactic or abstract nature, or 
 involving a Babylonish terminology, and requiring minds 
 trained to understand them, cannot be rendered any easier 
 to the mental digestion of intellects engrossed in other 
 departments of the world's work, and, hence, not so edu- 
 cated, by mechanically mixing them with the water of an 
 engaging rhetoric. The facts and the arguments based on 
 them must be digested and brought into true solution, so 
 that the food offered will be easily assimilable ; and that is 
 what I have tried here to do. 
 
 Perhaps this work may usefully tend to show that elec- 
 tricity, at the present time, is not u in its infancy." It 
 has undoubtedly a vast amount of work yet to do, and I 
 am patriotic enough to believe at the hands of our Amer- 
 ican inventors, first of all will yet accomplish things un- 
 dreamt of in our philosophy ; but it will do this not with 
 the feeble uncertainty of the nursling ) but with the vigor 
 and might of maturity. Moreover, although in ancient 
 days electricity, in common with all other natural mani- 
 festations, was regarded as a mystery, none the less the 
 knowledge of it, as these pages seek to prove, forced its 
 way through the clouds of ignorance and superstition with 
 the unerring directness of a projectile driven through the 
 mist from a modern gun. Electricity is not now occult, it 
 is not mystic, it is not magic, its workings are no more 
 wonderful than are the rise and fall of the tides ; in fact, it 
 
PREFACE. 5 
 
 may be safely said, that we know more about its laws and 
 their consequences than we do about those which deter- 
 mine the fall of a stone to the ground. 
 
 I end this essay which has been more of pleasure than 
 of toil fully conscious of the errors and inconsistencies 
 which must be in it. At every turn there have been tan- 
 gled skeins to unravel, whereof the true clews have, no 
 doubt, often been missed ; diverging roads, where one 
 selects a path never without misgivings. But with all 
 due submission, I venture to believe that a faithful effort, 
 even if misdirected, is better than none at all, although in 
 that consciousness may well lie the only justification for 
 this book. 
 
 PARK BENJAMIN. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction. . . n 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ancient sources of amber 15 
 
 Amber legends 16 
 
 The Syrian women and their amber spindles 17 
 
 The lodestone 19 
 
 Lodestone legends. 22 
 
 Greek knowledge of the lodestone and the Samothraciau rings. . . 23 
 
 The Magnetes 26 
 
 Egyptian knowledge of the lodestone 28 
 
 Magnetic knowledge of the Hebrews 29 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The opening of the Egyptian ports 30 
 
 Greek Nature-worship 31 
 
 Thales of Miletus and the beginning of Greek philosophy 32 
 
 The Magnet-soul 33 
 
 Diogenes Laertius on Thales 34 
 
 Aristotle and the foreshadowing of the inductive method 38 
 
 Theophrastus, and the first physical description of the amber effect . 39 
 
 The mythical Lyncurium 41 
 
 The University of Alexandria 44 
 
 Legends of magnetic suspension Mahomet's coffin 45 
 
 Lucretius' De Natura Rerum and its description of magnetic effects . 47 
 
 Ancient medical uses of amber . , . . 52 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The polarity of the magnet ....,,.,. 53 
 
 Unknown to ancient Greeks 54 
 
 Or to ancient Phoenician navigators 55 
 
 The Betulse 56 
 
 No knowledge of polarity among ancient Egyptians 57 
 
 Or among the Etruscans 59 
 
 Polarity possibly known to the prehistoric Nomad races 61 
 
 Relations of Akkadians and Chinese 63 
 
 Ancient China and Chinese chronology 64 
 
 The Chinese south-pointing carts 67 
 
 (vi) 
 
CONTENTS. Vii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Ancient Chinese knowledge of amber and of the geomancer's Com- 
 pass 75 
 
 The Chinese not natural navigators . . 77 
 
 Nor reliable astronomers . . 79 
 
 Nor competent inventors 80 
 
 The Mariner's Compass probably not of Chinese origin 85 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Dark Ages and the rise of Scholasticism 86 
 
 First distinction between magnetic and electric effects drawn by St. 
 
 Augustine 87 
 
 Patristic references to the lodestone and amber 90 
 
 Old medical uses of the lodestone 93 
 
 Claudian's Idyl 93 
 
 The Fables of the Magnetic Rocks 96 
 
 Ancient Arab navigation 102 
 
 The Compass not used in early voyages on the Indian Ocean .... 103 
 
 Nor by the Spanish Saracens 108 
 
 Nor on Spanish ships until 1403 in 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Northmen and their early voyages 112 
 
 Physical science among the Anglo-Saxons 115 
 
 The Norman invasion and the poem of William Appulus of Amalfi . 116 
 
 Scholastic philosophy 118 
 
 Alexander Neckani 120 
 
 His treatise de Natura Rerum 122 
 
 The doctrine of similitudes 124 
 
 And of virtues 125 
 
 Applied to the lodestone 127 
 
 The first European description of the Mariner's Compass 129 
 
 And the remarkable magnetic discoveries preceding 131 
 
 The Compass points 133 
 
 Gottland, the great nautical rendezvous 134 
 
 Wisbuy and its laws 135 
 
 The Finns and Lapps 137 
 
 Their sorcery and relationship to Chinese 139 
 
 And possible ancient knowledge of Compass 141 
 
 The garlic myth 142 
 
 The punishment for tampering with the Compass 144 
 
 The Compass possibly of Finn origin and emanating from Wisbuy . 145 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Thirteenth century thought 148 
 
 William the Clerk on the Compass 149 
 
 The Bible of Guyot de Provins 152 
 
VI 11 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 And other mediaeval poems referring to magnetic polarity 154 
 
 The spurious treatise of Aristotle . . 157 
 
 Mediaeval lodestone myths and fables 159 
 
 Roger Bacon and his discoveries 160 
 
 Ancient conceptions of the universe 163 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Peter Peregrinus 165 
 
 His perpetual motion !6y 
 
 His marvelous magnetic discoveries 169 
 
 His development of the Mariner's Compass 184 
 
 Flavio Gioja and his Compass card 187 
 
 Plagiarists of Peregrinus 191 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The revival of literature in Europe 193 
 
 Henry the Navigator and Portuguese voyages 194 
 
 Christopher Columbus and his magnetic discoveries 196 
 
 Attempts to account for Compass variation by the Magnetic Rocks . 202 
 
 The voyages of Vasco da Gama and Magellan 205 
 
 Peregrinus' disclosure of the magnetic field of force 207 
 
 Hartmann partly recognizes Dip of the Compass needle 209 
 
 Norman's discovery and explanation of Dip 211 
 
 Magnetic deceptions of the period 219 
 
 Paracelsus and his magnetic nostrums 220 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Fra Paolo (Pietro Sarpi) 224 
 
 His treatises on the magnet . 225 
 
 Cesare observes magnetism by earth's induction 227 
 
 The Jesuits dispute Sarpi's discoveries 228 
 
 John Baptista Porta 230 
 
 His Society 231 
 
 His relations to Sarpi 232 
 
 His treatise on natural magic and the magnetic discoveries therein 
 
 recorded 234 
 
 And especially the magnetic field of force . 235 
 
 And telegraphic communication by magnets 239 
 
 Jerome Fracastorio 241 
 
 Jerome Cardan . 243 
 
 And his differentiation of magnetic and amber effects 249 
 
 The physicians as physicists 255 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 William Gilbert 258 
 
 The object of his work 268 
 
CONTENTS. IX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 His errors , 274 
 
 His mode of thought 275 
 
 His Terrella and his magnetic theories 277 
 
 His magnetic discoveries 288 
 
 The inception of his study of electricity 294 
 
 The discovery of the Electrics 299 
 
 Gilbert's electrical experiments 303 
 
 His electrical theory 307 
 
 His electrical discoveries recapitulated 313 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Gilbert's treatises 315 
 
 Francis Bacon and his suppression of Gilbert's later work 318 
 
 Bacon's criticisms on Gilbert 321 
 
 Bacon's studies in magnetism and electricity 324 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Physical science in England in time of James I 332 
 
 The great Universities , ... 333 
 
 William Barlowe and Mark Ridley, and the controversy between 
 
 them 336 
 
 Physical Science in Italy 341 
 
 Galileo and his indebtedness to Gilbert 344 
 
 Galileo's magnetic researches 347 
 
 The electric discoveries of Nicolaus Cabaeus 349 
 
 The magnetic and electric theories of Rene" Descartes 356 
 
 The amber and the magnet in English literature 367 
 
 The Rosicrucians and Van Helmont 372 
 
 Sir Kenelm Digby, and the rise of physical science in England . . . 377 
 
 Sir Thomas Browne, destroyer of errors . . . , 380 
 
 Some early notions of telegraphy 382 
 
 Otto von Guericke 389 
 
 His theory of virtues 392 
 
 His extraordinary electrical discoveries made with the sulphur 
 
 globe 396 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The founding of the English Royal Society 404 
 
 Science at the Court of Charles II 406 
 
 Robert Boyle 414 
 
 His philosophy 416 
 
 His electrical discoveries 420 
 
 Physical observations in America, and Madam Sewall's sparkling 
 
 skirt 425 
 
 Robert Hooke 426 
 
 Isaac Newton and the reduction of electricity under the reign of law. 435 
 
 Halley's magnetic theories 447 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 The founding of the French Royal Academy of Sciences 450 
 
 Picard's observation of the electric light 453 
 
 Francis Hauksbee and his experiments on light and electricity. . . 457 
 
 Foreshadowings of the identity of electricity and lightning .... 469 
 
 Stephen Gray, charter-house pensioner 470 
 
 His remarkable discoveries in electrical conduction and insulation . 474 
 
 Charles Dufay 478 
 
 His recognition of resinous and vitreous electricities 484 
 
 Dr. Joseph Desaguiliers 489 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Electrical Progress in Germany 490 
 
 George Matthias Bose, a "modern wizard" . 493 
 
 Kriiger and his theories 501 
 
 The medical uses of electricity 502 
 
 Supposed combustion of the human body by electricity 504 
 
 The discoveries of Gordon and Winkler 506 
 
 Dean Von Kleist and the discovery of the Leyden jar . . . . - . . 512 
 
 Abbe Nollet and his experiments 516 
 
 The first electrical circuit and the experiments of Lemonnier and 
 
 Watson , 531 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Benjamin Franklin 537 
 
 Discovers discharging effect of points 541 
 
 His experiments on the Ley den jar . . 543 
 
 William Watson and his electrical circuit across the Thames .... 549 
 
 His electrical theory and that of Franklin 552 
 
 Ancient notions concerning lightning 561 
 
 Freke and Winkler's suggestions of the identity of lightning and 
 
 electricity 571 
 
 Abbe" Nollet on same subject 573 
 
 Franklin's theories of atmospheric electricity 575 
 
 The announcement of the Lightning Rod 582 
 
 Kinnersley's lectures on electricity 585 
 
 The French experiments on aerial rods 587 
 
 Franklin's kite experiment, and the proof of the identity of elec- 
 tricity and lightning . 589 
 
 Conclusion 592 
 
 Index 597 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chinese south-pointing cart 73 
 
 Norse punishment for tampering with the Compass 145 
 
 Peregrin us' floating Compass 180 
 
 Peregrinus' pivoted Compass 181 
 
 Peregrinus' Compass, plan view 182 
 
 Norman's Dipping needle 217 
 
 John Baptista Porta 231 
 
 Jerome Cardan . . 243 
 
 Gilbert's Terrella 277 
 
 Gilbert's armed lodestones 288 
 
 Magnetizing hot iron by hammering 290 
 
 Gilbert's Orb of Virtue 291 
 
 Gilbert's Electroscope , 303 
 
 Galileo Galilei 346 
 
 Cabaeus' picture of magnetic Spectrum 353 
 
 Rene Descartes 358 
 
 Descartes' magnetic field 363 
 
 Guericke's electrical machine 398 
 
 Dalance's title page 448 
 
 Hauksbee's mercurial fountain 459 
 
 Hauksbee's electric machine 461 
 
 Hauksbee's electric glow 464 
 
 Nollet's experiment on electrified boy 518 
 
 The Leyden experiment 520 
 
 Nollet's experiments on electric light 528 
 
 Nollet's experiments on electrifying animals 529 
 
 Franklin's illustration of his experiments 561 
 
 (xi) 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE intellectual rise in electricity is worthy of histori- 
 cal investigation, not merely because of the material 
 results, actual and potential, which have come from it, 
 but because it shows clearly anew the marvellous power 
 of the human mind as an instrument of discovery, capable 
 of correcting its- own errors. Beginning- with a single 
 phenomenon, afterwards including effects all, for long 
 periods, seemingly fortuitous and uncorrelated, this rise 
 has involved questions of an interest second only to that 
 which mankind has yielded to the great issues of life and 
 eternity; questions which challenged the human under- 
 standing and compelled it to measure itself against them. 
 From one fact it came to include many facts, from one 
 conception grew many conceptions, coincidently with the 
 increase in human learning, the broadening of human 
 thought, and the development of human intelligence. 
 
 The initial idea the germ found its lodgment in 
 some brain existing at an epoch far beyond the limits of 
 history. The discovery of amber in the ancient lake 
 dwellings of Europe suggests the possible perception of it 
 by pre-historic man. The accidental rubbing against the 
 skins with which he clothed himself may have caused an 
 attraction by the resin, thus electrified, of the light fur in 
 sufficiently marked degree to arrest his attention. Be- 
 tween such a mere observation of the fact, however, and 
 the making of any deduction from it, vast periods may 
 have elapsed; but there came a time at last, when the 
 amber was looked upon as a strange inanimate substance 
 which could influence or even draw to itself other things; 
 and this by its own apparent capacity, and not through 
 
 (12) 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 any mechanical bond or connection extending from it to 
 them; when it was recognized, in brief, that nature held a 
 lifeless thing showing an attribute of life. 
 
 This was more than a mere impression. It was an en- 
 igma demanding resolution, and thus endowed with inher- 
 ent and eternal vitality. 
 
 At some other time, perhaps not until after the advent 
 of an Iron Age, a similar power to that of the amber was 
 seen in the attraction of the lodestone for iron. Because 
 of this similitude the ancients somewhat hazily imagined 
 both effects to be essentially one. Progress in discovery 
 concerning either was therefore progress in knowledge 
 concerning both. This is also true from our modern point 
 of view, for not only are the phenomena of magnetism and 
 of electricity directly correlated and interconvertible, but 
 the concept of magnetism perhaps most widely accepted at 
 the present time, holds it to be merely an electric state; 
 the condition of electricity in whirling or vortex motion. 
 
 The attempt to account for magnetic attraction as the 
 working of a soul in the stone led to the first attack of 
 human reason upon superstition and the foundation of 
 philosophy. 
 
 After the lapse of centuries, a new capacity of the lode- 
 stone became revealed in its polarity, or the appearance of 
 opposite effects at opposite ends ; then came the first util- 
 ization of the knowledge thus far gained, in the manner's 
 compass, leading to the discovery of the New World, and 
 the throwing wide of all the portals of the Old to trade 
 and civilization. 
 
 The predominance of the magnet in human thought was 
 yielded to the amber, when the strange power of the latter 
 was found to exist also in other things. The keen-eyed 
 discoverers saw this new force annihilate time and space, 
 and flash into light ; pursued it even to its hiding-place in 
 the clouds ; beheld it grow from the feeble amber-soul into 
 the mighty thunderbolt ; watched it until the whole uni- 
 verse showed itself pervaded with it. 
 
14 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 This was a true intellectual rise. It was the Intellect at 
 work building the universe of which it is the key ; finding 
 anew that Nature also is working in every detail after the 
 laws of the human mind. 
 
 "It is not, then, cities, or mountains, or animals, or 
 globes that any longer command us, but only man ; not 
 the fact, but so much of man as is in the fact." 1 
 
 So in this research, I have felt that it is not so much the 
 trials and the discoveries made in this great and new field 
 of Nature which attract us, instructive and useful, even 
 momentous as they are for after all to many they are but 
 abstractions not these, so much as the breathing human 
 beings, who in the far past saw them and deciphered them 
 in the light of those other days, and of whose life they 
 formed a part ; who thought of them, and whose thoughts 
 lived on, and became immortal, and moved downward 
 through generation after generation to us ; even as our 
 thoughts, joining theirs, will pass through the ages to the 
 generations yet to come. 
 
 1 Emerson : Natural History of Intellect. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE use of amber begins with the dawn of civilization. 
 The discovery of beads in the royal tombs at Mycenae and 
 at various places throughout Sardinia and the territory of 
 ancient Btruria, proves that trade in it existed in prehis- 
 toric times; while the identity in chemical constitution of 
 the amber ornaments of Mycenae and the Baltic amber 
 from the Tertiary formation of the Prussian Samland, the 
 coasts of southern Sweden and the northern Russian pro- 
 vinces, indicates the far distant source from which the 
 resin was anciently derived. 1 Who first brought the resin 
 from the Baltic Sea to the Levant is an undetermined 
 question, since it is known to have come southward across 
 Europe by land as well as around the continent by water. 
 
 The Phoenicians those far-sighted and consummately 
 keen traders, whose commercial and maritime supremacy 
 is still unrivaled by that of any modern nation extended 
 their voyages past the gates of the world into the unknown 
 ocean in search of both the amber of the Northern Sea 
 and the tin of Cornwall; for to obtain the latter the makers 
 of bronze from all quarters flocked to the great metal 
 market of Sidon. Both commodities also came by way of 
 the Rhine and the Rhone to Marseilles and across the 
 Alps to Etruria and chiefly to the valley of the Po, besides 
 elsewhere by other land routes, along all of which stores 
 of tin and amber have been found as they were ages ago 
 hidden when the caravans were attacked or fell victims to 
 the natural perils of the road. While these ways are 
 known to have existed, and the amber trade over them to 
 have been maintained before Rome or Carthage were 
 
 1 Schliemann : Mycenae and Tiryns, 1876, 203, 245 ; Tiryns, 1886, 369. 
 Simcox : Prehistoric Civilizations, 1894. 
 
 (15) 
 
l6 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 founded, it may be that the Phoenician voyages to the 
 Baltic were of still greater antiquity, for the beads of 
 Mycenae date from at least two thousand years before our 
 era. 
 
 The amber was used by the ancient world as a jewel 
 and for decoration. Its color and lustre reminded the fan- 
 ciful Greeks of the virgin gold which glistened in the 
 sands of Pactolus, even as the brilliant metal had itself 
 recalled to them the yellow sunshine. Afterwards they 
 applied the same name to the compounds of metals which, 
 when burnished, gave a golden glow. They were all chil- 
 dren of the sun " Elector" reflecting in miniature his 
 radiance. Thus, in common with native gold and the 
 silver-gold alloys, the amber, in Hellenic speech, came to 
 be called "electron." 1 
 
 Throughout Greek literature, even from the time of 
 Homer and Hesiod, the mention of it is frequent. It is 
 inlaid in the royal roof of Menelaus, it bejewels the brace- 
 lets of Penelope, the necklaces of Eumoeus, 2 and the shield 
 of Hercules. 3 Legends cluster thick about it. Through 
 the lost tragedy of ^Eschylus, the Hippolyta of Euripides 
 and the Metamorphoses of Ovid comes the mytn of 
 Phaeton, recounting his death by the thunderbolt and fall 
 into the river Eridanus, and the transformation of the 
 weeping Heliades into poplars ever sighing and shedding 
 their amber tears beside the stream. The Greek traders 
 coming to the mouth of the Po for their cargoes, easily 
 believed the story perhaps told to conceal the true 
 source that the resin had been gathered under the poplar 
 trees along the banks, or on the Electrides the islands at 
 the outlet of the river. Long afterwards, so firmly did the 
 
 1 The ancient Greek poets called the sun tyexrop and Homer repeatedly 
 so terms it (Iliad. Z/ 513: T/ 398). "Electron" is used very indefi- 
 nitely by the Greek classic writers and in fact has no permanent gender, 
 though commonly neuter. See Rossignol : Les Metaux Dans 1'Anti- 
 quite, 345. Paris, 1863. 
 
 2 Odyssey. 3 Hesiod : Scutum Herculis. 
 
TRADITIONS OF THE AMBER. 17 
 
 legend persist, men came to search the shores of Eridanus 
 for amber, as the Spanish adventurers sought the Eldorado 
 in the new world. 
 
 "Dost thou think that we would tug against this torrent 
 for two oboli a day?" laughed the boatmen of the Po to 
 the discomfited Lucian, "could we find riches under the 
 poplar trees for the picking up?" 
 
 To the mythical tales set afloat by the traders, became 
 added the fancies of the poets. Amber is gathered, so ran 
 one fable, by the maiden guardians of the golden Hesper- 
 ides as it falls from the poplars into Lake Electrum ; it is 
 the slime of drear Lake Cephisis, the sweat of the laboring 
 soil under the fierce rays of the sun, the tears of the Indian 
 birds for the death of Meleager, said others. And the 
 sailors told of other Electrides islands in the German 
 ocean and off the Calabrian coast where grew the tree 
 "Electrida," and of stones in far-off Britain "purging 
 thick amber." 
 
 It often happens that historical facts become embedded, 
 as it were, in the names of things, and thus preserved, 
 and the knowledge of them so passed down through cen- 
 turies. Just as we find now locked in the yellow depths 
 of the amber, bodies of insects which lived ages ago, so in 
 one of the designations which the people of ancient times 
 gave to it is embalmed, perhaps, the story of how elec- 
 tricity first became known to the civilized world. 
 
 The Syrian women, Pliny says, 1 called the amber "har- 
 paga" or "the clutcher;" which is obviously based on a 
 peculiarity of it altogether different from that which caused 
 it to be likened to an embodied sunbeam. This name, in 
 turn, came from its use in spinning, the oldest handiwork 
 known to the race, and in the mode of spinning which has 
 been employed since the very beginning of civilization. 
 So that we may conjecture that the name came down from 
 the old Phoenicians, and that the amber which they 
 
 1 Pliny : lib. xxxvii. c. I ; Aldrovandus : Musaeum Metallicum. Milan, 
 1648, 404. 
 
 2 
 
18 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 worked into beads and ornaments found its place in the 
 hands of every woman who spun with the distaff, and who 
 could afford the luxury of a spindle made of the much- 
 prized substance. The way in which the spinning was 
 done by distaff and spindle, Catullus tells : 
 
 "The loaded distaff in the left hand placed, 
 With spongy coils of snow-white wool was graced, 
 From these the right hand lengthening fibres drew, 
 Which into thread 'neath nimble fingers grew. 
 At intervals a gentle touch was given, 
 By which the twirling whorl was onward driven. 
 Then, when the sinking spindle reached the ground, 
 The recent thread around its spire was wound, 
 Until the clasp within its nipping cleft 
 Held fast the newly finished length of weft." 
 
 As the spindle descended, and at the same time whirled 
 around, it rubbed against the loose feminine garments ; 
 thus it became electrified, as amber always does when 
 rubbed, so that on nearing the ground, it drew to itself the 
 dust or bits of leaves or chaff lying there, or sometimes at- 
 tracted the light fringe of clothing. The spinner easily 
 saw this, because the chaff would leap up to the excited 
 resin, or the fringe filaments extend themselves toward it, 
 and moreover, unless she were careful, the dust and other 
 substances so attracted would become entangled in her 
 thread. Therefore, she called her amber spindle, the 
 u clutcher ; " for it seemed to seize these light bodies as if 
 it had invisible talons which not only grasped, but held. 
 This was probably the first intelligent observation of an 
 electrical effect. It is singular that it should have become 
 apparent through the earliest practical, in contradistinc- 
 tion to merely ornamental, use of the amber, though per- 
 haps nothing strange that it is due to the keener percep- 
 tion of woman. 
 
THE LODESTONE. 19 
 
 The lodestone or magnetite is an ore of iron 1 which 
 sometimes crops out as a rock above the surface of the 
 ground. The accidental bringing of an iron object into 
 the neighborhood of the outcropping stone probably 
 caused the first observation of the attractive power of the 
 rock for the metal, and thus furnished the basis for the 
 legend which Pliny copies from the poet Nicander (who 
 wrote it two centuries before his time), concerning the 
 Shepherd Magnes, who, while guarding his flock on the 
 slopes of Mount Ida, suddenly found the iron ferrule of his 
 staff and the nails of his shoes adhering to a stone ; which 
 subsequently became called after him, the "Magnes 
 Stone," or "Magnet." This legend, in various forms, 
 retained its vitality up to comparatively recent times. As 
 masses of magnetite were discovered in various parts of the 
 world, the stories of its attractive power became greatly 
 exaggerated, especially, as I shall hereafter show, during 
 the Middle Ages. In fact, magnetic mountains which 
 would pull the iron nails out of ships, or, later, move the 
 compass needle far astray, did not lose their place among 
 the terrors of the sea until after the seventeenth century 
 had become well advanced. 
 
 The phenomena of the lodestone are, however, two-fold. 
 It not only attracts iron objects, but it has polarity, or, in 
 other words, exhibits opposite effects at opposite ends ; by 
 reason of which, when in elongated form and supported so 
 as freely to turn, it will place itself nearly in the line of a 
 meridian of the earth that is, nearly in a north and south 
 direction. This is its directive tendency, or, as William 
 Gilbert called it in 1600, its "verticity," and upon this 
 quality, as is well known, depends the use of the magnet- 
 ized needle in the mariner's compass. 
 
 We may conclude that whoever gained the first knowl- 
 edge of the attractive power of the lodestone, was also 
 acquainted with iron, if he had an iron object to present 
 
 S P- gr. 5.2, contain2 72.41 per cent, of iron. Osborn: 
 Metallurgy of Iron and Steel. 
 
2O THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 to the stone and in this way perceived its attraction. 
 Iron, however, is never found in a metallic state in 
 nature, except in meteorites. Excluding this infinitesimal 
 supply, the metal is obtained from its ores, by means 
 usually involving the development of intense heat, so 
 that to devise modes of attaining the necessary tempera- 
 tures, let alone the even more complex mental work 
 of contriving apparatus and processes for separating the 
 metal, requires advanced powers of observation and inven- 
 tion. Hence modern ethnological and geological author- 
 ities unite with L/ucretius 1 and other ancient writers in 
 affirming that the Age of Iron has always followed that 
 of brass or bronze. So far, therefore, as establishing the 
 probable time of the discovery of the attractive force of 
 the lodestone is concerned, it is immaterial whether we 
 consider that the phenomenon was first remarked as an 
 effect of outcropping magnetite upon iron brought near to 
 it; or as one exerted by fragments of magnetite in an iron 
 mine upon other fragments of the same substance, or 
 upon extracted iron. In any case, the observation of the 
 fact seems necessarily to have followed the advent of an 
 Iron Age, and therefore may not extend indefinitely back 
 into prehistoric times. 
 
 On the other hand, with regard to the directive tendency 
 of the lodestone a different conclusion is reached. To sus- 
 pend an elongated piece of the stone and see it turn itself 
 in a definite direction; or to do this repeatedly and with 
 different pieces and thus learn that the phenomenon is 
 true of this particular stone and not of other stones, obvi- 
 ously involves no necessary knowledge of its attractive 
 effect on iron. Therefore, if we admit the possibility of 
 sufficient intelligence in the race then living, we may con- 
 jecture that an acquaintance with magnetic polarity may 
 have existed among the earliest peoples of which we 
 have any tradition. I shall show hereafter that reason 
 for such conjecture is by no means absent, which if ac- 
 
 1 De Natura Rerum, v. 
 
THE IRON AGE. 21 
 
 cepted, places human knowledge of the directive tendency 
 of the lodestone not only far beyond the limits of history, 
 but even suggests the utilization of that knowledge by 
 wandering hordes for their actual guidance over the wil- 
 dernesses of the earth, at the same extremely remote epoch. 
 
 For the present, however, it is necessary to deal with 
 modern civilization and periods within historical times, 
 and therefore, to begin with an inquiry into the familiarity 
 of the western world with magnetic attraction; for what- 
 ever the Asiatic people may have known concerning mag- 
 netic polarity, there is no trustworthy evidence that the 
 nations of Europe had the slightest acquaintance with it 
 before the twelfth century of our era. 
 
 It is especially difficult to determine the positive date 
 when any nation made the transition from the bronze to 
 the iron age, and practically impossible to do so in the 
 cases of people who either inhabited countries where iron 
 does not abound, or who never acquired the art of obtain- 
 ing it. In such event, the substitution of implements of 
 iron necessarily imported from other countries for the 
 native ones of bronze, to which the population had become 
 accustomed by ages of use, was an exceedingly slow pro- 
 cess, retarded by the mental inertia of the times, and often 
 by national pride in home customs and handiwork. 
 Hence arises the seeming anomaly that among people far 
 advanced in civilization, the general use of iron can be 
 recognized only at a comparatively late period in their 
 history; while among barbarians, incomparably below 
 them in intellectual attainments, we find evidence of its 
 employment at immensely earlier periods. In Denmark, 
 for example, the age of iron corresponds to that of the 
 beech tree. Hesiod, writing in 850 B. C., speaks of the 
 time when "men wrought in brass, when iron did not 
 exist;" and Homer, although frequently referring to 
 weapons and implements of bronze, mentions iron but 
 rarely. The Aztecs, at the time of the Conquest, knew 
 nothing of the metal, although their soil was impregnated 
 
22 THE INTELLECTUAL, RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 with it. The Peruvians, under the same natural condi- 
 tions, were equally ignorant. 1 
 
 The traditions of magnetic attraction, however, date 
 from periods far earlier than the days of Nicander. The 
 iron of antiquity was mined chiefly on the islands and 
 coasts of the .^Jgean Sea, and on Elba and Crete, although 
 some came even from distant Ethiopia. That found on 
 the slopes of Mount Ida or on the Mediterranean islands 
 was famous. Its strange hunger for other iron, which it 
 seized and drew unto itself, was to the superstitious Greek 
 a mystery, concerning which the uninitiated might not 
 even think for fear of the anger of the gods : the anger of 
 Celmis, and Damnamenus and Acmon the irresistible, and 
 later of Azieros, Aziokersa and Aziokersos, whose very 
 names were mystic and dangerous to speak. 
 
 In far-off ages, so said the legend, Rhea, the earth god- 
 dess of Phrygia, sent to Ida, and thence to Samothrace, in 
 the u3jgean, those of her children who were skillful under- 
 ground, and wise in their knowledge of the ores, and 
 where they lay hidden in the cracks and crevices of the 
 rock. And, because of their skill, these emissaries re- 
 ceived the name of "Dactyls" fingers ; for they were u the 
 fingers of Rhea." Some of them went to Crete ; but 
 wherever they journeyed (and Samothrace became their 
 main abode), they dug into the earth and brought out 
 the iron ore ; and when the people saw them heat this, 
 and melt it and produce the black, hard ringing metal, 
 they believed them to be gods, and their art a mystery. 
 
 As a matter of fact the Idean Dactyls seem to have been 
 merely a roving band of Phrygian miners, 2 who carried 
 
 1 Prescott : History of the Conquest of Mexico. 1865, i., 139, and works 
 there cited. 
 
 Lyell, Sir C. : The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man. 
 London, 1873, 8. 
 
 2 Rossignol, cit. sup., refers to the Scholiast of Apollonius of Rhodes on 
 the Phoronid, an ancient and fragmentary poem which he considers as 
 old as the w r orks of Hesiod and Homer. This, concerning the Idean 
 Dactyls, says, "they first found in the mountain forests the art of the 
 
ANCIENT IRON WORKERS. 23 
 
 their metallurgical knowledge to places where the ore 
 existed, but like knowledge did not ; and who taught 
 mining and iron-working to the Hellenes, or to those who 
 occupied the land before them. 
 
 Following the Dactyls came the Cabin, a second and 
 more skillful band of iron-workers, who were indeed more 
 handicraftsmen than miners. Concerning these, all rec- 
 ords are most obscure and conflicting, and they are, be- 
 sides, inextricably entangled with the myths of several 
 nations. Like the Dactyls, the Cabiri came from Phrygia 
 to Samothrace, L,emnos and Imbros. Their cult seems to 
 have attained its greatest vigor, however, at Samothrace, 
 and ultimately to have spread to Macedonia and Phoenicia. 
 It possessed great vitality, since as late as the fourth cen- 
 tury of our era it was in a flourishing existence. 
 
 The Samothracian Cabiri became combined with the 
 Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, the twin sons of Heaven, who 
 presided over the mariners; and with the Egyptian Phtha- 
 Sokari and the Greek Haephaestos ; and later with the 
 Corybantes and Curetes, which appear to have been other 
 bands belonging to the same family. Their worship fre- 
 quently changed form, so that even the mystic recitals of 
 the Orphic hymns relating to it, now ascribed to the false 
 Orpheus or Onomacritus, who lived as late as 514 B. C., 
 are a confused jumble of forgeries, to which even the 
 Christian philosophers are said to have added their quota. 
 
 From the various legends and traditions, however, the 
 probable fact appears that the first iron miners of Greece 
 came from Phrygia, which abounded in the metal, and 
 settled in Samothrace. Here they instituted the myster- 
 ies which so long afterwards prevailed, and in the begin- 
 ning, as a proof of their supernatural skill, they exhibited 
 the attractive phenomena of the lodestone through the 
 mystic working of the so-called Samothracian rings. 
 
 The first mention of the magnet in the Greek classics is 
 
 cunning Vulcan, the black iron, carried it to the fire and produced won- 
 derful work." 
 
24 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 apparently that made in the fragmentary Oeneus of Eurip- 
 ides, which Suidas 1 quotes, and which distinctly refers to 
 the attraction of the lodestone for the iron. The subject 
 takes definite form, however, in the Ion of Plato ; and 
 there, in the following words, Socrates describes the 
 famous rings : 
 
 u The gift which you have of speaking excellently about 
 Homer, is not an art," says the sage, "but, as I was just 
 saying, an inspiration: there is a divinity moving you, like 
 that in the stone which Euripides calls a magnet, but 
 which is commonly known as the stone of Heraclea. For 
 that stone not only attracts iron rings, but also imparts to 
 them similar power of attracting other rings : and some- 
 times you may see a number of pieces of iron and rings 
 suspended from one another, so as to form quite a long 
 chain ; and all of these derive their powers of suspension 
 from the original stone. Now, this is like the Muse who 
 first gives to men inspiration herself, and from those in- 
 spired, her sons, a chain of other persons is suspended, 
 who will take the inspiration from them." 2 
 
 Plato lived between the years 429 and 348 B. C., and 
 from his time forward the rings of Samothrace are de- 
 scribed again and again. Lucretius, writing three cen- 
 turies later, refers to them as still potent. Their well- 
 established existence shows that the Samothracian 
 wonder-workers not only were familiar with the attractive 
 power of the lodestone, but with its capability of inducing 
 a similar power in iron. The popular belief that every- 
 thing which produces wonderful effects must have won- 
 derful properties, and the converse popular tendency which 
 seeks a cause for any effect not understood, in things con- 
 cerning which prevailing ignorance is still deeper, were 
 fully as strong in those ancient days as they are now. 
 For precisely the same reason that the modern u magneto- 
 therapist" plays upon the imagination of the patient, or 
 
 1 Suidas : Lex. Graec. et. Lat. post T. Gaisford, Halle, 1853, 658. 
 s jowett, B. : The Dialogues of Plato. 
 
THE SAMOTHRACIAN RINGS. 25 
 
 the charlatan sells to the credulous so-called " magnetic " 
 panaceas for every ailment, so the priests of Samothrace 
 drove a thriving trade in their magnetized iron rings as 
 amulets and cure-alls. They were worn by the worship- 
 pers of the Cabiri, later by the Roman priests of Jupiter, 
 and in Pliny's time they became the usual pledge of 
 betrothal. 
 
 The Cabiri were remembered long after their individual 
 cult had disappeared. They became converted into the 
 gnomes and the elves of the legends and folk-tales of the 
 Middle Ages, and in the first modern treatises on mining 
 we find them still depicted as dwarfs with their picks and 
 shovels and attended by their dogs, searching for the 
 metals in the depths of the earth. Even so skillful a 
 miner as George Agricola, 1 whose great work begins the 
 present science of metallurgy, cannot divest himself of a 
 half-belief in them; for in his quaint pictures he always 
 shows them at work in the mines, although often amid 
 machinery which the old Greeks who worshiped at Samo- 
 thrace might well have regarded as the handiwork of 
 higher gods than those which they there adored. 
 
 There were many near-by sources for the lodestone 
 which supported and magnetized the Samothracian rings; 
 for iron mines existed not only on the slopes of Mount 
 Ida, and on Elba and Crete, but on the island of Samo- 
 thrace itself. It was because the magnetic ore was found 
 in the same deposits as the ordinary ores of iron, that the 
 Greeks at first called it "Siderites" or ironstone. Later 
 because of its power of overcoming iron, and of forcing 
 that hard and intractable metal to come to it, they termed 
 it the " Hercules stone," and later still they gave it the 
 name which it still most commonly bears, the magnet, 
 which as Lucretius says comes "from its country, for it 
 had its origin in the native hills of the Magnesians." 
 This, of course, is widely at variance with Pliny's fanciful 
 derivation of the same name. 
 
 Agricola : De Re Metallica, 1556. 
 
26 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Lucretius, however, who wrote many centuries after the 
 event, is probably in error, for there is little, if any, mag- 
 netic iron ore in the hills of ancient Magnesia the narrow 
 and mountainous strip of land on which rise Mounts Ossa 
 and Pelion, and which formed the most easterly province 
 of Thessaly. The Magnetes as the inhabitants called 
 themselves were, in fact, hemmed in between sea and 
 mountains. The last formed a serviceable barrier against 
 the Thesprotians when this tribe made its irruption into 
 Thessaly; but when, through natural increase of popula- 
 tion, the territory of the Magnetes became too restricted 
 for their needs, there was no alternative but to cross the 
 ^Bgean and seek new footholds on the Asiatic continent, 
 where, Pliny says, they founded the city of Magnesia in 
 Ionia. But a later arrival of ^olians drove them north- 
 ward, and they established a second city, also named Mag- 
 nesia, beside Mount Sipylus in Lydia. It is conjectured 
 that their national pride caused them to retain the name 
 of their old home for both settlements : a theory which 
 gains support from the fact that the ^olians and lonians, 
 in founding new towns, were accustomed to adopt for them 
 local designations. 1 It is this second Magnesia which is 
 most reasonably supposed to have given its name to the 
 magnet, because of the large deposits of magnetic ore, 
 similar to that found at Elba, which still exist in its 
 vicinity and which were probably the ancient source of 
 supply. The town itself was destroyed by an earthquake 
 in the time of Tiberius. 
 
 If this emigration of the Magnetes ever occurred, it 
 happened before 700 B. C., and possibly before 1000 B. C., 
 the latter being generally regarded as the period when the 
 colonizing movement of the ancient tribes ended ; but, 
 like all such traditions, it is unsafe to accept it as a his- 
 torical fact. Another version of the same story is that the 
 Magnesians settled in both Lydia and Ionia on their re- 
 turn from Troy; still another makes them out, not willing 
 
 Abbott, E. A. : History of Greece, New York, 1888. 
 
THE ORIGIN OF THE MAGNET. 27 
 
 emigrants, but fugitives flying from Greece, and a third 
 brings them, not from Thessaly at all, but from Delphoi. 1 
 
 Divested of speculation, there remains simply the fact 
 that there was a town of Magnesia close to a large bed of 
 magnetite. 2 Klaproth 3 notes that this same settlement 
 was called "Heraclea," whence the Greek term "stone of 
 Heraclea " for the magnet ; but there was also a town of 
 Heraclea near the first Magnesia, and several other settle- 
 ments, similarly named, in widely separated parts of 
 Greece and Asia Minor, so that this derivation is also 
 in doubt. Indeed, Pliny 4 regards the name "stone of 
 Heraclea" or "Heraclea-lithos," not as based on locality, 
 but as meaning "Herculean stone," for the reason already 
 given, namely, the conquering power of the magnet over 
 iron ; and Professor Schweigger, 5 with labored ingenuity, 
 goes even further, and asserts that "Herculean" and 
 "magnetic" mean the same thing, and that the entire 
 ancient myth of Hercules merely symbolized the natural 
 strength of the magnet. 
 
 To these early traditions of the Greeks and Syrians, 
 research into the dim historical annals of other peoples, 
 existing at that far distant time, adds nothing of import- 
 ance. A familiarity with electrical (or magnetic) effects is 
 often attributed to the Egyptians of the Pharaonic periods; 
 but this seems to be without trustworthy foundation. No 
 legends of magnetic rocks or mountains on Egyptian ter- 
 ritory have been encountered. But one Egyptian iron 
 mine shows any signs of having been anciently worked, 
 and, there the ore is of the specular or red, and not of the 
 magnetic variety. 6 L,epsius considers that iron or steel do 
 
 1 Cox, G. W. : A History of Greece, London, 1874. 
 
 8 Trans. Phil. Soc., Cambridge; and Athenaeum, Jan. 4, 1834. See, 
 also, Wilkin's Ed. of Works of Sir T. Browne. London, 1883. 
 8 L' Invention de la Boussole, Paris, 1834. *Lib. xxxvi. 
 
 5 Ennemoser : History of Magic, London, 1854. 
 
 6 Wilkinson: Anc. Egyptians, Boston, 1883, ii., 250. Rawlinson : 
 Hist, of Atic. Egypt, London, iSSr, 93. 
 
28 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 not occur at all in the old empire, but only in the new. 1 
 Rawlinson, 2 on the other hand, while conceding the 
 strength of the theory that iron was first introduced into 
 Egypt by the Ptolemies, notes that some implements of 
 the metal have been found in the tombs, with nothing 
 about them indicative of their belonging to a late period ; 
 and that a scrap of iron plate was discovered by Vyse in 
 the masonry of the Great Pyramid. He also points out 
 that the paucity of such instances may be partially, if not 
 wholly, accounted for by the rapid decay of iron in the 
 nitrous Egyptian earth, or when oxidized by exposure to 
 the air; so that, as he says, the most judicious of modern 
 Egyptologists seem to hold that, while the use of iron in 
 Pharaonic times was at best rare and occasional, neverthe- 
 less the metal was not wholly unknown, and may have 
 been brought into the country from Phoenicia, in a manu- 
 factured state. 
 
 In such circumstances it is hardly possible to assume any 
 Egyptian knowledge of the lodestone, due to direct discov- 
 ery of it. The only apparently explicit evidence which 
 has been encountered is the statement of Plutarch, that 
 the Egyptian priest Manetho, who lived about three cen- 
 turies before our era, and who wrote a history of his coun- 
 try for the Greeks who had recently settled there, reported 
 that the Egyptians of a far distant period called the mag- 
 net the "bone of Horus," and the iron the "bone of Ty- 
 phon." But Manetho' s work, when Plutarch wrote about 
 it, was six centuries old and existed only in the form of 
 epitomes which were mutually conflicting, while his chro- 
 nology is now known to be unreliable. 3 
 . It has been suggested that such iron as has been found 
 in Egypt, and referred to Pharaonic times, may have been 
 
 ^epsius : Die Metalle in den Aegyptischen Inschriften, 1872, 105, 114. 
 Peschel : The Races of Man, New York, 1876, 488. 
 
 2 Hist, of Anc. Egypt, i., 505. 
 
 3 Rawlinson, cit. sup., ii., 6, 8. Cox : History of Greece, i., 614, Appen- 
 dix D, wherein Manetho's chronology is fully discussed. 
 
ANCIENT MAGNETIC KNOWLEDGE. 2Q 
 
 made and used by the Hebrews during their servitude, and 
 that when they left the country they carried their knowl- 
 edge with them. That they were familiar with the metal, 
 at the period of Moses, and hence at about 1,500 years B. 
 C., and possibly had known of it then for a long time, is 
 shown by the mention of Tubal Cain, 1 "an instructor of 
 every artificer in brass and iron," as a personage of great 
 antiquity, at the very beginning of the Pentateuch. Their 
 continuing knowledge of it, over many centuries, is further 
 shown by the biblical references to the bed of iron of Og, 
 the iron chariots of Javin, the miraculous floating ax-head 
 of Elisha, the question "shall iron break the northern iron 
 and the steel" in the Jeremiad, and many other instances, 
 easily found. There are Jewish writers, moreover, who 
 assert that not only were the Hebrews thus fully ac- 
 quainted with iron, but that they were equally well aware 
 of the magnet and its attractive force. The famous Rabbi 
 Mosheh ben Maimon (Maimonides), 2 who wrote at the end 
 of the twelfth century, mentions not only an image of the 
 sun, in the Babylonian Temple of Belus, as maintained in 
 suspension in the air by means of magnets, but avers that 
 Jeroboam suspended the golden calves, which he com- 
 manded Israel to worship, in the same way. 3 No proof, 
 however, seems to support this tradition, which, if true, 
 would show the Hebrew acquaintance with the magnet to 
 have existed at about 950 B. C. Kircher* quotes Rabbi 
 Isaac Abarbanel, who wrote late in the i5th century, as 
 authority for the statement that the Israelites knew of the 
 magnet while wandering in the wilderness, and even used 
 it in the construction of the tabernacle ; but this again is 
 yet more vague and doubtful than the ascription to Jero- 
 boam. 
 
 1 Genesis, iv. 32. 
 
 2 Moreh Nebukhim (Guide to the Perplexed). Talmud, Tract, Sene- 
 drin, c. 3 : Gemarah, c. Aegel. 
 3 1 Kings, xii. 28. 
 *Kircher: De Arte Magnetica. Rome, 1654. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE Egyptian ports were, for the first time, opened to 
 general foreign commerce by Psainmetichns L, in 640 
 B. C. Thereupon a stream of immigrants from all parts 
 of Hellas came ponring into the Nile land. Up to this 
 time, Egypt had been a hermit nation, discouraging inter- 
 course, restricting trade and prohibiting the circulation 
 within her territory of foreigners, whom she regarded as 
 cannibals and pirates. Nevertheless there had come to 
 the outer world, reports of her magnificent cities, her 
 great temples, and of a people so ancient and so learned, 
 that, to the barbarians of the North, these stories seemed 
 like legends of the gods. The curiosity of all men con- 
 cerning her was keen and whetted with the expectation 
 of centuries. 
 
 The Egyptian king had triumphed in the civil war 
 against his colleagues by the aid of Greek mercenaries. 
 The unbarring of the country to the men to whom he 
 owed his throne was a political necessity, regardless of the 
 involved violation of customs and traditions hoary with 
 age. The change in national policy was radical, and, once 
 made, the logical consequences followed. Not merely the 
 lonians, but the people of all Greece, and, in fact, of all 
 states, flocked to the Delta of the Nile, and the swarthy 
 and black-haired builders of the obelisks saw, for the first 
 time, the red-haired and blue-eyed barbarians from the huts 
 of the far north. 
 
 The Greek who came then to Egypt lived in a world 
 greater than that which was included within the shadowy 
 boundaries of Hellas, conterminous only with Greek speech 
 and Greek customs. For he abided in one of his own 
 creation, and it abided with him: a world peopled by his 
 
 (30) 
 
GREEK NATURE WORSHIP. 31 
 
 own fancy with deities, whose imaginary doings were part 
 and parcel of his life, and which controlled his every 
 action. Every phenomenon of nature to him was the 
 work, voluntary or involuntary, of a personal agent. If the 
 earth quaked, imprisoned giants were struggling against 
 the bonds of the higher gods ; Zeus wept in the rain-drops, 
 and the tears of Niobe fell in the snowflakes. Every 
 wood and every stream had for him its divinities. They 
 ushered in the dawn and at night he saw them wandering 
 through the sky. All nature was alive all things were 
 conscious things. There was no distinction between his 
 mythology and theology, none between the latter and his 
 system of religion, no question which the fictions of his 
 brain could not answer, and no doubt which his imagina- 
 tion could not solve. If limits to his speculative faculty 
 existed, they were to be reached only when it wearied of 
 its own exuberance a logical impossibility, perhaps, 
 when the creator was the worshiper of his own creations. 
 Equally were there no bounds to the theories which might 
 be evolved to account for natural facts, provided each fact 
 were fitted with its own theory, and the supernatural were 
 open to constant invocation; but when it came to traveling 
 outside of the ratiocinative circle, and to knowing things 
 in themselves and formulating theories which would stand 
 the test of explaining exactly ascertained facts, such con- 
 ceptions in the mind of the Greek who lived six centuries 
 before our era, had no more place than they have in that 
 of the child who dwells in the happy world of the fairy 
 books. 1 
 
 The Egyptian of the same period claimed a national 
 existence extending back for millenniums. His religion 
 was of double aspect: a strict monotheism combined with 
 a speculative philosophy on the two great subjects of the 
 nature of God and the destiny of man, and a gross and 
 multitudinous polytheism. 2 The intelligent, the learned 
 
 1 Cox : History of Greece, cit. sup., 127. 
 
 2 Rawlinson : History of Egypt, i., 505. 
 
32 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 and the initiated were invited to contemplate in the first, 
 a divine nature essentially unitary, pure spirit, perfect, all- 
 wise, almighty, supremely good; the ignorant masses in 
 the second, a variety of gods ranging from heroes to bulls, 
 cats, and apes, and a worship teeming with rites unspeak- 
 able. 
 
 Of science properly so called the Egyptian had none. 1 
 He claimed to have made records of natural facts for ages, 
 such, for example, as astronomical observations, which, as 
 he boasted, had been kept up for six thousand centuries. 
 But out of this vast storehouse of accumulated data not a 
 single theory explanatory of the motions of the heavenly 
 bodies ever emerged. He heaped up facts as he did the 
 stones of the great pyramid, with infinite labor, and over 
 a great interval of time, but the mountain of facts was as 
 lifeless as the mountain of stone. It was dead, it held the 
 dead, and there was no health in it. 
 
 There lived at this time, a keen young Milesian, 2 of an 
 intelligence far above the ordinary mental level of his 
 countrymen ; in character uniting the astuteness of the 
 Phoenician, whence he sprang, with the impressionable 
 temperament of the Hellene ; one of those "souls born out 
 of time extraordinary prophetic, who are rather related to 
 the system of the world than to their particular age and 
 locality." 3 Upon this phenomenal mind reacted an intel- 
 lectual environment wherein the most diverse elements 
 were commingled ; conceptions of the spirit gods of Egypt, 
 jarring with those of the anthropomorphic deities of 
 Greece ; dawning notions of physical astronomy jumbled 
 together with the sports of the shining gods and goddesses 
 in the blue vault, and no straight thought anywhere. The 
 result was the beginning of philosophy ; for when Thales 
 of Miletus saw how the machinery given to man to under- 
 stand facts could neither make the facts nor control them, 
 
 1 Buckle : History of Civilization, i., 36. 
 
 2 Plutarch : De Placet. Phil, i, 3. Clem. Alex. : Strom I, 15, \ 66. 
 
 3 Emerson : Wealth. 
 
THAMES. 33 
 
 how the most it could do was to react upon itself end- 
 lessly in endless circles of myths and shadows, he, for the 
 first time in the history of the human mind, insisted upon 
 finding, not in figments of the imagination, but in the 
 things themselves, a theory intended to account for the 
 phenomena observed. There was a great difference between 
 doing this, however imperfectly or illogically, and referring 
 the same happenings to the interference of the immortal 
 gods. Thus, speculation disengaged itself from theolog- 
 ical guidance, the effects of nature became no longer the 
 sport of unseen beings, and the causes of all change were 
 sought in the conditions of things themselves. 1 
 
 Now the particular natural effect upon which Thales 
 pondered, and for which he endeavored to account by a 
 theory, physical through its connection with the thing 
 itself and not based upon supernatural influences was 
 the attractive power of the lodestone. And thus it came 
 about that the mystery of the magnet gave the first impetus 
 to philosophic thought. 
 
 Aristotle reports the sayings of Thales only by hearsay, 
 and then with extreme caution: the first being that every- 
 thing is full of gods, and the second 2 (and it is this which 
 is of especial importance in our present research) that 
 ; ' Thales too, as is related, seems to regard the soul as 
 somehow producing motion, for he said that the stone has 
 a soul since it moves iron." 
 
 Thus we find the magnet at the very foundation of the 
 world's philosophy. Refusing to account for the attrac- 
 tion of the lodestone by supernatural interposition, as the 
 priests and worshipers at Samothrace had undoubtedly 
 done centuries before, Thales assumed a soul or a virtue 
 inherent and existing in the magnet itself, whereby it was 
 enabled to move the iron. Herein he perceived the mani- 
 festation of a first principle, common to all nature, which 
 
 1 Lewes: Histy. of Phily., London, 1871, vol. i, 5. 
 2 De Anima, i. 2; i. 5. 
 3 
 
34 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 he conceived to be water probably, says Aristotle, deriv- 
 ing his opinion from observing that the nutriment of all 
 things is moist, and that even actual heat is therefrom 
 generated and animal life sustained. 
 
 Writers of every age, from Aristotle onward, have 
 agreed in regarding Thales as the father of philosophy, 
 and yet very little is known of his life : Herodotus and 
 Aristotle are nearest to him in point of time, and they 
 furnish all that is even measurably trustworthy concerning 
 him. Herodotus 1 describes, first, his prediction of an 
 eclipse of the sun which brought to a sudden end one of 
 the interminable series of battles which the Lydians and 
 Medes were waging, and also that when the advance of the 
 army of Croesus was impeded by a river, he caused a new 
 channel to be made for the stream in rear of the camp, so 
 that the water becoming divided into two branches became 
 sufficiently shallow to be fordable. Modern re-calculation 
 of the eclipse fixes its probable date, and hence the period 
 when Thales lived, at 585 B. C. 2 
 
 If so minute and cautious an investigator as Aristotle 
 could obtain nothing more definite concerning Thales than 
 such as is contained in the meagre statements which he 
 gives, it is hardly to be expected that the commentators 
 who came afterwards could have had any better sources for 
 trustworthy information, especially as time has not 
 brought to light a single writing which can be shown to 
 be the Milesian's production. Nevertheless modern re- 
 views of electrical progress seldom fail to ascribe to 
 Thales the conception of a soul in the amber as well as in 
 the lodestone. The doubtful foundation of this resides in 
 a single sentence in the so-called life of Thales with which 
 begins the "lyives and Opinions of Eminent Philoso- 
 phers," written by Diogenes Laertius. Laertius is sup- 
 posed to have been a native of Laerte in Cilicia, and the 
 time when he lived, judging from the periods of the 
 
 1 Herod. : i. 74, 75. 
 
 2 Todd : Total Eclipses of the Sun, Boston, 1894. 
 
DIOGENES LAERTIUS. 35 
 
 writers whom lie quotes, appears to have been during the 
 last part of the second century of our era or in other 
 words, about as far distant from the age of Thales as we 
 are from that of William the Conqueror. If, according to 
 other opinions, he did not live until the time of Alexander 
 Severus, and wrote the book for Julia, the consort of that 
 emperor, who was of a philosophical and platonic turn of 
 mind, there is still a wider gap between him and the an- 
 cient Greek. 
 
 The sentence which he gives is: 
 
 " But Aristotle and Hippias say that he attributed souls 
 also to lifeless things, forming his conjecture from the 
 nature of the magnet and the amber." 
 
 As a matter of fact, Aristotle says nothing about the 
 amber, and that he should have knowingly omitted men- 
 tion of it in the passage above quoted is difficult to believe. 
 On the other hand, while Plato, in the Timaeus at a later 
 period, speaks of the "marvels that are observed about the 
 attraction of amber and the Heraclean stone," he does not 
 connect Thales with them. Hippias was a traveling Soph- 
 ist, and a contemporary of Protagoras and Socrates, but 
 none of his writings are extant. 
 
 It is necessary merely to glance at the remarkable col- 
 lection of stories which L,aertius has gathered about Thales 
 to see that he has simply brought together items of gossip 
 and tradition which had been accumulating for centuries. 
 
 Apuleius, 1 who lived either contemporaneously with Laer- 
 tius or nearly a century earlier, gives another and different 
 category, in which the amber-soul theory is ignored. Add 
 to this that L,aertius refers to no less than five u other men 
 of the name of Thales," including at least one "painter 
 of Sicyon, a great man," and none unknown to fame, a 
 not unnatural suspicion arises that the biographies of all 
 these may have been laid under contribution for the delec- 
 tation of the fair Julia. "All those letters which are at- 
 tributed by Laertius to the Philosophers," remarks Julius 
 
 1 Apuleius : Floridor, 361. 
 
36 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Scaliger, 1 as usual, savagely, U I am able to prove, by 
 many arguments, were concocted by the Greeks, in whom 
 the will or faculty for lying never failed." 
 
 L,et me now recapitulate. We have found lack of evi- 
 dence to prove that the Egyptians, at the time of Thales, 
 were cognizant of the magnet. Therefore it may be 
 assumed that Thales did not acquire whatever knowledge 
 he may have had concerning this substance from Egypt- 
 ian sources. We have also found that the working of iron 
 mines in Phrygia was of great antiquity, that magnetite 
 ore existed there and in Lydia, and probably was abund- 
 antly disseminated through Asia Minor. So also it appears 
 that the magnet was exhibited as a part of the Samothra- 
 cian mysteries, which were also of extremely ancient 
 origin. It is not unreasonable, therefore, to conclude that 
 Thales' knowledge of the magnet was home knowledge, 
 and that his doctrine of the soul inherent therein, was 
 intended to be in direct contrast with the prevailing 
 theories fostered by the priests of the Cabiric mysteries, 
 namely, that the stone was supernaturally influenced. 
 
 If the tradition of the Syrian women is older than the 
 time of Thales, it may be presumed that the amber attrac- 
 tion was not unfamiliar to him; otherwise I have encoun- 
 tered no direct evidence of earlier knowledge of it than 
 exists in the Timseus of Plato, and Plato lived nearly two 
 centuries after Thales. 
 
 The explanation given by Plato excludes all idea of at- 
 traction. "Moreover," says the philosopher, u as to the 
 flowing water, the fall of the thunderbolt, and the marvels 
 that are observed about the attraction of amber and the 
 Heraclean stone ; in none of these cases is there any attrac- 
 tion, but he who investigates truly, will find that such 
 wonderful phenomena are attributable to the non-existence 
 of a vacuum, taken in combination with the fact, that these 
 
 1 Ep., 306. See also Blount : Censura Celebriorum Authorum. Geneva, 
 1710, 158. 
 
PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY. 37 
 
 substances are forced round and round and are changed 
 and pass severally into their own place by composition and 
 divination." 
 
 It must be admitted, however, that even if Thales had 
 been cognizant of the amber phenomenon, it was not 
 logically necessary, from his point of view, to include it 
 specifically under his theory based upon the attraction of 
 the lodestone : and hence lack of mention does not, on his 
 part, imply lack of knowledge. All physical philosophy 
 as it stood before the age of Socrates was an obscure, semi- 
 poetical speculation as to first principles. It neither 
 sought to explain nor to clear up phenomenal experiences, 
 but often added new difficulties of its own, frequently con- 
 tradicting or discrediting experience. In the words of 
 Grote, "Thales and his immediate successors (like their 
 predecessors, the poets), accommodated their hypotheses to 
 intellectual impulses and aspirations of their own, with 
 little anxiety about giving satisfaction to others, still less 
 about avoiding inconsistencies or meeting objections. Each 
 of them fastened upon some one grand or imposing general- 
 ization (set forth often in verse), which he stretched as far 
 as it would go by various comparisons and illustrations, but 
 without any attention or deference to adverse facts or rea- 
 sonings. Provided that his general point of view was im- 
 pressive to the imagination, as the old religious scheme of 
 personal agencies was to the vulgar, he did not concern 
 himself about the condition of proof or disproof." 2 
 
 Plato while denying the attraction of the amber never- 
 theless links its effect with that of the magnet ; but 
 as to what it acts upon or wherein its action differs, if 
 at all, from that of the Heraclean stone, he is silent. 
 
 1 Plato: Timaeus, 80. Cicero refers to this in the De Natura Deorum, 
 and so does Timaeus of Locri, reputed to have been Plato's teacher, but 
 whose sole extant work is probably an abridgment of the Platonic Dia- 
 logues. (Timaeus Locrensis, ed. Serrani, p. 102. See, also, Smith : 
 Dict'y of Greek and Roman Antiquities, art. Timaeus.) 
 
 2 Grote : Aristotle. London, 1872; Vol. II., chap. XI., p. 154. 
 
38 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Where then does first explicit proof of the amber phenom- 
 enon, in fact, exist? 
 
 In the spring of B. C.. 334, Alexander of Macedor 
 crossed the Hellespont and began the famous campaign 
 which left him master of all the countries between the 
 Danube and the Ganges. At about the same time, Aris- 
 totle, who had been his preceptor, established a school at 
 the L,ykeum at Athens, and began to gather collections of 
 plants, animals and minerals, wherewith he illustrated his 
 lectures, delivered while walking up and down the leafy 
 paths which wound through the adjacent gardens. In 
 this undertaking he found in his powerful disciple a most 
 willing ally for Alexander not only contributed a vast 
 sum of money for the purchase of rare objects, but em- 
 ployed thousands of men to collect and transport to Athens 
 all that was strange to the Greeks in the distant countries 
 which had yielded to his arms. 1 
 
 To the gathering of this stupendous mass of material 
 may be traced three results of the highest import; first the 
 acquisition of the multitudinous physical facts which fill 
 the Aristotelian treatises on natural sciences. Second, the 
 foreshadowing of the inductive method of reasoning. 
 Third, the production by Theophrastus, the Lesbian, of a 
 history of stones, probably based directly upon the study 
 of Aristotle's collections. 
 
 I have said that Aristotle foreshadowed the inductive 
 theory. As any intellectual rise, coincident in time with 
 that of this great principle, must have been more or less 
 controlled by the mightier mental advancement, some ex- 
 planation of this statement is perhaps here necessary. 
 Because Aristotle gathered as has been stated a vast mass 
 of facts, it has been frequently maintained that the pro- 
 cess which Bacon calls that "double scale or ladder, as- 
 cendent and descendent, ascending from experiments to 
 
 1 Grote : Aristotle, i. i. 12. 
 
THEOPHRASTUS. 39 
 
 the invention of causes and descending from causes to the 
 invention of new experiments," 1 was not only foreshad- 
 owed but conceived by the Stagirite; even more than this, 
 elaborated into a logical tool ready for the world's use. 
 This view I have not taken. Although the duality of the 
 complex operation, whereof induction is the first and de- 
 duction the second half, as well as the especial necessity 
 for the inductive part, was recognized by Aristotle both in 
 actual declarations and by his unwearied industry in col- 
 lecting facts ; although, moreover, he perceived that all 
 science or theory must rest upon this foundation as a 
 whole, nevertheless he devotes himself only to the analysis 
 and to the formulating of the rules of the deductive part. 
 Thus it was, as Grote' 2 points out, that science afterwards 
 became disjoined from experience, and was presented as 
 consisting in deduction alone, while everything not de- 
 duction became degraded into un-scientific experience. 
 Of this last, abundant examples in the field under study 
 will hereafter be encountered, while on the other hand, 
 we shall find the true inductive method practically ap- 
 plied in the same field long before Francis Bacon trump- 
 eted its importance to the world. 
 
 Theophrastus was born B. C. 372, and died B. C. 287, 
 surviving Aristotle by thirty-five years, and succeeding 
 him as teacher at the Lykeum. His history describes what 
 he calls the stones and the earths, in contradistinction to 
 the metals; the first, as he supposed, being derived from 
 the earth itself, and the last from water. He refers not 
 merely to stones indigenous to Greece, but to others, of 
 foreign origin, such as the alabaster of Egypt, the pumice 
 of Sicily, the carbuncle of Carthage, Massilla, and of the 
 Nile cataracts and Syene, the emeralds of Tyre, Cyprus, 
 and Bactria, the pearls from the Indies and the shores of 
 the Red Sea, the gypsum of Syria, the cinnabar of Spain, 
 and so on, through a category so extensive, and represent- 
 
 *De Augmentis, vii. 7. 
 
 2 Grote: Aristotle i. c. 289; c. 160. 
 
4O THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 ing the minerals of so many different and distant countries, 
 that little doubt can remain that he wrote the book with 
 the collections of Aristotle directly before him. Here, for 
 the first time, is given definite information concerning the 
 amber attraction. "Amber," he says, u is a stone. It is 
 dug out of the earth in Liguria, and has a power of attrac- 
 tion. It is said to attract not only straws and small pieces 
 of sticks, but even copper and iron, if they are beaten into 
 thin pieces." 
 
 Then, bringing the amber and the lodestone into the 
 same attracting class, he adds : 
 
 "But the greatest and most evident attractive quality is 
 in that stone which attracts iron. Biit that is a scarce 
 stone and found in but few places. It ought, however, 
 to be ranked with these stones, as it possesses a like 
 quality." 
 
 It is a significant circumstance that there is no sugges- 
 tion of the soul animating the stones contained in Theo- 
 phrastus' terse and practical account of their qualities. 
 Their concretion, he says, is due to heat or cold, some 
 kinds of stones being occasioned by the one cause, others 
 by the other ; they differ likewise in the matter and man- 
 ner of the affluxes of the terrestrial particles from which 
 they are formed, and likewise they have "powers" of 
 their concreted masses, which are different from their 
 qualities of hardness, color, density, etc., and which in- 
 clude their capacity for acting upon other bodies or being 
 subject or not subject to be acted upon by them. Thus, 
 he points out, some are fusible, others not so, and others 
 can color water or cause petrifaction, and among these 
 powers is included the attractive quality. 
 
 There is no regarding this as anything but a strictly 
 scientific and material view of the subject, which if taken 
 in Aristotle's time, may perhaps account for that philoso- 
 pher's doubtful and cautious dealing with Thales' theory 
 of the prevailing soul. The calm and terse enumeration 
 of physical characteristics, and the theories and classifica- 
 
THK LYNCURIUM. 4! 
 
 tions based thereon, are as far distant from the crude 
 spiritual conception of Thales as the last is removed from 
 the older belief in the direct interposition of the gods. It 
 is not difficult even to imagine that Theophrastus looked 
 upon the Milesian doctrine with something of the disdain 
 with which the modern astronomer regards the planetary 
 speculations of the astrologers, or the modern chemist the 
 theories which once gave rise to the hope of achieving the 
 transmutation of metals. 
 
 Besides referring to the attractive qualities of the lode- 
 stone and the amber, Theophrastus, for the first time, 
 announces the existence of a third substance having iden- 
 tically the same properties as the amber, which he calls 
 Lapis lyncurius or lynx stone. He describes this as used 
 by engravers as the emerald is used, and that it has a very 
 solid texture, in confirmation of which, and also of the 
 statement of the identity of its attractive quality with that 
 of amber, he appeals to Diocles, an eminent physician of 
 Charysta, who is said to have ranked second only to Hip- 
 pocrates, but of whose works only a few fragments are 
 known. 
 
 It is, he says, pellucid, of a fire color, and is found by 
 digging; and then, with some detail, he declares it to be 
 derived from the secretions of the lynx whence its 
 name. 
 
 The precise nature of the lyncurium has long been a 
 bone of contention, and speculations concerning it have 
 been voluminous. The wrangle, occurring as it did in the 
 Middle Ages, is representative of the intellectual condition 
 of the times. From discussions as to what Theophrastus 
 meant, the commentators fell to arguing about what they 
 themselves meant, and the gloss writers of one century ex- 
 patiated upon the signification of the language of gloss 
 writers of the preceding century, and words were heaped 
 on words, until all sight of the original subject-matter 
 seemed to be lost. This continued until the end of 
 the seventeenth century, when the tourmaline and its 
 
42 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 attractive effect, when heated, became known, and there- 
 upon the contest ended as illogically as it had continued, 
 in the generally accepted notion that it was the tourmaline 
 to which Theophrastus referred. 
 
 Nevertheless there is nothing in the statement of Theo- 
 phrastus to warrant any such inference. He says that the 
 stone has the same attractive properties as the amber, but 
 not that these are excited by heating instead of by attri- 
 tion. The amber, he states, comes from Liguria, one 
 boundary of which was the Eridanus or Po river, on the 
 banks of which, as we have seen, the Greeks, from the 
 time of Herodotus, erroneously supposed the resin to be 
 found. Long before the time of Theophrastus, the figure 
 or Ligurian stone was well known. In both the original 
 Mosaic version of the Scriptures and in the Septuagint, the 
 "ligure" is the seventh stone in the breastplate of the 
 high priest, 1 and it is likewise the seventh stone in the 
 covering of the King of Tyre 2 in the Septuagint, though 
 not in the original. It may be, therefore, that confusion 
 was caused by the similarly sounding names of the Ligure 
 or Ligurian stone, which was the amber, with the L,yngur- 
 ian stone derived from the lynx a substance which Pliny 
 denounces as wholly mythical and non-existing. 3 
 
 Exodus xxxiii. 17-20. 2 Ezek. xxviii. 13. 
 
 3 Pliny : lib. xxxvii. c. 13. Marbcdeus, Archbishop of Remies, has 
 on the title page of his poem on Gems, attributed to the ancient Arabian 
 author Evax, a picture of the Jewish high priest wearing the breastplate, 
 one stone of which is marked " lincurius," and in his commentary he 
 gives the word as "lyngurius" (Marbodeus Callus, Cologne, 1539, P- 
 39). Erasmus in his commentary on St. Jerome, says tbat "lyngurius" 
 and "ligurius" are the same thing, and so does Dioscorides (Lib. 37. 3). 
 Camillus Leonardus (The Mirror of Stones, Venice, 1502, Eng. Trans., 
 London, 1750) notes the "lychinus" or "lychnites" as an "Indian gem 
 red in color," and mentions two species, one of which, purple in color, 
 being heated by the sun or by friction, attracts straws. This suggests 
 of course the tourmaline. But to the "lyncurius" or "lyncis" he at- 
 tributes no attractive quality, and he further notes the "ligurius," which 
 he says is ; 'like the electorius and draws straws." lolinus (lib. iii., 
 Utrecht, 1689, p. 59) agrees with Leonardus in defining the "lychuites," 
 
"'THE LYNCURIUM. 43 
 
 The weight of opinion of the old writers is to the effect 
 that the lyncurium and the amber were the same thing. 
 And so the lynx stone may be relegated to a place in that 
 cloud of delusions which always has darkened and probably 
 always will obscure the path of science. For the long dis- 
 pute concerning it, the. antiquarian may find some pleasure 
 in substituting the question whether Theophrastus erred 
 or whether the stone had its true origin in the ignorance 
 of that ancient bibliophile, Apellikon of Teos, who found 
 the original manuscripts of the philosopher nearly de- 
 stroyed after some two centuries' exposure to the damp 
 and worms of the cellar of the heirs of Neleus, and pro- 
 ceeded to fill up the gaps after his own fashion. 1 
 
 but says nothing about its attraction when heated. De Boot (Gem. et 
 Lap. Hist., Leyden, 1636) declares that "lychnites" is a kind of marble, 
 and ascribes no attractive power to it, and gives the "lyncurius" as 
 clear like aniber, drawing straws and light bodies in the same way. See 
 Aldrovandus, Musseum Metallicum, Bologna, 1636, p. 405; also Agricola, 
 Delia Natura de le Cose Fossili. Lib. IV., Venice, 1549, p. 236. 
 
 ^trabo, xiii., 609. 
 
 NOTE. If a third substance, having the same attractive quality as the 
 amber, was known to the ancients, it was probably jet a species of lig- 
 nite resembling cannel coal, but harder and susceptible of a high polish. 
 It does not seem possible, however, to resolve that doubt, owing to the 
 many kinds of coal and other fossil deposits which not only old writers 
 but even modern commentators constantly confuse. Theophrastus 
 speaks of a material which is plainly anthracite coal, and Pliny (xxxvi. 
 18), of the Gagates, his description of which answers generally to that 
 of jet; but neither author mentions any phenomenon similar to that of 
 the amber as pertaining to it. Later writers apply the word "gagates" 
 to almost any black bituminous material, though they commonly mean 
 "jet " by the term. Leonardus regards the gagate as another species of 
 amber "black amber" in contradistinction to yellow, and he describes 
 it as "black, light, dry and lucid, not transparent, and if put into fire 
 has, as it were, the smell of pitch. Being heated with rubbing it attracts 
 straws and chaff." Marbodeus gives almost the same account and states 
 that it is found in Britain, where it is still obtained in the tertiary clays 
 along the Yorkshire coast. This unfortunate confusion of yellow amber 
 and jet, probably first due to Leonardus, has rendered it impossible to 
 tell, from the references to amber attraction by the writers of the six- 
 teenth and even of the seventeenth century, which substance is meant. 
 
44 THE INTELLECTUAL RISK IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Mythology, the controlling factor in the world's intel- 
 lectual progress, had given way to philosophy, and now 
 philosophy in its turn was beginning to yield its power 
 into the hands of science. 
 
 The first great university of Alexandria, begun under 
 Alexander the Great, flourished under the patronage of 
 the Ptolemies for nearly four centuries. It was the gath- 
 ering place for philosophers from every part of the world. 
 Its students at one time numbered fourteen thousand souls 
 and its libraries contained seven hundred thousand vol- 
 umes. 
 
 Here were made the discoveries of Archimedes in 
 mechanics, of Euclid and Apollonius Pergaeus in mathe- 
 matics, of Hipparchus in astronomy and with the selopile 
 of Hero, here began the steam engine. All of this great 
 work was done before the year 150 B. C. We need only 
 compare the category of Hero's inventions with the single 
 material notion of Thales, to perceive the radical change 
 in thought which had occurred. It is the contrast of the 
 force-pump and the water-soul. It was not the crude and 
 imperfect classifications of Aristotle which accomplished 
 this. The inductive theory in that stage of the world's 
 history could not have established itself, not merely for 
 want of knowledge of a sufficiency of facts which would 
 demonstrate its truth in any particular instance, but also 
 because there was no group of natural facts which could 
 be clearly seen, unobscured by mists of attending specu- 
 lation and superstition. 
 
 Amid all this activity the progress which was made in 
 knowledge of the amber and of the lodestone was very 
 small. Pliny 1 has the dubious assertion that the architect 
 Timochares began to erect a vaulted roof of lodestone in 
 
 Singularly enough, as we shall see in dealing with the first-named period, 
 it appears not at all unlikely that the English were then much more 
 familiar with the attraction of jet than they were with that of amber. 
 
 1 Pliny : lib. xxxiv. 42. Vitruvius : De Archit, lib. iv. ; time, circa 
 31 B. C. 
 
MAGNETIC SUSPENSION. 45 
 
 the Temple of Arsinoe (wife and sister of Ptolemy Phila- 
 delplms) at Alexandria, in order that the iron statue of the 
 queen might have the appearance of hanging suspended 
 in the air. But this work was never accomplished, says 
 the historian, because both the king and the architect 
 died. 
 
 This is the same story which, as we have seen in the pre- 
 ceding chapter, the Jewish writers tell of the suspended 
 golden calves of Jeroboam, and the world has never been 
 able to get rid of it. Again and again has it been pointed 
 out, for a thousand years and more, that no piece of iron 
 can be balanced in the air by magnetic attractions oppo- 
 sitely exerted; but the vitality of the falsehood seems even 
 greater than that of the refutations. At the same time 
 there can be little doubt that in some temple, and prob- 
 ably one in Egypt, and at about the time of the Univer- 
 sity of Alexandria, there was an object held up apparently 
 by no other support than magnetic attraction; and very 
 probably held down by a wire or cord invisible to the 
 spectators. Ausonius 1 directly disputes the statement of 
 Pliny that the construction of a magnetic vault was aban- 
 doned. St. Augustine, 2 St. Isidore, 8 and Cedrinus 4 all 
 affirm the existence of the iron statue suspended between 
 ceiling and pavement. Clement 5 of Alexandria causes the 
 Sibyl to sing of u thou, Serapis lying amid rude stones, 
 thou fallest most miserable in the ruins of Egypt," and 
 his scholiast, Clycas, interprets the u lapides rudos multos" 
 as magnets, of which, he says, u many were used in the 
 temple of Serapis on all sides of an iron sun." So that 
 the statue of Arsinoe, in her own temple never completed, 
 may have become confused with an iron sun which did 
 
 1 Eidyllum x, Mosella, vers. 314, 320 ; time, circa 390 A. D. 
 
 2 De Civ. Dei, lib., 21, 6; time, circa 415 A. D. 
 'Originum, lib. xvi., cap. 4; time, circa 595 A. D. 
 
 4 Geo. Cedrinus : Compend. Hist, c. 267 ; time, circa 1057 A. D. Also 
 Suidas : Lex. cit. sup. Art. Magnet; time, circa 1081 A. D. 
 5 In Protreptico, 15 ; time, circa 192 A, D. 
 
46 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 exist ill the Serapeum; and that there, were, in fact, two 
 such different things Ruffinus 1 and others assert. 
 
 But note the expansive character of the tradition, and 
 the variety of its transmutations. The horse of Bellero- 
 phon, on the island of Rhodes, says the venerable Bede, 2 
 weighed 5000 pounds, and was suspended by magnets. 
 Martial 3 says that the effigy of Mausoleus was held over 
 his tomb in like manner. As the story grew older, King 
 Theodoric,* in a letter to Boesius, applies it to a statue of 
 Cupid in the temple of Diana of Kphesus. And then last, 
 but not least, it reached its final resting place in the legend 
 of Mahomet's coffin. Since this myth furnishes the sub- 
 stance of one of the most common metaphors in use, the 
 facts on which it rests, or rather does not rest, are worth 
 stating. 
 
 After Mahomet's death, the Meccans and Medinans dis- 
 puted possession of the body. Still another faction wished 
 the sepulchre to be in Jerusalem, as the proper place of 
 burial for all prophets. Finally Abu-Bekr interfered and 
 announced that he had heard Mahomet himself during his 
 life direct the selection of Medina. Thereupon a vault 
 was dug beneath the spot where stood the bed on which 
 the prophet slept, in the house of Ayesha. In order to 
 keep the coffin clear of the floor of the vault, it was sup- 
 ported on nine bricks, the earth being heaped about the 
 sides. That is the entire extent to which the coffin was 
 suspended in the air namely, by nine bricks put under it. 5 
 
 : Aquil. lib., vi. Histor., c. 22; time, circa. 390 A. D. S. 
 Prosperus : De Praedicatione, 3, c. 38 ; time, circa 446 A. D. 
 
 2 Beda.: de Sept. Mirac. Mundi ; time, circa 703 A. D. 
 
 3 Lib. De Spectaculis, time, circa 78 A. D. 
 4 Cassiodor. : Variat Lib., i, Ep. 45; time, circa 500 A. D. 
 f 'Gagnier: Histoire de la Vie de Mahomet. 
 
 Gibbon's note (the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 50) 
 as to this is as follows: The Greeks and Latins have invented and pro- 
 pagated the vulgar and ridiculous story that Mahomet's iron tomb is 
 suspended in the air at Mecca (cfjiia juereupi^6fj.vov, Laonicus Chalcon- 
 dyles : De Rebus Turcicis, 1. iii. 66) by the action of equal and potent 
 
LUCRETIUS ON THE MAGNET. 47 
 
 The Mahometans have always ridiculed the tradition, and 
 certainly it is exceedingly difficult, short of assuming it 
 to have been made out of whole cloth, to find any basis 
 for it in the facts above stated. There is, however, an- 
 other version, credited to one Bremond, 1 an indefinite 
 "traveler of Marseilles," who asserts that he saw u above 
 Mahomet's tomb a magnet, two feet long and three fingers 
 thick, from which is suspended a golden crescent enriched 
 with jewels, by means of a big nail in the middle;" but 
 this obviously lacks the essential feature of the something 
 being held floating in the air by magnetic attraction. 
 
 Meanwhile, the knowledge of the magnet had spread 
 beyond the confines of Greece and Asia Minor, in other 
 directions than to the southward. It had moved to the 
 west and to Rome. The Roman, Lucretius, 2 in that great- 
 est of all didactic poems, u On the Nature of Things," 
 tells of the Samothracian rings as still existing (95 to 52 
 B. C.), and as having been seen by himself. 
 
 "You may see, sometimes," he says, "five or more sus- 
 pended in succession and tossing about in the light airs, 
 one always hanging down from one and attached to its 
 lower side, and each in turn, one from the other, experi- 
 encing the binding power of the stone : with such a con- 
 tinued current its force flies through all." 
 
 Here is the first suggestion of a moving current travers- 
 ing a conductor, in centra-distinction to a soul or virtue 
 merely pervading the object. The distinction between the 
 
 lodestones (Diet, de Biyle. Mahom. Rem. E E. FF.). Without anv 
 philosophical inquiries, it may suffice that, i. The prophet was not buried 
 at Mecca ; and 2. That his tomb at Medina, which has been visited by 
 millions, is placed on the ground. (^Reland : de Relig. Moham., 1. ii., c. 
 19, p. 209-211.) 
 
 1 Azuni : Dissertation sur la Boussole, Paris, 1810, p. 27. 
 
 2 Lucretius : De Natura Rerum, Book 6. Translated by H. A. J. 
 Muuro. Cambridge, 1866. 
 
48 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 magnetic current flowing through the rings and its effect 
 exerted upon the space around the magnet is also drawn, 
 for in addition to the continuing current, Lucretius says 
 that there streams from the stone "very many seeds, or a 
 current, if you will, which dispels, with blows, all the air 
 which lies between the iron and the stone," thus produc- 
 ing, as he imagines, a vacuum in front of the iron, into 
 which the air pressure "thrusts and pushes it on, as the 
 wind a ship and its sails ;" and on this theory he accounts 
 for attraction. Furthermore, as Lucretius describes his 
 "streams" as continuously circulating around the lode- 
 stone, the vortex magnetic theory of Descartes is here 
 curiously foreshadowed, if not actually suggested. 
 
 Up to this time, as we have seen, there is nothing in the 
 ancient authors indicating any knowledge by them of the 
 repulsive effect of the magnet. It is always spoken of as 
 drawing the iron. When, however, two magnets are 
 brought together, attraction occurs only when their ////like 
 poles are presented to one another the north pole attract- 
 ing the south, and vice versa. But if like poles are 
 approximated, just the opposite result happens, and the 
 magnets mutually repel. It is immaterial whether two 
 lodestones, or one lodestone and a magnetized piece of iron, 
 or two magnetized pieces of iron, such, for instance, as 
 two compass needles, be employed ; the result is always 
 the same. Hence, as iron that has been brought into con- 
 tact with the lodestone (as was the case with the Samo- 
 thracian rings) very readily becomes magnetized by 
 induction from the stone, it is evident that there was a 
 possibility of two rings having become magnetized in this 
 way, being accidentally approximated with their like poles 
 facing one another, and under conditions when one or the 
 other of them might be free to move under the repulsive 
 force. Whatever may have been observed as to this at an 
 earlier time is not known ; but an unmistakable and, prob- 
 ably, the first recorded recognition of the phenomenon ap- 
 pears in the poem of Lucretius. 
 
THE GERM OF THE ELECTRIC MOTOR. 49 
 
 u Sometimes, too," he says, "it happens that the nature 
 of iron is repelled from this stone, being in the habit of 
 flying from and following it in turns." 
 
 The allusion is now, not to the current which flows 
 through the rings, but to the influence of the stone upon 
 the iron, merely placed in its neighborhood or, as we 
 now say, in its " field of force" and not in contact with it. 
 He is describing the turning of the ring, so as first to pre- 
 sent one pole to the lodestone and then the other, for a 
 ring usually has its poles located diametrically opposite 
 each other. If the ring were supported so that its poles 
 could be thus alternately presented to one and the same 
 pole of the lodestone, then, whenever the ring pole was of 
 the same name as that of the lodestone [as north pole to 
 north pole, or south pole to south pole], the ring would be 
 repelled, and would swing away from the lodestone ; but 
 if the ring pole were of different name from that of the 
 lodestone [as north pole to south pole, or south pole to 
 north pole], then the ring would be drawn to the lode- 
 stone, and if the latter were moved, the ring would follow 
 it. Hence, by turning the ring to and fro, as on an axis, 
 it could thus be made to swing or vibrate backwards or 
 forwards in front of the lodestone, or, as Lucretius ex- 
 plains, the ring will fly from or follow the stone "in 
 turns." Here is the first foreshadowing of the motion of 
 an armature for such is the ring before the pole of a 
 magnet, by change in relative polarity of magnet and 
 armature ; in the light of present knowledge we might 
 even regard this as the advent into the world of the con- 
 version of the energy of electricity into mechanical motion, 
 and the germ of the electric motor. 
 
 Lucretius says, further, that he has seen the Samothra- 
 cian rings "jump up" when the magnet stone had been 
 "placed under." It is unquestionably true that in a sus- 
 pended chain of rings, as he describes, the pole at the bot- 
 tom of the lowest ring would be of the same name as that 
 of the pole of the supporting lodestone say, north. If 
 4 
 
50 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 now, the same or north pole of a second lodestone were 
 brought up to the lower part of that last ring, then that 
 ring would be repelled and "jump up" exactly as Lu- 
 cretius says. 
 
 Bven more remarkable than this is his statement that 
 iron filings "will rave within brass basins" when the 
 stone is placed beneath. This was the first perception of 
 the field of force about a magnet by noting not merely the 
 effect of its attraction or repulsion exerted upon the pole 
 of another magnet brought into it, but upon loose iron 
 filings free to dispose themselves therein along the lines 
 of force. Then, under the astonished gaze of the poet, 
 the particles of metal arranged themselves in the curious 
 curves of the magnetic spectrum, and rose like bristles in 
 front of the poles. And as he moved the stone beneath 
 the brass basin which held them, he saw them fly from one 
 side of it to the other, sometimes grouping themselves for 
 an instant in dense bunches, then leaping apart and scat- 
 tering all so incoherently and so wildly, that it is small 
 wonder that he regarded them as raving in their frantic 
 desire to break away from the mysterious force. We 
 shall find the performances of these raving iron filings 
 astonishing the philosophers of the sixteenth century and 
 remaining always a puzzle until Faraday and Maxwell 
 found the key to it within our own time. 
 
 The explanation which Lucretius gives of magnetic at- 
 traction is repeated by Plutarch 1 who wrote a hundred and 
 fifty years later and who applies it also to the amber attrac- 
 tion. He says, "that amber attracts none of those things 
 that are brought to it, any more than the lodestoue. That 
 stone emits a matter which reflects the circumambient air 
 and thereby forms a void. That expelled air puts in mo- 
 tion the air before it, which making a circle returns to the 
 void space, driving before it towards the lodestone, the 
 iron which it meets in its way." He then proposes a 
 
 Plutarch : Platonic Quaest, torn. 2. 
 
MAGNETIC REPULSION. 5! 
 
 difficulty "why the vortex which circulates around the 
 lodestone does not make its way to wood or stone as well 
 as iron," and, again like Descartes, answers, that u the 
 pores of the iron have an analogy to the particles of the 
 vortex circulating about the lodestone which yields them 
 such access as they can find in no other bodies whose pores 
 are differently formed." 
 
 Plutarch also refers to magnetic repulsion and says that 
 u like as iron drawn by a stone often follows it, but often 
 also is turned and driven away in the opposite direction, 
 so also is the wholesome good and regular motion of the 
 world." 
 
 It must not be assumed, because of the interpretations 
 which it is possible to make at the present time of the 
 magnetic phenomena mentioned by Lucretius, that any 
 actual knowledge of the polarity of the lodestone existed 
 in his day. Not until centuries later did this come to the 
 civilized world. 
 
 Even when in course of time the recurrence of the re- 
 pelling effect of the magnet attracted attention, no concep- 
 tion of polarity resulted. On the contrary, it was for a 
 long time believed that the stone which repelled was a 
 totally different stone from that which attracted iron. 
 This supposed repelling stone is described for the first time 
 by Pliny, 1 who calls it the "theamedes" and says that it 
 comes from "Ethiopia, not far from Zmiris." For the 
 first thirteen centuries of our era, belief in its existence 
 was implicit. It served conveniently to explain mag- 
 netic repulsion, and hence, as frequently happens in such 
 circumstances, it prevented investigation of that effect. 
 
 For discoveries concerning the amber, search may now 
 be made through many centuries in vain. Plato, as has 
 been stated, had linked together the attraction of the 
 amber and the Heraclean stone, and Epicurus had attrib- 
 uted both to the same cause, namely, atoms and invisible 
 
 1 Pliny: lib. xxxvi. 25. 
 
52 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 bodies outwardly projected from the attracting body com- 
 bining with and bringing back the body attracted. That 
 seems to have convinced the Greeks and Romans then, 
 and the rest of the world for the ensuing two thousand 
 years, that the amber and the magnet were interrelated ; 
 or, at all events, that they both attracted for exactly the 
 same reason, and therefore nothing was to be gained by 
 looking into the subject further. As for the Egyptians, it 
 is doubtful whether they ever brought amber into exten- 
 sive use at all, before quite a late period of their history. 
 Only a few amber beads have been found in their tombs, 
 and these last were of the 2d and 3d centuries of our era. 1 
 
 The great Greek physician, Asclepiades, 2 recommends 
 pills of amber as a specific for hemorrhages, and that 
 seems to be the first medical use of the resin. His equally 
 eminent brother of Rome 3 has scant mention of it in his 
 great work on materia medica. 
 
 All that the civilized world had learned concerning the 
 lodestone and the amber has now been in substance stated. 
 It is briefly summed up in the knowledge of the attractive 
 capacity in each, of the ability of the magnet apparently to 
 transfer its powers to iron, and of the existence of (sup- 
 posedly) a kind of lodestone by which iron is repelled. 
 
 1 " An amber necklace, about 22 inches long, was also found in a grave 
 here one- third of it the small beads only were kept at Bulak, as amber 
 was almost, or quite, unknown in Egypt before." Tanis. 2d Memoir. 
 Egypt. Explorat. Fund. W. F. Petrie. London, 1889. Per contra 
 Clemens (Clem. Alex. Paedagog. iii. c. 2,) speaks of the sanctuary in 
 Egyptian temples as shining "with gold, silver and amber." Possibly 
 the word "amber " here is a mistranslation of the similar term for the 
 electrum alloy. See Wilkinson : Anc. Egypt, i. 246, Boston, 1883. 
 
 2 Lib., vii., de Coinp. Med. Time, circa 200 A. D. 
 
 3 Lib. de Simp. Med. See for this and preceding reference, Aldro- 
 vandus, Musaeum Metallicum, Bologna, 1648, p. 415. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 How or when the tendency of a freely-suspended mag- 
 net to set itself in a nearly north and south direction was 
 first discovered is a question, the answer to which is prob- 
 ably forever lost The civilized world remained in igno- 
 rance of the fact for nearly eighteen centuries after the 
 attractive effect of the lodestone had become well known. 
 Although, as I have already stated, it is not impossible to 
 conjecture that the phenomenon was familiar to the an- 
 cestors of primitive civilization, who, from the highlands 
 of Central Asia, dispersed in many races over the earth ; 
 yet the knowledge came to the people of the Middle Ages 
 anew, through the invention of the first and greatest of 
 electrical instruments the mariner's compass ; first, in its 
 utilization of the mysterious force existing in the magnet ; 
 greatest, in that it has contributed more than any other 
 product of human intelligence to the progress and welfare 
 of mankind. 
 
 The obscurity which veils the discovery of the under- 
 lying principle of the compass in the remote past seems to 
 extend to all the circumstances in which that contrivance 
 originated. It has been ascribed to the Greeks, the Phoe- 
 nicians, the Etruscans, the Egyptians and the Chinese. 
 It is said to have first appeared on the ships of mediaeval 
 Italy, and yet to have been first known in mediaeval 
 France. It is also claimed as German, Arabian, English 
 and Norse. 
 
 It is necessary to examine briefly the principal argu- 
 ments advanced in behalf of these several nations. In 
 this way we shall best perceive the conditions which 
 caused progress or checked it, and so trace through its 
 many channels the rise which we are following. 
 
 (53) 
 
54 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 The review of Greek knowledge of the magnet, already 
 made, is, perhaps, in itself sufficient to show how slight 
 must be the basis for any hypothesis that the compass is 
 of Hellenic origin. The commerce of ancient Greece was 
 of limited extent, and did not involve long voyages her 
 ships, in fact, entering the Turrhene seas in constant fear 
 of the Etruscans. They were held as interlopers on the 
 west coast of Italy even up to 533 B. C., 1 the carrying trade 
 meanwhile being mainly confined to the Carthaginian 
 and Etruscan fleets. Nevertheless much has been written 
 in support of the theory that Homer was familiar with 
 the compass because, in the Odyssey, he speaks of the 
 Phocian ships which sailed u tho' clouds and darkness veil 
 the encumbered sky" the argument being that ships 
 could not possibly "fly fearless" through darkness and 
 clouds, unless provided with a binnacle and its appurten- 
 ances. 2 Such contentions are hardly worthy of serious 
 consideration. The application of similar reasoning to the 
 passage in the same poem which mentions 
 
 "Wondrous ships, self-moved, instinct with mind, 
 No helm secures their course, no pilot guides, 
 man, intelligent they plough the tides," 3 
 
 might with equal propriety be taken to show the famili- 
 arity of the bard with steam, and possibly electric, propul- 
 sion, or even with the still unsolved problem of automatic 
 steering. 
 
 The long voyages of the sailors of Sidon and Arvad have 
 led many to regard the compass as of Phoenician origin, 
 under the assumption that such journeys could not have 
 been made without its help. The writers of the seven- 
 teenth century are fond of asserting that the Phoenician 
 
 1 Gray : History of Etruria, I, 173. 
 
 2 W. Cook: An Inquiry into the Patriarchal and Druidical Religion. 
 London, 1874. Cook's argument is upheld by Salverte: Philosophy of 
 Magic (trans, by Thomson), N. Y., 1847, vol. II. 
 
 3 Odyssey, viii, 610. 
 
ANCIENT VOYAGES TO OPHIR. 55 
 
 ships sent out by King Solomon must have been equipped 
 with it, because it is no more than reasonable to assume 
 that Solomon's wisdom included such valuable knowledge. 
 On the other hand, remarks the old chronicler, 1 relaxing 
 his gravity for the sake of the pun, "Solomon had all 
 the knowledge necessary to Morall, Politike and saving 
 wisdom, and to the end for which God gave him so large 
 a heart. But the sea hath bounds, and so had Solomon's 
 wisdom. Somewhat was left for John Baptist to be 
 greater than he, or any borne of women. Neither was the 
 knowledge of the compass necessary to Solomon, who, 
 without it, could and did compass the gold of Ophir.'' 
 
 The fact that Phoenician vessels went to this Ophir was 
 also deemed another good reason for believing the needle 
 to have been on them; this, mainly, because no one could 
 say definitely where Ophir was, and hence nothing was 
 easier than to insist that its situation lay at the very ends 
 of the earth, whither ships could not possibly find their 
 way unaided. Thus, some writers place Ophir in Peru, 
 others at the extremities of India, from which last place 
 the traveler Bruce removed it. 2 The geographer D'An- 
 ville 3 subsequently found a suitable situation for it in "the 
 Kingdom of Sofaula," in Africa. 
 
 Finally, however, the chroniclers concluded it to be safer 
 to rest upon the tradition that it took Solomon's ships 
 three years to go to Ophir (wherever it was) and return; 
 hence, on the chronological argument only, they insisted 
 that the distance must have been vast. But Huet, 4 Bishop 
 of Avranches, disposed of this inference by explaining that 
 the first year was used for the outward voyage and the 
 second for the return, and the third for laying up and re- 
 pairing the ships; and then he adds with much wisdom, 
 
 1 Purchas, his Pilgrims, i, \ 8. 
 
 1 Bruce : Travels in India. Book II., Chap. IV. 
 
 3 Veuatison : De 1'Invention de la Bonssole Nautique, Naples, 1808. 
 
 * Huet : Des Navigations de Solomon, c. 8, 3. 
 
56 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 44 It is great error to judge of ancient navigation by present. 
 To-day sailors go on at night and in cloudy weather, while 
 anciently they came to anchor. The ancients followed 
 every angle and sinuosity of the coast. The author of the 
 Periplous of the Red Sea proves that the Egyptians got to 
 India only by following the coast in little ships," and he 
 closes with Pliny's even more sagacious remark "The 
 desire for gain rendered India less distant than the rest of 
 the world. " The appearance of Phoenician ships in the 
 Persian Gulf in 697-695 B. C. gave, however, great im- 
 petus to commerce with the far East, for they were much 
 larger, better built and more sea-worthy than the vessels 
 of the Babylonians and Assyrians. Voyages in the Indian 
 Ocean in search of new markets then became longer, and 
 finally the southern shores of Shantung (East China) were 
 reached in about 675 B. C. 1 
 
 There is no trustworthy evidence, however, that the 
 Phoenicians, despite their skill as iron workers, had any 
 knowledge of the directive property of the magnet. Their 
 most ancient book, written by Sanconiathon, u the phil- 
 osopher of Tyre," deals with the progress of the human 
 mind and the discoveries made by man, and, in accounting 
 for these last, says that "it was the God Ouranos who 
 devised Betulae, contriving stones that moved as having 
 life.'' On this passage the theory that the betulae must 
 have been the lodestone has frequently been based, and 
 Sir William Betham asserts unequivocally, though none 
 the less inconsequently, that this statement is quite suffi- 
 cient to prove the acquaintance of the Phoenicians with 
 the compass. 2 On the other hand, it has been elaborately 
 demonstrated by one author that the betulae were not ani- 
 mated stones at all, but merely stones figuratively so con- 
 sidered, or, in other words, idols; 3 while other writers 
 
 1 De Laconperie : Western Origin of Early Chinese Civilization, Lon- 
 don, 1894. 
 
 2 Sir W. Betham : Etruria-Celtica, London, 1842, II., 8, et seq. 
 
 3 Fourmont : Reflexions sur les Anciens Penples, Paris, I747 
 
THE PLACING OF THE GREAT PYRAMID. 57 
 
 have argued in support of the conclusion that the stones 
 were probably pieces of magnetic iron from meteorites, 
 worn as divining talismans by the priests of Cybele, who 
 supposed them to contain souls which had fallen from 
 heaven. 1 
 
 I have already alluded to the lack of evidence tending 
 to show that the Egyptians of the Pharaonic period had 
 knowledge of the lodestone, whence it necessarily follows 
 that they could have known nothing of the compass. 
 Nevertheless, upon a contrary assumption, it has been 
 frequently maintained that the orientation of the Great 
 Pyramid is such as to indicate, with reasonable proba- 
 bility, that the compass needle was used in establishing 
 the positions of its faces. 2 
 
 The difficulty with this supposition is that the Pyramid 
 is, in fact, placed with too great accuracy for the work to 
 be done even by the best modern compass. Its sides face 
 astronomically the north, south, east and west; not to the 
 cardinal points of the compass, but to the azimuthal direc- 
 tion of the earth's axis and to a line at right angles thereto. 
 The compass, however, is subject to variations, due to reg- 
 ular daily, monthly, yearly and centennial changes in the 
 earth's magnetic field, which controls it. Hence, the 
 task of figuring backward the probable position of the 
 needle at the time of the building of the Pyramid a 
 period which is in doubt might well cause despair in 
 the most skillful investigator of terrestrial magnetism; 
 for, in the least interval which has elapsed, the needle has 
 probably swung over large angles from the true north, 
 back and forth many times. But, granting such a possi- 
 bility, still it may be safely questioned whether the most 
 accomplished surveyor or topographical engineer of to-day 
 could run the lines of the pyramid faces, by the aid of the 
 best modern compass, with no greater error than 19' 58", 
 
 1 Ennemoser : History of Magic, II., 2*7. 
 2 Gliddon: Otia JEgyptiaca, London, 1849. 
 
58 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 which the French Academy, in 1799, determined to be the 
 entire amount of variation of these faces from the true 
 astronomical direction. 1 Accidental mechanical imperfec- 
 tions in pivoting the needle, or in the shape of the latter, 
 might easily result in far greater error. The assumption 
 that an instrument free from fault existed in such remote 
 antiquity is, of course, untenable. 2 
 
 The spirit of maritime enterprise which animated the 
 Phoenicians and Carthaginians, and even the Greeks, was 
 never rife among the Egyptians of early eras, and, at later 
 epochs, they were content to await the importation of goods 
 by the foreign merchants, and to do their bartering on 
 their own territory. They had no timber for ship-building, 
 and dreaded the sea. It was only after the ports were 
 opened and commerce was forced upon her that Kgpyt 
 became a maritime state, and obtained her timber from 
 Syria, and then Necho (610 B. C.) built his navy, part in 
 the Mediterranean and part in the Red Sea, and expended 
 120,000 lives in trying to cut a canal which would enable 
 him to unite his fleets. This failing, he sent the Red Sea 
 squadron to discover a route around the African continent, 
 which it did, rounding the Cape of Good Hope and enter- 
 ing the Mediterranean; but, as the ships sailed from point 
 to point along the coast, they expended three years in 
 making the trip, and so the king decided the undertaking 
 of no value. 3 It is hardly necessary to add that a mari- 
 
 1 C. Piazzi Smyth : Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid, 3rd Ed., 
 Lond., 1877, 67. 
 
 2 It has been argued that the Egyptian btia-n-pe, celestial iron, signifies 
 magnetic iron : and that the expression res-mehit-ba, south-north iron, 
 in the inscription of the pyramid of Unas (last Pharaoh of the 5th 
 dynasty), if correctly read, would indicate an Egyptian knowledge of 
 polarity. This, however, seems to be unsupported conjecture. De 
 Lacouperie : Chinese Civilization, cit. sup. Deveria : Le Fer et 1' Aimant 
 dans 1'ancienne Egypte, 1870. 
 
 8 Rawlinson : Ancient Monarchies, ii ; History of Egypt. Draper: 
 Intell. Dev. of Europe, i., 78 et seq. Kenrick: Anc. Egypt under the 
 Pharaohs, N. Y., 1853, vol. n, 36. Plutarch: Isis and Osiris, 363, c. 32. 
 
THE ETRUSCANS 59 
 
 time showing such as this affords no help to the inference 
 of a knowledge of the mariner's compass. 
 
 Of the ancient Mediterranean nations, there still re- 
 mains to be considered that strange people which came by 
 thousands and tens of thousands from Lydia, and with 
 their great fleet descended upon the astonished Umbrians, 
 as unexpectedly as if they had fallen from the sky. The 
 Rasenna, as they called themselves, or as we now term 
 them the u Etruscans," "were not like any other nation," 
 says Dionysius, u in either speech or manners," and mod- 
 ern ethnology brings them into the great Finno-Ugric 
 family, and makes them relatives of the Finns, the Tar- 
 tars and the Mongolians. 
 
 Here was a nation which, if it did not undertake the 
 long voyages of the Phoenicians, for which there was no 
 need since, as we have seen, it got its amber by a much 
 more direct road, and probably acquired its other foreign 
 supplies by the simple and convenient process of piracy 
 fostered the sailor and all his arts certainly from a period 
 thirteen centuries before our era. The Etruscans invented 
 the anchor and the cutwater or prow, and stamped the latter 
 on their coins. Likewise they placed on the bows of their 
 ships, small idols pointing the way in advance, and we re- 
 tain them still in the modern figure-head. 1 Their augurs 
 consecrated the spot on which a temple was to be built by 
 marking on the ground and in the air, lines at right angles 
 indicating regions called u cardines," and hence our word 
 "cardinal," and our denomination "cardinal points." 
 These regions were subdivided so that the ground occupied 
 by the building had sixteen points, each giving its peculiar 
 augury. 2 They laid out their roads in straight lines, and 
 built great sewers and tunnels for irrigation, water-supply 
 and drainage throughout their territory; and under such 
 
 'Dempster: De Etruria Reg., Florence, 1723, lib. vii., c. Ixxxi. 441; 
 Suidas: Lexicon, verb. Pattaeci. Herod: lib. iii., 37; Gray: History of 
 
 Etruria, i., 317, 411. 
 
 2 Gray : History of Etruria, cit. sup. 
 
60 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 conditions, especially in subterranean works, that it is diffi- 
 cult to perceive how the alignments could have been 
 made without the aid of the magnetic needle. 
 
 But there is nothing tangible to suggest Etruscan knowl- 
 edge of the compass, except a single object found in the 
 tombs, which bears an incoherent inscription concerning 
 "steering on the ocean by night and day," a bas-relief of 
 a man holding a rudder, and an eight-pointed star, very 
 like the similar star which has been on the compass card 
 ever since the latter appeared in Europe, and commonly 
 known as the "rose of the winds." It also exhibits, at 
 the end of the ray corresponding to the north, a figure 
 closely resembling the "fleur de lis" or "Lilly," which 
 also appeared upon the very earliest compasses. The 
 terminals of the rays corresponding to N. E., S. E., N. W., 
 and S. W., are similar and rounded, and thus differ from 
 the sharp apexes corresponding to the cardinal points. 
 
 It was originally argued that the object was in fact a 
 compass dial above which the needle was suspended by a 
 fine thread or wire, 1 but with the refutation' 2 of this theory 
 by the Italian antiquaries who showed it to be a lamp, 
 archaeological interest in it ceased. Nevertheless the con- 
 jecture is still possible that the dial which first appeared 
 in Italian compasses may have been copied by the medi- 
 aeval navigators from some such Etruscan design. 
 
 With this brief survey, we may lay aside as unproved 
 by the evidence outlined, the various hypotheses which at- 
 tribute the invention of the compass to one or the other of 
 the ancient nations bordering upon the Mediterranean. 
 With regard to the Phoenicians and Greeks, there is no ap- 
 parent ground even for reasonable conjecture that they had 
 any knowledge of the magnet beyond its attractive power; 
 while as to the Egyptians it is extremely doubtful that 
 they knew anything of the lodestone at all. 
 
 1 Sir W. Betham : Etruria-Celtica, cit. sup. 
 
 2 Dennis : The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, London, 1878. II., 
 105. 
 
THE NOMAD RACES. 6l 
 
 Whether the Etruscans, however, were completely 
 ignorant of magnetic polarity is open to question not 
 merely because of the considerations relating to them and 
 already noted, but for another and broader reason; their 
 race connection with the Mongolians. Consideration of 
 this is a natural prelude to the discussion of the alleged 
 Chinese invention of the compass and hence to that 
 of the part which Asiatics have taken in the intellectual 
 rise under review. 
 
 Among the races of mankind which are included in 
 'neither the Aryan nor the Semitic nations, there is a 
 group termed the Turanian, which comprises all those 
 which can be philologically proved to have a genetic con- 
 nection, and which therefore constitute a true linguistic 
 family. The most important branch of the Turanians is 
 made up of original inhabitants of the great Asiatic table- 
 land, and in these are included the Finnic, Samojedic, 
 Turkic or Tartaric, Mongolic and Tungusic tribes, or as 
 they are sometimes collectively termed, the Ugric or Altaic 
 nations. 
 
 These people have certain well-marked peculiarities, 
 which distinguish them from all other races. While the 
 Aryan and Semite nations are found inhabiting large areas 
 of continuous territory never separated by any great inter- 
 val from others of their own race, and moving by land by 
 a system of lateral extension, so that they colonize by in- 
 dividuals and families, rather than by tribes or by the 
 migration of an entire community, the Ugrics, on the 
 other hand, present characteristics of an opposite descrip- 
 tion. They are found, so to speak, in isolated patches. 
 There are Finns in Sweden, in Hungary, in Russia, in 
 Persia and in Siberia; Mongols on the Don and Mongols 
 two thousand miles distant on the slopes of the Altai, and 
 congeners on the shores of the Arctic Ocean and on the 
 Bosphorus. These people migrated in bodies with their 
 herds and their flocks. They came upon desired territory 
 and took it by conquest; they multiplied rapidly, and when 
 
62 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 their land became inadequate to the support of its popula- 
 tion, the excess again migrated and the process was re- 
 peated. In this way the Mongolic hordes originally con- 
 quered China and penetrated to Moscow and Poland. In 
 this way, the dynasty of the Great Mogul was founded in 
 India, and that of the Manchoos established itself in mod- 
 ern China, where it still exists, as the long queues of the 
 Celestials bear witness. 1 
 
 The genesis of the Etruscans has always been a disputed 
 point among ethnologists, who have assigned them to the 
 Greeks, to the Egyptians, to the Phoenicians, to the 
 Canaanites, to the Libyans, to the Armenians, to the Can- 
 tabrians or Basques, to the Goths, to the Celts, and to 
 the Hyksos. There are persuasive arguments, however, 
 which connect them w r ith the great Ugric family. Their 
 language has been shown to be very similar to that of the 
 Finns and the Tartars, and their pictures exhibit them 
 with high cheek-bones and oblique eyes, such as the 
 Aryans and Semites never have ; and again, unlike these 
 last, they were unemotional and stubborn and conserva- 
 tive. They reverenced ancestors, and built tombs and 
 cared for the needs of the dead as if they were living, all 
 of which is foreign to the thoughts and feelings of the 
 Aryan or the Semite, who bade farewell to his dead at the 
 brink of the grave and proclaimed his own vitality in his 
 palaces and temples. 
 
 They came either directly or after a sojourn in Egypt 
 from Lydia in Asia Minor, where the magnetite is abund- 
 ant; still earlier from that cradle of the human race, the 
 Asiatic highlands, whence still earlier again, others of 
 their kin wandered off, even before the old ice was gone, 
 into the caves of Aquitaine and to the Swiss lakes, where 
 their bones are still found mingled with those of the rein- 
 deer and the cave-bear, and with their stone axes and bone 
 needles ; while their characteristic tombs and mounds ex- 
 tend over Europe and Asia. 
 
 1 Taylor : Etruscan Researches. London, 1874. 
 
THE CHINESE AND THE BABYLONIANS. 63 
 
 Whether this great Ugric family, before its dispersion, 
 became familiar with iron and the lodestone, we can only 
 surmise. 
 
 Nor is the hypothesis incredible. The deserts and 
 steppes of western and northern Asia, over which these 
 races wandered, were as trackless as the deep, and perhaps 
 that same necessity which is "the mother of invention" 
 may as well have operated to suggest the lodestone as a 
 means of guidance to the nomad of prehistoric times as 
 to the venturesome sailor of the Middle Ages. We should 
 thus naturally seek traces of such ancient knowledge 
 among the Etruscans, Mongols and Finns, rather than 
 among the people of the Aryan and the Semite families; 
 in fact, among these we have failed to find it. The 
 Etruscan tombs have yielded suggestive but slender evi- 
 dence. When we turn, however, to the Mongols, the pre- 
 sumptive proofs multiply. 
 
 Modern research establishes a connection between the 
 prehistoric Akkadians and the Chinese. The language 
 and the legends, the written character, the astronomy, 
 the arts, agriculture and domestic economy of China, all 
 show traces of a prehistoric community of origin with those 
 of the first inhabitants of Babylonia. M. De Lacouperie, 
 who regards the Bak tribes, which migrated eastward from 
 the last named region during the twenty-third century 
 B. C., as the first civilizers of China, especially suggests 
 that the early Chinese names of the four cardinal points 
 much resemble those given to the same points by the 
 Chaldeans. The same authority collates an extraordinary 
 number of instances in which the results of Chaldean 
 culture are found embodied in earlier Chinese civilization, 
 showing, for example, that from the Chaldeans the Chi- 
 nese obtained knowledge of the solar year, of their met- 
 rical system, of divination, of their musical scales, of the 
 gnomon and the clepsydra, of decimal notation and local 
 value of figures, of the transit instrument, of the fire drill, 
 of brick-making, canal digging, river embankments and 
 
64 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 irrigation works, of the use of metals and the art of 
 casting them, of skin boats, of war chariots, and of so 
 many other items as to afford ground for his belief that 
 everything in Chinese antiquity and traditions points to 
 a western origin. 1 
 
 I have now to consider the knowledge of the ancient 
 Chinese concerning the magnet and the amber, and their 
 oft-reputed invention of the mariner's compass. 
 
 Lying to the south of the steep declivities of Gobi, on 
 the Asiatic continent, there is a fertile lowland where a 
 profuse semi-tropical vegetation exists, in abrupt contrast 
 with the sparse and rugged growth of the desolate northern 
 steppes. Here the warm and dry weather of the spring 
 months, followed by the abundant monsoon rains of early 
 summer, cause the bamboo and the wheat to flourish with 
 equal luxuriance, so that the products of the soil combine 
 the hardy character of those of the temperate zone with 
 the rapid advance to maturity of the tropical yield. This 
 territory was the nucleus of the Chinese Empire. Its situ- 
 ation being entirely inland, its inhabitants, under the 
 favorable conditions of soil and climate, became of neces- 
 sity, and above all, an agricultural people. 
 
 From the adjacent dwellers in Thibet, India and Central 
 Asia, the Chinese were separated by a difference in lan- 
 guage, by natural barriers, and, artificially, by the great 
 wall which they built along the edge of the northern 
 cliffs. It was not until a comparatively late period in their 
 history that their boundary advanced, by conquest, to the 
 sea-coast. 
 
 Endowed, therefore, originally with a territory situated 
 geographically to advantage, with a soil capable of provid- 
 ing for all their needs, surrounded by neighbors of the 
 same descent as themselves, whom they surpassed in civil- 
 
 : Primitive Civilizations. N. Y., 1894, 16 et seq. 
 
CHINESE CHRONOLOGY 65 
 
 ization for thousands of years, comparatively unmolested 
 by invasion, and, even when overcome by the Tartar 
 hordes, absorbing their conquerors, and thus converting 
 subjugation into a mere change of governing dynasty, 
 there prevailed, among the Chinese, conditions which in- 
 fallibly tended to the promotion of peaceful self-evolution 
 and also the development of an intellectual and material 
 independence of the rest of the world ; an independence 
 which finally hardened into national conservatism of an 
 intolerant type. 
 
 In seeking to discover the chronological periods when 
 events even of great national moment occurred in the 
 history of such a people, the difficulties encountered are 
 by no means trifling. When it comes to fixing, with any 
 degree of certainty, the time of happenings of a specific or 
 less important character, they are practically insurmount- 
 able. No epoch can be assigned as certainly that of 
 the beginning of Chinese history. The national annals, in 
 one form or other, are claimed to extend back through the 
 Kingin-Chan era to the reign of Yao, 2357 B. C. Tradition 
 still more vague reaches to the ascent of the throne by 
 Hoang-ti in 2704 B. C. But there are Chinese authors 
 who gravely assert periods of national existence as elaps- 
 ing prior to the death of Confucius (479 B. C.), ranging 
 from 276,000 to 96,961,740 years. 1 
 
 In China there are no great structures, such as the 
 Egyptian pyramids, which can serve as proof of the civil- 
 ization and attainments which existed at any period prior 
 to that of the building of the great wall. The enlight- 
 ened ruler of the Tsin dynasty 2 who constructed not only 
 that wonderful work (B. C. 204), but provided the country 
 with those potent civilizing agents, good roads, conceived 
 that the services he had rendered were amply sufficient to 
 
 T Azuni : Dissertation sur la Boussole. Paris, 1809. Quoting De- 
 Guignes: Discours. prelim, au Shoo-king. 
 2 Williams: The Middle Kingdom, New York, 1883, ii. 92. 
 5 
 
66 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 justify his assumption of the title of "Emperor First," and 
 the consignment to oblivion of all annals which could pre- 
 serve traditions of any earlier reigns. Therefore he con- 
 structed, metaphorically speaking, another wall which has 
 been even a more effectual barrier to historical research 
 than was the great pile of masonry to the incursions of the 
 northern barbarians that is to say, he burned every book 
 he could find excepting those treating on agriculture and 
 medicine; and lest their contents should be remembered 
 or reproachful comment should be made upon his act, he 
 buried alive five hundred of the most learned scholars. 
 The intention was to completely blot out every trace of 
 preceding emperors. Some thirty years later, when 
 Wan-te, of the Han dynasty (B. C. 178), wished to revive 
 literature, even so venerated a classic as the Shoo-king 
 could not be found; so that it was re-constructed from 
 memory by one Fuh-sang, then ninety years of age, who 
 in the reign of the Emperor First, being one of the princi- 
 pal literati, had put out his own eyes and feigned idiocy in 
 order to escape death. A few years later it was claimed 
 that a number of books had been found in pulling down a 
 former abode of Confucius, and on this alleged discovery 
 some of the existing Chinese classics are based. 1 At the 
 present time, if the latter were destroyed, scores of Chinese 
 scholars could undoubtedly be found capable of reproduc- 
 ing them verbatim from memory; but the fact that the 
 version of the Shoo-king repeated by Fuh-sang was con- 
 sidered far inferior to that of the supposed old book, dis- 
 covered as before mentioned, seems to indicate that the 
 extraordinary education, which the Middle Kingdom now 
 requires of its people as a condition precedent to social 
 and official honors, did not, in those ancient days, reach its 
 present degree of minute thoroughness. 
 
 While the beginning of Chinese history is placed by De 
 Lacouperie at the 23d century B. C., other Chinese annal- 
 
 'The Shoo-king, or the Historical Classic. Trans, by Medhurst. 
 Shanghae, 1846. 
 
THE CHINESE SOUTH- POINTING CARTS. 67 
 
 ists regard it as impossible to rely upon any records dating 
 back more than 800 years before our era. 1 Legge* fixes 
 the beginning of trustworthy chronology at 826 B. C., and 
 Plath, at 841 B. C. It is apparent, therefore, that in deal- 
 ing with the legends and traditions which form the basis 
 for the assertion of knowledge of the magnet by the Chi- 
 nese at very ancient epochs, the doubt whether they prop- 
 erly belong to mythology or to history is unavoidable. 
 
 The most ancient of these legends relates to the victory 
 of the Emperor Hiuan yuan, or Hoang-ti, over the rebel 
 Tchi yeou, or Khiang, an event supposed to have taken 
 place in the year 2634 before our era. Khiang, having 
 been defeated, " excited a great fog in order to put, by the 
 obscurity, disorder in the ranks of his adversary. But 
 Hiuan yuan made a chariot which indicated the south, in 
 order to recognize the four cardinal points, " and by the 
 aid of this he overtook and destroyed Khiang. 3 
 
 This legend is so clearly mythical that it would deserve 
 no attention, were it not constantly quoted by pro-Chinese 
 advocates in support of their favorite claim that the inven- 
 tion of the compass by the Chinese extends back to the 
 remotest antiquity.* In the form in which they present the 
 story, it perhaps warrants Klaproth's conclusion that there 
 is nothing so plainly fabulous about it as to render it 
 certain that it has no historic foundation; but the anti- 
 Chinese writers have unearthed various ancient works in 
 which the tradition is very differently stated. In one of 
 these Khiang is destroyed by a monster-winged dragon, 
 sent after him by Hoang-ti, which threw him into a valley 
 
 1 Azuni, cit. sup. 
 
 2 Chinese Classics. 
 
 'Thoung Kian Rang Mou, imperial edition of 1707, fol. 22. Quoted 
 by Klaproth: 1'Invention de la Boussole. Paris, 1834, 72. 
 
 Also, Kou tin tchou, quoted by Biot. Comptes Rendus, vol. xix., 823. 
 
 *Arriot: Abrege" Chron de 1'Hist. Univ. de 1'Empire Chin., vol. 13. 
 Memoirs concerning the Chinese, p. 234, No. 3. Martini : Historia Sinica, 
 1 06. 
 
68 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 full of devils; while, in another, Hoang-ti gains his victory 
 by the aid of arms obtained from a celestial virgin, and 
 only by that means overthrows Khiang, who "had the 
 wings and body of a beast. " 
 
 The tribes which began the settlement of China are 
 believed to have maintained a jade traffic with western 
 Asia, the trade route of which was also a channel for the 
 trans-continental flow of intelligence. This commerce, 
 which had gradually decreased, appears to have revived 
 after the conquest of the country in noo B. C., and the 
 establish in en t of a new dynasty therein by the Tchoii, an 
 energetic and powerful race of Kirghiz origin, which had 
 occupied for centuries the territory bounding China on 
 the northwest. Not only did new learning arrive through 
 the increased traffic, but the Tchoii themselves had prob- 
 ably already acquired much astronomical and astrological 
 lore from Khorasmia, where a focus of such knowledge 
 had been established by a branch of the Aryan race in 
 about 1304 B. C. 2 
 
 An interval of fifteen centuries separates the legend of 
 Hoang-ti from the one next in chronological order, wherein 
 a supposed reference to the magnet is contained, and which 
 according to one Chinese authority ascribes knowledge of 
 polarity to Tchou-Kung, the founder of the Tchoii dy- 
 nasty, who is supposed to have obtained it from the sources 
 above mentioned. 3 A later and more complete version is 
 found in an historical memoir* written in the first half of 
 the second century of our era, a production which is, in 
 fact, an attempt to collect such fragments of ancient annals 
 as were believed to have survived the wholesale burning of 
 a thousand years before. It does not appear that this work 
 
 1 Azuni, cit. snp., 102. 2 De Lacouperie, cit. sup. 
 
 3 De Lacouperie, cit. sup., noting an amplified version of the lost 56th 
 chapter of Shoo King, written by Kwei Kuh tze in 4th century B. C. 
 
 * The Szu Ki or Historic Memoirs of Szu ma thsian quoted in Thoung 
 Kian Kang Mou, Ed. of 1701, vol. I, fol. 9. Reproduced by Klaproth, 
 cit. sup., 79. 
 
THE LEGEND OF THE AMBASSADORS. 69 
 
 now exists, except in the form of extracts quoted in a book 
 issued during the last century, so that the story may well 
 be regarded as not only an exceedingly doubtful tradition, 
 but one which has certainly undergone two modern atten- 
 uations. Its period is mo B. C., when the Cochin-Chinese 
 are alleged to have sent ambassadors to offer white pheas- 
 ants to the Emperor, and to do him homage, because there 
 had been no particularly annoying convulsions of nature 
 for the preceding three years. Three envoys were dis- 
 patched over different routes, because the u road was very 
 long and the mountains high and the rivers deep," and if 
 a single individual should go astray, the others might suc- 
 ceed in reaching their destination. As it happened, all 
 arrived safely and made their offerings, but when the time 
 came to return they concluded that they had forgotten 
 the way back. The Emperor then presented them with 
 five carts, or chariots, which always indicated the south, 
 whereupon they set forth, but instead of steering a straight 
 course back to Cochin-China they seem, somewhat incon- 
 sequently, to have made their way to the seashore, and to 
 have followed the coast to their native land; and what re- 
 flects still more upon the efficacy of the carts is that it 
 took them a whole year to make the journey. 
 
 'The Mirror of Chinese History," a native commentary 
 illustrative of the facts related in the Shoo-king, tells the 
 story with some variations, the final statement being that 
 "the duke gave them five close carriages, each of which 
 was so constructed as to point to the south ; the ambassa- 
 dors mounted these, and, passing through Foo-nan and 
 Lin-yih to the seashore in about a year, they arrived at 
 their country. Hence the south-pointing carriages have 
 always been used to direct the way and to show the sub- 
 mission of distant strangers, in order to regulate the four 
 quarters of the world." 
 
 Another work 1 gives a sequel to this story to the effect 
 
 1 Ki kin chu, written by Tsui-p'au during the Tsin dynasty. Jour. N. 
 C. Branch, Roy. As. Soc., n. s., xi., 123. 
 
70 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 that u the officers who accompanied the ambassadors to 
 their country then returned. They came back in the same 
 carriages in a direction opposite to that which they 
 pointed, and occupied a year as the journey out had done. 
 The axles and protruding axle-ends were originally of 
 iron, which was completely rusted away when they re- 
 turned. The chariots were entrusted to officers to be kept 
 for use of the envoys of subject states located at a dis- 
 tance." This was written centuries after the events de- 
 scribed, and is probably wholly imaginary. 
 
 But in the Shoo-king itself, in the account given of the 
 funeral of the King of Chow, which occurred at about the 
 same time (1102 B. C.), there is described the placing of 
 the royal vehicles about the palace and "the great or 
 pearly carriage is to be on the visitors' or western stairs 
 facing the south: the succeeding or golden carriage on the 
 eastern stairs facing the south" and so on for the cate- 
 gory of chariots, each successive one being made of less 
 valuable material, and the last being of wood. It will be 
 noted here, that the chariots were merely placed or in- 
 stalled so as to face the south, and the south in China has 
 always been regarded as the honorable quarter. The em- 
 peror takes his position facing that point, and all import- 
 ant buildings are similarly placed. Whether the south- 
 pointing chariots of the legend (as the commentaries and 
 alleged translations, made many centuries later, assert) 
 actually indicated the south by some contrivance contained 
 in them, though not described; or whether they were 
 merely chariots of honor, which, like those of the King of 
 Chow, were placed ceremonially facing the south, is thus 
 a debateable question. It is a noteworthy fact that the 
 commentary on the Shoo-king, written in 1200 A. D., 
 is elaborate on astronomical, musical and geographical 
 topics, even to the details of the armillary sphere and the 
 minute proportioning of cords for producing musical 
 tones. It is, therefore, exceedingly significant that both 
 text and commentary the latter written long before the 
 
A LOST ART. 7! 
 
 invention of the compass became a matter of international 
 dispute should be completely silent on the subject of the 
 magnet, if it were in common use. 
 
 The fact that the tradition of the ambassadors persisted 
 in itself, does not render it any the less mythical. Besides, 
 like the older legend, it is encountered in bad company. 
 Aztini 1 quotes from the Chinese work, in which he finds 
 it, an equally grave narration concerning men "with 
 bodies of beasts and heads of bronze, who ate sand and in- 
 vented arrows and frightened the world." And the 
 "Mirror of Chinese History," whence I have transcribed 
 the verbatim recital here given, likewise solemnly records 
 the appearance of a yellow dragon and of a flame which 
 presently "changed into a red bird having a soothing 
 voice." 
 
 The most ancient historical record of chariots indicating 
 the south is that found in the work of Han-fei-tsu, a Tao 
 philosopher who lived in the fourth century B. C. His 
 work is non-existent, but, as usual, is quoted in a com- 
 paratively modern Cyclopaedia, lu-hai, as follows: 
 
 "The ancient sovereigns established indicators of the 
 south (See-nan) to distinguish the morning side from the 
 evening side." 2 
 
 A later writer Liu-hiang (80-89 B. C.) ascribes the char- 
 iots to an earlier date, asserting that the Duke Hien of 
 Tsin, who lived between 822 and 811 B. C., attempted to 
 construct them and failed, and that the Duke Huan of Tsi, 
 a century and a half later, succeeded. 3 If the art was lost 
 and recovered at this early epoch, it is a curious fact that 
 
 1 Dissertation sur la Boussole, cit. sup. Legge (Chinese Classics, 
 Shoo-king, Vol. III., 535-7) rejects both the Hoang-ti aud the ambassa- 
 dors' legends. 
 
 2 Biot : Comptes Rendus, cit. sup. Klaproth, contra, says that the 
 earliest work containing a like reference dates only from the fourth 
 century A. D., and that merely fragments of it have come down. 
 
 3 De Lacouperie, cit. sup. 
 
72 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 history should have repeated itself in the same particular, 
 thirteen hundred years later; 1 for during the fifth century, 
 and, although some chariots still existed, a skilful work- 
 man, after a year's study, was unable to reproduce one, and 
 thereupon poisoned himself "with the feathers of the bird 
 ming, macerated in wine." The task was finally accom- 
 plished by one Ma-yo, whose method " was found perfect.'' 
 
 The commentary on the Hoang-ti tradition says that 
 nothing was known as to the ancient form of these chariots, 
 but that they were devised by the Emperor Hian-tsoung, 
 who reigned from 806 to 820 A. D. We are told that they 
 had four gilded dragons on the corners which held up a 
 feather canopy, and that a wooden figure on the top 
 pointed southwards; but nothing is vouchsafed about the 
 magnet. And that is the case 2 with every one of the 
 Chinese descriptions of these south-pointing chariots an- 
 tedating the introduction of the compass in Europe. It 
 is true that Klaproth, Duhalde, Biot and other sinologists 
 conceive that the a posteriori inference that a south- 
 pointing chariot is one containing a magnet needle may 
 fairly be made; but this cannot overcome the force of the 
 omission above noted, especially in view of the further 
 fact that no direct statement of Chinese knowledge of the 
 magnet exists of a date earlier than 121 A. D., 3 a period 
 when the Europeans had been conversant with the lode- 
 stone and its attractive properties for six hundred years, 
 and probably longer. And this statement consists of but 
 six Chinese characters in the dictionary Choue-Wen, 
 where the character "Tseu" is defined as "the name 
 of a stone with which the needle is directed." Even this 
 is known only by citations in later works. 
 
 The mediaeval and modern Chinese encyclopaedists de- 
 
 1 Klaproth, cit. sup., 89. Biot notes the annals of Wei (235 A. D.); the 
 official history of the Tsin dynasty (265 to 419 A. D.); of Chi hou (335 to 
 349 A. D.), and of the Soung dynasty (420 to 477 A. D). 
 
 2 China Review: 1891, Vol. XIX, 52. 
 
 3 Biot: cit. sup., p. 824; Klaproth: cit. sup., p. 66. 
 
THE CHINESE SOUTH-POINTING CARTS. 
 
 73 
 
 CHINESE SOUTH-POINTING 
 CART. 
 
 pict the south-pointing cart or chariot as represented in 
 the accompanying illustration, which appears in the so- 
 called great Japanese encyclo- 
 paedia of 1712, and originally in a 
 Chinese work of similar character 
 of 1341. The figure, some six- 
 teen inches in height, was made 
 of jade. Within the right arm, 
 extended in front, was concealed 
 a magnet, the directive force of 
 which is supposed to have turned 
 the manikin on its pivot, and 
 thus to have caused it always to 
 point to the south. This arrange- 
 ment, however, the Chinese con- 
 cede to have been unknown before 
 the 5th century A. D., when they 
 assert that it replaced a magnet 
 hanging within the chariot. 1 
 
 Iron was extensively worked in Shensi in B. C. 220, for 
 at that time there was a heavy excise duty on it, and 
 there is a tradition that such imposts were laid as far back 
 as 685 B. C. Hence, as magnetite is known to exist in 
 the iron deposits of the above locality, it has been argued 
 that sufficient evidence is thereby afforded of Chinese 
 knowledge of the properties of the lodestone at the earliest 
 named date. But the same argument would bring home 
 a like acquaintance to the Syrians, for example, and there- 
 fore it is of no value in a determination of priority in in- 
 vention between the different iron- working nations. 
 
 So far, nothing has been adduced showing any cogniz- 
 ance by the ancient Chinese, of the attractive quality of 
 the lodestone, nor any knowledge at all of the amber. 
 
 a The Ku yu tu (Illustrations of Ancient Jades), first published in 1341, 
 copied into a Chinese encyclopaedia of 1609, and then into the Japanese 
 encyclopaedia. Klaproth: cit. sup. De Lacouperie: cit. sup. Obviously 
 the dimensions of cart and figure, in the picture, are out of proportion. 
 
74 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Klaproth states that abundant deposits of the resin exist 
 in the empire, but also records that it was imported, in 
 various manufactured forms, as presents to the emperor 
 from Rome and western countries, during the first and 
 second centuries B. C. De Lacouperie says that the 
 knowledge of amber came to the Chinese from the west 
 Kabulistan and points out the similarity between the 
 Chinese and Persian names for it. The earliest reference 
 to its attractive property is also apparently the first men- 
 tion of the like property of the magnet, and appears in a 
 "Eulogy of the magnet," written by Kouo pho in 324 
 A. D., in the following words: 
 
 "The magnet draws the iron, and the amber attracts 
 mustard seeds. There is a breath which penetrates 
 secretly and with velocity, and which communicates itself 
 imperceptibly to that which corresponds to it in the other 
 object. It is an inexplicable thing." 1 
 
 But this is nothing more than a restatement of tl.e Euro- 
 pean notion of the flow, or virtue, or current, or soul, 
 emanating from the stone or the amber, with which the- 
 ory the western civilized world was then familiar, and 
 which, it is safe to say, involves a power of abstract con- 
 ception which the Chinese mind has never possessed. In 
 fact, the originator of such an interpretation of a physical 
 happening, of necessity finds in it an explanation satis- 
 factory at least to his own mind; and it does not seem 
 logically possible, as a part of one and the same mental 
 process, that he could regard the effect as "inexplicable." 
 
 The attraction of the lodestone is referred to in a later 
 Chinese work on natural history, in w 7 hich the magnet is 
 said to draw iron u like a tender mother who causes her 
 children to come to her, and it is for this reason that it has 
 received its name." 2 
 
 It is necessary to distinguish clearly between the land 
 
 Klaproth, cit. sup., p. 125. 
 
 2 Pen-thsao-chy-i of Tchin thsang khi, published 727 A. D., noted by 
 Klaproth, cit. sup. 
 
THE CHINESE GEGMANCER'S COMPASS. 75 
 
 use of the compass as for directing carriages, locating 
 buildings, etc. and its employment for finding the way at 
 sea, the latter being by far the more important. 
 
 So far, it will be noted, no marine use of the compass 
 by the Chinese has been suggested. The first passage, 
 remotely capable of such interpretation, appears in the 
 official history of the Soung dynasty, which, after men-, 
 tioning the carts, says that "under the Tsin dynasty (265 
 to 419 A. D.) there were also ships indicating the south." 
 During the same period Shih-hu is said to have built a 
 boat provided with a south-pointing magnet, and to have 
 used it on the "Pond of the Cackling Crane," but this 
 seems at most to have been but a toy. l No definite state- 
 ment, however, is found until the end of the nth century 
 is reached, and then, in a work entitled Mung-Khi-pi- 
 than, 2 we meet the following extraordinary passage: 
 
 "The soothsayers rub a needle with the magnet stone, 
 so that it may mark the south; however, it declines con- 
 stantly a little to the east. It does not indicate the south 
 exactly. When this needle floats on the water it is much 
 agitated. If the finger-nails touch the upper edge of the 
 basin in which it floats they agitate it strongly; only it 
 continues to slide, and falls easily. It is better, in order 
 to show its virtues in the best way, to suspend it as follows: 
 Take a single filament from a piece of new cotton and at- 
 tach it exactly to the middle of the needle by a bit of wax 
 as large as a mustard seed. Hang it up in a place where 
 there is no wind. Then the needle constantly shows the 
 south; but among such needles there are some which, 
 being rubbed, indicate the north. Our soothsayers have 
 some which show south and some which show north. Of 
 this property of the magnet to indicate the south, like 
 that of the cypress to show the west, no one can tell the 
 
 origin. ' ' 
 
 *De Lacouperie: cit. sup., noting the Tsin Kung Koh Ki of the 4th 
 century. See also note 2, page 76. 
 2 Thsa-chi, book 24, cit. by Biot. 
 
76 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Almost exactly the same recital appears in a medical 
 history composed in the years mi to my. 1 And it has 
 been claimed that a record exists of the use of the compass 
 on board the ship which carried a Chinese ambassador 
 from Ning-po to Corea during the year H22. 2 
 
 Two very significant facts may here be noted, namely, 
 that exactly the same knowledge (the variation of the needle 
 excepted) existed in undoubted connection with the nau- 
 tical compass in Europe at a closely approximate period; 
 and second, that in the before quoted description of two 
 instruments no nautical employment of either of them is 
 suggested. The latter fact is fully recognized by Klap- 
 roth, who admits that he can find " no indubitable use" 
 of the compass in the Chinese marine until toward the 
 end of the I3th century, at which time, as will hereafter 
 be abundantly proved, it had been on European ships for 
 a hundred years. 
 
 The tendency of the magnetic needle to depart from 
 true north (commonly termed its variation), appears to 
 have been observed by the Chinese geomancers in the 
 compasses used by them, long before any marine use of 
 the instrument was made. A so-called life of Yi-hing, a 
 Buddhist priest and imperial astronomer, undertakes to 
 show that the variation in the 8th century was nearly 
 three degrees to the right, or west of south. Later, we 
 find the geomancers adding special circles of symbols to 
 the compass card; such as a circle of nine fictitious stars, 
 a circle of sixty dragons, and so on; and, among these, 
 circles of points especially constructed to allow for varia- 
 tion. This was done in the year 900 by Yang Yi when 
 the variation was 5 15' east of south, and again three 
 centuries later when it had increased to 7 30', in the same 
 direction. 
 
 Such, in brief, is the evidence which the Chinese re- 
 
 1 Pen thsao yan i, quoted by Klaproth, 68. 
 
 2 Trans. Asiat. Soc. of Japan, 1880, viii. 475. Jour. North China Branch 
 Roy. As. Soc., New Ser., xi., 123. Shanghae, 1877. 
 
ANCIENT CHINESE NAVIGATION. 77 
 
 cords have yielded. L,et us now turn to the characteristics 
 and achievements of the people themselves, and endeavor 
 to ascertain therefrom the probabilities of the existence of 
 their claimed early knowledge of the magnet, and whether 
 circumstances favored their invention of the compass or 
 discovery of electrical effects. 
 
 The Phoenician traders and other navigators of the 
 Indian Ocean reached the Shantung peninsula in the 7th 
 century B. C. and monopolized the sea traffic of the coast. 
 This maritime intercourse appears to have terminated be- 
 fore the end. of the 4th century, the more convenient route 
 through Indo-China having diverted the trade. From 
 these hardy seafarers the Chinese seem to have learned 
 little or nothing. 1 Agriculture, as I have already noted, 
 was the chief pursuit of the Chinese in the beginning of 
 their history, and has so remained. In nautical belief, the 
 farmer is always the opposite of the sailor; or, in other 
 words, his is the calling which the seaman regards as 
 furthest removed from his own. The maritime powers of 
 a nation are always the last in reaching maturity; and 
 those of one which is pre-eminently agricultural in its 
 pursuits either never attain that point, or else, if the 
 Chinese be taken as typical, require a greater time for de- 
 velopment than is included at present within historical 
 limits. The Chinese, moreover, have been united for ages 
 in one inflexible system of manners, letters and polity, and 
 have dwelt upon land capable of supporting them; so that 
 there has been little natural inducement to them to enter 
 into communication with the rest of the world. The bor- 
 dering nations were, for centuries, far lower in the scale 
 of civilization, and could offer nothing to barter but 
 raw materials, of which China had either an abundant 
 natural supply, or for which she had no use. True, navi- 
 gation of the great rivers which irrigated the country be- 
 
 1 The eyes on the bows of Chinese junks (also present on modern Dutch 
 boats) are said to have been copied from ancient Phoenician vessels. 
 Perrot-Chipiez, Hist, de PArt, iii., 517. 
 
78 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 gan at an early date; but river navigation does not make 
 and never has made deep-sea sailors. The Chinese streams, 
 like the Egyptian Nile, were merely highways (and, in some 
 cases, practically streets, whereon the dwellings of the in- 
 habitants floated about, as they still do), and, so far from 
 the aquatic life to which they give rise, evolving seamen, 
 the greater facilities for interior communication afforded 
 by the rivers and canals rendered it easier for the dwellers 
 on the seaboard to draw upon inland sources of supply, 
 than to seek foreign ones across the unknown waters. 
 
 Nor were their coasts or the adjacent seas favorable to 
 navigation ; while the Chinese ships, to the sailors of the 
 western world, have always seemed the very opposite of 
 what sea-going vessels should be. The huge junks, with 
 bulging hulls and high sterns, were modeled after popular 
 notions of sea monsters, the teeth and eyes of which were 
 depicted on the bows, and the fins imitated in the shapes 
 of the sails. The typhoons upset them or drove them upon 
 the reefs, or blew them helplessly far out to sea. Yet, with 
 singular ingenuity, their builders constructed them with 
 double skins and with water-tight compartments, long be- 
 fore the sea-kings of the west dreamed of such safeguards. 
 
 The early voyages of the Chinese were merely coasting 
 trips made by the river boats, which crawled timorously 
 along the shore. No sea-going ships were built until 139 
 B. C. At the time of the Christian era, the Chinese knew 
 scarcely anything of the nearest islands to the eastward, 
 and in the 2d century it is doubtful whether they ever 
 sailed beyond the extreme point of the Shantung penin- 
 sula. At this time a fifteen ton boat was considered 
 enormous. In the 3d century some desultory traffic was 
 carried on with Japan, but after that period the extension 
 of sea commerce was slow. At the beginning of the 5th 
 century Java had not been reached, and not until fifty 
 years later did Chinese junks venture as far as Ceylon and 
 the Persian Gulf. 1 All this is doubly significant as show- 
 
 1 De Lacouperie, cit. sup. 
 
ANCIENT CHINESE ASTRONOMY. 79 
 
 ing first, that at the commencement of this great period of 
 six hundred years there was no deep-sea sailing which 
 called for the use of the compass; and second, that toward 
 the end of it, although voyages were made wherein the 
 guidance of the magnetic needle would have been of great 
 utility, and although the traditions of the south-pointing 
 carts then became more numerous, still no similar records 
 have been encountered showing that ships were steered by 
 the lodestone's aid. 
 
 Arguments in support of the presumed knowledge of 
 the Chinese regarding navigation are often based on their 
 alleged attainments in astronomy ; for they have undoubt- 
 edly studied the phenomena dealt with by that science, 
 since time immemorial. But their calculations of eclipses 
 have been found erroneous ; and the astronomer Cassini, 
 in examining an observation of one winter solstice very 
 celebrated in their annals, discovered therein an error of no 
 less than 487 years. They are rather astrologers than 
 astronomers, and their tribunal of mathematics, existing, 
 as it has, for centuries, has found its chief occupation in 
 indicating to the Government fortunate days for national 
 enterprises or ceremonials rather than in gathering the re- 
 sults of observation. In brief, their system of astronomy 
 is rigidity itself, and if its predictions fail they argue that 
 the fault is not in themselves, but in their stars, and settle 
 the matter by deferring further prophecy until after the 
 event. 
 
 The student who attempts to glean from the early mis- 
 sionary writers on China any definite information as to the 
 real status of her people in fields of invention or discovery, 
 will find himself confronted by an abundance of exagger- 
 ated statements and contradictions innumerable. The 
 later Italian and French authors, who have endeavored to 
 reconcile these, fail to do so, and unite in regarding the 
 missionary reports as generally unreliable. Nor can fa- 
 vorable inferences be drawn from other achievements 
 ascribed to the Chinese. They invented a written char- 
 
80 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 acter of their own, but only with syllabic, and not phonetic, 
 symbols. They are credited with the invention of gun- 
 powder, but it is an open question whether they did not 
 get it originally from India. They knew of it as early as 
 250 A. D., but then only used it in fire-crackers. No evi- 
 dence exists of its use as an agent of warfare earlier than 
 the middle of the I2th century, nor did the Chinese know 
 anything of its propulsive effects until the reign of Yung 
 loh in the I5th century, after it was first employed for 
 festival and ceremonial purposes. 1 They invented the 
 abacus, but not the positional value of figures. 
 
 On the other hand, the credit of first printing from 
 carved wooden tablets, or from movable porcelain type, 
 inventing India ink, chop-sticks, silk manufacture and the 
 macadamization of streets is seldom denied to them. 
 Their persistent conservatism, to some, is a potent argu- 
 ment in support of the proposition that whatever they have 
 adopted must be sanctioned by immemorial usage. On 
 this ground many of the pro-Chinese writers take a firm 
 stand. Barrow, for example, considers that the astrological 
 inscriptions on the card of the modern Chinese compass is 
 quite sufficient evidence of an extreme antiquity. They 
 have engrafted upon it, he says, "their most ancient and 
 favorite system of mythology, their constellations and 
 cycles, and, in short, the abstract of the elements. That 
 a people so remarkably tenacious of ancient custom, and 
 thinking so very meanly of other nations, would ever have 
 submitted to incorporate their rooted superstitions by en- 
 graving on the margin the sacred and mystical characters 
 of Fo Shu with an instrument of recent introduction and 
 barbarian invention" he regards as incredible. To this 
 may be added the fact that to the magnet the Chinese have 
 always paid divine honors. u An astonishing number of 
 offerings," says the missionary Gutzlaff, "are brought to 
 the magnet; a piece of red cloth is thrown over it, incense 
 is kindled before it, and gold paper, in the form of a 
 
 1 Barrow: A Voyage to Cochin China in the years 1792-3. Loud., 1806. 
 
DOUBTS AS TO THE SOUTH-POINTING CARTS. 8 1 
 
 Chinese ship, is burnt. " Barrow also notes that a Chi- 
 nese navigator not only considers the magnet needle as a 
 guide to direct his track through the ocean, but is per- 
 suaded that the spirit by which its motions are influenced 
 is the guardian deity of his vessel. 
 
 From the actual Chinese records we have now found 
 that the legends of south-pointing chariots antedating the 
 Christian Era are probably mythical. No reference to the 
 lodestone appears in Chinese literature until 121 A. D. 
 If Chinese knowledge of the magnet dates from about this 
 time, then, certainly, so-called south-pointing chariots 
 existing at an earlier period could not have been magnetic, 
 and the omission of any mention of the lodestone in the 
 descriptions of them follows of necessity. If, after 121 
 A. D., the magnet was used in them, then it is difficult to 
 reconcile this with the fact that the later writings continued 
 to describe the chariots in the same terms for centuries 
 and until long after the compass had come into general 
 use in Europe, and never contained a word concerning the 
 agency upon which their south-pointing virtue depended. 
 It is, moreover, a curious circumstance that while the first 
 south-pointing chariot known in Japan was constructed by 
 a Buddhist priest in 658 A. D., the lodestone itself was not 
 found in that country until nearly half a century later. 1 
 
 No recorded evidence of the attraction of the magnet or 
 amber appears in the Chinese books of earlier date than 
 the fourth century of our era, and then we find it explained 
 by a physical theory totally out of harmony with Chinese 
 modes of thought and the same as that which had been 
 advanced by the Greeks, eight hundred years before. 
 
 Turning to the characteristics of the people themselves, 
 it is undeniable that among them have originated many 
 inventions of great importance. But each achievement is 
 isolated. It cannot be traced in correlation with anything 
 else, nor as the result of any evolutionary process or grad- 
 ual development. Nothing is more clear than the ab- 
 
 ^laproth, pp. 93-94- 
 
82 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 sence, in Chinese thought, of the processes incident to 
 inductive reasoning. They possess a sort of inventive 
 automatism; and in the results they have achieved, the 
 environment appears to have been by far the more potent 
 factor than the brain. This faculty they probably have, 
 and always have had, in higher degree than any other 
 people. But they have chiefly expended their brain 
 energy, so to speak, upon a multitude of rites, ceremonies 
 and inflexible customs, governing and restricting every 
 phase of their existence; and upon the acquisition by rote, 
 of the contents of volumes of precepts and historical tradi- 
 tions, which find no practical applications. The conse- 
 quence is minds of stunted or abnormal growth, capable 
 of great subjective action and the grinding out thereby 
 of many words ; but even under the influence of the needs 
 of three hundred and fifty million people, and aided by 
 favorable temperature and abundant physical resources, 
 incapable of taking more than the first inventive step. 
 
 Their love for the marvelous and supernatural is fos- 
 tered by their national customs. Their unwillingness to 
 learn from the outer barbarian, is exhibited in the dis- 
 astrous consequences of their war with the Japanese. 
 They degraded the science of astronomy into mere astrol- 
 ogy. They have produced no great picture, no famous 
 statue faithfully representing nature, although they have 
 handled the brush and chisel with consummate skill for 
 ages. But they are the most wonderfully cunning of imi- 
 tators in the world. 
 
 The data which has now been presented concerning the 
 Chinese, lead to the following conclusions : 
 
 If the south-pointing chariots which existed prior to the 
 1 2th century A. D., be regarded (despite the doubts sug- 
 gested) as governed by a south-pointing magnetic needle, 
 or if the traditions of such a needle in the hands of the 
 geomancers be accepted as true, then Chinese annals fur- 
 nish the earliest recorded proof of the turning of magnetic 
 polarity to useful account. But the same records give no 
 
POSSIBLE PREHISTORIC USE OF THE LODESTONE. 83 
 
 information as to how the discovery was made, or when it 
 was made. As to the first, the Chinese legends are gro- 
 tesque and incredible ; as to the second, the traditions are 
 hopelessly conflicting, save in that all refer to periods in 
 remote antiquity. 
 
 The prehistoric people from the western Asia migrated, 
 as I have said, in all directions ; the Finns, for example, 
 going northward, and the Mongols eastward, and Etrus- 
 cans, perhaps, westward or southward. If the hypothesis 
 be accepted provisionally, that the parent race knew of the 
 directive tendency of the lodestone, and that all of its off- 
 shoots could thus have used it during their migrations as a 
 means of guidance over the deserts and wildernesses, it 
 follows, of course, that the discovery was not originally 
 made on territory which has ever been recognized as 
 Chinese, or by the Mongols exclusively ; but, on the con- 
 trary, was a part of the stock of knowledge which the dif- 
 ferent tribes once possessed in common. Now, bearing in 
 mind the conservative, inelastic, non-progressive character 
 of the Chinese, and their seeming inability to advance be- 
 yond the first act of discovery or invention, it apparently 
 follows that the directing needle might well continue 
 among them in its original state, and thus remain applied 
 for ages only to its original uses. Therefore, we should 
 naturally expect to find familiarity with the needle only 
 as a means of land guidance, and used either for in- 
 dicating a quarter of the horizon, or for establishing 
 lines in definite direction, as in placing buildings, lay- 
 ing out tunnels, etc. This comports with the facts. The 
 Chinese, having a great expanse of territory, would have 
 use for the land compass in traveling over long dis- 
 tances ; equally their religious system, as well as their 
 engineering knowledge, called for its employment in 
 the establishing of sites for their edifices. The Etrus- 
 cans, belonging to the same Altaic group, had but small 
 territory, and, therefore, no need for the guidance of the 
 stone in traversing it ; but, as I have already pointed out, 
 
84 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 their augurs, corresponding to the Chinese geomancers, 
 knew the cardinal points, and were able to fix them, and 
 the alignments of the Etruscan walls, and especially of the 
 tunnels and sewers, are made with an accuracy which it is 
 difficult to explain, unless the use of the needle be sup- 
 posed. As for the existence of Chinese record evidence, 
 and the absence of like proof concerning a similar employ- 
 ment of the magnet by other nations, this finds a ready 
 explanation in the unchanging permanence of the Chinese 
 community and its customs, over a vast period of time, 
 during which state after state of the Western world has 
 risen and fallen. The noteworthy fact is not that such 
 early records exist, but that their character is so doubtful, 
 and their number so few. 
 
 It is true that the actual Chinese record, indicating 
 familiarity with the compass afloat, is somewhat earlier in 
 date than the first European record of similar purport, but 
 on the other hand the latter, as will hereafter be abund- 
 antly shown, describes the instrument in use as one which 
 European navigators had long known. Moreover, the 
 construction of the first European compass clearly demon- 
 strates it to be the product of an evolution which, in view 
 of the slow intellectual and inventive progress of the time, 
 must have extended over a period far greater than the 
 interval which separates the two epochs. 
 
 Further than this I am impressed by the fact that I have 
 been unable to find any series of connecting links by which 
 Chinese knowledge of the instrument could have been 
 brought to Europe, during the twelfth century or earlier, 
 through channels of navigation and trade, and that in 
 reviewing such possibilities of communication as have 
 been suggested serious doubts have always appeared. 
 On the other hand, it may be said that it does not follow 
 that the intelligence spread through any of the regular 
 channels of international intercourse, but may have come 
 through chance travel between Europe and the far East. 
 Against this hypothesis stands the fact that the presence 
 
THE MARINER'S COMPASS, NOT CHINESE. 85 
 
 of the compass in the early European fleets, manned by 
 natural and instinctive seafarers, can be reasonably ac- 
 counted for, (and this I have yet to show) while the pres- 
 ence of the compass on the contemporary Chinese jnnks, 
 manned by people having no inborn inclination for the 
 sea, is a circumstance seemingly destitute of ancestry. 
 
 The identity of construction of the two instruments, 
 European and Chinese, renders inevitable the presump- 
 tion that one is an imitation of the other. As between 
 people whose skill lies in originating and people whose 
 skill lies in the wonderful minuteness and accuracy of 
 their copies, few, I imagine, will hesitate in deciding 
 which was probably the re-producer; or fail to reach a 
 reasonable conviction that the mariner's compass of the 
 East is literally a "Chinese copy n of the instrument which 
 led, not the indolent Asiatic, but the daring mariners of 
 England and Spain and Portugal and Italy to the most 
 magnificent achievements of the human race. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 I HAVE now to resume the tracing of progress in the 
 Western world. With the decline of the divine school of 
 Alexandria, which followed the period of the Ptolemies, 
 the inventive thought of civilization became almost sta- 
 tionary for nearly a thousand years. Mankind devoted 
 itself to thinking in circles, and believing before it under- 
 stood. Gradually the doctrine of faith in things spiritual 
 extended itself to things physical, and the latter, being 
 exalted above reason, became removed from the field of 
 human inquiry. From the acceptance of the theory that 
 the Scriptures contain all the knowledge vouchsafed to 
 man, to the interpretation of phenomena by texts, and 
 the gauging of physical laws by the rules of orthodox}*, 
 was but a natural descent. The downward path from the 
 splendid achievements of Archimedes and Hero and Euclid 
 was broad and easy, and it ended in the slough of the 
 schoolmen and the mystics, wherein the world wandered 
 for centuries, mistaking the fitful corpse lights of dead 
 falsehoods for the clear daybreak of coining truth. 
 
 Fortunately for future progress, the mystery, which was 
 regarded as inseparable from the effects of the magnet and 
 the amber, proved the salvation of continuing knowledge 
 concerning them. There can be little doubt but that 
 many of the inventions made by the acute student minds 
 which congregated in Egypt were totally forgotten and 
 lost during the dark ages. It is only recently that the 
 art of portraying the human countenance in colors and 
 with a skill in handling and modeling hitherto supposed 
 to have had its origin with the painters of the Renaissance, 
 has been proved to have been known and practised in the 
 Greek-Egyptian settlements dating from the early centur- 
 
 (86) 
 
ST. AUGUSTINE ON THE MAGNET- 87 
 
 ies of our era. The machine which releases its contents 
 or gives some information on the insertion of a coin, and 
 which only in recent years has invaded our public places, 
 stood at the doors of the Egyptian temples, and automati- 
 cally doled out its little measure of consecrated water in 
 return for five drachmas dropped into the slot in its recep- 
 tacle. 1 But there was nothing surprising or mysterious 
 about either mechanisms or portrait painting. On the 
 other hand, the magnet and the amber, both seemingly 
 lifeless, yet animated, formed, as it were, the connecting 
 link between the dead earth and living objects. Short 
 of things divine no greater mystery than this could be 
 conceived. It became an ever-present and always-ques- 
 tioning Sphinx rearing itself above the desert of ignor- 
 ance and superstition, in which, for generation after 
 generation, men were doomed to strive and struggle. 
 
 Through the early centuries of the Christian Era, we 
 shall find this problem dealt with again and again some- 
 times purely physically, more often metaphorically; some- 
 times by the poets, and with greater frequency by the his- 
 torians and fathers of the church. 
 
 "When I first saw it," says St. Augustine, 2 speaking 
 of the attraction of the magnet, "I was thunderstruck 
 (" vehementer inhorrui"\ for I saw an iron ring attracted 
 and suspended by the stone ; and then, as if it had com- 
 municated its own property to the iron it attracted, and 
 had made it a substance like itself, this ring was put near 
 another and lifted it up, and as the first ring clung to the 
 magnet, so did the second ring to the first. A third and 
 fourth were similarly added, so that there hung from the 
 stone a kind of chain of rings with their hoops connected, 
 not interlinking, but attached together by their outer sur- 
 face. Who would not be amazed at this virtue of the 
 stone, subsisting, as it does, not only in itself, but trans- 
 
 1 Heronis Alexanrlrium : Spiritalium Liber, Urbini, 1575, s. 29, xxi. 
 *De Civitate Dei, lib. 21, c. 4. (Dod's Translation.) Edinburgh, 1871. 
 
88 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 initted through so many suspended rings and binding 
 them together by invisible links?" 
 
 u Yet far more astonishing is what I heard about the 
 stone from my brother in the episcopate, Severus, bishop 
 of Milevis. He told me that Bathanarius, once Count of 
 Africa, when the bishop was dining with him, produced a 
 magnet, and held it under a silver plate on which he 
 placed a bit of iron; then as he moved his hand, with the 
 magnet underneath the plate, the iron upon the plate 
 moved about accordingly. The intervening silver was 
 not affected at all, but precisely as the magnet was moved 
 backward and forward below it, no matter how quickly, 
 so was the iron attracted above. I have related what I 
 myself have witnessed. I have related what I was told by 
 one whom I trust as I trust my own eyes." 
 
 Here is the first statement of the movement of a mag- 
 netic body under the control of a moving magnet. Lucre- 
 tius, as we have seen, had told of the to-and-fro vibration 
 of a magnetized ring as the magnetic poles presented to it 
 were reversed, of the fact that brass intervening would not 
 cut off the magnetic virtue, and of the u raving" of the 
 iron filings, but not of the pieces of iron actually following 
 the lodestone, when the latter was moved from place to 
 place. St. Augustine tells all that was known about the 
 magnet at his time. He could have said no more, and the 
 veriest stickler for didactic scientific accuracy, fresh from 
 his Aristotle and his Euclid, could have said it no better. 
 
 "Let me further say what I have read about this mag- 
 net," he continues. " When a diamond is laid near it, it 
 does not lift iron; or, if it has already lifted it, as soon as 
 the diamond approaches it drops it." That error, 1 for 
 
 1 For other Patristic writers referring to this same delusion see Euge- 
 nius: Opusculorum, P. ii., xxviii. 
 
 Magnes ferri color ferrum suspendere novit 
 Sit praesens adamans, quod tenet ille cadit. 
 
 Also Aldhelm : Aenigmata. Lib. de Septenario et de metris 8. De 
 magnete ferrifero. 
 
ST. AUGUSTINE ON THE MAGNET. 89 
 
 which lie will not vouch, lasted for fifteen centuries. The 
 caution is characteristic of the author, who, at seventy 
 years of age, reviewed all his writings and retracted that 
 which appeared doubtful or extravagant, and sought to 
 harmonize his opinions where they seemed in conflict. 
 Elsewhere he is careful to distinguish between matters of 
 hearsay and things which he knows or which can readily 
 be tested, and among these last he includes quicklime, 
 which burns in water and remains cold in oil, and the 
 magnet; and then he says that he does not know by what 
 imperceptible potion the lodestone refuses to move straws 
 and yet snatches the iron. 1 
 
 That was a significant question. It marks the first 
 dawning notion of some possible difference between amber 
 attraction and magnet attraction. Why should the lode- 
 stone move iron, and yet be powerless to stir the light 
 chaff? Why should the amber draw the chaff, and yet be 
 unable to attract iron? The querist believed the resin and 
 the stone to be generically the same. Hence, the anomaly 
 which surprises him. The Chinese Kouopho who said, a 
 century earlier, that the amber and magnet effects were 
 inexplicable, had not perceived that the mustard seeds 
 which flew to the amber refused to obey the call of the 
 stone. 
 
 When this difference was suggested, then the rise of 
 electrical knowledge, in human thought, began to move 
 in parallel channels. The world waited for a dozen cen- 
 turies before finally recognizing the distinction and sepa- 
 rating the phenomena into those which were electric or 
 amber-like and those which were lodestone-like or mag- 
 netic ; but the first suggestion of it came, none the less, 
 from the great philosopher and saint of the early church. 
 
 It may appear singular that St. Augustine should have 
 referred to the mystery of the magnet and amber, not in 
 any metaphorical way, but in the form of statement of 
 actually-observed physical fact. Yet, on the other hand, 
 
 1 De Civ. Dei, lib. 21, c. vi. 
 
90 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 it is evident that in no stronger manner could he have 
 used his knowledge of magnetic attraction in order to 
 accomplish his object : a defense of miracles and to depre- 
 cate the demand that the latter should be explained by 
 human reason. If, he argues in substance, man cannot 
 explain these plain natural occurrences, how can man be 
 expected to explain events that are supernatural? "When 
 we declare the miracles which God has wrought or will 
 yet work, and which we cannot bring under the very eyes 
 of men, skeptics keep demanding that we shall explain 
 these by reason, and because we cannot do so, inasmuch 
 as they are above human comprehension, they say that 
 we are speaking falsely." 
 
 St. Gregorius Nyssenus l also describes the communica- 
 tion of the magnetic virtue from one piece of iron to an- 
 other with simple accuracy, but in most of the Patristic 
 writings which refer to it the phenomenon is dealt with as 
 illustrative of the attraction of the soul to Deity, of Divine 
 control, or of the permeation of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 "For although God appeared to material things," says 
 Tertullian, 2 "yet He did not injure them because of grace, 
 and approached, but did not become of them, like the mag- 
 net to iron. " u If the magnet and amber have the strength 
 to draw rings and reeds and chaff," says St. Jerome, 3 u how 
 much the more irresistibly can the Lord of all created 
 things draw unto Himself that which He desires." St. 
 Ambrose/ after describing how the magnetic virtue most 
 strongly affects the ring next adherent to the magnet, and 
 is weakest in the last ring of the chain, finds in this an 
 illustration of the gradual lapse of the soul from the pure 
 state to sin. St. Gregory Nazianzenus 5 sees in the united 
 rings an illustration of the binding power of the Spirit. 
 Theodoritus, Bishop of Cyrrhus, 6 referring to the capability 
 
 1 De Homine, cap. i. 2 Lib. adv. Hermogenem, cxliv. 
 
 'Comment, in Ev. Matthaei, Lib. i, cxix., 50. 
 *Epist., xlv., 983. 6 Oratio, de se ipso. 
 
 6 De Curatione Infidelium Grsecorum, ser. 5. 
 
THE MAGNET IN PATRISTIC WRITINGS. 91 
 
 of the magnet of selecting iron only and lifting up that 
 metal, holding it without visible prop from beneath or 
 apparent means of suspension from above, and all by some 
 hidden or occult cause, declares that this does no more than 
 does the word of God for all men, if they would only give 
 ear to it. Yet, though many listen, only the faithful are 
 garnered ; while not even to these is held out the consola- 
 tion of earthly happiness below, nor is the bond which 
 unites them to heaven above manifest. Hence, it is some- 
 thing unknown, or rather the hope of it, which supports 
 them, even as the unknown virtue of the magnet raises and 
 supports the iron. 
 
 Nevertheless, the tendency of the early teachers of Chris- 
 tendom was to discourage the study of natural philosophy. 
 The momentous questions involved in the new faith, in 
 their estimation, so completely dwarfed all mundane issues, 
 that the search for physical truth seemed but a misapplica- 
 tion of the mental powers, which should be devoted solely 
 to the consideration of moral duties and the future world. 
 "It is not through ignorance of the things admired by 
 them," says Eusebius, 1 "but through contempt of their 
 useless labor that we think little of these matters, turning 
 our souls to the exercise of better things." All physical 
 reasoning was denounced as "empty and false;" and to 
 dispute concerning such matters as the dimensions of the 
 sun, the nature of the heavenly bodies and the magnitude 
 of the earth, "is just as if we chose to discuss what we 
 think of a city in a remote country of which we never 
 heard but the name." 2 
 
 Such being the attitude of the most cultivated minds 
 toward scientific research, it necessarily ceased. St. Isi- 
 dore, in his encylopedic "Etymologies," 3 at the end of 
 the 6th century, adds nothing to the facts reported by 
 St. Augustine, and repeats the same account of the Samo- 
 thracian rings and the silver plate, with a few additions, 
 mainly derived from Pliny. 
 
 Ev., xv , 61. 2 Lactautius, liii., init. 8 Originum, lib. xvi., iv. 
 
92 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 The last description of the ancient magnetic contriv- 
 ances is given by Ruffinns, 1 writing in 390, and he men- 
 tions those in the Serapeum in Alexandria, as merely 
 intended to deceive the people. A little window was ar- 
 ranged near the statute of Serapis, so that, at sunrise, a 
 beam would fall upon the lips ; and this the priests 
 explained as the sun's morning salutation ; while, at sun- 
 set, an iron figure of the sun, delicately counterbalanced, 
 was made to rise by the attraction of a magnet concealed 
 in the roof, and that was the sun's good-night. "But 
 there were so many other means of deception," adds the 
 chronicler hopelessly, "that it is impossible to tell them 
 all." It is said that while the image of Serapis was falling 
 under the blows of a battle-axe in the hands of one of the 
 destroying party which Archbishop Theophilus, in his 
 furious zeal, led to the Serapeum, a stray invader wander- 
 ing through the recesses of the temple, found the hidden 
 magnet in the roof, and removed it ; and, thereupon, a 
 four-horse chariot, which had been suspended in the air, 
 came crashing to the pavement. 2 
 
 The last part of the narration is often criticised as fabu- 
 lous, under the assumption that the four-horse chariot, 
 which probably was the iron image of the sun described 
 by Ruffinus, was caused to float in the air with no support 
 save magnetic attraction ; but if, as Ruffinus states, it was 
 carried on the arm of a balanced lever, the improbability 
 is not so manifest. 
 
 During the four centuries of undivided Roman empire, 
 beginning with the reign of Augustus Caesar and ending 
 with that of Constantine (306 A. D.), the names of Dioscor- 
 ides the Cilician, 3 and Galen of Pergamus, 4 stand out most 
 prominently as observers of nature. But Galen tells us 
 merely that the magnet and the Heraclean stone are the 
 same thing, and resemble haematite or bloodstone ; and 
 
 1 Hist. Eccles., lib. ii., 294. 
 
 2 Draper : Int. Dev. of Europe, i.. 320. 
 
 3 Lib. 5, c., 100. *Lib. Sim. Med., ix. 
 
CLAUDIAN'S IDYL. 93 
 
 Dioscorides, after announcing that the best magnet at- 
 tracts iron most readily, is blue, dense and not too heavy, 
 suddenly exhausts his knowledge with the rather inconse- 
 quent remark that three drachms of pulverized magnet, 
 taken in sweetened water, will prevent fat. There was 
 also Alexander of Aphrodiseus, who lived in Caracalla's 
 time, and who, though far less known than the preceding 
 philosopher, nevertheless invented the distillation of sea- 
 water, and suggested that the same process might be ap- 
 plied to wine. 1 He said that the attraction of magnet and 
 of amber is inexplicable, in which he agreed with the 
 Chinese philosopher Kouopho ; but to him is appar- 
 ently due the credit of having evolved the theory that the 
 magnet actually eats and feeds on iron, a notion which 
 lasted some twelve hundred years, and was very prevalent 
 in the i6th century. Marcellus Empiricus, 2 physician to 
 Theodosius the Great, wrote that the magnet both at- 
 tracted and repelled iron, the last property being termed 
 by him antiphyson. This, however, was in the 4th 
 century A. D., and hence long after Lucretius and Plu- 
 tarch had referred to the same phenomenon. 
 
 From the grave homilies of Jerome or the sombre lines 
 of Lucretius to the gay and voluptuous idyl of Claudian 3 
 is a far cry; but the subject which could inspire the saint 
 and the philosopher was equally potent to influence the 
 volatile brain of the singer. He speaks of the magnet as a 
 stone, discolored, dull and vile, unfit to adorn beauty, to 
 shine amid the purple of Caesar or to deck the bridle of the 
 fiery steed. And yet no gem of Orient is so prized by those 
 who know its power. It lives by iron; without iron it 
 thirsts and dies. Yet in the statue of the god of war is 
 iron, and in that of the goddess of love, the magnet. 
 Wherefore the priest consecrates the union of these two 
 divinities, the sacred torch guides the chorus, the doors 
 
 1 Meteorol. Comment. Venet, 1527. Humboldt : Cosmos, 562, 589. 
 2 Klaproth : Inv. de la Boussole, 12. 
 'Claudian: Idyl V. Magnes. 
 
94 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 of the temple are hung with myrtle, and, amid festoons 
 of purple and garlands of roses, there are celebrated the 
 nuptials of Mars and Venus, while in the love of the mag- 
 net and the iron a new metaphor is given to the world 
 which even the greatest of its poets has not disdained to use. 
 
 With the decadence of the Roman Empire the com- 
 mentator waxed more and more in strength, and original 
 thought became correspondingly enfeebled. Men forgot 
 or feared to consult nature, to seek for new truths, to do 
 what the great discoverers of other times had done; they 
 were content to consult libraries, to study and defend old 
 opinions, to talk of what great geniuses had said. 1 Thus 
 no new gold was mined, but the supply on hand was 
 beaten to the last degree of tenuity or twisted into a 
 myriad of forms. The three things which blocked progress 
 were the overshadowing claims of religion to the sole 
 domination of the reflecting mind, the prevalence of the 
 Platonic doctrine that all science may be evolved by the 
 use of the reason, and the disposition to dispute about 
 terms, or to seek new facts by new and subtle collocations 
 of words in the endeavor to read nature through books. 
 
 From these there became evolved first, a blind faith in 
 the supernatural, and in its constant intervention in the 
 physical world; second, an imagination capable of conceiv- 
 ing such interference as occurring under any and all cir- 
 cumstances, and as being the one and the sole explanation 
 for everything that was in the least respect phenomenal; 
 and, third, a habit of dealing with all learning at second 
 hand, which quickly obliterated the distinction in value 
 between evidence of the senses and mere hearsay reports of 
 speculations, especially after the latter had permeated down 
 through two or three generations of commentators. The 
 result was mysticism, injected into the Greek philosophy 
 by the Alexandrian school, and then spreading through 
 the whole body of human thought and poisoning it to its 
 very centres. If the ancient Greek was so familiar with 
 
 1 Whewell: Hist, of the Inductive Sciences, i., 312. 
 
THE DECADENCE OF PHILOSOPHY. 95 
 
 his gods that they invaded every motive and act of his 
 life, at least there was a freshness, a fragrance, a childlike 
 quality in his philosophy and in the legends which his 
 own exuberant fancy had interwoven with it, and which 
 turned it all into poetry. To him the universe, though 
 diverse, was yet harmonious and so unitary. He had no 
 system of revealed truth, no need of choosing between the 
 acceptance thereof and perdition, no conception of a fall 
 of man, and hence no doubt of the ability of reason to 
 penetrate to the science of things. His science his logic, 
 and his geometry was rational. 
 
 Replacing all this, now came the belief in a constant 
 struggle between dual powers, existing not only in the 
 external world, but in the human mind ; the belief that 
 every thought, every intelligent effort was the plaything 
 of divine caprice on the one hand, or infernal machination 
 on the other. Philosophy became an alleged imposture of 
 the devil ; reason, vitiated and untrustworthy. There was 
 no causality to be sought for, no field for scientific investi- 
 gation ; for what could be fairly determined by the instru- 
 mentality of the senses, when they, as well as the reason- 
 ing faculties, were liable to deception or distortion to suit 
 the occult purposes of the warring powers of good and 
 evil? Faith became so far independent of thought that it 
 was better to say concerning any myth, mystery or marvel, 
 in the words of Tertullian, ( 'I believe because it is im- 
 probable, absurd, impossible. n 
 
 The last of the fathers educated in philosophy died with 
 St. Augustine. In the Dark Ages which followed, science 
 disappeared, and magic took its place. The most intelli- 
 gent minds became entangled in the subtleties of spiritual 
 relations pervading even numbers and figures, sought oc- 
 cult meanings in every work of nature, and made a de- 
 graded superstition the controlling factor in life. 
 
 Yet here again the inherent mystery of the magnet 
 became a potent agency in the preservation of the knowl- 
 edge concerning it. Many centuries went by before the 
 
96 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 commentators supplemented their transcriptions from 
 Pliny with the absurd notions which finally clustered 
 thick around the lodestone and the amber. In fact, it was 
 only after some intellectual force had been gathered in the 
 general awakening, that men acquired sufficient ingenuity 
 to propose myths which, although absolutely untrammeled 
 by the least regard for the truth, seemed at all capable of 
 deepening a mystery which, by the universal consent of 
 past generations, had already reached the limit of profund- 
 ity. To these delusions I shall refer hereafter. I have now 
 to note the rise and spread of one which, in the end, ad- 
 vanced science instead of impeding it ; for it immensely 
 magnified the powers of the magnet without attempting to 
 ascribe to them any new qr different quality. It rested on 
 a natural, if not a reasonable inference, and this perhaps 
 accounts both for its early conception and long persistence; 
 in fact there are few fables which have had so great vital- 
 ity or have been so widely believed as that of the Magnetic 
 Mountains. 
 
 In that marvelous collection of romances, the Arabian 
 Nights Entertainments, is the tale of the third royal men- 
 dicant, 1 who ventured to sea. After a long period of calm, 
 the captain of the ship tells him, in great perturbation, that 
 "to-morrow we shall arrive at a mountain of black stone 
 called lodestone ; the current is now bearing us violently 
 towards it, and the ships will fall in pieces and every nail in 
 them will fly to the mountain and adhere to it ; for God 
 hath given to the lodestone a secret property, by virtue of 
 which everything of iron is attracted towards it. On that 
 mountain is such a quantity of iron as no one knoweth 
 but God, whose name be exalted ; for, from times of old, 
 great numbers of ships have been destroyed by the in- 
 fluence of that mountain." On the following morning, 
 as the ship approached the fatal stone, " the current car- 
 
 1 In some editions called Agib, the third calendar. 
 
THE MAGNETIC MOUNTAINS. 97 
 
 ried us toward it with violence, and when the ships were 
 almost close to it they fell asunder, and all the nails and 
 everything that was of iron flew from them towards the 
 lodestone." 1 
 
 The germ of that story lies in the legend of the shepherd 
 Magnes, the iron nails in whose shoes held him fast to the 
 magnet rock on Mount Ida, which, as I have said in a 
 former chapter, Pliny copied from Nicander's now lost 
 poem. When Ptolemy wrote his geography 2 in the 2d 
 century of our era, he conceived the notion of enlarging 
 the rock and substituting a ship's fastenings for the shep- 
 herd's shoe-pegs ; and, in order to give to it verisimilitude, 
 he proceeded to locate the magnetic mountains in the sea 
 between Southern China and the coasts of Tonquin and 
 Cochin China, on certain islands which he calls Manioles. 
 But, as Nicander's shepherd did not have the nails of his 
 shoes pulled out by the magnetic attraction, Ptolemy, evi- 
 dently -from scruples against venturing outside of the four 
 corners of the tradition, is careful not to say that the iron 
 is torn from the vessels, but only that u ships which have 
 iron nails are stopped, and that is why they are put to- 
 gether with wooden nails, in order that the Heraclean 
 stone which grows there may not attract them." The 
 story-teller of the Arabian Nights is equally wise as to the 
 materials which the lodestone will not attract; for the 
 dome on top of the lodestone mountain is of brass, and so 
 is the horseman thereon which the adventurous calendar 
 brings down with a leaden arrow from a brazen bow, and 
 after the sea magically submerges the mountain it is a man 
 of brass who appears in a boat to row the hero away from 
 the dangerous spot. 
 
 The wanderings of the magnetic rocks over the surface 
 
 'Lane: The Thousand and One Nights. Lond., 1859, l6j - This col- 
 lection was first made known in Europe about the end of the iyth cen- 
 tury by Galland, from a manuscript brought from Syria dated 1584. The 
 stories probably date from about the middle of the isth century. 
 
 2 Geography, lib. vii., c. 2. 
 7 
 
98 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 of the earth now begin. In a treatise attributed to St. 
 Ambrose, 1 a Theban story-teller recounts exactly the same 
 facts, but says the mountains are on the thousand islands of 
 the Arabian and Persian sea, called "Mammoles." Yet, 
 singularly enough, the Chinese author So Soung, 2 writing 
 between 1023 and 1063, completely corroborates Ptolemy, 
 and says that "at the capes and at the points of Khanghai 
 (the southern sea on the coasts of Tonquin and Cochin 
 China), the waters are low and there are many magnet 
 stones, so that if the great foreign ships which are covered 
 with iron plates approach them, they are arrested, and 
 none of them can pass by these places." So Soung quotes 
 from a still earlier work, appropriately entitled "memoirs 
 on the extraordinary things seen in the southern countries." 
 
 Even more curious than the support afforded to Ptolemy 
 is the reference to great foreign ships covered with iron 
 plates: which raises the question of whether the Norse iron- 
 clad vessels made so long a voyage at so far distant a 
 period. The Anglo-Saxons, ordinarily, before going into 
 battle hung their shields along the gunwales of their ships, 3 
 and the Icelanders did so in stormy weather or in time of 
 peril. 4 Whether, therefore, any Icelandic vessel managed 
 to get as far as China, and being in danger from the reefs 
 mentioned by So Soung, hung out her shields, is a matter 
 of curious conjecture. The Icelanders had explored the 
 American coast man y years before; but there is not even a 
 legend of a Viking ship ever sailing to China. 
 
 By the I2th century the myth of the magnetic rocks 
 had reached the north of Europe. In one of the earliest of 
 the Dutch poems, which Longfellow characterizes as "the 
 
 1 De Moribus Brachmannonim. Kd. Bissaeus. Lond.. 1665, p. 59. 
 
 2 Thou King Pen Thsao., cit. by Klaproth (cit. sup.), p. 117. 
 
 3 "Then from the wall, the Scylding warder, who had charge of the 
 cliff, beheld them carrying over the gunwale their bright shields, their 
 material of war ready for use." Beowulf (Anglo-Saxon Epic.) Trans, by 
 T. Arnold. Loud., 1876. 
 
 4 Hakonar Saga. Vigfusson. Loud., 1887, 106, 291. 
 
THE MAGNETIC MOUNTAINS. 99 
 
 Di vina Commedia of the Flemish school," (The Journey 
 of St. Brandaen), 1 the saint is driven by a storm into the 
 L,everzee (the old German Lebermeer), where he saw a 
 mast rise from the water and heard a mysterious voice 
 bidding him sail to the eastward to avoid the magnetic 
 rocks, which drew to them all that passed too near. Ogier, 
 the Dane, is wrecked upon Avalon Island by the attraction 
 of the lodestone mountain or castle thereon. 2 Although 
 the masts crack and many a sail is stretched by the brisk 
 breeze, the vessels of the Norse-German fleet are held 
 motionless by the magnet rock at Gyfers, says the I/ay of 
 Gudrun. 3 Magnus Magnussen, on his voyage to discover 
 Greenland, finds his ship stopped by a lodestone at the 
 bottom of the sea. And there is that most redoubtable 
 of travelers, Sir John Maundevile, Knight, 4 who not only 
 depicts the perils which ships searching for the "Yle of 
 Prestre John" encounter from the "grete Roches of Stones 
 of the Adamant that of his proper nature draweth Iren to 
 him," but gives his flamboyant imagination full play in 
 describing the "Buscaylle and Thornes and Breres and 
 grene Grasse " which spring up from the fragments of the 
 wrecked vessels and clothe the rocks as with a " grete 
 Wode or Grove." "And therefore," he concludes, "dur 
 not the Marchauntes passen there, but zif thei knowen wel 
 the passages or elle that thei han gode Lodesmen." 
 
 The magnet rocks are frequently mentioned by the 
 Arab writers of the I2th and I3th centuries. Clierif- 
 Edrisi, the geographer, speaks, with great particularity, 
 of an archipelago in the Red Sea, near the straits of 
 
 1 Reis van Shite Brandaen : Longfellow: Poets and Poetry of Europe, 
 Phila., 1845, 37 2 : Oudulaemsche Gedichten derxiie xiiie en xiveEeuwen, 
 nitgegeven door Jonkhr, Ph. Blommaert. Ghent, 1838-41. 
 
 2 Keary: Outlines of Primitive Belief. New York, 1882. 
 8 Ludlow: Epics of the Middle Ages. London, 1865. 
 
 *Halliwell: The Voiage and Travaile. London, 1866. See also Olaus 
 Magnus: Hist, de Gent. Sept., 1. ii., cxxvi. H. Von Valdeck: Herzog 
 Ernest von Bayern's Erhotung, 1858. Spenser: Faerie Queene, ii., canto 
 12. Also Encyclo. Metropol., XXI. article, Magnet. 
 
100 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Bab-el-Mandeb, wherein rises a mountain called "Mouru- 
 kein," which is, however, partly submerged by the tides: 
 and this, he says, (as usual on the authority of some one 
 else, one Hhasan ben al-Mondar,) seizes and holds ships 
 built with iron nails. He adds, however, on his own 
 authority, that there is still another magnetic mountain, 
 which he is careful to locate as far off as possible, to-wit: 
 in a gulf near Cape Zanguebar, which is very high, and 
 over the sides the waters fall with a frightful noise, and it 
 is named Adjoud. 1 
 
 The finishing touch to the romance which set the nails 
 flying from the ships, was given by one Bailak, a native of 
 Kibdjak, 2 who wrote, in 1242, a treatise on stones, in which 
 he quotes from a pretended work 3 on the same subject 
 by Aristotle, which, in fact, was an Arab concoction. His 
 story is worth quoting in full, because it not only rounds 
 out the fable to completion, but also, as is very likely to 
 happen in such cases, contains the explanation which 
 leads to it own destruction. He says: 
 
 u According to Aristotle, there is a mountain of this 
 stone in the sea. If the ships approach it, they lose their 
 nails and their iron, which detach themselves from the 
 ships, and fly, like birds, toward the mountain, without 
 being retained by the cohesive force of the wood. Hence 
 the vessels which navigate in this sea are not fast- 
 ened with iron nails, but cords made of palm fibres are 
 used to unite them, being secured by soft wooden nails 
 which swell in the water. The Yemen people also fasten 
 their ships with strips detached from the branches of the 
 palm tree. It is said that there is a similar mountain in 
 the Indian Sea." 
 
 It may be remarked, in passing, that when the Domin- 
 
 'Klaproth, cit. sup., 119. 2 Ibid, 57. 
 
 8 As is well known, there is much doubt concerning the actual works of 
 Aristotle. Most of those now accepted are not included in the full Aris- 
 totelian catalogue given by Diogenes Laertius, nor were they known to 
 Cicero. Grote: Aristotle, v. i., c. ii. 
 
THE MAGNETIC MOUNTAINS. IOI 
 
 ican monk Vincent de Beauvais 1 repeated tlie story in 
 1250, he put the mountain squarely on the shores of the 
 Indian Sea, and gave as his authority a Book of Stones 
 written by Galen, who was just as innocent of any such 
 production as Aristotle was. And when John Taisnier, 2 , 
 arch-plagiarist, in turn told it in 1562, he divided the 
 mountain into several pieces, and put it in the "Aethiopian 
 Sea; n while he changed the Yemen people into Canta- 
 brians, and, regardless of the baldness of the fiction, made 
 them construct their ships of wooden blocks fastened to- 
 gether by glue. 
 
 The evolution of the legend is characteristic of the times. 
 The outcropping magnetite of Phrygia probably attracted 
 the iron tools of the ancient miners, and Nicander trans^ 
 ferred its drawing power to the shoes of Magnes. Ptolemy 
 made the rock a mountain, set it on the seashore and 
 caused it to arrest ships; St. Ambrose and Soung So mul- 
 tiply the mountains, the Norsemen and the Arabs distri- 
 bute them widely over the earth and cause them not 
 merely to hold the ships but to pull out the iron nails, 
 and thus we reach the story of the Arabian Nights. 3 
 
 But, to return to Bailak's recital, at the end of which is 
 revealed the probable key to the myth. The Arabs had 
 no iron, or so little of it that vessel fastenings of that 
 material could not be obtained. 4 The great majority of 
 their ships were mere fishing crafts, intended to keep in 
 
 1 Constantinus, in L,ibro Graduum. 
 
 2 Taisnier : De Nat. Magnet, 1562. 
 
 "Lane (cit. sup.), says that the Arab author El-Kazweenee (in Ajaib el- 
 Makhlookat) in his account of minerals, places the mine of lodestone on 
 the shore of the Indian Sea, and reports that if the ships which navigate 
 this sea approach the mine or contain anything of iron it flies from them 
 like a bird, and adheres to the mountain ; for which reason it is the 
 general custom to make use of no iron in the construction of vessels em- 
 ployed in this navigation. Note 72. 
 
 4 Agatharcides affirms that iron in ancient Arabia was twice the value 
 of gold. (De Mari Rubro, 60.) 
 
102 THE INTELLECTUAL RISK IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 sight of shore. They were built 1 of wood of so hard a 
 quality that it was liable to split or crack like earthenware, 
 so that nails, even if they had been available, could not be 
 driven into it. The planks, after being bored, were 
 fastened to the stem and stern posts by wooden pins, and 
 were then bound together with ropes made from the 
 fibrous husk of the cocoanut, the cocoa fiber or coir of the 
 present time. Marco Polo, 2 after describing these boats, 
 says that they "are of the worst kind and dangerous for 
 navigation, exposing the merchants and others who make 
 use of them to great hazards." Being unfit to venture 
 upon the open sea, these vessels were of necessity kept near 
 land. Hence they were constantly exposed to danger from 
 reefs and shoals, and especially from such currents as the 
 Arabian Nights story-teller mentions, which swept them 
 irresistibly upon the rocks, so that it might easily seem 
 that the ships were dragged to the latter by some myster- 
 ious attractive force. A few tales of shipwreck of that sort 
 were easily elucidated by simply picking out from Pliny's 
 Natural History (which the world implicitly relied upon 
 for centuries) a convenient explanation. The story of 
 Mpgnes furnished one which fitted neatly to the facts, 
 and the tropical imagination of the Orient needed no ac- 
 cess of fervor to add the flying forth of the nails like birds, 
 and the breaking of the ill-fated ship into a thousand 
 pieces. 3 
 
 We have now to return to the study of the world's pro- 
 gress in knowledge of magnetic polarity. We have exam- 
 ined, briefly, the reasons which render the claim of origi- 
 nation of the mariner's compass by the Chinese as one to 
 
 ! The Three Voyages of Vasco da Gama. Hakluyt. Soc. London, 1869, 
 240. 
 
 2 Travels of Marco Polo. London, 1854, 20-21. 
 
 3 See Thevet: Cosmog. Univ., p. 445. Azuni : Dissert, sur la Bousscle 
 (cit. sup.) 
 
EARLY ARAB NAVIGATION. 103 
 
 be regarded with much doubt, if not to be wholly denied. 
 Even, however, if we concede the credit of this great 
 achievement to the Celestials, there still remains the 
 problem of how to account for the (necessarily assumed) 
 transmission of intelligence concerning the compass from 
 them to the western nations. The limited extent of their 
 voyages, due to their ignorance of geography, navigation 
 and seamanship, militates in advance against any hypoth- 
 esis of direct communication by the arrival of a Chinese 
 junk in a western port; and, in fact, that supposition is 
 seldom ventured. Perhaps the most favored theory is that 
 the Arabs, during the I2th century, brought the instrument 
 from China to the Mediterranean. 1 It is probably true that 
 Arab travelers found their way into China long before any 
 Europeans did so; and it is said that the knowledge of silk 
 was by this means brought to the western world during the 
 latter period of the Abbasides, and fully five hundred years 
 before Marco Polo's famous voyage. 2 The discovery of 
 ancient Chinese oil bottles, bearing on them quotations 
 from the Chinese poets, in Egypt and Asia Minor, is 
 considered proof of commercial connection between the 
 Arabs and Chinese, prior to the middle of the I3th century. 3 
 And the known fact that Arabian vessels did constantly 
 sail from the Persian Gulf to the Chinese coast, has been 
 deemed in itself sufficiently indicative of the presence of 
 the compass, without which so long a voyage, it is argued, 
 could not be made. 
 
 But the greater strength appears to lie in the considera- 
 tions which support the opposite conclusion. I have already 
 pointed out the structural weakness of the Arabian ships and 
 their unsuitable construction for ocean navigation.* Con- 
 sequently, their long voyages to China were always along 
 
 1 Klaproth, (I/Invention de la Boussole) and Humboldt, (Cosmos) both 
 so argue, and most cyclopaedias follow them. 
 2 Peschel: Races of Man, 363. 
 'Williams: The Middle Kingdom, ii.. 27. 
 4 Azuni : Dissert, sur la Boussole (cit. sup ) 
 
104 TH ^ INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 the coast by way of Cape Malabar, the shore never being 
 lost sight of at any time. 1 Trips to India, however, being 
 shorter, were frequent, and these were made even by the 
 Egyptians long before the Christian era. After studying 
 the periodic direction of the winds and the monsoons, one 
 Egyptian navigator, Hippalus, was bold enough to venture 
 into the open sea and to trust to the steady-blowing west 
 monsoon to waft him to the port of Musiris on the Mala- 
 bar coast. 2 His- success was regarded as so extraordinary 
 that the wind was named after him, and thenceforward, on 
 Indian voyages, both the Egyptians and the Arabs, when 
 they did leave the shore, risked the venture only when 
 they could rely on the persistence of the wind, and when 
 it was fair for the course they desired to sail. 3 
 
 It is true that the Arabs had astrolabes and other astro- 
 nomical instruments, which their pilots used for finding 
 their positions at sea; and obscure descriptions of these 
 have frequently been taken as referring to the compass. 
 The Arabs, however, never were inventors, and their early 
 knowledge was mainly derived from Greek books, from 
 which they could have learned nothing of navigation, 
 much less concerning the compass. Azuni* refers, more- 
 over, to a planisphere stated to be in the Treasury of St. 
 Mark in Venice, copied from one brought back by Polo, on 
 which is the explicit inscription that the ships traversing 
 the Indian" Ocean "navigate without the compass, for an 
 astrologer is stationed aloft and apart from every one else, 
 with the astrolabe in his hand," and thus vessels are 
 piloted. Nicholas Visconti, 5 who made the Indian tour in 
 the middle of the I5th century, asserts positively that the 
 Indian navigators "never navigate with the compass, but 
 
 ^enaudot : Anc. Rel. des Indes et de la Chine. Paris, 1718. 
 2 Robertson: Hist. Dis. of Anc. Ind., 2. 
 
 3 Arrian: In Periplo Maris Erythroei. Vellanson : De 1'Inv. de la 
 Boussole. Naples, 1808. 
 
 4 Azuni : Dissert, sur la Boussole, cit. sup. 
 
 5 Ramusio : Coll. Voyages. Venice, 1554, vol. i., 379. 
 
KARLY ARAB NAVIGATION. 105 
 
 guide themselves according as they find the stars high 
 or low, and this they execute with certain measures." 
 Whether the Arab pilots who were met by Vasco da Gama, 
 in 1497, after his famous voyage around the Cape of Good 
 Hope, were provided with compasses is a disputed ques- 
 tion. One of da Gama's companions, 1 after stating that 
 the largest ships, encountered did not exceed 200 tons bur- 
 den and were of very weak construction, adds that "no 
 one ever navigates these seas with the compass, but with 
 certain quadrants of wood, which appears to be very diffi- 
 cult, principally when the weather is foggy and the stars 
 cannot be seen." Contrariwise it is asserted that the 
 Arabs, at the time of da Gama, were instructed in so many 
 of the arts of navigation that they did not yield much to 
 the Portugese mariners in the science and practice of mari- 
 time matters. 2 
 
 It is obvious that even up to the end of the I5th century 
 a decided doubt exists as to the use of the compass by any 
 Arab or Indian navigators. Nor can anything be inferred 
 in their favor, even if it be conceded that the Chinese ves- 
 sels were employing it on the Indian Ocean. The Chinese 
 are not a communicative people, and, whether as a marine 
 or a land device, the magnetic needle has always been re- 
 garded by them as animated by a spirit. This is the 
 guardian deity of the ship, and hence, from the beginning y 
 the compass has been shut up in a little cabinet in the 
 stern of the vessel, with other sanctified utensils, and jeal- 
 ously guarded from strangers. The instrument, moreover, 
 is adjusted for the course before the ship leaves port by the 
 ship's owner, and the navigator is therefore especially 
 solicitous that it should not be disturbed en voyage? Add 
 to all this the fact that a magnetic needle cannot be recog- 
 
 1 Ibid, vol. i., c. 3. Barrow : A Voyage to Cochin China. Lond., 1806, 
 355. Renaudot : Dissert, sur les Sciences des Chinois, 288-289. 
 
 2 Hakluyt Soc. Three Voyages of Vasco da Gama, 1869. Varthema : 
 Travels, 31. 
 
 3 Barrow, cit. sup. 
 
106 THK INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 nized as magnetic by looking at it, and, unless the copy- 
 ing Arab possessed, not merely the knowledge of magnetic 
 attraction, which he might have had, but also that of 
 magnetic polarity, which he certainly did not have, it 
 would be impossible for him to reproduce the apparatus. 
 
 Besides, the Chinese mariner was grossly ignorant, and 
 even if he could explain the mysterious little needle, it is 
 imlikely that the haughty Arab, of a totally different race 
 and religious belief, would view other than with contempt, 
 the signs and astrological hieroglyphics, which were part 
 of the Chinaman's religion, and to which he would be 
 sure to attribute much of the marvelous powers of the 
 compass. The Arabs had possessed charts and astrolabes 
 for a long time, and had proved them to be efficient guides 
 at sea, so that it is improbable that they would readily 
 supplant them by any such incomprehensible Chinese 
 contrivance. Nor indeed is it necessary, because the 
 Arabs made long voyages, or because early mariners of 
 the Indian Ocean undertook journeys on which the modern 
 navigator would never venture without the aid of a com- 
 pass, to assume that such an instrument existed among 
 them. A fairly good means of guidance at sea, known 
 since the days of the Phoenicians, was the flight of birds. 
 Those birds which accomplish the longest flights, and 
 cross the widest oceans, always select, by some marvelous 
 instinct, the shortest ocean routes; and birds which know 
 their way are an invaluable guide to the sailor who has 
 lost his. There is, for example, a kind of falcon which 
 breeds in Southern Siberia, Mongolia, and Northern 
 China, and winters in India and Eastern Africa. 1 It is 
 able to make this long migration by moving from station 
 to station in the Indian Ocean, so that it is plausibly 
 supposed that guided by these birds, the ancient ships 
 might have made voyages from the coast of Malabar even 
 to the far distant Archipelago of Madagascar. 
 
 1 Dixon : Migration of Birds. London, 1892. Simcox : Prim. Civiliza- 
 tion, cit. sup. 
 
THE ARABS AND THE COMPASS. 107 
 
 If, therefore, the eastern Arabs neither invented the 
 mariner's compass themselves nor derived it from the 
 Chinese, the many claims based upon its supposed origin 
 among them must be laid aside. Indeed, it is seldom 
 that recent writers attempt to establish directly the first 
 appearance of the instrument among these people, the 
 usual contention being that the knowledge of it came with 
 the Saracen armies which conquered Egypt, the north 
 African coast, and finally Spain ; and that it was during 
 the period of advanced civilization which that country 
 reached during the Arab-Moor domination that the com- 
 pass found its way into general use on the Arab fleets in 
 the Mediterranean. 
 
 It is certainly not an unreasonable supposition that the 
 people whose attainments and culture shine out with the 
 highest lustre against the black background of the dense 
 and all-pervading ignorance prevailing throughout Europe 
 during the dark ages, and to whom the rejuvenation of 
 physical science was chiefly due, should have been, of all 
 others, the one to bring forth an invention of such trans- 
 cendent importance ; but even the strongest advocates of 
 the Spanish Saracens do not pretend that the compass was 
 discovered on Spanish soil, but allege only in a general 
 way that "the Arabians, finding it in their eastern con- 
 quests among the treasures of natural magic, brought it 
 into Spain certainly as early as the eleventh century, and 
 used it very generally there in the twelfth. n 
 
 But if the Arabs of the East, as we have seen, did 
 not have the instrument, it is hardly necessary to remark 
 that the Arabs of the West could not have obtained it 
 from them ; and, therefore, the problem is not to be 
 solved by such an hypothesis. Certain eminent Italian 
 historians (patriotically unwilling to relinquish the credit 
 accorded to Italy for many years during which the claims 
 of Flavio de Gioja of Amalfi were favorably regarded), 
 while conceding the invention to the Saracens, deny it 
 to the Saracens of Spain and ascribe it to the Saracens 
 
108 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 of Apulia. That the compass did probably come to 
 Apulia at an early date in its history, and that there is 
 consequently a certain support to this opinion, we shall 
 see further on; but there is a total lack of record evidence 
 that the Saracens, who dwelt chiefly in L,ucera or Nocera, 
 a city of refuge in the Italian province, had any part in its 
 introduction. 
 
 Our present inquiry, however, is to determine what, if 
 anything, the Spanish Moors contributed to the science, 
 the development of which we are studying : and to this I 
 now address myself. 
 
 By the middle of the eighth century, the Arabs through- 
 out their whole empire, from Syria to the Atlantic, had 
 begun to turn from the study of the Koran to that of 
 science and profane literature. They went to the Greeks 
 for their philosophy, and translated into Arabic the works 
 of Aristotle and Plato, Euclid, Apollonius, Ptolemy, 
 Hippocrates and Galen, undented by the distortions of 
 the Christian revisers, and untrammeled by the theological 
 dicta of any religious system. The syllogism of the 
 Stagirite commended itself to the subtle Saracen intellect, 
 and the disputations of the shady walks of Athens, long 
 since silenced, became again heard in the schools which 
 flanked the mosques from one end of the Mediterranean to 
 the other. 
 
 In Spain the awakening was even more thorough, and 
 the progress more swift ; for the men of action outstripped 
 the men of thought. Cordova produced her unrivaled 
 leather, and pointed to a paved street ten miles long and 
 brilliantly lighted at night. Toledo brought forth her 
 sword-blades, which still laugh the modern armorers' art 
 to scorn. The Arabic numeral, arithmetic, algebra and 
 chemistry came into the world. Rice and sugar and 
 cotton and spinach and saffron and nearly every fine 
 garden and orchard fruit followed the conquerors from the 
 east. The vineyards of Xeres and Malaga then first 
 yielded their famous wines. Art took on new and fas- 
 
THE ARABS AND THE COMPASS. 109 
 
 cinating forms, and such dreams of beauty as had never 
 before been known appeared amid the groves and gardens 
 of Granada. 
 
 If the Spanish Moors built any great ships or made any 
 long voyages on blue water, all have escaped record as 
 completely as has the memory of the mariner's compass, 
 with which their advocates say their apocryphal vessels of 
 the tenth and eleventh centuries were provided. 
 
 We shall look in vain through the encyclopaedic astro- 
 nomical work of Ibn Younis the great Hakemite Tables 
 (1007 A. D.) for any reference to this instrument, ines- 
 timable as is its importance in observations of the heavens. 
 Equally in vain will the works of Cherif Edrisi (1153 A. 
 D.) the most famous of all Arabian geographers be 
 searched for it ; nor has the grammatical and historical 
 lexicon of the Byzantine Greek, Suidas, full as it is in its 
 reference to the magnet, a word which reveals the slight- 
 est knowledge of the directing needle. 
 
 If the Saracens had constructed large vessels and had 
 made extensive voyages in them upon the open sea, it is 
 reasonably certain that some clear and indisputable records 
 thereof would long since have come to light. But the 
 only craft of unusual magnitude which they built were 
 flatboats for the transportation of troops or goods over 
 short distances, while their ships were of inconsiderable 
 dimensions. Out of eighteen hundred, which they sent 
 against Constantinople, only twenty were large enough to 
 carry one hundred men each, and all of them were de- 
 stroyed by the Greek fire showered upon them by the 
 besieged, in a single night. On a succeeding venture 
 most of the seven hundred and sixty ships composing the 
 attacking fleet met a like fate. 
 
 Thus it appears that the compass had no early existence 
 among the Arabs of the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, 
 nor among the highly civilized Saracens of Spain. There 
 still remain the Arabs who traded in the Eastern part of 
 the Mediterranean; but here our quest is short, for in the 
 
110 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 work of Bailak of Kibdjak already noted, and written in 
 1242, the first of all Arabian descriptions of the compass is 
 found. 
 
 "The captains who navigate the Syrian Sea," he says, 
 "when the night is so obscure that they cannot perceive 
 any star to direct them according to the determination of 
 the four cardinal points, take a vessel full of water which 
 they place sheltered from the wind and within the ship. 
 Then they take a needle, which they enclose in a piece 
 of wood or reed formed in the shape of a cross. They 
 throw it in the water contained in the vase, so that it 
 floats. Then they take a magnet stone large enough to 
 fill the palm of the hand, or smaller. They bring it to the 
 surface of the water, and give to the hand a movement of 
 rotation toward the right, so that the needle turns on the 
 surface of the water. Then they withdraw the hand sud- 
 denly, and at once the needle, by its two points, faces to 
 the south and to the north. I have seen them, with my 
 own eyes, do that, during my voyage at sea from Tripolis 
 to Alexandria in the year 640 (or 1240 A. D ).* 
 
 Bailak's assertion that the compass was in use at this 
 date is of course, in itself, enough to dispose of the oft re- 
 peated statement that the first tidings of it were brought 
 to Europe by Marco Polo, for that traveler did not return 
 from Cathay until 1295. But the theory of its invention 
 by the Eastern Arabs must also fall; for, at the time that 
 Bailak wrote, the Northmen had been steering their ships 
 by the magnet needle for more than half a century, and 
 the compass was well known to the sailors of England, 
 France and Italy. 
 
 That the mariners of Christian Spain had like know- 
 ledge may perhaps be inferred ; but the earliest Spanish 
 record of the compass which has been found is in the 
 famous compilation of laws known as L,as Siete Partidas, 2 
 
 ^laproth : 57. From Arab MSS., No. 970, Bib. Nat. Paris. 
 2 Las Siete Partidas del Rey Don Alfonso El Sabio. Madrid, 1807. 
 Part IT., Title IX., Law 28. 
 
THE COMPASS IN MEDIEVAL SPAIN. Ill 
 
 made by order of Alfonso X., King of Castile, in 1263 ; the 
 a8th statute of which is the following : 
 
 "And as the sailors are guided in an obscure night by 
 means of the magnet needle, which is their mediator be- 
 tween the star and the lodestone, and shows them where 
 to go as well in good weather as in bad ; so those who 
 have to aid and to counsel the king should always be 
 guided by justice, which is the mediator between God and 
 the world, always giving safety to the good and punish- 
 ment to the wicked, each according to his deserts." 
 
 It appears, however, that the instrument was not then 
 in use in Spanish ships. In the chronicle of Don Pedro 
 Nino, Conde de Buelna, a famous Castilian knight, appears 
 the decisive statement under date of 1403: "The galleys 
 of Conde, it is said, left the island of la Alharina in Bar- 
 bary. . . The pilots compared their needles rubbed with 
 the magnet stone and opened their charts." This the 
 distinguished Spanish historian Capmany 1 says is not only 
 the first mention of the use of the compass in a Spanish 
 vessel, but he finds that in the inventories of a three- 
 decked ship fitted out in Barcelona in 1331 against the 
 Genoese, there is no reference to such an instrument ; nor 
 yet in the similar schedules of 1364 of the galleys of Don 
 Pedro IV., of Aragon, although all articles, even those of 
 very small account, are noted. On the other hand, he 
 points out that in the galley inventories of Alfonso V., of 
 Aragon, dated 1409, the compass is fully set forth. 
 
 1 Capmany : Memorias Historicas Sobre la Marina, Commercio, etc. 
 Madrid, 1792. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 BEING a sea-wolf, and living among sea-wolves, the 
 mediaeval Northman was controlled by wolf law, which 
 compelled him to keep his powers, offensive and defensive, 
 in the best possible order, lest he should be eaten. For, 
 when there was no quarry at hand for the common pack, 
 its members fell one upon another and the Danes harried 
 the Saxons, and the Swedes worried the Finns, and the 
 Norwegians came upon any and all of them ; and conse- 
 quently, as this fighting was done chiefly at sea, that nation 
 which had the strongest navy for the time being, at least, 
 was paramount. Therefore, to the building and mainte- 
 nance of ships everything else was subordinate, and even 
 the lands were divided so as to secure the largest possible 
 contribution of vessels, or the greatest tax levy for their 
 support. In the beginning, the galleys were small, and the 
 seven hundred of them which made up the fleet of Hakon 
 and Harald Bluetooth were little more than canoes ; but 
 they grew apace in size until in the nth century, the Long 
 Serpent of King Olaf Tryggvason went into action against 
 the ships of Norway, Denmark and Sweden, with thirty- 
 four banks of rowers beating the water into foam at her 
 sides. And, in that same battle of the Svold, Eirik, Jarl of 
 Norway had a vessel with beaks on both stem and stern, 
 and covered at her bow with great iron plates which 
 reached to the water. 
 
 As larger ships were built, the wonderful energy of the 
 Northmen found a new outlet in overcoming the dangers 
 and hardships of long voyages, even unto regions wherein 
 seamen had never before penetrated ; and their trading craft 
 went not merely into the Mediterranean, but to Greenland 
 and along the American coast. The northern Sagas may, 
 
 (112) 
 
THE VOYAGES OF THE NORTHMEN. 113 
 
 however, be searched in vain for any allusion which can 
 be interpreted as referring to the compass. In the middle 
 of the ninth century, Harald Fairhair, of Norway, drove 
 many of the chieftains from the country, and the record of 
 their voyages in search of new lands then begins. Naddod 
 Viking discovered Iceland in 861, and was followed by 
 Floki, the son of Vilgerd, a noted pirate, in 865. Floki 
 sailed from Roga land in Norway, and on reaching Smor- 
 snnd offered a great sacrifice and consecrated the three 
 crows by means of which he meant to find the way for, 
 says the Saga, "the magnet was not then in use for the 
 northern sailors." When he thought he was near to the 
 land, he freed the first crow, which returned to the port 
 from which he had sailed; the second crow flew about aim- 
 lessly until tired, and then came back to the vessel; but 
 the third crow went onward, and after the manner of its 
 kind, in a straight line, and so laying his course, Floki 
 found the eastern coast of the island. 1 
 
 Following the discovery of Iceland came that of Green- 
 land, by Thorvald and his son Eirik the Red, who made 
 the first voyage 2 in 985, and followed the coast. Liter 
 
 l L,andnamab6k: i., c. 2, \ 7. Wheaton: History of Northmen, London, 
 1831. Mallet: Northern Antiquities, 188. 
 
 This use of crows or ravens for finding the way at sea is believed to 
 have been common among the Northmen, and there may have been a 
 particular variety of these birds trained for the purpose and consecrated 
 thereto by religious rites which fell into disuse on the introduction of 
 Christianity; a probability strengthened by the fact that the raven was 
 the bird of Odin, the raven god, Hrafnagud, as he is called in the Scald 
 poetry. 
 
 The Icelandic saga was written in the nth century, and hence its di- 
 rect reference to the non-use of the magnet at an earlier period has been 
 cited to establish undoubted knowledge c of the compass at the date of the 
 work. The latter, however, was left uncompleted by its original author, 
 and it was glossed by many writers up to the time of Hauk, the son of 
 Enland, who entirely re-made it in the I4th century so that the refer- 
 ence belongs to that date and not to a period three centuries earlier. 
 See Klaproth, V Invention de la Boussole, cit. sup. 
 
 1 Flateyjarb6k, i., 429; Du Chaillu: Viking Age, cit. sup., 18. 
 8 
 
114 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 still was the first journey of Bjarni to America, 1 and as to 
 this the Saga says that "after three days' sailing, land 
 was out of sight and the fair winds ceased and northern 
 winds with fog blew continually, so that, for many days, 
 they did not know in what direction they were sailing" 
 a statement which completely negatives the presence of 
 the compass, even without the aid of the ensuing descrip- 
 tion of how the ships afterwards sailed in sight of the 
 shore. 
 
 We have now to turn to the Anglo-Saxons. A century 
 and a half after the pirate ships of Hengist had appeared 
 off Thanet, the "strangers from Rome," sent by Gregory 
 the Great, marched into Canterbury with censers burning, 
 the silver cross borne aloft, and chanting the solemn litany 
 of the Church: so returned into England the Latin tongue, 
 and with it Christianity. In the reign of Aelfred came 
 peace, long enough for the establishment of order and the 
 beginning of the teaching of the people. Of all the great 
 things which Aelfred did, the most significant with respect 
 to our present research, are the opening of channels of 
 thought and commerce between England and the people 
 of the north countries, and the great impetus which his 
 larger and better ships must have given to the making of 
 long voyages. 2 Thus a more extended knowledge of the 
 art of navigation and of matters pertaining thereto was 
 gained, better conditions of intercommunication were es- 
 tablished, and the spread of intelligence among the sea- 
 faring nations greatly quickened. Meanwhile, and long 
 before the reign of Aelfred, the magnet was well known 
 in Britain. The Greek and Roman writings with which 
 the clergy were familiar and those of Pliny especially 
 contained, as we have seen, abundant references to it; 
 and, as iron had been freely mined before the Roman occu- 
 
 1 Flateyjarb6k., i., 430. 
 
 2 The Saxon Chronicle and William of Malmesbury, 248. Wright, T. 
 A.: Essay on the State of Literature, etc., under the Anglo-Saxons. 
 London, 1839, 92. 
 
SCIENTIFIC WRITINGS OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 115 
 
 pation, the lodestone which Harrison, 1 in 1577, speaks of 
 as "oftentimes taken up out of our mines of iron," was 
 present in abundance in the country. The first Anglo- 
 Latin epigram mist, St. Aldhelm, 2 writing in the latter half 
 of the seventh century, devotes a stanza to it, mainly with 
 relation to the supposed power of the diamond to cut off its 
 attraction; and the Venerable Bede indirectly alludes to it 
 in his mention of Bellerophon's horse suspended in the 
 air at Rhodes. 
 
 The writings of St. Isidore and Bede were the chief 
 text-books of science of the Anglo-Saxons up to the 
 twelfth century. Their dicta were accepted as articles of 
 faith to be learned, and not questioned. Compilations and 
 re-compilations were made from them, often intermingled 
 with spurious treatises, and the whole buried under great 
 masses of commentaries, so that, to determine therefrom 
 the state of knowledge existing at any particular period is 
 at best a doubtful undertaking. The Anglo-Saxon work 
 in which we might expect to find the compass described, 
 if it were known, is the Manual of Astronomy abridged by 
 Alfric from Bede's De Natura Rerum, in the loth century; 
 but it contains no reference to the instrument, and, on the 
 contrary, alludes to the northern or "ship star," and its 
 fixedness in the heavens. 3 
 
 With the monastic reforms of Dunstan and Athelwold 
 some slight revival of scientific investigation becomes 
 apparent. But it was of weakling growth, and when it 
 was found linked with like progress in Saracen Spain, the 
 great body of the monks looked upon it with suspicion as 
 savoring of witchcraft and heresy. Despite the fame 
 which Dunstan gained by his supposed victory in a per- 
 
 1 Harrison, W. : A Description of England. Lond., 1577. Book iii., 
 c. 12. 
 
 2 Aldhelm: Lib de Septenario et de Metris. Ep. viii. De Magnete 
 Ferrifero. 
 
 3 Wright, T.: Popular Treatises on Science during the Middle Age& 
 London, 1841. 
 
Il6 THE INTELLECTUAL, RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 sonal contest with the Devil, his neighbors threw him into 
 a pond to determine whether he was, in fact, a wizard or 
 not; and when Ailnier of Malmesbury, having invested 
 himself with a pair of wings, jumped from a steeple and 
 broke his legs, they ascribed his failure to evil influences 
 with which he had paltered, and not, as he insisted, to his 
 having forgotten to put on a tail behind. 1 
 
 In none of the chronicles of Saxon England, nor in the 
 old legendary poems of the north, can any definite sign 
 of acquaintance with magnetic polarity be recognized. 
 While the Normans undertook long excursions, the ordi- 
 nary voyage made by them was merely between points on 
 the narrow seas where the pilots were seldom out of sight 
 of land, and in waters which had been navigated for cen- 
 turies and wherein all the peculiarities of coasts and cur- 
 rents were intimately known. During the loth and nth 
 centuries, however, the forays of the Normans, originally 
 confined to the lands bordering on the sea, were extended 
 into the heart of Europe. They ruined France, placed 
 her monarchs under tribute, and occupied and named one 
 of the fairest portions of the Prankish territory. There, 
 having embraced Christianity, they began pilgrimages to 
 Italy and the Holy Land, with all the fervor of new-made 
 converts. Their acceptance of the new faith does not 
 seem to have extended as far as the doctrine of loving one's 
 neighbors; and any behavior on the part of the latter to- 
 ward the pious pilgrim on the basis of such a presumption 
 speedily converted the meek wayfarer into an astonishingly 
 skilful manipulator of axe and sword. Their pilgrimages, 
 therefore, were not easily distinguishable from invasions, 
 and aroused resentment, and finally wars, especially with 
 the Greeks and Saracens of Southern Italy, one result of 
 which was the conquest of Apulia, and the transfer to 
 Norman control of the flourishing and opulent Amalfi, a 
 
 1 Wright, T.: An Essay on the State of Literature, etc., under the 
 Anglo-Saxons. London, 1839. 64-69. 
 William of Malmesbury (Scriptores Post Bedam), 92. 
 
WILLIAM APPULUS. 117 
 
 city which, for the preceding three hundred years, had 
 been one of the great maritime trading marts of the world. 
 
 It is in an original account of Norman prowess in this 
 part of Europe, written by William Appulus, 1 a native of 
 France, in noo, that a possible trace of the compass ap- 
 pears ; and this only in a single line of a poem which, in 
 describing Amalfi and its glories, mentions the many 
 mariners tarrying in the city as "skilled in opening the 
 ways of the seas and the heavens." Gibbon 2 regards these 
 words as relating to the compass ; but, inasmuch as the 
 eminent historian himself dwells upon the extension of 
 the Amalfitan trade to the African, Arabian and Indian 
 coasts, they seem more applicable to the general nautical 
 skill which could conduct ships to such distant places, 
 rather than to any specific aid in so doing which the com- 
 pass might afford. 
 
 At all events, if the silence of all written records from 
 the reign of Aelfred to the beginning of the I2th century 
 is to be regarded as disproving the prior or contemporary 
 use of the instrument, the continuance of that same silence 
 after the time of William Appulus and in the face of the 
 great commerce of Amalfi, is even more significant as 
 showing its absence. 
 
 On the other hand, it is not safe to accept these premi- 
 ses as controlling, in view of the existing state of Euro- 
 pean civilization. Hallam tells us that from the middle 
 of the 6th century a condition of general ignorance lasted 
 for a period of about five centuries; and that not until the 
 close of the nth century began vigorous attempts to re- 
 trieve what had been lost of ancient learning, or to supply 
 its place by the original powers of the mind. 3 Then, un- 
 fortunately, the newly-developed energy was turned into a 
 path almost diametrically opposite to that which led to the 
 
 1 William Appulus (apud Muratori, v.) lib, iii., 267. 
 
 2 Gibbon : The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, c. Ivi. 
 
 3 Hallam: Literature of Europe, Part I , c. i., 10. 
 
Il8 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 cultivation of physical science. If ignorance had left that 
 road choked and impassable with weeds, the scholastic 
 philosophy, of which John Scot Krigena began the asser- 
 tion in Aelfred's reign, conducted inquiring minds alto- 
 gether away from it. In the early days of Christendom 
 the heathen philosophy was regarded as different from the 
 philosophy of the new dispensation, and, therefore, it was 
 silenced. Now, it was maintained that the heathen phil- 
 osophy was identical with that deduced from divine reve- 
 lation, and consequently that theology was inherently and 
 essentially philosophical truth. Wherefore Abelard in- 
 sisted that logic includes the whole of science, which is 
 the same thing as saying that the key to all knowledge 
 lies in combining and recombining the notions conveyed 
 by words : or that the manipulation of a mathematical 
 formula can result in the discovery of a new mathematical 
 truth. Thus, a universal science was established with 
 the authority of a religious creed. Error became wicked, 
 dissent became heresy ; to reject the received human doc- 
 trines was nearly the same as to doubt divine declara- 
 tions. 1 
 
 In the scholastic philosophy so founded, physics had no 
 proper part, as distinguished from metaphysics. u Quiddi- 
 ties" were spoken of as distinct from qualities and quanti- 
 ties. Peter became an individual because of his humanity 
 combined with "Petreity." 2 The nature of angels, their 
 nine hierarchies, their modes of conversing and the morning 
 and evening state of their understandings; 3 the character of 
 the crystalline waters above the heavens wherein the stars 
 are set; 4 the mystical analogies between man and the uni- 
 verse, such were some of the subjects which were discussed 
 and disputed in endless circles until minds became polarized 
 
 'Whewell: Hist, of the Inductive Sciences, i., 315; ii., 151; Tenne- 
 mann : Geschichte der Philos., viii., 461 ; Ranker Hist, of the Popes, i., 
 502. 
 
 2 Ibid., 321. 
 
 'Hallam: Literature of Europe, cit. sup. 4 Whewell, 318. 
 
ANGLO-NORMAN MAGNETIC KNOWLEDGE. 119 
 
 and incapable of either receiving or understanding physi- 
 cal truths. And they were always such vast topics, such 
 ponderous metaphysical disquisitions; and so momentous 
 were the consequences supposed to depend on them that 
 the modern student heartily joins with old Burton in 
 wondering how his scholastic predecessors "could sleep 
 quietly and were not terrified in the night, or walk in 
 the dark, they had such monstrous questions and thought 
 such terrible matters all day long." Where was there any 
 place in the literature of the beginning of such a period 
 for exact physical descriptions of the magnet and its phe- 
 nomena? What was substituted for them appears in the 
 very first writing 1 in the Anglo-Norman language the 
 lingua Romana. This was not a sermon, although the 
 resemblance is frequently strong, but a poem written in 
 1 121 by Phillippe de Tliaun, under the high patronage of 
 the Queen of Henry I., Adelaide of Lo lira me. The work 
 is a Bestiary, founded partly on Pliny's Natural History 
 and partly on the zoological classifications of St. Isidore, 
 interspersed with fables some evidently borrowed from 
 the Orientals. It deals with the subject of magnetism in 
 the following not altogether lucid manner : 
 
 "And this know freely, that they break in pieces the 
 lodestone with goats' blood and lead: it signifies a great 
 matter. By the blood of the goat, we understand corrup- 
 tion in our law. By the lead we understand sin by which 
 men are ensnared. But the lead weighs the iron, which 
 draws sinners to hell. And this virtue it has in it, that it 
 draws iron with it: it signifies that Christians draw Pagans 
 to their law when they leave their heresy and believe." 
 
 Although these were days, as I have said, when any 
 eccentricity in thought or deed might give rise to sus- 
 picions of paltering with the powers of darkness, no 
 charge of sorcery or the compassing thereof could lie 
 against the inspired author of this sort of poesy; but 
 when, in the following paragraph, he proceeds to describe 
 
 1 Wright, T. : Popular Treatises on Science during the Middle Ages, 125. 
 
120 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 a mountain in the east where the adamant is found, which 
 mountain (whether because of the lodestone in it or not, 
 lie carefully neglects to say) u by night emits a great light 
 and it does not appear in the face of day," he becomes ap- 
 prehensive. So with entire prudence, he makes it clear 
 that he, the poet, does not aver this, but that it is the 
 dictum of Physiologus an expedient which many writers 
 of later times found convenient to imitate when discussing 
 prohibited subjects in a way likely to arouse in their be- 
 half the solicitude of the Holy Inquisition. 
 
 The intellectual movement in both literature and sci- 
 ence gained force rapidly as the iath century advanced. 
 Schools sprang up over the continent, and letters were 
 cultivated nowhere better than in Normandy. Then the 
 Norman French the Langue d' } oui gradually became 
 the vehicle of literary expression, and, with the reign 
 of Richard he of the lion heart and poet soul a new 
 era of literature intervenes, when the trouveres and 
 jongleurs come upon the scene and the indomitable 
 Norman spirit bursts forth in romances of chivalry and 
 honor and love: and when the beautiful legends of Arthur 
 of the round table and the "San Graal " are told by the 
 descendants of the fierce Berserkers, whose delight lay in 
 hearing over and again the bloody sagas of rapine and 
 massacre stridently shouted by the Skalds. 
 
 In the month of September, 1157, two infants, born on 
 the same day, the one at Windsor, the other at St. Albans, 
 were confided to the care of good dame Neckam. The 
 first was Richard of England, son of King Henry; the 
 second, she herself, by the best of all rights, named Alex- 
 ander, 1 and afterwards he became commonly known as 
 Alexander of St. Albans. 
 
 1 Wright, T. Alexander Neckam, lib. ii. London, 1863, quoting MSS. 
 James Coll., vii. 34. Wright's Latin text of Neckam's treatise and his 
 biographical introduction thereto, have been followed in the present 
 chapter. 
 
ALEXANDER NECKAM. 121 
 
 The boys, after the manner of foster brothers in those 
 days, grew up together until the difference in their 
 stations moved them asunder. The Prince went to the 
 wars the subject to the schools. Perhaps the royal favor 
 followed the young student, for we find him a distin- 
 guished professor at the University of Paris when but 
 twenty- three years of age: and a member of the school 
 which had been established by his countryman, Adam du 
 Petit Pont, which was celebrated for the subtleties of its 
 disputations. Here, he tells us, he both studied and 
 taught the arts rhetoric, poetry, civil and canon law, 
 Biblical criticism and medicine: an odd combination from 
 a modern point of view. Then he returned to England 
 and became master of the Dunstable school; but he evi- 
 dently had less taste for teaching than for learning, and 
 the books, the congenial companionship, the literary at- 
 mosphere to be found only in the monasteries, became 
 an overpowering attraction to the scholar, who felt, as 
 many another of like kidney has felt since, that he was 
 made for better work than hammering a parrot-like 
 knowledge of the Trivium into boys whom the Assize of 
 Arms was enrolling in the new militia as quickly as they 
 were able to wield a lance. 
 
 So he wrote to the Abbot of St. Benedict, seeking ad- 
 mission into that order; for of all monks, the Benedictines 
 were, in pursuance of the injunctions of their founder, 
 most devoted to letters. 
 
 u Si vis veniam : sin autem, etc." (If you wish I will 
 come : if not, etc.) ran his missive, with a curtness and a 
 shade of hauteur worthy of his royal nursemate. But the 
 witty Abbot had a pat answer, and a pun besides, ready at 
 hand : 
 
 u Si bonus es, venias : si nequam, nequaqtiam." (If you 
 are good for something, you may come : if not, don't.) 
 The u nequam" and "Neckam" were perilously alike: 
 too nearly so for the sensitive spirit of the would-be monk; 
 so he turned his back on Benedict's house and made favor 
 
123 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 with that of Augustine at Cirencester. There he seems to 
 have lived out his days uneventfully and to have risen to 
 be Abbot. He died at Kempsey, near Worcester, in 1217, 
 and that is all that is known about him personally. 
 
 Neckam was a typical product of the prevailing philos- 
 ophy of his time. His principal treatise bears the title 
 De Natura Rerum, which was a stereotyped one among 
 the mediaeval encyclopaedists, and in it he epitomizes all 
 the scientific knowledge of his day which he has gathered 
 by observation, and proceeds to explain it by the aid of a 
 tropical imagination tempered by theology. He delights 
 in intellectual labor, and detests scholastic methods, yet 
 sees no other mode than these last by which its produc- 
 tions may be utilized. He collects his facts with patient 
 care, all the time thinking that the study of the liberal 
 arts, while useful, leads people into the u vanity of over- 
 curious researches. " And then he seeks to reconcile the 
 inconsistency by averring that the arts are commendable 
 in themselves, but those who abuse them are worthy of 
 reprehension : regardless as to whether or not he himself 
 may be found in the latter category. But for scholastic 
 reasoning as such, it is "a thing full of vacuities." 
 
 There is no direct statement in Neckam's writings 
 which fixes exactly the time when they were produced ; 
 but John of Brompton, whose chronicle ends with the 
 accession of King John (which occurred during his life- 
 time), quotes from the De Natura Rerum in a way that 
 shows it to have been well known at the end of the I2th 
 century. It is a treatise constructed very much on the 
 lines of St. Isidore's Etymologies, but is not so categorical 
 as the older work. It is a treasure house of curious folk- 
 lore and legends. In it appears for the first time the fancy 
 of the Man in the Moon; the traditions of the development 
 of the goose from the barnacle; 1 the swan that sings ere it 
 dies ; the unnatural ostrich which starves its young, and 
 
 persisted even in the Royal Society at the end of the jyth cen- 
 tury. Phil. Trans., No. 137, p. 927, vol. xii., 1677-8. 
 
ALEXANDER NECKAM. 133 
 
 the pelican which dies to feed them ; the nightingale 
 which sings on one bank of a stream and never on the 
 other; the grasshoppers generated by the cuckoo; the par- 
 rot which drops dead on hearing the language of its native 
 land; the dog which manages the sails of a boat which its 
 master steers ; the wren which hides under the eagle's 
 wing and when the eagle rises in the air above all other 
 birds, slips out and flutters over him and so wins the con- 
 test; the squirrel which crosses rivers on a chip with his 
 tail for a sail ; the lynx with eyes so sharp that it can see 
 through nine walls : all discussed as Neckain promises in 
 the beginning "morally.'* 
 
 The portions of Neckam's writings which are of especial 
 interest and importance in our present research are the 
 chapter 1 on attractive strength in his De Natura Rerum, 
 and a paragraph in another treatise De Utensilibus, the 
 last being a sort of vocabulary or series of lists of articles 
 in ordinary use. These show clearly the point to which 
 knowledge of the magnet and amber had progressed, and 
 the curious conceptions and fancies which had become in- 
 termingled with it. 
 
 In attacking the subject of attraction, Neckam defines 
 the existing doctrine of similitudes, which was very closely 
 like the ancient theory of sympathies and antipathies, by 
 means of which it was sought to explain every phenomenon 
 of nature by a mutual affinity or reciprocal dependence of 
 bodies, whether celestial or terrestrial, organic or inor- 
 ganic; such as gravity, cohesion, the force we call chemi- 
 cal "affinity," (and for which we still retain the old name 
 though with a different understanding of it) and all move- 
 ments, natural and instinctive, of living things. 
 
 The theory came originally from the Greek, and espec- 
 ially from Galen, who maintained that there was a vital, 
 intelligent and divine power in nature, by virtue of which 
 every substance appropriates that which suits its constitu- 
 
 1 Cap. xcviii. 
 
124 INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 tion and its needs. 1 This was practically giving to the 
 nature-soul of the ancient Greeks a selective capacity. 
 In the 9th and loth centuries the Arabs applied the same 
 doctrine to the magnet. Serapion says that a solvent 
 medicine, when it reaches the stomach, then draws with 
 an attractive virtue the humor suitable to itself, but it is 
 not drawn to the humor; just as the magnet moves the 
 iron to itself, but is not moved to the iron. 2 Ali ben 
 Abbas likewise makes a similar comparison, 3 which, in 
 later writers, is repeated over and over again, although it 
 is essentially false, and simply due to the iron being more 
 weakly magnetized than the attracting lodestone. 
 
 The doctrine of similitudes is thus a mediaeval form of 
 the old canon similia similibus, and rests on the same 
 concepts. All compounds, for example, were supposed to 
 derive their qualities from their elements by resemblance, 
 being hot by reason of a hot element, heavy in virtue of a 
 heavy element, and so on. For a long period, medical 
 science rested on these distinctions, disorders being hot 
 and cold, and remedies being similarly classified. One 
 Eastern story teller relates 4 that the Persian physicians were 
 scandalized by the prescription of mercury by a European 
 brother, for the cure of ill-effects following over-indulgence 
 in cucumbers; for, they maintained, cucumbers are cold, 
 and hence their ill-effects can not be overcome by mer- 
 cury, which is cold also. "He makes no distinction," 
 complain the oriental practitioners, "between hot and 
 cold diseases and hot and cold remedies, as Galenus and 
 Avicenna have ordered, but gives mercury as a cooling 
 medicine." 
 
 1 Martin : Obs'ns and Theories of the Ancients on Magnetic Attractions 
 and Repulsions. See also Atti dell' Accademia Pont, de Nuovi Lincei, 
 T. xviii., 1864-5. 
 
 2 Steinschneider : Intorno ad alcuni passi di Opere del Medio Evo rela- 
 tivi alia calamita. Rome, 1868. 
 
 3 Lib. Practicae, lib. ii. c., 53. 
 
 *The Adventures of Hadji Baba. Ed. by J. Morier, N. Y., 1855, p. 98. 
 
ALEXANDER NECKAM. 125 
 
 Similar notions persisted among the metallurgists until 
 the beginning of the i8th century. Thus the ready com- 
 bination of metals with mercury to form amalgams was 
 regarded as proof of mutual benignant regard, and the 
 combination of metals in their alloys was similarly ex- 
 plained. Lead is loved by gold and silver, but brass ab- 
 hors lead. 1 The astrologers claimed that metals exercised 
 a selection in benevolently mixing with various parts of 
 the human body, the gold seeking the heart; silver, the 
 brain; lead, the spleen; mercury, the lungs; tin, the liver, 
 and so on. But to living beings as units, they thought 
 that metals manifested great contrariety, because, as it was 
 gravely pointed out, no animal could subsist on metals, 
 plants do not flourish where metallic veins abound, and in 
 mines the vapors are deadly. Even in preparing pearls as 
 medicine, they must be brayed in marble mortars, because 
 otherwise iron might thus be imported into the body and 
 act malevolently. 
 
 Neckam follows these ideas closely. Some things, he 
 says, are drawn naturally, others by accident, and when 
 by accident, either from necessity or chance similitude; 
 from necessity, as when the body, through hunger, attracts 
 so that its famishing members will thrive on insufficient 
 food, such as bran (there were evidently dyspeptics in 
 those days),, or even on noxious herbs. Accidental simil- 
 itude occurs when non-nourishing things are combined 
 with nutriment. Natural attraction takes place, we are 
 told, in many ways, u as by the power of heat, or by a vir- 
 tue, or by the natural quality of similitude, or by the law 
 of vacuity. " Fire, for example, by the strength of heat 
 draws oil for its nutriment. 
 
 The concept of an u attractive" virtue is the mediaeval 
 modification of Galen's selective vital force. This attrac- 
 tion by virtue, says Neckam, is caused in two ways, either 
 occultly or manifestly. Occult virtue is closely allied to 
 similitude in its effects, and acts as scammony draws bile 
 
 1 Aldrovandus: Musaeutn Metallicum, ii. 
 
126 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 and hellebore the vapors. But manifest virtue is virtue 
 that is perceptible and here we suddenly find ourselves 
 within the borders of the particular field which we are ex- 
 ploring it is seen when the lodestone draws iron and the 
 jet chaff. 
 
 This reference to jet is noteworthy. The ancient writers 
 spoke of u gagates," which acted like amber, and left it 
 in doubt what gagates might be. After jet had been cer- 
 tainly determined to possess the amber quality, the word 
 was so interpreted. Neckam, however, is not quoting 
 from any ancient author, but stating his own facts and be- 
 liefs; and the frequent later use of the English word "jet" 
 by English writers instead of " amber," in referring to the 
 phenomenon figuratively, renders it altogether probable 
 that the learned Abbot was speaking not of the doubtful 
 substance from Lydia, which he had never seen, but the 
 lustrous black stone which had been mined in his own 
 country ever since the Roman invasion. 1 
 
 "If you ask its value as an ornament," he says, "jet is 
 black and brilliant: if its nature, water burns it and it is 
 extinguished by oil: if its power, being heated by rubbing, 
 it holds things applied to it, like amber: if its use, it is an 
 excellent remedy for dropsy." It was commonly found in 
 Derbyshire and Berwick, and the Romans preferred it to 
 that which was found in Germany. "The old writers," 
 says Harrison, 2 "remember few other stones of estimation 
 to be found in this Island, than that which we call 'geat,' 
 and they, in L,atin, 'gegates.' " 
 
 The explanation of "the quality of natural similitude 
 not without attractive virtue" is ushered in by an illustra- 
 tion borrowed evidently from the Arabs. A warm stomach 
 draws warm nourishment, and a cold stomach, cold nour- 
 ishment: and we are to note that, according as by friendly 
 
 1 The value of jet and of Kimmeridge coal for ornamental purposes was 
 then well understood, and jet ornaments have been found in graves of the 
 period. Traill: Social England, i. 92. 
 
 2 Harrison: A Description of England. London, 1577. 
 
SYMPATHIES AND SIMILITUDES. 127 
 
 similitude, attraction occurs, so, by hostile dissimilitude 
 expulsion takes place. So that, for example, if vinegar 
 and water be poured around a tree, the water will be 
 absorbed and the vinegar rejected. 
 
 Now comes the first faint suggestion of the polarity of 
 the lodestone. "So," he says, continuing his illustration, 
 u the lodestone attracts by one part by similitude and from 
 another part expels by dissimilitude." This is not the 
 mere statement that a lodestone will repel as well as at- 
 tract: nor is it, on the other hand, quite the affirmance of 
 "opposite effects at opposite ends," but it is a clear recog- 
 nition that one and the same stone will repel at one part 
 and attract at another part. Where these parts were situ- 
 ated with reference to the figure of the magnet whether 
 at its ends or otherwise Neckam did not know; but that 
 this dual property exists in it, he makes plain. Compare 
 Neckam's statement with that of Aldrovandus written four 
 centuries later; "the lodestone attracts iron by natural sym- 
 pathy at one end and repels it by antipathy at the other." 
 
 Continuing, he explains that the appetite virtue draws 
 by friendly similitude, and the expulsive virtue rejects by 
 hostile dissimilitude; but the attracting thing again he 
 goes back to the Arabs must act more violently than the 
 attracted thing, for if equal they would counterbalance. 
 Whence it is that the lodestone draws iron and not an- 
 other lodestone, although it may have thereto greater 
 similitude, because the lodestone opposes to the lodestone 
 an equal and mutual contradiction. The iron yields itself 
 because of weaker virtue. 
 
 The entanglement of his mind in the snares of sympa- 
 thies and similitudes is obvious. On the theory of simili- 
 tude, a lodestone should attract another lodestone ; but 
 that, he holds, is not the fact. Similia similibus cannot 
 be at fault; that would be to dispute the hypothesis, which 
 is indisputable. Wherefore, query, how can an incontro- 
 vertible fact be reconciled with an indisputable theory 
 when they diametrically disagree? 
 
128 THE INTEUvECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 The dialectical subtlety of the problem cannot have 
 been otherwise than fascinating to the intellect skilled in 
 the casuistries of the Petit Pont, and it grappled with the 
 difficulties just as it had perhaps many a time done with 
 
 "Whether angels in moving from place to place 
 Pass through the intermediate space " 
 
 and emerged triumphantly. 
 
 The similitude is undeniable ; so, likewise, the sympa- 
 thy. One lodestone resembles and sympathizes with the 
 other, even as the other does with it. Therefore, why 
 should attrahens act upon attractum any more than at- 
 tractum upon attrahens? If Sortes and Scholasticus at 
 opposite ends of a rope pull against one another with equal 
 strength, is Sortes drawn to Scholasticus or Scholasticus 
 to Sortes? Certainly not; they remain quiescent in statu 
 quo; so do the lodestones. Q. K. D. 
 
 Now, this is not setting up Sortes that favorite straw 
 man of the schools to be proved a stone, or a rose, or a 
 lily, or what not; nor does it demonstrate that any remark 
 of Sortes is both true and false at one and the same 
 time, nor that he knows something, yet nothing all 
 favorite quibbles of the mediaeval disputants and, there- 
 fore, what Neckam calls "vacuities": this is what a i2th 
 century mind, trying to break away from that sort of reas- 
 oning, manages to accomplish in the effort. The reason- 
 ing is wrong, of course; but it is physical reasoning, and 
 that, even if wrong, is something better than "vacuities." 
 
 Now follows in this old treatise of an English monk 
 probably the first of all known descriptions of the mar- 
 iner* s compass. Here it is: 
 
 "The sailors, moreover, as they sail over the sea, when 
 in cloudy weather they can no longer profit by the light of 
 the sun, or when the world is wrapped in the darkness of 
 the shades of night, and they are ignorant to what part 
 of the horizon the prow is directed, place the needle over 
 the magnet, which is whirled round in a circle, until, 
 
THE FIRST MARINER'S COMPASS. 129 
 
 when the motion ceases; the point of it (the needle) looks 
 to North." 
 
 The paragraph from the De Utensilibus may be best 
 considered simultaneously with the foregoing. The Latin 
 words 1 present many obscurities, to which it is needless 
 to refer in detail here, since they are considered in the fol- 
 lowing translation: 
 
 "If then one wishes a ship well provided with all things, 
 one must have also a needle mounted on a dart. The 
 needle will be oscillated and turn until the point of the 
 needle directs itself to the Bast (North), thus making 
 known to the sailors the route which they should hold 
 while the Little Bear is concealed from them by the vicis- 
 situdes of the atmosphere; for it never disappears under 
 the horizon because of the smallness of the circle which it 
 describes." 2 
 
 The manner of using the compass described in these re- 
 markable passages is altogether different from that now 
 followed; but is easily interpreted in the light of the.in- 
 
 1 "Qui ergo munitam vult habere navem habet etiam acum jaculo sup- 
 positam. Rotabitur enim et circumvolvetur acus, donee cusp is acus 
 respiciat orientem; sicque comprehendunt quo tendere debeant nautae 
 cum Cynosura latet in aeris turbatione; quamvis ad occasum numquam 
 tendat, propter circuli brevitateni." Wright, T.: A Volume of Vocabu- 
 laries, London, 1857. 
 
 2 D'Avezac: Anciens Temoignages Historiques Relatifs a la Boussole. 
 Bull, de la Soc. Geog., 19 Feb., 1858. 
 
 See, also, Bertelli ; sulla Epistola de P. Peregrine, Rome, 1868, Mem. 
 ii. p. 41. D'Avezac points out that the statement in the original that the 
 needle directs itself to the East is evidently an error, and translates the 
 somewhat ambiguous clause with reference to the Little Bear as given 
 above. In this Bertelli concurs, but dissents from D' Avezac's rendering of 
 " suppositam " as if it were ' ' superpositam " and consequent translation 
 of "acum jaculo suppositam " as "a needle mounted on a pivot." It is 
 thought that Bertelli is right, on the principle that no physical discovery 
 ought to be ante-dated merely by a possible change in the signification 
 of words. The burden of proof is on D'Avezac not only to demonstrate 
 that his rendering is reasonable, but also from other sources to show 
 that a pivoted compass was known at or about Neckam's time; and this 
 he fails to do. 
 
130 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 formation afforded by the early writers, whose works ap- 
 peared shortly after Neckain's treatises. 
 
 The needle was not in constant use, as it is now, on a 
 ship at sea, nor was it even employed to indicate any par- 
 ticular course. The roughness of the construction of the 
 first compasses made them wholly unsuitable for such pur- 
 pose. When the Pole-star could be seen at night, the pilot 
 steered by it, as usual, and by day he kept along shore. 
 If, however, the sky at night became cloudy, so that the 
 stars were obscured, the needle was brought out and rubbed 
 with the lodestone. This rubbing was repeated every time 
 the needle was used, and is what is meant by (acum super 
 magnetem ponunt) the placing of the needle over the mag- 
 net. This operation was called u inunction." The needle 
 was thrust through a reed or short piece of wood (jaculo 
 snppositam), which supported it floating in a vessel of 
 water. If the needle was left in this receptacle, naturally 
 it would move against the side, and thus be held, by con- 
 tact, in a position not at all coinciding necessarily with 
 the earth's lines of force. Consequently its magnetic 
 quality would become more or less impaired, and that was 
 apparently one reason for the remagnetization prior to 
 every observation. Another reason probably was the re- 
 moval, by the rubbing process, of the rust which would 
 accumulate on the iron needle, the effect of the oxidation 
 being to enlarge the needle and to roughen it, and so to 
 impede its free movement on the water. 
 
 After the needle had been magnetized and carefully 
 floated it was given an oscillating and circular movement, 
 in order to carry it clear of the sides of the vessel and to 
 overcome its own inertia, and also the normal resistance of 
 the water to its motion. This was done by moving the 
 magnet in the vicinity of the needle in a circular direction, 
 the magnet attracting the needle and causing it to follow. 
 After this motion was established the lodestone was with- 
 drawn and the needle allowed to come to rest, and the 
 point on the horizon noted which the north end desig- 
 nated. 
 
DISCOVERIES IN MAGNETISM. 131 
 
 It is plain that this operation must have required con- 
 siderable thought for its invention. It was necessary to 
 discoverers/, that a lodestone bar would, when free to 
 turn, place itself longitudinally in a north and south 
 direction : second, that an artificial lodestone could be 
 made by rubbing a needle with the natural lodestone: 
 third, that such a needle would place itself north and 
 south in the same way as a lodestone : fourth, that such a 
 needle would be free to turn if floated on water: fifth, 
 that a certain end of the needle would always point to the 
 star, and that the indication of that end must be followed : 
 sixth, that, in order to make this extremity always north- 
 indicating, the needle must be rubbed with a definite part 
 of the magnet and in a definite way, that is to say, the 
 needle must be rubbed from south- pointing end to north- 
 pointing end by a certain part of the magnet, or from 
 north-pointing end to south-pointing end by an opposite 
 part of the same magnet; any departure from the foregoing 
 would make the end of the needle regarded as north- 
 pointing turn to the south, and so destroy the utility of 
 the apparatus : seventh, that the floating needle would not 
 only follow a lodestone bodily, as the iron moved over the 
 silver dish, as told by St. Augustine, but by suitably mov- 
 ing the lodestone it could be made to rotate : eighth, that 
 the inertia of the needle and the resistance of the water 
 could be first overcome artificially and the needle set in 
 motion, so that afterwards the directive force of the earth, 
 tending to set the needle in a particular position, north 
 and south, would act jointly with the inertia and the 
 liquid resistance as a force tending to stop the needle, in- 
 stead of as a force tending to set the needle in motion in 
 opposition to both of these resistances. 
 
 This is a most extraordinary category of discoveries for 
 any period of the world's history, let alone a time when 
 physical research was impeded in every direction, and the 
 human brain supposed competent to evolve all human 
 knowledge. It includes the perception of a difference be- 
 
132 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 tween the effects produced by different parts of the lode- 
 stone, in order that the magnetizing operations above de- 
 scribed might be done ; the directive tendency of the mag- 
 net ; the making of artificial magnets by rubbing iron 
 needles with the stone, such magnets also showing differ- 
 ent properties at opposite parts; the supporting of the com- 
 pass needle on liquid, as a rotary armature; the prevention 
 of the disturbing effects of inertia and fluid resistance, and 
 the use of the instrument to reveal the position of the hid- 
 den Pole star. It is contrary to the teaching of the his- 
 tory of human invention since the beginning of the world, 
 to the principle which underlies all human progress, to 
 assume that all these discoveries were made simultane- 
 ously, and therefore that the compass of Neckam, crude 
 as it is, was the product of a single inventive act. On 
 the contrary, such a chain of phenomena is of necessity 
 the result of evolution, and of slow evolution because oc- 
 curring at a period when the current of all exact thought 
 moved most sluggishly. 
 
 Observe that Neckam has linked together all the elec- 
 tric knowledge of his time. In the same treatise he dis- 
 cusses amber and lodestone attraction, the repelling effect 
 of the magnet, the polarity of it, and as the fruit and 
 flower of all, exhibits the mariner's compass. Klaproth, 
 as I have stated, says that the Chinese had no knowledge 
 of the instrument until during the I3th century, and hence 
 after Neckam' s day. The claim made by another author- 
 ity, that a single Chinese writing asserts that the compass 
 was used on a voyage in 1122 A. D., furnishes no proof 
 that afterwards, and between that date and the period 
 which Klaproth takes as the earliest, there was any con- 
 tinued marine employment of the magnetic needle by the 
 Chinese. It is hardly reasonable to assume that the in- 
 telligence of this isolated use in 1122 could have reached 
 England in the very depths of the Dark Ages, at a time 
 more than 150 years before Marco Polo made his famous 
 voyage, when practically no communication existed be- 
 
EUROPEAN TRADITIONS OF THE COMPASS. 133 
 
 tween China and Western Europe and when no channel 
 can be recognized by which such news could have come 
 by way of the Arabs. Nevertheless, it is impossible, as 
 already stated, to conceive that the mariner's compass had 
 not been slowly evolving somewhere before Neckam de- 
 scribed it. Yet, where? We have examined in vain the 
 knowledge of all nations which at various times and by 
 various authorities have been credited with its invention. 
 How came it to be known and in use in Northern Europe 
 before Neckam' s day? 
 
 Does the intellectual rise in electricity include a lost art 
 regained? True, traditions as to the antiquity of the com- 
 pass in Europe have never been wholly wanting. The 
 Emperor Charlemagne is said to have given to the cardinal 
 points (which, as we have seen, were established and so 
 termed by the Etruscans) the Teutonic names, North, 
 South, East and West, which they still bear ; and to have 
 also named the four intermediate rhumbs, North-East, 
 North-West, South-East and South-West. The sailors of 
 Bruges in Flanders, moreover, have always been reputed 
 to be the inventors of the remaining eight points, complet- 
 ing the thirty-two, to which they gave the present Teu- 
 tonic designations during the I2th century. 1 
 
 The venerable Dr. Wallis, writing in 1702, at the age 
 of eighty-six, gives it as his opinion that the mariner's 
 compass was originally an English invention "for the 
 word 'compass' is an ancient English word for what we 
 otherwise call by a French name a c circle.' And I am sure 
 that within my memory, in the place where I was born 
 and bred, it was wont to be so called, though the word 
 * circle ' is more in use." 2 
 
 Anderson: Origin of Commerce, London, 1787, v. I, 61. Quoting 
 Goropius apud Morisotus, and Verstegan. 
 
 2 Phil. Trans., xxii., 276; xxiii., 278. 
 
 "My green bed embroidered with a compas," is mentioned in the will 
 of Edward, Duke of York, dec'd 1415. Nicolas: Testamenta Vetusta, 
 London, 1826. 
 
134 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 There is material for conjecture, however, perhaps 
 more persuasive than any based on such traditions and 
 inferences as the foregoing. The pursuit of it leads us to 
 the far north, to the sea on the shores of which the amber 
 was first gathered, and to the great island city once grand 
 in marble and brass, but of which now even the ruins are 
 forgotten. 
 
 In the Baltic, about equidistant from Sweden, Russia, 
 and Germany, lies the island of Gottland, by some iden- 
 tified as the Kungla of the national epic l of the Esthon- 
 ians, where it is always described as a fairy land of adven- 
 ture and untold wealth. Hither came the maritime com- 
 merce of the Wendic people after their capital city, Veneta, 
 had been destroyed in 1043. Originally occupied by 
 Goths, and later jointly by Goths and Germans, these 
 tribes maintained incessant contests, which ultimately led 
 to the downfall of the place. During the period of its 
 supremacy, the island became a rendezvous for the vessels 
 of all trading nations, and its principal settlement, Wisby 
 or Wisbuy, despite the constant internal strife, grew 
 into a city of large extent, the ruins of which have re- 
 vealed many works of art and luxury. Olaus Magnus, 2 
 the great historian of the North, writing in 1555, speaks 
 of it as a noble town, possessing a strongly-defended 
 citadel. He says that it was the emporium of many 
 regions, and that nowhere else in Europe was there such 
 trade: that flocking thither came the Goths, the Gauls, 
 the Swedes, the Russians, the Danes, the Angles, the 
 Scots, the Flemings, the Vandals, the Saxons, the Span- 
 iards and the Finns; these different people freely, mingling 
 with one another and filling the streets, the town hospi- 
 tably welcoming all; that, in his time, there still remained 
 
 'The Kalevipoeg. See Kirby : The Hero of Esthonia. London, 1895. 
 2 Olaus Magnus: Hist, de Gent. Septen. Rome, 1555, lib. 2, cxxiv. 
 
WISBUY. 135 
 
 marble ruins, vaulted halls and iron gates, windows decor- 
 ated with copper and brass, afterwards gilded all showing 
 the grandeur of a bygone age. By 1288 the city seems 
 to have become dilapidated through the continual feuds; 
 but, in that year, Magnus, King of Sweden, allowed the 
 citizens to rebuild their walls and fortifications a cir- 
 cumstance which has led some historians into the errone- 
 ous belief that the place was then, for the first time, estab- 
 lished. 
 
 It naturally followed that amid such a vast concourse of 
 foreigners, all seafaring men, disputes constantly arose, 
 based on controversies peculiar to the mariner's calling 
 the relative rights of masters and seamen, of owners 
 and shippers, the adjustment of marine losses, contracts 
 governing the chartering and maintenance of ships and 
 crews, and so on through the great body of that branch 
 of jurisprudence now known as admiralty. 
 
 There is probably no one more stubbornly conservative 
 of his rights than the sailor, or more ready to assert them; 
 and as this has always been found true of his species since 
 time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the con- 
 trary, there is no reason to believe that the mariners who 
 took their liberty in the streets of Wisbuy differed mate- 
 rially in modes of thought and action from those who 
 congregate to-day in the great maritime ports of the world. 
 Jack came ashore, and probably spent his hard-earned 
 wages and fought the "beach combers" and the u rock 
 scorpions" and became the prey of the crimps of Wisbuy 
 and the terror of its police, just as he does now at Gibral- 
 tar, or Liverpool, or Hong Kong; while the owners and 
 the masters and the average adjusters and the sea-lawyers 
 wrangled over questions of jettison and demurrage and 
 collision with the same fervor that brings them nowadays 
 into the Admiralty Courts. The consequence was that 
 two sets of locally-devised laws came into existence, ad- 
 ministered by the consulate courts or authorities of the 
 city the one known as the Ordinances of Wisbuy, con- 
 
136 THE INTELLECTUAL RISK IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 trolling all matters pertaining to the harbor, docks and to 
 vessels in port; and the other, known as the Laws of Wis- 
 buy, governing rights on the high seas. To these statutes 
 merchants and sailors submitted by general custom and 
 consent, 1 and they submit to them still, for they are im- 
 bedded in modern codes of marine law. Whether the 
 famous laws of Oleron, supposed to have been framed by 
 Queen Elinor, who died in 1202, or Richard L, who died 
 in 1199, preceded or followed the Wisbuy laws, which 
 they closely resemble, is a mooted point ; but apparently 
 the latter are the older. 2 
 
 It is certain that, early in the i3th century, the Wisbuy 
 laws were commonly observed in the eastern ports of the 
 Baltic, which, of course, could not have been the case had 
 these statutes not come into existence, as some suppose, 
 until after the rebuilding of the walls of the city in 1288. 
 Furthermore, recent research has made it plain that the 
 Wisbuy code was a composite structure built up gradually 
 over a long period, during which not only additions but 
 omissions were made; many features, at one time in full 
 force and regarded as wise and proper, becoming obsolete 
 or out of harmony with changed customs or more mode- 
 rate notions of wrongs and remedies. 3 The code as it ap- 
 pears to-day is extremely brief,* and thus bears on its face 
 the evidence that it is probably merely a residuum, and 
 by no means inclusive of all the precepts which at various 
 times formed parts of it. 
 
 1 Olaus Magnus, cit. sup., says : "The laws for sea affairs and the de- 
 cisions of all controversies severally, far and wide, as far as the pillars of 
 Hercules and the utmost Scythian Sea, are fetched from thence, and are 
 observed ; being given, that all things may be done in a due tranquillity 
 that may be fit and agreeing to peaceable commerce." 
 
 2 Beckmann: Hist, of Inventions, London, 1817, i., 387. Parsons: 
 Treatise on Maritime Law, Boston, 1859, 10, inclines to the opposite view. 
 
 3 The Black Book of the Admiralty, London, 1876. (Monumenta Juri- 
 dica.) Introduction. 
 
 4 Ibid. Also Appendix to Peter's Admiralty Reports. 
 
THE FINNS AND LAPPS. 137 
 
 Here then was a great central mart or exchange, 
 whither came the ships and mariners of all nations, save 
 only the Saracens ; for the infidel vessels would have 
 found scant welcome at the hands of the newly-converted 
 Northmen. Here was a source of sea law observed by all 
 Christian sea-faring peoples. And here, if anywhere, was 
 the focal point from which it may be presumed would be 
 radiated any new item of knowledge, of interest and im- 
 portance to the maritime world. 
 
 Among the ships which came to Wisbuy were those of 
 the Finns and Lapps ; and among the northern tribes, the 
 Finns and Lapps differed from all the others in character 
 and customs. Unlike their neighbors, they belong to that 
 great Ugric nomad race which includes the Mongolians, 
 Etrurians and Magyars. Their early history is exceed- 
 ingly obscure. While the Lapps are commonly regarded 
 as members of the Finnic branch of the Turanian family, 
 some ethnologists consider them to be the original inhabi- 
 tants of the country now known as Finland, and to have 
 occupied it before the irruption into Europe of the Asiatic 
 hordes which destroyed the Roman Empire. The Finns, 
 on this theory, starting from the foot of the Ural Moun- 
 tains, came to Bulgaria and Hungary, and being driven 
 thence in the yth century, made their way to the Baltic 
 provinces, whence they drove the Lapps to the extreme 
 north. Other hypotheses deny the close connection thus 
 predicated between the Finns and Magyars, and place 
 the migration of the former northward at a far earlier 
 date, while extending the area of their settlement over a 
 large part of Sweden and Norway, whence they were ex- 
 pelled by the Scandinavian Teutons and forced into the 
 confines of present Finland. 
 
 In the I2th century, at the instigation of the Pope, Eric 
 IX., King of Sweden, undertook to introduce Christianity 
 among them; a series of crusades followed during the 
 next two hundred years, with the result of subduing 
 the Finns, though not of conquering them, and with the 
 
138 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 further consequence of making their peculiar customs and 
 national life far better known to their northern neighbors. 1 
 
 During the Middle Ages the territory about the Baltic 
 occupied by the Finns, the Ksthonians and the Lapps, 
 was regarded as the peculiar home and nursery of sor- 
 cerers, whither people from every land, even from distant 
 Greece and Spain, resorted for instruction or for special aid. 
 The Esthonians looked upon the Finns as greater sorcer- 
 ers than themselves, and the Finns in turn considered the 
 Lapps their superiors in magic skill. But the old writers 
 always single out the Finns by name, as the typical wizards. 
 The mediaeval Finns were a gloomy, earnest people, show- 
 ing on their faces the marks of their Tartar relation- 
 ship, and retaining in their families the same distinctive 
 appellations as the far-distant Chinese. In their wander- 
 ings from the cradle of the human race in Asia, perhaps, 
 they brought with them the Runic characters in which 
 are written the ancient inscriptions found both in the 
 north of Europe and on the Tartar steppes; but in common 
 with the other northern nations, their traditions came 
 down by word of mouth and in the songs of the Skalds 
 and minstrels. They were the earliest iron workers in 
 Northern Europe, and the Finnish swords anciently had a 
 reputation equal to that which the famous blades of Toledo 
 long afterwards acquired. Their great epic, the Kalevala, 
 a composite structure of no definite date, shows them also 
 to have been skilled as ship-builders, and in its descriptions 
 of battles and forays it is not unlike the Anglo-Saxon 
 poem of Beowulf, or the Norse Eddas and Sagas; but its 
 chief characteristic is its wild and gloomy legends of 
 sorcery and magic. 
 
 In all forms of witchcraft the Finns were regarded as 
 masters. They devised the magic runes and spells which 
 overcame the enemy while protecting the wearer, the 
 impenetrable garments, the charmed weapons, and raised 
 
 1 Vincent: Norsk, Lapp and Finn. N. Y., 1881. Peschel: The Races 
 of Man. N. Y., 1876. Simcox: Primitive Civilization, cit. sup. 
 
FINNISH SORCERY. 139 
 
 the ghosts of the drowned. 1 They practiced soothsaying 
 as a means of profit. Their traffic in charms was chiefly 
 with the sailor. To him they sold weather, good and bad, 
 and bags of wind ( u as L,apland witches pottled air") 
 which would waft liis ship to the desired haven, or send 
 that of his enemy to disaster. 2 
 
 The Finn country, with its many inlets and sounds, had 
 an extended sea-coast, so that the early inhabitants be- 
 came navigators from the beginning of their settlement. 
 Therein they differed from the Mongols, who, as I have 
 stated, remained for a long period dwellers inland. If 
 we may conjecture knowledge of magnetic polarity and 
 of the guidance of the lodestone, existing in the ancient 
 people of Central Asia, whence both the Finns and the 
 Mongols sprang, it is as reasonable to infer persistence of 
 the same knowledge among the Finns as among the 
 Chinese; although, as I have also remarked, the unchang- 
 ing nature of Chinese customs would render the conditions 
 for its preservation more favorable in the Middle Kingdom 
 than in the Northern land. In such a country as Finland, 
 however, the need for the land compass would quickly 
 disappear; for there long land journeys were both unneces- 
 
 Magnus: Hist, de Gent. Sept, Rome, 1555, lib. iii., c. xvi. 
 See Lea: History of the Inquisition, N. Y., 1888, iii.; Peschel: The Races 
 of Man, N. Y., 1876. 
 
 8 The nautical superstition as to the weather-controlling power of the 
 Finns is still alive (see Bassett : Phantoms of the Sea, Chicago, 1892). 
 Dana, in his Two Years before the Mast, tells of the crew ascribing per- 
 sistent headwinds to the presence of a Finn on board, whom the captain 
 proceeded to imprison for his refusal to provide good weather. "The 
 Finn held out for a day and a-half, when he could not stand it any 
 longer, and did something or other which brought the wind round again, 
 and they let him up." The " Rooshian Finn " is a frequent character 
 in the forecastle yarns of the United States navy ; and that he can alter 
 the wind by sticking his knife into the mast is firmly believed by the old 
 man-of-war's man. Whether any possible connection exists between the 
 insertion of the knife for this purpose, and the savage Norse punishment 
 also involving driving the knife into the mast, noted hereafter as a pen- 
 alty for tampering with the compass, may interest those curious in in- 
 vestigating such matters. 
 
140 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 sary and arduous, the sea when open furnishing a far 
 easier road, while no elaborate buildings or engineering 
 works called for employment of the needle in establishing 
 sites or in determining alignments. On the other hand, 
 adaptation of the guiding needle (assuming it to be known) 
 to marine use would be not at all unlikely. While, there- 
 fore, on the one hand, and for ethnological reasons, it may 
 be possible to assume knowledge of magnetic polarity to 
 have existed among the Finns and Mongols, and that both 
 may have availed themselves of it in migrating, the one 
 people northward and the other eastward; on the other 
 hand and for geographical reasons, the probabilities point 
 more strongly to the Finns, seamen and dwellers by the 
 sea, having discovered the sea use of the magnetic needle 
 rather than the agricultural, inJand-Hving, sea-dreading 
 Chinese. 
 
 Bringing together now the conclusions which have been 
 thus far suggested, we have found first, that the circum- 
 stances attending the appearance of the compass among the 
 European sailors all indicate a radiation, so to speak, of 
 intelligence concerning it from some central point or focus : 
 second, that at about this time the city of Wisbuy, on the 
 Island of Gottland, in the Baltic sea, was the great gather- 
 ing-place and mart for all sea-faring men, and that thither 
 came Goths, Swedes, Russians, Danes, Angles, Scots, 
 Flemings, Vandals, Saxons, Spaniards and Finns: and 
 third, that a knowledge of magnetic polarity may be 
 more reasonably conjectured to have existed among the 
 Finns rather than among any of the other peoples named, 
 because of the race affiliation of the Finns and their pecu- 
 liar skill in sea-sorcery. It may readily be imagined that if 
 they possessed in the needle or stone a charm which would 
 guide a ship from haven to haven, even in the narrow 
 seas, how mysterious such a talisman would seem to the 
 ever superstitious mariner, and how eagerly he would seek 
 to obtain it and how quickly the tidings of it would spread 
 throughout all the fleets of the western world. Nor is 
 
AN ANCIENT FINNISH COMPASS. 141 
 
 direct proof of such possession wholly wanting. A single 
 Finnish compass has been discovered for which the people 
 claim great antiquity, the card or scale of which is marked 
 for a latitude where the sunrise and sunset at the summer 
 and winter solstices differ by sixty degrees: 1 this condition, 
 curiously enough, being found along parallel 49 20' N., 
 which crosses Asia at the region which was the cradle of 
 primitive civilizations, and from which began the wan- 
 derings of the great family to which both Finns and Mon- 
 gols belong. 2 
 
 A source from which knowledge of the mariner's com- 
 pass may have come to Wisbuy, is thus found in its 
 possible Finnish origin. How the Finns, if they had the 
 secret, came to part with it whether it was forced from 
 them by their Swedish masters, or whether they yielded it 
 up for the benefit of mankind in general, under the exhor- 
 tations of good St. Henry, the English bishop, who 
 entered their country in the train of Eric, or whether they 
 bartered it with other mariners at Wisbuy, until all the 
 world came to know of it is a matter of surmise with 
 which we are less concerned than we are with finding cor- 
 roboration of the conjecture that from the great maritime 
 exchange in the Baltic came the intelligence which 
 Neckam first recorded. 
 
 The ancient sea laws of Wisbuy as I have said regu- 
 lated rights and duties on the high sea, and therefore dealt 
 with nautical crimes and offenses. Of these none is more 
 heinous than to falsify the compass, for as every one 
 knows, upon the accuracy of that instrument the safety of 
 
 ^ouvelles Annales des Voyages. Paris, 1823, vol. xvii., 414. The 
 card instead of being divided into quadrants N. S. E. and W. has its four 
 cardinal points 60 to the east and west of North, and two 60 to the east 
 and west of South : the first two marking sunrise and sunset at the sum- 
 mer solstice, and the last two the same at the winter solstice. 
 
 2 This region coincides closely with that in which Bailly conceived a 
 prehistoric people of high civilization to have arisen and from which it 
 migrated. (Lettres sur 1'Origine des Sciences. Paris, 1777.) See also 
 Ency. Brit., 7th ed. 
 
142 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 the ship, and of all the lives she carries, directly depends. 
 Even a slight error in its indication may lead the vessel 
 far out of her course or into fatal perils. That this must 
 have been perceived by the first sailors who used it, is 
 altogether probable; indeed, we can easily imagine their 
 terror and apprehension, when they found themselves out 
 of sight of land and the familiar Pole star obscured by 
 clouds, relying solely upon the pointing of the little 
 needle, quivering in its bowl of water, to show them 
 the way. Wreckers and pirates in mediaeval times were 
 common, and when the sea-villains learned how implicit 
 the reliance was upon the compass, and how by slightly 
 falsifying it they might bring a richly-laden craft upon 
 the rocks and so into their toils, opportunities for this 
 mode of plying their trade quickly revealed themselves. 
 Obviously, it was much easier to conspire with the crew, 
 or to send one of their own stripe on board in the guise of 
 an honest seaman, to tamper with the needle, and so bring 
 the ship to wreck in some previously-determined region, 
 than to seek to capture her in the open fight for which all 
 vessels then sailed prepared. Therefore, as by common 
 consent, all sea-faring men regarded falsification of the 
 compass as an offense, worthy of the severest punishment. 
 Tampering with the compass, moreover, in those days 
 was supposed to be very easy, and no doubt many an un- 
 fortunate sailor lost his life under the charge of so doing 
 when in fact he was innocent. The lodestone (with 
 which the needle was rubbed) was then supposed to be 
 affected by influences which are really destitute of the 
 slightest effect upon it. Among the superstitions relating 
 to it none, for example, was more common than the be- 
 lief that its attractive power could be destroyed or weak- 
 ened by the touch, or even the odor, of onions or of garlic. 
 As Neckam notes, the proximity of the diamond was 
 supposed to have a like effect; but diamonds were not 
 ordinarily in the possession of mariners, while the odorous 
 vegetables were, and so much was their effect feared that 
 
THE GARLIC MYTH. 143 
 
 Baptista Porta ' expressly ridicules the delusion prevailing 
 even in his time which caused mariners, when in charge 
 of the lodestone, to avoid eating onions or garlic, which 
 not only may "deprive the stone of its virtue, but, by 
 weakening it, prevent them from perceiving their correct 
 course." So potent was this garlic myth that it was re- 
 peated steadily for fifteen hundred years. U I cannot 
 think," observes one philosopher of the lyth century, 2 
 "that the ancient sages would write so confidently of that 
 which they had no experience of, being a thing so obvious 
 and easy to try: therefore I suppose they had a stronger 
 kind of Garlick than with us." It began with Pliny, and 
 came down by way of Solinus, Ptolemy, Plutarch, Al- 
 bertus Magnus, Matthiolus, Rueus, Langius, Marbodseus, 
 and the Arabian physicians and philosophers. True, 
 Pietro of Abano first contradicted it before 1316 and 
 Cardan 3 followed in 1550; nevertheless, the vitality of the 
 notion 4 not only survived these attacks, but attained such 
 vigor that when Philip Melanchthon, the great theologian 
 of the Reformation, undertook to write a book on Phy- 
 sics, 5 in 1575, this same delusion is the only phenomenon 
 concerning the magnet which he mentions; and he in- 
 troduces it as an illustration of an accidental effect. It 
 got its quietus in 1646 at the hands of that genial and 
 witty iconoclast, Sir Thomas Browne, 6 who says u for an 
 iron wire heated red hot and quenched in the juice of the 
 
 *Magia Naturalia, 1589, Lib. vii., c. 48. 
 
 2 Ross : Arcana, 192. 3 De Subtilitate, lib. vii., 474. 
 
 4 Numerous theories have been evolved to explain the origin of this 
 fiction. The most ingenious is that noted by Bertelli in his Memoirs of 
 Peregrinus (Mem. ii., p. 39). He says that the passage in Pliny's Nat. 
 History, " Ferrum ad se trahente magnete lapide et alio (theamede) 
 rursus abigente a sese," is given in some codices so that "alio" reads 
 "allio," thus transforming "other" into "garlic." This hypothesis re- 
 lieves Pliny of responsibility for the error, and places it upon some un- 
 known transcriber. 
 
 5 Initia Doctrinae Physicae. Wittenberg, 1575, 221. 
 6 Pseudodoxia Epidemica, ii., iii. 
 
144 TH 3 INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 garlick doth notwithstanding contract a verticity from the 
 earth and attracteth the southern point of the needle. If 
 also the tooth of lodestone be covered and stuck in garlick, 
 it will notwithstanding attract: and needles excited and 
 fixed in garlick until they begin to rust do yet retain their 
 attractive and polary respects." And Sir Thomas well 
 knew whereof he spoke, for he had tried actual experi- 
 ments with lodestone and garlic, and wrote down what he 
 saw: wherein he differed from his learned predecessors 
 who merely commented, with more or less profundity, 
 upon one another's speculations. 
 
 To return now to the Laws of Wisbuy : From what has 
 been said concerning the dangers attending the falsifica- 
 tion of the compass, it may easily be inferred that in any 
 code prescribing penalties for maritime offences, would 
 appear a prohibition of the crime, and provision for 
 punishment of the criminal. If in the old Wisbuy 
 statutes such a law appears, then the existence and use of 
 the compass is of course established as of an earlier date 
 than their compilation. Now, if we may credit Olaus 
 Magnus, writing before 1555, there was in the ancient 
 code just such a provision, and he gives it because it is 
 still in force in his own day. It is as follows: 
 
 "Whoever, being moved by sedition, shall menace the 
 master or pilot of a ship with the sword, or shall presume 
 to interfere with the nautical gnomon or compass, and, 
 especially, shall falsify the part of the lodestone upon 
 which the guidance of all may depend, or shall commit 
 like abominable crimes in the ship or elsewhere, shall, if 
 his life be spared, be punished by having the hand which 
 he most uses fastened, by a dagger or knife thrust through 
 it, to the mast or principal timber of the ship, to be with- 
 drawn only by tearing it free." 
 
 The savagely cruel character of the penalty tends to 
 show its antiquity, and affords abundant reason for its 
 abandonment as people became more civilized. But 
 beyond this the language used seems to draw a distinction 
 
THE PENALTY FOR FALSIFYING THE COMPASS. 145 
 
 between the compass needle and the lodestone ; a dis- 
 tinction which, as I have explained, obtained in the 
 early compass, but which had long since ceased to exist in 
 the time of Magnus. Observe also that it is the lodestone 
 of which falsification is especially feared, because it was 
 supposed that if the stone were wrong, then the needle 
 rubbed by it would also be wrong. And this accords with 
 the prevalent idea before mentioned, that the lodestone 
 power could be annulled, as by garlic. Thus, the Wis- 
 buy statute was undoubtedly framed under the common 
 
 THE PUNISHMENT OF THE FALSIFIER OF THE COMPASS. 
 
 belief that the falsification could be very easily accom- 
 plished; and this was true, for the perpetrator, for ex- 
 ample, might rub the needle with the lodestone so as to 
 reverse its polarity, or so as greatly to diminish its direct- 
 ive tendency. In whatever way the result was actually 
 produced there was the garlic or diamond theory which 
 would suffice to account for it. 
 
 The facts which point to the European invention of the 
 mariner's compass, may now be recapitulated as follows: 
 
 1 From Olaus Magnus' History of the Northern Nations, Ed. of 1555. 
 The old engraving, besides showing the compass- falsifier with the knite 
 thrust through his hand and into the mast, illustrates the punishments 
 of "keel-hauling" and throwing the criminal overboard, which were 
 inflicted for mutiny and treason. 
 IO 
 
146 THE INTELIvECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 A description of the instrument appears for the first time 
 in Neckam's treatise, written toward the end of the I2th 
 century. The nature of this description is such as to make 
 it clear that the writer is not referring 10 something of 
 his own devising, but, on the contrary, to a contrivance 
 which has then been known- to sailors for some indefinite 
 period. So many discoveries concerning the magnet are 
 necessarily involved in it, moreover, as to justify the pre- 
 sumption that it is the product of evolution and of many 
 minds. But, neither in the writings of William Appulus, 
 nor in the Bestiary of Phillippe de Thaun, is there any 
 evidence of similar knowledge; although it is hardly sup- 
 posable that de Thaun, especially, would have failed to 
 mention it somewhere in his long categories, had he pos- 
 sessed any such information. This places the probable 
 time of the appearance of the compass in Europe at about 
 the middle of the I2th century. 
 
 After this description of the compass appeared in an 
 English work, descriptions of it in the literature of other 
 nations followed so rapidly as leave their true chronologi- 
 cal sequence in doubt, and under conditions which not 
 only preclude the idea that the writers got their informa- 
 tion from Neckam, but also that of the transmission of 
 such knowledge seriatim from people to people. This 
 suggests the radiation of the intelligence to the world from 
 some central focal point. Such a point is found in Wisbuy 
 on the Island of Gottland, then a great trading place for 
 sea-faring people. Hither the knowledge may have been 
 brought by the wonder-working Finns. Finally, the 
 ancient sea laws of Wisbuy, dating from the time of the 
 first appearance of the compass before noted, contain a 
 direct provision against tampering with the instrument, 
 and impose a terrible penalty for so doing. 
 
 We may imagine that the lodestone fell at once into its 
 proper place in nautical employment. It belonged to the 
 category of appliances used by the pilots to make their 
 crude observations. It was not especially exposed to the 
 
THE MEDIEVAL COMPASS. 147 
 
 landsman's gaze, being used only at sea, and then as occa- 
 sion required. Thus it might perhaps escape chronicle, 
 until some one, like Neckam, intending to write an ency- 
 clopaedia, instituted an inquisition into things maritime 
 sufficiently minute to bring the device to light. If 
 Neckam's description be re-read in the light of this hypo- 
 thesis, it seems to be framed on just such broad lines as 
 would naturally be chosen by any one setting forth, for 
 the first time, a (to him) new and extraordinary appliance. 
 He tells simply what the contrivance does, but he is totally 
 ignorant why it so acts, and of the long series of discov- 
 eries which separates it from the magnetic knowledge of 
 Isidore; as ignorant as were the sailors in the English 
 ships who came into the English harbors, and who prob- 
 ably told him just what they knew themselves, and no 
 more 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE thirteenth century found ecclesiastical authority 
 sovereign in every department of thought. It was an 
 offence against religion, as well as against reason, to reject 
 the truth ; and the truth, it was insisted, was in the dogmas 
 which the Church in its wisdom had arbitrarily defined. 
 The members of a university, who had developed a spirit 
 of investigation, found it sternly repressed, with an ad- 
 monition "to be content with the landmarks of science 
 already fixed by the fathers, to have due fear of the curse 
 pronounced against him who removeth his neighbor's 
 landmark, and not to incur the blame of innovation or pre- 
 sumption." In vain did the Italians, especially, show an 
 intrepid desire to pursue the truth, or reveal prophetic 
 visions of discovery. "Who shall say," asks Ranke, 
 "whither this tendency would have led? But the Church 
 marked out a line which they were not to overstep ; woe 
 to him who ventured to pass it I" 1 
 
 The century had not far advanced, however, when the 
 first faint signs of emancipation of the intellect from theo- 
 logical fetters began to show themselves, although the 
 completion of the enlargement was still many a score of 
 years distant. The work of scholasticism as the "solvent 
 of theology" became manifest, while scholasticism itself 
 commenced to pass into mysticism. As the military and 
 clerical power started upon its decline, so the industrial 
 and scientific forces of the world began once more an up- 
 ward course. 
 
 The works of Aristotle and the Alexandrians had now 
 
 'Whewell: Hist. Indue. Sciences, ii.; Tennemann: Geschichte cler Phil- 
 osophic, viii.; Ranke: History of the Popes, i. 
 
 (148) 
 
WILLIAM THE CLERK. 149 
 
 been given new life through the commentaries of the 
 Greeks and the Arabs, and were being eagerly restudied 
 by those who had hitherto denounced them as the ravings 
 of pagans and infidels. The gathering of physical facts 
 was gradually becoming regarded as an objective proceed- 
 ing, and philosophy began its movement away from the 
 subjective methods of theology. 
 
 While the philosophers and the theologians were pursu- 
 ing endless disputations resulting from these changing 
 conditions, the imaginative spirit of Christendom burst 
 forth almost unchecked. The new language of the Nor- 
 mans yielded the new romance, and chivalry and love re- 
 placed piracy and murder or the dull category of saintly 
 virtues, as the burden of the poems which the jongleurs 
 recited, or the songs which the trouveres sang. 
 
 Among these new singers was one little known to fame, 
 but still the most prolific of all. He wrote one of the 
 Romances of the Round Table, but, like some few others, 
 his muse favored subjects of a religious and moral char- 
 acter rather than those of a sprightly or amatory turn. 
 He called himself William the Clerk, 1 and he was a vassal 
 of Sire Rauf or Raul, who fought in the wars of Frederick 
 I. in Italy (1159 to 1177). Robert Wace, the most emi- 
 nent of the trouveres, vouches for the multiplicity of Wil- 
 liam the Clerk's writings; but if, as seems to be the case, 
 they were generally of the stripe of the rhymed natural 
 history interspersed with moral lessons (Li Bestiare Divins), 
 which he composed by order of Rauf, whom he eulogizes 
 in a fulsome manner through thirty verses, we need waste 
 no regrets over their loss. In fact, William has spared us 
 that trouble by himself deploring that he ever wrote them. 
 
 1 Sur un MS. du Commencement clu XlVme Sie"cle, etc. Bulletin du 
 Bibliophile. Paris, Sept., 1836. D'Avezac : Anciens Temoignages his- 
 toriques relatifs a la Boussole. Bull, de la Soc. Geog., 10 Feb., 1858. 
 Jal : Arche*ologie Navale. Paris, 1840, 208. De la Rue : Essais Hist. 
 sur les Bardes, les Jongleurs et les Trouveres. Caen, 1834. Wright : 
 Biog. Brit. London, 1842, vol. ii., 426. 
 
150 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 After he had become a monk lie made atonement by in- 
 forming mankind that 
 
 "William, a Normau clerk who verses strung 
 In flowing numbers of the Romance tongue, 
 Too oft, alas, indulgent his refrain 
 In fable foolish and in legend vain 
 Too oft he sinned and him may God forgive 
 Who loved the world, and in it loved to live." 1 
 
 Among the poetic effusions which their author thus 
 lamented is one discovered by M. Paul in Paris, a distin- 
 guished French antiquarian, in a MS. of 1329, which he 
 attributes unquestionably to William the Clerk. It is en- 
 titled L,ove's Complaint (Complainte d' Amour), and in it 
 the poet, after comparing his inamorata to the Pole star or 
 Tramontane, gives the following description of the com- 
 pass. 2 
 
 " Such of Tramontane the guise 
 Shining blazing in the skies. 
 Who, to far Venetia's strand 
 Greece or Acre, Frisian land, 
 Wandering sees its friendly ray 
 Pointing out the hidden way. 
 Knows it faithful guide to be 
 O'er the bosom of the sea. 
 Whether storm vext or at rest, 
 Blow the north wind or the west. 
 
 "When before the northern gale 
 Flies through raging waves, the sail, 
 That pure beam serene and clear, 
 Saves the bark from danger near. 
 When the blackness of the night 
 Cloud-enshrouded veils its light, 
 Still it doth a virtue own 
 Drawing iron to the stone. 
 Guiding safely those who roam, 
 To the sweet delights of home. 
 
 J The free translation is the author's. Wright, T.: Biog. Brit., cit. sup. 
 2 Author's translation. Bulletin du Bibliophile, cit. sup. 
 
WILLIAM THE CLERK. 151 
 
 "Who would of his course be sure, 
 When the clouds the sky obscure, 
 He an iron needle must 
 In the cork wood firmly thrust. 
 Lest the iron virtue lack 
 Rub it with the lodestone black, 
 In a cup with flowing brim, 
 Let the cork on water swim. 
 When at length the tremor ends, 
 Note the way the needle tends; 
 Though its place no eye can see 
 There the polar star will be." 
 
 This is apparently the first attempt to account for the 
 north and south pointing of the needle, and represents 
 probably the generally-accepted notion of the time; for we 
 can hardly imagine the poet as the originator of it. The 
 reasoning seems to have been that the needle points to the 
 star because it has been rubbed by the stone. Therefore 
 it receives a virtue from the stone. Whence does the 
 stone get its virtue? Clearly from the Pole star, else why 
 should the needle point to that star in preference to any 
 other object in the universe say the moon. 
 
 This is a long stride ahead in scientific reasoning, in that 
 it seeks to explain a natural phenomenon by natural 
 causes, and not by the intervention of supernatural ma- 
 chinery, or by an appeal to faith, or by the exercise of 
 dialectic ingenuity. Whether the hypothesis be right or 
 wrong is therefore of no consequence; it was an effort at 
 straight rectilinear thought, made at a time when minds 
 ran around in small circles; and as such it denoted pro- 
 gress. It was, moreover, encouraging to the intellects 
 who had begun to feel the influence of the new centrifugal 
 force, of which they could not understand the meaning, 
 pulling them out of their little orbits. 
 
 While William the Clerk was bewailinf the shortcomings 
 
 o o 
 
 of the world which he had left, the world in turn even the 
 Church itself was scourging the iniquities of the clergy. 1 
 
 1 The Lateran Council of 1215. See Lea: History of the Inquisition, 
 cit. infra. 
 
152 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 "Thy ministers rob here and murder there, 
 And o'er thy sheep a wolf has shepherd's care," 
 
 sang Wai th er von der Vogelweide, the Minnesinger of 
 Germany: and the troubadours in France echo the same 
 strain in even fiercer invective under the Arabian influence 
 from across the Pyrenees, couching their denunciations in 
 the new and flowing rhythms learned from the same source. 
 
 Among the troubadours was Guyot de Provins, 1 a min- 
 strel, who, like the great Minnesinger, wandered from 
 court to court singing his lays, and who had followed the 
 Templars in the Crusades. Becoming tired of the world, 
 or, perhaps, his world tiring of him, he entered the Cis- 
 tercian novitiate, but abandoned that order in favor of the 
 Cluniacenses, and then repented his choice and sought to 
 return to his first association. The result was an increase 
 in the jealousy between the two orders, and finally a trian- 
 gular contest in which Guyot stood aloof and poured out 
 upon both of them the vials of his wrathful sarcasm in gall 
 and wormwood, none the less biting because of his inti- 
 mate knowledge of monastic secrets. 
 
 The principal satire written by Guyot is entitled 
 "Bible," as common a name for productions of the sort as 
 De Natura Rerum was for encyclopaedic treatises. It is 
 a long poem of some 2,700 lines, written between the years 
 1203 and 1208, and it brings all sorts and conditions of men 
 under the lash, beginning with monarchs and ending with 
 u theologues, priests and physicians." 
 
 The second book is devoted to the clergy, and opens 
 with a criticism of the Pope himself. It might well be 
 supposed that such startling audacity would have brought 
 * the earthly pilgrimage of the writer to an abrupt conclu- 
 sion ; but Guyot was speaking only the popular thought, 
 and other troubadours Pierre Cardinal, 2 for example of 
 
 1 Wolfart, J. F.: Des Guiot von Provins bis jetzt bekannten Dichtun- 
 gen, etc. Halle, 1861. 
 
 2 Lea H. C.: History of the Inquisition, N. Y., 1887, i , 55. 
 
GUYOT DE PROVINS. 153 
 
 far higher rank and consequence than himself, were attack- 
 ing Innocent with even greater rancor and openness. The 
 Pope settled most of these scores to his own satisfaction, 
 during the Albigensian Crusade. 
 
 Guyot's onslaught on the papacy is mildness itself com- 
 pared with his vituperations against the hierarchy gener- 
 ally, or even as contrasted with the poem of Pierre Cardi- 
 nal, who openly accused the Pope of betraying his sacred 
 trust and "vending his pardon briefs from cot to hall." 
 He merely holds up the Pole star as an example of con- 
 stancy and rectitude for papal emulation, but, in thus doing, 
 so closely copies the verses of William the Clerk that 
 before we know it we are laughing at the grotesque sub- 
 stitution of the supreme pontiff for the fair unknown of 
 the subsequently remorseful monk. 
 
 Guyot begins by wishing that the Pope resembled the 
 Pole star, whereby the sailors guide their course, and 
 which, unlike other stars, is fixed and immovable; which, 
 of course, is entirely inoffensive, except, as a schoolman 
 of the time might remark, in so far as it inferentially 
 suggests that the successor of St. Peter has not that u Pe- 
 treity " which is the rock of his foundation. Still some 
 change had to be made in language originally designed to 
 celebrate the young woman whose brilliancy and attractive 
 allurements William intended the Pole star to typify. 
 Rut Guyot tamely follows the Clerk of Normandy, drag- 
 ging in identically the same description of the compass, 
 with the slight addition that in dark weather the needle 
 can be illuminated. After which he returns to the Pope, 
 and wishes him to be beautiful and clear like the star; but 
 as he leaves out the whole of the ingenious theory whereby 
 William connects the star with the lodestone, the precise 
 relation of the Pope to the compass is left as obscure as 
 Darwin's famous linkage of cats and red clover would have 
 been had the great naturalist never explained it. 1 
 
 1 Guyot's poem has been so frequently published during the last cen- 
 tury that its bibliography is now quite voluminous. A carefully edited 
 
154 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Although it is representative of the temper and mode of 
 thought of the times, the Bible of Guyot would scarcely 
 merit the notice here given it were it not constantly re- 
 ferred to in modern literature as the earliest known wait- 
 ing on the compass. It has frequently also been made the 
 basis for the claim to the original invention of that instru- 
 ment by the French. Both the treatise of Neckam and 
 the poem ascribed to William the Clerk are in all prob- 
 ability of much earlier date, while the signs of the copyist 
 are certainly more apparent in the imperfect work of the 
 troubadour than in the logically complete structure of the 
 trouvere monk. 
 
 The theory to which William the Clerk alludes as ex- 
 plaining the action of the needle soon begins to assume 
 definite form, and align itself with the general hypothesis 
 of magnetic virtue laid down by Galen. Thus the two 
 lines of magnetic discovery, attractive power of the stone 
 and its directive tendency, hitherto merely linked by 
 Neckam, now begin to coalesce. "The magnet is found 
 in India, and draws the iron to it by a certain occult 
 nature. An iron needle, after it has touched the stone, 
 always turns to the northern star, which does not move 
 around the axis of the heavens as do the other stars; whence 
 it is very necessary to those who navigate the sea," 1 writes 
 Cardinal de Vitry in 1218, thus bringing the statement of 
 both phenomena side by side in a single paragraph. 
 
 Still more suggestive are the lines of Guido Guinicelli, 
 the first of Italian poets who embodied in verse the subtle- 
 ties of philosophy, and whose fame Dante has recorded : 
 
 text appears in Wolfart's work (cit. sup.), and in Fabliaux et Contes des 
 Poetes Francois des xi., xii., xiii., xiv. and xvme sicles. Nouv. ed. 
 Paris, 1808, pp. 327-8. Bertelli, in his Memoria sopra P. Peregrinus, 59, 
 gives the poem, and a partial bibliography in a foot-note. An English 
 translation of it appears in Lorimer's Essay on Magnetism. London, 
 I795- 
 1 Historic Hierosolimitanae, cap. 89. 
 
THE MAGNETIC FIELD OF FORCE. 155 
 
 "Kindles in noble heart the fire of love 
 
 As hidden virtue in the precious stone; 
 This virtue comes not from the stars above 
 
 Till round it the ennobling sun has shone; 
 But when his powerful blaze 
 
 Has drawn forth what is vile, the stars impart 
 Strange virtue in their rays; 
 
 And thus when nature doth create the heart 
 Noble and pure and high, 
 
 Like virtue from the star, love conies from woman's eye. 1 
 
 Even more closely knit are the facts in the following 
 stanza by the same poet, for here the traditional magnetic 
 mountains once more come to light 
 
 In what strange regions 'neath the polar star 
 May the great hills of massy lodestone rise, 
 Virtue imparting to the ambient air 
 To draw the stubborn iron; while afar 
 From that same stone, the hidden virtue flies 
 To turn the quivering needle to the Bear, 
 In splendor blazing in the northern skies. 2 
 
 This adds another step to William the Clerk's original 
 theory. The Pole star communicates its virtue to the 
 magnetic mountains, and from the magnetic mountains 
 conies the lodestone wherewith the needle is rubbed. But, 
 for another reason, this stanza is very curious, in that it 
 shows an early form of the hypothesis of the field of force 
 surrounding the lodestone, in which field the power or 
 strength or virtue of the stone is exerted. Note that the 
 virtue is imparted " to the ambient air to draw the stub- 
 born iron." The idea of action at a distance of the 
 magnet influencing its armature through no material 
 bond was not so thinkable to the poets and commen- 
 tators of the twelfth and thirteenth, as it afterwards 
 became to the natural philosophers of the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries. Not long after Guinicelli's poem 
 
 1 Longfellow's translation: Poets and Poetry of Europe, 511. 
 
 2 Author's translation. Ginguene* : Hist. Litt. de 1' Italic, i. 413. 
 
156 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 appeared, Gtiido delle Colonne l of Messina expressed the 
 same thought 
 
 " It is a secret of the lodestone, 
 That to itself the iron 'twill not draw 
 Unless the mediate air consent ; 
 Although it hath the nature of a stone, 
 Yet of its nature stones do not partake 
 For lack of this same strange capacity. ' ' 
 
 This idea that the intervening medium takes part in the 
 phenomenon of magnetic attraction was one which did not 
 replace, but supplemented the prevailing doctrine that the 
 stone operated solely by reason of its occult virtue. It 
 was suggested in the poem of L,ucretius and favored by the 
 greatest of the Arabian philosophers, Averrhoes, 2 who also 
 explained the attraction of rubbed amber for chaff by the 
 same conception. A century later it was adopted by St. 
 Thomas Aquinas. 3 Certainly a physical hypothesis which 
 enlisted the concurring advocacy of the most eminent of 
 Christian and Pagan commentators, and which appeared, 
 ostensibly at least, to rest upon the principles of Aristotle, 
 whom the world then regarded as the fountain-head of 
 philosophy, could have had no stronger support. 
 
 The references to the lodestone and to the compass now 
 begin to multiply rapidly in all classes of literature. 
 Gautier d'Epinois/ in 1245, writes amatory verses compar- 
 ing the object of his affection, not to the Pole star, as 
 William the Clerk had done, but to the magnet, and the 
 whole world to the needle which turns in response to such 
 transcendent attractions. Matthew Paris, 5 perhaps also 
 
 1 Author's translation. Nannucci: Man. della Lett. Florence, 1856, 
 81. Bertelli: Mem. sopra Peregrinus, 35. 
 
 2 Colliget, V. 
 
 3 In Phys., VII., lect. 3. See, also, Albertus Magnus : Phys., lib. VIII., 
 tract. 2, 
 
 4 D'Avezac: Aper9us Hist, sur la Boussole. Bull. Soc. Geog., 20 Apr., 
 1860. 
 
 6 McPherson: Annals of Commerce. London, 1805, i. 
 
ARISTOTELIAN PHILOSOPHY. 157 
 
 not without some poetic license, though of a different 
 kind, tells us that the first papal legate sent to Scotland in 
 1247 "drew the money out of the Scots to himself as 
 strongly as the adamant does iron." Hugo de Bercy, 1 in 
 1248, speaks of the compass as in common use, and notes 
 a change in its construction, the needle now being sup- 
 ported by two floats and arranged in a glass cup. The 
 Norwegians, 2 by the middle of the century, not only had 
 the instrument in constant employment, but were using it 
 as an especial reward of merit and as the device of an 
 order of knighthood. 
 
 Meanwhile the influence of the philosophy of Aristotle 
 had greatly augmented, and his writings were the subjects 
 of commentaries innumerable. But the world was in- 
 debted to the Arabs for the Aristotelian text, and it had 
 come down from copyist to copyist, gathering errors as the 
 rolling snowball gathers snow on its way; for the tran- 
 scribers of the East were not the patient and accurate 
 writers of the monasteries, and they had little compunc- 
 tion about adding paragraphs here and there drawn from 
 their own imaginations. But worse even than this, there 
 also appeared works attributed to Aristotle which are now 
 generally conceded to be entirely spurious and of purely 
 Arabic origin. Such, for example, is the Arabic transla- 
 tion of a Book of Stones, of which, if it ever existed, no 
 trace remains, nor can any reference to it be found in any 
 classic author. 
 
 The Arabic treatise does not purport to be even a com- 
 plete translation of the alleged work of Aristotle, but 
 merely a collection of excerpts. Nevertheless it seems to 
 have been received with the same respect accorded to the 
 philosopher's genuine writings, and this despite the fact 
 that the manuscripts of it must have materially differed 
 among themselves. In certain of these codices, though 
 evidently not in all, for the passage is wholly absent in 
 
 'Riccioli : Geograph. and Hydrograph., lib. x., cap. 18. 
 2 Torfaeus: Hist. Norweg., lib. iv., 345. 
 
158 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 that possessed by the great National Library of France, 1 
 there appeared an account of the magnet which did much 
 to retard the progress of the science. 
 
 It was unearthed by both Albertus Magnus 2 and Vincent 
 de Beauvais, 3 who refer to it in their works, so that there 
 is still the further hypothesis that it was originally in- 
 vented by one of them, and hence not chargeable even to 
 the Arabs. It sets forth that the point of the magnet 
 which attracts iron is to the north, and the point which 
 repels it is to the south; and it asserts that if the iron be 
 held to the point which respects the north the iron will 
 turn to the north; which is untrue, for the pole of the 
 magnet which is directed to the north is the south pole, 
 and it will induce a north pole in the iron, and that north 
 pole will turn to the south, and not to the north. But the 
 substance of what is said, whether right or wrong, is of 
 much less moment than the historical fact that here prob- 
 ably began that complex tangle of relations between the 
 poles of the lodestone, the poles of the needle magnetized 
 from it by induction, the poles of the heavens, and, later, 
 the poles of the earth, 4 in which the philosophers of the 
 i6th century were even more hopelessly enmeshed than 
 those of the i3th, and which is not clearly unraveled yet 
 in our own terminology; for we still persist in calling that 
 
 1 MS. Arab., No. 402, St Germ., quoted by Klaprolh, cit. sup., 52. 
 
 2 De Mineralibus, lib. ii., tract iii., c. v. : Opera. Leyden, 1651. 
 
 3 Vincent! Bellovacensis: Speculi Naturales, etc., torn, ii., lib. ix., c. 19. 
 * The modern confusion arises from referring to the magnet needle as 
 
 having a north and south polarity. The end which points to the north 
 magnetic pole of the earth is, of course, south in polarity, although it is 
 often marked N, and spoken of as the north pole of the needle. French 
 writers frequently omit the inversion, and designate by north end of the 
 needle that which in fact points southerly. Maxwell proposed the 
 terms "positive" or "austral" magnetism to indicate that of the north 
 end of the magnet, and ' negative " or "boreal " magnetism that of the 
 south end. So also it has been suggested to speak of the poles alter- 
 nately as " red " and " blue." It is gradually becoming common to call 
 the extremity of the needle which turns to the north the "north seek- 
 ing" or "marked" end. 
 
LODESTONE SUPERSTITIONS. 159 
 
 end of the needle which points to the north the north 
 pole, when, as a matter of fact, its inherent polarity of 
 course is south. 
 
 After this follow a series of falsehoods which we shall 
 find afterwards cropping up everywhere. We are told that 
 the magnet attracts lead because it is the softest of metals, 
 and that the magnetic ardor penetrates and corrodes stones 
 and tarnishes their brilliancy. That some magnets attract 
 gold, others silver, and others iron ; and that, if the gold 
 be in a fine powder and mixed with sand, the magnet will 
 separate out every particle of the metal. 
 
 This last is the first suggestion of the process of mag- 
 netic separation of metals from other substances mixed 
 with them. The removal of iron in this way from an ad- 
 mixture with sand, etc., is elaborately described, as we 
 shall see, by Porta and others, in the sixteenth century ; 
 so that the same idea of late years applied to the magnetic 
 extraction of the same metal from its crushed ores, is of 
 much antiquity. 
 
 Lastly, there is described the "creagus" or "flesh mag- 
 net," a stone "which, when once attached to the body, 
 cannot be removed without tearing with it the flesh, 
 although, in the latter, not a drop of blood will be found." 
 This was probably nothing more than pumice, which ad- 
 heres slightly to the lips or other moist surface of the body; 
 but, none the less, the delusion lasted well ; for, three cen- 
 turies later, the wonder books told of u a kind of adamant 
 which draweth unto it fleshe, and the same so strongly 
 that it hath power to knit and tie together two mouthes 
 of contrary persons and drawe the heart of a man out of his 
 body without offending any part of him." 1 
 
 1 Fenton : Certaine Secrete Wonders of Nature. 1569. The Rev. Henry 
 N. Hudson, in his excellent edition of Shakespeare, cites this passage in 
 apparent explanation of Hermia's speech: "You draw me, you hard- 
 hearted adamant," etc. (Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II, Sc. i). 
 There will be some, I fancy, who will be unwilling to take the poet in 
 quite so literal a way, or to accord to him less play of imagination in the 
 premises than was shown by Gautier d'Epinois. 
 
160 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 In about the year 1250, Bartholomew de Glanvil, or, as 
 he was commonly termed, Bartholomseus Anglicus, an 
 English monk of the Minories order, wrote an encyclo- 
 paedic work, 1 as usual on the lines of that of St. Isidore. 
 His chapter on the magnet is of no intrinsic importance, 
 for it is partly copied from the Etymologies and partly- 
 taken from the same source from which Albertus Magnus 
 and Vincent de Beauvais drew their information the false 
 treatise of Aristotle. But Glanvil's work fell into the 
 hands of the man who was easily first among the philoso- 
 phers of his time, and whose genius towered over that of 
 his contemporaries like a mountain peak above mole-hills. 
 
 For forty years, Roger Bacon studied science through 
 the medium of experiment, which extended chiefly over 
 the fields of alchemy and optics. Meanwhile he found 
 time to learn Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Chaldaic, and to 
 master all that was known of mathematics. In an evil 
 hour, he joined the order of Franciscan monks, and then 
 found that he had literally thrown himself, body and mind, 
 into chains. His writings were forbidden. If he at- 
 tempted to instruct others, punishment awaited him. He 
 was denied books, and because, despite all the obstacles 
 cast in his way, it was evident, even to the dull minds of 
 those who harassed him, that his knowledge of nature was 
 far beyond that of the world in general, he was accused 
 of sorcery. When he was not treated like a disobedient 
 school-boy, he was dealt with as a suspected heretic. 2 
 
 At length there came a pope Clement IV. whose lean- 
 ing toward scientific inquiry caused a desire to know what 
 Bacon could teach him; so he ordered the monk to disobey 
 his superiors, hastily and secretly, and to write out his 
 treatises and send them to Rome. Bacon had already 
 exhausted his pecuniary resources, for he had expended 
 some 2000 livres on his experiments; and how was he, a 
 mendicant friar and penniless, to find the sum necessary 
 
 1 Lib. de Proprietatibus. 
 
 2 Lewes: Hist, of Philosophy. London, 1867, ii. 77. 
 
ROGER BACON. l6l 
 
 to pay the scribes for transcribing his works? Further 
 than this, how was such a task to be done in the monas- 
 tery, where he met hostility at every hand? The Pope 
 sent him no money, nor even dared to interfere in his be- 
 half with the ruling powers of his order. 
 
 Nevertheless, he undertook the task single-handed, and 
 in eighteen months, by dint of labor which, in the face of 
 the difficulties encountered, seems almost superhuman, he 
 had composed and written out and dispatched his Opus 
 Majus, Opus Minus and Opus Tertium. Almost imme- 
 diately after receiving these, the pope died. For ten years 
 thereafter Bacon was allowed to prosecute his studies in 
 peace. Then, in 1278, in his 64th year, a council of Fran- 
 ciscans condemned his works, and he was sentenced to 
 solitary confinement in his cell, and it is generally believed 
 that he died while thus immured. 
 
 Such, in brief, was the career of the first great apostle 
 of experimental science who, in an age the whole temper 
 of which was against scientific and philosophical studies, 
 conceived of the essential connection between all sciences 
 and their dependence upon the fixed and universal laws of 
 nature; who brought grammar, philology, geography, 
 chronology, arithmetic and music into scientific form ; 
 who laid the foundations of optics ; who discovered the 
 explosive force of gunpowder, and probably invented the 
 telescope; and whose u Greater Work " was at once "the 
 Encyclopaedia and the Novum Organum of the i3th 
 century." 
 
 Through the treatise of Glanvil the attention of Bacon 
 seems to have been directed to the magnet, which he calls 
 the "miracle of nature." He says that the iron which is 
 touched by the lodestone follows the part of the latter 
 which excites it, and flies from the other part ; and that it 
 turns to the part of the heavens to which the part of the 
 magnet wherewith it was rubbed conforms. He says that 
 it is not the Pole star which influences the magnet, for, if 
 such were the case, the iron would always be attracted 
 ii 
 
1 62 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 toward the star. On the contrary, the rubbed portion of 
 the iron will follow the rubbing part of the magnet in any 
 direction, backwards or forwards, or to the right or left ; 
 and if the iron be floated in a vessel of water and the mag- 
 net placed- beneath, the same part of the iron will sub- 
 merge itself to meet the magnet, while, if the magnet be 
 placed above, it will rise upward. On the other hand, if 
 the opposite portion of the magnet be presented, the iron 
 (rubbed part as before) will always fly from it, "as the 
 lamb from the wolf." Consequently he concludes that the 
 magnet is influenced by the four parts of the heavens, and 
 not by the one part in which the Pole star is located. 
 
 If Bacon did not actually discover the law of magnetic 
 action (like poles mutually repel, unlike poles attract), it is 
 manifest, from the foregoing, that he came very close to 
 doing so. At all events, he brought the condition of gen- 
 eral knowledge on the subject to a point where the very 
 next step resulted in discoveries of the highest importance. 
 
 Bacon was pre-eminently a teacher, and seems to have 
 freely communicated his knowledge to others whenever he 
 was not restrained from doing so. To Brunette Latini, 
 the celebrated Florentine grammarian and preceptor of 
 Dante, he not only told what he knew about the magnet, 
 but repeated his experiments in his presence. Latini, at 
 that time, was in exile, and visited Oxford, where Bacon 
 resided, in about the year 1260. He died in 1294. He 
 describes the compass in his I v i Livres dou Tresor, 1 and, in 
 certain letters written during his sojourn in England, he 
 tells how Bacon showed him the "ugly and black stone to 
 which the iron voluntarily joined itself," and the needle 
 which, when rubbed by the stone, turned to the star and 
 guided the mariners. 
 
 In the Opus tertium Bacon says that there are but two 
 perfect mathematicians, Master John of London and 
 u Master Petrus de Maharn, curia, a Picard." John of 
 
 *Li Livres dou Tresor. Paris, 1863, p. 3. Mainly a collection of ex- 
 cerpts from earlier authors. 
 
COSMICAL PHILOSOPHY. 163 
 
 London was his own disciple, "nurtured and instructed 
 for the love of God," and the trusted bearer of his com- 
 pleted works to Rome in 1267. For John, Bacon predicted 
 a glorious future "if he live to grow old and goes on as he 
 has begun." But upon Peter this Picard from Maricourt 
 he lavishes all his praise, all his enthusiasm. And 
 Master Peter had well deserved it. From the trenches be- 
 fore Lucera he had written an epistle, which later came to 
 be known as the u Letter of Peter Peregrinus" a missive, 
 little remembered now, often misunderstood, often plagiar- 
 ized centuries ago, more often misinterpreted, but none the 
 less a great epoch-making deliverance an imperishable 
 landmark in the path of physical discovery. 
 
 Before entering upon the examination of this work, a 
 brief reference to some features of the generally accepted 
 cosmical philosophy of the Middle Ages is here necessary. 
 That our globe was the centre of the universe, and thus 
 fixed and immovable, was undisputed. Encompassing it 
 were supposed to exist ten heavens, successively envelop- 
 ing one another ; all except the outermost being in con- 
 stant rotation about their common centre. The highest 
 or external heaven formed the boundary between creation 
 and space, and here abode the Deity, forever hearing the 
 harmony of the spheres which lay below Him, in an endless 
 hymn of glory and praise. Beneath the Empyrean came 
 the crystal heaven, or primum mobile, then the heaven of 
 subtle elements without weight, constituting the fixed 
 stars, while the successive inner shells were respectively 
 the heavens of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, 
 Mercury, and, finally, of the Moon ; the Earth and its 
 atmosphere being sublunary things. All motion of these 
 heavens was the direct work of angels or intelligences, 
 and the laws of Nature were merely divine precepts which 
 they carried into execution. 
 
 Ages, however, before these notions were conceived, the 
 
164 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 apparent rotation of the heavens had been observed ; and 
 not only this, but also that this revolving motion was 
 seemingly about an axis, the intersection of which with 
 the celestial vault marked the places of the poles of the 
 universe. The conception of such poles was of still more 
 ancient date. The story of Creation, deciphered from the 
 broken and scattered remains of Assyrian and Babylonian 
 tablets, recounts how "Maiduk embellished the heavens, 
 prepared places for the great gods, made the stars, set the 
 Zodiac * * * and fixed the poles." This carries the idea 
 of these points back fully to 3,000 B. C. ; but it probably 
 had its rise very much earlier in prehistoric times. The 
 Kushite-Semite race, who were the first imperial rulers of 
 the primeval world, called themselves "sons of the pole," 
 and substituted, for the reckoning of time by the Pleiades, 
 one founded on so purely a physical motion of the heavenly 
 pole, that they conceived the heavens to move about it 
 with friction ; a fact which they deemed proved by the ap- 
 parent movements of the fixed stars. They even believed 
 the pole to be an ever twirling fire-drill, the heat of which 
 influenced the stars. The race of Yakotas, the sons of 
 Jokshan, or Joktan, in Genesis, likewise believed that the 
 pole in its revolutions produced the burning heat of 
 
 summer. 1 
 
 This material idea of the poles, of course, has no place 
 in the mediaeval conception. They were simply the points 
 about which the concentric heavens revolved, and that one 
 which was visible to Europeans was marked by the pres- 
 ence of the Pole star. The progress of electrical knowl- 
 edge owes much to this mediaeval cosmic philosophy. It 
 was because of the belief in the rotary heavens that the 
 great discoveries now to be recounted were made, and, as I 
 shall show hereafter, it was because of a disbelief that the 
 earth stood still, that the even greater work which imme- 
 diately ushered in the present science was undertaken. 
 
 1 Davis : Genesis and Semite Tradition, New York, 1894. Hewitt : The 
 Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times, London, 1894. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE town of Lucera or Nocera, situated in the province 
 of Apulia in southern Italy, was founded early in the thir- 
 teenth century by Frederick II., Emperor of Germany, as a 
 place of free refuge and dwelling for the Saracens. In 1266, 
 Charles of Anjon, who had been crowned king of the two 
 Sicilies by Pope Urban IV., captured the town. Subse- 
 quently it rebelled and he besieged it a second time. The 
 defense was obstinate and the town was finally reduced, in 
 1269, only because of starvation and after a year's siege. 
 
 Among the partisans of Charles who were encamped 
 under the walls of Lucera during this long investment was 
 the Magister Petrus de Maharne-Curia (or Master Peter de 
 Maricourt), of whom Roger Bacon speaks in glowing 
 terms. The surname u de Maricourt" is derived from a 
 little village in Picardy, whence he came, and is classed 
 among the territorial designations of the French nobility. 
 The title "Magister" indicates the academic grade of 
 "Doctor," showing that the bearer had studied and at- 
 tained scholastic honors. The eulogiums of Bacon are FO 
 unstinted that there is reason to believe that Peter was 
 already a man of wide celebrity for his learning and skill. 
 Bacon 1 calls him u a master of experiment" seeing in full 
 brilliancy the things which others grope for in darkness, 
 like bats in the twilight, and says that through experiment 
 he had become "versed in all natural science, whether 
 medicinal, or alchemical, or relating to matters celestial or 
 terrestrial." He is skilled, the monk tells us, in minerals 
 and metal working in arms, whether military or pertain- 
 ing to the hunt, in agriculture and geodesy and magic; 
 
 1 Brewer, V.: Fr. Roger! Bacon, Opera. Load., 1859. Op. Tertium, c. 
 xi., p. 46. 
 
l66 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 and that lie pursued learning for its own sake, neglecting 
 all rewards, although his wisdom was sufficient to have 
 enabled him to accumulate immense wealth had he so 
 willed. That his experiments were continued over a con- 
 siderable period of time is shown by Bacon's statement 
 that he worked for three years upon burning glasses evi- 
 dently following in the footsteps of Archimedes. But, of 
 all his achievements, that which most excites the admira- 
 tion of the Friar, is his invention of a perpetual motion : 
 the first recorded contrivance of the kind which came into 
 the world, and probably the only one which in the end 
 served a good purpose. 
 
 Here again the influence of Archimedes is apparent. 
 There had always been a tradition that that philosopher 
 constructed a sphere which reproduced the motions of the 
 heavenly bodies. Cicero 1 refers to it in a general way, 
 and Kircher 2 devotes a chapter to speculation on its possi- 
 ble construction; but probably it was nothing more than 
 an orrery, showing the supposed relative positions and 
 movements of the planets, but destitute, of course, of any 
 automatic mechanism. 
 
 The circumstances which led to Master Peter's presence 
 at the siege of Lucera are not difficult to conjecture. He 
 probably belonged to one of the semi-military religious 
 orders which, like the Templars, took an active part in 
 the Crusades. The name of "Peregrinus" or Pilgrim, 
 which later writers substitute for the surname " de Mari- 
 court," shows that he had made the pilgrimage to the 
 Holy Land for this was a common honorary title ac- 
 corded to persons who had taken part in the efforts to 
 rescue the Holy Sepulchre; and, as Charles of Anjou, under 
 whom we now find him serving, had joined the first crusade 
 
 *De Nat. Deorum, ii, 35. Tusc. Disp., i. 25. 
 
 2 De Arte Magnetica. Rome, 1654, lib. ii., part iv , p. 245. See also, 
 Claud. Ep. xxi. In Sphaerum Archim., Sext. Empiric, adv. Math. ix. 
 15. Lactantius: Div. Inst, ii. 5. Ov. : Fast vi. 277. Smith: Diet, of Gr. 
 and Rom. Biog. and Myth. i. 2711. 
 
PETER PEREGRINUS. 167 
 
 of his brother Louis IX., of France, Peter or Peregrinns 
 as for the sake of uniformity with the old writers we shall 
 hereafter term him very probably went to the Orient 
 in Charles' train. Friar Bacon indicates plainly enough 
 what his functions were. He was skilled in arms and 
 magic, and as pretty much all mechanical and physical 
 knowledge, in those days, over and above what Archi- 
 medes had taught, was included broadly under the last- 
 named term, Peregrinus was, in brief, an engineer. He 
 probably devised engines for throwing stones and fire-balls, 
 or for breaching walls ; while his knowledge of geodesy 
 came into play in building fortifications and digging mines. 
 During this employment, Peregrinus seems to have con- 
 ceived the idea of converting the sphere of Archimedes 
 into a self-moving magnetic motor, and then to have gone 
 a step further and evolved a magnetic perpetual motion on 
 an entirely different principle. It is a most singular fact 
 that he reached these delusions through a series of bril- 
 liant discoveries, in which he not only overthrew most of 
 the old notions concerning magnetism, but established, 
 for the first time, the great fundamental laws of the sci- 
 ence. Yet he cannot well be condemned for thus landing 
 in an impossibility. No one knew that such a thing as a 
 self-moving machine was impossible. The force of such a 
 conception, especially when attained through the medium 
 of experimentation which was correct in itself, and upon 
 an intellect educated perhaps to as high a degree as was 
 attainable in those days to the appreciation of the magni- 
 tude of it, may well have been overwhelming. A machine 
 moved by the virtue which God had put into the lodestone 
 and requiring no human aid such was the initial idea 
 which, running on to other conclusions, must have de- 
 veloped itself into speculation concerning the stupendous 
 results which many such machines could accomplish, the 
 possible accumulation of their powers, and the vast aggre- 
 gated mights and that was an age when might made 
 right which should be at the disposal of whoever con- 
 
l68 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 trolled them. And beyond all this, conceive of the 
 tremendous influence upon this soldier-monk, imbued 
 with the superstitious of his creed, of the conviction that 
 he might be the chosen of the Almighty to remove the 
 curse of Eden, and to relieve man from the earning of his 
 bread by the sweat of his brow. 
 
 He does not say this in the letter which he wrote on the 
 I2th day of August, 1269, from the trenches in front 
 of Lucera. The stake would, no doubt, have claimed him 
 in short order, had he dared even to breathe a word of such 
 a doctrine. But no one can read that missive without see- 
 ing how deeply the writer's soul was stirred within him. 
 The person to whom he sent it was not a philosopher like 
 himself, not even a scholar, but a knight, one Sigerus of 
 Foucaucourt, and his next-door neighbor at home. u Ami- 
 corum intime" u nearest of friends" is the form of ad- 
 dress, and the story is told as if in answer to some question 
 put by Sigerus concerning the occult virtue of the magnet. 
 But it all leads up to the machine which its inventor 
 thought would run forever, and which is described in his 
 last chapter; and what precedes is introduction, evidently 
 intended simply to educate the recipient to a comprehen- 
 sion of the great result which the writer believed he had 
 attained. It was the beginning of the arch-delusion in 
 mechanics which ran for centuries parallel with the arch- 
 delusion in chemistry, and with consequences very similar. 
 For, as the search for the philosopher's stone and the 
 elixir of youth brought to light many of the basic truths 
 of the one science, so the equally vain quest for the per- 
 petual motion has resulted in the discovery of many of 
 the underlying principles of the other. 
 
 But let us examine the letter itself. It begins with a 
 brief table of contents designed to show the orderly plan 
 on which it is arranged. There are two parts the first 
 divided into ten chapters and relating to general prin- 
 ciples ; the second, into three chapters, which set forth 
 the apparatus in which these principles are embodied. 
 
PETER PEREGRINUS. 169 
 
 After stating that he proposes to describe the occult 
 nature of the lodestone in simple language, Peregrinus 
 lays down the principles of experimental research. While 
 he admits the value of general reasoning, he warns the 
 reader against relying upon speculation and theory alone. 
 
 In the abstract, he says, many things appear true and cor- 
 rect which cannot be done by hands. The student must 
 exhibit the wonderful effects by his work ; for, by actually 
 doing things, he can remedy errors which he never can cor- 
 rect by mathematics. This may seem curious counsel from 
 the inventor of a perpetual motion, and lead to the query 
 whether he practiced what he himself preached. The an- 
 swer is suggested further on, when Peregrinus describes 
 the first of his self-moving contrivances. If it does not 
 work, that fact, he says, is to be ascribed to the lack of 
 mechanical skill in the maker, rather than to inherent 
 difficulties of the mechanism. This, of course, is one way 
 of avoiding a troublesome issue ; but it must be remem- 
 bered that Peregrinus is writing from the seat of war, 
 where he probably has had no means of obtaining accurate 
 workmanship. He is sure of the conclusions which he 
 has deduced from experiment ; and, having tested some 
 probably rude form of his machine and finding that it re- 
 fuses to work, he considers this due, not to erroneous 
 deductions, but to imperfections in the making. Hence 
 this warning at the outset. 
 
 He next tells how to select a good magnet. In color 
 it must be iron-like slightly bluish and pale. The best 
 comes from the northern regions, and is used by sailors 
 who travel between the ports of the northern seas, notably 
 those of Normandy and Flanders. This preference for the 
 northern magnet is noteworthy, not only as showing that 
 the best lodestone existed in the part of Europe where the 
 compass found its first employment, but also because it 
 is in direct variance with all the earlier writers who in- 
 variably give first place to the Indian stone. The heavier 
 and more compact the magnet, the better, although such 
 
170 THE INTELIvECTUAI, RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 stones are the most costly. A mode of testing the lode- 
 stone is now for the first time announced. The best 
 magnet, we are told, is that which will attract the 
 greatest weight of iron, and draw it most strongly. In 
 other words, Peregrinus considers not only the lifting 
 power of the stone, but the magnetic strength, and appar- 
 ently recognizes the difference between these effects. It 
 is difficult to believe that a thirteenth century mind is 
 evolving these concepts. Not until three hundred years 
 later did Baptista Porta and Cardan and other philos- 
 ophers of the time begin to measure the attractive force 
 by causing the magnet to draw iron suspended on a scale 
 arm. 
 
 All of the foregoing is prefatory to his announcement 
 of greater discoveries. The ancient notions, as we have 
 seen, were that the Pole star governed the magnet; then, 
 that the Pole star influenced the magnetic mountains, 
 which, in turn, governed the magnet; then, that the mag- 
 net was controlled, not by the Pole star, but by all p^irts 
 of the celestial sphere, and, by their resultant action, the 
 needle was brought to the north and south position. 
 Peregrinus takes the next step forward, and reveals the 
 poles in the lodestone itself. There are two points in the 
 heavens, he says, of greater note than the rest, ''because 
 the celestial sphere revolves about them as if it were on 
 pivots, one of which is called the Arctic or north pole, 
 and the other, the Antarctic or south pole." So in the 
 stone which he looks upon as an image of the celestial 
 sphere, "you must understand there are two points, the 
 one north and the other south." 
 
 Bacon knew that different parts of the same magnet 
 would affect iron (as he supposed) differently, one attract- 
 ing, the other repelling; but he had no notion that these 
 parts had any definite position. Peregrinus not only tells 
 us that they have precise places as precise as the poles 
 around which the celestial sphere apparently revolves 
 but now proceeds to explain how they may be found. 
 
FINDING THE MAGNET POLES. 1 71 
 
 The stone is to be made in globular form and polished 
 in the same way as are crystals and other stones. Thus 
 it is caused to conform in shape to the celestial sphere. 
 Now place upon it a needle or elongated piece of iron, 
 and draw a line in the direction of the length of the 
 needle, dividing the stone in two. Then put the needle 
 in another place on the stone, and draw another line in 
 the same way. This may be repeated with the needle in 
 other positions. All of the lines thus drawn "will run 
 together in two points, just as all the meridian circles of 
 the world run together in two opposite poles of the world. ' ' 
 
 Here was a magnet made in spherical form, the poles 
 of it recognized and named, and the magnetic meridians 
 found. More than this, although the lodestone sphere 
 was regarded as an image of the celestial sphere, a certain 
 analogy between it and the terrestrial globe was also 
 plainly seen. Yet, again, more than three centuries were 
 to intervene before William Gilbert should perceive in 
 the globular magnet of Peregrinus a miniature earth, or, 
 in the world itself, only a great magnet a colossal re- 
 production of the Pilgrim's lodestone ball. 
 
 Peregrinus probably first found the poles in the way that 
 is above described. Then afterwards he remarked that, at 
 the points so determined, the needle was more strongly 
 attracted than elsewhere. Consequently, he sees that the 
 poles can be detected without marking the meridians, by 
 simply noting the places on the stone where the needle is 
 most frequently and powerfully drawn. If, however, he 
 continues, you wish to be precise, break the needle so as 
 to get a short piece, about two nails in length. Place this 
 on the supposed polar point. If the needle stands perpen- 
 dicularly to the surface of the stone, such point is the true 
 pole ; if not, then move the needle about until the place is 
 found where it does thus stand erect. If these points are 
 accurately ascertained and the stone is homogeneous and 
 well chosen, he adds, "they will be drawn diametrically 
 opposite one another like the poles of the sphere. " 
 
172 THE INTELLECTUAI, RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Here was still another advance. The idea that the 
 lodestone somehow influenced the space between itself 
 and the iron had been in existence from the time of 
 Lucretius. But this in its latest form implied simply that 
 the intervening air "consented" to the passage of the 
 magnetic virtue, and thus the lodestone became, as it 
 were, permitted to draw the iron. But Peregrinus goes 
 far beyond that or any other earlier theory of the magnetic 
 influence. He sees for the first time that the lodestone 
 not only attracts the iron over the intervening space be- 
 tween them, but compels the iron to take a definite position 
 in that space. In other words, he perceives that when his 
 little needles are placed at the poles of the stone they stand 
 erect, while elsewhere they stand more or less inclined. 
 That was the first definite recognition of the directive 
 action of the magnetic field of force: the first revelation of 
 the direction in which the strains and stresses therein are 
 exerted, shown by the turning of the little bits of iron in 
 response thereto, as an anchored boat swings to the tide, 
 or a weathercock to the wind. 
 
 Having found the position of the poles, the next step 
 is to distinguish one from the other. "Take," says 
 Peregrinus, "a wooden vessel, round, like a dish or platter, 
 and put the stone in it so that the two points of the stone 
 may be equidistant from the edge; then put this in a larger 
 vessel containing water, so that the stone may float like a 
 sailor in a boat." There must be plenty of room in the 
 large vessel, so that the one containing the stone may not 
 meet the side and so have the free motion impeded. Then 
 "the stone so placed will turn in its little vessel until the 
 north pole of the stone will stand in the direction of the 
 north pole of the heavens, and the south pole in that of the 
 south pole of the heavens;" and if it be removed from 
 this position, it will return thereto "by the will of God." 
 "Since the north and south parts of the heavens are 
 known, so will they be known in the stone ; because each 
 part of the stone will turn itself to its corresponding part 
 
THE LAW OF MAGNETIC ATTRACTION. 173 
 
 of the heavens." Here the naming of the magnet poles 
 leads to confusion because Peregrinus gives to each magnet 
 pole the same name as that of the quarter toward which 
 the end of the free needle pointed ; an example ever since 
 followed. 
 
 Having thus both located and identified the poles, the 
 next step was to determine their action upon one another ; 
 and then fell all of the old theory which began with the 
 "theamedes," and ended with the supposed power of the 
 magnet to repel as well as to attract iron. Two stones 
 he says, are to be prepared, and the poles determined 
 and marked by cuts. One stone is to be placed in a 
 cup, and floated as before. The other stone is to be held 
 in the hand. Then, "if the north part of the stone, which 
 you hold, be brought to the south part of the stone floating 
 in the vessel, the floating stone will follow the stone you 
 hold, as if wishing to adhere to it;" and, if the south part 
 of the held stone be brought to the north part of the float- 
 ing stone, the same thing will happen. "Know it therefore 
 as a law, ' ' he says, "that the north part of one stone attracts 
 the south part of another stone, and the south, the north" 
 But, if the reverse be done, if the north part of the 
 stone in the hand, be brought to the north part of the 
 floating stone, the latter will flee ; and the same will 
 happen if south be joined to south. Thus was found the 
 fundamental law that unlike magnetic poles mutually 
 attract. 
 
 Peregrinus does not lay down the further law, that like 
 magnetic poles repel ; for, singularly enough, he does not 
 recognize any actual repulsion occurring between these 
 poles of like name, but assumes that the stone merely 
 turns itself around so that the law already stated may 
 come into play that is, so that unlike poles may attract 
 one another. Finally, he attacks the theory that the iron 
 is the natural affinity of the magnet, and that the magnet 
 will attract iron rather than another magnet. Here he 
 finds further support in the doctrine of similitudes, which, 
 
174 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 as we have seen, was so generally prevalent. The magnet, 
 he thought, attracted the magnet more powerfully than 
 the iron because the magnet was like the magnet; and he 
 uses the same illustration given by Neckam the attrac- 
 tion of scammony for bile. 
 
 The more one reads of this remarkable letter, the more 
 evident becomes the conflict in the mind of Peregrinus 
 between the conclusions drawn from experiment, and 
 those deduced from existing theories and speculations. It 
 is also curious to note how much further he had extricated 
 himself from the prevailing atmosphere of delusions and 
 false conceptions than Neckam had done seventy years 
 earlier. In Neckam's treatise, the wholly speculative 
 ideas predominate; in that of Peregrinus, those which rest 
 purely upon experiments obviously control. Neckam en- 
 deavors to reconcile the teachings of experiment with the 
 prevailing theories, evidently through some sort of impres- 
 sion that he must do so, even if the results of investigation 
 are out of harmony with those evolved from speculation. 
 Peregrinus, on the contrary, does just the reverse, and 
 tries not only to harmonize his experimental conclusions 
 with one another, but to adapt the existing theories to 
 them. 
 
 Yet, in one instance, he seems to fail completely, and 
 to allow theory to lead him entirely astray. It has al- 
 ready been stated that in giving names to the poles of the 
 magnet, Peregrinus calls that pole "north," which points 
 to the north when the needle is supported so as to be 
 freely moved. He says, " You will infer what part of the 
 iron is attracted to each part of the heavens from knowing 
 that the part of the iron which has touched the southern 
 part of the magnet is turned to the northern part of the 
 sky. The contrary will happen with respect to that end 
 of the iron which has touched the north part of the stone, 
 namely, it will direct itself towards the south." It is 
 difficult to see how he could have made this error in the 
 face of his experiments; for, as a matter of course, the end 
 
THE NAMING OF THE MAGNET POLES. 175 
 
 of the needle which touched the south part of the lode- 
 stone must have acquired north polarity, and, therefore, 
 have pointed to the south, which is exactly the reverse of 
 what he states. True, the doctrine of similitudes would 
 lead him to infer that the north pole of the magnet would 
 point to the north pole of the heavens; but why should he 
 allow that theory to control his ideas in the face of this 
 particular demonstrated fact, when he has no hesitation 
 in stating conclusions drawn from other facts in the same 
 series of experiments, which were directly in the teeth of 
 that theory ? Two reasons may be given to account for 
 this. The first is that the error was not due to Peregrinus, 
 but to a transposition of terms by some copyist. 
 
 The second and stronger reason becomes clear when it 
 is remembered that the doctrine of similitudes was more 
 commonly applied with reference to the magnet and 
 needle than with reference to needle and Pole star. The 
 end of the needle in the compass was always rubbed by 
 one and the same end of the magnet, and thereafter it 
 turned to the north. Therefore it was concluded a priori 
 that the pole of the magnetizing lodestone must also be 
 north. Peregrinus undoubtedly, as others had done, 
 rubbed the north end of his magnet to the needle and 
 saw the latter point to the north, and thus, as he supposed, 
 he established the principle, not by theory, but by actual 
 experiment. And that the prevailing theory harmonized 
 with the experiment tended, of course, still further to sup- 
 port the latter. 
 
 If he had presented to the supposed north pole of the 
 needle the south pole of the magnet, he would have seen 
 repulsion instead of attraction, and possibly have been led 
 to question his hypothesis; but that is asking altogether 
 too much of an investigator of the thirteenth century. In 
 that he experimented on the subject at all connotes im- 
 portant progress. To suggest that he might have experi- 
 mented to test the apparently plain conclusions of observa- 
 tion, is simply to impute to him a capacity for inductive 
 reasoning far in advance of his age. 
 
176 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 The next great discovery which Peregrintis notes is the 
 possibility of changing the magnetic poles. "If," he 
 says, "the south part of the iron which has been rubbed 
 by the north part of the stone be forced to meet the 
 south part of the stone; or the north part of the iron, 
 which has been rubbed by the south part of the stone, be 
 forced to meet the north part of the latter, then the virtue 
 of the iron will be altered; and if it were north, it will be 
 made south, and vice versa. And the cause of this is the 
 last impression acting, confounding, or counteracting and 
 altering the original virtue" Unless Peregrinus drew 
 some occult distinction, in his own mind, between the 
 influence of the heavenly sphere upon the magnet and 
 upon the needle receiving its virtue therefrom, it is diffi- 
 cult to perceive why this remarkable revelation of the pos- 
 sibility of destroying or reversing magnetic polarity did 
 not suggest to him that such influence must be of a strange 
 and inconsistent kind if it could be thus neutralized or 
 inverted. But this again is a nineteenth century criticism. 
 
 Peregrinus does see, however, that the poles of the lode- 
 stone are apparently unstable, in a curious sort of way: and 
 he announces that the unlike poles of two magnets come 
 together not only to assimilate, but to unite and make one. 
 Then, to prove this, he cuts a magnet in two and shows 
 that each part has two different poles. And yet, when the 
 parts are brought together to reconstitute the magnet in 
 its original form, the polarity is the same as before the 
 cutting, and two of the four poles which the two frag- 
 ments possessed have seemingly vanished. That is the 
 first announcement of the persistence of polarity in the 
 separated parts of a lodestone, and it was a refutation 
 in advance of the later theory of two magnetic fluids 
 residing only in opposite ends of the stone. The ex- 
 periments 1 are stated in some detail, but, as they amount 
 
 1 In the printed copy of Peregrinus' letter which the British Museum 
 possesses, Dr. John Dee, Queen Elizabeth's favorite astrologer, has cov- 
 ered the pages relating to them with underscorings and diagrams, as if 
 he regarded that part of the work as the most important of all. 
 
THE SOURCE OF MAGNETIC VIRTUE. 177 
 
 merely to transpositions of the pieces of the divided stone, 
 it is not necessary to trace them minutely here. The 
 conclusion is that the unlike poles attract because natur- 
 ally they desire to unite and make one; whereas the like 
 poles, also because of their nature, have no such desire. 
 
 Peregrinus next remarks that some unlearned people 
 have supposed that the virtue by which the magnet attracts 
 iron is already existing in the mineral veins in which the 
 magnet is found; "whence they say that the iron is moved 
 to the poles of the earth because of the mines of the stone 
 there existing." But, he declares, the mines of the stone 
 are found in various places in the earth, and hence the 
 needle influenced by them should stand irregularly in dif- 
 ferent positions; which is not the fact. Now, he concludes, 
 "wherever a man may be he may see with his eyes this 
 motion of the stone, according to the place of its meridian 
 circle. But all meridian circles meet at the poles: where- 
 fore from the poles of the world the poles of the magnet 
 receive their virtue." 
 
 He evidently regards the poles of the earth, and those 
 of the heavens, as in the same axial line, and attributes no 
 especial directive faculty to those of the earth. For, he 
 adds that the needle does not point to the Pole star, which 
 varies in place, but to the heavenly poles, thus showing 
 that he knew, possibly by means of astronomical observa- 
 tions, that the common opinion of his contemporaries, that 
 the position of the Pole star coincided with that of the 
 pole of the heavens, was erroneous. 1 
 
 The first part of Peregrinus' letter, which I have now 
 reviewed, ends with the description of his first form of 
 perpetual motion, and this, as I have already stated, is 
 apparently based on the Archimedean sphere. He intro- 
 duces it as a means of showing how all parts of the 
 
 1 This opinion, however, was not universal in the Middle Ages, as is 
 shown by a celestial globe (Cufic-Arabic) in the National Museum at 
 Naples which dates from 1225, and in which the Pole star is indicated 
 5> distant from the pole. 
 12 
 
178 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 heavens, and not the poles only, influence the magnet ; 
 but he is very cautious, and throws the burden of success 
 or failure upon the maker. Make a globular magnet, he 
 says, and find the poles. Then affix two pivots, on which 
 the globe may turn. See that it is equally balanced and 
 turns easily on the pivots, and try this repeatedly for many 
 days and at different times in the day. Now place the 
 stone with its axis in the meridian of the place, and dis- 
 pose its poles so as to correspond to the elevation or de- 
 pression of the heavenly poles in the region where you 
 may be. And then 
 
 But Peregrinus here drops his affirmative style and takes 
 refuge in u ifs." 
 
 ^If the stone is moved according to the motion of 
 the heavens, you will delight in having found so wonder- 
 ful a secret; but if not, impute the failure rather to your 
 own unskillfulness than to nature." 
 
 What he believed would happen he had never tried 
 the experiment was that the globular magnet, being on 
 the (then considered) motionless earth, and being in- 
 fluenced by the heavenly vault revolving about it, would 
 follow the motion of the sky and so rotate. 1 He thought 
 it might even serve as a timepiece. But this delusion 
 nevertheless bears good fruit for, he adds, u in this posi- 
 tion (i. e., in the magnetic meridian) I believe the virtues 
 of the stone to be best preserved," which is true. 
 
 In order to appreciate the remarkable improvements 
 which were embodied in the instruments which Peregrinus 
 now proceeds to describe, it may be recalled that the ex- 
 isting compass was nothing but a needle supported on a 
 reed so as to float in a vessel of water. It simply showed, 
 
 1 " It was the opinion of Pet. Peregrinus, and there is an example pre- 
 tended for it in Beltinus (Apiar. g. Progym., 5, pro., u) that a mag- 
 netical globe or terella being rightly placed upon its poles, would of 
 itself have a constant rotation like the diurnal motion of the earth; but 
 this is commonly exploded, as being against all experience." Wilkins: 
 Mathematical Magick, London, 1707, 5th ed., Chap. XIII. 
 
PEREGRINUS' COMPASS. 179 
 
 during cloudy weather, the position of the Pole star. It 
 was not combined with any scale, nor was any means pro- 
 vided whereby a vessel could be steered on a given course 
 by the direct aid of the compass itself. In other words, 
 the compass had no "lubber's point" or fiducial line, and 
 the ano'le of the course to a true north and south line was 
 
 o 
 
 only guessed at. The nautical astrolabe, however, was 
 fairly well known, and was used for measuring the alti- 
 tude of the sun. It was a ring of metal divided into quad- 
 rants and graduated in degrees. It had cross-pieces, so that 
 there could be pivoted at its center a bar with sight 
 notches at opposite ends. The user held the ring in 
 suspension by his left hand, so that its vertical diameter 
 would be plumb. Then, with his right hand he manipu- 
 lated the sight-bar before his eye, glancing first along it at 
 the horizon line, and then elevating it to the position of 
 the sun, thus rudely measuring the angle of altitude of the 
 sun above the horizon. Peregrinus now combined the 
 nautical astrolabe and the compass, and then, for the first 
 time, he produced a compass having a graduated scale and 
 a fiducial line or "lubber's point," which not only could 
 be steered by, but which could be used for taking the 
 azimuth of any heavenly body. This was very ingen- 
 iously done. He makes his magnet in ovoid form and 
 puts it in a bowl in symmetrical position. Then, on the 
 upper circular edge of that bowl he places marks, so that 
 a diametral line will coincide with a line passing through 
 the poles of the magnet, which last he has already deter- 
 mined. Then he marks another line at right angles to 
 this, and finally divides the four quadrants into ninety 
 parts each, so that each division is of course one degree of 
 the circle. Now he places the bowl in a large vessel 
 (probably glass) of water, in which the bowl floats, and 
 the magnet, of course, places itself with its poles in the 
 magnetic meridian. Thus he can recognize all points of 
 the horizon by the marks which he has put on the edge 
 of the bowl. Lastly, he rests upon the bowl edge a light 
 
l8o THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 bar of wood. This has, at each end, an upright pin. 
 Normally it is placed in the north and south line. Hence, 
 if he wishes to take the angular bearing of the sun from 
 the north and south line, he moves this bar until the 
 shadows of the pins coincide with the longitudinal axis 
 of the bar; and simply notes the angle between the final 
 direction of the bar and the north and south line marked 
 on the edge of his bowl. To do this he has to hold the 
 bowl steady with one hand, as he describes, and move 
 the bar around its center with the other. Then, of course, 
 he has only to read on his scale the angle between the bar 
 and the north and south line, and he has the solar azi- 
 muth. In a similar way he can find the direction of the 
 
 PEREGRINUS' FLOATING COMPASS. 1 
 
 wind, by turning his bar until it is in line with the direc- 
 tion in which the wind blows. Or, he can find the 
 azimuth of the moon, or a star, by placing his bar in the 
 direction of the heavenly body. Of course it is only a 
 step beyond this, and one that was probably fully known 
 to him, to place the same bar in a line fore-and-aft the 
 ship, and then his instrument would show the course of 
 the vessel. 
 
 The evolution of this instrument from the astrolabe and 
 the old floating compass is obvious ; but Peregrinus is not 
 contented with it, and now he proceeds further, and, for 
 
 1 From Bertelli, cit. sup. 
 
PEREGRINUS' COMPASS. l8l 
 
 the first time, produces the pivoted compass. The floating 
 bowl and the large vessel of water are abolished, and in 
 place of them there is the ordinary circular compass-box 
 of to-day. Its edges are marked as those of the bowl were 
 with the degrees of the circle. It is covered with a 
 plate of glass. In the centre of the instrument, and 
 stepped in the glass cover and in the bottom of the box, is 
 a pivot, through which passes the compass needle, now no 
 longer an ovoid lodestone, but a true needle of steel or iron. 
 Then, at right angles to this needle is another needle, 
 which, curiously enough, he says is to be made of silver or 
 copper. Pivoted above the glass cover is an azimuth bar, 
 as before, with sight pins at the ends. Now, he says, 
 you are to magnetize the needle by means of the lodestone 
 
 PEREGRINUS' PIVOTED COMPASS. 1 
 
 in the usual way, so that it will point north and south ; 
 and then the azimuth bar is to be turned on its centre so 
 as to be directed toward the sun or heavenly bodies, and in 
 this way, of course, the azimuth is easily measured. In 
 fact, the device is the azimuth compass of the present 
 time. u By means of this instrument," says Peregrinus, 
 "you may direct your course towards cities and islands 
 and all other parts of the world, either on land or at sea, 
 provided you are acquainted with the longitudes and lati- 
 tudes of those places." Or, in other words, find the posi- 
 tion in latitude and longitude of the place whither you 
 wish to proceed, which is obviously the first thing neces- 
 sary ; note the direction of that place from the place 
 
 1 From Bertelli, cit. sup. 
 
183 
 
 THE: INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 where you are, and by means of the compass as he de- 
 scribes it you have simply to follow the course you have 
 plotted. There would not be any difficulty in steering a 
 modern ocean steamer by means of Peregrinus's compass, 
 and in exactly the same way. 
 
 After the time of Peregrin us, as we shall see, the com- 
 pass card was invented, and all of the thirty-two points 
 of the compass (beginning with north, and thence pass- 
 
 PEREGRINUS' COMPASS. 
 
 ing in order to north by east, north northeast, northeast 
 by north, northeast, northeast by east, and so on) were 
 named. 
 
 The presence of the little needle of copper or silver 
 which Peregrinus thrusts through the pivot at right 
 angles to the iron needle is a matter of curious interest. 
 Peregrinus does not say why he uses it, nor what purpose 
 he expected it to serve. Probably it was intended merely 
 to indicate the east and west points and made of non-mag- 
 
 1 From the Vatican Codex of Peregrinus' Letter. This is apparently 
 intended as a plain view of the floating compass. 
 
PEREGRINUS' MOTOR. 183 
 
 netic metal so as not to interfere with the magnetic needle. 
 Yet the currents generated in a non-magnetic conductor 
 moved in a field of force cause it seemingly to meet resist- 
 ance as if the field contained some retarding medium, so 
 that a copper bar or disk has been applied to the needle 
 of a modern galvanometer to utilize this retarding effect 
 to prevent undue vibration of that needle. The non-mag- 
 netic needle in Peregrinus' compass may have had the 
 same effect. Its retarding influence might not be sufficient 
 to interfere with the impressed force of the earth's magnet- 
 ism upon the iron needle, and yet enough to check the 
 vibrations of the latter due to inertia; so that Peregrinus 
 may thus have unwittingly stumbled upon a phenomenon 
 the discovery of which belongs to recent years. 
 
 The last chapter of this famous letter relates to the 
 supposed perpetual motion for the understanding of which, 
 by his friend Sigerus, all of these discoveries have been 
 made and described. We have no contemporary record 
 of any earlier attempt to construct a self-moving ma- 
 chine, although Peregrinus in the very beginning says that 
 others have vainly tried to make them. The description 
 which he presents of his own conception is incomprehen- 
 sible : and in this respect it is the prototype and exemplar 
 of all the subsequent so-called elucidations of the myster- 
 ious and power-generating u motors " which have been 
 devised since his day. It had a ring of silver, which he 
 rendered light by perforating it in various places. This 
 he supported in some way so that it would rotate on its 
 center. In the ring he arranged a series of iron teeth, the 
 sides of which were at different inclinations, something- 
 after the fashion of the teeth of a ratchet wheel. The 
 magnet was placed at the extremity of a radial arm dis- 
 posed within the ring, with its end close to the teeth. 
 The magnet was fixed. The description of the operation 
 is unintelligible, but presumably Peregrinus expected that 
 the magnet would draw the prominent portion of each 
 tooth to itself, and then the momentum of the wheel would 
 
184 THE INTELLECTUAL RISK IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 carry the tooth beyond the magnet, and then the magnet 
 would attract the protruding portion of the next succes- 
 sive tooth, which he probably imagined would be brought 
 nearer to it than would the rapidly-retreating face of the 
 tooth which had just passed. He states that the tooth 
 came alternately to the north and the south portion of the 
 magnet, and there was alternately attracted and repelled ; 
 but the pictures of the machine which appear in the vari- 
 ous old manuscript copies of the letter do not accord with 
 this explanation. He also adds a small ball, which falls 
 from one tooth to the other as the wheel rotates; and possi- 
 bly he supposed that the movement of this ball would add 
 something to the momentum of the wheel. Of course the 
 contrivance never could have worked. But then, paper 
 inventions often have that failing, and a large and goodly 
 company of imitators, walking in Peregrin us' footsteps, 
 are even now constantly finding this out. The law which 
 asserts that two and two make four, and no more, at all 
 times, and in all places, and that it is not given to man to 
 create anything whatever, has never been suspended in 
 favor of any mechanism, no matter how expensive or in- 
 genious, not even when it meets the approval of persons 
 of superior consequence, financial and otherwise, in the 
 community. Not having fully realized this fact ourselves 
 at the end of the nineteenth century, we may perhaps look 
 with some lenience upon the similar misapprehension of 
 Peregrinus six hundred years ago. 
 
 Let me now recapitulate the foregoing remarkable 
 achievements. Peregrinus discovered and differentiated 
 the poles of the magnet. He revealed the law that unlike 
 magnetic poles mutually attract. He showed how to 
 detect the magnetic poles and demonstrated that in every 
 part or fragment of a divided magnet the two poles persist. 
 He proved that not only is the iron needle attracted by 
 the lodestone, but that it will assume definite inclined or 
 angular positions when brought into proximity thereto. 
 Thus he, for the first time, disclosed the state of strain 
 
PEREGRINUS 1 DISCOVERIES. 185 
 
 and stress existing in the medium surrounding the mag- 
 net, which, acting upon the light needle, compelled it to 
 set itself in the direction of lines of force proceeding from 
 the stone. Thus he first exhibited the condition of the 
 magnetic field. He saw, though dimly, that the directive 
 quality of the freely- suspended lodestone depended, not 
 alone upon some inherent virtue of the stone, but upon an 
 external influence acting upon it an influence which he 
 regarded as emanating from the celestial sphere. He found 
 the position of the poles on a globular magnet, and recog- 
 nized the magnetic meridians upon its surface. He first 
 perceived the correct way of measuring magnetic strength. 
 He discovered the mutability of the magnetic poles, and 
 that the poles of a weaker magnet could be reversed or 
 obliterated by the inductive action upon them of a stronger 
 magnet. 
 
 He invented the first mariner's compass which could be 
 constantly used to steer by as we steer by it now, instead 
 of being employed merely to indicate the diiection of the 
 Pole star ; the first compass having a fiducial or ' * lubber's ' ' 
 point and a graduated scale : the first compass capable of 
 being used to measure azimuth or bearing: the first com- 
 pass having a pivoted needle the prototype of all electri- 
 cal measuring instruments in which such an indicator is 
 employed : and, if he did not actually recognize the re- 
 tarding effect of a magnetic field upon a non-magnetic body 
 (such as silver or copper), and combine such non-magnetic 
 metal with the needle of his instrument in order to dampen 
 or check its natural vibrations and so to bring it quickly 
 to rest at its indication, he at least perceived that the mag- 
 netic field had no directive force upon such a body, and 
 that therefore it could be employed as an additional index 
 under the control of the magnetized needle. Finally, 
 he first suggested the conversion of magnetic (electric) 
 energy into mechanical energy in an organized machine 
 and to do useful work ; and thus he proposed the first 
 magnetic (electric) motor. 
 
1 86 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 That even such remarkable discoveries as these should 
 have remained unknown or have been forgotten for so 
 long a period is easily accounted for by the intellectual 
 condition of the times. Education was restricted to the 
 few, and mainly to members of the religious orders, who, 
 knowing little or nothing concerning maritime matters, 
 would be unlikely to appreciate improvements in the 
 compass or experiments upon it. The contents of the 
 learned treatises of the time are not to be regarded as 
 common knowledge, for manuscripts were costly and rare, 
 and the masses of the people could not read them in the 
 vernacular, much less in Latin. Frequently all that was 
 known relative to a certain subject was confined to one 
 author or group of authors, or to some one town or region. 
 This sort of isolation constantly occurred in scientific 
 matters not taught in the universities. Intercommuni- 
 cation by letter was difficult, instruction in the schools was 
 mainly by lecture, and the universal reverence for Aristotle 
 caused all novelties which were not accounted for by his 
 teachings to be slightingly considered if not ignored. 
 Undoubtedly, also, Sigerus regarded Peregrinus' informa- 
 tion as a secret confided to his care, and thus general 
 knowledge of it might have been delayed indefinitely. 
 And, finally, when it came to light, people who tested 
 the perpetual motion apparatus and found it a delusion 
 naturally would discredit all other statements. 
 
 Of the later history of this extraordinary man nothing 
 is known: not even the lavish encomiums of Roger Bacon 
 availed to save him from oblivion, for such was the fate 
 of Bacon himself. 1 The few manuscript copies which had 
 been made of the famous Letter lay buried in the monas- 
 teries for nearly three hundred years. 
 
 1 The Opus Mrjus was not published until 1733, nor the Opus Minus 
 and Opus Tertium until 1859, and not a single doctor of the thirteenth 
 and fourteenth centuries mentions Bacon either for blame or praise. 
 Charles, E.: Roger Bacon, sa vie, etc. Paris, 1861, p. 31. 
 
GIOJA. 187 
 
 There are two well known features of the modern com- 
 pass which Peregrinus' instrument lacks; and these are of 
 importance. The needle passes through a vertical pivot 
 shaft, so that the pivot and needle turn together, while 
 the modern compass needle rotates on a fixed point ; and, 
 besides the scale marked in degrees around the circle, the 
 modern instrument has also the so-called card on which 
 appears a species of star of 32 points, each having its 
 appropriate name, as N. B., N. N. E., S. W., W. S. W., 
 and so on. Almost the first piece of nautical learning 
 acquired by the young sailor is the learning of the names 
 of these points of the compass in their order, or, as it 
 is commonly termed, "boxing the compass." The older 
 seamen of to-day still steer by the same points; but the 
 modern fashion is to go back to the idea of Peregrin us 
 and to lay a course from north so many degrees east, for 
 example, instead of designating it by the arbitrary name 
 of the point toward which the vessel is steered. The star 
 itself has been known for centuries as the Rose of the 
 Winds, and it is likewise inscribed on very old charts to 
 show the direction of the various points. The earliest 
 maps on which it has been found are Genoese, and date 
 from 1318, and hence it has been supposed that both the 
 star and the pivoted needle were invented by Mediter- 
 ranean rather than by northern mariners, at some period 
 between the time of Peregrinus' letter and the above- 
 named year. 
 
 The suggestion that any part of the compass is of Italian 
 origin recalls at once the man whom the world, for scores 
 of years, believed to be the inventor of the entire instru- 
 ment, and whom many modern encyclopaedists, and Italian 
 writers generally, still delight as such to honor. Flavio 
 Gioja, 1 or Giri, or Gira (for the name is in doubt), lived 
 
 'See Nuova Encyclopaedia Italiana. Boccardi, Turin, 1880. The most 
 elaborate arguments in favor of Gioja's claims are given by G. Grimaldi 
 in Memorie dell' Acad. Etrusc. di Cortona. See also Brechmann : Hist. 
 Pandectarum Amalphi, Diss. I, No. 22. Inter Scriptores Reruui Neapo- 
 
1 88 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 at Pasitano near Amalfi at the beginning of the fourteenth 
 century. His fame rests on the line of Anthony of 
 Bologna, who lived later in the same century: 
 
 Prima dedit nautis usum magnetis Amalphis. 
 (Amalfi first gave to seamen the use of the magnet.) 
 
 Of Gioja's life nothing definite appears to be known, 
 and even the line quoted above does not ascribe to him 
 the invention of the compass, but only its introduction. 
 Flavius Blondus speaks merely of the " rumor" of the 
 Amalfitans being "entitled to the credit of the magnet 
 by the assistance of which navigators are directed to the 
 North Pole." But, long before Gioja' s day, the Italian 
 vessels from Venice, Genoa and other ports had been 
 transporting Crusaders by thousands to the Holy Land, 
 and making trips with a regularity which, since the com- 
 ^pass was fully known, leaves little doubt that they de- 
 pended upon that instrument to some extent; although the 
 pilots of that time, after the fashion of their ancestors, 
 kept close to shore. Peregrinus, as we have seen, had fully 
 pointed out that vessels could be steered from one place to 
 another by means of his pivoted needle when the latitude 
 and longitude of the objective point was known ; but that 
 description, it must be remembered, was buried in a private 
 letter. Gioja seems to have re-discovered this and hence 
 to have taught the adventurous sailors of the Mediterranean 
 that the compass could be used, not only to find the Pole 
 star, but directly to steer by. In so doing he earned a 
 title to fame but little inferior to that which he would 
 have merited had he been the original inventor of the 
 apparatus. It was probably Gioja also who first added to 
 the instrument the compass card or Rose of the Winds, 
 of which the Etruscans, ages before, had designed the pat- 
 tern one doubtless repeated over and over again in their 
 
 litarum, Napoli, 1735, p. 935. Also McPherson : Annals of Commerce, 
 Ivond., 1805, Vol. I., 365. 
 
 1 Italia Illustrata. Basle, 1559, 420, g. 
 
THE ROSE OF THE WINDS. 189 
 
 ornaments, and bearing a resemblance to the Rose of the 
 Winds, which, as I have already pointed out, seems too 
 close in detail to make denial of some relationship between 
 the two designs altogether reasonable. The invention of 
 the needle turning on a fixed pivot seems to follow that 
 of the card as a matter of course ; for, by that means, the 
 needle could be brought much nearer to the surface of the 
 card below it than if it were on the long pivot shaft which 
 Peregrinus employed to bring it near to the graduated 
 edge of the bowl which was above it. 
 
 I have already stated that the first authentic descrip- 
 tion of the Chinese marine compass is of later date than 
 the appearance of the instrument in Northern Europe. 
 It is found in a work 1 known to have been written in 1297 
 under the reign of the Mongol Emperor Timour Khan, 
 and is therefore after the letter of Peregrinus. In this 
 the sailing directions for ships are indicated by the rhumbs 
 or diagonal lines of the compass card. 
 
 It is undoubtedly true that, at this time, the Chinese 
 were making voyages of great extent and duration. That 
 famous traveler, Marco Polo, (whom Gilbert, 2 and other 
 writers on the magnet in the I7th and i8th centuries, 
 erroneously insist first brought the knowledge of the com- 
 pass from China to Europe) describes a great expedition 
 from the Pei-ho river, which occupied three months in 
 making the journey to Java, and afterwards wandered for 
 eighteen months in Indian seas before reaching "the place 
 of their destination in the territory of King Arghun." 
 Polo also records the enterprises of Kubla Khan against 
 Madagascar. 
 
 1 Chrestomathie Chinoise. Paris, 1833, p. 21. 
 
 2 De Magnete, 1600, p. 4. There is not a word in Polo's narrative 
 which describes the compass, and no evidence that he imparted other- 
 wise any information on the subject. Furthermore his travels occurred 
 between 1271 and 1295, and hence had not begun in 1260, the date when 
 Gilbert says he learned of the compass from the Chinese. Gilbert also 
 speaks of Polo as Paulus Venetus, which is an error, the latter being the 
 name commonly given, not to Polo (Messer Million), but to Fra Paolo 
 vSarpi. 
 
190 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 But just what sort of compass the Chinese then had, even 
 so strong an advocate in their behalf as Klaproth fails to 
 discover. He quotes from a work of the i6th century a 
 description of the floating compass in common use before 
 the time of Peregrinus, and goes to Dr. Barrow for the 
 details of their pivoted needle compass; so that, while we 
 may infer that, with characteristic conservatism, they may 
 have passed down these instruments unaltered from some 
 far distant period, there is still that fatal absence of direct 
 proof which renders all early Chinese invention open to 
 more or less suspicion. That the deviation of the needle 
 from the astronomical meridian or, in other words, its 
 variation was well known to the Chinese long before that 
 phenomenon had been remarked in Europe is sufficiently 
 well established; and therefore I shall not devote space to 
 the long discussions based on the assumption of its 
 European invention which fill the treatises. A spurious 
 addition to a Leyden codex of Peregrinus' letter, in which 
 the variation is mentioned, has led many writers to credit 
 Peregrinus with its discovery. But he knew nothing of 
 it, and if, as Bertelli concludes, the variation in Europe 
 was in fact zero at his time, there was nothing to direct 
 his attention to it. The first practical knowledge among 
 European people of the fact that the needle is not strictly 
 true to the earth's geographic pole belongs to a later period 
 than that now under review. 
 
 During the following century little was added to the 
 magnetic discoveries of Peregrinus, nor was the compass 
 as he and Gioja left it materially improved. The mention 
 of the magnet and of the needle became more frequent, 
 philosophers, poets, and theologians dealing with the sub- 
 ject with the same catholicity as in the past, and finding 
 in it an unfailing source of supply for simile and meta- 
 phor. 
 
 Raymond Lully, 1 metaphysician and monk, entangles 
 
 J De Contemplatione. Capmany : Memorias Historias Sobre la Mar- 
 ina. Madrid, 1792, i, 73. 
 
THE COMPASS CARD. 191 
 
 the purely physical facts of magnetic attraction with his 
 occult teachings, and does this at so early a date (1297) 
 that books have been written to advocate his right to the 
 credit for Peregrinus' achievements. Dante in the Para- 
 diso l speaks of 
 
 ' ' a voice 
 
 That made me seem like needle to the star 
 In turning to its whereabouts," 
 
 which, if recording no discovery, at least led to the first 
 mention of the pivoted compass card itself carrying the 
 needle; which is the form now used, wherever recourse is 
 not had to the still older notion of the floating magnet 
 Da Buti, 2 the commentator on the great Florentine, writ- 
 ing in 1380, tells us that "the navigators have a compass 
 in the middle of which is pivoted a wheel of light paper 
 which turns on its pivot, and that on this wheel the needle 
 is fixed and the star (Rose of the Winds) painted." 
 
 In the north, Barbour, writing in 1375, says that in 1306, 
 King Robert, of Scotland, in crossing from Arran to Car- 
 rick, steered by a fire on the shore; for he u na nedill had 
 n a stone;" and the adoption of the Mediterranean compass 
 seems to have been long delayed, for not until 1391 does 
 Chaucer 3 mention the substitution of the horizon circle 
 divided into thirty-two points in place of twenty-four. 
 
 NOTE. The text which I have followed in the foregoing epitome of 
 Peregrinus' researches is the one which Bertelli Barnabita has prepared 
 from a careful collation of all of the existing manuscripts of the letter. 
 (Sopra Pietro Peregrine di Maricourt e la sua Epistola de Magnete. 
 P. D. Timoteo Bertelli Barnabita, Mem. Prima. Rome, 1868. Sulla 
 Epistola di Pietro Peregrine de Maricourt e Sopra Alcuni Trovati, etc. 
 Mem. Seconda : Bull, di Bib. e di Storia delle Scieuze. Math, e Fisiche. 
 Vol. I., Jan., Mar. and April, 1868.) 
 
 The first printed edition edited by Gasser (Petri Peregrini Maricurtensis 
 de Magnete, seu rota perpetui motus libellus. * * Per Achillem P. 
 
 1 Canto XII., v. 28. 
 
 2 Da Buti, Francesco: Comment. Sopra la Div. Commedia. Pisa, 1862. 
 
 3 Treatise on the Astrolabe. Ed. Skeat. Early Eng. Hist. Soc. Lon- 
 don, 1872. 
 
192 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Gasserum, L. mmc primum promulgatus. Augsburgi in Sue vis,) ap- 
 peared in 1558, at which time manuscript copies of the letter were 
 regarded as very rare. At the present time, several codices are known 
 to exist there being two in the Vatican, and six in the Bodleian 
 Library of different dates, besides others elsewhere. In 1562 the material 
 portion of the work was stolen by John Taisnier (Opusculum Perp. Mem. 
 Digniss De Natura Magnetis et ejus effectibus. * * Authore Joanne 
 Taisnierio Hannonio, etc. Coloniae, 1562), and published as his own in a 
 treatise on the Nature of the Magnet and its Effects. The only English 
 version of Peregrinus' letter is a translation of Taisnier's work by one 
 Richard Eden, which seems to have been originally printed without 
 date, and then reprinted in 1579 by Richard Jugge, London. 
 
 The perpetual motion of Peregrinus was also copied by a writer of the 
 i6th century Antonio De Fantis, of Treviso and to him the invention 
 of the apparatus is most commonly ascribed by authors subsequent to 
 Jerome Cardan. The rotary magnetic sphere of Peregrinus was also 
 plagiarized by Cornelius van Drebbel, who, in his letter to James I., of 
 England, his protector, solemnly avers his ability to construct the ap- 
 paratus so that it will automatically operate. Cardan: De Varietale 
 Rerum, 1553 lib. 9, c. 48; Vuecher: Les Secrets et Merveilles de Nature. 
 Lyon, 1596, 912. Cornelii Drebbeli Belgae Epistola ad Sapient. Bret. 
 Monarchi. Jacobum, De Perp. Mobiles Inventione. Hamburg, 1628, p. 
 66. The possibility of Peregrinus' apparatus is doubted by Gilbert (De 
 Magnete, 1600, lib. vi., c. iv.), and denied altogether by Galileo. (Opera, 
 Florence, 1842, 443-9.) 
 
 In the beginning of the present century a mythical person was in- 
 vented, one Peter Adsiger, and to him a few facts, which some one had 
 exhumed from the old manuscripts or the Augsburg edition of the Let- 
 ter, were duly credited ; so that, for a long time, the names of Peter 
 Peregrinus and Peter Adsiger were found in the text-books and histories, 
 and so appear even up to to-day. But the name "Adsiger" was simply 
 a translator's blunder, and is a part of the Latin dedication of the letter 
 which Peter writes to Sigerus (Ad Sigerum). On such small errors as 
 this, fame too often depends. 
 
 Some question has been raised as to whether certain of Peregrinus' 
 discoveries were not earlier made by Dr. Jean de St. Amand, who was a 
 celebrated physician and a canon of the cathedral church of Tournay. 
 He lived "after the year 1261," but just when is not known. He seems 
 to have been merely a copyist who restates Peregrinus' conclusions in 
 an obscure way. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE revival of literature throughout Europe was every- 
 where manifest as the i4th century drew to its end. Gi- 
 otto, Dante, Petrarch, Boccacio, Chaucer, Froissart, Wicliffe 
 such were the men whose great works both mark this 
 period and serve as indices of the directions which the 
 newly-aroused intellectual forces were taking. Yet the 
 rise of positive science was none the less steadily continu- 
 ing; before it the dogmas of authority, and especially those 
 of Aristotle, were as steadily weakening. Meanwhile the 
 commercial rivalry between Venice and Genoa, the great 
 centers of Mediterranean trade, had brought the spirit of 
 maritime adventure to the highest pitch. In the war be- 
 tween the republics, Genoa had been worsted ; and the 
 Venetians, by advantageous treaties with the oriental 
 rulers, had established trading stations in the East, which 
 gave them advantages unattainable to their competitors. 
 The narrative of Marco Polo of the prodigious wealth of 
 the far distant India, had inflamed the cupidity of his 
 countrymen. However much the fathers of the church 
 might assert the flatness of the earth, the sailors of Genoa 
 and of Amalfi knew to the contrary, for they had learned 
 that the ship which vanished beneath the brink of the 
 horizon was neither sunk nor lost, and that, in all the 
 seas wherein they had adventured, the quivering needle 
 was a safe guide. So began, in Italy, the desire to sail, 
 under the safeguard of the compass to the westward, and 
 thus to reach the golden realm of Cathay. 
 
 In 1450, the invention of printing from movable types 
 was made, and with this means of communicating and in- 
 fluencing opinion, the extension of knowledge was vast 
 and sudden. Books fell four-fifths in price. The fruits of 
 J 3 (193) 
 
194 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 the new education and of the rapid spread of intelligence 
 soon began to appear. 
 
 At this time the Italian trade, principally Venetian, 
 came overland from India by way of the Persian Gulf to 
 the Caspian and Mediterranean, and through the Red Sea 
 to Egypt. The transhipments were many, the delays seri- 
 ous and the expense of carriage enormous; yet the Italian 
 merchants were the most opulent in the world. The ad- 
 venturers of Spain and Portugal looked upon their com- 
 merce with envy, and hungered for its profits. Meanwhile 
 the knowledge of the compass had reached the Spanish and 
 Portuguese mariners, and the latter, from their Atlantic 
 ports, had begun to make, by its aid, voyages upon the 
 Western Ocean longer than ever before. Their audacity, 
 however, was checked by their superstition. They be- 
 lieved in a region of fire about the equator, in a weedy and 
 entangling sea far to the West, and in the certain destruc- 
 tion of vessels that doubled Cape Bojador; currents bewild- 
 ered them, and the trade-winds suggested only gales always 
 blowing them away from home. Yet, if these men could 
 be got to steer around the African cape, as the Egyptians 
 had done ages before, it was certain that a water-way to 
 India would thus be opened, and the nation to which they 
 belonged might well hope to wrest from the proud Vene- 
 tians the commercial supremacy which made all Europe 
 their tributary. So thought Prince Henry of Portugal, son 
 of John the First Henry the Navigator and, thereupon, 
 he set to work to educate the sailors. He founded a naval 
 college, got together the cosmographers and the mariners 
 and the artificers skilled in instrument making, and having 
 corrected the charts, and improved the astrolabes and the 
 compasses the last more especially he provided the 
 money and equipment for great voyages. Ultimately, 
 under this stimulus, the Portuguese doubled Cape Bojador, 
 penetrated to the tropics and found there no deadly heats, 
 explored the African coast to Cape de Verde, and sailed 
 to the Azores, passed with impunity through the weedy 
 
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 
 
 terrors of the Sargasso Sea, and learned to lay their courses 
 homeward despite the trade-winds and the currents. 
 
 Such was the first great work of the magnet. Henry 
 died in 1473, with the object of his ambition the opening 
 of the water-route to India unfulfilled. Yet all Europe 
 knew of his achievements, and the Italians better than all 
 others, for their commercial existence was at stake. In 
 Genoa, the interest was extreme, for she saw the oppor- 
 tunity, through her mariners, not only of surpassing the 
 hardy Portuguese, but of avenging the crushing humilia- 
 tion which she had received at the hands of Venice. But, 
 in the long and wordy discussions which ensued among her 
 learned men, in their wanderings amid the labyrinths of 
 what Aristotle said, or Cosmos Indicopleustes asserted, or 
 Augustine and Lactantius thought, the golden hour passed 
 by, and from the little harbor of Palos, in Spain, and not 
 from the great port of Geneva la Superba, sailed the ships 
 which carried forth the visionary son of the wool-comber 
 and brought back the Admiral of the Indies. 
 
 Columbus, as is well known, went to Lisbon in 1470, 
 where he supported himself by chart-making in the inter- 
 vals of voyages to the Guinea coast. He was well aware 
 of the advances in navigation which Prince Henry's mar- 
 iners had made, and, in fact, had married the daughter of 
 one of the ablest of the Portuguese sailors. From the 
 Imago Mundi of Cardinal Pedro d'Aliaco, written in 1410 
 and published in 1490, he culled the opinions of Aristotle, 
 Strabo and Seneca, on the possibility of reaching India 
 by sailing to the westward. D'Aliaco's scientific knowl- 
 edge came chiefly from the Etymologies of St. Isidore, but 
 the particular part of his work which, as the annotations 
 in Columbus' own hand on the copy now in Seville show, 
 seemingly most influenced the discoverer, was plagiarized 
 from the Opus Majus of Roger Bacon. 1 
 
 1 Major, R. H., F. S. A.: Select Letters of Columbus. Hakluyt Soc., 
 London, 1870. Introduct., p. xlvii. Humboldt: Ex. Critique. Vol. i., 
 pp. 64, 70. 
 
196 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 The knowledge which Columbus had of the compass 
 and of the magnet, therefore, rested on both practical and 
 theoretical grounds. Of the compass, his early voyages 
 had taught him even more than the ordinary use. In- a 
 letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, dated 1495, he describes 
 how, having been sent by King Rene to Tunis to capture 
 a galley, he found, on arriving at the island of San Pedro, 
 in Sardinia, so powerful a force arrayed to meet him that 
 his crew became alarmed and insisted on returning to 
 Marseilles for reinforcements, "upon which," he con- 
 tinues, "being unable to force their inclination, I yielded 
 to their wish, and, having first changed the points of the 
 compass, spread all sail, for it was evening, and at day- 
 break we were within the Cape of Carthagina, while all 
 believed, for a certainty, they were going to Marseilles." 1 
 
 This is of a piece with his alteration of the reckoning 
 of the ship's progress during his first voyage to the New 
 World. It not only shows his familiarity with the com- 
 pass, but incidentally furnishes an instance of that very 
 tampering with the instrument against which the severe 
 provision already noted in the Laws of Wisbuy was di- 
 rected. 
 
 If Columbus was not familiar with Roger Bacon's work, 
 he at least had learned, somehow, of the theory of the 
 magnet, in which both Bacon and Peregrinus believed ; 
 namely, that the magnet was not controlled by the North 
 star, but by all points of the heavens ; for, in the history 
 written by his son, he is expressly credited with this idea. 
 
 The figure of the great Admiral is one of especial inter- 
 est in this research, because of the remarkable magnetic 
 discoveries which he made. As this subject appears to 
 have been confused by certain of his biographers, seme 
 detailed consideration of it is necessary. 
 
 A geographical meridian of the earth passes, as we 
 know, through any given point of observation and the 
 earth's geographical poles. The compass needle may 
 
 1 Major: Select Letters, cit. sup., p. xxxvi. 
 
COLUMBUS' DISCOVERY OF VARIATION. 197 
 
 stand longitudinally in the direction of this meridian. It 
 then points to the geographical north pole, and is said to 
 have no variation. But if the north-pointing end lies to 
 the east or west of the meridian, then it is said to have 
 east or west variation. This it is absolutely necessary to 
 allow for in steering a ship, or in running a line in survey- 
 ing land, or in laying out a railway. The variation is not 
 the same at all points on the earth, nor is it constant at 
 any one point. Therefore, there is a variation of the varia- 
 tion, which is secular in that it occurs over very long 
 periods, besides being annual and even diurnal. Besides 
 these changes there are irregular variations or perturba- 
 tions, due to disturbances in the earth's magnetic field, 
 which need not here be considered. 
 
 As I have already stated, the Chinese knew, certainly as 
 early as the nth century and probably before, that the 
 needle did not point to the true north and south, and they 
 constructed their land compasses to allow for the angle of 
 discrepancy. But there appears to be no record showing 
 that any European ever recognized the variation of the 
 needle as a cosmical phenomenon before Columbus did 
 so on his memorable voyage. 1 
 
 Now, briefly, what happened to Columbus was this. On 
 his first voyage to America, on the evening of September 
 
 , much has been written (See Libri: Hist, des Sci. Math, en Italic. 
 Paris, 1830, vol. ii., 71. Formaleoni: Saggio Sulla Nautica Antica del 
 Veneziani. Venice, 1783, 51-2. Humboldt: Cosmos, v. Irving: Life of 
 Columbus) concerning an old chart made in 1436 by Andrea Blanco, and 
 now in the Library of St. Mark in Venice, upon which appears a figure 
 supposed to represent the points of the compass with a correction for 
 variation. This, however, Bertelli (Sulla Kpistola di P. Peregrino. 
 Rome, 1868, mem. iii., 77.), has investigated and finds no suggestion of 
 variation present the correction simply being that necessary to apply to 
 the courses of a ship sailing on rhumbs of the compass (as N. E., N. W.) 
 to keep clear of the loxodromic curve, or endless spiral, due to the cur- 
 vature angle between the earth and the meridian, which would never 
 lead to any determined point. I shall not take space here to repeat Ber- 
 telli's demonstration of this error; while the other anticipations upon 
 which he comments are merely inferences which he easily disproves. 
 
198 THE INTELLECTUAL RISK IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 13, 1492, the needle varied to the northwest half a point, 
 and at dawn nearly half a point further. From this he 
 states that he knew that it was not adjusted to the Pole star, 
 but to some other fixed and invisible point, the variation 
 of which no one had, up to that time, observed, and hence, 
 on the third day, having sailed about one hundred leagues 
 further, he wondered because he observed the needle come 
 back to the star. On September iyth the pilots, having 
 measured the sun's amplitude, 1 found the needles were a 
 whole point in error; and then the seamen were greatly 
 terrified, for they believed that their trusted guide had 
 failed them. This is the time when Columbus is said to 
 have invented the fiction of the movement of the Pole 
 star in order to quiet their apprehensions, the personal 
 narrative in Martin's collection stating "the Admiral dis- 
 covered the cause, and ordered them to take the amplitude 
 the next morning, when they found that the needles were 
 true. The cause was that the star moved from its place, 
 while the needle remained stationary." 2 
 
 As Peregrinus had pointed out this movement of the 
 Pole star more than two hundred years before, and Prince 
 Henry's College had probably sifted all theories of the 
 compass, including the notion that the needle pointed to 
 the pole of the heavens and not to the Pole star, it is 
 probable that Columbus simply stated a fact as he under- 
 stood it, and in that respect invented nothing. Of course, 
 to the ignorant seamen, any reasonable explanation would 
 
 1 The sun's true amplitude is the number of degrees that the sun rises 
 or sets to the northward or southward of the east or west points of the 
 horizon. As the sun has no variation, by means of such an observation 
 the variation between the true north and the magnetic north as indicated 
 by the compass can be determined. 
 
 2 Hist, del S. D. Fernando Colombo * * * dei fatii del 1'Ammiraglio D. 
 C. Colombo, suo padre, etc. Venice, 1621, cap. xvii. 
 
 Martin: Coleccion de los Viajes y Descubrimientos que hiceron por 
 mar los Espanoles desde fines del Siglo XV. Madrid, 1825. 
 
 Kettel, S. : Personal Narrative of the First Voyage of Columbus to 
 America. Boston, 1827. 
 
COLUMBUS' DISCOVERY OF VARIATION. 199 
 
 have sufficed. Columbus also believed that the lodestone 
 was influenced by the different parts of the heavens, so that 
 if the needle were touched with one part of the stone it 
 would point east, with another west, and so on; and in fact 
 he says that those who rub the needles cover the stone 
 with a cloth so that the north part only is exposed, and 
 the needle being touched with this possesses the virtue of 
 turning to the north. 1 
 
 Whatever interpretation Columbus may have given to 
 the phenomenon in order to quiet the fears of his men, or 
 whatever his own ideas may have been as to the cause of 
 it, there is certainly no disputing the fact that he did then 
 fully observe and recognize the variation of the compass. 
 Moreover, he saw the needle vary at other times on other 
 voyages, and the net result of his observation is given in 
 his letter to the King and Queen on his third voyage, in 
 his own words, as follows: 
 
 tl When I sailed from Spain to the West Indies I found 
 that as soon as I had passed 100 leagues west of the 
 Azores, there was a very great change in the sky and the 
 stars, in the temperature of the air and in the water of the 
 sea: and I remarked that from North to South in travers- 
 ing these hundred leagues from the said islands, the needle 
 of the compass, which hitherto had turned toward the 
 northeast, turned a full quarter of the wind to the north- 
 west, and this took place from the time when we reached 
 that line." 2 
 
 He even drew a deduction from his observations which 
 is curious, and characteristic of both the man and the 
 time : 
 
 "I have come," he says, u to the conclusion that the 
 earth is not round, but of the form of a pear, or of a ball 
 with a protrusion being highest and nearest the sky 
 situated under the equinoctial line. ... In confirmation 
 
 ^ist. del Almirante, C. 66. Mufioz.: Hist. N. Mundo, lib., vi., \ 32. 
 Also authorities before cited. 
 2 Major: Select Letters, cit. sup. 
 
200 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 of my opinion, I revert to the arguments which I have de- 
 tailed respecting the line which passes from north to south 
 one hundred leagues west of the Azores; for, in sailing 
 thence, westward, the ships went on rising smoothly 
 towards the sky, and then the weather was felt to be 
 milder, on account of which mildness the needle shifted 
 one point of the compass ; the further we went the more 
 the needle moved to the northwest, this elevation produc- 
 ing the variation of the circle which the North star de- 
 scribed with its satellites." 
 
 The denial of credit to Columbus for the actual discov- 
 ery of variation depends chiefly upon the supposed indica- 
 tions of the 1436 chart of Andrea Blanco or Bianco (see 
 note, page 197) and in a general way upon inferences that 
 earlier navigators may have observed the same behavior 
 of the needle. 
 
 Humboldt 1 states that three places in the Atlantic line 
 of no variation for September i3th, 1492, May 21, 1496, 
 and August i6th, 1498, can be certainly determined, and 
 that the line at that time ran from northeast to southwest, 
 touching the South American coast a little east of Cape 
 Cordova. That distinguished scientist, however, summed 
 up the achievement of Columbus in the words : "The re- 
 discoverer of the New World found a line of no variation 
 3 west of the meridian of the Island of Flores, one of the 
 Azores," 2 and elsewhere explicitly says that he has no 
 right to the title of discoverer of the variation itself. But 
 then, Humboldt, who as the foregoing quotation shows, 
 was equally averse to according to Columbus the greater 
 honors which the world's opinion now freely bestows upon 
 him, appears to have based his conclusion upon the show- 
 
 . Critique de 1'Hist. de la Ge"og., vol. iii., p 44-48. Cosmos, 
 i., 169-197; v., 49-60. 
 
 2 He also says (Cosmos, v. 54) that Columbus "had the great merit of 
 determining astronomically the position of a line of no variation 2 l / 2 
 east of the Island of Corvo in the Azores on the I3th of September, 
 1492." 
 
COLUMBUS' DISCOVERY OF VARIATION. 2OI 
 
 ing of the Blanco chart, which modern research has since 
 proved to have been misinterpreted. The fact that a sim- 
 ilar dictum to that of Humboldt is advanced by. Washing- 
 ton Irving in his fascinating life of the Admiral has done 
 much to place the matter apparently beyond dispute ; but 
 an impartial study of the history of the rise and progress 
 of magnetic knowledge up to the time of Columbus, and 
 of the condition of it during his life, and a recognition of 
 the fact that much important data underlying such history 
 has been made known since both Humboldt and Irving 
 wrote, indicate the need for a revision of their verdict. 
 
 Little weight can be given to the argument that the first 
 freely suspended magnetic needle certainly showed varia- 
 tion, as did all later ones when influenced by the earth's 
 field, and that therefore the phenomenon was always open 
 to observation. Unfortunately many a physical effect has 
 thus presented itself for ages to the perception of man- 
 kind nay, forced itself under the very eyes of the keen- 
 est investigators without gaining recognition, or adding 
 in the slightest to the world's stock of knowledge, until 
 suddenly hailed as a great discovery. Moreover there 
 were cogent reasons why, even if navigators had noted an 
 aberration of the needle, they would have been likely to 
 ascribe it to other causes than the true one, and so have 
 failed to recognize the real variation at all. 
 
 Thus, in May, 1496, when the Genoese and the Flem- 
 ish compasses on the ships of Columbus were found to 
 disagree, one varying to the northwest and the other in- 
 dicating the star, Columbus himself concludes the reason 
 to be the difference in the magnets with which the needles 
 were rubbed. In such rudely constructed instruments as 
 then existed, it was equally possible to have assigned the 
 errors to difference in shape of the needles, or weakness 
 of magnetization, while it is not at all unlikely that both 
 their form and treatment resulted in the production of con- 
 sequent poles, which imported into them still further error. 
 There was much better reason, therefore, for the European 
 
20-2 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 pilots before Columbus to have regarded any deviation of 
 the needle as due to faulty construction or faulty magneti- 
 zation, than to have assumed that it varied because of some 
 external influence. 
 
 Because Columbus laid most stress upon his observation 
 of the variation of the variation and of a line of no varia- 
 tion, is no more reason for disputing his right to be known 
 as the discoverer of the variation itself, than is his notion 
 that he had visited a part of India one for denying him 
 his title as the discoverer of the New World. Mankind 
 has long since decided that the forgotten voyages of the 
 9th century Icelanders detract nothing from his renown : 
 equally immaterial is the hidden knowledge of the Chi- 
 nese. The planets moved in accordance with definite law 
 before the eyes of millions before Newton or Kepler lived; 
 but the originality of the conceptions of these men is un- 
 impaired. Moving planets and moving compass needles 
 merely produced images on retinas : it was inconsequent 
 whether of men or of sea-gulls. But to discover meant the 
 establishment of connection between retina and a think- 
 ing, intelligent brain, and the application of the result of 
 thought to the world's benefit. That is what Newton and 
 Kepler did and Columbus did likewise. He was the first 
 discoverer of the New World who made his discovery 
 known to the Old World. He was the first discoverer of 
 the variation of the compass needle who made that fact 
 known to the rest of mankind. And the true discoverer 
 is not only he who has eyes to see and ears to hear, but 
 he who has a tongue and uses it to tell to others what his 
 keener senses have told to him. 
 
 The variation of the compass needle having been dis- 
 covered, the importance of it was soon perceived by the 
 sailors, for such a vagary of the needle would lead ships 
 far astray if not known and allowed for in laying the 
 course. But the philosophers, who cared little about nau- 
 
THE MAGNETIC ROCKS. 203 
 
 tical matters, and knew less, were more interested in 
 speculating upon it and evolving new causes. Despite the 
 light shed upon the problems of navigation by Prince 
 Henry and his wise men, the myth of the magnetic rocks 
 still survived among sailors the world over. With the 
 discovery of variation, this assumed new vigor. Here was 
 an explanation of the aberration of the needle ready at 
 hand, and it was promptly and universally adopted. When 
 the chart of the New Continent was added to the Edition 
 of 1508 of Ptolemy's geography, the magnetic rocks, hav- 
 ing traversed the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, at 
 last came to final anchorage north of Greenland, which 
 was depicted as the eastern part of Asia, and the earth 
 was given a magnetic pole in the shape of an insular 
 mountain. 1 
 
 The idea of a magnetic pole of the earth governing the 
 compass, to which Peregrinus alludes but dismisses be- 
 cause of the wide distribution of mines of magnetic ore, 
 had never been forgotten. Cecco d'Ascoli, satirist and 
 astrologer, fifty years later expressly affirmed in his bitter 
 poem, 1'Acerba 2 a most heterogeneous gathering of learn- 
 ing of all sorts, and hence appropriately termed "the 
 Heap" that both poles of the earth were magnetic and 
 exercised attraction, and perhaps he would have gone 
 further and found out the magnetic character of our globe, 
 and made who knows what other discoveries, if he had 
 not fallen foul of the Inquisition, which burned both him 
 and his books. 3 Between 1324 and 1508, however, great 
 intellectual changes had taken place. Where people 
 before assigned physical phenomena to causes entirely 
 evolved from their inner consciousness, and hence with- 
 out any foundation at all, they now explained them by 
 physical facts wrongly selected; which, on the whole, was 
 in the direction of progress. 
 
 1 Humboldt: Cosmos. Lond. 1872, vol. v., 56. 
 
 2 Poeti del Primo Secolo della lingua Ital. Florence, 1816. 
 
 8 Lea: Hist, of Inquisition, vol. iii., 444. 
 
204 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Ill 1546, Jerome Fracastorio 1 questioned the existence 
 of the polar mountains, and says that Bishop Oviedo, hav- 
 ing made diligent inquiry "about that part of Sarmatia 
 now called Moscovia," could find no such elevations. 
 Olaus Magnus, 2 who lived in the North, however, not 
 only affirms the existence of the mountains, but directly 
 avers that the "compass follows them in direction." He 
 also finds an island near the Arctic circle where the 
 needle becomes demagnetized. 
 
 If the magnetic mountains of the North governed the 
 needle, the variation was still to be accounted for. That, 
 however, presented little difficulty. The mountains, it 
 was explained, were not at the north pole, but at a dis- 
 tance from it. "The needle does not point to the true 
 North," remarks Francesco Maurolycus 3 in 1567, "but by 
 nature to a certain island which Olaus Magnus calls the 
 magnetic island." Martin CortezMiad evolved this and 
 more twenty years before, for he had not only to account 
 for variation, but for secular variation- the needle, in his 
 time, not pointing to the rocks, as located in the 1508 
 edition of Ptolemy. But mountains which had already 
 traveled from Cochin China were abundantly movable, so 
 Cortez merely shifted them sufficiently to the south to 
 meet the changed conditions a course evidently approved 
 by Livio Sanuto, who did the same thing years afterward. 
 
 Meanwhile the world began to speculate as to what sort 
 of a place this magnetic pole el calamitico might be, 
 and what would happen to those who went there. Thus 
 the sailors, urged by love of adventure and curiosity, be- 
 gan those journeys to the far north of which the end is 
 not yet, and thus the quest of the north pole has its rise 
 in the desire to attain the great island of lodestone to 
 
 *De Sympathia ; Opera, Venice, 1555, 103. 
 
 2 Hist, de Gent. Sept. Rome, 1555, lib., ii., c. xxxvi. 
 
 3 Op. Mathematica. Venice, 1575. 
 
 4 Breve Compendio de la Sphera: The Arts of Navigation, trans, by R. 
 Eden. London, 1561. 
 
PORTUGUESE VOYAGES. . 205 
 
 which, it was supposed three hundred years ago, all the 
 compass needles turned themselves. 1 
 
 The discovery of the line of no variation by Columbus 
 (which was substantially a part of his discovery of the var- 
 iation itself) became at once of great political moment. 
 Immediately upon his return to Spain, in March, 1493, the 
 King and Queen despatched an embassy to Pope Alexander 
 VI., with a prayer for the securing to them of their rights in 
 the newly-discovered lands. Martin V. had already given to 
 Portugal all the territory which her mariners might dis- 
 cover between Cape Bojador and the East Indies. Alex- 
 ander now made over to Spain all lands west and south of 
 a line drawn from the Arctic to the Antartic Pole, one 
 hundred leagues west of the Azores ; or in other words, all 
 of the world yet to be discovered was partitioned between 
 these two nations with the line of no variation to separate 
 their respective possessions. 
 
 The Portuguese lost little time in cultivating their hem- 
 isphere. The great dream of Henry the Navigator re- 
 mained still unrealized, although the three years' voyage 
 of the sailors of the Egyptian Pharaoh, centuries before, 
 showed that the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope was 
 not impossible. Bartholomew Diaz had confirmed this in 
 1486, by reaching the cape with a couple of fifty-ton pin- 
 naces. The India, which Columbus had not found by 
 sailing westward might still be open to discovery through 
 an eastward voyage. The Jewish physicians said so. 
 John of Portugal, who had seen the prize of the New 
 World slip through his grasp, burned to retrieve his error. 
 Again the compass led on a great adventure, and in 1498 
 the ships of Vasco da Gama, having sailed around the 
 African continent, came to anchor on the Malabar coast. 
 
 The maritime supremacy of the Italians was now van- 
 ishing, and the rivalry lay between the nations of the 
 Iberian peninsula. It was not long before it dawned on 
 them that the earth, being globular, an imaginary line on 
 
 1 Humboldt, cit. sup. 
 
206 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 only one side of it would not divide it into hemispheres, 
 and that serious dispute might easily arise as to the owner- 
 ship of territory at the antipodes, depending upon whether 
 ships sailed thereto in an easterly or westerly direction. 
 The Portuguese had found the Molucca or Spice Islands by 
 traveling constantly eastward, and had established a fine 
 trade with them in cloves and nutmegs. Upon this trade 
 the Spaniards looked with longing eyes, so that, when 
 Ferdinand Magellan suggested that it might be entirely 
 practicable to go to the same place by sailing constantly 
 westward, his persuasions found a ready and favorable re- 
 ception. For, obviously, although the islands had been 
 reached by traveling constantly to the eastward of the line 
 of no variation, and hence claimed by the Portuguese, if 
 they could be attained by traveling constantly to the west- 
 ward of the same line, the claim of the Spaniards to. them, 
 under the provisions of Pope Alexander's bull, would be 
 just as good. Such was the inception of the magnificent 
 voyage of the good ship San Vittoria in 1520-22, from the 
 port of Seville to the port of Seville. Her intrepid com- 
 mander died before the task was completed, but through 
 his indomitable perseverance and faith, the world was cir- 
 cumnavigated. 
 
 Thus the first practical application of electricity to 
 human use for of electricity it must be remembered 
 magnetism is but one form had resulted in the greatest 
 of human achievements. And the consequences who 
 shall measure even the most immediate of them? The 
 whole commercial condition of civilization profoundly 
 changed ; new political questions engendered, to precipi- 
 tate new conflicts amid the clashing interests of the 
 nations ; new interminglings of races ; new issues of re- 
 ligion in its relation to the heathen ; old theological 
 tenets, so far as they depended on assumed flatness of the 
 earth, overthrown, and the Scriptural interpretation of 
 physical phenomena discredited ; the unsettlement and 
 moving of great bodies of people ; a new thirst for ad- 
 
THE MAGNETIC FIELD OF FORCE. 207 
 
 venture and a new spirit of enterprise ; new distribution 
 of wealth; new thought: in a word, the world, which 
 had halted for a dozen centuries, now moved onward, not 
 doubtingly and feebly as the invalid regaining health, 
 but with the might and majesty of its new and irresisti- 
 ble energy. 
 
 Granted that it took great acts to do this, and that 
 nothing less than the discovery of the new continent, 
 the opening of the water-way to India and the circum- 
 navigation of the globe would have sufficed ; beyond them 
 all, making them all possible, lay the slender bit of mag- 
 netized iron, quivering on its pivot yet always looking to 
 the far north. 
 
 Of the three methods of finding the magnetic poles which 
 Peregrin us describes, two, it will be remembered, are based 
 upon the position assumed by the needle or short bit of iron 
 when placed upon the surface of the spherical magnet. In 
 one instance, we are told to draw several lines upon the 
 globe corresponding in longitudinal direction to the needle, 
 the latter being placed at different points and permitted 
 freely to direct itself. These lines are found to be merid- 
 ians, and the poles of the stone are at their intersection. 
 In another method, the needle is moved about on the 
 sphere, until a point is observed where it becomes in- 
 clined and stands perpendicular. 
 
 Plainly, both of these methods reveal, as I have already 
 suggested, not a force drawing the iron to the stone, nor 
 yet anything happening in either stone or iron, but a pe- 
 culiar condition in the space immediately around the stone, 
 by reason of which the needle is moved both in a hori- 
 zontal and in a vertical plane, into a determinate position. 
 
 The circumstances here are in all respects remarkable. 
 The compass needle was then supposed to point to the 
 Pole star under the influence of virtue from that star ; or, 
 as Peregrinus believed, under the effect of virtue from all 
 
208 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 parts of the heavens. But the bit of iron which Pere- 
 griuus placed on his globe was not a compass needle, nor 
 did it point to the Pole star ; nor does he attach to it any 
 theory of control by anything celestial or terrestrial, other 
 than the lodestone itself. It turned to the pole of the 
 round stone, and not only did that, but adjusted itself 
 with such accuracy that its very action was the best means 
 of rinding the pole. 
 
 How the discoverer reasoned over this, we can only 
 conjecture. The bit of iron being already in contact 
 with the stone, he must certainly have remarked that 
 here was a force which did not act to draw the metal to 
 the magnet, but simply to turn it into a new position in a 
 horizontal plane, and that, one always pointing to the 
 pole. 
 
 This, however, was not all. In Peregrinus' third 
 method the needle is turned, tilted, in a vertical plane. 
 If nothing but attraction were involved, it ought simply 
 to be drawn to the stone in any position, sidewise or end- 
 wise. But here it is turned endwise and then inclined 
 until perpendicular. Here then was another force acting 
 to make one end of the needle move downward and so to 
 point to the pole beneath. 
 
 Of course the needle or bit of iron which Peregrinus 
 used was itself a magnet ; or became one immediately by 
 induction from the lodestone globe. 
 
 Now what had he shown ? First, the existence of the 
 field of force around the stone, in which he had seen the 
 needle deflect both laterally and vertically in order to point 
 directly at the pole second, he had marked out lines of 
 force and determined their direction and that they ended 
 in the poles for these were the meridians which he traced 
 on his globe : and he had also seen that they existed at 
 considerable distances from the pole for, in order to dis- 
 cover the place where his needle would stand perpendicu- 
 lar he must have moved it to other places where it was 
 simply more or less inclined. 
 
THE DIP OF THE COMPASS NEEDLE. 2OQ 
 
 Thus Peregrinus revealed the presence of the magnetic 
 field a discovery which lies at the very foundation of all 
 electrical development. We may look upon him as be- 
 ginning a cycle which ended five hundred and fifty years 
 later, when Oersted saw his needle turn and place itself 
 anew in the field of force surrounding, not a lodestone, 
 but a wire through which an electrical current was passing. 
 
 In the middle of the sixteenth century this seed which 
 Peregrinus planted reached the end of its long period of 
 germination. Or, perhaps, there had come into the world 
 people capable of reading more from the pages of his man- 
 uscript, than was there in words. At all events, by direct 
 inspiration from his writing came the discovery of the dip 
 or inclination of the compass needle, and the still more 
 definite recognition of a magnetic field of force. How this 
 happened I have now to tell. 
 
 In March, 1544, Dr. George Hartmann, a native of Eck- 
 holtsheim, and a mathematician and astromoner of emi- 
 nence, wrote to Duke Albert of Prussia an account of 
 magnetic discoveries made during the preceding year, 
 which he had already explained to King Ferdinand of 
 Bohemia. He says : 
 
 "In the second place I find also this in the magnet: 
 that not only does it decline from the north, and turn to 
 the east for nine degrees more or less as I have said, but it 
 also shows a downward inclination which may be demon- 
 strated as follows: Take a compass needle about the length 
 of a finger and place it on a point in a position exactly 
 horizontal (or on the water-level) so that neither end in- 
 clines to the earth and both sides are in exact equilibrium. 
 Now, if I rub either end of the needle once with a magnet, 
 the needle does not stand any longer balanced, but inclines 
 downwardly about nine degrees more or less. I have not 
 been able to demonstrate to his Majesty the cause of this 
 phenomenon." This was the first announcement, after 
 '4 
 
210 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Peregrinus, of the dip or inclination 1 of the magnetic 
 needle. 
 
 In that same letter, Hartmann describes the precise 
 mode of identifying the north and south poles of a mag- 
 net, by placing it in a wooden bowl, floating on water, 
 which Peregrinus gives; and revealing the source of his 
 information beyond peradventure, he says 
 
 "I have received an old parchment book of the time of 
 the wars of the Contadini, in which I have found men- 
 tioned the force of a magnet, and the mode of constructing 
 by means of a magnet, an instrument which moves auto- 
 matically in equal form, time and manner as does the 
 heavens : so that, as the sky, every 24 hours, makes its 
 revolution around the terrestrial circle, so also this instru- 
 ment in the same period completes its revolution. I have 
 not been able to believe it." 
 
 It is easy to identify, from the foregoing, the first of 
 Peregrinus' perpetual motions, and to recognize in the 
 " parchment book" a manuscript of Peregrinus' letter; 
 for no printed edition of it had at that time appeared. 
 The error which Hartmann makes as to the extent of the 
 dip, is easily accounted for by the fact that his needle was 
 arranged on a vertical, instead of a horizontal pivot ; and 
 hence was impeded in inclining. 2 
 
 term "Variation" expresses the action of the earth's magnetic 
 force in a horizontal plane, but that force has another action upon a 
 freely suspended needle. Only along the line of the magnetic equator 
 (which varies but little from the earth's true equator), does the needle lie 
 in a horizontal plane; proceeding northward, the north pole of the needle 
 is drawn downward at an increasing angle called the "dip" or "inclina- 
 tion," until it reaches a value of 90 at the magnetic pole; but proceeding 
 southward the north end of the needle is tilted upward. In some modern 
 compasses sliding weights on the frame which carries the needle are used 
 to counteract this inclining tendency. 
 
 2 See Bertelli : Memoria Sopra P. Peregrinus, p. in, quoting from 
 Hartmann's letter. Dove : Repertorium der Physik, Berlin, 1838, Band 
 ii. Also, Volpicelli : Intorno alle prime scoperte della propriety che 
 appartengono al magnete, Atti dell. Accad. Pontif. de' Nuovi Lincei, 
 Vol. XXX., 8 March, 1866. 
 
ROBERT NORMAN. 211 
 
 Four years after Hartmann's letter was written, one 
 Fortunius Affaitatus, a native of Cremona, addressed a 
 treatise to Pope Paul III in which it has been supposed 
 there is some allusion to the dip. The theory of AfTaitatus 
 is interesting in that it opposes the older notion of sym- 
 pathy between pole and needle, and substitutes a sort of 
 inertia inherent to matter and to the magnet in particular, 
 whereby it follows the movement wherever possible of the 
 heavenly sphere. And, as this has the greatest velocity 
 at the equator, and the least at the poles, so the magnet, 
 not being able to find any point of rest, lowers itself at the 
 equator toward the pole; a merely fanciful speculation 
 which obviously has nothing to do with the inclination of 
 the needle, which is under consideration. 1 
 
 The man who gave to the world the first correct knowl- 
 edge and who is most commonly credited with the dis- 
 covery of the dip is Robert Norman, an instrument maker 
 of Bristol, England, who, in 1576, announced his achieve- 
 ment in a little treatise called the u Newe Attractive." 2 
 The conditions are those which we shall find repeated 
 many times in this history a possibly independent in- 
 ventor, realizing the full importance of his accomplish- 
 ment, anticipated, in point of time, by others who, if they 
 perceived the extent of their discovery, left no record to 
 that effect. Peregrinus undoubtedly discovered the incli- 
 nation of the needle to a globular magnet, but not to the 
 earth. Hartmann discovered the inclination of the needle 
 to the earth, but says himself that he cannot understand 
 it, and besides never sees the full extent of the angle of 
 dip. It is not unreasonable to believe that Norman got 
 nothing from Hartmann, for a private letter to a Prussian 
 Duke was not at all likely to come under his notice. But 
 whether, with Hartmann, he drank from the same spring 
 
 1 Affaitatus: Theolog. Phys. et Astron. Considerationes, Venice, 1659. 
 See, also, D'Avezac : Aperus Hist. Sur la Boussole. Bull, de la Soc. 
 Ge"og., 1860. Bertelli : Memoria sopra Peregrine, 115. 
 
 2 London, 1581. Reprinted, 1720. 
 
212 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 is open to question. Both the printed edition of Pere- 
 grinus' letter, and Taisnier's pirated copy thereof, were 
 extant and available to him; and in both are pictures, 
 which the earlier manuscripts of the Letter did not have. 
 
 Norman's little pamphlet is of especial interest in that 
 it is one of the earliest English books on the magnet, and 
 contains the first poem in the language on the same sub- 
 ject. If Norman was simply an artificer, his skill as a 
 writer is noteworthy; for his preface is a model of style, 
 couched in the quaint rhetoric of his time. Moreover, it 
 is remarkable as showing the bond which still existed be- 
 tween the purely speculative philosophy and experimental 
 science, and the efforts of the latter to free itself there- 
 from. 
 
 "I meane not to use barely tedious Conjectures or im- 
 aginations: but, briefly as I may, to passe it over, ground- 
 ing my Arguments onely uppon experience, reason and 
 demonstration which are the grounds of Artes," is the 
 author's declaration of independence; "albeit, it maybe 
 said," he continues, "by the learned in the Mathemat- 
 icalles, as hath beene already written by some, that this is 
 no question or matter for a Mechanician or Mariner to 
 meddle with, no more than is the finding of the Longitude, 
 for that it must bee handled exquisitely by Geometricall 
 demonstration and Arithmeticall Calculation; in which 
 Artes, they would have all Mechanitians and Sea-men to 
 be ignorant, or at least insufHcientlie furnished to performe 
 such a matter, alledging against them the latin Proverb 
 of Apelles, ^Ne sutor itltra crepidamS But," he con- 
 cludes, taking heart of grace, " there are, in this land, 
 divers Mechanicians, that in their severall faculties and 
 professions have the use of those Artes at their fingers 
 ends, and can apply them to their severall purposes as 
 effectually and more readily, than those who would most 
 condemne them;" and hence he " woulde with the learned 
 to use modesty in publishing their conceits and not dis- 
 dainfully to condemne men that will search out the 
 
NORMAN'S POEM. 
 
 secrets of their Artes and professions, and publish the same 
 to the behoofe and use of others; no more than they woulde 
 that others should judge of them for promising much and 
 performing little or nothing at all." 
 
 Following his preface, Norman gives the following lyric 
 on the magnet, which is evidently of his own composition: 
 
 THE 
 MAGNES OR LOADSTONE'S CHALLENGE. 
 
 Give place ye glittering sparks, 
 
 ye glimmering Diamonds bright, 
 Ye Rubies red, ye Saphires brave, 
 
 wherein ye most delight. 
 In breefe yee stones enricht, 
 
 and burnisht all with gold, 
 Set forth in Lapidaries shops, 
 
 for Jewels to be sold. 
 Give place, give place I say, 
 
 your beautie, gleame, and glee, 
 Is all the vertue for the which 
 
 accepted so you bee. 
 Magnes, the Loadstone I, 
 
 your painted sheaths defie, 
 Without my helpe, in Indian Seas 
 
 the best of you might lye. 
 I guide the Pilot's course, 
 
 his helping hand I am, 
 The Mariner delights in me, 
 
 so doth the Marchant man. 
 My vertue lies unknowne, 
 
 my secrets hidden are, 
 By me, the Court and Common-weale, 
 
 are pleasured very farre. 
 No ship could sayle on seas, 
 
 her course to runne aright, 
 Nor compasse shew the ready way, 
 
 were Magnes not of might. 
 Blush then, and blemish all, 
 
 bequeath to mee thats due, 
 Your seates in golde, your price in plate, 
 
 which Jewellers doo renue. 
 Its I, its I alone, 
 
 whom you usurpe upon, 
 Magnes my name, the Loadstone cal'd, 
 
 The prince of stones alone. 
 
214 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY* 
 
 If this you can denie, 
 
 then seeme to make reply, 
 And let the painefull sea-man judge, 
 
 the which of us doth lye. 
 
 THE MARINER'S JUDGMENT. 
 The Loadstone is the stone, 
 
 the ouely stone alone, 
 Deserving praise above the rest, 
 
 whose vertues are unknowne. 
 
 THE MARCHANT'S VERDICT. 
 
 The Diamonds bright, the Saphires brave, 
 
 are stones that beare the name, 
 But flatter not, and tell the troath, 
 
 Magnes deserves the same. 
 
 Then he reviews, briefly, the existing knowledge of what 
 he calls the " attractive point,'' or the point to which the 
 compass needle is directed. This point, he says, attracts 
 the compass, while the compass in turn respects that 
 point. He refutes the doctrine of the magnetic rocks at 
 the North Pole; "for," he says, "if the compasse or 
 needle were drawn towards the North part by any Attrac- 
 tion of the Magnes stones in those parts imagined, why 
 then should not the Compasse or Needle shew the same 
 effect in mooving towards the Hand of Elba, in the Levant 
 seas, where are great quantitie of these Stones? and yet 
 Shippes sayling within a myle of this Hand, yea, and into 
 Porto Feraro, a Towne of the same He, within a quarter 
 of a myle of a huge Rocke of these stones, the Compasse 
 or needle is not found any thing to be drawne or changed, 
 nor the Attraction of this huge rocke to extend so farre as 
 one quarter of a myle." 
 
 He disputes the opinions of Pedro de Media and of Mar- 
 tin Cortes, who denied the existence of any variation of the 
 compass at all, and adhered to the old notion, which, as I 
 have already pointed out, was that generally accepted prior 
 to the time of Columbus, namely, that aberration of the 
 needle was due to errors in the instrument ; or, as Nor- 
 
THE FIRST MEASUREMENT OF DIP. 215 
 
 man puts it, "that if the compasse or needle shew not the 
 pole, the fault is in placing the wiers on the flie, and not 
 in any propertie it hath to vary." 
 
 All of these earlier theorists he thinks went u farre wide 
 from the Attractive point," and the reason they did so is 
 their ignorance of a "certaine Declining propertie under 
 the Horizon, lately found in the needle." This is his dis- 
 covery, which he describes in the following terms : "Hav- 
 ing made many and divers compasses, and using alwaies 
 to finish and end them before I touched the needle, I found 
 continually that after I had touched the yrons with the 
 Stone, that presently the north point thereof would bend 
 or Decline downwards under the Horizon in some quan- 
 titie ; insomuch that to the Flie of the Compasse which 
 before was made equall, I was still constrained to put some 
 small peece of waxe in the South part thereof, to counter- 
 poise this declining, and to make it equall againe." He 
 noticed this repeatedly without deeming the occurrence 
 of any moment, until some one employed him to make an 
 instrument in which the needle was to be five inches long. 
 He constructed the apparatus with his usual care, balanced 
 the needle with the utmost nicety, and then magnetized 
 it ; whereupon the north end dipped. Not wishing to add 
 wax, he sought to restore the balance by cutting off some 
 of the inclining end ; but he removed too much, and 
 spoiled his work. Although, as he says, "thereby beeing 
 stroken in some choller," he at once determined to find 
 out the cause of this inclining, and thereupon he sup- 
 ported a needle on a horizontal pivot, so that it could 
 move freely around a vertical circle, which he graduated 
 in quadrants after the fashion of the Astrolabe. Then, for 
 the first time, it became possible to measure the whole 
 angle of inclination or dip of the needle below the horizon, 
 and Norman records it as about 71 50'. l 
 
 How was this to be accounted for? Not by any acces- 
 
 was in 1576. The angle afterwards increased to 74 42' in 1720, 
 since which time it has been decreasing. 
 
2l6 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 sion of weight at one end, says Norman, because, if the 
 needle be placed in a balance, it will be found to be no 
 heavier after being touched by the lodestone than it was 
 before; and besides, if the needle did receive "pondrous 
 or weighty matter from the magnet," why, he asks, 
 should not the south end, as well as the north end, dip 
 when rubbed? which it certainly does not. But there 
 are more deeply-rooted hypotheses than these to be en- 
 countered. Hitherto we have regularly met the supposition 
 of an attractive force exerted on the needle, most com- 
 monly on the north-seeking end of it, by the Pole star. 
 
 Even when the influence of all parts of the heavens is 
 maintained, there is invariably a conjecture that the 
 needle is drawn to something, and so brought into posi- 
 tion. Obviously, however, the discovery of the inclination 
 placed these theories at once in question. For what 
 pulled the North point downward, or lifted the South end 
 upward? 
 
 Norman at once takes the ground that there are no at- 
 tractive points, but simply a u certayne point that the 
 Needle always respecteth or sheweth, being voide and with- 
 out any Attractive propertie," and this he calls the " Re- 
 spective point." To prove this, he runs a needle through a 
 cork, and cuts the latter gradually smaller, until it will 
 just support the needle level upon the surface of the water. 
 Then he magnetizes the needle, and notes that its north 
 end inclines downwardly, as before; the needle not u de- 
 scending to the bottome, as by reason it should, if there 
 were any Attraction downewards, the lower part of the 
 water being neerer that point then the superficies thereof." 
 Similiarly, he says, if the needle were arranged so as to 
 sink very slowly to the bottom of the vessel, it would be 
 lifted bodily if there were any attractive point in the 
 heavens. 
 
 Of course, when the needle is tilted, a line, in prolonga- 
 tion of its axis, enters the earth, and on this line some- 
 where, Norman insists, his imaginary Respective point 
 
THE RESPECTIVE POINT. 
 
 217 
 
 exists. He cannot, however, fix its position until " the 
 expert travailer have made certaine observation of the 
 Declyning of the Needle in other places, " but considers 
 that it will "be great or little, according as the distance 
 of the point Respective is from the place where the triall 
 is made." Of one thing, however, he is sure, and that is 
 that "this stone hath wholy and fully in himselfe Power, 
 Action, Propertie and Vertue of his own Appetite to shewe 
 
 NORMAN'S DIPPING 
 
 and to cause the Needle to shewe the point Respective, 
 without any Attractive qualitie or external cause of Rockes 
 of the Magnes stone, or by Attraction in the Heavens or 
 elsewhere whatsoever." If one presses him further, how- 
 ever, he announces that the end of his explanations is 
 reached. "I am no more able," he says finally, "to 
 satisfie you heerein, than if you should aske me howe and 
 by what means the celestiall Spheres are moved." 
 
 1 From The Newe Attractive. 
 
2l8 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 The times had greatly changed from those when the 
 first duty of a philosopher was, at all hazards, to evolve a 
 theory whereto the facts might fit themselves as best they 
 could. Norman's Respective point is not theoretical. It 
 has a physical location along a certain line. The needle 
 plainly points to it, but does not move to it bodily. Ergo, 
 the virtue is in the needle not in the point and has been 
 derived from the stone where "God in his Omnipotent 
 providence hath appointed it so to bee." 
 
 Yet, even here, he is not quite content with the finality 
 of his conclusion. Even if he cannot say why the virtue 
 is in the stone, he can picture to himself something of its 
 attributes for, if it "could by any means be made visible 
 to the Bye of man it would be found in a Sphericall form 
 extendinge round about the Stone in great Compasse and 
 the dead bodie of the Stone in the middle thereof: whose 
 center is the center of his aforesaid Virtue." 
 
 Thus the conception of the magnetic field of force 
 begins to take shape. Peregrinus has found its tendency 
 to turn the needle in line with the poles and to draw the 
 needle point down ; the horizontal and vertical com- 
 ponents. Norman finds and measures the inclination. 
 The variation of the compass is already known. He com- 
 bines the two, "for seeing it is certain that though in 
 severall Horizons the compasse hath severall Variations : 
 yet in any one Horizon, the needle Respecteth alwayes 
 one onlie point without alteration as by travaile is truely 
 prooved." And then he describes the virtue which comes 
 from the lodestone and which directs the needle as a 
 "Circular and invisible Vertue piercing all thinges and 
 stayed by nothing be it Wall, Boorde, Glasse or anything 
 whatsoever." 
 
 No one can read Norman's narrative of his experiments 
 and theories without being impressed with his frank an- 
 ticipation of objections to them. He adheres to the belief 
 that the stone owes its virtue to nothing but its own in- 
 herent quality, and yet he is mystified over the capacity 
 
DELUSIONS CONCERNING THE LODESTONE. 2 19 
 
 of the magnet to induce its property in another, and an- 
 other, and another iron nail, and so on indefinitely, until 
 he bethinks him of musk, which, "having a sweet savour 
 or smell itself imparteth the same to another thing, as to 
 a pair of Gloves : and those Gloves give out savour and 
 perfume a whole Chest of Cloaths," and so concludes that 
 4 ' the Vertue of the stone is distributive. ' ' Note the physi- 
 cal character of all this, when contrasted with the older 
 notions of the affection of the magnet and iron, or the 
 hunger of one for the other, or the doctrine of sympathy 
 and similitudes. 
 
 It is necessary, in order to appreciate how singular the 
 position which Norman assumes, and how completely he 
 adopted the inductive method, to recall some of the general 
 ideas concerning the magnet which were then in vogue. 
 I mean the beliefs of the great mass of the people the 
 conceptions which infiltrated through all sorts of litera- 
 ture, and which made up the sum total of the world's 
 knowledge on the subject. 
 
 There was not a single myth which had come down from 
 antiquity which was not in full vigor. That garlic would 
 destroy magnetism, that the lodestone had no attractive 
 power in the presence of the diamond, that it was a useful 
 medicament when administered internally even the 
 ancient superstitions of Samothrace all were preserved 
 and implicitly accepted. They had persisted unimpaired 
 by the dialectics of the schoolmen or the physical discover- 
 ies of the philosophers; and they had become folk-lore 
 and chimney-corner gossip. A few examples will suffice: 
 
 A magnet (it was believed) carried on the person will 
 cure cramp and gout, draw poison from wounds, prevent 
 baldness, cure headache, obtund pain and facilitate parturi- 
 tion. It will draw gold from wells, speak when sprinkled 
 on water with a voice like that of an infant, and when mixed 
 with nettle juice and serpent fat, make a man u mad and 
 
220 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 drive him from his kindred, habitation and country." It is 
 both a test of connubial fidelity and a potent means of 
 effecting marital reconciliations. It takes away fears and 
 jealousies and renders a person "gracious, persuasive and 
 elegant in his conversation." It is the especial friend of 
 burglars; because, "if burned in the corners of a house, it 
 causes the inmates to believe that the building is falling; 
 and so terrified are they with fancies, that they fly out, 
 leaving everything behind them, and, by this artifice, 
 thieves seize on goods." Such were the typical absurdi- 
 ties which filled people's minds at the beginning of the six- 
 teenth century. At about the middle of the same period, 
 they received a vast accession of others, which, if not 
 more absurd, were far more pestilent for then began many 
 of the delusions and deceptions which still prevail under 
 the generic name of "animal magnetism." 
 
 To the arch impostor Bombast of Hohenheim, or, as he 
 is commonly called, Paracelsus, the conception of these 
 last is chiefly due; and as we shall encounter more or less 
 of his influence in tracing further developments, some brief 
 consideration may be given to his magnetic theories. He 
 had learned the rudiments of medicine from his father; 
 but he became by choice a professed astrologer, alchemist 
 and magician, traveled widely "to observe the secrets of 
 nature and the famous mountain of lodestone," 1 and 
 eventually imbibed, from the East, a rude sort of theoso- 
 phy. This, mingled with the mysticism of Europe, pro- 
 duced a new and complicated form of quackery which, 
 being less comprehensible than any which had preceded 
 it, found especial favor with the fanatics, demonologists 
 and philosopher' s-stone hunters. Thus encouraged, he 
 denounced Galen, Hippocrates and Averrhoes and all their 
 adherents as imbeciles, claimed the discovery of the elixir 
 of life, asserted communication with spirits, and entered 
 upon a career of the grossest dissipation. Finally, he lost 
 the support of the more intelligent portion of his followers, 
 
 1 Biographic Univ., Paris, 1822. 
 
PARACELSUS. 221 
 
 and sank into a mere strolling charlatan, wandering from 
 town to town telling fortunes, casting nativities, selling 
 alleged receipts for producing the philosopher's stone, and 
 preying generally upon the most ignorant classes. In 1541 
 he ended his career in abject poverty, an inmate of the 
 public hospital at Salzburg. 
 
 The modern tendency toward psychical research, the 
 ever-present inclination of the credulous to accept old de- 
 lusions if revamped in novel guises, and probably Mr. 
 Robert Browning's poem 1 have given to Paracelsus and 
 his cult a new and wholly factitious importance. His 
 absurdities have been dignified by the name of a u phil- 
 osophy," and the man himself converted into a martyr. 
 He knew human nature, and played upon its foibles with 
 consummate skill. In that he proclaimed the doctrine of 
 free thought in medicine and developed the therapeutic 
 value of opium and mercury, the world is indebted to him. 
 But, as a teacher of physical science, the best that can be 
 said of him is that he preached reliance upon phenomena 
 rather than faith, and practised exactly the opposite. 
 
 His notions concerning the magnet are of moment, be- 
 cause of their retarding effect upon scientific progress. 
 Yet they were merely amplifications of myths as old as the 
 race itself, re-told in manner suited to that era, as they are 
 still rehearsed in terms suited to the present time. Lies, 
 in which the people wish to believe, rival the truth in im- 
 mortality. The finger rings from Samothrace, the Martial 
 Amulets of Paracelsus, and the magnetic cure-alls of to- 
 day are all accounted for in the persistence of human 
 gullibility and ignorance through all civilizations and all 
 ages. Exposures seem powerless to destroy them. Human 
 imagination and chance recoveries afford ample sustenance. 
 
 According to Paracelsus, every human being is a mag- 
 
 1 To this it is but fair to say that Mr. Browning himself provides an 
 antidote in his appended notes. There is no one work, I apprehend, 
 which shows more fully the influence of Paracelsus on the thought of his 
 time, than Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. 
 
222 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 net "possessing a magnetic power by which he may 
 attract certain effluvia of a good or evil quality in the same 
 manner as a magnet will attract iron." This is merely an 
 attribution, in fact, to man of the attractive quality which 
 the ancient writers were so fond of expressing as pertain- 
 ing to the Deity, and as metaphorically illustrated by the 
 drawing power of the magnet or amber. The old poets 
 and philosophers as I have shown constantly personified 
 the magnet and spoke of its love, or its appetite, for the 
 iron. Paracelsus simply reverses the figure, and, instead of 
 attributing to the magnet the capacities of the man, gives 
 to the man the capacities of the magnet. The metaphors 
 of the poets became more literal after that. The differ- 
 ence is apparent between Gautier d'Epinois' asseveration 
 that all the world turns to his lady because of her beauty, 
 even as the needle to the lodestone, and the complaint 
 
 You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant, 
 But yet you draw not iron, for my heart 
 Is true as steel 
 
 of Helena following Demetrius. It is a reflection of the 
 Paracelsan notion and not a gross allusion to the medi- 
 aeval ''flesh-magnet' ' which is thus found in the only 
 extended reference to the lodestone which Shakespeare 
 makes. 
 
 "A magnet," continues the astrologer elaborating his 
 theories, u may be prepared from iron that will attract iron ; 
 and a magnet may be prepared out of some vital substance 
 that will attract vitality." Such a substance, he holds, is 
 one which has remained for a time in the human body; 
 and it may serve to allay inflammation because "it will 
 attract the superabundance of magnetism carried to that 
 place by the rush of the blood." Diseases can be trans- 
 planted from the human frame into the earth by similar 
 means. As to the lodestone itself, Paracelsus asserts that 
 it "attracts all martial humors that are in the human 
 system;" and that "martial diseases are caused by auras 
 
PARACELSUS. 223 
 
 coming and expanding from a centre outwards and at the 
 same time holding on to their centres." The front (north 
 pole) of the magnet attracts, and the back (south pole) re- 
 pels; and, in cases of nervous "epilepsy where there is a 
 great determination of nervous fluid towards the brain, the 
 repulsing (negative) pole of a magnet is applied to the 
 spine and to the head, and the attracting (positive) pole of 
 other magnets upon the abdominal region." 1 
 
 All of this reads very like an extract from a " paper" 
 by some modern "hypnotist" or magnetizer. We shall 
 encounter more of it as we approach the period of Van 
 Helmont, and Charleton, and Digby, so that it is not 
 necessary, for present purposes, to dwell longer on the sub- 
 ject. The traces of Paracelsus' fancies, either original or 
 revamped, constantly appear in the scientific works of the 
 sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, like bar- 
 nacles fouling and delaying the ship. Even Norman 
 turns aside to contradict his statement, that a magnet, 
 when "made red-hot, and quenched in the oil of Crocus 
 Martis," will become so increased in strength as to be 
 competent to pull a nail out of the wall. "But I suppose 
 he meant not that the nail should be fast," adds Norman 
 drily, "for then it were a miraculous matter;" which be- 
 ing applied to a miracle-monger of singular flamboyancy, 
 savors of the sarcastic. 
 
 1 The foregoing extracts are from the Paramirum of Paracelsus. See 
 his Life by Mr. Franz Hartmann ^London, 1887, PP- 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 AMONG the men of the past, whose true greatness the 
 world is only now tardily appreciating, stands Pietro 
 Sarpi, 1 better known by his monastic name of Fra Paolo, 
 for he was a friar of the Servite order. He was born in 
 1552, and died in 1623. The erection of his statue the 
 highest honor which the Republic of Venice could bestow 
 upon a citizen was decreed three weeks after his death, 
 and carried into effect two hundred and seventy years later. 
 
 It is not my province to recount the strange history of 
 Fra Paolo's political career ; wherein, by sheer force of 
 ability, he successfully opposed the Pope in the plenitude 
 of his power, and became the chief consulter, guide and 
 de facto ruler of the proudest state in Europe. The great- 
 est of the Venetians was equally, in his day, the greatest 
 of Italian scientists. A history of any branch of physical 
 science, known in his time, must of necessity deal with 
 some part of his work. 
 
 "What he did," says Macaulay, "he did better than 
 anybody;" and, perhaps, it will suffice to recall Galileo's 
 reverent address to him, as "my father and my master," 
 to show that the encomium of the historian applies not 
 alone to his achievements as a statesman. His private 
 secretary and intimate friend, Fra Fulgenzio Micanzio, 
 in a list of subjects in which he declares Fra Paolo 
 to have been profoundly versed, mentions, besides the 
 Hebrew and Greek languages, and mathematics, "history, 
 astronomy, the nutrition of life in animals, geometry, in- 
 cluding conic sections, magnetism, botany, mineralogy, 
 
 1 Robertson : Fra Paolo Sarpi, London, 1894. Griseleni : Vita de F. P. 
 Sarpi, 1760. Giovini : Vita, etc., Brussels, 1836. Micanzio : Vita, etc., 
 Verona, 1750. Fabronio : Vitae Italorum, Pisa, 1798, xvii. 
 
 (224) 
 
FRA PAOLO. 225 
 
 hydraulics, acoustics, animal statics, atmospheric pressure, 
 the rising and falling of objects in air and water, the re- 
 flection of light from curved surfaces, spheres, mechanics, 
 civil and military architecture, medicine, herbs" and 
 u anatomy." And, in almost every one of these great 
 fields, Sarpi made discoveries of the highest importance. 
 He first observed the dilatation and contraction of the uvea 
 of the eye ; first found the valves in the human veins, and 
 first discovered the circulation of the blood (Harvey ex- 
 perimentally demonstrated this afterwards), and invented 
 artificial respiration. He made the first maps of the moon, 
 anticipated Kepler in his observations on the reflection 
 of light from curved surfaces, first recognized the effects 
 of refraction, and declared that the sun is fed, and that 
 stars are suns. He announced that heat is motion, and 
 exemplified its generation by heating iron with a hammer; 
 that light is motion, and that it comes to us in waves or 
 pulsations through a medium less material than the atmos- 
 phere ; that sound is motion, but not (as he thought) 
 motion of the atmosphere, for it travels against the wind 
 and through water, moving like light in waves or pulsa- 
 tions ; that color is caused by the atmosphere and by the 
 reflection of different rays of light ; and then he identifies 
 sound, color, heat and light together, thus correlating 
 these physical phenomena. The desire is strong to dwell 
 upon Sarpi's researches in these fields, but it must be 
 foregone to turn to his discoveries in magnetism. Un- 
 fortunately, here the actual records are meagre. He 
 wrote a treatise on the magnet, which, after his death, 
 remained, with his other manuscripts, in the Servite Mon- 
 astery, where he spent his life. As late as 1740 his 
 literary remains were minutely examined and arranged in 
 order by the learned Fra Giuseppe Bergantini. Twenty- 
 six years afterwards they, with the buildings in which 
 they were stored, were completely destroyed by fire. 
 
 While Sarpi's original treatise on the magnet was thus 
 lost, a brief record of its contents is contained in his biog- 
 15 
 
226 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 raphy, written by Griseliui, and published about 1760. It 
 appears to have contained, first, a mass of scattered data 
 (probably lecture notes), followed by 140 propositions, 
 based on magnetic phenomena. They relate to the dis- 
 covery of the two points or poles of greatest attraction on 
 the magnet by means of the inclined magnetized needle 
 and to the "new generation of the same;" to magnetic 
 attraction and repulsion, and the communication of mag- 
 netism, both from the lodestone and from magnetized 
 iron ; to the increase of magnetism in magnetic bodies ; to 
 the action of one magnet upon another ; to the various 
 effects produced "in the sphere of the horologe through 
 different positions of magnetized bodies with respect to 
 it;" 1 to the irreparable loss of magnetism which happens 
 in the lodestone and in magnetized bodies when submitted 
 to fire ; and, finally, to the magnetization of iron, by 
 means other than by rubbing it with a lodestone. 
 
 Another volume of Sarpi's writings, the original of 
 which was also destroyed in the same fire, contained 674 
 propositions or "Pensieri" on all kinds of subjects, per- 
 taining to every branch of natural science. Fortunately, a 
 copy 2 was made of this before its destruction, which is now 
 in the Library of St. Mark in Venice. Accompanying the 
 manuscript are notes, made during the last century, in 
 which Sarpi's discoveries are compared with those then 
 claimed by Peter Van Musschenbroeck of Leyden. This 
 gives a little clearer idea of Sarpi's investigations, in that 
 it states that he determined the reciprocal relation of one 
 magnet upon another, but did not measure or determine 
 the magnetic force: also the action of the magnet on iron: 
 also the manifestation of magnetic activity around the 
 poles as an atmosphere or in other words the field of 
 force: also the maximum and minimum of attractive force 
 of the magnet on the iron according to the magnitude of 
 
 1 This may possibly relate to the supposed rotary sphere of Peregrinus. 
 
 2 Class II., No. cxxix., cited by Bertelli, Mem. Sopra Peregrinus, p. 88. 
 
CESARE'S DISCOVERY. 227 
 
 the mass of the latter: also the inversion of polarity which 
 may take place during the magnetization of the needle, 
 although he seems to have known nothing of consequent 
 poles: also magnetic variation (but not the variation of the 
 variation) and magnetic inclination: also the magnetic 
 properties acquired by iron "freely exposed to the air." 
 
 Robert Norman's book, to which I have referred in the 
 preceding chapter, was published a few years before Sarpi 
 is believed to have made his principal magnetical investi- 
 gations; and it is altogether unlikely that it escaped the 
 friar's attention. The Letter of Peregrinus had been in 
 print for more than two decades. Moreover, a manuscript 
 of it existed, and was at Sarpi's disposal in the Castellan 
 Library of Venice. We are therefore justified in eliminat- 
 ing from the two categories, before given, all matters 
 anticipated by Norman and Peregrinus, so far as these can 
 be recognized. This done, the net result is to leave the 
 destruction of magnetism by fire, the magnetization of 
 iron by means other than induction from a lodestone 
 afterwards alluded to as the acquirement of magnetic prop- 
 erties by iron freely exposed to air and the existence of 
 the field of force around the magnetic poles, now directly 
 made known for the first time. 
 
 That a lodestone could be deprived of its attractive 
 quality by heating it to a high temperature was a new 
 discovery, which may well have excited the incredulity of 
 those who believed with Norman that the virtue in the 
 stone was implanted by Providence, and hence was pre- 
 sumably ineradicable. The revelation that iron could be 
 magnetized without the aid of the stone at all was not 
 original with Sarpi, but was the result of an accidental 
 observation made by one Giulio Cesare, a surgeon of 
 Rimini, early in 1586, and not long before Sarpi wrote 
 concerning it. An iron rod which supported a terra-cotta 
 ornament upon the tower of a church in the before-named 
 town had become bent by the force of the wind, and had 
 remained thus distorted for about ten years. It was taken 
 
228 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 down and the iron sent to a blacksmith to be straightened, 
 and while it lay in the smithy, Cesare, by chance, noticed 
 that it possessed attractive properties. By an odd co- 
 incidence the church was dedicated to St. Augustine ; so 
 that one might almost fancy that the influence of the Saint 
 whose discoveries concerning the magnet have already 
 been noted, was somehow still potent to lead others in the 
 same path. The circumstance puzzled the philosophers 
 greatly ; for how, they asked, could iron which is a metal 
 be thus converted into lodestone which is a stone? For 
 the time being the old doctrine of sympathies and simili- 
 tudes the great likeness and sympathy between iron and 
 magnet furnished a sufficient answer : but after a few 
 years the true explanation appeared in a great work, to 
 which the orderly progress of this narrative forbids further 
 reference at present. 1 
 
 Although the limiting of Sarpi's magnetic discoveries to 
 the destruction of magnetism by heat, and the apparent 
 concentration at the poles of the atmosphere or virtue 
 which Norman thought to be spherical seems to be the 
 consequence of the process of exclusion followed, it would 
 be unjust to the great Consul tore to assume that there are 
 here defined the actual metes and bounds of his accom- 
 plishments in magnetic research. The evidence so far 
 adduced concerning them is at best imperfect; while it 
 must be remembered that to depreciate their importance 
 or to obliterate them wholly, powerful forces have acted 
 for centuries. 
 
 Still, to have conceived the first clear idea of the field 
 of force about the poles of a magnet is sufficient to give 
 the discoverer an undoubted pre-eminence, and that Sarpi 
 did this is not only indicated by a comparison of his 
 reputed achievements with what was already known, but 
 is strongly substantiated by the efforts which have been 
 made to deprive him of all credit for them. Sarpi had no 
 worse enemies than the Jesuits, whom he caused to be 
 
 1 Aldrovandus : Musaeum Metallicum. Milan, 1648, lib. I, 134. 
 
FRA PAOLO. 229 
 
 driven from Venice after they had refused to comply with 
 the statutes passed by the state in contravention and de- 
 fiance of the Pope's interdict. The rancor against him, 
 which resulted in an attempt to assassinate him, and the 
 removal of his remains nine times from place to place be- 
 fore they found safe and permanent sepulture, had not 
 undergone the slightest abatement when the Jesuit Cab- 
 aeus, 1 six years after Sarpi's death, wrote his book on the 
 magnet, and with ingenious indirection, proceeded to as- 
 cribe to Leonardo Garzoni, another Jesuit who died in 
 1592, the discoveries of which, as I shall shortly show, 
 John Baptista Porta obtained knowledge directly from 
 Sarpi. 
 
 Garzoni seems to have written, at some indefinite time 
 (but very close to and possibly even after the periods when 
 Sarpi made his researches), a treatise on the magnet which 
 he left uncompleted. His brother, after his death, an- 
 nounced an intention of publishing it, but if he did so, 
 Bertelli 2 (despite a thorough search through all the princi- 
 pal libraries of Italy and especially through those in which 
 Cabaeus found his literary material), has been unable to 
 discover any trace of it. He unearths, however, a book, 
 published in 1642, which says that Garzoni's magnetic dis- 
 coveries were well known, and on no better basis than this, 
 permits himself to accept, without question, the assertion 
 of Cabseus that the whole idea of the field of force origi- 
 nated with Garzoni, and hence, by necessary implication, 
 not with Sarpi. But against the tacit opinion of even so 
 learned a scholar as Father Bertelli, stands the total lack 
 of evidence in favor of Garzoni, and the intense antagon- 
 ism to Fra Paolo characteristic of the Jesuits, in which 
 Cabseus evidently shares. 
 
 While, however, as I have stated, proof of Sarpi's dis- 
 coveries, based on his own writings, is now meagre, it 
 
 1 Philosophia Magnetica. Ferrara, 1629, lib. i., c. xvi. 
 
 2 Mem. sopra Peregrinus, 24. 
 
230 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 is probable that, through the intervention of Baptista 
 Porta, we have always been in full possession of a record 
 of his work: in fact, we may not unreasonably assume, of 
 a better one than such as may h-ave been contained in the 
 brief treatise which was burned: for Porta has told in ex- 
 tenso matters which Sarpi (who seems to have been the 
 prototype of Faraday in his predilection for reducing his 
 results to brief paragraphs and numbering them) would 
 have reported in the most concise and abbreviated form. 
 
 John Baptista Porta was a prodigy. He died in 1615 at 
 the reputed age of seventy, the author of many discoveries 
 and many books the last not all philosophical and scien- 
 tific, for he is said to have written u fourteen comedies, 
 two tragedies and one tragi-comedy." Despite some con- 
 fusion and discrepancies in dates, it appears to be the fact 
 that he produced his work on Natural Magic, in four 
 books, 1 when only sixteen years of age. It bears the date 
 of 1558, and deals learnedly with astrology, abounds in 
 the wildest vagaries on the generation of animals, dis- 
 cusses agriculture and horticulture in similar manner, 
 ends with an omnium gatherum on domestic economy, 
 and has not, from first to last, a word about the lodestone. 
 Despite his tender age, Porta seems to have been the 
 moving spirit in what was probably a ridotto or club of 
 persons interested in one another and in some especial 
 subject, which met for purposes of discussion and mutual 
 entertainment. Whatever the precise nature of the assem- 
 blage originally may have been, it developed finally into 
 the first of all learned societies, the Academia Secretorum 
 Naturae abbreviated ordinarily into "the Segreti," in 
 which it was an essential condition of membership that the 
 
 1 Magise Naturalis, sive De Miraculis Rerum Naturalium, lib. iv. lo. 
 Baptista Porta Neapolitano Auctore. Neapoli, 1558. lo. Baptista Portae 
 Neapolitan!: Magise Naturalis, libri xx. Neapoli, 1589. There have 
 been many editions in translations. 
 
JOHN BAPTISTA PORTA. 231 
 
 applicant should have successfully prosecuted an original 
 research in medicine or philosophy. It is said that, be- 
 cause the participators called themselves the "Otiosi " (idle, 
 lazy), the people became aroused and denounced the organ- 
 
 ization to the Pope as a gang of sorcerers; but it is a much 
 more reasonable assumption that the astonishing state- 
 ments in Porta's book, on such subjects, for example, as 
 the production of birds and frogs from decaying matter, 
 
232 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 had more to do with the indictment than any name which 
 the members might have chosen to assume. In fact, 
 scores of such societies mainly literary were organized 
 in Italy before the close of the sixteenth century. 
 Tiraboschi gives a list of one hundred and seventy-one of 
 them, and among their designations were such singular 
 names as "Inflammable," "Pensive," "Intrepid," "Un- 
 ripe," "Drowsy," "Rough," "Dispirited," "Solitary," 
 "Fiery," "Sympathetic," "Grieved," "Re-ignited" and 
 "Drunken." 
 
 At all events, Porta, as head and front of the offending, 
 was summoned to Rome, whence he escaped with no worse 
 penalty than the dissolution of his society and some 
 fatherly advice, which indicated the extreme imprudence 
 of ever starting it again. While at Rome he gained the 
 favor of Cardinal Luigi D'Este, who gave him means of 
 traveling through France and Spain, and who afterwards 
 called him to Venice to build for him a parabolic mirror. 
 
 By this time Porta' s attainments had gained him con- 
 siderable celebrity. He had studied optics closely, and, 
 although he did not invent the camera obscura (which was 
 the work of Leon Baptista Alberti nearly a century earlier), 1 
 he first pointed out and taught the analogy between that 
 apparatus and the human eye. He probably originated 
 the magic lantern, however, and had some notion of the 
 telescope, although his reference thereto is by no means 
 unambiguous. 
 
 That the most eminent natural philosopher of Naples 
 should have encountered the most eminent natural philos- 
 opher of Venice, and that the two should find in one 
 another mutual attraction, seems to have inevitably fol- 
 lowed. Porta instantly assumed the role of pupil, as most 
 men did who came in contact with Sarpi, whatever their 
 callings or attainments might be; and Sarpi, who delighted 
 in teaching, found in Porta a congenial and tireless disci- 
 ple. Nor did this relation cease even after great honors 
 
 1 Tiraboschi: Storia della Lett. Ital. Firenze, 1810, vol. vii., 495. 
 
PORTA AND SARPI. 233 
 
 had come to the Venetian; for when, as Procurator of his 
 Order, he made an official visitation to Naples, it was with 
 Porta that he sojourned, and into Porta's eager ears poured 
 the story of the magnetic researches which he had then 
 just completed. The Neapolitan had reached middle age, 
 and for thirty-five years had been collecting material to 
 add to the work on Natural Magic. Perhaps he deemed 
 this latest teaching of Sarpi the cap-sheaf of all, and an 
 indication that the auspicious time for publication had 
 come. He had been admitted to the great Academy of the 
 Lyncei, and, shrewdly considering that nothing issued un- 
 der such sanction would be taken as savoring of the black 
 art, he induced that society to give the work, now extended 
 to twenty books, its official approval. This completed 
 edition appeared in 1589. The seventh book is devoted 
 wholly to the magnet, and is one of the longest in the 
 volume. Cabseus intimates that it is merely an epitome 
 of knowledge gained by Porta from Garzoni; and Bertelli, 
 perceiving the necessity of bringing the two men at least 
 into geographical proximity, thinks that Porta may have 
 met the Jesuit when he went to Venice to make the Car- 
 dinal's mirror. 
 
 But this is disposed of by Porta himself, who, in his 
 preface to his book on the magnet, says "We knew 
 among the Venetians Paulus Venetus, vigilant in this 
 study. He was of the order of Serviti, then a Provincial, 
 now most worthy Procurator, from whom we not only do 
 not blush to have copied, but we rejoice therein, since we 
 know no one than he more learned or more subtle among 
 those that we have seen. He was born to universal knowl- 
 edge, and is an ornament not merely to the city of Venice 
 and to Italy, but to the world. If we begin from his funda- 
 mental ideas and proceed to his completed studies of tran- 
 scendent sublimity and accurate labor, we shall never be 
 disappointed.'* Sarpi was Provincial of his order from 
 1579 to 1582, so that, at the time Porta's work appeared, 
 the two men must have been in communication for more 
 than seven years. 
 
234 TH ^ INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Porta's writing bears all the ear-marks of the compiler. 
 It is exceedingly diffuse, often self-contradictory, and the 
 same fact is repeated over and over again in different 
 guises, as if the change in form were regarded as involv- 
 ing a material change in substance. Much that is set 
 down may be laid out of sight at once, since it is merely a 
 re-statement of the discoveries of Peregrinus. The phe- 
 nomena of attraction and repulsion, the mode of determin- 
 ing the poles and the persistence of the poles in a divided 
 magnet, are all described as by Peregrinus with no material 
 variation, except that in the last-named instance Porta car- 
 ries the separation further, and finds the poles "in the 
 smallest fragments as well as in the great magnetic rock." 
 
 It requires but little critical study of this treatise to reach 
 the conclusion that the notion of the field of force was re- 
 garded as by far the most important subject within the 
 knowledge of its writer, or more correctly, of the individ- 
 ual from whom that knowledge was acquired. It is re- 
 curred to over and over again, examined from many points 
 of view and tested in many different wa}*s; so that we may 
 almost see the conception grow as experiment made it 
 clearer. This growth I shall now briefly trace. 
 
 Porta, having pointed out that the magnetic virtue and 
 polarity remains, even when the stone is divided into mi- 
 nute grains, avers that when these grains are brought to- 
 gether, the strength of all will become unitary. Then he 
 says, " But what is more wonderful, although the strength 
 may be received in the middle of the stone, it is not dif- 
 fused at the middle but at the extremities of the polar lines 
 and . . . comes forth openly" Not long afterwards, we 
 encounter an experiment which consists in grinding a 
 magnet into the minutest grains and mixing it w r ith some 
 inert white substance. Then, for the mystification of the 
 bystanders and Porta delights in that sort of thing a 
 magnet, hidden by a cloth, is brought up to the mass. At 
 once the magnet grains rush to the stone, packing them 
 selves densely u like hairs " or u like the down on a man's 
 
PORTA ON THE FIELD OF FORCE. 235 
 
 chin;" or in other words, behaving just as do the well- 
 known iron filings. (Porta sees at once the possibility of 
 drawing iron out of sand mixed with the ore by this 
 means, and mentions it.) "This shock of hairs," he says, 
 "adheres to the stone so persistently that they can hardly 
 be detached: even when the stone is struck by a hammer, 
 or two stones covered with them are rubbed together, 
 still they stick on. They stand erect like spurs, and the 
 more the stone is rubbed by another stone, the more they 
 congregate." So much Lucretius had also seen in the 
 Samothracian marvels. 
 
 But now follows the direct recognition of the field "It 
 is to be noted that the point diffuses virtue in its sphere as 
 from centre to circumference, and just like the light of a 
 candle, which is diffused everywhere and illuminates a 
 chamber, and the further it recedes the more languidly it 
 glows; and after a little further movement, it is lost; and 
 then, as much as it approaches nearer, the more vividly it 
 shines. In the same way, this force emanates from the 
 point; and the nearer the latter, the more strongly it 
 draws, while the greater the distance the more it is remiss: 
 so that, if it recedes much, it vanishes and does nothing; 
 therefore, in place of any other term we will call the ex- 
 tent of its power 'the sphere of its virtue.' " l 
 
 What more was there left in substance to discover as to 
 the law of magnetic attraction and repulsion? Every par- 
 ticle of matter in the universe, Newton tells us, "attracts 
 
 1 Literal translation The English edition of Porta's Natural Magick 
 (London, 1658,) renders the passage as follows: "Giving you to under- 
 stand that the Pole sends its force to the Circumference. And as the 
 light of a Candle is spread everyway, and enlightens the Chamber; and 
 the farther it is off from it, the weaker it shines, and at too great a dis- 
 tance is lost ; and the neerer it is, the more cleerly it illuminates : so the 
 force flies forth at that point ; and the neerer it is, the more forcibly it 
 attracts ; and the further off, the more faintly : and if it be set too far 
 off, it vanisheth quite, and doth nothing. Wherefore for that we shall 
 say of it, and mark it for, we shall call the length of its force the com- 
 pass of its Virtues." Note passim the old use of the English word 
 "compass" for "sphere." 
 
236 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 every other particle with a force whose direction is that 
 of a line joining the two and whose magnitude ... is 
 inversely as the square of their distance from each other." 
 Light radiation equally moves in a straight line, and its 
 intensity varies as the square of the distance between the 
 surface on which it falls and the source of radiation. 
 Those are the laws of the phenomena stated in the fore- 
 going quotation. Put the two together, and the result is 
 Michell's sixth law, first expressed in 1750 : "The Attrac- 
 tion and Repulsion of Magnets decrease as the squares of 
 the distances from the respective Poles increase." 1 
 Neither Sarpi, who had so narrowly studied the human 
 eye and had dived into the deeps of all existing optical 
 knowledge, nor even Porta who had followed him, could 
 perhaps have expressed that law as Michell did a couple of 
 centuries later; but they knew how the light of a candle 
 increased and diminished, and they saw the resemblance 
 between this and the increase and diminution of the virtue 
 around the poles of a magnet. How better could they 
 state their knowledge than by making the comparison and 
 pointing out the resemblance? 
 
 But let us go a little further. Whenever Porta becomes 
 grave and states an important fact, he shortly afterwards 
 relaxes and tells about "jokes of the magnet with which 
 we often exhilarate friends," and such parts of the book 
 are undoubtedly his own. He is particularly fond of the 
 iron-filings experiment, and, after stating the similarity of 
 the sphere of magnetic attraction to the candle radiations, 
 he recurs to it. This time he places on a table two masses 
 of magnet fragments, and, holding a lodestone in each 
 hand under the table, he makes the particles move, as he 
 fancied, to represent contending armies. The individual 
 grains rise up like erected spears, and advance and re- 
 treat and enter into "deadly struggles, now conquering, 
 now conquered, now with arms raised, now lowered;" and 
 then, in the midst of the play, he remarks, "the nearer 
 
 'Michell, J.: A Treatise of Artificial Magnets, London, 1750. 19. 
 
PORTA'S THEORIES. 237 
 
 the magnet approaches the more strongly the force extends 
 its sphere," which to him is confirmatory of the light 
 analogy. 
 
 The ingenuity which could evolve this conception was 
 not slow to perceive the consequences. Iron is visibly at- 
 tracted when placed in that sphere of virtue, but does any- 
 thing else happen to it? Here is the answer, "Not alone 
 by adhesion does the magnet diffuse its virtue to the iron, 
 but, what is more wonderful, within the radii of its own 
 virtue it causes virtue in the iron. For, if you approach a 
 magnet to iron, so that the latter may be in the sphere of 
 virtue, this iron will attract another iron, and the one so 
 attracted will draw another, and thus you may see a chain 
 of needles or rings in the air hanging." (The Samothra- 
 cian rings, with the upper one not in contact with the 
 lodestonebut magnetized therefrom by induction.) "But 
 while the chain exists, if you gradually remove the magnet 
 for a short distance, the last ring falls, and then the next, 
 and so on in succession all fall, and thus you see the stone 
 is able to cause its virtue in the iron without contact." 
 
 It is curious to note how this led Porta into a false con- 
 clusion. He supposed that the sphere of virtue around the 
 magnet had a definite outer limit whereat the radii of virtue 
 ended; and that, so long as it overlapped a certain num- 
 ber of rings, all would remain suspended; but, if its centre 
 were retracted, so that the last ring were left out of the 
 sphere, then that ring would fall. Consequently, he says, 
 if you try to magnetize a bar three feet long with a stone 
 having a sphere of only two feet radius, you cannot do it 
 except over two feet of the bar ; the protruding one foot 
 will be inert. Neither Porta nor Sarpi (seen through him) 
 appears to have had any idea of the virtue extending from 
 pole to pole, or to have made any deductions from the 
 positions assumed by the inclined needles of Peregrinus or 
 Norman. But their knowledge of a field of force and of 
 magnetic induction due thereto was certainly well defined. 
 
 The many other discoveries which Porta records may 
 
238 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 now briefly be stated. The destruction of magnetization 
 by high temperature seems to have been found by burning 
 the lodestone, which, when surrounded by heaped-up coals, 
 emits a "blue, sulphurous and iron flame; and, at the same 
 time, with the dissipation of this, the soul of the magnet 
 departs and it loses its attractive power." The suggestion 
 by Peregrinus of measuring the force of the magnet is car- 
 ried into practical effect, and the strength determined is 
 that required to resist separation of the armature from the 
 magnet, which is arranged in one pan of a balance. The 
 fact is noted that, while the magnetic virtue passes freely 
 through brass, etc., iron acts as a screen to cut it off. The 
 guarding of compass needles after they are magnetized 
 from proximity with lodestones is strongly advised, lest 
 "they be inebriated;" and clean iron is said to receive the 
 virtue much more tenaciously than metal containing rust 
 or earthy matters. Here occurs the first mention of the 
 fact that "sailors prefer steel" for compass needles 
 "which will keep its value for a hundred years." Iron 
 filings, we are told, wrapped in paper, receive virtue like a 
 solid magnet, but, if they are shaken, they lose it. 
 
 Porta's recital abounds in absurdities, many of which 
 are due to experimental errors. His theory of the cause 
 of the attraction of the lodestone is correlated to the ob- 
 served behavior of the iron filings; for he considers the 
 magnetic forces to be due to minute particles of the stone 
 springing from friction and concentrated into hairs, which, 
 becoming attached to iron, impart thereto magnetic virtue. 
 Yet, on the other hand, he believed with Alexander of 
 Aphrodiseus that the lodestone actually fed on iron, and 
 therefore buried a stone surrounded by filings and occasion- 
 ally exhumed it to note without success the amount de- 
 voured. He imagined that iron rubbed by a diamond 
 would become magnetic, and so avers; and, he believed 
 that a magnet has east and west, as well as north and south, 
 poles. A closer analysis of his work will show many more 
 such delusions, and, to counterbalance them, suggestions 
 which perhaps proved the germs of later useful discoveries. 
 
THE FIRST NOTION OF THE TELEGRAPH. 239 
 
 The rise which we have been tracing has been followed 
 mainly through effects which, although of like nature, are 
 commonly defined as magnetic rather than electric; and all 
 roads have led us to the mariner's compass as a ne plus 
 ultra of invention. But now Porta begins an advance 
 movement. The doctrine of sympathies and similitudes 
 is still in force, and it is common belief that nowhere is 
 sympathy stronger or likeness closer than between magnet 
 and magnet. Meanwhile, there has arisen the conception 
 of the sphere of virtue surrounding the lodestone. Con- 
 jectures as to the extent of that sphere have become con- 
 fused with speculations as to the potency of the sympa- 
 thetic influence, and out of all this has grown a curious 
 notion that distance is no bar to the mutual effects of mag- 
 nets, that they will even copy one another's positions, so 
 that, if one magnet point in a certain direction, a second 
 and sympathetic magnet will indicate the same direction, 
 even if they be situated far asunder. A step further and 
 Porta' s thought thus leaps ahead : 
 
 u To a friend, that is at a far distance from us, fast shut 
 up in prison, we may relate our minds; which I do not 
 doubt may be done by two Mariner's compasses having the 
 alphabet writ about them." 
 
 So came into the world the fancy which finds its modern 
 embodiment in the great wire cobweb which envelops the 
 earth and brings all people into converse, as it were face to 
 face. Yet this initial notion of the telegraph is of less 
 historical significance than the fact that Porta is here, for 
 the first time, seeking to put the pivoted magnet needle to 
 a new use. In other words, he is trying to invent beyond 
 the compass; and he is taking from it as his instrumentality 
 the pivoted needle moving in and controlled by a surround- 
 ing virtue. A few more years and it will be this same in- 
 strument in another hand, which will usher in electricity 
 as a distinct manifestation of natural force and as the 
 world now knows it. 
 
240 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Iii tracing the history of magnetic discovery, and es- 
 pecially that of the conception of the field of force, it has 
 been necessary, in order to avoid complication, to lose 
 sight, for a time, of the progress which the world was 
 making toward a better recognition of the phenomenon 
 of the amber. At the middle of the fifteenth century the 
 identity of the attractive force exercised by magnet and 
 amber was generally accepted as certain. No one thought 
 of seriously disputing the matter, no reason for investi- 
 gating an occurrence so manifest obtruded itself, and no 
 practical employment of amber in any wise akin to that 
 of the magnet invited research to discover what further 
 occult capabilities the resin might possess. By the end 
 of the century, however, the use of the compass had 
 brought people into greater familiarity with the lodestone, 
 and, as the knowledge of it increased, the time approached 
 when differences between amber attraction and magnet 
 attraction began to excite remark. But this was the 
 period when the Greek influence, which attended the re- 
 vival of learning after the fall of Constantinople, was 
 making itself felt throughout all Europe. The new school 
 of Platonists, under the leadership of Marsilio Ficino 1 the 
 Florentine, challenged the supremacy of the Aristotelian 
 philosophy, and precipitated new discussions which di- 
 vided the learned into opposing camps, wherein the wordy 
 warfare raged and the experimental study of nature was 
 forgotten. Yet it was Ficino himself who virtually re- 
 peated the question asked centuries before by St. Augus- 
 tine, by suggesting a difference between the amber and 
 the magnet; not, be it observed, by describing the respec- 
 tive phenomena and comparing the facts for that would 
 be far below the dignity of any Platonist, new or old but 
 by promulgating a speculation on the subject, which could 
 have arisen only from some previous knowledge based 
 upon the actual observation of such a difference. 
 
 He says that iron is rendered magnetic, and maintained 
 
 1 Born 1433, died 1499. 
 
FRACASTORIO. 241 
 
 so, by rays from the Bear that is, the North star or Arctic 
 pole and the ' ' lodestone attracts iron because of a superior 
 grade in the properties of the Bear." Following the pre- 
 vailing notions, he would naturally have accounted for the 
 attractive quality of amber in the same way; for, as I have 
 stated, no one had drawn any distinction between the effects 
 of the stone and the resin. But it is significant to note 
 that Ficino does not do this, because he has clearly found 
 out that, while the magnet attracts iron and points to the 
 North pole and hence is controlled by the latter, amber 
 does not attract iron but chaff, and does not point to the 
 North pole at all. Yet because iron, under a supposed 
 control, attracts, so some control must likewise be assumed 
 for amber, because it also has an attractive quality, although 
 of a different character. Therefore he triumphantly con- 
 cludes that it is not the Arctic pole, but the Antarctic 
 pole which influences the resin and the argument stands 
 forth in symmetrical perfection; the lodestone is a thing, 
 which is caused to attract iron by the Arctic pole : the 
 amber is a thing, which is caused to attract chaff by the 
 Antarctic pole. 
 
 Many years after Ficino's time, Jerome Fracastorio, 1 
 poet, physician and philosopher of Verona, reverts to the 
 old doctrine of similitudes to deny its application to the 
 magnet and the amber, and incidentally, for the first time, 
 announces that the amber property exists in another 
 natural body the diamond; for the gem, he says, when 
 rubbed, will attract hairs and twigs in the same way as 
 the amber. 
 
 He is much more concerned, however, in evolving a new 
 theory which will explain why hairs and twigs are thus 
 attracted, when clearly there is no affinity between such 
 substances and the amber or the diamond, than in record- 
 ing experimental details. Yet he also sees clearly that the 
 attracting bodies are widely different from one another; 
 
 1 Born 1483, died 1553. Authorities differ as to the orthography of the 
 name, some giving it as Fracastoro, others as Fracastorio. 
 16 
 
242 THE INTELLECTUAL, RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 so that, even granting hairs to have an affinity for the 
 resin, that fact in itself, to his mind, seems to negative the 
 idea of their possessing any similar affinity for the gem. 
 The discovery of another substance which, while different 
 from either magnet or amber, still possesses the same sin- 
 gular drawing power, is of no importance to him in com- 
 parison with getting these stubborn facts within the safe 
 confines of a new theory a conclusion eminently charac- 
 teristic of his time. And he is not unsuccessful at least, 
 to his own satisfaction. The amber and the diamond, he 
 finally announces, do not attract hairs and twigs because 
 hairs and twigs are hairs and twigs; but because, in the 
 thing attracted, there is a principle, perhaps in the in- 
 cluded air, which is first drawn by the analogous principle 
 existing in the thing attracting. In other words, the re- 
 ciprocal attraction and repulsion of the magnet, the amber 
 or the diamond, depends upon whether the principles enter- 
 ing into their composition principles of a spiritual char- 
 acter apparently are analogous or contrary. 1 
 
 This was published in 1546. Fracastorio had then at- 
 tained great fame as a physician a fame which lives yet; 
 for he was the first to assert that contagion is due to u in- 
 visible effluvia" and not to occult causes, and to dis- 
 tinguish the exauthematic typhus of the plague, which, 
 up to that time, included all the grave epidemic maladies; 
 while from the hero of his famous poem comes the name 
 of that hideous disease of which the Old World is said to 
 have known nothing until after the discovery of the New. 
 That his simple opinion that Trent was unhealthy should 
 have resulted in the removal of a great council of the 
 Church from that town to Bologna, is sufficient to show 
 the immense influence he exerted. 2 The announcement 
 of the foregoing theory by so high an authority therefore 
 
 1 Hier. Fracastorii, Veronensis: Opera Omnia. Venice, 1555. Lib. 
 de Sympathia et Antipathia. 
 
 2 Biographic Universelle, Art. Fracastorio. La Grande Encyclopedic, 
 Paris, 1893, Vol. 17. 
 
JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 243 
 
 may well have been considered conclusive as to the identity 
 of magnetic and electric attraction. Yet within a very 
 few years it was challenged. 
 
 On the 24th of September, 1501, there was born in 
 Milan the first of that trio of Italian philosophers whose 
 achievements in physical science seem all the more bril- 
 liant by contrast with the ignorance and superstition of the 
 period covered by their lives. To two of these men Fra 
 Paolo Sarpi and John Baptista Porta some reference has 
 already been made. Girolamo Cardano, 1 or Jerome Car- 
 
 dan, as his name is commonly Anglicized, belonged to the 
 generation immediately preceding theirs; but the three 
 lives overlapped, and much of their work was done con- 
 temporaneously. There is little resemblance to the mer- 
 curial, inquisitive, precocious Porta, still less to the 
 
 1 Morley, H.: The Life of Girolamo Cardano of Milan, Physician. 
 The portrait of Cardan here given is from a contemporary print forming 
 the frontispiece of the 1553 edition of his treatise, De rerum Varietate. 
 The statement of his age as 49 years does not accord with the date of his 
 birth as given by his biographers. 
 
244 TH] S INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 majestic figure of the Venetian Consultore, in the person- 
 ality of Cardan; yet he far exceeded the former in inge- 
 nuity, and probably (statecraft and theology excepted) he 
 equalled the latter in the variety and profundity of his at- 
 tainments. Cardan's character was a bundle of contradic- 
 tions his life, a series of vicissitudes; and hence, as this 
 or that group of traits or events is selected as typical, so 
 he may be made out a martyr and a philosopher, or a char- 
 latan and a magician. He was the natural son of an aged 
 Milanese geometer, who made him a wretched drudge, 
 until, astonished by the learning the boy had managed to 
 acquire under difficulties, the disheartening quality of 
 which he of all the world knew best, he consented to enter 
 him as a medical student in Pavia. Thence Cardan went 
 to the University of Padua, the affairs of which were in 
 great disorder. For years there had been no rector, mainly 
 because no one wanted the place. Cardan offered himself 
 and was elected by one vote. But the honor was empty. 
 The mother, slaving at menial labor in Milan, worked to 
 defray the bare official charges. The symbols of his mock- 
 majesty, if he had them his robes of scarlet and purple 
 silk and his gold and jeweled badges, his fife-players and 
 his spearmen and all the stately, ceremonial appurtenances 
 of the office were paid for, if at all, from the proceeds of 
 the gaming table. He called his term of office his " Sar- 
 danapalan year;" the University sardonically termed it 
 the last of the ten years in which there was no rector. 
 
 In time he became a doctor, and practised in a little 
 village, and wrote books on therapeutics and the plague. 
 His health was wretched his poverty, extreme. His 
 marriage helped him a little; but an inordinate passion for 
 gambling resulted in chronic destitution. The Milan 
 physicians would not permit him to practice because of his 
 origin; but a lectureship on geography, geometry and as- 
 tronomy yielded a pittance sufficient to ward off starvation. 
 So he lived, writing more treatises, mainly on the subjects 
 of his lectures, and developing a genius for fancies and 
 
JEROME CARDAN. 245 
 
 dreams which hardened eventually into a superstition as 
 controlling and as uncontrollable as the attraction of the 
 dice-box. But he had a fine taste for music, he loved the 
 melodious words of Petrarch and Pulci, he read Aristotle 
 and Plotinus for pleasure; and even if the scanty contents 
 of his purse were the products of his gambling skill, they 
 went for no grosser pleasures than expensive writing ma- 
 terials and rare books. Add to this that he was a skillful 
 physician especially for those days and, though blunt 
 in speech, warm-hearted and charitable almost to ex- 
 tremes, and we may safely leave his condemnation to those 
 inerrant moralists who believe that there are no virtues, 
 however great, which the small vices cannot eclipse. 
 
 The dream fancies gradually acquired a stronger hold 
 astrology, first critically examined, became entangled with 
 his faith the casting of a horoscope of Christ brought him 
 perilously near to prison for blasphemy, and a book point- 
 ing out errors in medical practice called down upon him 
 with renewed vigor that uncompromising odium which 
 the elderly medical tortoise, even to this day, especially 
 reserves for the youthful medical hare. The people said 
 he was mad made so by poverty; the inordinate number 
 of printers' errors in his book, which he himself says 
 drove him nearly to distraction would have furnished a 
 more probable reason. 
 
 Thus he lived until nearly forty-five years of age before 
 the tide of his fortunes began to turn. In 1545 he pub- 
 lished his great work on algebra, wherein he laid down 
 rules for all forms and varieties of cubic equations, estab- 
 lished the literal notation, applied this form of mathe- 
 matics to the resolution of geometrical problems, and 
 accomplished other results of great importance, though of 
 too technical a character to be noted here. Up to this 
 time, he had written in all some fifty-three treatises. His 
 success as a physician now began to tell, and resulted in 
 his Milan brethren, after twelve years of denial, giving 
 him the stamp of regularity. The rapidity of his rise was 
 
246 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 phenomenal. From the half-starved, unpaid, flouted stu- 
 dent barely able to keep body and soul together, his ad- 
 vice, in less than ten years, was sought by the Emperor 
 himself, by the King of France for the Queen of Scotland, 
 and by the majesty of England, then embodied in the weak- 
 ling son of Henry VIII. He journeyed in state throughout 
 Europe men of rank and learning everywhere eager to 
 obtain his aid or recognition. And finally, after his 
 travels, he returned to Milan, loaded with honors and re- 
 wards, the undisputed greatest living authority in the 
 healing art. 
 
 The temptation to dwell upon the dramatic episodes of 
 Cardan's later life ending, as it did, in crushing sorrow 
 is strong, but must be resisted, to proceed at once to the 
 remarkable work which will always hold a prominent 
 place in the history of electricity: for in it, for the first 
 time, the phenomena of the amber are clearly differenti- 
 ated from those of the magnet. 
 
 Cardan's Books on Subtilty occupied, in the writing, 
 three years, and were published at Nuremberg and Paris 
 in 1551. l The work attained an enormous popularity, and 
 well it might for it was calculated to arouse the keenest 
 curiosity, in that it related to ''subtle" things or those 
 which are "sensible by the senses or intelligible by the 
 intellect, but with difficulty comprehended." It is hardly 
 possible to figure to one's self a book nowadays claiming 
 to be a treatise on everything not easily understood; but, 
 at that time, such a work was a welcome improvement 
 upon and a distinct advance beyond the old De Natura 
 Rerum treatises, whereof I have noted numerous exam- 
 ples, and which generally undertook to explain not only 
 "things with difficulty comprehended," but, with equal 
 ease and readiness, things not comprehended at all. It is 
 a curious medley, discussing abstruse mathematics and 
 
 . Cardani, Medici Mediol: De Subtilitate, Lib. xxi. Paris, 1551. 
 There have been numerous later editions. The first French translation 
 is dated 1556, and this I have used. 
 
JEROME CARDAN. 247 
 
 dreams, hydrostatics and fortune telling, metallurgy and 
 card tricks. It stands squarely on the dividing line be- 
 tween mediaeval magic and modern physical science. 
 That the sixteenth century reader might well have re- 
 garded the work as be-deviled it is easy to imagine. If he 
 trusted himself to the figments of the author's boiling 
 imagination, he found himself in the end disconcerted 
 with the dry remark that "many things appear admirable 
 until the cause is known ; then admiration ceases :" l if he 
 pinned his faith only to the statements of fact, again he 
 is laughed at and told that "some things seem more true 
 than they are others are more true than they seem." 
 The bewildered disciple, especially if imbued with the 
 philosopher's faith in demons and ghosts and apparitions, 
 may well regard this as the nimbleness of Mephisto, and, 
 recalling Cardan's wonderful cures and vast learning, his 
 strange luck at gambling, his, at times, reckless prodi- 
 gality and dissolute existence, may see in the Milanese 
 doctor another Faust and the slave of a Satanic compact. 
 But another and final contradiction awaits him on the very 
 last page of the book, where he finds this child of the 
 devil, prostrate as "an humble worm of the earth," ac- 
 knowledging, in a prayer of singular beauty, that "to 
 Thee I owe all that is here written in truth," that "the 
 errors and faults are of mine own ambition, rashness and 
 haste," and imploring for the Heavenly pardon and 
 "guidance to better things." 
 
 The statements in Cardan's treatise which relate to the 
 amber so closely follow those on the same subject in the 
 famous work of George Agricola, 2 which appeared a few 
 years earlier, that the discoveries recorded which are Car- 
 dan's own are easily distinguished. Agricola's summary 
 of the uses and properties of amber contains probably all 
 that was then known concerning it. It was utilized in the 
 
 1 Often paraphrased since : e.g., "Science is anything we do not un- 
 derstand : the moment we understand it, it ceases to be science." 
 
 2 Agricola: De la Nat.ura de le Cose Fossili. Venice, 1544. lib. iv. 
 
248 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 manufacture of printing-ink and of incense; when burned 
 it was supposed to be a sure preventive of plague and as 
 that terrible scourge then ravaged Europe almost un- 
 checked, the demand for the resin was great. It was 
 carved into rings, beads for rosaries, and statuettes. But, 
 next to its employment for fumigation, its most extensive 
 use was as a specific for checking hemorrhage, nausea and 
 catarrh. Thus it found its way chiefly into the hands of 
 the physicians, and thus it doubtless came to pass that to 
 the members of the faculty were owing the remarkable 
 discoveries which had their basis in its attractive property. 
 
 Agricola, however, perceives no difference between its 
 attraction and that of the magnet. He enumerates down, 
 chaff, hairs, leaves and other small things including even 
 metal filings as drawn to it, the last probably fortifying 
 him in his individual belief in the similarity between it 
 and the lodestone. Yet he notes that, when rubbed even 
 with the finger, it becomes hot, and still hotter when the 
 friction is applied with a coarse cloth, or even with a hard 
 substance; but one's faith in his accuracy is somewhat 
 rudely shaken by his culminating assertion that there is 
 found on the shores of the Vistula a grey amber which, 
 on being rubbed with iron, will cause leaves lying on the 
 ground to fly up to it, even if held a distance of two feet 
 above them. 
 
 Cardan transcribes, almost literally, Agricola's list of 
 things which the amber will attract, and then, for the first 
 time, offers an interpretation purely physical. He specu- 
 lates neither upon similitudes, sympathies or analogous 
 principles, but boldly assigns a wholly material cause; 
 namely, "that it has a fatty and glutinous humor which, 
 being emitted, the dry object desiring to absorb it is 
 moved toward the source, that is the amber. For every 
 dry thing, as soon as it begins to absorb moisture, is 
 moved toward the moist source, like fire to its pasture; 
 and since the amber is strongly rubbed, it draws the more 
 because of its heat." It is not necessary to criticise this 
 
THE AMBER EFFECT DISTINGUISHED. 249 
 
 theory, which was certainly as reasonable as any advanced 
 either before or for the next hundred years. Its im- 
 portance lies in the fact that, good or bad, it was the first 
 hypothesis ever advanced to account for the phenomenon 
 of the amber in contradistinction to and as different from 
 that of the lodestone. There is no doubt as to its author's 
 meaning, for immediately succeeding the theoretical state- 
 ment, comes the making of the actual contrast in a pass- 
 age of extreme historical importance, beginning with the 
 unqualified assertion that "the magnet stone and the 
 amber do not attract in the same way" and thus squarely 
 denying the assertions of all the philosophers of the past, 
 and his medical brother of Verona in particular. Observe 
 the reasons : 
 
 "The amber draws everything that is light; the magnet, 
 iron only." He then had not been misled by the amber's 
 attraction for finely-pulverized iron. 
 
 "The amber does not move chaff when something is 
 interposed: the magnet nevertheless will attract iron." 
 An age had gone by since St. Augustine had recorded the 
 last. It was to a rejuvenated world that Cardan thus 
 brought the first suggestion of electrical insulation. 
 
 "The amber is not mutually attracted by the chaff: 
 the magnet is drawn by the iron." This was intended as 
 a blow at Fracastorio, and his notion of analogous princi- 
 ples. Here one wishes that the details of his experiment 
 had been given, even as Porta would have recorded them. 
 
 "The amber does not attract at the end: the magnet 
 attracts the iron sometimes at the North and sometimes at 
 the South." It is with the permanent polarity of the 
 magnet that the distinction is here drawn. 
 
 "The attraction of the amber is greatly aided by heat 
 and friction : that of the magnet, by cleaning the attract- 
 ing part." The important point here lies in the implica- 
 tion that, while the amber effect can be 'augmented by 
 heat and friction, that of the magnet can not. The clean- 
 ing of the magnet to which he alludes is probably the 
 
250 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 removal of foreign matters or a scale, of which he else- 
 where speaks, attached to the natural lodestone, which he 
 supposed impaired its force. He knew that the power 
 could not thus be cut off. 
 
 This having been said in the sixteenth century and not 
 in the nineteenth, the necessity obtruded itself of reconcil- 
 ing his plainly experimental results with his previously- 
 announced theory. He sees that the link must be a physical 
 and not a metaphysical one. Instinctively the leech finds 
 his analogy in an instrument of torture still lingering in 
 the chirurgical armament. The hotter the amber, he 
 thinks, the more it draws just like the action of u the 
 cupping glass due to fire and hot things;" and there he 
 rests content, oblivious of the hopeless inconsistency of 
 this notion with that part of his theory which accounts 
 for the phenomenon by the attraction between dry and 
 moist bodies. The cupping-glass idea was his own the 
 rest of the analogy he borrowed from the ancients. 
 
 That Sarpi knew of this remarkable differentiation of 
 magnet and amber, is hardly to be doubted ; and it may 
 be surmised that his master mind perceived the conse- 
 quences, which others pointed out. But there is nothing 
 in Porta's reflection of Sarpi's light to support this ; and 
 the loss of Sarpi's writings leaves the matter probably 
 forever in obscurity. Porta himself seems to have attached 
 no importance to the subject, although he shows abundant 
 familiarity with Cardan's work. Indeed, at times he fairly 
 revels in disputing the assertions of the Milanese physician, 
 in terms so much more vigorous than refined, that it is 
 not difficult to imagine that the Neapolitan philosopher 
 had imbibed his notions of Cardan from those life-long 
 rivals who had furnished the older scholar abundant basis 
 for his epigrammatic definition of envy as "mild hate." 
 
 Cardan, for example, avers that iron is the magnet's 
 food ; so not only accounts for magnetic attraction, but in- 
 sists that a magnet is best preserved in iron filings : which 
 may be perfectly true if the filings are packed in a dense 
 
A REVIEW. 251 
 
 mass to form an armature or keeper. Porta, however, as 
 has been recounted in the last chapter, retorted by bury- 
 ing a magnet with iron filings and occasionally digging it 
 up to see how much of the latter the magnet had de- 
 voured : a literal interpretation of Cardan's directions, 
 which, it is needless to add, was not attended with results. 
 On the other hand, Porta cordially agrees with Cardan, 
 that the virtue of the magnet cannot be destroyed by gar- 
 lic nor by the presence of the diamond. 
 
 I have now reached the end of that epoch which im- 
 mediately precedes the earliest attempt to systemize elec- 
 trical and magnetic knowledge and thus to reduce it to a 
 science. In the rise of that knowledge through the cen- 
 turies we have seen the conception of the soul animating 
 the amber and the magnet give place to more material 
 hypotheses indeed to many of them in turn and ulti- 
 mately become degraded to a mere physical emanation or 
 to an appetite. We have found the phenomenon of mag- 
 netic attraction, familiar for centuries to the western 
 world, and that of magnetic polarity known for as long a 
 period to the nations of the east, and yet that there was 
 practically no interchange of this knowledge. In time, 
 however, we have seen this interchange take place, and 
 in tracing the separate items to their coalescence, we have 
 at the same time followed the evolution of the first great 
 electrical invention the mariner's compass. 
 
 We have seen the enormous advance in human progress 
 directly owing to this instrument. We have perceived 
 that, although the amber phenomenon found no practical 
 application to the uses of man, still the inherent mystery, 
 the unexplained nature of it, was sufficient to impart to it 
 all the vitality inherent to a problem which constantly and 
 automatically forces itself upon generation after generation 
 for solution. After the compass had begun its great w r ork, 
 after it had revealed the New World to the Old, the alii- 
 
252 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 ance, in the general mind, of the amber to the magnet 
 ended forever the possibility of the questions concerning 
 the nature of either sinking into oblivion. But the modes 
 of dealing with these questions we have found to change 
 with the changing times. 
 
 The tendency to speculate and to account for facts by 
 theories, which seems implanted in the race, slowly, very 
 slowly, even in the individual under the discipline of edu- 
 cation, loses its energy. So, in those old days, it was only 
 as men began to question Nature, and not their own 
 brains, that they began to perceive the conditions which 
 Nature had actually imposed on them, and to recognize 
 the difference between these and the imaginary conditions 
 which their speculations had sought to impose upon 
 Nature. Gradually the new logic of experimental demon- 
 stration gathered momentum, the phenomena of magnetic 
 polarity and of induction became recognized, and so came 
 about the first crude conception of the magnetic field of 
 force. A more exact knowledge of the magnet led in- 
 evitably to the perception of the differences between the 
 effects produced by the lodestone and by the rubbed 
 amber ; and at last to the drawing of a clear line of de- 
 marcation between them. 
 
 And then the Sphinx of the centuries follows the flies 
 and the reptiles into the golden recesses of the amber, and 
 there enthroned poses once more the nature of the amber 
 soul as a new riddle. There is no kinship between this 
 evanescent energy drawn from these yellow depths and 
 the stolid pull of the dull stone no similarity between 
 the wayward and mastering spirit which seizes upon any- 
 thing within its strength and the unrelenting tyranny 
 with which the magnet enforces servitude only upon the 
 stubborn iron. What then is this genius which is called 
 forth by the friction of the amber, even as the Afrite was 
 summoned by the rubbing of Aladdin's lamp? Thus the 
 question first asked twenty-two hundred years before was 
 renewed : and now impressed with greater urgency than 
 ever upon the newly-awakened human intellect. 
 
THE PHYSICIANS AS DISCOVERERS. 253 
 
 During this great period the attraction of magnet and 
 amber had been dealt with, first by the philosophers, then 
 by the priests, now by the physicians. To the theo- 
 logians of the last three centuries of this era, the subject 
 is a favorite mine of metaphor from which saints and 
 popes have not disdained to draw. The metallurgists, 
 headed by Agricola, make both the stone and the resin 
 the subject of their didactic description; and, contrariwise, 
 the mystics and magicians heap upon the already-existing 
 mystery of it, new and endless mysteries of their own 
 devising. Only occasionally does a master mind, dominat- 
 ing all known sciences, like that of Sarpi, or some keen 
 student of nature ahead of his times, -as Robert Norman, 
 achieve genuine progress. 
 
 A review of all that has been handed down to us makes 
 it clear that to the members of the medical profession 
 more than to those of any other, is due the impetus which, 
 at the end of the sixteenth century, brought the world to 
 the point where the next step beyond meant the incoming 
 of electricity as a new science. Yet it may well be 
 doubted whether the work of searching out and establish- 
 ing it could have fallen into hands less adapted thereto 
 by past training. Medicine is an inexact science. In 
 no field of human endeavor has the imagination been 
 more severely taxed to frame hypotheses to accord with or 
 account for seemingly endless adventitious phenomena. 
 u Medicine," says Bacon, 1 speaking of it as it existed in 
 his time, " is a science which hath been more professed 
 than labored, and yet more labored than advanced ; the 
 labor having been, in my judgment, rather in circle than 
 in progressing. For I find much iteration, but small 
 addition. n And as to its practitioners, he says, "in the 
 inquiry of diseases they do abandon the cures of many, 
 some as in their nature incurable and others as past the 
 period of cure ; so that Sylla and the Triumvirs never 
 proscribed so many men to die, as they do by their 
 
 1 Bacon : De Augmeiitis, ii., x, 3. 
 
254 TH E INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 ignorant edicts : whereof numbers do escape with less 
 difficulty than they did in the Roman proscriptions." 1 
 Yet the reproach brought against the Asclepiades that 
 they "resigned themselves to visionary speculations, and 
 obeyed the instincts of their understandings rather in 
 crude meditations on the essence of things, the origin of 
 the world, the nature of God and the soul of man, than in 
 developing a practical and useful system of medicine" 2 
 often repeated against the mediaeval physicians, has little 
 justice in it. Like all knowledge depending upon phys- 
 ical investigation, that of the human body lay under the 
 ban of ecclesiastical control. Ceremonies and relics and 
 consecrated specifics, amulets, miracle-working images, and 
 a celestial faculty recruited from the ranks of the saints 
 such were the means too often relied upon to meet the 
 fearful diseases which flourished under conditions which 
 favored every form of contagion and infection. "Afflictions 
 sent by Providence" and "demoniac possessions" were 
 terms which readily veiled the density of the existing 
 ignorance. Man, it was insisted, must not investigate the 
 structure of his own frame with the scalpel, since this 
 argued contempt for the doctrine of final resurrection. 
 Medical practice must be first of all orthodox. Supernat- 
 uralism must prevail, and the struggling lunatic dealt with 
 through book and holy water, rather than through reme- 
 dies ministering to the mind diseased. Progress in any 
 department of the healing art could hardly be expected 
 in such circumstances. 
 
 Hence, while extended allusion to the therapeutic em- 
 ployment of both the magnet and the amber in the Middle 
 Ages has been made in the preceding pages, it would be 
 incorrect to infer that the advancement of magnetic or 
 electrical knowledge was materially accelerated by such 
 use. In fact, so long as the principal value of the lode- 
 stone lay in its utility as "a means of expelling gross 
 
 1 Bacon : De Augmentis, ii., x, 5. 
 
 2 Meryon: The History of Medicine, London, 1861. 
 
THE PHYSICIANS AS DISCOVERERS. 255 
 
 humors," as Dioscorides and Galen averred, the world 
 was none the better for the attention bestowed upon it by 
 these fathers in medicine. It was when the physicians 
 ceased to deal with it, however, as physicians, and began 
 to deal with it as physicists, that real advances began. It 
 was the leaven of the inductive method of Hippocrates 
 which worked for good in them Hippocrates, who had 
 asserted demoniac possession to be u no wise more divine, 
 no wise more infernal, than any other disease," and the 
 sturdy common sense of whose precepts had refused to be 
 destroyed by the magic of the Persians, or the dreams of 
 the Asclepiades, or the numbers of Pythagoras, or the 
 atoms of Democritus, and which even asserted itself free 
 of the entangling meshes of the Aristotelian Matter and 
 Form. 
 
 The priests of Samothrace sold magnet rings to cure 
 rheumatism and gout. A thousand years later the fact 
 was so far forgotten that when Aetius, in the fifth century, 
 compiled all the medical knowledge of his predecessors, 
 and announced that "those who are afflicted with gout in 
 their hands or feet or with convulsions are relieved by 
 holding a magnet in their hands," the discovery was re- 
 garded as wholly new, despite the writer's cautious prefix 
 of "they say" to his asseverations. How the magnet in 
 the hands of the arch impostor Paracelsus became the 
 foundation of speculations as wild and as fantastic as ever 
 man conceived, has already been told, and some reference 
 has been made to the vagaries of Raymond Lully con- 
 cerning it. The knowledge of the embryo science did 
 not advance because of the visionary theories of these 
 people, but despite of them just as it grew in the works 
 of Cardan and Porta, where the statements of great dis- 
 coveries in it are jostled by the descriptions of alleged 
 phenomena as false and as absurd as anything which the 
 veriest charlatan could devise. 
 
 Nevertheless it is to be remembered, that there was hardly 
 a medical writer of any eminence, from the time of Ori- 
 
256 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 basins onward, who did not refer to the magnet in some 
 way often writing utter nonsense about it, sometimes in- 
 terspersing his rumors and vagaries with truths frequently 
 the more forceful for the re-telling in a new manner. If 
 in a multitude of counselors there is wisdom, if the truth 
 resides in numbers of witnesses, surely we may ascribe 
 some of the progress effected to the mutual cancellation of 
 the mistakes and misstatements repeated and reiterated in 
 the works of the old medical writers. The subject was 
 sifted through the books of the Arabs and by their great- 
 est leeches, Hali Abbas, Avicenna and Serapion the Moor; 
 while in Europe, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 
 physicians of commanding eminence hasten to contribute 
 their observations or speculations concerning it, to the 
 general fund of knowledge. Kernel and Dupuis in France, 
 Amatus in Portugal, Thomas Lieber (or Erastus) in Ger- 
 many, Fallopius, Fracastorio, Costaeus and Cardan in 
 Italy such were the men who, with an abundant crop 
 of tares, cultivated the harvest which, meagre as it was, 
 increased a thousandfold within the next hundred years. 
 
 At the end of the sixteenth century, the Italians were 
 far in advance of all other nations in their medical attain- 
 ments, and the English well in the rear. I have encoun- 
 tered no writings by English physicians of that century 
 which entitle them to any credit for either preserving or 
 advancing electrical or magnetic knowledge. The prac- 
 tice of physic did not pass from the active control of the 
 priesthood and become an independent profession in Brit- 
 ain until Henry VIIL, in 1518, granted its charter to the 
 Royal College of Physicians in London. The names of Dr. 
 Linacre and Dr. Kaye (Shakespeare's Dr. Caius) then come 
 into prominence, but chiefly as leaders in the struggle of 
 the college to put down quackery, and to impose qualifica- 
 tions upon the medical practitioner, to maintain itself 
 against the pretensions of the clergy, who still arrogated 
 to themselves the right to license, and to assert its own 
 privileges and dignity. 
 
THE PHYSICIANS AS DISCOVERERS. 257 
 
 If it had been known that the reduction of the elec- 
 trical and magnetic knowledge of the time to a science, 
 coupled moreover with new discoveries of extreme im- 
 portance and brilliancy, was predestined to come from a 
 medical faculty, common consent, as well as the evidence 
 to be derived from all written records, would infallibly 
 have pointed to that existing in Italy; perhaps in Milan 
 or Padua or Bologna. But no one could have foreseen 
 that so startling an event could have originated in Eng- 
 land, could have been the unaided work of an English doc- 
 tor; and, perhaps least of all, of the particular physician 
 who, at the time of its appearance, presided over the des- 
 tinies and troubles of the much-vexed and hard-fighting 
 college in London. 
 
 The rise in electricity had slowly taken place throughout 
 all Europe, indeed, all the world, and therein many na- 
 tionalities had taken part. It was now destined to move 
 with a new and marvelous vigor, through the transcend- 
 ent genius of an Englishman and on English soil. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 WILLIAM GILBERD (or Gilbert, as the name is more 
 commonly written) was born in the year 1540, in Holy 
 Trinity Parish in the town of Colchester, England. 1 He 
 came of excellent family, and was the eldest of the five 
 sons of Jerome Gilbert, at one time town recorder. Of his 
 individual history there is but scant record. He was a 
 physician, but the great work which has insured his im- 
 mortality has no necessary relation to the healing art. No 
 important discovery in medicine is known to be his, and 
 he appears therein only as a teacher and an expounder. 
 And this is the more remarkable, since, in dealing with a 
 different branch of science, he displays not only a marvel- 
 ous originality of thought, but intolerance of accepted 
 opinion to a degree which ordinarily leads most men to 
 revolutionary extremes in any field of action in which they 
 may be placed. 
 
 Something of the difficulty which is encountered in re- 
 conciling the dual intellectual lives of Shakespeare the 
 poet and Shakespeare the player, of Bacon the philosopher 
 and Bacon the advocate, is again met when those of Gil- 
 bert the physician and Gilbert the discoverer are con- 
 trasted. We find, on the one hand, the hard-working 
 London doctor, renouncing matrimony through simple de- 
 votion to his art, and year in and year out teaching a little 
 band of students at his house hard by St. Paul's, until the 
 
 Cooper: Athenae Cantabrigiensis, Cambridge, 1858. This contains a 
 very full list of works in which reference to Gilbert is made. Of the 
 older biographies of him, that which is especially full appears in Bio- 
 graphica Britannia, London, 1757. Among later memoirs may be noted 
 one by Prof. S. P. Thompson, London, 1891, and another by Mr. Con- 
 rad W. Cooke, London, 1890. 
 
 (258) 
 
WILLIAM GILBERT. 259 
 
 queen called him into her service; on the other, a philoso- 
 pher of overshadowing genius pursuing, despite his ar- 
 duous professional labor, and in the very teeth of the fixed 
 beliefs of the world of his time, the first researches seeking 
 to establish physical science on a philosophic basis, and 
 which revealed and co-ordinated the amber-electricity as a 
 new and distinct phenomenon of nature. 
 
 The archives of the University of Cambridge, of the 
 Royal College of Physicians, and the meagre statements 
 of his epitaph high up on the church wall in his native 
 town, tell us the official honors which Gilbert won. But 
 scores of other good and useful men whose fame never 
 traveled beyond their birthplaces, who adopted liberal 
 professions, rose in them, secured their rewards and de- 
 parted, have left records equally respectable. There is 
 nothing in the writings of his time which reveals to us 
 any clear view of other manifestations of the living force 
 which drove Gilbert to the accomplishment of the great 
 task so controlling, so novel, and yet so foreign to his 
 daily round of toil. True, it was not uncommon, in those 
 days, for the physician to follow some other art or practice 
 more to his fancy than his calling. "For you shall have 
 of them," records the great Chancellor caustically, 1 "anti- 
 quaries, poets, humanists, statesmen, merchants, divines, 
 and in every of these better seen than in their profession ; 
 and no doubt upon this ground, that they find that medi- 
 ocrity and excellency in their art maketh no difference in 
 profit or reputation towards their fortune; for the weak- 
 ness of patients, and sweetness of life, and nature of hope, 
 maketh men depend upon physicians with all their de- 
 fects." But the official honors which Gilbert received 
 included all which his profession could give; and, as none 
 of the foregoing influences, however much they might 
 have conduced to his material support, imply the Presi- 
 dency of the Royal College of Physicians, and the ex 
 officio status of professional primacy, it may safely be con- 
 
 1 Bacon: Advt. of Learning, b. ii., c. x., 2. 
 
260 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 eluded that, despite his great work in another art, he was 
 none the less a good and skilful doctor, who rose to high 
 places because he deserved them. 
 
 So the memorials of him fail. We can only read be- 
 tween the lines of his book and draw inferences, and per- 
 haps measure his thought-power by noting its effect upon 
 the thought inertia of his contemporaries : we can quote 
 what this or that philosopher said about him, which is no 
 safe criterion, for where is there less toleration of truths 
 of to-day than in minds filled to saturation with the truths 
 of yesterday? But no Boswell attended his steps, and no 
 relics have been found of that voluminous correspondence 
 which he is said to have opened with the learned men of 
 Italy. One portrait 1 of him which hung in the house of 
 the Royal College of Physicians was destroyed in the 
 Great Fire of 1666, and another which he bequeathed to 
 the Bodleian Library became decayed, was removed, and 
 disappeared unaccountably during the last century. The 
 sole vestiges of him are a few scraps of doubtful hand- 
 writing, and the old house in Colchester where he once re- 
 sided. His fame rests upon the contents of two ancient and 
 yellow-paged volumes, 2 one of which Peter Short printed 
 for him nearly three hundred years ago; the other 3 his 
 surviving brother lovingly collected from his scattered 
 papers, and it lay in manuscript for half a century after 
 his death. 
 
 In the dark days of Queen Mary, the town of Colches- 
 ter, famous then and since for its oysters and Dutch 
 weavers being a " sweet and comfortable mother of the 
 bodies and a tender nourse of the souls of God's chil- 
 dren" 4 the latter, so styling themselves, much affected 
 the common inns as their meeting places. Consequently 
 Protestantism flourished sturdily, until the Smithfield 
 
 1 Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 3, 1662. 
 
 2 De Magnete. London, 1600. 
 
 3 De Mundo Novo Sublunari, Philosophia Nova. Amsterdam, 1561. 
 
 4 P. Morant: The History and Antiquities of Colchester. London, 1748. 
 
WILLIAM GILBERT. 261 
 
 fires spread thither and burned it out. There was not 
 much in the atmosphere of a place where half a dozen 
 rank Gospellers went to the stake of a morning and as 
 many more in the afternoon, to encourage free thought in 
 a boy even of Gilbert's mental strength; nor was eight 
 hours' work a day over the Sententiae Pueriles, or the 
 Accidence (which Mr. Robert Wrennald, in consideration 
 of six pounds, thirteen shillings and four pence annually 
 paid him, taught in the school which King Henry VIII. 
 had founded) 1 especially calculated to expand the faculty 
 of original ideation in any one. 
 
 At the age of eighteen, Gilbert matriculated at St. 
 John's College, Cambridge. The condition of the Uni- 
 versity, then and for several years afterwards, was any- 
 thing but one likely to promote the scholarship or foster 
 the natural abilities of its students. It had fallen far be- 
 low the high standards of Ascham and Cheke; it was 
 destitute of leaders capable of stimulating others by their 
 example to honorable exertion; its undergraduates w ? ere 
 disorderly, insubordinate and even riotous, addicted to 
 gaudy clothes, the taverns and the gambling houses, 
 while religious dissensions ran high between the sympa- 
 thizers with Rome and the adherents of the new Puritan- 
 ism which had found lodgment chiefly in the colleges of 
 Trinity and St. John's. Whatever Cambridge then 
 achieved in advancing real knowledge was the outcome 
 of individual genius rising superior to the prevalent in- 
 fluences of the culture which surrounded it. To science 
 and its votaries, the great University then offered no per- 
 manent home. 2 
 
 Gilbert's progress was unremittingly upward. He at- 
 tained his bachelor's degree in 1560, became a Fellow on 
 Symson's Foundation in 1561, "commenced" M. A., in 
 1564, and during the two years following, was mathematical 
 
 1 P. Morant: The History and Antiquities of Colchester. London, 1748. 
 
 2 The University of Cambridge : Mullinger. Cambridge, 1884. v. ii., 
 pp. 100, 573, 574. 
 
262 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 examiner of his college. Then he studied medicine and 
 reached his Doctorate and a senior Fellowship in 1569, 
 when he terminated his eleven years' connection with the 
 University. 
 
 The facilities for studying anatomy and clinical medi- 
 cine in England, at that time, were not comparable with 
 those to be obtained on the Continent. Vesalius, of the 
 University of Padua, had written, not long before, his 
 famous work based upon actual dissections of the human 
 body, and pointing out the errors into which Galen had 
 fallen through studies said to have been made upon the 
 organs of apes. Enstachius, then living, was continuing 
 the work of his greater contemporary upon the founda- 
 tions of the science of anatomy. The discoveries of Fallo- 
 pius were still new and arousing the keenest interest. 
 Cardan was teaching in Bologna. The chemical medicine 
 of Paracelsus was creating widespread controversy. For a 
 student such as Gilbert, whose turn of mind was of the 
 most practical nature and who possessed a keen taste for 
 experimental research, the opportunities for such study 
 available outside of England furnish abundant reason for 
 his sojourn of four years abroad, and make it needless to 
 picture him as simply making "the grand tour" which, 
 in those days, formed a part of the educational course of 
 well-to-do people. 
 
 Although the habits and mode of thought acquired dur- 
 ing his period of study in the foreign universities had 
 much to do with the development of his later achieve- 
 ments, Gilbert was no one's disciple. No one even played 
 for him the part of a Southampton or an Essex, unless 
 sub silentio the Queen herself. Even the dedication to the 
 young Prince of Wales, who never wore the crown, which 
 prefaces his posthumous volume, was penned by his 
 brother, and not by himself. Nor is any especial influ- 
 ence recognizable which can be said to have aroused in 
 him a spirit of emulation and so to have directed him into 
 his chosen path of discovery. Galen and Dioscorides, in 
 
WILLIAM GILBERT. 263 
 
 fact all of the ancient writers, treated of the lodestone as 
 a part of the materia medico, ; the more modern authors 
 dwelt much also upon its occult powers, and Paracelsus 
 had rejuvenated but recently the superstitions of the old 
 Greeks and had opened the Pandora's box of delusions and 
 deceptions concerning it, which have plagued the world 
 ever since. Gilbert, while showing abundant familiarity 
 with these and other authorities on the medical uses of the 
 magnet, disposes of their labored speculations with scant 
 respect and few words. Therapeutically he thinks the 
 stone has some uses, not however dependent upon its mag- 
 netic quality. As for Paracelsus, he observes that head- 
 aches can no more be cured by a lodestone applied than 
 by a steel hat, and he singles out the apostle of laudanum 
 and mercury for especial scorn. That he owed nothing to 
 the accumulated magnetic wisdom of his professional an- 
 cestors saving perhaps the knowledge of a host of errors 
 to be avoided is clear. His greatest debt, as I shall show 
 hereafter, lay to Peregrinus, to Cardan and Fracastorio as 
 philosophers rather than as physicians, and to Sarpi 
 through Baptista Porta's transcriptions. 
 
 Gilbert's medical reputation must have preceded him, for 
 upon his return to England, he was at once made a Fellow 
 of the Royal College of Physicians. He began practice 
 in London, and established himself in a house on "St. 
 Peter's Hill between upper Thames Street and Little 
 Knight Rider Street." As Dr. Linacre is known 1 to have 
 given a house on Knight Rider Street to the college as its 
 first abode, it may be that Gilbert took up his residence in 
 the college building. At all events, it seems that he led 
 an all but cloistered life and taught medicine at his dwell- 
 ing to a number of students. More probably, however, 
 this gathering was modeled on the Italian ridotto, or was 
 something after the fashion of Porta's suppressed society, 
 the Otiosi, having for its object not only didactic instruc- 
 tion, but free discussion and interchange of opinion. It 
 
 J T. Allen: A New History of London, 1883, iii., 573. 
 
264 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 was the first association of its kind in England, and the 
 precursor of the Royal Society. 1 That it was popular 
 among the students is attested by John Chamberlain, 2 who 
 lived with Gilbert and who speaks of " the town as empty 
 as if it were dead vacation, nobody at the Doctor's." 
 Later, when Gilbert was called to Whitehall, Chamberlain 
 predicts the disbanding of the society, saying U I doubt 
 our college will be dissolved and some of us sent to seeke 
 our fortune;" and still later, after Gilbert's departure, "the 
 covie is now dispersed," he chronicles somewhat ruefully, 
 "and we are driven to seeke our feeding further off, our 
 Doctor being alredy setled in Court." Meanwhile Gilbert 
 was elected to the office of Censor of the College three 
 times, twice to that of Treasurer, then he became, in 1597, 
 Consilarius in place of Dr. Giffard, and finally, in 1600, 
 the same year in which his famous work appeared, he 
 reached the Presidential Chair. 
 
 In the last-named year also, as Chamberlain records, 
 Queen Elizabeth appointed him one of her body physi- 
 cians, a merely perfunctory office, for she detested doctors 
 and would have none of their drugs. Perhaps her un- 
 lucky experience with the Jew, Rodrigo Lopez, whom she 
 covertly- favored and allowed to prescribe for her, until he 
 was detected trying to give her poison (being thereunto in- 
 cited, so it was said, by Spain) and duly convicted, shat- 
 tered her faith in the medical profession : perhaps, in her 
 last years, she believed in her own sarcastic remark that 
 the people would say that the physicians killed her if she 
 died of old age after following their counsels : perhaps she 
 
 1 It is generally stated that the organization of the College of Philoso- 
 phy instituted in London in 1645, which immediately preceded the Royal 
 Society, was due to the scheme of Solomon's House described by Bacon 
 in the New Atlantis and first suggested in his Praise of Knowledge, pub- 
 lished in 1593. Gilbert's society, however, appears to be of still earlier 
 establishment. It may have been the first medical "quiz" class in 
 England. 
 
 2 Letters written by John Chamberlain during the reign of Queen 
 Elizabeth. London, Camden Society, 1861, pp. 88, 102, 103. 
 
GILBERT AND THE QUEEN. 265 
 
 drew no distinction between Giflfarde, Caius and Caldwell, 
 and the barber surgeons or the leeches turned loose upon 
 her people, through the Heaven-sent discernment and 
 selection of his Grace of Canterbury. At all events, as is 
 well known, she refused to take physic to the last, and 
 grimly flouted her doctors from her pile of cushions as 
 long as fierce will and frail body remained together ; and 
 then, with characteristic inconsistency, left to one of 
 them and that one, it is said, Gilbert the only substan- 
 tial bequest whereby she remembered any of her personal 
 attendants. The chorus of execration which arose from 
 the ignored royal household is historical ; but the great 
 work of Gilbert had then been written and laid at her 
 feet. The book itself was not without a spice of ingenious 
 flattery for herself, and so it is not difficult to imagine that 
 the Queen was willing to give to him, in order to carry on 
 labors whereof she saw the value, the pension which she 
 was equally ready to deny even to the most sycophantic of 
 her court satellites. 
 
 The laudatory address of Edward Wright, the mathe- 
 matician, which is prefixed to Gilbert's first and chief 
 volume, 1 wherein all his magnetic and electrical experi- 
 ments and discoveries are recorded, says that it was held 
 back from the press for nearly twice the Horatian period. 
 This places the time of its inception shortly after Gilbert 
 became Censor of the Royal College of Physicians the 
 acquirement of which dignity, and the fact that he was 
 enabled to undertake a task requiring so great an expend- 
 iture of time and labor in addition to the duties imposed 
 on him by his profession, fairly indicate that in the decade 
 which had elapsed since his settlement in England, he had 
 achieved no small measure of success. The statement has 
 
 1 The title in full is as follows : 
 
 Guilielmi Gil / berti Colcestren- / sis, medici lotidi- / nensis, / De Mag- 
 nete, Magneti- / cisque Corporibus, et de Mag- / no magnete tellure ; 
 Physiologia Nova, / Plurimis et argumentis, et expe / rimentis demon- 
 strata. / Londini / Excudebat Petrus Short Anno / MDC. / 
 
266 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 been made that his magnetic experiments involved an 
 actual outlay of over ^5,000 sterling, 1 and Gilbert him- 
 self avers in his preface that, in his endeavor to discover 
 the true substance of the earth, he examined matters ob- 
 tained from lofty mountains, sea depths and hidden 
 mines from which it may be inferred that he had made a 
 large collection of rare substances, which, in those days, 
 must have involved great outlay. So also, in describing 
 one of his experiments, he speaks of testing the supposed 
 magnetizing effect of seventy-five diamonds. It is evi- 
 dent, moreover, that all of his practical research was made 
 with the utmost attention to detail, that his tests were re- 
 peated over and over again, sometimes with very slight 
 variations. They form a great multitude of experiments 
 and discoveries dug up, he says, with much pains and 
 sleepless nights and at great cost; and "all of them done 
 again and again under my own eyes." 
 
 It was impossible for such an intellect as that of Gil- 
 bert not to draw comparisons between knowledge based 
 on the magnificent discoveries of the Italian anatomists, 
 and that founded on the pedantic re-readings of Galen 
 about which the English physicians ceaselessly wrangled ; 
 or between the intelligence which sought, at the bedside, 
 the best modes of assisting the vis medicatrix natures, and 
 the quacks, whom he denounces as prescribing gold and 
 emerald and practicing wretched imposture for money. 
 To him who has learned the art of questioning nature, 
 there belongs a potent armament adaptable to all needs. 
 The study of the obscure functions of the human organs 
 and that of the equally obscure phenomena of the lode- 
 stone involved, in both instances, "sure experiments and 
 demonstrated arguments" the same care "to look for 
 knowledge not in books but in things" and the handling 
 of bodies "carefully, skillfully and deftly." The skill 
 trained to one task was inevitably trained in all essentials 
 
 fuller: Worthies of England, 16. Morhof: Polyhist. Lit. Lubeck, 
 1732, Vol. II., 3d ed., 409. 
 
THE COPERNICAN DOCTRINE. 267 
 
 to the other, and thus properly directed, the genius of 
 Gilbert moved forward in the path of new discovery, 
 perhaps as nearly in a right line as any fallible human 
 effort can so proceed. 
 
 In 1543, the year of his death, Nicolas Copernicus ven- 
 tured "merely as an hypothesis for their better explana- 
 tion" to publish the cosmical discoveries which he had 
 made thirty-five years earlier. It did not become a Polish 
 Catholic canon and prebendary to do more than cautiously 
 suggest, even at the eleventh hour, a theory which would 
 have been perilous to advance at an earlier time. Yet, 
 the hypothesis of the earth's revolution about the sun was 
 no new one. Among the ancient philosophers Heraclides 
 of Ponticus, Ecphantus, Nicetas of Syracuse, and chiefly 
 Philolaus, had all affirmed it, and it had found its first 
 modern support during the fifteenth century at the hands 
 of Cardinal de Cusa, who asserted, without qualification, 
 "jam n obis manifestum terram in veritate moveri," al- 
 though he offered no more proof of the fact than did his 
 predecessors. Copernicus, however, took "the liberty of 
 trying whether on the supposition of the earth's motion it 
 was possible to find better explanations than the ancient 
 ones of the revolutions of the celestial orbs," and con- 
 cluded that "if the motions of the other planets be com- 
 pared with the revolution of the earth, not only their 
 phenomena follow from their suppositions, but also that 
 the several orbs and the whole system are so connected in 
 order and magnitude that no one part can be transposed 
 without disturbing the rest and introducing confusion into 
 the universe." 
 
 This doctrine was brought into England by Giordano 
 Bruno of Nola, one of the last martyrs of philosophy, 
 whose statue, erected within late years, marks the spot in 
 the Eternal city where his too aggressive wit was expiated 
 under the all-embracing name of heresy. In 1583, he held 
 public disputations with Oxford doctors, and subsequently 
 formulated his metaphysics in his treatises. From Bruno 
 
268 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 it may be presumed that Gilbert imbibed the ideas which 
 made him not only the first of English Copernicans, but 
 from his very nature an active defender of the new theory, 
 with the original tenets of which he coupled his belief 
 that the diurnal rotation, as well as the polarity, of the 
 earth is due to the magnetic nature or Form of a so-called 
 terrene matter of which he regarded the globe as com- 
 posed. 
 
 The ultimate aim and object of Gilbert's work was 
 therefore to substantiate the doctrine of Copernicus by 
 entirely new arguments and experiments : and this at a 
 time when the opinion of the world or what was then 
 nearly the same, the opinion of the Church was inflexibly 
 arrayed against it. To have published such a theory in 
 the England of Mary would have inevitably resulted in 
 the consignment of the book, if not its author, to the 
 flames; but the Roman arm did not extend to Elizabeth's 
 England, and the Queen's physician might safely brave 
 the power which, in his boyish days, for the utterance of 
 heresies far less pestilent and subversive, he had seen hale 
 his townsmen and neighbors to the stake. So he printed 
 what he had excogitated, not in barbarous monk-Latin, 
 bristling with contractions and packed into a dumpy 
 octavo, after the fashion of most scientific works of the 
 time, but in language which, if not entirely Augustan and 
 betraying its English origin in its sturdy assertiveness and 
 bluff invective, is far from destitute of rhetorical grace; 
 and replaced the incubus imprimatur of the Holy Inquisi- 
 tion with pictures of the Queen's Arms, and her monogram 
 and her falcon badge of maidenhood, inherited from the 
 ill-fated Anna Boleyn, and her rising phoenix semper 
 eadem which, a dozen years before, had soared to glory 
 over the wreck of the Invincible Armada. It may have 
 been chance which transferred to Gilbert's pages the same 
 emblazonments which appear in those of Darcie's History 
 of England of earlier date, which ends with the story of 
 the magnificent victory in the Channel; it may have been 
 
GILBERT'S PHILOSOPHY. 269 
 
 that the Cupids and flowers which entwine the Royal 
 monogram were put there because of their assumed pleas- 
 ant significance to the " fair vestal throned by the West;" 
 but no one will deny the singular appropriateness of the 
 emblems of England's grandeur impressed upon the first 
 great scientific treatise of modern times, and flaunting 
 anew the challenge of the free Anglo-Saxon in the field 
 of thought as in that of arms. Rome denounced the 
 book; but there is no record that along with the treatises 
 of Galileo, to which they had lent inspiration and in com- 
 parison with which they were the greater offender, the 
 Italian hangman burned the pages which bore the English 
 rose. 
 
 I have stated that Gilbert's physical researches were in- 
 tended to support the Copernican theory. This he sought 
 to do, not directly, but by founding upon his experiments 
 a so-called "magnetic" hypothesis, whereby he believed 
 that the earth's motion could be explained. A brief review 
 of this speculation is, at the outset, desirable. Afterwards 
 I shall note the unfavorable reception which it encoun- 
 tered, and the possible temporary disrepute of Gilbert's 
 entire work because of his errors concerning dip and varia- 
 tion. As resulting in the first great physical investiga- 
 tion, depending upon the inductive method, some consid- 
 eration of Gilbert's mode of philosophic thought is also 
 necessary : all of the foregoing being a prelude to the 
 review of the discoveries which underlie the modern 
 science of electricity. 
 
 The fundamental arguments which Gilbert advances in 
 support of the heliocentric theory do not differ essentially 
 from those which had already become known among the 
 Continental philosophers. He regards the geocentric doc- 
 trine as best refuted by the suggestion of the immense 
 rapidity with which the spherical heavens must revolve 
 the extravagant whirling of the primum mobile if the 
 
270 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 earth be regarded as the motionless centre of the universe 
 (a notion which had occurred long before to the Venetian 
 Benedetti, the first clear refuter of Aristotle's mechanics) 
 and which Burton quaintly describes as so great that "an 
 arrow out of a bow must go seventeen times about the 
 earth whilst a man can say an Ave Maria." 1 Such earlier 
 objections as this to the Ptolemaic system he epitomizes 
 with characteristic perspicuity; but when he undertakes 
 to present affirmatively his own supposed magnetic proof 
 of the earth's motion, he becomes both doubtful and ob- 
 scure; doubtful, inasmuch as he leaves it questionable 
 whether he intends to accept the idea of an annual motion 
 of the earth about the sun, and obscure, in his explanation 
 of the manner in which the magnetic quality of the earth 
 in his belief causes the diurnal movement on its axis. 
 
 In developing his cosmical theory, Gilbert, following 
 the precedent of earlier co-believers, makes his main point 
 of attack the theory of Aristotle, that the earth is spheri- 
 cal and has its center coincident with the center of the 
 universe about which the heavens revolve: and more par- 
 ticularly the Peripatetic argument that the earth does not 
 move, first, because it is at the center of the universe, to 
 which all heavy bodies gravitate to find a position of rest, 
 and second, because a rotary motion would not belong 
 naturally to the earth itself, but would pertain equally to 
 each portion of the earth, whereas such is obviously not 
 true, all of these portions being carried in a straight line 
 to the center. 2 Against this Gilbert maintains that the 
 earth is not a chaotic spherical mass, but one having de- 
 finite poles which are not merely mathematical expres- 
 sions, but which, on the contrary, are set at fixed points, 
 whereat the greatest verticity of the earth is manifested, 
 and whereon, he holds it is magnetically demonstrable, 
 the earth revolves. This rotation is diurnal, for none else 
 will account for the attending phenomena. The existence 
 
 1 Anatomy of Melancholy, part 2, 2, Mem. 3, 
 
 2 Aristotle: De Ccelo, ii., chap. xiv. 
 
GILBERT'S PHILOSOPHY. 271 
 
 of these poles is due to a creative act whereby forces prim- 
 arily animate were implanted in the globe in order that it 
 might steadfastly take direction (in space), and in order 
 that the poles might be opposite, so as to serve as the ex- 
 tremities of an axis on which the earth turns. The direc- 
 tion in space is such that the North pole of the earth 
 constantly regards the Pole star ; so that, if that pole were 
 turned aside from this steadfast position it would go back 
 thereto. 
 
 It will be apparent that this doctrine rests upon the con- 
 clusion that the earth itself is a freely movable magnet, 
 having poles and amenable to the same laws as the compass 
 needle. How this was reached will soon be shown. 
 
 Thus far Gilbert's theory is not difficult to follow; but 
 when he comes to explain, not conditions under which an 
 asserted rotation of the earth on its axis might take place, 
 but how such rotation, through magnetic means, actually 
 does take place, difficulties arise. Obviously any tendency 
 of the earth's axis to return to normal position when di- 
 verted therefrom cannot account for the revolution of the 
 globe itself. But, says Gilbert, the whole earth regards the 
 Pole star, and similarly, each true part of the earth seeks a 
 like place in the world (universe) and turns with a circular 
 motion to that position. The natural movements of the 
 whole and of the parts are alike; hence, since the parts 
 move in a circle, the whole has circular motion, and hence 
 the whole earth is adapted to such movement. 
 
 This is not only inconclusive, but, on prima facie 
 showing, appears to be nothing more than the theory 
 of Peregrinus (that the magnet is directed, not solely 
 by the poles of the heavens acting upon the poles of 
 the stone, but by all parts of the heavens acting upon 
 all parts of the stone) which Gilbert has applied to his 
 huge magnet, the earth. But so to assume would be to 
 involve Gilbert in the fatal inconsistency of both denying 
 and affirming the existence of a rotary heaven ; for, ac- 
 cording to Peregrinus' doctrine, unless such be present, 
 
272 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 there is no force acting to rotate the poised stone, while 
 of course, in the Copernican system, a rotary heaven has 
 no place. 
 
 There is, however, to be added Gilbert's further 
 hypothesis that every magnet, the earth included, is sur- 
 rounded both by an "orb of virtue" which includes the 
 whole space through which the magnetic action extends ; 
 and by an "orb of coition" which includes all that space 
 through which the smallest magnetic body is moved by 
 the magnet, and beyond which, in other words, the magnet 
 can produce no motion in solid matter. In modern terms 
 the orb of virtue may be regarded as the whole magnetic 
 field capable of recognition as such, and the orb of 
 coition that part of the field in which a selected extremely 
 small magnetic body is attracted. These orbs or spheres 
 which Gilbert speaks of as "effused," and as produced 
 directly from the earth's exhalations, are magnetic be- 
 cause so generated ; but such phenomena are by no means 
 limited to our globe alone. Thus, he considers that all 
 heavenly bodies, and especially the sun and moon, have 
 such effused spheres, which are capable of acting upon 
 other bodies and other effused spheres. Hence, not only 
 does the earth, as has been said, remain in its place by its 
 own magnetic virtues, but "by a confederation of the 
 adjacent globes through the connected effluent strengths, 
 it is directed harmoniously to its neighbors ;" it is moved 
 by "the conspiracy of motions of other bodies and by 
 their effused forms moving together, especially by the sun 
 and moon, by which it is bounded and limited." 
 
 It seems therefore that Gilbert, besides apprehending the 
 existence of a field of force around the earth, also pictured 
 to himself the action of that field upon other fields, and 
 of other fields upon it; a conception so far in advance of 
 his age that nothing but his unequivocally direct state- 
 ments make one willing for a moment to entertain the 
 belief that he ever harbored it ; a conception which finds 
 an every-day illustration in the electric motor in fact, 
 
GILBERT'S ERRORS. 273 
 
 in every electrical apparatus in which mechanical motion 
 is caused by the reaction of fixed and moving fields of 
 force. It cannot, of course, be affirmed that Gilbert con- 
 ceived of the rotation of the earth in the fields of the sun 
 and moon in any such way as we regard the rotation of an 
 armature in a magnetic field ; but that he certainly did 
 regard the earth's diurnal rotation as somehow due to 
 the confederacy and conspiracy of the earth's effused Form 
 acting on, and being acted upon by, the effused Forms of 
 other celestial bodies is plain. 
 
 Of course all this probably intensified the obscurity of 
 Gilbert's theory at the time of its production. And an 
 obscure hypothesis, intended to substantiate another which, 
 according to prevalent opinion, was not philosophical ar- 
 gument, but pestilent, soul-destroying heresy, had not 
 much way-making power even among those who disputed 
 theological conclusions and were inclined to tolerate truth 
 regardless of the finger-posts at Rome. Hence it may 
 readily be imagined that even to the Copernicans them- 
 selves Gilbert may have seemed a doubtful auxiliary, while 
 there was manifestly not much heart of grace to be taken 
 from his long category of experiments and arguments, 
 however individually true and interesting they might be, 
 so long as they seemed in respect to their aim and object 
 merely a ladder leading nowhere. 
 
 There was a more serious trouble in Gilbert's work, 
 however, than even the advocacy of proscribed astronomi- 
 cal doctrines, and that lay in his erroneous notions con- 
 cerning the dip and variation of the compass. At the time 
 he gave these to the world, the English seaman was rapidly 
 merging the pirate in the merchant adventurer, the naval 
 supremacy of England was established, there were no 
 more Invincible Armadas to be feared, a great trade was 
 to be wrested from Spain and Portugal and Italy, and the 
 exploits and discoveries of Drake and Raleigh and Fro- 
 bisher were setting the heart beating and the fancy 
 aflame of every youth in whose veins ran the blood of the 
 18 
 
274 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 men who had sunk the Danish harriers, and who longed 
 to voyage to Virginia and the strange lands of the New 
 World, and perchance to find fortune in some gold-logged 
 galleon on the Spanish Main. 
 
 Errors likely to wreck ships, made when the eyes of all 
 Englishmen were turned to the sea, were likely to prove 
 doubly harmful, especially as there was nowhere the cor- 
 rect knowledge necessary to recognize their fallacy, or 
 even to prevent people presumably expert in such matters 
 from endorsing them as truths. Edward Wright, in his 
 prefatory address to Gilbert's treatise, although looking 
 askance at the magnetic theory of the earth's rotation, 
 (nevertheless he does u not see why it should not meet 
 with indulgence ") grows eloquent over Gilbert's mistaken 
 idea that the dip of the magnetized needle "differs in the 
 ratio of the latitude of each region," and that hence, the 
 dip being once determined and the latitude observed, 
 "the same place and the same latitude may thereafter be 
 readily found by means of the dipping needle even in the 
 darkness and fog." Equally erioneous was his opinion 
 that compass variation is nothing but the deviation of the 
 needle to more massive or elevated parts of the globe, and 
 that it is constant at the same place. When these beliefs 
 were proved to be wrong, it must have seemed to many 
 that not only was Gilbert's general theory vague and 
 indefinite, but that even his especial practical applications 
 of it to the purposes of the navigator were misleading, and 
 more likely to invite the perils of the sea than to prevent 
 them. 
 
 Before the extent of his errors and uncertainties was 
 generally perceived, his work was generally praised ; but 
 later it seems to have fallen into oblivion. Small wonder, 
 when to the many who believed it heretical were added 
 more who thought it open to the charge of teaching 
 delusions. But in time the world separated the delu- 
 sions from the truths ; it rehabilitated Gilbert, not for his 
 speculations, not even because he rescued the study of 
 
GILBERT AND ARISTOTLE. 2 75 
 
 the magnet from the atmosphere of mysticism which sur- 
 rounded it : but because, in celebrating the man, it like- 
 wise celebrated the beginning of the removal of all natural 
 science from the quicksands of empiricism and specu- 
 lation, ancf the placing of it upon the solid basis of actual 
 experiment, the evidence of the senses and philosophical 
 thought. 
 
 Although Gilbert constantly revolts against the physical 
 theories of the Peripatetics, it is none the less clear that 
 his mind was deeply tinctured with the logic and meta- 
 physics of Aristotle. But he stood at the dividing line 
 between the old philosophy and the new. To the rules of 
 the Stagirite he could conform his speculations ; but he 
 drew his conclusions under the rules imposed by Nature. 
 The control of Aristotle over mental processes did not 
 imply with him a corresponding control over the inter- 
 pretation of physical facts ; and this being so, he definitely 
 established, for the first time in the world's history, the 
 truth that metaphysical arguments alone are incompetent 
 to explain Nature's workings or to detect her immutable 
 laws. 
 
 This appreciated makes fairly clear the method of 
 investigation which he endeavored to follow, and sheds 
 light on many of his statements otherwise obscure or self- 
 contradictory. His treatise contains much of what Aris- 
 totle calls exoteric discourse a process of noticing and 
 tracing out all the doubts and difficulties which beset the 
 enquiry in hand, along with the different opinions enter- 
 tained about it, either by the vulgar or by individual 
 philosophers, and the various reasons why such opinions 
 may be sustained or impugned. 1 After doing this, still 
 following the procedure of the Stagirite, he begins to lay 
 down and follow out affirmative principles of his own, 
 thus passing from the dialectic to the didactic stage. But 
 
 1 Aristotle: Topica, i. (Grote, Aristotle, i., 68). 
 
276 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 when lie comes to recording his experiments, to testing 
 the results by negative arguments and contradiction, to 
 rising from particulars to the general, and thus deducing 
 new conclusions, we shall find in practical application the 
 principles of inductive reasoning which his great contem- 
 porary and critic, Francis Bacon, a few years later, formu- 
 lated for all time and all men. The discussion of Gilbert's 
 relations to Bacon, however, must be deferred to another 
 chapter, in order that our present review of his theories 
 may progress in an orderly way. 
 
 If the magnetic earth-rotation theory be, for the mo- 
 ment, laid aside, Gilbert's primary thesis is that the globe 
 consists of a certain solid homogeneous substance, firmly 
 coherent and endowed with a primordial actualizing Form. 
 The various substances which appear on the surface of the 
 globe through contact with the atmosphere, waters, and by 
 influence of the heavenly bodies, have become more or less 
 deprived of the prime qualities and true nature of this ter- 
 rene Matter. But the lodestone and all magnetic bodies 
 contain the potency of the earth's core and of its inmost 
 viscera, in virtue of which the earth itself remains in posi- 
 tion and is directed in its movements. Thus the earth is 
 in fact a huge magnet, or the lodestone is a fragment of 
 the magnetic earth possessing the primal Form of things 
 terrestrial. Between Matter and Form he drew substan- 
 tially the Aristotelian distinctions. 
 
 The investigations made by Gilbert in support of this 
 theory, consisted first in determining what is a magnet, 
 second, the cause and character of magnetic attraction, or 
 as he preferred to call it, coition, and third, the nature of 
 its polarity or directive quality, or to use his own word, 
 "verticity." Having found certain phenomena of the 
 lodestone true of the earth, and conversely certain terres- 
 trial phenomena true in a miniature earth made of lode- 
 stone, he concludes the globe to be itself a magnet, and 
 thence proceeds to the researches wherein he not only 
 passed in review all preconceived notions of magnetism, 
 
GILBERT'S TERRELLA. 277 
 
 and probably tested every experiment thereto relating of 
 which he could find record, but made a remarkable num- 
 ber of new discoveries. More than this, he took up, for 
 the first time for systematic study, the phenomenon of 
 the amber not primarily for the purpose of inquiring 
 into its nature, but really as a digression, and with the ob- 
 ject of showing that it was totally different from that of 
 the magnet. 
 
 The research begins with a comparison of the poles of 
 the heavens, the poles of the earth and the poles of the 
 lodestone; and the proposition is at once laid down that 
 the poles of a magnet on the earth look toward the poles 
 of the earth, move toward them and are subject to them. 
 This was the first statement of the truth that the compass 
 needle is governed not by the heavens nor by the Pole 
 star, nor by the poles of the heavens but by the mag- 
 netic quality of the globe itself. 
 
 GILBERT'S 
 
 In order to prove the like nature of the earth and the 
 lodestone, Gilbert carved a piece of the stone into spheri- 
 cal form; because, as he says, that shape is the most per- 
 fect, agrees best with the earth, which is a globe, and is 
 
 1 From the first edition of his treatise De Magnete. A and B repre- 
 sent the earth's poles, F the earth's centre and D and E pivoted com- 
 pass needles applied to the lodestone ball. 
 
278 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 better adapted for experimental purposes. This miniature 
 earth he calls an earthkin or terrella, and upon this he 
 makes his experiments, mainly by placing near to it 
 pivoted iron needles or iron plates, and noting the direc- 
 tive or attractive force exerted by the globe. 
 
 The close similarity of this course to that followed by 
 Peregrinus will at once be apparent. But Peregrinus re- 
 garded his spherical magnet as a miniature representative 
 of the celestial sphere: Gilbert regarded it not merely as 
 a representative of the spherical earth, but actually as the 
 earth ; in the sense that it was physically a fragment 
 thereof, possessing, though in less degree, the same poten- 
 cies and energies. Peregrinus considered the magnetized 
 needle as influenced by the poles of the spherical heavens 
 represented in the lodestone globe : Gilbert, by the actual 
 poles of the small spherical lodestone, in precisely the 
 same way as by the actual poles of a greater spherical 
 lodestone namely, the earth. 
 
 Yet undeniably both Peregrinus and Gilbert performed 
 exactly the same experiment and with the same thing. 
 Natural phenomena are not changed by the names men 
 give them, and whether the lodestone globe be regarded 
 as a miniature earth or a miniature heavenly sphere cannot 
 alter in the slightest either the nature of the object or the 
 effects produced by it. I may even go further and, as I 
 have already suggested in discussing the experiments of 
 Peregrinus, point out that the analogy of the lodestone 
 globe to the earth may, from Peregrinus' language, be 
 fairly inferred as not unperceived by him. But, there is 
 all the difference in the world between approximating a 
 result, however nearly, and actually attaining it ; while 
 there is no argument more frequently specious and hence 
 more perilous than that which seeks to establish conclu- 
 sions as foregone after the event. Granting that Pere- 
 grinus perceived an analogy between his globular lodestone 
 and the earth he did not see them as one and the same 
 thing differing only in magnitude. Gilbert did: he made 
 
GILBERT AND PEREGRINUS. 279 
 
 his terrella, as he thought, of the earth, as the earth and 
 in the shape of the earth; judged of the whole from the 
 part, and thus attained the conclusion which Peregrinus 
 did not reach namely, that the globe on which we live 
 is a huge magnet. 
 
 But the details of the initial experiments on the terrella, 
 its manufacture on the lathe as lapidaries turn and polish 
 crystals, the modes of finding its poles and magnetic me- 
 ridians by short bits of iron, the greater attraction of the 
 poles for these pieces, their erection at the polar points, 
 their varying inclinations when supported in different parts 
 of the field, the practical demonstration of the laws of mag- 
 netic attraction and repulsion, and the distinguishing of 
 the magnetic poles, Gilbert takes directly from the famous 
 Letter of Peregrinus, at times almost verbatim. He even 
 copies figurative expressions which Peregrinus uses, such 
 as the comparison of the magnet in its floating bowl to a 
 sailor in a boat. The fact that Gilbert makes no acknowl- 
 edgment of Peregrinus' achievements in all these vital 
 matters some may find explicable by the disregard for the 
 amenities which characterizes his entire work. Others 
 again will find it difficult to reconcile his appropria- 
 tion of Peregrinus' discoveries with his immediately fol- 
 lowing statement that the whole philosophy of the mag- 
 net is ill-cultivated even in its elementary principles. 
 
 It is true that this systematic habit of not acknowledg- 
 ing the effective work of his predecessors makes it no easy 
 task to distinguish with certainty the true extent of Gil- 
 bert's accomplishments, even in the light of the review of 
 past progress which has already been presented. He 
 rarely mentions an earlier writer except to dispute conclu- 
 sions, which may perhaps be due to the influence exerted 
 upon him by Aristotle, who, as Bacon repeatedly re- 
 marks, "as though he had been of the race of the Otto- 
 mans, thought he could not reign except the first thing he 
 did he killed all his brethren." 1 
 
 . of Learning, Book 2., c. viii., 5. "And herein I cannot a little 
 
280 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 He cites Porta more than any one else, Cardan next and 
 then Fracastorio, mainly to exhibit their errors; but he 
 draws freely upon Porta, for example, in stating the rela- 
 tions of divided lodestones and the behavior of magnetic 
 bodies in the field of force, and upon Cardan for differentia- 
 tion between lodestone and amber. If, by chance, he 
 happens to express a favorable opinion of these philoso- 
 phers, he always manages afterwards to reverse it. He be- 
 gins by calling Porta a philosopher of no ordinary note, 
 and ends by denouncing his statements as the maunder- 
 ings of a babbling crone. Fracastorio is an ingenious phil- 
 osopher and also a reckless speculator. As regards Cardan, 
 the importance of whose brilliant differentiation of lode- 
 stone and amber we have already seen, Gilbert is at least 
 consistent, for he never permits himself any praise at all 
 of the famous Milanese, who he asserts reasoned solely on 
 the basis of vague and indecisive experiments. And as 
 for the other philosophers, whether writers on medicine, 
 or on navigation, or on astronomy, ancient or modern, 
 Platonist or Peripatetic, charlatans, such as Paracelsus, or 
 scholars, however of learned repute, all are included in 
 censure and often abuse, which last perhaps reaches its 
 lowest level in a bitter anathema against Taisnier, the 
 plagiarist of Peregrinus; although, from one point of view, 
 it may be urged that the only difference between Taisnier 
 and Gilbert himself is that Gilbert's plagiarisms from the 
 same source are much the more complete and accurate. 
 
 The sole exception to be found in this wholesale con- 
 demnation is an accordance of honor to Aristotle, Theo- 
 phrastus, Ptolemy, Hippocrates and Galen, whence he 
 says came the stream of wisdom, and who, he is per- 
 
 marvel at the philosopher Aristotle, that did proceed in such a spirit of 
 difference and contradiction toward all antiquity; undertaking not only 
 to frame new words of science at pleasure, but to confound and extin- 
 guish all ancient wisdom; insomuch as he never nameth or mentioneth 
 an ancient author or opinion but to confute and reprove : wherein for 
 glory and drawing followers and disciples he took the right course." 
 Advt. of Learning, B. 2, c. viii., 2. Bacon himself did the same. 
 
GILBERT AND HIS PREDECESSORS. 281 
 
 suaded, would gladly have embraced many of the new 
 things brought to light since their departure, had they 
 known of them ; and his mention of St. Thomas Aquinas, 
 (who seems to have anticipated his notions of magnetic 
 coition), as a man of god-like and lucid mind ; a tribute 
 which, by reason of its solitude, engenders the suspicion 
 that his failure to contradict it subsequently was due rather 
 to oversight than design. 
 
 Following the general enunciation of his conception of 
 the earth's magnetism, and his repetition of the experi- 
 ments of Peregrinus, Gilbert enters upon the researches 
 which are plainly original. Then he rises to an eminence 
 so lofty, that his contemptuous criticisms of his predeces- 
 sors soon resemble the scorn of the eagle for the flights of 
 the sparrows. If then he is intolerant, it is that intoler- 
 ance which every man who sees the truth, however ob- 
 scurely, feels for others who preach error or half truth. 
 If he seems to belittle the achievements of his predecessors, 
 it is due to that instinctive tendency of the mind to con- 
 clude that that which is false in part is false in all, rather 
 than to impute to truth the greater leavening power. Con- 
 sequently, when, at the very outset of his studies, he finds 
 Cardan gravely asserting that a wound by a magnetized 
 needle is painless when he had only to prick his finger to 
 learn the opposite or Fracastorio that a lodestone will 
 attract silver, or Scaliger that the diamond will draw iron, 
 or Matthiolus that garlic cuts off magnetic attraction all 
 susceptible of easy disproof, which disproof he actually 
 makes and sees, he says, in the uneuphemistic terms 
 characteristic of his day, not that these people are mis- 
 taken, but that they wilfully falsify. After that the 
 mental process is easy. Anything proved true, he un- 
 doubtedly argued to himself, if drawn from that sink of 
 mendacity, redounds, not to the credit of the sink, but 
 of him who rakes it out. Therefore he did everything 
 anew not, as he says, for the purpose of refuting prior 
 falsehoods or overturning old delusions, but to build 
 
282 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 up the new physiology of the magnet from the very 
 foundations. 
 
 If then he plagiarizes Peregrinus, it is not the ipse dixit 
 of Peregrinus which he copies blindly, regardless of 
 whether right or wrong, but he tests the experiments of 
 Peregrinus crucially, finds them true, and, for that reason, 
 adopts them as a part of his structure. It is immaterial to 
 him who originated the experiment which he tests 
 whether himself or some one else. The great question 
 which he seeks to solve is, is the result true "Not in 
 books, but in things themselves?" he says, "look for 
 knowledge." Every experiment not merely those which 
 he first conceived, but those of any and every origin 
 "has been investigated and again and again done and 
 repeated under our eyes." 
 
 Gilbert's philosophy, resting, as I have said, upon that 
 of Aristotle, is imbued with the distinction between Form 
 and Matter, which the Greek makes of fundamental im- 
 port in his Philosophia Prima, and diversifies with an 
 infinitude of subtleties. Borrowed by the Stagirite from 
 the familiar facts of the sensible world that matter has 
 always some shape and shape has always some matter, and 
 that we can name and reason about matter without distin- 
 guishing its shape, and equally name and reason about 
 shape without attending to the material shaped or its 
 various peculiarities the doctrine assumed the abstract 
 signification of two correlates inseparably implicated in 
 fact and reality in every concrete individual that has 
 received a substantive name, yet logically separable and 
 capable of being named and considered apart from each 
 other. Matter is the lower, inchoate conception the 
 unactual or potential. Form actualizes this into the per- 
 fect or complete, and furnishes the energizing principle. 
 Matter is a cause co-operative. Form is a cause operative. 
 Matter is to Form as brass is to the statue, wood to the 
 couch, and the body of man to the soul. 1 Form in the 
 
 1 1 have followed in the foregoing the close analysis of the Aristotelian 
 
MATTER AND FORM. 283 
 
 writings of the schoolmen was synonymous with at- 
 tribute : "it is that by which a thing is." An angel to a 
 schoolman was a Form not immersed in Matter. " Angeli 
 sunt formae immateriales," says the Angelic Doctor. 1 
 
 The Matter of the earth, according to Gilbert, is en- 
 dowed with Form or efficient potencies which give to it 
 firmness, direction and movement. Of these the princi- 
 pal feature is "verticity " a word which he coins to sig- 
 nify 'the self-directing capacity or directive polarity of the 
 globe. Just to the extent that it loses Form as by the 
 terrene Matter becoming combined with base' or excremen- 
 titious substances so it loses verticity. Ultimately he 
 draws a somewhat subtle distinction between this unique 
 and peculiar Form which he ascribes to the earth and the 
 prima forma of Aristotle, by limiting the first to a partic- 
 ular variety or kind of Form which keeps and orders its 
 own globe giving a specific Form to the sun, another to 
 the moon, and so through all the heavenly bodies. Thus 
 he reaches his general conclusion as to the magnetic na- 
 ture of the earth, and at the same time differentiates his 
 theory from the older hypotheses. 
 
 This nature is not derived from the heavens as a whole, 
 
 conception, given by De Grote in his discussion of the De Anima. 
 Aristotle, Vol. II, p. 181 et seq. 
 
 "The implication of the two (Matter and Form) constitutes the living 
 subject with all its functions, active and passive. If the eye were an 
 animated or living subject, seeing would be its soul ; if the carpenter's 
 axe were living, cutting would be its soul ; the Matter would be the lens 
 or the iron in which this soul is embodied. It is not indispensable, how- 
 ever, that all the functions of the living subject should be at all times in 
 complete exercise ; the subject is still living, even while asleep ; the eye 
 is still a good eye, though at the moment closed. It is enough if the 
 functional aptitude exists as a dormant property, ready to rise into 
 activity when the proper occasions present themselves. This minimum 
 of Form suffices to give living efficacy to the potentialities of the body ; 
 it is enough that a man, though now in a dark night and seeing nothing, 
 will see as soon as the sun rises ; or that he knows geometry, though he 
 is not now thinking of a geometrical problem." Aris., De Anima, II, i., 
 p. 412, a. 27. 
 
 J St. Thomas Aq.: Sum Theol., I, q. 61. 
 
284 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 he says, neither is it generated thereby through sympathy, 
 or influence, or other occult qualities: neither is it drawn 
 from any special star; but the earth has its own proper 
 magnetic vigor or Form, just as sun and moon have theirs. 
 Consequently, as a fragment of the sun would arrange 
 itself under solar laws to conform to the shape and ver- 
 ticity of the sun, or a fragment of the moon under lunar 
 laws to conform to the shape and verticity of the moon, so 
 a fragment of the earth under terrestrial laws, being en- 
 dowed with the same magnetic vigor or Form, will dispose 
 itself correspondingly to the earth. Now as a lodestone is 
 not merely a fragment of the earth, but is of the inmost 
 earth and possesses the primal Form of things terrestrial 
 and the whole impetus of magnetic Matter, therefore 
 it has the fixed verticity, and the innate whirling motion 
 of revolution, inherent to the earth. 
 
 The notion that the lodestone is both a fragment of the 
 earth and is polarized by induction therefrom, is not incon- 
 sistent with modern ideas; but that of the earth rotating 
 because of its magnetic quality reduces itself, as I have 
 already pointed out, to mere guess-work and to proof of 
 the strength with which the speculative tendency asserts 
 itself, even in a mind which repudiated u probable con- 
 jectures" as a basis of reasoning, and despite the belief 
 that it recognized no control save that of "sure experiment 
 and demonstrated argument." 
 
 Not only does Gilbert explain the existence of magnet- 
 ism through the Peripatetic conceptions of Matter and 
 Form the last, as we have seen, somewhat modified in 
 particulars but he recurs, ultimately, to the same source 
 for ground-work for interpretations of special magnetic 
 phenomena. Aristotle applies the term "nature" to a 
 constant which perpetually tends to renovate Forms as per- 
 fect as may be, and invariably acts in a uniform way, pro- 
 ducing phenomena which are regular and predictable. 
 In opposition to nature stands variability or chance, 
 which interferes with and impedes the work; so that, 
 
GILBERT'S LOGIC. 285 
 
 although results which have taken place in the past can 
 be definitely stated and recorded, those still in the future 
 defy all power of prediction. 1 One example may be cited 
 which will serve to show how Gilbert applied this hypo- 
 thesis, while incidentally it may indicate how, being as I 
 have said on the middle ground between the old and new 
 philosophies, he wandered, even in the face of the simplest 
 experimental proof, from the path of logical inductive 
 reasoning. 
 
 He repeats, in exactly the same way, the experiment of 
 Peregrinus, showing the mutual repulsion of like poles of 
 two parts of a divided lodestone floating in water. "By 
 such a position of the parts," he says, " nature is crossed 
 and the form of the stone is perverted. But nature ob- 
 serves strictly the laws which it imposes on bodies, hence 
 the flight of one part from the undue position of the other, 
 and hence the discord unless everything is arranged ex- 
 actly in accordance with nature." 
 
 This obviously is the Aristotelian idea of necessity 
 the constant sequence or conjunction the fixed means 
 through which the fixed ends of nature only can be ob- 
 tained. To place like poles in juxtaposition is to place 
 them wrongly, and then Gilbert avers nature is perverted, 
 and the Form of the stone disturbed, and hence there is 
 discord : nor can there be any compromise but only war 
 until the stones acquiesce as nature decrees. He does not 
 assert that under given circumstances, shown by a multi- 
 tude of experiments, like magnetic poles mutually repel, 
 and that thence a general law may be inferred from which 
 their similar behavior under similar circumstances may 
 be predicted; but that, when everything is arranged ex- 
 actly according to nature that is, unlike poles juxtaposed 
 then these parts attract one another. It has all been 
 41 settled by nature." 
 
 Gilbert speculated, as I have said, with the logic of 
 Aristotle, but he made experiments and interpreted the 
 
 'De Interpretatioue: Grote, cit. sup., vol. i., 166, book i, chap. vi. 
 
286 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 results of them by their own logic. Unable, struggle as 
 he might, wholly to divest himself of that reverence for 
 antiquity peculiar to all the philosophical thought of his 
 time, a half-defined belief persisted in him that the spirit 
 of the Greek, notwithstanding the lapse of two thousand 
 years, was still competent in some way to define, to eluci- 
 date and to account for all that the human mind might find 
 obscure; but, despite such belief, he saw and knew, even 
 though he might not admit the knowledge to himself, that 
 it was not the intellect of Aristotle, but his own, which was 
 making for straight thought. And where he erred, it was 
 because he courted the ancient influence and ignored, even 
 if he did not fail to perceive, the plain deductions from the 
 facts before him. Nbne the less he, first of all men, system- 
 atically replaced the great doctrine of words by the greater 
 doctrine of works. It was only when he thought it in- 
 cumbent on him to reconcile the teachings of man's books 
 and nature's books, and just in proportion as he allowed 
 the first to obscure the second, that he landed in inevitable 
 contradictions and fallacies. 
 
 From this general and necessarily brief showing of 
 Gilbert's mode of thought, I now pass to his actual 
 experimental work and the physical discoveries resulting 
 therefrom. To record all of the facts relative to the 
 magnet which Gilbert first brought to light, and to show 
 their relation to the modern science, would involve ex- 
 planations far too extended, if not too didactic, to find 
 place here. Nor is it necessary to do so : for I am now 
 approaching the period when we may begin to trace the 
 independent development of amber-electricity as distin- 
 guished from that of magnetism, and need therefore in 
 future allude to the latter only in so far as the discoveries 
 made in it may have directly conduced to such progress. 
 And here it may be recalled that there is no necessary re- 
 lation between the advance or rise in a specific branch of 
 knowledge during a given period of time and all of the 
 discoveries pertaining thereto made within the limits of 
 
GILBERT'S THEORY OF THE LODESTONE. 287 
 
 that period. On the contrary such -a rise is apt to be de- 
 termined by a comparatively few salient achievements, 
 which being more readily appreciated and understood than 
 others, are more promptly turned to useful account. In 
 every stage of the world's progress the making of discov- 
 eries " ahead of the times" has been going on; and of 
 these perhaps the greater proportion remain mere items of 
 abstract knowledge for years, perhaps for centuries, until 
 thought advancing to new points of view so discerns their 
 practical utility : or some keener intellect sees in them 
 possible applications to which other minds have been 
 blind. It will be apparent therefore that in tracing his- 
 torically such an intellectual rise as is here chronicled, a 
 more or less arbitrary selection must be exercised, and 
 matters often in themselves important, but which appear 
 to exert no active influence thereupon, must be omitted. 
 Otherwise the work reduces itself to the gathering of 
 chronological annals. 
 
 After having declared the origin and nature of the lode- 
 stone on the strength of initial experiments, which, how- 
 ever he interpreted them, were in fact drawn mainly from 
 Peregrinus, Gilbert takes up the problem of the iron 
 magnet; for here was plainly a substance having the prop- 
 erties of the lodestone and yet differing from that primary 
 terrene Matter, although of like Form or vigor. He 
 evolves the theory that the earth gives forth humors or 
 exhalations, which coalesce with solid materials to form 
 metals, and, if these materials be the more homogeneous 
 or internal Matter of the globe, the result is iron or lode- 
 stone, which is nothing but a noble iron ore ; if they be 
 the globe Matter, in an altered or baser state, or efflor- 
 escences, then other metals are produced. Iron ore is, 
 therefore, the homogenic telluric body to which the earth 
 humor has been added ; but the latter does not destroy the 
 potency of the earth-Form existing therein, and hence it 
 
288 THE INTELIvECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 remains, or may be rendered, magnetic. Lodestone is the 
 same body concreted with a stony Matter ; and both mag- 
 netized iron and lodestone conform themselves to the globe 
 of the earth. 
 
 So much for the hypothesis, fanciful enough in itself, 
 and yet, if not directly leading to Gilbert's practical dis- 
 coveries, at least not serving to conduct the investigator 
 directly away from them, as many an older 
 assumption had done. 
 
 There is no perspective in Gilbert's record 
 of these researches save that leading to his 
 supposed magnetic proof of the Copernican 
 doctrine. Hence the difficulty in disentang- 
 ling from his often prolix restatements the 
 really novel and important achievements. 
 His own attempt to do this by marking large 
 asterisks beside the descriptions in his book 
 of those experiments which he regards as of 
 more importance is of little aid, since this 
 does not imply that the matters noted are of 
 his own inception, and, in some instances, 
 they are plainly taken from Porta. Neverthe- 
 less, it is possible to distinguish, as probably 
 original with Gilbert, the following remarka- 
 ble discoveries in magnetism : 
 
 That the strength of a magnet can be aug- 
 mented and preserved by placing upon its 
 pole an iron helmet or cap the effect, as now 
 regarded, being to collect and converge the 
 lines of force. This was the first suggestion 
 
 r ,, , 
 
 f "ie armature or keeper. 
 
 That the magnetic attraction will not be 
 cut off by any substance except, as he says, by an iron plate. 
 That the earth is a huge magnet, and has magnetic 
 poles. 
 
 That the compass needle is directed by the earth's mag- 
 
 1 From the first edition of his treatise De Magnete. 
 
 jfi 
 
 GILBERT'S 
 
 ARMED 
 
GILBERT'S MAGNETIC DISCOVERIES. 289 
 
 netism, and disposes itself in the line of a great circle 
 passing through the poles ; or, in other words, in a mag- 
 netic meridian, a term also first used by Gilbert. 
 
 That iron or steel acquires magnetism from the lodestone 
 and is thus itself a magnetic body, capable of attracting 
 the stone as the stone attracts it, so that the two come 
 together by forces mutually exerted, and not by the one- 
 sided attraction of magnet on object. This was, to some 
 extent, pre-suggested by Cardan, and, long before him, by 
 St. Thomas Aquinas and Cardinal de Cusa. 
 
 That the magnetic force moves from one end of an iron 
 rod to the other. It travels through all bodies, he says, 
 and is continued on by them. Here was the first notion 
 of magnetic conduction ; the first suggestion of the pos- 
 sible movement of the force from point to point. 
 
 That magnetization of iron occurs with great rapidity. 
 "It is there in an instant," he asserts, "and is not intro- 
 duced in any interval of time, nor successively, as when 
 heat enters iron, for the moment the iron is touched by 
 the lodestone it is excited throughout." 
 
 That the lodestone most strongly attracts the best and 
 purest iron that the best iron is derived from the lode- 
 stone or magnetic ore that the strongest magnets are 
 made from the best iron and that the best iron, even if 
 not magnetized, acts like the lodestone in directing itself 
 to the earth's poles, through induction from the earth. 
 
 That iron can be magnetized by simple placing in the 
 plane of the magnetic meridian or, better, by being 
 hammered or wire-drawn, or heated and cooled while so 
 disposed ; and that maintenance of a magnet in the same 
 plane conserves its properties. Thus Gilbert says that 
 iron bars which have been fixed in buildings for twenty 
 years or more in north and south position acquire ver- 
 ticity, and thus he explains the magnetization of the iron 
 rod taken down from the church of St. Augustine in 
 Rimini ; a phenomenon which Giulio Cesare had accident- 
 ally remarked several years before. There is a world of 
 19 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 difference between such a physical interpretation as this, 
 and the assumption that the iron by sympathy or simili- 
 tude had become converted into a lodestone. 
 
 That two lodestones fitted with armatures, so as to have 
 a common pole-piece, exert a much greater lifting force 
 than either separately. This is the compound magnet. 
 
 That bodies, to use the modern term, can be saturated 
 
 MAGNETIZING HOT IRON BY HAMMERING IT WHILE HELD IN 
 
 THE MAGNETIC MERIDIAN. 
 
 with magnetism. "Magnetic bodies," he says, u can 
 restore soundness (when not totally lost) to magnetic bod- 
 ies, and can give to some greater powers than they origi- 
 nally possessed; but to those which, by their nature, are 
 in the highest degree perfect, additional strength cannot 
 be given." 
 
 I have already made some reference to the orbs of virtue 
 
 1 From the first edition of Gilbert's treatise De Magnete. The work- 
 man is directed to place himself facing the north, and to hammer the hot 
 iron so that it will expand or elongate in a northerly direction. 
 
THE ORB OF VIRTUE. 
 
 291 
 
 and coition the effused strengths or Forms which surround 
 the lodestone, and which illustrate Gilbert's conception of 
 the magnetic force. A more detailed examination of his 
 theory shows that he regards the force of the terrella as sent 
 out in all directions, attracting whatever iron or magnetic 
 body may come within the sphere of influence; and the 
 nearer the iron to the lodestone, the greater the force by 
 which it is drawn. The shape of the field, he thinks, con- 
 forms to that of the emitting body, and he compares its 
 physical characteristics, as Porta had already done, to 
 those of light; but he goes a step further and regards it as 
 merely soliciting bodies that are in amicable relations with 
 
 GILBERT'S NOTION OF THE ORB OF VIRTUE AROUND THE MAGNET. 1 
 
 itself, without actually exerting any motive energy upon 
 them. In fact, he is inclined to regard the magnetic field 
 not merely as revealed by the presence of bodies of mag- 
 netic material placed in it, but as in some way subjectively 
 connected with such bodies, preventing either the force 
 being imbibed, or given back to its original source. He 
 finds, however, that the lines of magnetic force of his ter- 
 rella are meridional and numberless, and concludes that 
 the center of the terella is the center of force, although the 
 
 1 From the first edition of his treatise De Magnete. A is a compass 
 needle at the equator, and C another needle at the pole D. 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 energy is concentrated at the poles. All his deductions, 
 however, lead to the conviction, on his part, that the mag- 
 net emits no true effluvium nothing corporeal and that 
 its whole action, whether attractive or directive, depends 
 upon its capacity to impart its Form to the iron. As soon 
 as the metal comes within the lodestone's sphere of influ- 
 ence, even if at some distance from the stone, the Form 
 the soul of the iron is renewed: that which before was 
 dormant and inactive becomes lively and active, and the 
 Form, being now arranged and ordered, again joins forces 
 with the lodestone, and the two bodies enter into alliance, 
 u whether joined by bodily contact or standing within 
 their sphere of influence." 
 
 The most curious conclusions to which Gilbert's ideas 
 of the magnetic field of force led him, are those which are 
 recounted in his posthumous volume. 1 Here he asserts 
 that the earth's orb of magnetic virtue extends to the 
 moon, and ascribes the moon's irregularities to the effects 
 which it produces ; that the moon is magnetically bound 
 to the earth because its face is always turned earthwards, 
 and that there is a magnetic coition between our globe and 
 its satellite, the seas being drawn toward the moon and the 
 moon reciprocally to the earth. For the effused lunar 
 forces he says reach to the earth and act on fluids, while 
 the magnetic virtues of the earth surround the moon, both 
 bodies agreeing and consenting in motion, although the 
 earth, by reason of the greater mass, predominates. 
 
 Perhaps more interesting than all else is his assertion 
 of a relation which the greatest modern minds have sus- 
 pected, have sought to prove, but so far with only negative 
 results. All that is of the earth and is homogeneous with 
 it, says Gilbert, belongs to it so of the sun, and the moon, 
 and other bodies. Such belongings adhere to and do 
 not spontaneously leave their globes ; and if they are re- 
 moved by external force they seek to return, because each 
 
 *De Novo Mundo, Amsterdam, 1651. 
 
GRAVITY AND MAGNETISM. 293 
 
 globe, by its own virtues, attracts them. Otherwise, the 
 dissipation of the universe would necessarily follow. 
 
 Now this, he avers, is not an appetite or inclination to 
 position, or to space, or to a boundary, but is to the body, 
 the source, the mother, the beginning where all are united 
 and safely kept. Thus the earth attracts all magnetic 
 bodies, besides all others in which by reason of material, 
 the primary magnetic force is absent ; and this inclination 
 to the earth in terrene substances is commonly called 
 gravity. The gravity of a body then is inclination to its 
 source, and all things which come of the earth return to it. 
 
 Thus, repeating himself in many ways, not uninfluenced, 
 perhaps, by the recollection of the return of all flesh to the 
 dust, he suggests the correlation of gravity and magnetism 
 a thought still burning, a question still unsolved. More 
 than two centuries afterwards another great student of 
 nature, facing like problems, conceived of the same rela- 
 tionship; and it was while endeavoring to penetrate into its 
 mysteries, the one by speculation, the other by experi- 
 ment, that both William Gilbert and Michael Faraday 
 each reached the ultima thule of his life-work. 
 
 The amber phenomenon had begun to detach itself in 
 men's minds from that of the lodestone, as Cardan's differ- 
 entiation plainly shows. Gilbert now made the separation 
 complete, and not only brought electricity so termed as 
 distinguished from magnetism into the sphere of human 
 thought of his times, but gave to its intellectual progress 
 an impetus which has ever since continued, and with 
 growing force. 
 
 " Those unobvious, delicate and often cumbrous and 
 tedious processes of experiments which have thrown most 
 light upon the general constitution of nature," says Mill, 1 
 u would hardly ever have been undertaken by the persons, 
 or at the time they were, unless it had seemed to depend 
 upon them whether some general doctrine or theory which 
 
 1 Mill: System of Logic, ii, 18. 
 
294 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 had been suggested, but not yet proved, should be ad- 
 mitted or not." It was to sustain his cosmical theory that 
 Gilbert accomplished the achievements which will render 
 him forever known as the father of electrical science. 
 What he did, and how he did it, I have now to relate. 
 
 Gilbert's cosmical system is based, as I have endeavored 
 to show, upon his own application of the results of his ex- 
 periments to the Copernican doctrine. It was open, there- 
 fore, to his opponents to attack him either by disputing 
 the sufficiency of his experiments, or by showing that there 
 were other phenomena similar to those of the magnet, and 
 presumably of like nature, which could not be accounted 
 for by his explanations, and hence that the latter fell short 
 of universal application and so failed to satisfy the condi- 
 tions of the problem to be solved. Naturally the assault 
 would be directed upon the new and specific support pro- 
 vided by him for the Copernican heresy rather than upon 
 the theory itself, against which the forces of the prevail- 
 ing theology and philosophy were already turned; and this, 
 it may be fairly presumed, no one appreciated and per- 
 ceived the need for anticipating better than did Gilbert 
 himself. 
 
 Of the two before-noted objections, that which went to 
 the sufficiency of the experiments was the least to be 
 feared, for he could point to such a multiplicity of tests 
 and practically did so, marking the records of some two 
 hundred of the principal ones by asterisks on the margins 
 of his pages for the express purpose of attracting attention 
 to them that in those days, when from the slenderest 
 physical occurrence unbounded speculation often flowed, 
 it would require a more than ordinarily bold disputant to 
 challenge the thoroughness and exhaustive quality of his 
 work. As a matter of fact, as we shall see later on, such 
 an antagonist did arise ; but this was years after Gilbert's 
 voice had become forever silent. 
 
THE AMBER QUESTION. 395 
 
 The other possible criticism was, however, more serious 
 and immediately pressing. Gilbert knew that ostensibly 
 at least it was well founded: he knew that the difficulties 
 involved must be met and overcome, or avoided simultan- 
 eously with the presentation of his main argument, and he 
 knew that anything less than complete destruction or 
 avoidance of them would inevitably result in his own con- 
 fusion. 
 
 The peril which thus menaced him came from an un- 
 solved problem of the ages: the same which had vexed 
 Thales twenty-two centuries before; the same which had 
 persisted to mystify men's souls ever since; the riddle of 
 the Amber Sphinx, which now, Oedipus-like, he must 
 solve, or fall. 
 
 Let us recall two facts: first, that the world in general 
 classed the amber and the magnet together, and saw no 
 difference in their respective attractions upon other bodies; 
 and second, that Cardan, nevertheless, had drawn a clear 
 distinction between them and had contrasted their be- 
 havior. With the popular opinion and with that of Car- 
 dan, Gilbert was fully familiar. He saw that the effect of 
 the first would be at once to lead people to attempt to 
 apply his magnetic theories to the amber attraction, while 
 that of the second was an authoritative impress upon his 
 own mind of reasons why the discovery of discrepancies 
 would follow. Granting, for example (he perhaps argued 
 to himself), that the magnet and the amber are alike in 
 attractive power, they are not so in verticity; and, if the 
 attractive capacity shows that both contain the same 
 assumed primordial terrene Matter, how is it that the Form 
 which determines self-direction in the one is absent in the 
 other? What is this primordial Matter which can exhibit 
 such totally different physical characteristics as are seen in 
 the light and brilliant resin and the heavy and dark stone? 
 Even if the Form be the same, is the Matter identical in 
 both? If verticity is absent in the amber, is this because 
 the latter is an "efflorescence" and hence u impaired" 
 
296 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 primordial Matter? But what impairment is it which 
 excludes one essential quality (verticity) and not the other 
 (attraction)? Why are not both qualities equally impaired, 
 or both absent, as in inferior magnets or in most sub- 
 stances? Why does amber or jet (then supposed to be 
 black amber) alone, out of all the vast number of terrene 
 bodies, exhibit this strange attraction ? How is the draw- 
 ing of all light bodies by amber to be reconciled with the 
 selective property of the magnet, which enables it to draw 
 only iron and steel? How is it that the magnet, being 
 wholly or mainly primordial terrene Matter, can effuse and 
 excite a new Form in iron alone ; when amber, which, if 
 primordial terrene Matter at all, lacks a chief capacity 
 thereof, is able, on the same reasoning, to excite a new 
 Form in any substance which is light and minute in size? 
 If amber does not excite such a Form in the thing attracted, 
 where is there coition in the attractive action? if it does, 
 why is there not some residual attractive power left in the 
 straw or chaff, such as the lodestone leaves in the iron? 
 If there be two effused Forms respectively different, one 
 proceeding from the amber and the other from the magnet, 
 ^which is the true Form effused by primordial terrene Mat- 
 tter? Which the true effused Form of the earth? How is 
 lit that this attractive capacity is always present and in- 
 herent in the lodestone, and not so in the amber unless the 
 resin be excited? If magnetic attraction is a primordial 
 terrene characteristic, implanted by creative act, why is 
 human aid necessary to develop it in a certain substance? 
 What is the effused Form of a heavenly body if it under- 
 goes attrition in space? that of amber, or that of lodestone, 
 or a combination of both? 
 
 It is needless to multiply such questions, for, the instant 
 the doubt fell into the placid pool of theory, it roughened 
 the surface in circle after circle, ever widening until the 
 smooth quiescence was gone. The issue no longer was 
 one limited by the mere observation that a bit of amber 
 attracts a particle of chaff only when rubbed, and a bit of 
 
THE AMBER QUESTION. 
 
 lodestone a particle of iron always ; but to Gilbert it was 
 a universal problem, dealing with the relations of worlds 
 and the structure of the universe. He saw that it touched 
 the very heart of his whole cosmical hypothesis. 
 
 Thus Gilbert came to study the amber, not for the first 
 time in the world's history, but for the first time by the 
 methods which he had brought into use in finding out the 
 laws of the lodestone : methods which ultimately led, not 
 to the futile utterance of "corn" or u millet" before the 
 closed door, but of the magic "Open Sesame." But what 
 had he before him indicating where to begin his quest? 
 
 The new facts which had been added to the knowledge 
 of the ancients concerning the amber had been noted by 
 Cardan, who had not only drawn the suggestive distinc- 
 tion between the amber and the magnet, but had agreed 
 with Fracastorio in the averment that the amber quality 
 also resides in another and totally different substance, 
 namely, the diamond. Nor did this capacity of the dia- 
 mond lack apparent corroboration from other philosophers. 
 Scaliger had alluded to it in his commentary. Porta had 
 specifically asserted that an iron needle rubbed with a 
 diamond would turn northward, as when rubbed with the 
 lodestone. And Fracastorio had not merely recorded the 
 drawing of "hairs and twigs" by both amber and dia- 
 mond, but in the very passage from his work which Gil- 
 bert quotes, he ascribes the effect to a principle inherent 
 in and common to both resin and gem. Nevertheless, it 
 is not likely that Gilbert seriously considered these asser- 
 tions, much less tested them by experiment, without some- 
 thing of a mental struggle. His antagonism to Cardan 
 and all his works is profound. For Scaliger he has only 
 contemptuous indifference. Porta's assertion he put to 
 specific trial with great elaboration and at no small ex- 
 pense, for he says he tested, before many witnesses, the 
 frictional effect on iron of seventy-five diamonds, with the 
 result of completely refuting the Neapolitan philosopher's 
 averment. Still the doubt remains. Cardan had said to 
 
298 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 rub the diamond itself not to rub iron with the diamond 
 and the attraction thus produced could not be explained 
 away by inconsequent suggestions that Porta had been mis- 
 led by a similarity in names, and had confused adamas, the 
 diamond, with adamas, the lodestone. Besides, however 
 much Gilbert might flout Cardan, or refute Porta, there re- 
 mained the clear statement of Fracastorio, whom he knew 
 to be neither a charlatan nor a mere transcriber, but, on the 
 contrary, a philosopher of commanding eminence and fame. 
 
 In the end Gilbert probably rubbed some of his seventy- 
 five diamonds and found Cardan and Fracastorio to be 
 right. But, as he was not seeking to establish their, re- 
 putations, he did not trouble himself to record the fact, but 
 left the famous Italians pilloried with the other philoso- 
 phers as u word -mongers ' } and "chattering barbers" a 
 species of comparative vituperation which came not unread- 
 ily from the student of Vesalius and Fallopius, already over- 
 flowing with fine scorn for the blood-letting and tooth- 
 drawing knights of the lather and basin, who in England 
 were contesting the right to practice surgery with the reg- 
 ular professors of the healing art. 
 
 The great point gained was not perception of the fact 
 that something else beside amber would attract in the 
 same way, but the proof of it. The immediately following- 
 questions were: are there any other substances having this 
 same capability? If so, how many? Are they so few that 
 the behavior of all can be lightly explained away as a 
 lusus nature?, and the general hypothesis so saved? Are 
 they so numerous and of such importance that another 
 theory, not inconsistent with the first, may be predicated, 
 which will subsist concurrently by satisfying the peculiar 
 physical conditions of the amber and its cognates, while 
 not extending to the great cosmical application of the 
 magnetic hypothesis? Are they so overwhelmingly many 
 as to destroy the cosmic theory in toto by reducing its 
 magnetic foundation to insignificance. 
 
 These, or like questions, I believe, led to the first delib- 
 
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: 
 
 u 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." 
 
300 THE INTELLECTUAI, RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 It was an astounding discovery this prevalence of the 
 amber-soul. It meant that the spirit which men, through 
 all ages, had supposed locked in the amber along with the 
 dead flies and bees there imprisoned, had never been so 
 confined. This was an Ariel which had not been bound 
 in the cleft pine, now at last set loose by the magician's 
 hand, but a sprite which had always been free to play a 
 part among the things of heaven and earth undreamt of in 
 man's philosophy. But Gilbert was no poet, nor ever 
 " waxed desperate in imagination." Even when his inner 
 vision pictured the eternal motion of the rolling spheres, 
 their silent music never reached his thought. Besides, in 
 the present instance, he was vitally concerned with the 
 bedevilments of his theory, which seemed likely to follow; 
 and a clear, practical and definite understanding of the 
 physical cause was what he needed, and least of all any 
 befogging of it by poetic imagery or idealization. 
 
 What could be more different than the substances which 
 this force seemed to animate what more contrasting than 
 sulphur and the sapphire or the true gems and the false? 
 There were no such dissimilarities between the various 
 kinds of lodestone, or even between the lodestone and the 
 iron ; so that the attracting capacity possessed by these 
 involved no great diversity of substance. But here was 
 attraction existing in bodies so totally unlike that to 
 assert that all of them contained a primordial terrene 
 magnetic Matter, would be to ascribe to that assumed sub- 
 stance a Protean capacity for change which would virtu- 
 ally argue it out of existence. 
 
 It was plain, therefore, that the amber quality was not 
 something exceptional pertaining to the resin, but de- 
 pended upon some cause hitherto unrecognized yet widely 
 prevalent. Equally plain was it also to Gilbert, that so 
 far from the difficulties of bringing this phenomenon into 
 harmony with his magnetic hypothesis being diminished 
 by the discovery of such prevalence, they were so greatly 
 magnified as to render the effort obviously futile. A few 
 
THE) AMBER PHENOMENON. 30! 
 
 years earlier it would have been easy to attribute every- 
 thing troublesome to the influence of the stars or any other 
 u occult" control, and, in fact even then, books on "the 
 miracles of nature" jostled the commentaries on Aristotle 
 on the shelves of every philosopher. But nothing could 
 have been more repugnant to Gilbert than such a course. 
 The amber effect, he saw, must be accounted for, and 
 now, by an hypothesis which would be consistent with, 
 though different from, the broad theory which, at all haz- 
 ards, was to be maintained. Such was the path which 
 now opened before Gilbert. 
 
 Far back in mediaeval times there arose that curious 
 divagation of the human mind, based, perhaps, in some 
 degree, on the ascendency of the Aristotelian philosophy 
 of words, of seeking to explain things not understood by 
 giving to them new names. Later, this was carried to 
 extremes by Paracelsus, and the same course has since 
 been followed by charlatans generally. It was also in 
 Gilbert's day the custom of the alchemists, and, to some 
 extent, that of all scientific students, to hide discoveries 
 and modes of operation in arbitrary words and phrases, 
 often the merest gibberish, of which only the users knew 
 the meaning. Thus there came into existence a pedantic 
 terminology. 
 
 "A Babylonish dialect which learned pedants most affect," 
 
 which invaded every department of knowledge and which, 
 in some branches of science, though much modified and 
 more logically conceived, still flourishes. 
 
 Gilbert, from his own professional experience, was well 
 aware of the dangers which word-manufacture involved on 
 the one hand, and the temptations which it offered on the 
 other ; for, no matter how sure his experiments and well- 
 demonstrated his arguments, the necessary learning of a 
 new vocabulary would be almost an insurmountable bar- 
 rier to the very minds to which his appeal lay from the 
 schoolmen and philosophants. But when he unearths 
 
302 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 matters that are genuinely hidden, and which must be 
 identified somehow in speech, by marks which enable 
 them to become the subjects of discourse, Gilbert has no 
 hesitation in naming them, and the orbs "of virtue" and 
 "of coition" already alluded to, are instances of such des- 
 ignations. These, with something of the same care which 
 is found in the definitions of terms used in a modern Brit- 
 ish Act of Parliament, he groups together and elucidates 
 in a separate and commendably brief glossary prefixed to 
 his De Magnete. 
 
 The discovery of many substances partaking of the 
 amber quality raised at once the need of a generic term 
 including and fairly describing all, by which they might 
 be spoken of and thought about without repetition and 
 circumlocution. The property which all had in com- 
 mon was that of attracting corpuscles. And this attrac- 
 tion was not similar to that of the lodestone, but similar 
 to that of the amber : similar, because, whatever its true 
 cause might be, it was certainly ostensibly exerted in like 
 manner to the amber attraction. Gilbert's treatise being 
 in Latin, he frequently translates the English word 
 "amber" by the Latin u electrum" a derivative from 
 the Greek yMm-pw and, on this basis, originates the term 
 for the new genus. The word which he so coins is 
 "Electrica" translatable as "electrics" which he de- 
 fines as signifying u quae attrahunt eadem ratione ut elec- 
 trum" (those substances which attract in the same manner 
 as the amber). Thus the father of the science by right 
 of paternity gave to it its name ; for the subsequently- 
 invented word "electricity" simply refers to the condition 
 or state prevailing in an electric. 1 
 
 I have now to outline the course of Gilbert's experi- 
 menting and the principal results which he achieved. 
 Trying his electrics on many different substances, he soon 
 reaches the conclusion that they will all attract, not only 
 
 1 Further on I have noted the origin of other similarly derived words 
 such as "electrical," etc. 
 
GILBERT'S ELECTROSCOPE. 303 
 
 straws and chaff, but metals, woods, leaves, stones, earths, 
 even water and oil "everything which appeals to the 
 senses" provided it be not aflame or in a too rarefied 
 state. He is working from the vantage-ground of the 
 isolated facts observed by others, and thus he moves be- 
 yond the implication of Fracastorio that the amber attracts 
 only u hairs and twigs," and incidentally seizes a con- 
 genial opportunity to anathematize Alexander of Apro- 
 diseus for drawing an absurd conclusion to the effect that 
 the resin exercises an occult selection in attracting only 
 the stalks and not the leaves of the garden- basil. In like 
 manner he passes beyond the bounds of Cardan's discovery 
 that the amber attraction may be cut off, and shows that a 
 screening effect happens on the interposition of moist 
 breath, a current of humid air, a sheet of paper, water, 
 linen cloth, and the silk gauze known as "sarsnet." 
 
 He is not satisfied with merely stating that he has 
 
 GILBERT'S ELECTROSCOPE. 1 
 
 proved all this by actual experiment. So anxious is he to 
 avoid even the appearance of the prevailing mysticism, so 
 careful to forestall any possible charge of concealing his 
 mode of operating, so Faraday-like in his desire to leave 
 behind him his ladder for the use of others to come, that 
 he invites a repetition of his tests and a reverification of 
 conclusions, and describes the simple apparatus which he 
 has employed. He calls it a versorium in modern terms 
 it is an electroscope made of a light metal rod centrally 
 poised on an apex like the needle of a compass. It turns 
 to the rubbed electric when the latter is brought near its 
 
 1 From the first edition of Gilbert's treatise De Magnete. 
 
304 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 end, and so shows the attractive effect. Before he devised 
 this he seems to have made the electric draw to itself the 
 attracted object bodily ; but he found that the attractive 
 force, in some substances, was too weak to overcome both 
 inertia and frictional resistance, and the pivoted needle, 
 the position of which a very small drawing force could 
 easily disturb, was therefore contrived. 
 
 This is the first of all instruments depending upon 
 amber-electricity. And again what is it essentially but 
 the compass needle? Not the freely-movable magnet 
 needle turning itself under the influence of the earth's 
 magnetic field and yielding itself to the earth's attraction, 
 but simply a freely-movable needle of any substance turn- 
 ing itself under the influence of the electric field of the 
 rubbed amber and yielding itself to the amber's attraction. 
 Here was the first electrical invention beyond the mariner's 
 compass, the adaptation of the same physical means (the 
 balanced needle rotating on its pivot) to the recognition of 
 the fact of a field of force. Gilbert had shown how that 
 colossal magnet the earth governed the compass needle, 
 and how the same control was exerted upon the needle by 
 the miniature earth the terrella. Also he had shown that 
 the excited amber would attract any substance provided 
 the latter were light in weight and so within its exertable 
 strength. A step further, and the excited glass or sulphur 
 and the compass needle the two things that lay respec- 
 tively at the beginning of the new advance and at the 
 culmination of the old came together : and the needle, 
 (immaterial whether magnetic or not, so long as it were 
 light and easily controllable,) moved in response to the 
 call of the electric. 
 
 By means of this instrument, Gilbert says, he detected 
 his electrics, and thus suggests the amount of patient 
 labor which he brought to the task. How many sub- 
 stances he procured, rubbed and carried to his needle, only 
 to see it remain motionless, we can but surmise. In the list 
 which he gives of things which are non-electrics, because 
 
THE ELECTRICS AND NON-ELECTRICS. 305 
 
 they failed to move the versorium, are emerald, agate, car- 
 nelian, pearls, jasper, chalcedony, alabaster, porphyry, 
 coral, marbles, coal, flint, bloodstone, emery, bone, ivory, 
 hard woods (such as ebony, cedar, juniper, cypress), the 
 lodestone, silver, gold, copper and iron. 
 
 It is no reproach to say that such experimenting was 
 merely empirical. In the nature of things at the time, it 
 could not have been otherwise. 1 He, doubtless, tried 
 every available substance over and over again, making 
 many an inconclusive test, until he discovered that a body 
 might appear as an electric at one time and not at another, 
 and that changes even in atmospheric conditions might 
 easily lead to its entry into or exclusion from the electric 
 category. Nor could he have found a much worse place 
 for such researches than foggy London, where the prevail- 
 ing dampness probably many a time frustrated his most 
 careful efforts. At last, however, he learns that the best 
 electrical effects are obtained when the weather is cold, the 
 sky clear and the wind in the east, and that on overcast 
 days when the breeze is southerly the indications of the 
 quivering versorium are not to be trusted. 
 
 The unexpected revelation of so many substances par- 
 taking of the amber property made it plain that the field 
 upon which Gilbert was now entering was wholly new and 
 untrodden. That he had reached its border through the 
 devious ways of his magnetic hypotheses, that his further 
 advancement upon it would be but a digression from his 
 chosen main path, that he had come to it in pursuit of a 
 special object all these considerations are immaterial. To 
 all intents and purposes his advent as the first explorer 
 might have been owing to any other influences, or to none, 
 save the merest arbitrary selection of the amber attraction 
 as an inviting subject for inquiry. Thus we reach a per- 
 ception of the simple fact, clear of its surroundings, that 
 
 1 The history of the development of some modern electric appliances is 
 not altogether free from instances of a similar course commending itself 
 tothe nineteenth-century intellect. 
 20 
 
306 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 here is a man at the end of the sixteenth century under- 
 taking the study of a natural occurrence which had never 
 before been systematically studied at all, and which no 
 one understood. 
 
 How did he set to work? The ordinary course of pro- 
 cedure of the contemporary philosopher would be the 
 gathering of a few isolated examples, not necessarily cor- 
 related, although ostensibly applicable to the same subject, 
 and the making of a speculation or several speculations of 
 more or less ingenuity about them. Nothing could differ 
 more widely from this than the strikingly original course 
 now followed by Gilbert. Despite the overwhelming au- 
 thority of Galen and Avicenna, he brushes aside their 
 guesses at the causes of attraction, as wholly inadequate 
 to explain, and then, for the first time in the history of 
 modern philosophical thought, he systematically gathers 
 negative instances and undertakes affirmatively to discover 
 and separate out the truth by proper rejections and exclu- 
 sions something which u had not been done or even at- 
 tempted," says Bacon, "except perhaps by Plato." 
 
 The attraction of electrics he finds is not caused : 
 
 By heat, because heating alone, even up to the flaming 
 point, will not produce it. 
 
 By a mode of operation analogous to that of the cupping 
 glass, as Cardan suggests, because of the contradictory 
 character of Cardan's own explanations, which we have 
 already noted. 
 
 By the seeking of other bodies by the electric as food, 
 because the attracted body would then diminish while the 
 electric would grow. 
 
 By the attractive force of fire, because the non-electrics, 
 when heated by fire or the sun, show no attraction. 
 
 By draught of displaced air (the cause assigned by Lu- 
 cretius to magnetic movements), because that effect could 
 not produce attraction in the open atmosphere. 
 
 By hot objects or by a draught of hot air, for neither an 
 iron rod at white heat nor a candle-flame brought near the 
 
THE NATURE OF THE ELECTRIC. 307 
 
 versoritim, although the flame certainly produces a heated 
 current, will cause the needle to turn. 
 
 By any peculiar property of amber or special relation 
 between it and other bodies, because very many other sub- 
 stances partake of the same electric nature. 
 
 By similitude or likeness, because all terrestrial things, 
 whether like or unlike, are attracted by the electric. 
 
 Nor has the electric attraction any resemblance to the 
 drawing of moisture by plants, the purging of a morbid 
 humor by a drug, the removal of water from a stoppered 
 bottle when covered with a heap of wheat, or the mythical 
 sucking up of water by elephants' tusks. 
 
 Then follows the list of solid non-electrics already given, 
 and to this are added many substances which either fall to 
 pieces or grow sticky by rubbing, such as pitch, soft resin, 
 camphor, galbanum, ammoniacum, storax, asa, gum ben- 
 jamin and asphaltnm. 
 
 Having thus cleared the ground negatively, Gilbert pro- 
 ceeds to draw his affirmative conclusion as to the physical 
 nature of the electric. The earth, he says, is made up of 
 two kinds of Matter ; moist and fluid, or watery, and dry 
 and firm, or terrene. Any given substance consists either 
 of both kinds of Matter or of a concretion of either kind. 
 Amber and jet are concretions of water so are all shining 
 gems and electrics generally have their origin in humor 
 or watery Matter. This humor can even be driven out by 
 heat and discharged as vapor. But electrics have certain 
 necessary physical characteristics ; namely, that they are 
 firmly concreted so that they shine on being rubbed, and 
 retain the "appearance and property of fluid" in a firm, 
 solid mass. These conditions present, they attract all 
 bodies, whether humid or dry, by a force which likewise 
 has its origin in the humor. 
 
 The next step is to account for this attractive force. 
 The attraction of the magnet, it will be remembered, he 
 supposes to be due to its effused Form awakening an inert 
 Form in the drawn iron, so that the thing attracting and 
 
308 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 the thing attracted mutually come together by a movement 
 of coition. This effused Form (field of force) is wholly in- 
 corporeal. It is the animating energy, or as Thales looked 
 upon it, the "soul" of the magnet. 1 
 
 The attraction of the electric, however, he concludes to 
 be due to a diametrically-opposite cause. The force is not 
 awakened until the substance is rubbed, and then the sub- 
 stance is altered that is to say, it attains a moderate heat, 
 becomes shining or polished, and finally gives out an ef- 
 fluvium. This effluvium is corporeal it is the original 
 Matter in another condition like a vapor that is given off 
 from a fluid, or as if the body were dissolved into an ex- 
 halation. 
 
 Now as to the qualities of this effluvium, he says that 
 the effect of moist breath, or a current of humid, atmos- 
 pheric air, or a sheet of paper, or a linen cloth, interposed 
 between the electric and the object attracted, is to choke its 
 powers. Thus the electric differs entirely from the magnet, 
 which attracts through any obstacle. Barriers such as the 
 foregoing therefore act physically to stop the progress of 
 the material electric effluvium, while they are perfectly 
 transparent to the immaterial, effused, magnetic Form. In 
 order to produce this effluvium, the heat generated in the 
 body itself, not heat contributed by other bodies, must act; 
 and a gentle and rapid friction must be used, not force 
 applied violently and recklessly, to cause the finest efflu- 
 vium to arise from a subtle solution of moisture an ex- 
 ceedingly attenuated humor, much more rarefied than the 
 ambient air. To explain how such a humor could be ob- 
 tained from so dense a body as the diamond, he instances 
 odoriferous substances which exhale fragrance for cen- 
 turies; having in mind, perhaps, the still-persistent odor 
 
 1 See Spectator, No. 56, May 4, 1711, for this same comparison. Addi- 
 son describes Albertus Magnus as placing the lodestone on glowing coals 
 and perceiving " a certain blue vapor to arise from it which he believed 
 might be the substantial Form: that is, in our West Indian phrase, the 
 soul of the lodestone." 
 
THE ELECTRIC EFFLUVIUM. 309 
 
 of the musk which was mingled with the mortar in the 
 building of the Mosque of St. Sophia in Constantinople. 
 
 How then does such an effluvium attract? Does it set 
 the air in motion, and is the air-current followed by the 
 attracted bodies ; or are the latter directly drawn? If an 
 air-current moves the objects, how can a minute diamond 
 of the size of a chick-pea pull to itself so much air as to 
 sweep in a corpuscle of relatively large dimensions, seeing 
 that the air is drawn by only a small portion of one end 
 of the stone? Clearly it is not the air which is moved, for 
 then clearly the attracted body must stand still or move 
 more slowly before coming in actual contact with the 
 amber, on account of the heaping-up of the air on the sur- 
 face and its rebounding after collision. And, furthermore, 
 if there be a variation in the character of the effluvia, if 
 they go forth rare and return dense (as with vapors), then 
 clearly the body would begin to move a little after the be- 
 ginning of the application of the electric. But and here 
 is the first statement of that marvelous speed of transmis- 
 sion which, in the telegraph and telephone, annihilates 
 distance "when rubbed electrics are suddenly applied to 
 the pivoted pointer instantly the pointer turns. n 
 
 New ideas now crowd fast one upon the other. The in- 
 creased attractive power of the electric, as the attracted 
 body approaches it, is recognized; the motion of the body 
 is seen to be quickened, "the forces pulling it being 
 stronger." At once Gilbert perceives the similarity in this 
 respect between electric and magnetic attraction, and it 
 seems that almost of necessity he must be led to interpret 
 this as a most untoward result, tending to show the iden- 
 tity of the very phenomena which he was hoping to differ- 
 entiate. But note how he dealt with it. Not only, he says, 
 is this quickened motion, this augmenting force, true of 
 the magnetic and electric attractions, u but of all natural 
 motions." The great generalization of the correlation, not 
 only of magnetic and electric attractions with one another, 
 but with the other forces of the universe, is here suggested 
 
310 THK INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 a conception which, emanating from a mind of the six- 
 teenth century, is an inspiration and a marvel. 
 
 Then he says that if the attracted body were moved by 
 an air-current, it would remain in contact with the electric 
 but for a moment. On the contrary, that this attractive 
 power persists "sometimes for as long as five minutes, 
 especially if the weather is fair." Such is the first state- 
 ment of the electric charge. 
 
 That the amber does not attract the air, but the body, is 
 shown by its drawing the particles on the surface of a drop 
 of water into a cone, and not moving the whole drop. But 
 this landed him in another paradox; for how could the 
 electric thus attract water if, as he had already found, 
 water directly applied to the electric destroyed its attract- 
 ive power? So he concludes that it is one thing to sup- 
 press the effluvium at its rise, and another to destroy it 
 after it is emitted. Hence, he discovers that to cut off the 
 attraction completely it is necessary not merely to inter- 
 pose a silk texture midway between the electric and the 
 object, but quickly to lay it over the electric directly after 
 friction. This is the first suggestion of insulation applied 
 directly to the charged conductor the prototype of the 
 coating which covers the wires which convey the currents 
 through our streets and dwellings, and prevents leakage 
 of them on the one hand while guarding us from their 
 dangers on the other. 
 
 While Gilbert's experiments often end in genuine dis- 
 coveries, and involve conceptions far in advance of his 
 time, it not infrequently happens that his deductions and 
 conclusions are vague, speculative and obscure. This not 
 only occurs when (as he says himself in his preface), after 
 having described his magnetic experiments and accounted 
 for the homogenic parts of the globe, he turns to the gen- 
 eral nature of the whole earth, and then proceeds "to 
 philosophize freely,'' but even in his statements as to what 
 his experiments specifically prove. His notion of electric 
 effluvia finds its true limit when he describes the emana- 
 
GILBERT'S THEORY OF ELECTRIC ATTRACTION. 311 
 
 tion very much as the Chinese Kouoplio had done cen- 
 turies before as a breath proceeding from the electric and 
 reaching to the attracted object. But when he essays to 
 account for the actual movement of the latter, his explana- 
 tion is based, not on the observed behavior of the electric, 
 but on the gravitation of bodies or bubbles floating in water, 
 which he believes come together through some effect of the 
 liquid between them. Water, he considers, is a moist or 
 humid link between the bodies, and so is the electric 
 effluvium, although the last is much rarer, and all things 
 come together because of humor. He fails to perceive 
 that, even if the effluvia be regarded as material arms 
 which permeate the air without moving it and grasp 
 straws, etc., no explanation is thus afforded why or how 
 these arms draw the attracted object. 
 
 Nevertheless, in his own mind, this theory was sufficient 
 for the differentiation which he sought. And he sums this 
 up finally by asserting that electric motion is one of matter 
 toward concretion, while magnetic motion is that of ar- 
 rangement and order ; and thus he assigns to electric 
 action the bringing and holding together of the materials 
 of the earth, while to magnetism he believes the verticity 
 or direction of the globe in space and also its rotation to 
 be due. Ultimately he attempts to distinguish the charac- 
 teristic natures of gravity, magnetism and electricity, while 
 suggesting their generic resemblance. By gravity, parts 
 of the earth are borne to it by natural inclination. By 
 magnetism, bodies are borne to one another mutually. 
 By electricity, corpuscles are carried to the electric. 
 
 I have dwelt upon Gilbert's theories because they serve 
 to make clear the originality of the man in philosophic 
 thought, and the onward momentum which he gave to 
 it. Nor, if we are to accept the dicta of the apostle 
 of the inductive method, is Gilbert's merit any the less 
 because later and wiser generations may regard his specu- 
 lations as to the magnetic relation of the planets as mis- 
 taken. "Truth," says Bacon, "emerges more readily 
 
312 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 from error than confusion." Better a wrong hypothesis 
 than none at all. 
 
 But mistakes mislead, and erroneous theories obscure 
 the vision for new discovery. Perhaps for this reason, 
 perhaps because he did not regard them as of sufficient im- 
 portance, in view of the object sought, Gilbert failed to 
 observe many electrical facts which were well within his 
 horizon. He knew nothing of electrical conduction. 
 Magnetic conduction he realized easily under the assump- 
 tion of the change in Form occurring throughout an 
 elongated, magnetized body from one end to the other. 
 But he never carried his electrical effluvia, even in im- 
 agination, through solids, nor, in fact, could he logically 
 do so under his assumption that they were corporeal 
 emanations capable of being dammed by a sheet of paper. 
 He speculated somewhat concerning terrestrial electricity, 
 but only as a means of uniting and holding the earth 
 Matter. Electric repulsion he not only did not observe, 
 but he denies its existence, asserting specifically that 
 "electrics neither repel nor propel." Nor is this notion, 
 for him, inconsistent, in view of his belief that the plac- 
 ing of like magnetic poles together was an unnatural dis- 
 position of them, which nature would proceed to set right. 
 Magnetic repulsion was therefore merely a preliminary 
 rotation of one magnet, so that both might come together 
 u perfectly according to nature.". 
 
 The practical character of Gilbert's work is well indi- 
 cated by the inventions which he makes. Thus he de- 
 scribes the first filar suspension of the needle of an indi- 
 cating instrument, and even advises that silk filaments be 
 used, twisted differently and not all in one direction, so as 
 to eliminate the torsional effect : the first instrumental 
 magnetometer (an iron versorium), and incidentally points 
 out that the stone which from the greatest distance causes 
 the needle to turn, is the best and strongest. He first 
 determined the directive strength of a pivoted magnet, 
 by noting the frequency and extent of its vibrations before 
 
GILBERT'S DISCOVERIES RECAPITULATED. 313 
 
 coming to rest. His method of magnetizing iron is still in 
 common use, and liis counsels as to keeping compass- 
 needles away from other magnets, and of placing all mag- 
 nets, during storage, in definite position with respect to 
 the earth's magnetic meridian are universally followed. 
 
 Finally the magnetic rocks those mythical wanderers 
 from distant Cathay, by way of the Red Sea to the Arctic 
 Ocean which Fracastorio had relegated to the hyper- 
 borean regions, and made them the sole cause of the 
 northing of the needle which Maurolycus had deprived 
 of that high office, and imprisoned on a small northern 
 island with no function save to disturb the compass 
 these, under Gilbert's magic touch, grew to fill the entire 
 globe and lost their identity in the great earth-magnet. 
 
 Briefly recapitulated and freed from his astronomical 
 theories, Gilbert's contribution to physical science, and 
 to the philosophical advancement of mankind, was as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 He was the first: to investigate natural phenomena 
 philosophically and systematically, and by a true induc- 
 tive method, for he interrogated nature by actual experi- 
 ment and from the particulars thus ascertained rose to 
 correct generalizations ; to recognize electricity (as distin- 
 guished from magnetism) as a new natural condition or 
 force, and to study and name it ; to extract the facts and 
 laws of magnetism from the existing mass of speculation, 
 mysteries and delusions, and to reduce them to a science ; 
 to suggest the correlation of gravity and magnetism with 
 other natural forces, and a relationship between gravity, 
 magnetism and electricity ; to formulate a definite concep- 
 tion of the magnetic field of force, and to attempt to show 
 its extent; to suggest the reaction between two fields of 
 force, and mechanical motion of the inducing bodies result- 
 ing therefrom ; to recognize that the earth is a great mag- 
 net, capable of magnetizing iron and iron ore by induction; 
 to determine the magnetic polarity of the earth, and in the 
 directive tendency thereof to reveal the true reason for the 
 
314 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 verticity of the compass-needle ; to discover magnetic 
 screening, conduction and saturation, the compound mag- 
 net, the mutual attraction or induction of lodestone and 
 iron, the pole-piece or armature, the effect of induction on 
 soft iron, and magnetization by molecular disturbance ; and 
 to discover electrical charge and its permanence for a con- 
 siderable period of time, and that it can be retained by 
 covering the excited body with certain substances. He 
 invented the first electrical (as distinguished from mag- 
 netic) instrument, the first electrical indicating device, the 
 first magnetometer, filar suspension, and the ordinary 
 method of magnetization. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 AFTER the death of the Queen, Gilbert was continued 
 in his office of Court Physician by James I. He survived 
 his royal mistress, however, by but seven months, his 
 decease occurring in November, 1603. The Y ear was a 
 plague year, and London suffered with even more than 
 usual severity ; but whether Gilbert succumbed to that 
 terrible disease or to some other malady is not known. 
 His books, papers and collections, which he had be- 
 queathed to the Royal College of Physicians, were all 
 destroyed in the Great Fire. He was buried in Trinity 
 Church, Colchester, where a tablet to his memory, bearing 
 an epitaph far beneath his deserts and couched in doubtful 
 Latin, still remains. 
 
 That Gilbert intended the De Magnete to be his final 
 and greatest work, or that he designed submitting his dis- 
 coveries and his assumptions to the judgment of the world 
 only through its pages, is, I am persuaded, far from the 
 truth. The concluding book of his treatise is at best but 
 an outline of his cosmical theories ; and, as the establish- 
 ment of these was his chief aim, it is hardly supposable 
 that he would have contented himself with so brief a state- 
 ment of conclusions after so many years of experiment and 
 study. The volume was edited and supervised while in 
 press by Edward Wright, who at the time was a lecturer on 
 Navigation for the East India Company, 1 and who takes 
 occasion in the prefatory address to praise Gilbert's sup- 
 posed discoveries concerning dip, compass variation and 
 the finding of a ship's position at sea ; so that it seems 
 possible that Wright, because of his belief in the import- 
 Ridley: Magneticall Animadversions, London, 1617. 
 
 (315) 
 
316 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 ance of these practical achievements, induced Gilbert to 
 give the work to the world before it had reached comple- 
 tion and with its parts disproportioned. That Gilbert 
 designed making additions to it is proved by the single 
 letter written by him now known to exist, which Dr. 
 William Barlowe, Archdeacon of Salisbury, appends as a 
 sort of testimonial to his own little essay on the magnet, 
 which appeared in 1613. In this letter, which was prob- 
 ably written early in 1602, Gilbert speaks of adjoining "an 
 appendix of six or eight sheets of paper to the book after 
 a while," which was to be descriptive of some new inven- 
 tions ; and probably of two instruments for finding latitude 
 at sea, which his friend, Thomas Blondeville, published 
 and ascribes to him in a curious astronomical treatise en- 
 titled "the theoriques of the Seven Planets," which he 
 produced in the last-named year. At all events, this ad- 
 dition to the De Magnete never was made; and Gilbert 
 appears to have devoted himself to the preparation of a more 
 elaborate exposition of his cosmical theories than that 
 which terminates the earlier work. This he left, however, 
 in a fragmentary state, only two books or divisions having 
 been written; or, more properly speaking, sketched, for they 
 show all the marks indicative of an intention to amplify at 
 some future time. They probably bear a similar relation 
 to the finished work as it would have been, as the two 
 books of the Advancement of Learning to the final De 
 Augmentis of Francis Bacon. This epitome, with the 
 title-page belonging to it, forms the first part of the post- 
 humous volume to which I have already alluded, and is 
 called "A new philosophy of our sublunary world;" its 
 contents being thus clearly distinguished in character from 
 those of the De Magnete, which bears the general title of 
 "A new physiology of the magnet, magnetic bodies and 
 of the great magnet, the earth." The later work was 
 manifestly intended to supplant existing cosmologies, and 
 to inculcate the philosophy of the world's place in the 
 universe which Gilbert believed that he had developed ; 
 
FRANCIS BACON. 317 
 
 the De Magnete, on the other hand, contains the " certain 
 experiments and demonstrated arguments," upon which 
 the philosophy is based. 
 
 Appended to the new philosophy, is a treatise on 
 meteorology u contra Aristotelem ;" but this seems to be 
 a distinct production, and not necessarily related to the 
 first-named treatise. 
 
 I have referred somewhat at length to this posthumous 
 work of Gilbert, which is now a literary rarity, because 
 it has a remarkable history of its own, and because it 
 forms the connecting link, so to speak> between Gilbert 
 and Bacon. 
 
 It is but natural that the world should turn to the great 
 English philosopher for the most authoritative of all con- 
 temporary estimates and opinions concerning the man 
 whose fame waned amid his immediate posterity, and 
 burst into brighter effulgence than ever three centuries 
 after his death. With even keener expectancy does it 
 seek to know how, at the hands of the apostle of the 
 advancement of science, this new science of the magnet 
 and of the amber found its impetus and promotion. I 
 have yet to encounter any expressed opinion as to the 
 manner in which Bacon dealt with Gilbert, which does 
 not lay accusations at the door of the former, ranging 
 all the way from a simple imputation of failure to under- 
 stand Gilbert's magnetic and electric discoveries, up to 
 direct charges of jealousy, malice and injustice ; the char- 
 acteristic common to all, however, being an absence of 
 explanation of rational motive, so that one might well 
 draw from them inferences not altogether consistent with 
 the usual conception of Bacon's mental strength. 
 
 Throughout all of Bacon's philosophical writings there 
 is no contemporary philosopher more frequently mentioned 
 than is Gilbert; nor one for whose opinions Bacon shows 
 any kindred respect. Even where he disputes and con- 
 
318 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 demns Gilbert's conclusions, he leaves it in no doubt that 
 they belong to Gilbert, and not to some Anonymous, for 
 he writes Gilbert's name beside them. Nor does he satisfy 
 himself with a mere expression of dissent, or even with a 
 single bitter outburst of condemnation; but he comes back 
 again and again, year after year, in his early works and 
 in those written near the end of his life, always answering 
 Gilbert, praising Gilbert, refuting Gilbert, condemning 
 Gilbert not Fracastorio, nor Cardan, nor Bruno, but 
 Gilbert, "our countryman. " 
 
 I shall now proceed to tell the history of the book which, 
 as I have said, forms a connecting link between Gilbert 
 and Bacon, and afterwards to examine the nature of the 
 opinions which Bacon expresses regarding Gilbert's dis- 
 coveries and hypotheses. In this way I shall endeavor to 
 reach an understanding of Bacon's views and his reasons 
 therefor, on which, perhaps, an impartial judgment of his 
 course may be founded; and this, if throwing no new light 
 on his character, may serve to heighten that with which 
 some of its many sides are already illuminated. In this 
 way also we shall see the working of one of the forces 
 which for the time, so far from advancing the new science, 
 tended rather to keep it in the slough of delusions and de- 
 ceptions from which it was struggling to emerge. 
 
 The "New Philosophy" of Gilbert came to be published 
 half a century after his death in the following curious cir- 
 cumstances. Within the period of apparently some two 
 years after his demise, William Gilbert, of Melford, his 
 elder brother, bearing, oddly enough, the same name 
 ( u nec sine causa ad rationes economicas spectante," says a 
 later editor) found, among Gilbert's scattered papers, the 
 fragmentary New Philosophy and the Meteorology. These 
 (as he says, being governed by fraternal affection, as well 
 as by an appreciation of the importance of the arguments 
 advanced, whereof he felt unwilling to deprive the world), 
 he arranged, caused to be translated into Latin, and pre- 
 fixed to them a dedication to Henry, Prince of Wales, who 
 
GILBERT'S PHILOSOPHIA NOVA. 319 
 
 died in 1612. That he intended to publish the book is 
 clear; nevertheless, he departed, as its author had done, 
 with his purpose unfulfilled. 
 
 In 1626 Bacon succumbed to the results of his ill-timed 
 experiment in preserving chickens with snow, and be- 
 queathed all his papers saving his collection of speeches 
 and letters to his literary executors, Sir John Constable 
 and William Bosvile the latter better known as Sir Will- 
 iam Boswell, sometime British Agent with the States of 
 the United Provinces. The Bacon manuscripts were sent to 
 Boswell' s residence at the Hague, and there lay until Bos- 
 well, who died in 1647, confided them to the editorial care 
 of Isaac Gruter, who culled from them nineteen essays and 
 fragments, including the Cogitata et Visa, the Descriptio 
 Globo Intellectualis, Thema Coeli and others, and pub- 
 lished them all together in 1653. Among the papers 
 which thus came into his hands, Gruter found the two 
 manuscripts of William Gilbert, of Colchester, which Wil- 
 liam Gilbert, of Melford, had prepared, and these he edited 
 and issued as before stated, in 1651. l 
 
 Gruter is unable to decide whether the treatises, thus 
 brought to light, were written before or after the De Mag- 
 nete. Mr. James Spedding, the learned biographer of 
 Bacon, is of opinion that they were produced before 1604 
 u as the new star of 1572 is mentioned by itself, whereas 
 later writers, as Bacon and Galileo, always couple it with 
 the star in Ophiuchus first seen in i6o4;" 2 and also con- 
 jectures that they are of later date than 1600, on the some- 
 what inconclusive authority of Bacon's remark 3 concerning 
 Gilbert as one. who, ''having employed himself most as- 
 siduously in the consideration of the magnet, immediately 
 established a system of philosophy to coincide with his 
 favorite pursuit." When the Meteorology was written is 
 
 'The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. by Spedding, Ellis and Heath, Vol. 
 II., 196, Vol. V., 187, Boston, 1802. 
 2 Ibid. 
 3 Novum Organuni, i., 5^. 
 
320 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 perhaps doubtful, but the internal evidence of the Philos- 
 ophia Nova (presupposing, as its contents plainly do, a 
 knowledge on the part of the reader not only of the mag- 
 netic but of the electric phenomena recorded in the De 
 Magnete), leaves it, I think, beyond question that it was 
 prepared after the writing, if not after the publication 
 of the last-named work. 
 
 But the exact time of its production is of little moment. 
 The significant fact lies in the possession of the manu- 
 scripts by Bacon during his lifetime. He studied them, 
 he knew their contents. And in those great Monuments 
 wherein he has invoked for his own fame the judgment of 
 the next age, he attacks and condemns over and over 
 again the opinions of a man who could neither speak for 
 himself, being in his grave, nor be spoken for by the only 
 written words wherein he had set them forth, and which, 
 in the cabinet of my Lord Verulam, were as effectually 
 silenced and entombed. The advocates of Bacon, who can 
 reconcile his consignment of Peacham to the rack with the 
 principles of natural law and the rights of the citizen 
 which he so eloquently defended, may perhaps see in his 
 dealing with the dead Gilbert's manuscripts no evidence 
 of the meanness and baseness, of which others have pro- 
 fessed to find in his character abundant proof. But pos- 
 sibly it may call for still further partisan ingenuity to 
 discover the consistency of his suppression of this record 
 of conclusions from an inductive research, and his severe 
 strictures upon its author, with his simultaneous blazoning 
 to the world of the value of the inductive method as the 
 only means of discovering physical truth, and "hitherto 
 untried. " 
 
 The very persistence of his censure of Gilbert is of 
 itself remarkable. Unlike the arraignment of Aristotle 
 ("pessimus sophista"), or Galen ("canicula et pestis"), 
 or Agrippa ("trivialis scurra"), or Paracelsus ("asinorum 
 adoptiva") in the writings of his youth, which gave place 
 to much more tempered expressions in those of his maturer 
 
BACON AND GILBERT. 321 
 
 years, the vigor and severity of the adverse judgments 
 which he passes upon Gilbert's theories remained un- 
 abated from the beginning of his career to the end. 
 
 But to infer from the foregoing that Bacon's attitude 
 toward Gilbert's achievements is always one of unquali- 
 fied disapproval, is gravely to err. While the instances 
 where he bestows praise are few, there are several in 
 which he tacitly accepts the truth of Gilbert's discover- 
 ies; and if to this be added the further fact that toward one 
 and to us the most important branch of these his real 
 relation is substantially that of a passive disciple, it be- 
 comes evident that any correct conclusion as to the ulti- 
 mate nature of his opinions must be based on careful 
 discrimination between the matters to which he, at differ- 
 ent times, refers. Between these, it is difficult to draw 
 any precise dividing line which will enable us to say that 
 with those on one side he wholly agrees, while he as com- 
 pletely disagrees with those on the other. No two cate- 
 gories can be framed in this respect which will not include 
 serious exceptions. But, viewing all broadly, it will be 
 found that when he acquiesces, it is in favor of Gilbert's 
 direct conclusions from experiment ; while on the other 
 hand he seldom fails to condemn Gilbert's cosmical hypoth- 
 eses and speculations. For Gilbert's chief effort, the 
 attempt to base cosmical theories upon the outcome of 
 magnetic experiment, his censure is without qualification ; 
 to that, every shaft of ridicule and disparagement is di- 
 rected it is vain, false, absurd, wrong in every particular 
 it is a generalization from wholly insufficient data an 
 attempt to build a ship from material not enough to pro- 
 vide the rowing-pins of a boat. 
 
 With this differentiation as a guide, we can now sep- 
 arate Bacon's opinions regarding Gilbert's magnetic and 
 electric discoveries which possess for us the more vital 
 interest from those which he formulates with reference 
 to the broader, universal deductions. 
 
 He agrees with Gilbert in classing the lodestone as 
 21 
 
322 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 among the things which work by the universal configura- 
 tion and sympathy of the world by the primitive nature 
 of matter and the seeds of things "by consent with the 
 globe of the earth. " Then, still following, he connects 
 magnetism and gravity, the latter differing only in being 
 by consent "of dense bodies" with the globe of the earth, 
 and the magnetic motion "drawing both the iron to the 
 magnet and heavy bodies to the globe." 1 He recognizes 
 the production of the field of force; "immaterial virtues 
 which pass through all mediums yet at determinate dis- 
 tances." 2 There is no doubt as to the signification which 
 he attaches to the last phrase, for he asks himself the 
 question "What may be distance?" and answers it almost 
 in Gilbert's words "that which is not inaptly termed, orb 
 of virtue, or activity." 3 
 
 Gilbert's notion of the gradual diminution of the earth's 
 attraction as bodies recede, he expressly affirms, adding 
 that the downward motion "rises from no other appetite 
 of bodies than that of uniting and collecting themselves to 
 the earth (which is a mass of bodies of the same nature 
 with them), and is confined within the orb of its own 
 virtue." 4 His concurrence in Gilbert's idea of the earth's 
 verticity takes the following, even cordial, form : "Now 
 the diligence of Gilbert has discovered for us most truly 
 that all earth and every nature (which we call terrestrial) 
 that is not supple but rigid, and as he himself calls it 
 robust, has a direction or verticity, latent indeed, yet re- 
 vealing itself in many exquisite experiments north and 
 south." 5 And again he agrees with Gilbert, whom he 
 commends as having well observed it, that magnetic repul- 
 sion is not strictly an avoidance, but a conformity or 
 attraction to a more convenient situation. 6 
 
 . Hist., cent, x, 904, et seq. 2 Nov. Org., B. ii, 37. 
 
 8 De Augmentis, B. iii, iv. 
 
 *Des. Globi Intellect. Nov. Organum, B. ii, 35. 
 6 De Fluxu et Refluxu Maris. 6 Nov. Org., B. ii, 48. 
 
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- 
 
 1 De Aug., B. iii, c. iv. 2 De Fluxu et Refluxu Maris. 
 
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 Novtim 
 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 reverification 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 "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. 
 
BACON ON THE ELECTRICS. 325 
 
 and partly in Latin, which it has been assumed, not infre- 
 quently, sets forth a series of electrical discoveries and ex- 
 periments made by Bacon himself. The entire production, 
 however, is merely an epitome of the famous second chap- 
 ter in Gilbert's De Magnete, wherein the electrical mat- 
 ters are contained; no material fact being wanting, and 
 the various facts being arranged in nearly the same order 
 in which Gilbert presents them. 
 
 It is not an unreasonable inference that Bacon prepared 
 this synopsis merely for convenience, intending at some 
 future time to take up the subject of electrics for study; 
 and this supposition gains support from his curt dismissal 
 of the topic in his Natural History, 1 where he begins a 
 paragraph as if he were about to discuss "emissions which 
 cause attraction of certain bodies at a distance," but does 
 nothing beyond excepting the lodestone from the category 
 and noting his intention of considering "the drawing of 
 amber and jet and other electric bodies" besides sundry 
 other attractions under another title, which he appears 
 never to have done. But if "imitation is the sincerest 
 flattery," this is a shining example of it, which may justify 
 the suggestion already made that in respect to this part of 
 Gilbert's contribution to the world's knowledge Bacon's 
 attitude is that of a disciple. He adds nothing to Gilbert's 
 results he does not dispute a single physical happening. 
 But when he comes to the consideration of Gilbert's hy- 
 pothesis of electrical action based on these experiments, 
 then his inclination to dispute conclusions asserts itself. 
 He will not accept Gilbert's assumption of effluvia purely 
 physical notion as it is. He prefers to go back to anti- 
 quity, and exhume one of those brain-spun abstractions, 
 which it is his delight to condemn. 
 
 ; 'The electrical operation, of which Gilbert and others 
 after him have told so many fables, is none other," he 
 avers, "than an appetite of the body excited by light fric- 
 tion which does not well tolerate the air, but prefers any- 
 
 *Nat Hist., cent, x., 906. 
 
326 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 thing tangible which it can find near by." No induction, 
 and least of all, one based on precise rules, ever brought 
 him to this conclusion. No conclusion ever contained, or 
 was likely to lead to the acquirement of less of the "fruit" 
 which the inductive method aimed to secure. It is easier 
 to perceive in the assertion a reductio ad absurdum and a 
 satire, than the inconsistency which otherwise obtrudes 
 itself. He denied Gilbert's effluvia, and pointed his denial 
 by suggesting, as a truer hypothesis, the notion of the 
 magnetic appetite, which, none better than he knew, 
 owed its existence to nothing but "the sterile exuber- 
 ance" of ancient thought. 
 
 Macaulay likens the speculations of the old world in the 
 realm of natural philosophy to ploughing, harrowing, 
 reaping and threshing, with no better result than to fill 
 the garners with smut and stubble. Bacon is fond of the 
 parable of the farmer who directed his sons to dig in the 
 vineyard for hidden treasure the gold not being found, 
 but the cultivation vastly increasing the yield of the vines. 
 
 His opinion of Gilbert's work accords with Macaulay's 
 analogy, for he believed that it yielded no valuable har- 
 vest on the other hand it falls within his favorite alle- 
 gory, for Gilbert's digging the experiments on the mag- 
 net and the amber was in itself admittedly good and 
 valuable. It was to him as if Gilbert had ploughed and 
 harrowed to improve soil which had yielded, not grain, 
 but weeds not the vine loaded with bursting clusters, but 
 the malignant creeper luxuriant with poisonous foliage. 
 To Bacon the Copernican theory was a pestilent thing. 
 Gilbert's tillage of the land could make it none the less 
 noxious rather the contrary : far less could he convert it 
 into the fruitful vine. Nor, to change the figure, could 
 the stones which Gilbert quarried suffice for a monument 
 reaching to the skies. His pile ended in clouds not in 
 the heavens. 
 
 In distinguishing between Gilbert's physical discoveries 
 and his cosinical speculations, Bacon regards the latter as 
 
BACON AND GILBERT. 327 
 
 of the higher import; and, in so doing, follows in the 
 steps of Gilbert himself. It must be remembered that 
 Gilbert's aim was not primarily the making of electrical 
 and magnetic discoveries, but the establishment, through 
 such means, of a great theory of the physical structure of 
 the universe ; that the actual facts proved by these experi- 
 ments and Gilbert's application of these facts to support 
 his hypotheses, were two entirely different matters. The 
 last we have already seen to be in many particulars incon- 
 clusive and obscure. Nor was the general acceptance of 
 the Copernican theory in any wise promoted by Gilbert's 
 arguments ; nor do the latter enter into any modern astro- 
 physical doctrine ; nor does any one maintain them now. 
 What other position toward them could Bacon have taken, 
 convinced, moreover, as he was of the error of the helio- 
 centric theory, than that which he assumed? A false doc- 
 trine bolstered by wrong interpretations of experiments 
 cannot be made true in the mind of any rational being so 
 believing, by establishing the accuracy of the experiments 
 per se. 
 
 That Bacon saw in Gilbert's hypotheses a flagrant ex- 
 ample of the very errors resulting from incorrect gener- 
 alizations, away from which he was seeking to lead the 
 world, furnishes a probable reason both for the severity of 
 his censure and the persistence with which he repeated it. 
 To call Gilbert an empiric and a maker of fables, was 
 merely to indulge in a style of vituperation in which he 
 was far excelled in point of picturesqueness, vigor and 
 fecundity by Gilbert himself, and besides to follow a fash- 
 ion of the times, whereof the irascible daughter of King 
 Henry was no weak exemplar. But Bacon's strictures 
 were rarely in the form of hasty invective. They were 
 painstaking and years often elapsed before he found ex- 
 pressions for them which seemed to him entirely satis- 
 factory and adequate. Of this peculiarity, two prominent 
 instances are worth noting as typical. 
 
 In the Advancement of Learn ing, published in 1605, he 
 
328 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 says that "the Alchemists have made a philosophy out of 
 a few experiments of the furnace, and Gilbert, our country- 
 man, hath made a philosophy out of observations of the 
 lodestone " this being in illustration of the proneness of 
 humanity to generalize upon insufficient or incomplete 
 data. The same statement is repeated in the Novum Or- 
 ganum, published fifteen years later, and in the De Aug- 
 mentis (1623). And, finally, in the History of Heavy and 
 Light Bodies, which did not appear until after Bacon's 
 death, it takes a more severe form, declaring that Gilbert 
 "has himself become a magnet; that is, he has ascribed too 
 many things to that force and built a ship out of a shell." 
 Apparently, it took Bacon as long to reach a final formula- 
 tion of this judgment as it did Gilbert to make all the 
 experiments in the De Magnete. 
 
 Another even more curious example forms a part of his 
 attack on Gilbert, especially as a Copernican. In the Ad- 
 vancement of Learning, he speaks of the establishment of 
 a Calendar of Sects of Philosophy, in which he proposes the 
 setting down of the philosophy of "Gilbert, our country- 
 man, who revived, with some alterations and demonstra- 
 tions, the opinions of Xenophanes." The opinions of 
 Xenophanes, who was the founder of the Bleatic school of 
 Greek philosophy, concerning astronomy, were extravagant 
 in extreme ; but, as they included a wild speculation in- 
 volving terrestrial rotation, he is commonly mentioned 
 among the ancient prototypes of Copernicus. Bacon's 
 statement, of course, had no foundation in fact, and was 
 derisively intended. This is repeated with odd variations. 
 In the Cogitata et Visa, we are told that "our countryman 
 Gilbert," in order that he might examine the nature of the 
 magnet, constantly sought, with great firmness, constancy 
 of judgment and many experiments, " to start new sects in 
 natural philosophy ; nor did he hesitate to turn into 
 ridicule the name of Xenophanes, to whose opinions he 
 himself inclined." In the Redargutio Philosophorum this 
 is changed to read that he turned the name of Xenophanes 
 
BACON AND GILBERT. 339 
 
 into Xenomanes, an allusion which finds its explanation 
 in the History of Life and Death, wherein Bacon describes 
 the Greek as "a man who wandered no less in his mind 
 than in his body, so that, in consequence of his opinions, 
 his name was changed from Xenophanes to Xenomanes." 
 But in the De Augmentis, in a paragraph similar to that 
 originally in the Advancement of Learning, Xenophanes 
 is dropped out of sight, and Gilbert is charged with reviv- 
 ing the doctrines of Philolaus. The strength of the judg- 
 ment which, while persisting over twenty years, can exer- 
 cise such a keen discrimination is sufficiently apparent. 
 
 The Philosophia Nova of Gilbert contains, as I have 
 already pointed out, the most comprehensive statement of 
 his cosmical and astronomical views. The Meteorologia 
 deals more particularly with natural phenomena, such as 
 comets, the winds and tides, and the rainbow. To both 
 of these works Bacon often refers. Thus, in the Descrip- 
 tio Globo Intellectualis, he mentions Gilbert's notions of 
 the revolution of the stars, the vacuum in the interstellar 
 space, the scattering of opaque globes through the heavens, 
 and, with especial approval, his mapping of the moon and 
 his conceptions concerning gravity. In his History of the 
 Winds he draws so freely upon Gilbert's chapters on the 
 same subject that Gruter notes upon the margins of the 
 Meteorologia the places whence he has taken his extracts. 
 In fact, even in the absence of knowledge of the discovery 
 of the Gilbert manuscripts among Bacon's literary remains, 
 there is abundant evidence to show that he was at least one 
 of the distinguished men whom Gruter says had access to 
 Gilbert's writing in its unpublished form. 
 
 It is not necessary for the purpose of this work to extend 
 this review of the relations of Bacon and Gilbert beyond 
 the present limit. That Bacon recognized Gilbert's emi- 
 nence as a philosopher and as a discoverer is clear. He 
 certainly regarded him in the light of u a foeman worthy 
 of his steel." That he was governed in his censure by 
 personal animosity it is needless to assume, in view of the 
 
330 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 existence of other and wholly impersonal considerations 
 of ample strength. His suppression of Gilbert's manu- 
 script is a part of that "checkered spectacle of so much 
 ^lory and so much shame" which makes up his life. 
 
 As to the statement that is often made that Gilbert prac- 
 ticed the inductive method before Bacon presented it to 
 the world, some discrimination is requisite. The greatest 
 philosophical critics have never agreed as to the exact 
 nature of the induction which Bacon sought to engraft 
 upon human thought, and therefore it would be presump- 
 tuous here to seek its definition. If his philosophy advo- 
 cates induction as a mode of reasoning only in a broad and 
 general way, it but follows Roger Bacon, and, more closely, 
 Leonardo da Vinci. Indeed, the words of the great Italian, 
 "My design is first to examine facts, and afterwards to 
 demonstrate how bodies are constrained to act It is the 
 method that one must adhere to in all research into nature" 
 . . . find a better application in the experiments of Gil- 
 bert than in the aphorisms of Bacon. "Recent induction, 
 that of Mill and Whewell, Herschel, Faraday and Darwin," 
 says Professor Nichol, "is the means by which great se- 
 quences of nature, called laws, are investigated by the aid 
 of apt conjecture and by careful verification established;" 1 
 and such was the induction which led Gilbert to the con- 
 clusion that the earth is a great magnet. But this, accord- 
 ing to the same authority, is not Baconian induction, for 
 Bacon aspired to penetrate into the inner nature of things, 
 and so hold them in command by the aid of a method 
 which, from its exhaustiveness, he held to be as certain in 
 its results as a demonstration of Euclid ; a "conclusion of 
 necessity," so mechanical that when once understood all 
 men might employ it, yet so startling that it was to be as a 
 new sun to the borrowed beams of stars; a method compared 
 by its author to a compass which equalizes all hands, and 
 enables the most unpracticed person to draw a more correct 
 
 1 Nichol: Francis Bacon, his life and his philosophy. Edinburgh, 
 1889, ii., 181. 
 
BACON'S INFLUENCE ON ELECTRICAL PROGRESS. 331 
 
 circle than the best draftsman can without it, and which is 
 to level all abilities, and eliminate intellectual acuteness 
 and the play of genius in the solution of the problems of 
 nature. If such be the Baconian inductive method, Gilbert 
 never practiced it, and it may be questioned whether any 
 oue has ever done so. That Gilbert, however, pursued the 
 inductive method as truly, in kind, as it is followed in the 
 scientific thought of to-day, seems beyond dispute. 
 
 It has been suggested, in order to account for Bacon's 
 attitude not only toward Gilbert but toward Copernicus 
 and Harvey, that he did not, in reality, initiate modern 
 philosophy, but closed the philosophy of the Middle Ages. 1 
 Nor is this altogether at variance with the view taken by 
 Lord Brougham in his fine summing up of the Baconian 
 achievements, 2 with direct reference to Roger Bacon, Da 
 Vinci and Gilbert, as the generalization and extension 
 of their modes of investigation "to all matters of contin- 
 gent truth, exploding the errors, the absurd dogmas and 
 fantastic subtleties of the schools." So, in estimating 
 Bacon's part in the intellectual rise in electricity, we find 
 him near the boundary between the old and the new phil- 
 osophy, and apparently influenced by the old mode of 
 thought as well as by the new. Toward the science as 
 Gilbert begun it, his position appears to have been inter- 
 preted by his contemporaries and immediate successors as 
 one of disparagement, and for a time this acted to retard 
 progress; while his failure to do Gilbert justice, certainly 
 savors of mediaeval intolerance. But in so far as he led 
 the world to the investigation of all physical phenomena 
 by direct experiment and correct induction, he became 
 ultimately a power mightily working for the advancement 
 of knowledge in the new field. 
 
 1 Erdmann, History of Philosophy, London, 1890. 
 
 2 Brougham, Address on Unveiling of Newton's Statue, 1855. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THERE is no period in the annals of England which is 
 more captivating to the student than that which includes 
 the years which close the reign of Elizabeth, and those 
 immediately following the accession of James I. It was 
 at this time, we are told, that there came a wonderful 
 awakening of the national life, an unexampled increase 
 in opulence, refinement and leisure. It was then that the 
 glory of the new literature burst forth ; and imagination, 
 winged by the genius of Shakespeare, soared to its su- 
 premest height. Then the sails of Britain swept over the 
 furthest seas, and the romances of the old minstrels became 
 dull and vapid beside the tales which the weather-beaten 
 mariner brought back of the flowery lands and golden 
 shores which, beckoning so seductively, set the staid trader 
 of foggy London aflame with cupidity and with enterprise. 
 Then, it is said, arose a new impulse to classical study and 
 a passion for the master literature of Greece and Italy. 
 English commerce increased and wealth poured into the 
 land, bringing with it new luxuries and a new demand for 
 wines and jewels and rich apparel and sumptuous equipage 
 and costly dwellings. The huts of u sticks and mud" 
 which the followers of Spanish Philip had declared the 
 peasants' hovels to be, gave place to houses of stone and 
 brick; the grim and battlemented walls of feudal times to 
 mansions graceful and beautiful, embowered in smiling 
 gardens and decorated with the exquisite refinement of 
 Italian art. 
 
 Such, briefly, is the picture, so often shown, following 
 the recital of the great sea victory and the story of 
 the years of fear and suspense and stagnation which 
 preceded it, until it seems as if the smoke of the guns 
 
 (332) 
 
THE CONDITION OF SCIENCE IN ENGLAND. 333 
 
 of Hawkins and Drake and Frobisher, like the gauze 
 of the theatre, had obscured the stage when the fortunes 
 of the play were darkest, only to be swept aside to reveal 
 the glory of England's transformation. 
 
 But national progress does not depend solely upon the 
 growth, however remarkable, of polite literature, nor even 
 of commerce. It finds another and potent aid in the labors 
 of the investigator and the inventor in the diffusion of a 
 knowledge of physical science among the people, and in an 
 environment wherein discovery and invention are certain 
 to be appreciated, stimulated and fostered. As will now 
 be seen, the intellectual conditions which existed in Eng- 
 land at the beginning of the seventeenth century were far 
 from favorable either to the development of inventive 
 genius or the encouragement of physical inquiry. 
 
 Whatever of scientific knowledge there was in the 
 country was restricted to the physicians, and to perhaps a 
 few individuals who, like Lord Arundel, built for them- 
 selves huge magnets and other apparatus merely as play- 
 things. Certainly it was not to be found in the Universi- 
 ties. Oxford and Cambridge were under the rule of the 
 Star Chamber. Bruno describes the Dons, despite their 
 gorgeous robes and insignia, as "devoid of courtesy as 
 cowherds." Student life combined the seclusion of the 
 monastery with the riotous dissipation of the tavern. The 
 Protestant sects wrangled ceaselessly among themselves, 
 or combined their jarring forces against Rome. Faith in 
 Aristotle, so greatly weakened abroad, here stood in unim- 
 paired vigor, and those who had not drunk deep at his 
 fountain, were denied, by statute, a degree either in phil- 
 osophy or theology. 1 There was no suggestion of new 
 advance which was not flouted, no tolerance save for end- 
 
 1 Official statutes declared that Bachelors and Masters of Arts who did 
 not faithfully follow Aristotle were liable to a fine of five shillings for 
 every point of divergence or for every fault committed against the Or- 
 ganon. Bruno wittily called Oxford "the widow of sound learning." 
 Lewes: Biog. Hist, of Philosophy. New York, 1857. 
 
334 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 less quibbling over names and words. The learning of 
 the realm, as Bacon said, was but "an infinite chaos of 
 shadows and moths wherewith our books and minds are 
 pestered. ' ' 
 
 The mob detested foreigners and all their ways. The 
 aristocracy aped the Italians under what Ascham called 
 the "enchantment of Circe brought out of Italy to mar 
 men's manners in England," in everything except educa- 
 tion. In 1605, Nicholas Peiresc, a Frenchman of great 
 learning, visiting England, finds nothing more worthy of 
 record than a discussion with Camden as to the meaning of 
 the names of French towns, and a summons from the King 
 to relate the story of a drinking match. 1 In 1615 Scioppius 
 denied that James could collect twenty learned men in all 
 the realm. Brilliant rhetoric, casting the glamour of ro- 
 mance and poetry about the Elizabethan Age, may obscure 
 the fact that the existing state of learning was one of degra- 
 dation; but it cannot destroy the truth of it. Neither can a 
 recital of the varied attainments of the Queen, and notices 
 of the erection of new grammar schools and of increased 
 interest in the ancient classics among the word-spinners, 
 serve to make that which was in the mire appear to have 
 been in the clouds. 
 
 "The reign of Queen Elizabeth," says the ingenuous 
 Thomas Sprat in 1667, summing up the true condition of 
 learning in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, "was long, 
 triumphant, peaceable at home and glorious abroad . . . 
 but though knowledge began abundantly to spring forth, 
 yet it was not then seasonable for experiments to receive 
 the public encouragement, while the writings of antiquity 
 and the controversies between us and the Church of Rome 
 were not fully studied and despatched. The reign of King 
 James was happy in all the benefits of peace, and plenti- 
 fully furnished with men of profound learning, but, in 
 imitation of the king, they chiefly regarded the matters of 
 religion and disputation, so that even my Lord Bacon, with 
 ^assendus: The Mirrour of True Nobility and Gentry. London, 1657. 
 
WRIGHT AND BAR^OWE. 335 
 
 all his authority in the state, could never raise any college 
 of Solomon but in a romance." 1 Such were the times dur- 
 ing which the announcement of the electrical discoveries 
 of Gilbert appeared. 
 
 As a Copernican, Gilbert, in his own country, had few 
 co-believers; and as he had not merely linked his physical 
 researches to the heliocentric doctrine, but had sought to 
 substantiate the latter by them, it followed for this reason 
 that his entire work stood discredited in the eyes of Eng- 
 lish scholars generally. But even if he had not adhered 
 to the new theory, it may well be doubted whether there 
 was sufficient knowledge of physical science existing in 
 England to secure for his magnetic and electric discoveries 
 even a superficial understanding by the learned classes. 
 So far as written records prove, there were but two men in 
 the kingdom, both his personal friends, who, had any 
 special attainments in matters magnetical. These were 
 Edward Wright 2 and William Barlowe, 3 and even their 
 interest in the subject was mainly utilitarian, and depended 
 upon the belief that Gilbert had discovered some new nav- 
 igating instruments and simpler methods than were in ex- 
 istence for finding a ship's position at sea. 
 
 Gilbert had no practical knowledge of navigation, and 
 his sea voyaging had begun and ended with the crossing 
 of the English Channel when he made his continental 
 tour. Wright, on the other hand, was probably the most 
 skillful sea mathematician in all England. He had made 
 long voyages, even to South America. He had plotted 
 new charts and corrected old ones, and had even become 
 involved in a dispute with the famous Gerhard Mercator, 
 wherein he claimed the maps, made on what is now known 
 as Mercator's projection, to have been of his own first de- 
 vising. He had invented new methods of solar observa- 
 
 1 Sprat: Hist. Roy. Soc. London, 1667. 
 
 2 Bibliographica Philosophica. 
 
 3 Wood: Athenae Oxonienses, 1813; Biograph. Britann.; LeNeve: Fasti. 
 Eccl. Anglia. Ed. Hardy; Stephen: Dicty. Nat. Biog. N. Y., 1885. 
 
336 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 tion, had written books on navigation, was lecturer on that 
 subject to the Kast India Company, and ultimately became 
 a tutor of the Prince of Wales. Wright actively assisted 
 Gilbert, not only in the gathering of material and the edit- 
 ing of his treatise, but is said to have prepared the twelfth 
 chapter of the fourth book, in which there appears a table 
 of the fixed stars. 1 He also wrote the address to Gilbert 
 which is prefixed to the De Magnete. It seems not unrea- 
 sonable to assume that his belief in the practical importance 
 of the instruments which Gilbert describes caused him to 
 advocate speedy publication of the work, in order to bring 
 them into the hands of the merchant adventurers and nav- 
 igators as soon as possible, and this may account for the 
 brevity of the final chapters, wherein Gilbert develops his 
 cosmical theories. For these speculations Wright, al- 
 though a Copernican himself, had little fancy, and merely 
 mentions them perfunctorily in his preface. 
 
 While Wright was a navigator who had learned his art 
 at sea, Barlowe was one who believed himself to have 
 acquired it in cathedrals. In 1597 he published a book 
 entitled the Navigators' Supply, dedicated to the Earl of 
 Essex, wherein he ingratiates himself with the sea-faring 
 man by the following remarkable preface: "Touching 
 experience in these matters (compasses, etc.) I have none. 
 For, by natural construction of body, even when I was 
 young and strongest, I altogether abhorred the sea. How- 
 beit, that antipathy of my body against so barbarous an 
 element could never have hindered the sympathy of my 
 mind and hearty affection towards so worthy an art as 
 navigation is ; tied to that element, if you respect the out- 
 ward toil of the hand, but clearly freed therefrom, if you 
 regard the apprehension of the mind." But the refreshing 
 naivete of this is even surpassed by his effort to neutralize 
 its effect by claiming the especial consideration of the 
 reader for his book because it "Was written by a bishop's 
 sonne, and, by affinitie, to many bishops kinne" 
 1 Ridley: Magnetical Animadversions. London, 1617, p. n. 
 
WILLIAM BARLOWE. 337 
 
 thus betraying the innocent belief that the accumulated 
 ecclesiastical influence which he wielded, because of his 
 filial relation to one bishop and his fraternal relation to the 
 four others whom his sisters had espoused, would secure 
 for him, from the briny mariner afloat, the same sort of 
 favor which, ashore, finally landed him in the comfortable 
 Archdiaconate of Salisbury. 
 
 Barlowe, however, was far more deeply interested in Gil- 
 bert's magnetical experiments than Wright, because he 
 was making similar researches himself. It has been 
 claimed 1 for him that he had "knowledge in the magnet'* 
 twenty years before Gilbert's book appeared, and that he 
 was accounted superior, or at least equal, to Gilbert as a 
 "searcher and finder out of many rare and magnetical 
 secrets ;" but there is nothing to substantiate this in any- 
 thing Barlowe ever published. He certainly was in no 
 hurry to give to the world either his own magnetical re- 
 searches, or to express his approval of those of his friend. 
 He owed his earlier advancement to the friendship of 
 Essex, whom, to his credit be it said, he did not desert in 
 adversity, and to whom he ministered even on the scaffold; 
 and then, in the next reign, he became chaplain to the 
 Prince of Wales, on his way to his final preferment ; so 
 that, even if he had been a Copernican at heart, which he 
 was not, it would have been to the last degree impolitic for 
 him to have rushed into an endorsement of a work wherein 
 the proscribed theory was so strenuously maintained. Be- 
 sides, in 1605 came Bacon's earliest fling at Gilbert the 
 first English criticism of the De Magnete from an eminent 
 source and that this had a deterrent influence upon him 
 may also be conceived. But there was a great deal of 
 human nature in Barlowe, revealing itself with more than 
 common transparency. He did not dare, in 1600, to chal- 
 lenge Gilbert's priority to himself, nor even then to make 
 public his own alleged discoveries ; but when, in 1613, 
 another Richmond suddenly leaped into the field in the 
 
 1 Wood : Athenae Oxoiiienses, London, 1813, Vol. II, 375. 
 22 
 
338 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 person of Mark Ridley, he rose in arms. It is of no 
 moment to him that Ridley tells the world nothing more 
 than Gilbert had already told it a dozen years earlier, and 
 that he is merely attacking, at too late a date, Gilbert over 
 Ridley's shoulders. He disputes Ridley in toto; and thus 
 begins the first of the many controversies which have in- 
 volved every material discovery and invention in electrical 
 science. 
 
 Little is known about Ridley beyond his own descrip- 
 tion of himself on his title page as "Doctor in physicke 
 and Philosophic, L,atly Physition to the Kmperour of 
 Russia and one of ye eight principals or Elects of the Col- 
 ledge of Physitions in London;" but his book is remark- 
 able for its peculiarly practical advice and for the recom- 
 mendation, in the preface, that the reader should provide 
 himself with "such like forms of Magnets as I have de- 
 scribed ... as also of needles, wiers and waights of iron 
 and steel," upon the procurement of which "then thou 
 mayest read and practice the operations and demonstra- 
 tions of this book." 
 
 There is a vast difference between this counsel, followed 
 by pages of detailed instructions and pictures, and the 
 apology which, not very many years before, prefaced Rob- 
 ert Norman's work. There it was feared that magnetic 
 matters "may be said by the learned in the mathemati- 
 calles " to be "no question or matter for Mechanician or 
 Mariner to meddle with," and it was begged that they 
 "do not disdainefully condemne men that will search out 
 the secrets of their Artes and Professions and publish the 
 same to the use and behoofe of others." 
 
 Ridley's treatise, in the main, however, is in substance 
 but an amplified review of most of the magnetic experi- 
 ments which Gilbert records in the De Magnete. The 
 Copernican doctrine is accepted somewhat hesitatingly, 
 and with less reservation Gilbert's affirmation of the mag- 
 netic nature of the globe. 
 
 As allusion is also made to his cosmical notions, includ- 
 
THE BARLOWE AND RIDLEY CONTROVERSY. 339 
 
 ing the supposed magnetic attractions of earth, it appears 
 that Ridley was also one of the illustrious men who 
 Gruter says had access to the manuscript of Gilbert's post- 
 humous Philosopliia Nova, of course before Bacon sup- 
 pressed it. 
 
 It is but just to Barlowe to state that he claims to have 
 written the work which appeared in 1618 in reply to 
 Ridley, some seven years earlier, and that the manuscript, 
 having been delivered to his chosen patron, Sir Thomas 
 Challoner, was, as he says, "either mislaied or embeseled." 
 The book, as published, was dedicated to another poli- 
 tician, Sir Dudley Digges. Barlowe compares him to the 
 magnet, because he thinks Digges maintains u so pleasing 
 a carriage toward everie man, as causeth all good men 
 which know you to love you by force of a natural sympa- 
 thy," which was a new use of the old metaphor in its ap- 
 plication to a politician, and confers upon the astute Am- 
 bassador of Elizabeth the honor of being the first of modern 
 "magnetic statesmen." 
 
 I shall not pause to examine the magnetic experiments 
 which Barlowe records, for they augment but little the facts 
 already known. Nor does his brief reference to electric 
 phenomena add anything, except the word u electrical," 
 to the language. In fact, he translates Gilbert's "elec- 
 trica," as "electricall bodies," and not "electrics;" and 
 speaks of "electricall attraction," which he says is in "in- 
 finite other things both naturale and compound" besides 
 those noted by Gilbert. But he gives no additional names 
 of electrics, nor, despite his alleged extension of Gilbert's 
 observations, has he the slightest notion of electrical re- 
 pulsion or conduction. 
 
 Barlowe' s assertion that his thunder had been stolen, 
 provoked from Ridley a prompt and caustic reply under 
 the title of Magneticall Animadversions, 1 in which Ridley 
 avers that there is not a fact in Barlowe' s treatise that was 
 not well known long before his first manuscript was given 
 
 1 Cit. sup. 
 
340 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 to Challoner, and that what Barlowe had not purloined 
 from Gilbert he had filched from him. But Barlowe is 
 still eager for the fray. 
 
 "Except this Ridley had ploughed with my Heifer hee 
 had not known my Riddle," he rejoins ,* after assert- 
 ing that Ridley had surreptitiously obtained a manuscript 
 copy of his book, and identifying with careful precision 
 much of his stolen property in Ridley's pages. And then, 
 after sating himself with verbal scarification of Ridley, he 
 essays to meet the acrimonious demand of the latter that 
 he should state unequivocally the precise inventions he 
 claims to have made, and specifies improvements in hang- 
 ing the dipping needle, the magnetical difference between 
 iron and steel, "the right way of touching magneticall 
 needles," the piecing and cementing of lodestones, and that 
 a "Loadstone being double capped must take up so great 
 weight;" which we may pass by mainly because those 
 which are of importance are not Barlowe' s, and those 
 which are probably his are not important. 
 
 The best thing Barlowe did was to draw a clear line be- 
 tween Gilbert's magnetic discoveries and Gilbert's cosmical 
 theories, by distinctly affirming the first and as distinctly 
 disaffirming the second "Entreating of the motion of the 
 earth," he says, "I think there is no man living further 
 from beleeving itt than myself," thus setting himself right 
 with the Anti-Copernicans; and then reconciling his appar- 
 ent simultaneous belief and disbelief in Gilbert by quoting 
 "Amicus Socrates, Amicus Plato, sed magis arnica veritas" 
 and "Nullius addictus jurare in verba Magistri." Ridley 
 drew no such line because he was himself Copernicam It 
 will be remembered that Bacon also separated Gilbert's 
 discoveries and hypotheses, and that it is only after per- 
 ceiving that fact that his diverse criticisms can be mutually 
 reconciled; but unlike Barlowe he left the dividing bound- 
 ary hazy and obscure. 
 
 Marlowe: A Briefe Discovery of the Idle Animadversions of Marke 
 Ridley. London, 1618. 
 
STATE OF LEARNING IN ITALY. 341 
 
 Such was the reception- which w r as accorded the Gilbert- 
 ian discoveries at home; five years of neglect and probable 
 ridicule, then Bacon's initial attack, then plagiarism of 
 them, and finally a wrangle between the appropnators. 
 Besides, and almost at the outset, there came from Hol- 
 land the sneering comment of Scaliger the son then pro- 
 fessor of Belles Lettres at the University of L,eyden swift 
 to repay the sharp criticisms of Gilbert upon the vagaries 
 of Scaliger the father. U A certain Englishman produced 
 a book on the magnet three years ago," he writes to Casau- 
 bon, u which has not justified the expectations formed of 
 it." "It proved to be more his doctrine," he said at an- 
 other time, "than the nature of the magnet.." 1 
 
 "Stare negas Terrain: nobis miracula narras: 
 Hse cum scribebas: in rate forsan eras," 
 
 was the sneering epigram written by John Owen. 2 
 
 Between the state of learning in England during the 
 period before noted and that existing in Italy, the contrast 
 is impressive. 3 In the latter country, at the beginning of 
 the seventeenth century, peace had reigned unbroken for 
 forty years and as a consequence the advance in all the 
 arts of civilization had been rapid. The universities of 
 Bologna, Padua, Pisa and Pavia were attracting larger 
 numbers of students than ever before, and of these no 
 small proportion were devoting themselves to mathematics 
 
 1 Scaliger: Epist. 200, and Epist. ad Casanbon. For these and other 
 criticisms of Gilbert see Blount: Censura Celebriorum Authorum, Gen- 
 eva, 1710. 
 
 2 "This firm-set earth, you do deny. 
 
 Perhaps when this you wrote 
 'Twas not the sky that sailed by, 
 But only you, afloat. 
 
 3 See Hallam's Literature of Europe, vols. II and III.; also Robertson's 
 Fra Paolo Sarpi, London, 1893. 
 
342 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 and medicine. While from such centres flowed whole 
 rivers of learning, there sprang countless rivulets from the 
 societies and academies which arose all over Italy. The 
 purely literary gatherings which had met for many years 
 and which had become a part of the social life of the 
 country, were now promoting scientific culture and the 
 interchange of philosophical thought. Such, for exam- 
 ple, were the ridotti of Andrea Morosini the historian, of 
 Paolo and Aldo Manuzio, "princes in the art of typog- 
 raphy," and of the famous merchant Sechini, in Venice. 
 And, of all, perhaps the most famous was that which Gian 
 Vicenzo Penelli held in his magnificent house in Padua. 
 Here the discussions took place between such intellect- 
 ual giants as Fra Paolo, Galileo, Santorio, Fabricius of 
 Acquapendente, Alpino, Mercuriale, Ghetaldo, Antonio de 
 Medici and Fra Fulgenzio. Here was one of the finest 
 libraries and scientific collections ever gathered by private 
 munificence a treasure-house of rarities, of globes, maps, 
 mathematical instruments and fossils presided over by a 
 man who had made its establishment a labor of love, and 
 had devoted to it a great fortune; in order, as Peiresc re- 
 ports after visiting its marvels, to furnish "all the learned 
 men of the age, both far and near, with such books and 
 other things as they stood in need of." 1 Gian Francesco 
 Sagredo maintained another museum in Venice, his house 
 resembling a Noah's Ark, having in it, as he tells us, "all 
 manner of beasts." 2 In Milan were the magnificent miner- 
 alogical and zoological collections of Aldrovandus. Fin- 
 ally there was the Academy of the Lyncei or Lynxes (so 
 called with reference to its desire to pierce lynx-eyed into 
 the depths of truth) devoted especially to physical science, 
 and, although founded in 1603 by Frederic Cesi, then a 
 boy of eighteen, soon numbering among its members such 
 men as Porta, Galileo and Colonna. 
 
 In a country imbued with so great a taste for learning, 
 
 'Gassendus: Mirrour of Nobility, cit. sup. 
 2 Celeste: Private Life of Galileo, Phila., 1879. 
 
GIAN FRANCESCO SAGREDO. 343 
 
 and possessing men whose attainments placed them far in 
 advance of all other European scholars, it would have been 
 indeed strange if the announcement of such discoveries as 
 those of Gilbert had failed to arouse the liveliest interest. 
 Nor did the acute minds of the Italians long delay the sep- 
 aration of the wheat from the chaff, for they quickly saw 
 that Gilbert's recognition of the magnetic property of the 
 earth, and the experiments underlying this discovery, were 
 of far greater scientific importance than his notions as to 
 the structure of the heavens. 
 
 Gilbert's treatise must have reached Italy with remark- 
 able celerity for those days. In his letter, dated February 
 i3th (presumably), 1602, which Barlow publishes, he speaks 
 of being in direct epistolary communication with Sagredo, 
 and says "that he hath conferred with divers learned men 
 in Venice and with the readers of Padua, and reporteth a 
 wonderful liking of my book." This was the verdict 
 which Gilbert wanted the praise of the men the extent 
 of whose learning he knew and whose ability he honored. 
 Beside this, the contemptuous silence of his own country- 
 men became a matter of indifference. 
 
 The name of Gian Francesco Sagredo has been rendered 
 immortal by Galileo, who adopts it as that of one of the 
 participators in his famous Dialogues. Nor was this dis- 
 tinction solely due to the fact that Sagredo, perhaps be- 
 yond all others, was the beloved disciple, as well as the 
 ardent adherent and benefactor, of the great philosopher. 
 He was a Venetian patrician, endowed with an ample for- 
 tune, which he spent profusely upon his collections of 
 apparatus and curiosities. He had already studied the 
 magnet and knew all that Fracastorio and Cardan had 
 written concerning it. He was in immediate touch with 
 Fra Paolo Sarpi, as well as with Galileo the former the 
 greatest representative of "the learned men of Venice," 
 the latter a "reader of Padua." 
 
 In the fall of 1602, Sarpi is said to have written to 
 Galileo referring directly to Gilbert's discoveries, and 
 
344 TH ^ INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 asking for explanations of them. But concerning this 
 fact, as in regard to most other evidences of Sarpi's knowl- 
 edge of magnetism, doubt has been thrown. Writers, 
 probably influenced by the Church in its bitter hostility 
 to Sarpi, insist upon the authenticity of the letter, and 
 claim that it proves that the great Venetian had no such 
 attainments in physical science as his advocates aver, and 
 that hence Galileo's famous reference to him as "my father 
 and master" should be interpreted as indicating that the 
 Friar was merely the philosopher's spiritual guide. 1 The 
 Florentine Society, in publishing the collected correspond- 
 ence of Galileo, however, reject the communication as 
 probably not written by Sarpi. 2 So, also, Sarpi's relations 
 to Gilbert have been very differently regarded. Some 
 biographers even assert that Gilbert learned from Sarpi all 
 the magnetical discoveries which he subsequently pre- 
 sented as original, 3 and fix the time of communication 
 as during Gilbert's foreign tour, 4 which is absurd, seeing 
 that Sarpi was then very young and had only just attracted 
 notice by his precocity in theological debate. 5 Sarpi him- 
 self, on the other hand, strongly praises Gilbert's work, 
 adding: "I have not seen a man in this century who 
 has written originally save Vieta in France and Gilbert in 
 England" an enconium which, as Hallam justly observes, 
 he would hardly have passed without a hint to the effect 
 that the discoveries were in fact his own. 6 
 
 There is no doubt, however, that Galileo learned of 
 Gilbert's discoveries from Sagredo, and repeated his ex- 
 
 1 Nelli : Vita e Commercio Letterario di G. Galilei, Lausanne, 1793, i, 
 407. 
 
 2 Opere de G. Galilei, Florence, 1851. 
 
 3 Griselini: Vita de Fra Paolo Sarpi, Lausanne, 1760. Giovini : Ibid., 
 Brussels, 1836. Fabronio : Vitae Italorum, Pisa, 1798, xvii. 
 
 4 Garbio: Annali di Serviti, Lucca, 1721, vii. Micanzio: Vita de F. P. 
 Sarpi, Verona, 1750. 
 
 5 Robertson: Fra Paolo Sarpi, London, 1893. 
 
 6 Hallam: Lit. Europe, London, 1864, iii, 333. 
 
GALILEO GALILEI. 345 
 
 periments very shortly after their communication to the 
 world. 1 The great lawyer who wrote philosophy u like a 
 L,ord Chancellor" had already rendered his sarcastic judg- 
 ment upon "Gilbert our countryman," who u hath made 
 a philosophy out of the observations of a lodestone." The 
 greater practitioner of the philosophy of works, writing to 
 the Grand Duchess of Tuscany in 1606, had no compunc- 
 tion in overruling that judgment, and in announcing the 
 advent of a philosophy confirmed by evident demonstra- 
 tions, and "showing our earth to be in its primary and 
 universal substance none other than a great globe of lode- 
 stone." 2 Nor did he ever waver from that opinion. A 
 quarter of a century later it is re-asserted and amplified 
 over pages in the famous Dialogue, which brought him 
 into the clutches of the Inquisition. 3 
 
 In 1607 began a remarkable correspondence 4 between 
 Galileo and the reigning Duke of Tuscany, who had been, 
 and to some extent still was, Galileo's pupil. Of all the 
 magnetic phenomena which Gilbert had recorded, none, 
 saving the theory of the earth's magnetism, appears to have 
 impressed Galileo more strongly than the discoveries of 
 Gilbert concerning the armed lodestone, and especially the 
 notable increase in lifting power which seemed to follow 
 the attachment of the iron helmet or cap to the pole. 
 Gilbert had said that, by means of this cap or armature, 
 a stone capable of raising but four ounces could be made 
 to raise a weight of twelve ounces, and that when the poles 
 of two such stones thus armed were caused mutually to 
 attract, the joint action of both would lift a weight of 
 
 " Galileo made many experiments upon the magnet, and both he and 
 his favorite pupil, Sagredus, were moved to meditate thereon through 
 having received Gilbert's book." Nelli: Vita, etc., di G. Galileo. Lau- 
 sanne, 1793, i., 103. 
 
 8 Celeste: The Private Life of Galileo. Phila., 1879. 
 3 Galileo: Systema Cosmicum, in quo Dialogis, iv.. etc. Ed. Leyden, 
 1641, Dialog, iii., p. 296. 
 *Opere di G. Galileo. Florence, 185 r. 
 
346 
 
 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 twenty ounces; and he describes other experiments, all 
 going to show the increased lifting power gained by the 
 attachment of the armature. Galileo, it seems, for the 
 purpose of repeating Gilbert's experiments, had prepared 
 
 GALILEI. 1 
 
 for himself a lodestone weighing about half a pound Tus- 
 can, and this the duke wanted. Galileo thereupon wrote 
 to the ducal secretary, stating that while everything that 
 he owned was at the disposal of his sovereign, he ventured 
 
 'Reduced fac simile of the frontispiece of his Systema Cosmicum. 
 Leyden, 1641. 
 
THE MAGNETIC RESEARCHES OF GALILEO. 347 
 
 to suggest that a friend of his (Sagredo) possessed a lode- 
 stone far more worthy of the notice of his Serene Highness, 
 and which weighed fully five pounds, but for which the 
 large sum of four hundred crowns was demanded. 
 
 The curious spectacle then followed of the Sovereign of 
 Tuscany and the great philosopher keenly haggling for sev- 
 eral months over the purchase price, until finally the duke's 
 offer of a considerably reduced amount was accepted. Gal- 
 ileo then became uneasy lest the stone should not accom- 
 plish what he had stated that it would do, namely, lift its 
 own weight, and thereupon he caused the magnet to be 
 sent to him by Sagredo, in order that he might satisfy 
 himself by experiment as to its efficiency. What he did 
 with it he recounts in his letter of transmission. He fitted 
 up the stone at his own expense with armatures, which he 
 makes in the form of two little anchors (suggestive, as he 
 says, of the fabulous notion that a magnet might lift a 
 ship's anchor), for purposes of convenience, inasmuch as 
 when the stock of the anchor is applied to the magnet pole 
 other pieces of iron can be applied to the hook, up to the 
 extreme limit of the strength of the magnet. 
 
 It is exceedingly interesting to note how carefully and 
 ingeniously he proceeds to provide for the requirements 
 of future experimentation. u I have not made the anchors 
 of the great weight," he says, " which I have seen the 
 stone to be able to sustain ; first, in order to be sure that, 
 without tedious trial, the irons suddenly presented to the 
 poles of the stone would attach themselves, and, second, 
 because I think that the same piece will not be sustained 
 with the same force in all places of the earth." He 
 thought that the magnet poles would be governed some- 
 what in attractive power by the proximity of the earth's 
 poles, so that, in this way, "the stronger pole of the stone 
 should sustain something more at Padua than at Florence 
 or Pisa." Therefore, he is anxious to have this question 
 tested, and to that end, while he makes the anchor arma- 
 tures themselves of a weight not as great as that which the 
 
348 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 stone will sustain, he applies to them, in the form of 
 separable pieces, numerous bits of iron which, with the 
 anchors, aggregated a weight greater than the stone's sus- 
 taining power, as he carefully adds "in the condition in 
 which I sent it": thus guarding against an apprehended 
 possibility that the stone will not behave in Florence in 
 the hands of others as well as it has acted in Padua in his 
 own. 
 
 He provides the stone also with a strengthening 
 piece, apparently arranged so that the armatures cannot 
 be placed anywhere except at the proper places. Then he 
 says that both armatures had better be applied at once, 
 because he has found, to his great surprise, that u an iron 
 so heavy that by itself it will not be governed by one pole, 
 will become attached thereto if another iron is applied to 
 the opposite pole." He also sends with the stone two ex- 
 tra pieces of iron, one of which is to be in the form of a 
 cylinder and to be placed upon a smooth table, and the 
 other to be applied to the stone at a marked point; and 
 this cylinder, in some way which he does not very clearly 
 describe, is to be first repelled by the magnet brought near 
 it, and then attracted a result evidently depending upon 
 variations in the distance intervening between the strong 
 lodestone and the rolling cylinder which, by induction, it 
 weakly magnetizes. And then he adds the first announce- 
 ment of the true effect of the armature as a keeper in 
 actually invigorating and retaining the strength of the 
 magnet, by being allowed to remain in contact with the 
 poles, and suggests the provision of a support, so arranged 
 that the armatures may always remain attached and in 
 place. Finally he says that not only will the stone sustain 
 its own weight, but a load four times greater, which, in a 
 magnet of such large proportions, he regards as marvelous, 
 and he expresses the opinion that if it were cut up into 
 small pieces the latter might be made to hold iron aggre- 
 gating six or eight times their weight. 
 
 Such were the interesting results of the study which 
 
NICOLAUS CAB^US. 349 
 
 Galileo made upon Sagredo's large magnet. His investi- 
 gations at that time went no further, for the following year 
 saw his invention of the astronomical telescope, imme- 
 diately succeeded by the magnificent discoveries in the 
 heavens upon which his fame chiefly rests. When he 
 took up the magnet cursorily in after years it was still to 
 ponder over its attractive power and how this might be 
 augmented, or to devise theories to account for the appar- 
 ent strengthening effect of the armature. He supposed, 
 in the end, that the iron was drawn to the armature with 
 greater force simply because the two surfaces, being smooth 
 and polished, presented more points of contact than could 
 exist between iron and the rough magnet, 1 which was 
 perhaps as good for the time as Gilbert's notion that the 
 touch of the stone awoke a slumbering virtue in the arma- 
 ture, and that then both pulled with their joint forces; 
 and fully as reasonable for example as some hypotheses 
 accounting for the microphonic transmission of speech. 
 
 The huge magnet which was sent to the Grand Duke 
 served its purpose as a toy for that potentate and his suc- 
 cessors for many a day. Ninety years later it became lost, 
 and then Leibnitz, writing to Magliabecchi, 2 deplores the 
 disappearance of a relic which he says the scientific world 
 would have prized beyond the most precious gem, a lament 
 which he might equally well have made over the earlier 
 destruction of Gilbert's terrellas in the great London fire. 
 
 The Italian philosophers were not so swift to appreciate 
 Gilbert's electrics as they were his conception of the earth's 
 magnetism, and it was not until 1629 tnat tne earliest of 
 their researches upon the former were made known. In 
 that year Nicolaus Cabaeus, 3 a Jesuit, then of Ferrara, and 
 a philosopher of remarkable ability, who had maintained 
 a school of philosophy, mathematics and theology in 
 
 1 Galileo: Systema Cosniicum, cit. sup. 
 
 8 Clavorum Germanornm, etc. Florence, 1746, Epistle xxvii. 
 'Sotuello: Bib. Scripta Soc. Jesu. Rome, 1676; Brucker: Hist. Crit 
 Phil. Cabaeus: Philosophia Magnetica, Ferrara, 1629, p. 18. 
 
350 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Parma, produced, in the first complete Italian treatise on 
 the magnet, a record of study which had extended over 
 many years, and which, among other things, resulted in 
 the first electrical discoveries following those of Gilbert. 
 
 This is the same Cabseus to whom I have already referred 
 in a preceding chapter, apparently as advocating the hear- 
 say discoveries of Leonardo Garzoni against those of Fra 
 Paolo Sarpi. His name is often mentioned in the histor- 
 ical retrospects of electrical progress which have appeared 
 during the last century or so, apparently solely because 
 of his having added some more electrics to Gilbert's list; 
 these being "white wax and anything made of wax which 
 is hard and may be rubbed . . , several gums, such as 
 gum elemi, gum carab, gum from mastic, pix, which is 
 called Spanish, and gypsum, not burnt," a slender enough 
 addition to the science, although of interest as being a real 
 advance beyond Gilbert. His principal discovery, how- 
 ever, is of very much more importance than a few addi- 
 tional electrics, although the fact seems to have remained 
 unrecognized. 
 
 Cabseus, while admitting the accuracy of Gilbert's ex- 
 perimental work and of the physical distinctions which 
 Gilbert points out between the amber and the lodestone, 
 refuses to accept either Gilbert's theory of electric effluvia 
 or his general dictum of the attractive quality of bodies 
 concreted from humor. "His words," says Cabseus, "are 
 put together with ornate elegance, but I do not see that 
 they explain any mode of attraction. Plenty of things 
 which are hard and yet are concreted of humor have no 
 attraction, and many things attract which do not appear 
 to be concreted of humor." Floating bodies do not attract 
 by humor, but through "gravity and levity." If wet 
 bodies do adhere, that is due to agglutinating action of the 
 interposed liquid. Cabaeus is not here attacking Gilbert's 
 theories merely from a spirit of opposition. He has found 
 some strange facts, and Gilbert's effluvium notion refuses 
 to be squared with them. He does not understand these 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF ELECTRICAL REPULSION. 351 
 
 facts, and he interprets them wrongly; but dissent from 
 Gilbert's hypothesis and the production of a new one in 
 supposed accordance with the new data were inevitable. 
 
 What had he seen ? That, when the face of a well-pre- 
 pared electric is applied to the drawing of light filings or 
 sawdust or similar corpuscles, they run strongly to the 
 electric, and when they reach it they fly back, not falling 
 off merely, but being thrown off afar to a distance of two 
 or three inches. And that sawdust groups itself upon the 
 electric " like masses of hairs," the ends of which fluctuate 
 and waver, and finally these extremities likewise do not 
 fall off, but are projected afar. 
 
 In brief, he had found electrical repulsion the phenom- 
 enon which Gilbert said had no existence. He had seen, 
 as any one may now see, the oppositely-electrified body 
 move to the electric, become similarly charged and fly away 
 from it. This plainly could not be accounted for by sup- 
 posing material arms or rods grasping the attracted body, 
 and in some unknown way bringing it to the electric; and 
 so Cabseus framed a new hypothesis, wherein repulsion was 
 in fact the fundamental feature. The rubbed electric, he 
 avers, produces a most thin effluvium, which attenuates 
 the air and vigorously impels it; and this attenuated air, 
 in returning to the electric in a gyration, brings with it 
 the attracted body. In other words, he thinks that efflu- 
 vium is first "expelled," and thereby the air is "propelled" 
 in a wind. The wind comes back, entraining with it the 
 chaff sometimes even with such violence that it seems to 
 rebound from the electric. Such was the first recognition 
 of electrical repulsion and the first theory proposed to ac- 
 count for it. 
 
 It will be recalled that Gilbert says that the rays of mag- 
 netic force emanate in all directions from the lodestone's 
 centre, and thus form an "orb" or "sphere of virtue" 
 around "that great magnet, the earth." Herein he dif- 
 
352 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 fered from Porta, who had insisted that the diffused virtue 
 emanated from the two poles of the lodestone. ' But this 
 was one of the instances in which Gilbert allowed theory 
 rather than experiment to guide him; for, when he carried 
 his iron needle around the terrella, he saw plainly enough, 
 as Peregrinus had seen centuries before, that it never 
 pointed to the centre, except when it was exactly at the 
 poles. In fact, this was one of Peregrinus' methods of 
 finding the poles. At the equator, the needle stood at 
 right angles to this position, and between the equator and 
 the poles it assumed various inclinations to the latter. 
 Of course, a needle placed successively in different places 
 along a meridian of the terrella would map out, so to speak, 
 the direction of the lines of force from pole to pole. But 
 Gilbert did not perceive this any more than he saw the in- 
 consistency between his theory and his experiments; for 
 clearly, if the magnetic virtue emanated radially from the 
 centre of the terrella, his needle should always point to the 
 centre, and so take the same position at the equator as at 
 the poles. 
 
 Cabaeus, however, was more keenly alive to the logic 
 of the experiment, and to the fact that it was at odds 
 with Gilbert's supposition. He, in turn, moving the 
 needle in different positions along the meridian, sees it 
 gradually incline from the equator to the pole, until at last 
 it stands upright; or, starting from the pole, sees it grad- 
 ually incline in the opposite way, until at the equator it 
 has moved over a right angle. Then he goes a step, but a 
 long one, further. Instead of a single needle moved into 
 different positions, take a great many needles, he says 
 little ones, mere particles of iron, iron filings and put 
 them around the stone. Look at them ! At the equator 
 they adhere "prostrate" to the magnet, but at the poles 
 they "erect themselves like hairs." Hairs, branching and 
 curving away from the poles as starting points. What is 
 controlling them? Certainly the emanations from the 
 magnet; and, therefore, they must be showing the true 
 
CAB^US ON THE MAGNETIC SPECTUM. 353 
 
 paths of those emanations leading, not from the magnet 
 centre, but from both poles. 
 
 Thus, for the first time, the lodestone was made to write 
 its own story, and it was Cabaeus who first recognized, not 
 that filings erected themselves hair-like about a stone, for 
 Porta had done that, but that they grouped themselves in 
 a definite way, branching from the poles, making what we 
 now term the magnetic spectrum. 
 
 Acute as he was, Cabaeus failed to see all that was thus 
 written for him. He did not perceive that the filings 
 curved from pole to pole. For him, they swept outward 
 in paths ending always like hairs in a brush, and thus he 
 depicts them. But there were two brushes; and that was 
 
 PICTURE OF THE MAGNETIC SPECTRUM. 1 
 
 enough to dispose of Gilbert's notion and so to serve his 
 purpose. 
 
 Cabaeus is the very Mercutio of philosophers. He is 
 caustic and witty his dialectic sword is ready and needle- 
 pointed his mental agility is swift. He flits around Gil- 
 bert like a wasp, stinging wherever he can. But I shall 
 not follow him further, tempting as the task is. He may 
 be dismissed for bias. He was of course savagely anti- 
 Copernican. As a Jesuit he wrote to sustain Garzoni 
 against both Sarpi and Gilbert; and also in the same ca- 
 pacity, and with characteristic casuistry, he denied that 
 
 1 From his Philosophia Magnetita, 1629. 
 23 
 
354 TH E INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 the earth is a great magnet, while stoutly averring that it 
 is endowed with magnetic properties. 
 
 Thus far had the Italians advanced. They had undeni- 
 ably made progress beyond Gilbert in the "new physi- 
 ology," had stumbled upon electrical repulsion, and had 
 attacked the Englishman, with more or less success, 
 whenever they caught him wandering from the safe ground 
 of sure experiments. But what had become of the great 
 cosmical theory the magnetic inter-relation of the 
 heavenly bodies the extension of the sphere of virtue into 
 the heavens, and the government of the planets by the 
 mutual reactions of their "effused* 1 spheres which Gil- 
 bert regarded as at once the flower and crown of all his 
 labors? For that doctrine there was as little resting-place 
 in the bosom of the Church, as in the inhospitable breast 
 of Bacon. There was no lodgment for it, except among 
 the Copernicans, and so it fell into the outspread arms of 
 one of them and there gently expired. John Kepler, 
 casting about for clews, clutching at guess after guess in 
 pursuit of proof of his great laws trying to figure some- 
 thing like universal gravitation out of his inner conscious- 
 ness came upon this outcast theory, and administered 
 upon its effects. 
 
 In his treatise on the movements of Mars, 1 we are told 
 that the sun is a great rotary magnet carrying its Gil- 
 bert's rather sphere of virtue around with it. The 
 planets are in that vast whirlpool and are carried with it. 
 If it be asked why should not this great solar magnet 
 draw its satellites to destruction in its fiery mass? Be- 
 cause, is the reply, the field of force is made up of fibers 
 filaments that are straight, that is, which surround the 
 sun, so that the planets are dragged along in these mag- 
 net streams, like boats in a maelstrom. 
 
 u Sed proh Deum immortalem!" a few years later, 
 shouts Athanasius Kircher, that irascible but omniscient 
 philosopher of the Church Militant, losing his temper 
 
 1 De Motibus Stellis Martis. Prague, 1609. 
 
THE END OF GILBERT'S COSMICAL THEORY. 355 
 
 completely and banging the dust out of Kepler's immortal 
 pages. "Qusenam ista philosophandi ratio est?" 1 
 
 But Kircher knew well enough that Kepler had been 
 reading in the "Philosophia Magnetica of William Gilbert 
 the Englishman," and that his argument thereon was 
 that if the earth had magnetic properties, it was u neither 
 incredible nor absurd" that the same might be equally 
 true of other "primary bodies." 2 The Gilberto-Keplerian 
 theory, however, had no more health in it than there was 
 in the other tenet which the two philosophers held in 
 common namely, that the earth is alive and has a soul. 
 No one cares to remember now the odd vagaries of the 
 great student of the stars who overthrew the old astronomy. 
 He willingly renounced many of them himself as his 
 knowledge of phenomena grew wider; nor have they ever 
 dimmed the glory which all the world accords to the finder 
 of the laws whereby the planets move in eternal harmony 
 with the Almighty Will. 
 
 "Having held and believed that the Sun is the Center 
 of the Universe and immovable, and that the earth is not 
 the center of the same and that it does move ... I abjure 
 with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest 
 the said errors and heresies and generally all and every 
 error and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church," 
 wrote Galileo Galilei, in mortal terror of the Inquisition; 
 that was in 1633. 3 Twenty years before, under the protec- 
 tion of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, he had asserted the 
 heliocentric doctrine, with no worse result than a friendly 
 admonition from Cardinal Bellarmine, and he had agreed 
 not to promulgate it further. But, as the world grew wiser, 
 it smiled at the theological claims to infallibility in matters 
 
 1 Kircher. Magnes sive De Arte Magnetica. Cologne, 1641. 
 
 2 Kepler: Epitome. Ast. Copernic. Frankfort, 1635. 
 
 3 Whewell: Hist. Indue. Sci. London, 1837, Vol. II., 133. Hallam: 
 Lit. Europe. Part III., cviii. 
 
356 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 of physics, and at last, in 1620, the Church itself yielded 
 sufficiently to' sanction the discussion of the Copernican 
 theory as an hypothesis merely. This gave Galileo a safe 
 opportunity, as he believed, once more publicly to reaffirm 
 his belief therein. He went too far, and tried to prove it 
 orthodox. However the ecclesiastical authorities may 
 have intended to deal with others, the fact of his having 
 violated, as they claimed, his earlier promise gave them a 
 reason for coming upon him despite the permissory decree. 
 He was the most shining of all shining marks. To crush 
 him would do more to paralyze independent philosophical 
 thought, at least within the pale of the Church, than any 
 random anathema that Rome could hurl. 
 
 The effect upon all Europe was profound. The faithful, 
 who found themselves in the van of philosophical pro- 
 gress, stopped and drew back. The blight of uncertainty 
 fell upon them. If, after years of free discussion, Coper- 
 nicanism had come to be heresy, inviting the dread visit 
 of the Holy Office, what then might be safely taught and 
 studied? The light laughter at the ecclesiastics, who 
 sought to govern Nature's laws by theology, was heard no 
 longer from the Protestant ranks; but instead the hatred to 
 Rome leaped into new vigor, and sarcasm, invective, ridi- 
 cule fierce and bitter came pouring forth. 
 
 But the blight persisted none the less. There was great 
 force in it. "If the opinion of the earth's movement is 
 false," said Rene Descartes grimly, locking the manuscript 
 of his Principia in his cabinet, "all the foundations of my 
 philosophy are also false, because it is demonstrated clearly 
 by them . . . yet I would not for all the- world sustain 
 them against the Church." And so the book remained 
 unpublished for ten years. But when it did appear there 
 followed a revolution in the realm of thought. 
 
 So far, from Gilbert onwards, we have seen the students 
 of the lodestone and the electrics dealing with phenomena, 
 and seeking to derive laws from experiment. We have 
 seen the inductive method, as it were, in the air and affect- 
 
DESCARTES. 357 
 
 ing the minds of all thinkers, crystallized and formulated 
 in the language of Bacon, and then moving forward with 
 renewed and concentrated force. But now, there appears 
 a philosopher of the first rank, who tosses it aside as an 
 instrument inadequate for the discovery of truth, and sub- 
 stitutes pure deduction; a man skilled in mathematics, 
 wherein Bacon was most deficient, who regarded physics 
 not as did Bacon, as the basis of all science, but as merely 
 a reservoir of illustrations of his principles; who argued, 
 not from effects to causes, known to unknown, but deduced 
 effects from causes and explained things seen by reasons 
 found by intuition. "It is not so necessary," said Des- 
 cartes, u to have a fine understanding as to apply it rightly. 
 Better progress can be made by walking slowly on the 
 right road than by running swiftly on the wrong one." 
 Bacon expresses the same idea, but the common ground is 
 reached by paths leading from totally opposite directions. 
 The ten years of delay in the publication of Descartes' 
 great treatise perhaps gave him the opportunity to make it 
 the almost perfect piece of scientific writing which it is. 
 For unswerving directness of expression, for exquisite 
 clearness, for pertinency of example, it has scarcely a rival 
 in the whole literature of physics. We have now to see 
 how the magnet and the electric were treated in the phil- 
 osophy of Descartes a philosophy essentially metaphysi- 
 cal, evolving first a clear hypothesis and then seeking to 
 reveal thereby the causes of observed phenomena. 1 
 
 Descartes, by his vortex theory, undertook to explain 
 mechanically the solar system, the formation of planets, 
 the relation of the tides to the moon, and to subject the 
 laws of motion to scientific analysis. 2 He assumed 3 matter 
 uniform in character throughout the universe, to be 
 divided into polygonal masses. These having a circular 
 
 1 Lewes: The Biog. Histy. of Phily., N. Y., 1857, Vol. II, 1445. 
 2 Mahaffy: Des Cartes, Edin. and Lon., 1880. 
 
 3 Des Cartes: Priucipia Philosophise (ultima editio), Amsterdam, 1692, 
 Parts 3 and 4. 
 
358 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 motion grind one upon the other, producing spheres and 
 also filings or parings due to mutual abrasion of the poly- 
 gons at their angles. By this means, there conies into ex- 
 istence the transparent substance of the skies (ether), the 
 material of luminous bodies, such as the sun and fixed 
 stars, and the. material of opaque bodies, such as the 
 planets. The motions of these parts are those of revolving 
 
 DESCARTES. 
 
 currents or vortices, wherein the luminous body is at the 
 center and the ether surrounds it. In the solar vortex the 
 planets are immersed, and with it are whirled around. 
 The similarity of Descartes* conception of a solar vortex 
 to Kepler's notion of the magnetic whirlpool surrounding 
 
 1 Reduced fac simile of the frontispiece of his Principia Philosophies. 
 Amsterdam, 1692. 
 
DESCARTES' THEORY OF MAGNETISM. 359 
 
 the sun is obvious. The difference is the substitution of 
 Descartes' whirling matter, mechanically produced, for 
 Kepler's whirling filaments magnetically produced. 
 
 Among the small filings which are ground from the 
 revolving spheres by friction, are many which are com- 
 pelled to escape through the interstices between the whirl- 
 ing particles, and these consequently are molded or shaped 
 into the form of spirals. To the movements of these spiral 
 particles through the pores or conduits of bodies adapted 
 to receive them are due magnetic and electric phenomena. 
 These conduits are shaped to receive the spiral particles, 
 and extend through the bodies possessing them in a direc- 
 tion parallel to an axis. The spirals which can enter at 
 one end of the conduits cannot enter at the other end 
 apparently on the principle that a right hand threaded 
 screw cannot enter a left hand threaded nut ; and also 
 because, in the conduits, there are delicate protruding 
 branches which allow the spirals to bend them freely, 
 while moving in one direction, but become rigid and op- 
 pose their passage while moving in the other something 
 like the converging wires in an old-fashioned mouse-trap. 
 The result is that the spirals, say from the North part of 
 the heavens, can enter the conduits suitable to them at 
 the South end of the stone, pass through these passages 
 to the North end, and then returning enter the South end 
 again forming a whirlpool through and round the stone; 
 Similarly, the spirals from the South part of the heavens 
 can enter the conduits suitable to them at the North end 
 of the stone and, in like manner, form a whirlpool. 
 
 In other words, Descartes plainly sees that there is a 
 force, not merely radiating from the magnet poles, as 
 Cabseus supposed, but traversing the stone from pole to 
 pole in one direction and then traversing the external 
 region around the stone from pole to pole, in the opposite 
 direction. His spirals whirling about under that in- 
 fluence, were merely a device to render its effect think- 
 able just as were Faraday's equally imaginary lines of 
 
360 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 force. What Descartes really had discovered was the 
 endlessness of these apparent lines of magnetic force. 
 
 This idea of the spirals flowing in definite directions 
 through conduits in the magnet, he applies to all magnetic 
 phenomena, of which he finds therein an explanation often 
 with marvelous ingenuity. The stream of spirals flows 
 more easily through the lodestone or iron than through the 
 air or any other substance, because the conduits in the first- 
 mentioned bodies are better suited to them. Wherever 
 the streams enter and leave a body, there are its poles. If 
 a magnet, free to move, presents its conduit entrances at 
 an angle to the stream of spirals from the earth's poles, 
 the force of the stream is sufficient to turn the magnet so 
 as to bring the conduits in line with its path, and then so 
 that the north entrances of the conduits are directed to 
 the south pole of the earth, and vice versa; thus the 
 directive tendency of the needle to the poles is explained. 
 "There are always," he says, "more spirals around the 
 magnet than elsewhere in the air, because, after they have 
 left one end of the stone, they find in the air a resistance, 
 which causes most of them to return to the other end of 
 the magnet whereat they enter ; and thus several remain 
 around it, making a kind of whirlpool, the same as they 
 make about the earth. So that the whole earth may be 
 taken for a magnet not differing from others, unless it be 
 bigger : and that on its surface where we live its virtue is 
 not very strong." Thus the field outside of the magnet 
 is accounted for and a definite conception is suggested of a 
 "resistance " to the force, compelling it to choose -a certain 
 path. 
 
 But there is still more in the foregoing quotation. If 
 the earth is so vast and great a magnet, why is its virtue 
 "not very strong?" The streams of spirals are generated 
 in the earth in a certain region, which last is a spherical 
 stratum. In passing to the earth's surface they encounter 
 another and outer stratum of metals, etc., abounding in 
 conduits suitable to them. Many of them pass through 
 
DESCARTES' THEORY OF MAGNETISM. 361 
 
 these conduits and back to the origin, hence but a small 
 proportion of the total number of streams reaches the air. 
 That is the first notion of "short circuiting" and "leak- 
 
 age." 
 
 Some of the explanations are curiously ingenious, such, 
 for example, as that of magnetic attraction and repulsion. 
 If two magnets are placed with unlike poles in proximity, 
 the spirals from one may enter the conduit ends of the 
 other. Then the air between the juxtaposed poles is 
 driven out and forced around to the rear of the two mag- 
 nets so that it pushes them together. If, on the other 
 hand, like poles are opposed, the spirals from one magnet 
 cannot enter the conduits of the other, and the spirals 
 force the stones apart. 
 
 Iron is adapted to become magnetic because it has con- 
 duits suitable to receive the spirals; but it is not normally 
 magnetic, because the little branches or projections in the 
 pores are turned naturally in all sorts of directions. If, 
 however, a magnet through which a strong stream of spi- 
 rals is passing be approached to the iron, the force of that 
 stream is enough to drive the spirals through the conduits 
 in the iron, and in so doing to turn all the little branches 
 in one way. After that the iron constantly receives 
 streams, and is magnetic. 
 
 The mode of answering that standing puzzle, how is it 
 that the magnet in communicating its virtue to large 
 quantities of iron still retains its own unimpaired? is espe- 
 cially felicitous. "There happens no change in the mag- 
 net, because the spirals which leave its pores enter iron 
 rather than some other body. In fact, they pass even 
 more freely and in greater quantity through the magnet 
 when there is iron around it than when there is none. 
 Hence, instead of the magnet's virtue being in anywise 
 thus impaired it is increased, besides being communicated 
 to the iron." Yet he does not account for the strengthening 
 effect of the armature in this way, but agrees with Gali- 
 leo's hypothesis concerning it. 
 
362 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 The foregoing will suffice to show the remarkable and 
 novel character of the magnetic theory of Descartes. 
 Apparently it seems to have had no other origin than the 
 "scientific use of the imagination," but this is not entirely 
 true. Induction from phenomena forced its way into his 
 reasoning, despite his belief that he was dealing solely with 
 his own intuitions. After he had explained, in his limpid 
 style, the accordance of his hypotheses and the various 
 phenomena of the magnet, which he sums up beautifully 
 in thirty-four aphorisms, he betrays the material mechan- 
 ism which really sets going all this speculation. I shall 
 let him reveal it for himself. 
 
 u Now, if one should stop to consider how iron powder 
 or iron filings thrown about a magnet arrange themselves, 
 many things would be observed confirming the truth of 
 what I have just said." (Observe the fallacy, post hoc, 
 ergo propter hoc.) "For, in the first place, it will be seen 
 that the little grains of this powder do not pack themselves 
 together confusedly, but that joining themselves together 
 lengthwise they form filaments, which are as many little 
 tubes, through which the spirals pass more freely than 
 through the air, and which, therefore, may serve to show 
 the path of the spirals after they have left the magnet. 
 But in order that the eye may recognize the curving of 
 these paths the filings should be strewn upon a smooth 
 surface, in which the globular magnet is half buried, so 
 that its poles are in the same plane, as globes are supported 
 in horizon circles; then on that surface the filings will 
 arrange themselves in lines showing exactly the paths 
 which the spirals take around the magnet and also around 
 the earth." 
 
 Then he continues further and explains how the filings 
 group themselves around the poles of the two magnets 
 when attraction or repulsion takes place. 
 
 He had seen all that Cabseus did not see. He had recog- 
 nized the whole magnetic spectrum, the complete magnetic 
 curves, and that the lines of force or paths along which the 
 
DESCARTES ON THE MAGNETIC FIELD. 
 
 imaginary spirals were urged were exactly mapped by the 
 iron filings, a purely physical observation. The chief 
 features of the field of force had been observed. The 
 route of new discovery now lay toward its properties. 
 
 When Descartes reaches the electrics he shows some 
 unwillingness to formulate theories about them, as it were, 
 ex cathedra, as he had done in reference to the magnet. 
 It is necessary, he says, to "say something" about these 
 bodies the electrics it was not his original intention to 
 
 
 DESCARTES' REPRESENTATION OF THE MAGNETIC FIELD. 1 
 
 do so and then (lame and impotent conclusion for the 
 man whose mind was the reverse of the Baconian medal) 
 he is not fully certain why they act as they do until he 
 shall have made ** several experiments to discover their 
 nature." Experiments! and by the apostle of deductive 
 
 1 From his Principia Philosophise. This depicts a large spherical mag- 
 net (the earth) having its poles at A, B, with smaller magnets I, K, L, 
 M, N, disposed in inductive proximity The lines of force in which the 
 assumed spirals arrange themselves are clearly shown. 
 
364 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 reasoning. Why not have deduced " their nature " from 
 intuition? 
 
 Yet the speculation whereby he endeavors to account for 
 electric attraction is one of the most remarkable of all. 
 He begins by denying absolutely the notion of emanations 
 of an apparently glutinous character which emerge, seize 
 upon the chaff, and, on retracting, bring it back to the 
 electric. There is no warrant for such an hypothesis, he 
 thinks, and for it he substitutes the following: 
 
 The pores of the electric are slits of extreme narrowness. 
 Nothing but the globules of the most subtle ether can 
 enter them. But when they are rilled these globules unify 
 and form little ribbons (bandelettes), which move to and 
 fro in the pores, and are molded to their shapes. They 
 cannot of themselves leave the electric, because there are 
 no passages in the air which they fit. But when the elec- 
 tric is rubbed it is heated. Its shape, and hence that of its 
 pores, is deformed, and the ribbons are crowded out, and 
 hence are moved toward other bodies. Not being able to 
 find any suitable conduits in these bodies through which 
 they can proceed, they engage merely in the pores of light 
 chaff. As the electric, after rubbing, resumes its normal 
 condition, they shrink back and bring the chaff with them. 
 
 It is a very far-fetched theory, and the ribbons are no 
 better than Gilbert's effluvia. But there is something novel 
 in Descartes' commentary upon it. After explaining how 
 it is the nature of the element, whereof these ribbons are 
 composed, to keep swiftly moving within the pores of the 
 electric, he says, "and sometimes, on the other hand, they 
 pass in a very short time to far distant places, never meet- 
 ing a body in their path capable of stopping or diverting 
 them. And then meeting afar like matter disposed to 
 receive their action, they produce effects entirely rare and 
 marvelous, such as causing the wounds of a corpse to bleed 
 when the murderer approaches, exciting the imagination 
 of those who sleep, and even of the waking, and creating 
 in people thoughts which warn them of events happening 
 
ATHANASIUS KIRCHER. 365 
 
 far away, or presentiments of great afflictions and great 
 joys or impending peril. ' ' And that was the first attempt, 
 many and many a time since fruitlessly repeated, to ex- 
 plain the psychical things of heaven and earth, through 
 the physical agency of electricity. 
 
 Descartes' Principia appeared in 1644, as I have said, 
 after ten years' seclusion. Meanwhile it had become in- 
 cumbent on somebody of greater ecclesiastical influence 
 than Cabseus, and of more general eminence as a phil- 
 osopher and theologian, to advance the arguments of the 
 Church against the heresies of Gilbert, Kepler, Galileo, 
 and other recusants of that stripe. The task naturally fell 
 to Athanasius Kircher, to whom allusion has already been 
 made ; a Jesuit, a Professor at Rome, and a man of ency- 
 clopaedic knowledge, great gullibility, and the author, 
 says Robert Southwell, 1 of twenty-two works in folio, 
 eleven in quarto, and three in octavo. His treatise on the 
 magnet was written about 1639 and issued in 1641. Many 
 editions of it followed. It adds nothing to the existing 
 knowledge on the subject, but it exhibits an astonishing 
 collection of magnetic apparatus, from perpetual motion 
 to the magnetic toys which are still sold everywhere. It 
 was probably the vade mecum for the practical magneti- 
 cian of the day, if any one pursued that calling. 
 
 Kircher has the honor of giving to the action of the 
 lodestone its name u Qualitatem Magneticam Mag- 
 netismus appellare placuit." (The magnetic quality may 
 be properly termed magnetism.) And, what is perhaps 
 a little surprising, he also invented the word " Electro- 
 magnetism" heading one of his chapters on the electrics 
 with u n^xrpo-fjiayvTjTicftbq that is concerning the magnetism 
 of electrics or the attraction of electrics and their causes." 
 
 1 Boyle's works. London, 1744, v. 405. Kircher's genesis of the solan 
 goose is classic. The eggs, he says, are laid in the Arctic regions; they 
 mix with the sea and render it " eggified." Drops of sea water dash on 
 the trees near the shore, and the specific egginess of the sea, the natural 
 vegetation of the tree, and the influence of the sun, unite in hatching the 
 goose. 
 
366 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Kirclier was an admirable compiler, and, as a storehouse 
 of doubtful facts, his work is interesting. Of course, he 
 agreed with Cabseus that the earth is not a magnet, but 
 magnetic. And his proof thereof is impressive. "How 
 vast its mass how prodigious would be its effects what 
 could resist its capacity?" that is if it were a magnet, 
 and not merely magnetic. He is a Professor of Mathe- 
 matics, and to numbers he appeals. Comparing the size 
 of the earth with that of a terrella a few inches in diam- 
 eter, he staggers his reader with the assertion that if the 
 terrella can attract one pound, the earth, if a magnet, can 
 attract over three octillion pounds. That is sufficient for 
 an exact idea of just what the earth can do : and so he 
 returns to his Jeremiad. 
 
 u Woe to all iron implements," he thunders, " woe to all 
 horses and mules (probably on account of their shoes), woe 
 to cataphracts, woe to Gilbert's kitchen utensils." Why, 
 the rocks and the precipices and the mountains would be 
 bound in an indissoluble mass everything would keep 
 still! Instead of the motion Gilbert predicts, there would 
 be utter quiet and the end of all movement. After that, 
 denunciation follows naturally and strong, sweeping de- 
 nunciation too. 
 
 "Proprium est haereticorum res divinas et incompre- 
 hensas ingenio suo metiri, quas nisi comprehenderint nee 
 credere velle videntur " duly clinched with a quotation 
 from Nazianzenus, Orat., 24. 
 
 But it did not do much good. The misbelieving Prot- 
 estants wagged their heads in derision as usual, and the 
 good sons of the Church took it all as a sermon, well 
 enough in the abstract no doubt, but having no real im- 
 mediate bearing upon the magnetic and electric problems 
 which they were anxious to solve : certainly none com- 
 parable to that which would instantly be recognized in 
 even a look askance from the Holy Inquisition. 
 
GILBERT'S ERROR IN COMPASS VARIATION. 367 
 
 Now back to England, where we left Barlowe and Ridley 
 "animadverting" upon one another over their respective 
 claims to Gilbert's experimental discoveries : and the 
 navigators trying to turn Gilbert's nautical instruments to 
 practical account. But the last were of no avail. Gilbert 
 had made a fundamental error as to compass variation ; 
 "that the arc thereof continues to be the same in what- 
 ever place or region, be it sea or continent, and is forever 
 unchanging." It was, however, soon detected, not by an 
 Englishman, but in all probability by Gian Francesco 
 Sagredo, who was Venetian Consul at Aleppo in about 
 1610, and who was then making observations himself 
 there, and having others do the same at Goa in India. 
 Vastly important as this subject was to the English sailors 
 and merchants for the safety of their ships and the suc- 
 cess of their enterprises ultimately depended upon the 
 truth of their steering-needles little more than rumors of 
 the changes in local variation seem to have reached the 
 country for many years. Burton sums up, in a curious 
 blending of the old legends of the magnetic rocks with the 
 results of the new experimental observations, probably all 
 that was then known. He asks whether there be a great 
 rock of lodestone which may cause the needle in the com- 
 pass still to bend that way, and what should be the true 
 cause of the variation of the compass. 
 
 "Is it a magnetical rock, or the pole star as Cardan 
 will ; or some other star in the bear, as Marsilius Ficinus ; 
 or a magnetical meridian, as Maurolicus ; ve I situs in vena 
 terrcz, as Agricola : or the nearness of the next continent, 
 as Cabseus will; or some other cause, as Scaliger, Cortesius, 
 Conimbricenses, Peregrinus contend ; why at the Azores 
 it looks directly north, otherwise not? In the Mediter- 
 ranean or L,evant (as some observe) it varies 7 grad. ; by 
 and by, 12, and then, 22. In the Baltic Seas near Rasce- 
 burg in Finland, the needle runs round if any ships come 
 that way, though Martin Ridley write otherwise that the 
 needle near the Pole will hardly be forced from his direc- 
 
368 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 tion. 'Tis fit to be inquired whether certain rules may be 
 made of it as n. grad. Loud, variat. alibi, 36, etc., and 
 that which is more prodigious, the variation varies in the 
 same place, now taken accurately, 'tis so much after a few 
 years quite altered from what it was : till we have better 
 intelligence, let our Dr. Gilbert and Nicholas Cabaeus the 
 Jesuit, that have both written great volumes on this sub- 
 ject, satisfy these inquisitors." 1 
 
 Burton, however, has much to say about the Coperni- 
 cans, and he knows Gilbert best as a defender of their 
 theory, which he classes among the causes of melancholy. 
 It is in "sober sadness,' 5 he says, that he finds Digges and 
 Gilbert and Kepler defending the notion that the earth is 
 a moon, a conception which makes one "giddy vertiginous 
 and lunatic within this sublunary maze." 
 
 But Ben Jonson, in perhaps closer touch with London 
 life than the Leicestershire clergyman, discovers that the 
 making of terrellas into playthings for Tuscan Grand 
 Dukes, like other fads Italian, was being widely copied 
 among English aristocracy, and that magnetism and its 
 wonders were therefore beginning to interest the people 
 generally. Therefore he wrote his comedy, "The Mag- 
 netic Lady," wherein the heroine, "Lady Lodestone," 
 
 "Draws and draws unto you guests of all sorts, 
 The courtiers, and the soldiers, and the scholars, 
 The travelers, physicians and divines, 
 As Doctor Ridley wrote, and Dpctor Barlowe." 
 
 and which ends with the happy union of the magnet and 
 armature. 
 
 "More work then for the parson. I shall cap 
 The Lodestone with an Ironside, I see " 2 
 
 1 Burton : Anatomy of Melancholy, Part 2, $ 2, Mem. 3. The first 
 edition of this work appeared in 1621, and five editions of it appeared in 
 Burton's lifetime, which ended in 1639. The reference to Cabaeus in the 
 last sentence of the quotation shows that this clause at least was written 
 after the appearance of the Philosophia Magnetica in 1629. 
 
 2 The date of this play is 1632. 
 
ELIZABETHAN POETS ON ELECTRICITY. 369 
 
 But this last is the only new metaphor which Jonson 
 bases on magnetism. He has not devoured Ridley and 
 Barlowe with that insatiate appetite for knowledge which 
 shows its results in his extraordinary mastery of occult 
 subjects in the Alchemist. There was more poetry, per- 
 haps, to be got out of alembics and retorts and receivers, 
 from incineration and calcination and reverberation, than 
 out of a stone. So, saving the two passages before quoted, 
 the magnetic color, so to speak, of his play is factitious, 
 and cheaply gained by giving his characters the technical 
 names of Needle, Compass, Ironside, and so on. 
 
 But how deathless that figure of speech, here again re- 
 curring, which likens personal attractiveness to the draw- 
 ing of the lodestone! It is almost as old as civilization. 
 It never was more of a favorite than during the time of the 
 literary awakening in England, and most of all with Robert 
 Greene, who fairly strews it throughout his now almost 
 forgotten novels and plays. Clarinda is "an adamant ob- 
 ject to draw the wavering eyes of Pharicles." Love is 
 "the adamant which hath virtue to draw," and "what 
 adamants are fayre faces!" l Sometimes he deserts the 
 lodestone for the amber attraction: "seeing you sit like 
 Juno ... I was by a strange attractive force drawne as 
 the adamant draweth yron and the jeat the straw;" 2 to 
 withstand the brunt of beauty is as impossible as "for the 
 yron to resist the operation of the adamant or the silie 
 straw the virtue of the sucking jeat." 3 So does Jonson 
 once avail himself of the electrical simile: 
 
 "Your lustre too'll inflame at any distance; 
 Draw courtship to you as a jet doth straws." * 
 
 But Shakespeare never does. Only in Helena's reproach 
 does he use the well-worn figure based upon the magnet 
 
 1 Greene: Mamillia. 1580-3. 
 
 2 Ibid. : Menaphon. 1589. 
 8 The Carde of Fancie. 
 
 * Every Man in his Humor. Act III., Sc. 2. 
 24 
 
370 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 "You draw me, you hard hearted adamant, 
 But yet you draw not iron, for my heart 
 Is true as steel: Leave you your power to draw, 
 And I shall have no power to follow you." 1 
 
 Perhaps he thought that his rival, Greene, had already 
 made the metaphor too common. Perhaps by putting the 
 figure in its single use in the mouth of the love-sick girl 
 he meant to satirize Greene's overworking of it. 2 Perhaps 
 he was no believer in the "miracles of science," now so 
 called. "They say miracles are past," he remarks, with 
 something of the non-inquisitive superciliousness with 
 which a peripatetic might stop in his lazy promenade be- 
 side the Lykeum to gaze on a gardener grafting a tree. 
 
 1 Midsummer Night's Dream. Act I., Sc. i. 
 
 2 1 append the following : 
 
 " Beautie is the Syren which will drawe the most adamant by force." 
 MainmiliA. 
 
 " For the Adamant drawes by vertue though Iron strive by nature." 
 Ibid. 
 
 " Yet they have in their eyes adamants that will draw youth as the let 
 the straw." Never too Late. 1590. 
 
 "A woman's teares are Adamant, and men are no harder than Iron, 
 and therefore may be drawn to pitie." Ibid. 
 
 Here are two quotations in which the figure changes: 
 
 " Their hearts like Adamants that will turn no way but to one poynt 
 of heaven." Never too Late. 
 
 " For the fingers of Lifts (shoplifters) are fourmed of Adamant; though 
 they touch not, yet they have vertue attractive to drawe any pelfe to 
 them as the Adamant dooth the Iron." Notable Discy. of Coosnage. 
 
 See Greene: Life and Works. Huth Library. 1881-83. 
 
 Jonson -(Every Man out of his Humour. Act III., Sc. 2,) probably car- 
 ries the attractive figure to the limits of hyperbole 
 
 Would to heaven 
 
 In wreak of my misfortune I were turn'd 
 To some fair nymph, that set upon 
 The deepest whirlpit of the rav'nous seas, 
 My adamantine eyes might headlong hale 
 This iron world to me and drown it all. 
 
 Shakespeare (Troilus and Cressida. Act III., Sc. 2,) uses the simile 
 "as true as iron to adamant," which may refer either to attraction or 
 directive tendency. 
 
THE ROSICRUCIANS. 371 
 
 "We have our philosophical persons to make modern and 
 
 familiar things supernatural and causeless." 1 
 
 If the study of the magnet in England had continued 
 nothing more than a mere amusement, the conditions for 
 the advancement and increase of both magnetic and elec- 
 trical knowledge would have been vastly better than those 
 which prevailed before half of the seventeenth century had 
 ended. All physical science was under the domination of 
 the theologians, and the rising Puritanism was scarcely 
 more tolerant of it than was the Church itself. The 
 divines, says Robert Burton, are "too severe and rigid, 
 ignorant and peevish, in not admitting the true demon- 
 strations and certain observations of the mathematicians, " 
 tyrannizing "over art, science and all true philosophy in 
 suppressing their labors . . . forbidding them to write, to 
 speak a truth, all to maintain their superstition and for 
 profit's sake." 2 Nor does he bear any better testimony 
 concerning the physicians, the only scientific body in the 
 community; for the country, he says, is indeed overrun 
 with mountebanks, quacksalvers, empirics in every street 
 almost and in every village, calling themselves physicians, 
 who serve to "make this noble and profitable art to be 
 evil spoken of and contemned by reason of these base and 
 illiterate artificers." 3 Obviously such an environment was 
 the worst possible for the promotion of the truths of natu- 
 ral philosophy, or, what is the same thing, the very best 
 possible for the cultivation of every item of popular super- 
 stition and ignorance. 
 
 Meanwhile there had arisen in Germany* a sect of fanat- 
 ics calling themselves Rosicrucians or brethren of the 
 
 1 All's Well that Ends Well. Act II., Sc. 3. 
 
 2 Burton: Anatomy of Melancholy, Part 2, \ 2, Mem. 3. 
 8 Ibid., Part 2, 3, Mem. i. 
 
 4 Mackay: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions. London, 
 1852, i. 262. 
 
372 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Rosy Cross. They followed Paracelsus in attributing oc- 
 cult and miraculous powers to the magnet, and established 
 what is now known as the "faith cure;" or in other 
 words, they worked upon the imagination of invalids, 
 highly nervous persons and credulous people generally. 
 They became known later as "magnetizers," and attracted 
 to their ranks hundreds of the alchemists, whose calling 
 was rapidly becoming disreputable, seeing that all their 
 efforts to transmute the base metals into gold had invari- 
 ably failed, and that they were now manifesting an incli- 
 nation to swindle. 
 
 The magnetizers pretended to transplant diseases by 
 means of the magnet and to cure them by applications of 
 the magnet to the body the latter, a delusion dating from 
 the period of the Samothracian rings. That was "min- 
 eral" magnetism. "Animal magnetism," so called, de- 
 veloped from this, and did not necessarily involve the in- 
 terference of any actual lodestone or iron magnet at all. 
 As I have stated, the magnetizers derived many of their 
 peculiar doctrines from Paracelsus; but their principal de- 
 ception, the magnetic cure of wounds, rested upon the 
 imaginary properties of an unguent originally invented by 
 one Corrichterus, who was physician to Maximilian II. 
 The peculiarity of this compound, which contained, among 
 other gruesome ingredients, "the mossy periwig of the 
 skull of a man destroyed by violent death in the increase 
 of the Moon," was that no magnet was ever put into it; 
 not even the powdered lodestone which the ancients and 
 the mediaeval leeches mixed in plasters to draw out iron 
 from the body. Subsequently, it was made of less horrible 
 materials, and eventually became nothing but iron sul- 
 phate in powder. 
 
 Among the leading Rosicrucians was John Baptist Van 
 Helmont, a Flemish physician and chemist, still honestly 
 renowned as the first to recognize the existence of differ- 
 ent kinds of air and to use the term "gas," and as the re- 
 puted discoverer of carbonic acid. He had been a close 
 
VAN HELMONT. 373 
 
 student of Gilbert and was well familiar with Gilbert's 
 magnetic experiments, references to which he mingles in 
 his writings with his own falsehoods relative to the cura- 
 tive properties of the magnet, so as to make it appear that 
 his absurdities somehow rest upon Gilbert's researches. 1 
 From Gilbert's theory of the amber effluvium, he evidently 
 concocted the explanation of the effect of the magnetic 
 unguent or powder (which, by the way, was never to be 
 applied to the wound, but to either the weapon which in- 
 flicted it or to an ensanguined bandage), wherein he main- 
 tains that "the blood effused doth send out subtle streams 
 to its fount," namely, the body; and these streams or 
 "Magnetic Nuntii" carry with them "the Balsamick 
 Emanations of the Sympathetick Unguent or Powder." 
 So far as the actual electrical effect was concerned, it did 
 not appear to enter per se into Van Helmont's curative 
 agencies except as a direct means of drawing contagion out 
 of the body, and "venome and bullets out of wounds;" 
 but the passage in his work which prefaces this announce- 
 ment has another and more noteworthy claim to fame. In 
 the English translation of Charleton, it is : 
 
 "The phansy of Amber delights to allect strawes, chaffe 
 and other festucous bodies, by an attraction, we confess, 
 obscure and weake enough, yet sufficiently manifest and 
 strong to attest an Electricity or attractive sign-nature." 2 
 
 That was the first appearance of the actual word which 
 is now the name of the science. 
 
 As the Rosicrucians increased in numbers, they became 
 bolder in their assertions, insisting that magnetic agents 
 not only transmit their spiritual energy into determinate 
 patients, but do so "at vast and intermediate distances." 
 The common people accused them of witchcraft, and be- 
 lieved them especially inspired by the powers of darkness. 
 Helmont retorts with "experiments," and the following 
 
 1 Charleton: A Ternary of Paradoxes of the magnetic cure of wounds, 
 etc. 2d ed. London, 1650. (Trans, of Van Helmont ) 
 2 Charleton: Supra, p. 77 
 
374 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 one in particular, which he declares "cannot but be free 
 from all suspect of imposture and illusion of the Devil." 1 
 
 "A certain inhabitant of Bruxels in a combat had his 
 nose mowed off, and addressed himself to Tagliacozztis, a 
 famous Chirurgeon, living at Bononia, that he might pro- 
 cure a new one; and when he feared the incision of his 
 own arm, he hired a Porter to admit it, out of whose arm, 
 having first given the reward agreed upon, at length he 
 dig'd a new nose. About thirteen moneths after his re- 
 turn to his own Countrey, on a sudden the ingrafted nose 
 grew cold, putrified, and within a few days drop't off. To 
 those of his friends that were curious in the exploration 
 of the cause of this unexpected misfortune, it was discov- 
 ered that the Porter expired neer about the same punctilio 
 of time wherein the nose grew frigid and cadaverous." 2 
 
 "There are at Bruxels yet surviving some of good re- 
 pute that were eye witnesses of these occurrences," he 
 adds, gravely, oblivious of the difficulties of eye-witnessing 
 events simultaneously happening in Bruxels and Bononia. 
 "But," he demands, triumphantly, " is not this Magnet- 
 ism of manifest affinity with mummy, 3 whereby the nose, 
 enjoying, by title and right of inoculation, a community 
 of life, sense and vegetation for so many months, on a 
 sudden mortified on the other side of the Alpes? I pray, 
 what is there in this of superstition? what of attent and 
 exalted Imagination?" 
 
 Of course, there were people the anatomists especially 
 who were not quite satisfied with such evidence, and 
 demanded more definite and physical explanations. But 
 Van Helmont was ready with the retort irrelevant, which 
 in one form or another is still the most serviceable reply in 
 the dialectic armament of the "magneto- therapist." 
 
 "Go to, I beseech thee !" he says haughtily. "Does 
 
 1 Charleton : Supra, p. 13. 
 
 2 This story is evidently the basis of M. Edmond About's novel, The 
 Nose of a Notary. See, also, Tatler, Dec. 7, 1710, No. 260. 
 
 3 The bodily humor of Paracelsus, see p. 222. 
 
VAN HEIvMONT. 375 
 
 the Anatomist, our Censor, happily know the reason why 
 a Dog swings his Tayl when he rejoyces, but a Lyon when 
 he is angry; and a Cat when pleased advances hers in an 
 erect posture. , . . The imbecility of our Understandings 
 in not comprehending the more abstruse and retired causes 
 of things is not to be ascribed to any defect in their nature, 
 but in our own hoodwinkt Intellectuals." 
 
 This, of course, is delightfully subtle ; indeed, to 
 Hoodwink our Intellectuals, and then to say that we can- 
 iiot understand the hoodwinking deception because our 
 Intellectuals are "hoodwinkt" leaves Van Helmont 
 perched on a pinnacle of effrontery which the modern pro- 
 moter of the electric and magnetic nostrum has yet to 
 climb. "His experiments need to be confirmed by more 
 witnesses than one," says Robert Boyle, 1 in his solemn 
 fashion, delivering the judgment of the next generation, 
 "especially since the extravagances and untruths to be 
 met with in his treatise of the magnetic cure of wounds 
 have made his testimonies suspected in his other writ- 
 ings." Yet perhaps he deceived no one more than he 
 deceived himself, for he invented an "Alkahest" as a 
 remedy for all diseases, and claimed to have discovered 
 the means of prolonging life far beyond its natural term ; 
 but none the less left the world in his sixty-seventh year. 
 
 The Rosicrucian delusions regarding the magnet were 
 taught in England by Dr. Robert Fltidd ("a Torrent of 
 Sympathetick Knowledge," says Charleton) who began to 
 practice medicine in London by virtue of a degree from 
 Oxford in 1605. They made headway why not, since 
 after all they were in full accordance with so deep-rooted 
 a national superstition as that the King's touch would 
 cure scrofula? Why not, in a country rapidly nearing the 
 vortex of Civil War, under conditions when differences in 
 theology and politics made a man's neighbors his foes, and 
 every man's sword his best friend? What were all the 
 
 1 Boyle: Works, Ed. by Birch, London, 1744 (The Skeptical Chemist), 
 Vol. i, 313. 
 
376 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 magnetic discoveries of the philosophers since the world 
 began, in comparison with the marvelous magnetic powder 
 which stood ready to heal the wounds of Edgehill and 
 Marston Moor? In fact does not Walter Charleton, King's 
 Physician, positively tell of the cures "neer allied to 
 miracles" wrought u by Sir Gilbert Talbot upon many 
 wounded in the King's Army ; chiefly in the Western 
 Expedition?" 1 And thus, during the period when 
 Charles and Cromwell were fighting, superstition and 
 ignorance and war all united to bring the condition of 
 scientific learning in England to perhaps about the lowest 
 depths which it has sounded in modern times. Then, 
 perforce, it had to rise. 
 
 Charleton, in his preface to his translation of Van Hel- 
 mont, mentions Fludd, but regards as "the choicest flower 
 in our garden" Sir Kenelm Digby. This was because 
 Digby, being of fairly high station, was the promoter of 
 the new cult at Court, and also because Digby had told so 
 many and such variegated fables about the results pro- 
 duced by his vitriol powder as a cure for wounds, as to 
 leave the less fertile Charleton lost in wonder and admira- 
 tion. 2 He alleged that he had cured a person named 
 Howel, who was pinked in the arm, by the simple expe- 
 dient of rubbing Howel' s garter with the magnetic pow- 
 der, and that he could set Howel writhing in pain at 
 will by dipping the garter in vinegar. But the new rise 
 of science in England began in the person of Digby. It 
 was very like that of a man clambering out of a mud-hole. 
 The adhering filth was most in evidence. 
 
 1 For by his side, a pouch he wore 
 Replete with strange hermetic powder, 
 That wounds nine miles point blank would solder. 
 
 Hudibras, ii, 225. 
 
 2 Poudre de Sympathie, Discours fait . . . par le Chevalier Digby. 
 Paris, 1660. 
 
SIR KENELM DIGBY. 377 
 
 Digby was adventurer, conspirator, naval commander, 
 and diplomatist. He rejoiced in probably one of the most 
 extensive collections of personal enemies ever gathered. 
 They included the Pope, the King, Parliament, afterwards 
 the L,ord Protector, and so on through all sorts of people, 
 down to and including his wife's relations. The last ac- 
 cused him of murder. Nevertheless his manners were 
 charming. When Parliament locked him up, his co- 
 prisoners said that he turned the jail into "an abode of 
 delight." His natural winsomeness accounts for his suc- 
 cess in gaining the greatest beauty in Europe as his wife, 
 and in inducing the Queen Dowager of France to wheedle 
 Parliament into permitting him to retain his forfeited head. 
 
 But his estates, such as they were, were confiscated, and 
 he went into exile in France, and there produced, in 1644, 
 a treatise on the nature of the soul, 1 intended, he says, for 
 the instruction of his son, in which he appropriated as 
 much of Descartes' theory of the magnet and the electric 
 as served his purposes, and presented it as his own. 
 
 Digby was by no means without ability, as his career 
 amply proves. And in point of scientific attainments he 
 ranked high for his time. He was the first to observe the 
 importance of oxygen to plant life, and he was the first 
 Englishman to write of the magnet and the electrics in 
 the light of the knowledge gained from the continental 
 philosophers. If he had made his work completely a 
 compendium in English of the discoveries and theories of 
 the latter, as it was in part, he would have rendered a ser- 
 vice of great value. 
 
 In place of Descartes' spirals coming from the heavens 
 and moving through the pores of the magnets, Digby sub- 
 stitutes atoms, caused to rise from the torrid zone of the 
 earth by the sun's heat, to be replaced by others borne on 
 the heavier air which flows to the equator from the poles. 
 
 1 Digby: Two Treatises, in the one of which Tht Nature of Bodies; in 
 the other the Nature of Mail's Soule is looked into in way of discovery 
 of the Immortality of Reasonable Soules. Paris, 1644. 
 
378 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 When cold polar atoms and dry equatorial atoms meet 
 they conglomerate, sink to earth and form stone, which 
 retains the original north and south flowing tendency of 
 the atoms, and hence is magnetic. Then follows an at- 
 tempt to account for the magnetic phenomena on this 
 theory, palpably modeled on the similar effort of Descartes. 
 
 His electric hypothesis is that the electric, being heated 
 by rubbing, breathes out steams which, as they come into 
 the cold air, are condensed and spring back "in such 
 manner as you may observe the little tender horns of snails 
 use to shrink back if anything touched them, till they 
 settled in little lumps upon their heads." These steams, 
 meeting a light body, pierce into it and settle in it, and if 
 it be of "competent bignesse for them to wield," they 
 bring it back with them. It will be observed that Digby's 
 steams behave exactly like Descartes' ribbons. Both 
 make the emanations fly out when the electric is warmed. 
 Descartes brings them back by the cooling of the electric; 
 Digby, by the cooling of the air. 
 
 A revival of scientific learning was taking place in 
 France, and Digby had the advantage of being there. 
 The ridotti of the Italians were being copied. Societies 
 for the discussion of scientific subjects were gathering at 
 the houses of Mersenne, Thevenot and De Monmor. 
 There Digby met Descartes, and besides, such men as 
 Gassendus, Paschal, father and son, Hobbes, Roberval and 
 others of less eminence. 1 From that membership came 
 the historic gathering of mathematicians in the Library of 
 Colbert, in June, 1666, and the founding of the Academic 
 Royale des Sciences. 
 
 Thus, Digby had no lack of sources of information, and, 
 if the generality of his countrymen could have been induced 
 to believe him, he would have come down to us, perhaps, 
 as a great rejuvenator of English science. But, unfor- 
 tunately for him, this was not to be. Evelyn, who knew 
 him, speaks of him in his diary as an "arrant motinte- 
 
 ^ontenelle: Eloges Historiques des Acad., Vol. ii. 
 
THE "INVISIBLE COLLEGE." 379 
 
 bank;" and Lady Fanshawe delicately says that, while he 
 made scientific experiments, he had an ''infirmity of lying 
 about them." Still he is entitled to the credit of produc- 
 ing a philosophical work in the English language, which 
 unquestionably had no small effect in helping the onward 
 progress of his country in knowledge of natural science, 
 and of probably creating a renewed interest in the physical 
 phenomena of electricity and magnetism an accomplish- 
 ment which, although retarded by the errors which he 
 taught, was at least not neutralized by them. 
 
 He figures prominently in the scientific literature of his 
 time, and occasionally his opinions are quoted with much 
 deference; but this was probably less due to their original- 
 ity and merit than to their author's rank and position. It 
 was a new thing for a u man of quality" to be interested 
 in such matters, and still more of an innovation for him to 
 pose as an authority thereon. But the fashion spread, and 
 to Digby is due the honor of leading in a path into which 
 not many years afterwards the king and all the court 
 rushed pell-mell. 
 
 The example of the French societies, modeled, as I have 
 sa'd, on the Italian ridotti, was soon followed in England. 
 Shortly after the breaking out of the civil war, an assem- 
 bly of learned and curious gentlemen, u in order to divert 
 themselves from those melancholy sciences, applied them- 
 selves to experimental inquiries and the study of nature." 
 This was the so-called "Invisible College," which began 
 its meetings in 1645 ^ n Dr. Goddard's lodgings in Wood 
 Street, chiefly because there was an artisan in the house 
 able to grind glasses for telescopes and microscopes. 1 
 
 It was the second scientific society instituted in England 
 the first being the little gathering of students and friends 
 which met, as already noted, in the house of Gilbert, hard 
 by St. Paul's. The new assemblage met to discuss pretty 
 
 1 Boyle: Works, cit. sup. Thomson: Hist. Roy. Soc. London, 1812. 
 
380 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 much everything except theology and state affairs. It was 
 unwise to deal with the first still more unwise to meddle 
 with the second, especially during the Protectorate, seeing 
 that most of the members were devoted royalists. 
 
 In the following year Dr. Thomas Browne, another 
 London physician, published his famous Enquiries into 
 Vulgar and Common Errors 1 a book which represented 
 immense labor in experiment and the collection of curious 
 facts, and which had many editions during its author's 
 lifetime. The popular reception which it encountered is 
 a significant commentary on the changed conditions of the 
 times. Not only was England flooded with copies of it, 
 but it was speedily translated into foreign languages. It 
 was the first systematic and deliberate onslaught upon the 
 popular superstitions and beliefs which had been accepted 
 as true for centuries, and was itself an expression of the 
 skepticism not alone of the author, but of the age. 2 Browne 
 had already written the "Religio Medici," a work which 
 is now classic, and in so doing, had become involved in 
 controversy with Digby, who had explosively replied in a 
 book written in twenty-four hours, part of which time was 
 spent in procuring Browne's work and part in reading it; 
 a proceeding which brought down upon his multitudinous 
 inconsistencies and infirmities the later censure of Browne. 
 
 A collection of all the ancient blunders and traditions 
 concerning the lodestone fills Browne's quaint pages. 3 
 Some of them he refutes in a sensible way; others, in a 
 manner which leaves confusion worse confounded. He 
 records no discoveries of his own, and his theories are 
 borrowed. He followed the Jesuits in the belief that "the 
 earth is a magnetical body," and he adds a bare suggestion 
 to the earlier ideas concerning the tendency of the earth's 
 magnetism to fix its position in space, by saying that the 
 globe u is seated in a convenient medium," thus implying 
 
 1 Browne: Pseudodoxia Epidemica. London, 1646. 
 "Buckle: History of Civilization. N. Y.. 1877, i., 263. 
 3 Ibid., Chaps, iii. and iv. 
 
DR. THOMAS BROWNE. 381 
 
 that there is some coaction between the medium and the 
 magnetic virtue of the earth, which results in the directive 
 tendency of the globe, and that the latter does not depend 
 upon the effused magnetic force acting in some unknown 
 way. He has no definite theory as to the magnetic virtue, 
 but regards the hypothesis of Descartes, and the notions 
 of Digby founded thereon, as equally worthy of belief. He 
 ridicules Digby 's magnetic powder, and all magnetic 
 unguents for the cure of wounds generally; and then, with 
 characteristic shrewdness, puts his ringer at once upon the 
 real reason which underlay the healing effects which 
 seemed to follow the use of these nostrums. It is not 
 necessary, he thinks, to conceive of spirits to "convey the 
 action of the remedy unto the part and to conjoin the 
 virtues of bodies far disjoined," because only simple 
 wounds are ever healed, and these, when "kept clean, do 
 need no other hand than that of nature and the balsam of 
 the proper part." In other words, he had noted the rigid 
 requirement of all magnetic healers that, while the 
 weapon was to be anointed and dressed, the wound was to 
 be simply brought together, bound up in clean rags, and, 
 above all, to be let alone for seven days; and he had seen 
 that simple flesh injuries under this treatment healed 
 themselves by "first intention." 1 
 
 Browne's experiments on the electrics are repetitions 
 of those already well known. He thinks that electric 
 effluvia behave like threads of syrup, which elongate and 
 contract, and, in contracting, bring back the attracted 
 objects. He arrives at the conclusion that no metal 
 attracts, "nor animal concretion we know, although polite 
 and smooth." But the "animal concretions" which he 
 has tried are extraordinary. They are elks' hoofs, hawks' 
 talons, the sword of a sword-fish, tortoise shells, sea-horse 
 and elephants' teeth, and unicorns' horns" indicating 
 that he had made up his mind that all ordinary substances 
 had already withstood the test of experiment, and further 
 
 Paris' Pharmacologia, 23, 24. Mill: System of Logic, Vol. ii., 402. 
 
382 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 investigation ought only be undertaken among the con- 
 tents of museums. 
 
 Browne, however, made one experiment which is of 
 especial interest, and which requires from us a glance back- 
 wards, and hence a brief digression. 
 
 It has already been noted that John Baptista Porta refers 
 to possible communication "to- a friend that is at a far dis- 
 tance from us and fast shut up in prison" by means of 
 "two Mariner's Compasses having the Alphabet writ 
 about them." 1 This is the first known suggestion of a 
 possibility which fretted men's minds for many years; 
 namely, that by reason of a supposed sympathy between 
 magnets, the movements of one would be copied by those 
 of another, no matter how great the distance between 
 them; and that, hence, it was necessary only to dispose 
 alphabets around two widely-separated pivoted needles, 
 which had both been magnetized by the same lodestone, 
 to cause the letter to which the needle at one station is 
 moved to be indicated simultaneously by the needle at the 
 other and distant station. Of course, this would now be 
 termed "telegraphy;" and it would not be difficult to find 
 modern dial telegraph instruments operating in accord- 
 ance with a very similar process. 
 
 Porta' s idea appears to have been improved upon by 
 Daniel Schwenter, who, in 1600, devised an apparatus of 
 some complexity. He divided the compass card, in each 
 of the widely-separated compasses, into compartments each 
 containing four letters of the alphabet. The needle in 
 signalling was intended to move first to the compartment 
 containing the letter, and then to indicate the especial 
 character desired by one, two, three or four vibrations. 
 Just how the needles were to be worked by the bar mag- 
 nets or "chadids" which were employed is not clear; but 
 
 1 Porta: Magia Nat., 1589, Book vii. Natural Magic (Eng. Trail.), 
 1658, Book vii, p. 190. 
 
EARLY IDEAS ON MAGNETIC INTERCOMMUNICATION. 383 
 
 attention was to be called by the needle striking against 
 a small bell placed in its path. 1 Schwenter's plan did 
 not, of course, bring telegraphy into the world, centuries 
 ahead of its time. In fact, he tacitly repudiates it him- 
 self in a later publication, 2 wherein, after learnedly ex- 
 plaining how Claudius in Paris and Johannes in Rome 
 can thus communicate with one another, he denies that 
 any magnet in the world has sufficient strength for the 
 purpose; although he says u Thomas de Fluctibus " (prob- 
 ably meaning Fludd) describes a secret stone in his works 
 which is possibly powerful enough, but neglects to men- 
 tion u where it was found and who found it." 
 
 At the same time, no earlier instance having been en- 
 countered, it appears that we may accord to Schwenter 
 the credit of the invention of the first apparatus for (pre- 
 sumably) causing a bell to be sounded by the moving 
 armature of a magnet. 
 
 Nine years later, the feasibility of magnetic communi- 
 cation was elaborately disputed by the celebrated lapidary 
 and mineralogist de Boodt, 3 who says that the notion that 
 the magnetic needle can communicate the secrets of 
 thought between friends fifty-five leagues distant is an 
 error, u because it is very certain that the magnet which 
 has touched an iron needle can cause it to move only 
 through a certain and very small interval, perhaps three 
 or four feet." After that, no one seems to have much 
 faith in the idea; and probably because of his own percep- 
 tion of its absurdity, Famianus Strada selects it as the sub- 
 ject of his parody upon the poem of Lucretius, which, it 
 will be remembered, abounded in references to the mag- 
 net. This he presents with burlesques of Claudian, L,u- 
 cian and other ancient poets in the Prolusiones Academicae* 
 
 Schwenter (De Sunde): Steganologia et Steganographia. Nurnberg, 
 1600. 
 
 "' Schwenter: Deliciae Physico Mathematicae. Nurnberg, 1636. 
 3 De Boodt: Gemmarum et Lapidum Hist. etc. Hanoviae, 1609. 
 * Strada: Prolusiones Academicae. Rome, 1617. 
 
384 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 a work of much literary skill and ingenuity. Strada is 
 quite specific, however, in his instructions. Two flat, 
 smooth disks are to be provided, marked around their cir- 
 cumferential edges with the alphabet. Iron needles are 
 pivoted at their centres and energized by one and the same 
 lodestone. "L,et your friend," he says, "about to depart, 
 carry this disk with him, and let it be agreed beforehand 
 at what time or at what days he shall observe whether the 
 dial pin (needle) trembles, or what it marks on the indi- 
 cator. These things so disposed, if you desire to address 
 your friend secretly, whom a part of the earth separates far 
 from you, bring your hand to the disk; take hold of the 
 movable iron; here you observe the letters arranged round 
 the whole margin with stops, of which there is no need for 
 words; hither direct the iron and touch with the point the 
 separate letters, now this one and now the other, whilst 
 by turning the iron round again and again throughout 
 these you may distinctly express all the sentiments of 
 your mind. Strange, but true, the friend who is far dis- 
 tant sees the movable iron tremble without the touch of 
 any one and to traverse now in one, now in another direc- 
 tion: he stands attentive and observes the leading of the 
 iron and follows by collecting the letters from each direc- 
 tion, with which, being formed into words, he perceives 
 what may be intended, and learns from the iron as his in- 
 terpreter. Moreover, when he sees the dial pin stop, he, 
 in his turn, if he thinks of any things to answer in the 
 same manner by the letters being touched separately, 
 writes back to his friend." 
 
 Addison 1 copied from Strada this conceit and talked 
 about it charmingly in the Spectator and Guardian, nearly 
 a century later, and Hakewill 2 and Akenside 3 allude to it. 
 
 1 Addison: Spectator, 241, 1711; Guardian, 119, 1713. 
 
 2 Hakewill: An Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence 
 of God. London and Oxford, 1630. 
 
 3 Akenside: The Pleasures of the Imagination. Bk III., v. 325-7. 
 London, 1744. 
 
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 the 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 "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- 
 
 l Cabaeus: Philosophia Magnetica. Ferrara, 1629, pp. 3O'-6. 
 
 2 Galileo: Dialogo Intorno ai Due Massimi System! del Mondo, etc.. 
 1632. 
 
 25 
 
386 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 tion at the corresponding letter in the arm of the other 
 person. 1 Van Helmont's story of the artificial nose belongs 
 to the same category. 
 
 For such conceits as the flesh magnet and the sympathies 
 attributed thereto, Browne has no stomach. He regards 
 them all as "of that monstrosity that they refute them- 
 selves in their recitements. ' ' But the two needles and their 
 alphabetical dials he evidently thinks are not to be dis- 
 posed of with mere expression of disbelief or even contempt. 
 There is a concreteness about that apparatus which makes 
 strongly for its toleration. It is very simple, and the needle 
 of the compass certainly does obey the earth from a long 
 distance, and go to certain marked indications on a card, 
 all of which are conditions closely allied to those in the 
 sympathetic dials. If Browne had lived before Gilbert, 
 he would have written a dissertation, very subtle and very 
 ingenious, no doubt, which would have demonstrated that, 
 from the nature of things and the canons of Aristotle and 
 the names commonly bestowed on the phenomena and sub- 
 stances involved, the whole alleged effect could not be. 
 But Gilbert had lived and passed away, and this thing 
 which "was whispered through the world with some at- 
 tention, credulous and vulgar auditors readily believing 
 it, and more judicious and distinctive heads not altogether 
 rejecting it," could not be satisfactorily dismissed in any 
 such manner. And therefore Browne, for the first time, 
 tested the sympathetic dials by actual experiment. 2 
 
 u Having expressly framed two circles of wood," he says, 
 "and, according to the number of Latin letters, divided 
 
 1 Fahie. A History of Elec. Telegy. to the year 1837. Lond., 1884, p. 
 19. An excellent bibliography of the early works on the subject is given 
 here on p. 20. See also 
 
 Bertelli: Di un supposto sistema Telegrafico Magnetico . . . del secoli 
 xvi. e x\ii. Rome, 1868. 
 
 2 Browne: Pseudodoxia Epidemica, cit. sup. 
 
BROWNE'S EXPERIMENTS. 387 
 
 each into twenty-three parts, placing therein two stiles or 
 needles composed of the same steel, touched with the same 
 lodestone and at the same point; of these two, whensoever 
 I removed the one although but the distance of half a span, 
 the other would stand like Hercules' pillars, and (if the 
 earth stand still) have surely no motion at all. Now, as it 
 is not possible that any body should have no boundaries or 
 sphere of its activity, so it is improbable it should effect 
 that at a distance which nearer at hand it cannot at all 
 perform." 
 
 That gave its quietus to Porta's ingenious conjecture, 
 but still not to the idea which was the life and soul of it. 
 "Now, though this desirable effect possibly may not yet 
 answer the expectation of inquisitive experiment," says 
 Glanvil twenty years later, u yet 'tis no despicable item 
 that by some other such way of magnetick efficiency it 
 may hereafter with success be attempted ... to confer at 
 the distance of the Indies by sympathetic contrivances may 
 be as usual to future times as to us in a literary correspond- 
 ence." L And again and again in after years this persistent, 
 all-pervading world-notion, which, perhaps, begins with 
 the Scriptural, u Canst thou send lightnings that they 
 may go and say unto thee, here we are," reappeared. 
 u Whatever the way or the manner or the means of it may 
 be," says Beal, 2 writing to Boyle in 1670, in words which 
 sound like those of a seer, "we are sure that we have a 
 perception at great distance, and otherwise than by our 
 known senses, and sometimes a secret anticipation of 
 things future, which cannot be without correspondence 
 with some causative. Whether aerial, more refinedly ethe- 
 real, intelligent or astral, whether by any one or other, or 
 all of these strange expedients, we are sure of the great 
 and strange effects; and when we see how quickly the 
 sunbeams do pass to the borders of this vertex, we may 
 well imagine that our spirits may hold an intercourse at 
 
 1 Glanvil: Scepsis Scientifica. Lond., 1665, chaps, xix. and xxi. 
 2 Boyle: Works, cit. sup. 
 
388 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 like distance with equal dispatch in mental and spiritual 
 affairs." So went on germination of the telegraph; but 
 the plant was of slow growth, and nearly a century had 
 yet to elapse before it began to expand and fructify. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the quaint old town of Magdeburg, in 
 Germany, the Herr Burgomaster has been laboring with 
 things stranger than any that the alchemists knew ; and 
 Balthasar de Monconys, 1 Lieutenant of Police from Lyons, 
 having set out for the east to discover vestiges of the phil- 
 osophy of Trismegistus and Zoroaster, has heard of these 
 doings and has gone far out of his way to learn of them. 
 And thus, in October of 1663, Monconys is told of a 
 "globe made of nine minerals" which plays with feathers 
 "continually and without end," and which shows why the 
 moon always looks at us with the same face. Nor was he 
 surprised thereat; for what could not be done by the man 
 who had put two empty hemispheres of copper, not two 
 feet in diameter, face to face, and then proved to the Em- 
 peror Ferdinand and all the princes sitting in the Diet at 
 Ratisbon that thirty horses, (fifteen attached to each hemi- 
 sphere, and the two huge teams tugging in opposite direc- 
 tions), could not pull them apart? Verily, he was a won- 
 derful wizard the Herr Burgomaster. The Magdeburgers 
 said that he had a devil's contrivance which told him when 
 the storms were coming, and that while his prophecies 
 were always right it was dangerous to live near him for 
 the thunder one day fell on his house and broke a lot of 
 his infernal toys, and heaven might serve him worse next 
 time for tampering with the spirits of the air, which he 
 shut up and tortured in his tubes and globes.' 2 
 
 But the Burgomaster knew his Magdeburgers and they 
 him, and there was little danger that the fellow- officials 
 with whom he dined and smoked and joked would hale 
 him before their courts for sorcery. Besides, he was coun- 
 cillor to his most serene and potent Highness, the Elector 
 
 1 Monconys: Voyages. Lyons, 1665. 
 
 2 Phil. Trans. Abridgt, vol. ii., 29. 
 
OTTOneGUERICKE 
 
 ,^ Potentifs Elector; Branded 
 
 ConiiliArius et Civitat:Magtlel>.Con{ul: 
 
 /////// 
 
 //'//// /'j-i/f v////////// I /////. 
 
OTTO VON GUERICKE. 389 
 
 of Brandenburg, and he had other titles bespeaking great 
 consideration. But, at the present time, a couple of cen- 
 turies later, the moths have eaten all these dignities and 
 we know Otto von Guericke best as one of the first and 
 greatest of the electrical discoverers. 
 
 Now, we have to find out what Monconys saw. 
 
 Otto von Guericke 1 was Burgomaster of Magdeburg for 
 thirty-five years. He was a many-sided man. He had 
 studied law at L,eipsic, Helmstadt and Jena, and mathe- 
 matics at L,eyden, and had travelled through France and 
 England. He had established himself as an engineer at 
 Erfurt, when the attractions of an official career proved 
 more potent than those of his profession, and he entered 
 political life in 1627 as an alderman of his native town. 
 But he could not divorce himself from his interest in phy- 
 sical science; and so, throughout his long public service, 
 he made work in his laboratory his relaxation and his 
 play: just as President Jefferson found pleasure in experi- 
 menting upon the conduction of heat through fabrics amid 
 the engrossing cares of the White House, or as Charles II., 
 discovered in physical experiments conducted in his closet 
 at Whitehall, a welcome relief from the feverish excite- 
 ments and frivolity of his court. 
 
 In the history of pneumatics, von Guericke stands in the 
 highest place. He invented the air-pump in 1650, and 
 discovered that in a vacuum animals cannot exist, and all 
 bodies fall with equal rapidity. He recognized that gases 
 have weight, and by means of the "Magdeburg hemi- 
 spheres," already alluded to, he showed how great the 
 force due to pressure exerted by the air, by comparing it 
 with the contrary pulling strain of horses. He invented 
 the air-balance and the anemoscope, and, by such means, 
 weighing the air, he was enabled to make his astonishing 
 
 1 Hoffman: Otto von Guericke. Magdebourg, 1874. Paschius: De In- 
 ventis, vii., 29. Fontenelle : Eloges Hist, des Acad., vol. ii. 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 predictions of the weather. Besides all this, he made the 
 remarkable electrical experiments and discoveries now to 
 be described. 
 
 Most of the long and arduous researches whereby physi- 
 cal science has become established have been undertaken, 
 not for the purpose of ascertaining results previously un- 
 known, but in the hope that their outcome would afford 
 support for some preconceived and favorite hypothesis. 
 In this way, as I have already pointed out, Gilbert was 
 led to his magnetic and electric investigations, trusting to 
 find in them corroboration for his cosmical theory. So 
 Cabseus undertook similar studies in the hope of eliciting 
 evidence which would break down, not only Gilbert's con- 
 ception, but the Copernican doctrine generally. So ob- 
 servation of the magnetic spectrum and its phenomena 
 resulted in the mentally conceived spirals of Descartes and 
 their percolation through and grouping about the mag- 
 net. So, in another field, the alchemists established the 
 science of chemistry through their futile experiments in 
 search of the transmutation of metals. 
 
 In dealing with the ancient and mediaeval philosophers 
 we have seen that they seldom narrowed their observation 
 down to specific matters. Their treatises, as a rule, were 
 on the Nature of Things De Natura Rerum from the 
 days of Lucretius onward, and there was a time when a 
 writer, such as St. Isidore, might reasonably compress all 
 .that was known about everything in natural philosophy, 
 both celestial and terrestial, into a very moderate-sized tome. 
 As sublunary things, however, became familiar and com- 
 monplace, philosophical speculations began to change, and 
 finally, during the sixteenth century, the fundamental 
 hypothesis was one pertaining, not to the nature of things 
 in general, but to the nature of the extra-mundane regions 
 and of the worlds moving therein. Hence to the three 
 great theories of Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Tycho Brahe 
 were added sometimes new hypotheses, sometimes new 
 supporting arguments, just in proportion as new knowl- 
 
OTTO VON GUKRICKE. 391 
 
 edge, based on physical experimenting, gave new basis for 
 one or the other. Therefore when a man had made novel 
 discoveries, instead of contenting himself with stating 
 simply what he had done and how he had done it, and 
 leaving other people to make and find useful applications 
 of the new-found information, he was far more likely to 
 begin his dissertation either with a new cosmical hypothe- 
 sis or a re-statement of his favorite old one, and then to 
 adduce the discoveries as establishing the new notion or 
 as affording additional proof to the preferred doctrine. 
 The suppression, by the way, of this discursiveness, as 
 broad as the universe itself, and the limitation of scien- 
 tific treatises to matters strictly germane and relevant to 
 their subjects, is one of the great achievements of the 
 Royal Society and of the various philosophical bodies 
 modeled after it. 
 
 Consequently, as might be expected, when von Guericke 
 gave the results of his pneumatic and electrical experi- 
 ments to the world, he did it in a treatise on Vacuous 
 Space "in quo totum Mundi Systemi consistit." ' His 
 first book deals with the universe generally, and his sec- 
 ond with interstellar space. His own discoveries occupy 
 the third and fourth books, and then he gets back to vast 
 conceptions again, and, in successive divisions of his work, 
 considers the earth and moon, comets (whereof it may be 
 noted in passing he first pointed out the periodicity), the 
 planets and the fixed stars. We need not here occupy 
 ourselves with his astronomical or cosmical notions, and 
 the detailed history of his beautiful discoveries in pneu- 
 matics belongs to a different field in physics from that in 
 which we are now wandering. Hence the matters which 
 interest us, and those which astonished Monconys more 
 than two centuries ago, are also set forth in the book, 
 wherein are treated "the mundane virtues and other things 
 thereupon depending." 
 
 1 Von Guericke; Experimenta Nova (ut vocantur) Magdeburgica de 
 Vacuo Spatio. Amsterdam] 1672. 
 
392 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 A few words of preface may be granted, because von 
 Guericke has ideas of his own about these virtues, which, 
 together with life and matter, enter into the constitution 
 of all bodies. They are effluvia sometimes corporeal, 
 such as the air sometimes incorporeal, or more properly 
 highly diffused, such as those which emanate from a body, 
 and surrounding it, form its orb or sphere of virtue. Of 
 the incorporeal virtues there are many not all percepti- 
 ble, because of defects in our senses; but those which we 
 are best able to recognize come from the earth or from the 
 sun. Thus from the earth arise "impulsive virtue," "di- 
 rective virtue," "turning virtue," "sounding virtue," 
 and soon; while the sun yields "light and coloring vir- 
 tue," and the moon "frost-making virtue." Then there 
 are other virtues derived from the planets, which the 
 astrologers call "influences." 
 
 All of these virtues are alike in that they can act at a 
 distance. They join themselves to neighboring bodies, 
 which simultaneously recognize them; but if any virtue 
 meets a body not suited to it, it is repelled or reflected, 
 and the repercussions may continue until the virtue is ex- 
 hausted and ceases. The more solid the body, the more 
 virtue it is capable of receiving. Certain virtues accord 
 with certain bodies and there is mutual suitability. They 
 are excited therein by attrition, collision, touch, vibration, 
 and so on. 
 
 Von Guericke' s "impulsive virtue," so called, appears 
 to be simply momentum. "Conservative virtue" is grav- 
 ity. "Directing virtue" is Gilbert's verticity, the mag- 
 netic force which he thought adjusted the earth's axis in 
 space and prevented its nutation. "Turning virtue" is 
 any impressed rotary motion; von Guericke gives as an 
 example a man revolving on his heel. "Sounding vir- 
 tue" is that which causes the sensation of sound, and is 
 produced ( ' by the friction of bodies. " " Heating virtue ' ' 
 is heat due to subterranean fire or "friction of the sun's 
 virtue." "Lighting virtue" is the sensation of light and 
 
VON GUERICKE'S COSMICAI, THEORIES. 393 
 
 color. It is clear that von Guericke perceives that there 
 are certain resemblances between the phenomena due to 
 the play of natural forces, and has, perhaps, a hazy notion 
 of some correlation between them of the development of 
 one phenomenon from another, as the production of heat 
 by friction of the sun's virtue. Hence he is seeking, in 
 the language of the arithmetics, to reduce all these factors 
 to a common denominator. This he finds in the idea of 
 "virtues." They are all different, these natural happen- 
 ings light and sound and magnetism and heat and grav- 
 ity but none the less they are all " virtues" emanating 
 from a physical body, such as the earth or the sun, and as 
 such they are as necessary a concomitant of that body as 
 the matter whereof it is composed. 
 
 This is von Guericke' s main hypothesis, corresponding 
 to the magnetic theory of Gilbert. But he differs squarely 
 from Gilbert in the belief that the earth is a great magnet. 
 The globe, he says, is moved by the rays of the sun and 
 its own intrinsic turning virtue; by two forces, and hence 
 it would naturally be controlled unevenly. Therefore it 
 is given by nature a directive virtue (whereof its poles 
 are merely termini), u so that it does not sway this way 
 and that in its position, not even on account of the rubbing 
 of the rays of the sun, and so that it does not wabble or 
 nutate in its own daily rotation, and change the times of 
 the year, length of days," etc. This directive virtue is 
 not inherent to the earth itself, but is imparted to it by 
 nature, which does nothing in vain, and for the express 
 purpose of preventing wabbling. Consequently he con- 
 cludes that Gilbert is wrong in regarding the globe as 
 intrinsically a big magnet. 
 
 There is, however, still another virtue, but which is of 
 higher import than all of the others. Von Guericke goes 
 back to Aristarchus, and says that he, believing the earth 
 to be animate, revised the opinion of those who thought that 
 it had both an attractive and a repelling faculty. "This," 
 says von Guericke, "appears harmonious with reason, 
 
394 TH 3 INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 for if the earth has the power of attracting those things 
 which are agreeable to it, it will likewise have the power 
 of repelling those things which injure it and do not please 
 it;" and specifically, if one planet ''impresses its contrary 
 influence upon another, that other resists the same by its 
 own repelling virtue." For a modern philosopher and a 
 skillful experimentalist, this notion of an expulsive virtue 
 or repelling force actually existing in the earth was a new 
 one. Clearly, moreover, he is not evolving that supposi- 
 tion out of his inner consciousness, but because he has 
 some tangible physical reason for it. Observe first, that 
 he has imputed to the earth not one, but many different 
 virtues; second, that he has denied that it is by siibstance 
 a magnet; and, third, that he gives it this new repelling 
 effect. Now why is he doing this? 
 
 Let me recall here a peculiarity in mode of reasoning 
 common to all of these old philosophers save perhaps 
 Gilbert and that is, they always present their theory first, 
 and then detail some physical phenomena, usually new 
 ones, which they think sustain it the idea being to lead 
 the student to suppose that the working of the superior 
 brain alone has produced the conception, the truth of 
 which detected nature is afterwards compelled to admit. 
 This is not only putting the cart before the horse, but also 
 causing it to appear that the vehicle tows the animal. 
 In that way Descartes puts his spiral-ribbon theory first, 
 and his observation of the iron filings in the magnetic 
 spectrum last; Cabseus his rebounding-effluvia hypothesis 
 before the repelled-chaff experiment. 
 
 Von Guericke is evidently following the same course; or 
 in other words, he has found some strange and novel 
 effects, and all this new theory about the virtues, etc., 
 rests on that basis; while, like his predecessors, he fails to 
 perceive that the credit and the honor due to him who is 
 gifted with eyes to see and ears to hear what the laws of 
 nature are revealing cannot be enhanced by an effort to 
 make the world believe that the true source of it all is not 
 nature, but himself. 
 
THE FIRST ELECTRICAL MACHINE. 395 
 
 Von Guericke's position is that if the earth is by sub- 
 stance a magnet, it must have all the magnetic proper- 
 ties not only directive virtue or verticity, but also the 
 attractive magnetic power. But in comparing what he 
 calls the conservative virtue of the earth with its directive 
 virtue, he points out that "the former attracts all bodies 
 not only in the regions of the poles but everywhere. The 
 bodies attracted are not changed but are held by a conser- 
 vative force." 
 
 In other words, von Guericke believes that the magnetic 
 quality of the earth simply adjusts and holds its axis in 
 space and exerts no attractive force on exterior bodies. 
 The attractive force which the earth does manifest is grav- 
 ity, and that is owing to the "conservative virtue." And 
 the "conservative virtue" is the same thing as electrical 
 attraction, which he says is exerted not like magnetic at- 
 traction merely at the poles but at all points of the electric. 
 So, according to him, gravity is not correlated to the 
 earth's magnetism, but is simply the electrical attraction 
 exerted by the earth upon exterior objects, and he believes 
 it to be due to the rubbing of the globe by the sun's rays. 
 
 Note the difference between this conception and Gil- 
 bert's dictum that the "matter of the earth's globe is 
 brought together and held together electrically." Von 
 Guericke's idea is that the earth, as a mass, electrically 
 attracts, not only its own matter, but also outside matter. 
 
 Now what Monconys saw was the experiment which 
 illustrated the possession by the earth of conservative vir- 
 tue that is, electrical attraction and also of the capacity 
 of not only attracting, but repelling other bodies. Von 
 Guericke had copied Gilbert's idea of the earth-kin the 
 terrella but had made his miniature globe, not of a mag- 
 net, but of an electric. And Monconys saw von Guericke 
 rotate that electric globe to imitate the rotating earth, 
 meanwhile rubbing it; and then he also saw, and describes 
 fairly well, the extraordinary phenomena revealed by this 
 first of all electrical machines. 
 
396 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Monconys says that Gnericke told him, among other 
 things, that the smooth yellow sphere which was exhibited 
 was made of nine different minerals, but either Monconys' 
 memory was at fault or else Guericke thought a little mis- 
 direction justifiable in the circumstances. Guericke him- 
 self tells how to make the globe, as follows: "Take a 
 sphere of glass (called a vial) of about the size of the 
 head of an infant; put in it sulphur that has been pulver- 
 ized in a mortar, and sufficiently liquefied by being placed 
 near a fire. When this has become cool, break the sphere, 
 take out the globe, and keep it in a place that is dry." 
 Afterwards it is to be perforated, so that it can be rotated 
 on an iron axis, and that, perhaps, is a reason why he did 
 not rub the glass vial itself instead of the sulphur cast in 
 it. It would be difficult to make a smooth round hole in 
 the imperfect glass of those days, for the insertion of the 
 axis. 
 
 The sulphur globe being described, Guericke proceeds 
 to show how it possesses the different virtues and the re- 
 sults thereof. 
 
 41 It Has, first, the impulsive virtue (momentum), because, 
 being heavy, it can be hurled by the hand further than if 
 it were made of wood or lighter material." So also it has 
 the conservative virtue, to exhibit which the axis of the 
 globe is placed in two supports a hand's breadth above the 
 supporting base or platform, upon which and beneath the 
 globe are to be strewn "all sorts of little fragments, like 
 leaves of gold, silver, paper, shavings," etc. The direc- 
 tions are to "stroke the globe with the dry palm, so that 
 it may be rubbed or submitted to friction thus twice or 
 thrice. Then it will attract the fragments, and when 
 turned on its axis will take them along with itself. In 
 this manner is placed before the eye the terrestrial globe, 
 as it were, which by attracting all animals and other things 
 which are on its surface, sustains them and takes them 
 around with itself in its diurnal motion in twenty-four 
 hours. 
 
VON GUERICKE ON ELECTRIC REPULSION. 397 
 
 "Thus this globe when brought rather near drops of 
 water causes them to swell and puff up. It likewise at- 
 tracts air, smoke, etc. 
 
 " From these experiments it must be seen that there ex- 
 ists in the earth for the preservation of itself a virtue of 
 this sort, which also can be excited in an especially 
 suitable body, namely, this globe, so that it acts more in 
 it than in the earth itself (for whatever this globe attracts, 
 it snatches it, as it were, or draws it away from the earth)." 
 
 Now follows the first positive recognition of electric re- 
 pulsion which is none other than von Guericke's expul- 
 sive virtue. Cabseus had seen the chaff leap back from 
 the electric, but he had not interpreted the phenomenon 
 itself, although he had tried to concoct a theory in con- 
 formity with it. Not so von Guericke. Hear him: 
 
 "Even expulsive virtue is to be seen in this globe 
 (namely when it is taken from the apparatus to the hand 
 and is rubbed or stroked in said manner with the dry hand), 
 for it not only attracts but also repels again from itself 
 little bodies of this sort (in proportion to their temper), 
 nor does it receive them until they have touched some- 
 thing else." 
 
 There is also the first suggestion of the discharge of the 
 electrification of the attracted body on contact with an 
 object other than the electric, and its consequent re-attrac- 
 tion by the latter. 
 
 But note his experiment. He takes the globe out of its 
 supports and holds it in his hands with its axis vertical. 
 Then, after exciting the globe and causing it to repel a 
 feather, he carries it around the room, so that it drives 
 the feather, floating in the air, before it. His feather is a 
 bit of down, which he says "extends itself and in some 
 way shows itself alive" its individual electrified fila- 
 ments of course mutually repelling. He observes that 
 when it is thus chased around the room it prefers to ap- 
 proach "the points of any object whatsoever before it, and 
 it is possible to bring it where it may cling to the nose of 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 any one." Here lie is anticipating Franklin in recogniz- 
 ing the effect of pointed conductors in drawing off the 
 electric charge. 
 
 4 'But," he continues, "if one places a lighted candle 
 upon the table and drives the feather at a distance of about 
 a hand-breadth from the candle up to the globe, the feather 
 suddenly recedes and flies to the globe as a sort of guard;" 
 and thus he observes the dissipation of the charge on the 
 
 VON GUERICKE'S ELECTRICAL, MACHINE AND SULPHUR 
 
 feather by the hot air, so that it becomes no longer re- 
 pelled but once more attracted by the rubbed globe. 
 
 Now follows a number of other curious observations of 
 the electrified feather. He finds that the same part or 
 face of the feather by which the feather has been once 
 caught up by the globe and then repelled is kept un- 
 changed in the orb of virtue; so that if any one puts the 
 
 1 Reproduced in reduced fac simile from von Guericke's Experimenta 
 Nova Magdeburgica. On the right appears the first electrical machine ; 
 on the left, the sulphur globe on the end of the staff held by the figure 
 is represented as repelling the floating feather (a). 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF ELECTRICAL CONDUCTION. 399 
 
 globe above the feather, the latter "inverts itself in the 
 air and views the globe always with the same face." Von 
 Guericke stops here to suggest that "it is from the same 
 cause that the moon always turns the same face toward the 
 earth, and doubtless in the orb of the earth's virtue is thus 
 repelled by it and there held." Then continuing: "if 
 the feather begins to unfold its pinnules on the globe and 
 you extend your finger or something else to it, it will fly 
 to it and recede toward the globe, and repeat this several 
 times; but if you present a linen thread to the feather, all 
 its pinnules are straightway attached to the globe, and 
 thus attached lie for quite a while as if dead, until they 
 again erect and extend themselves. In the same manner 
 this feather shows the fire to such an extent that if it thus 
 unfolds itself and the flame of the candle is moved up to 
 it, the feather throws itself back upon the globe." 
 
 " If the globe is suspended on its axis in the apparatus 
 in such a manner that it can turn, and be excited by the 
 palm in the accustomed manner, and a rather soft feather 
 is placed beneath, the globe will then attract the feather 
 many times and drive it around away from itself into the 
 nearest place underneath itself, and continue this for some 
 hours." Thus the feather is alternately charged and dis- 
 charged and so kept in vibration. Von Guericke finds in 
 this proof of the animate nature of the globe. "When it 
 does not want to attract," he says, "it does not attract." 
 Nor does it "allow the feather to approach until it has 
 cast it against something else, perhaps in order that it 
 may acquire something therefrom." 
 
 Now comes the announcement of a discovery of the 
 highest import. Gilbert had seen a rod, rendered magnetic 
 at one end, become magnetic at the other; but no one had 
 observed any transference of the supposed electric effluvia 
 except from the surface of the electric to the limits of the 
 orb or sphere of virtue. Von Guericke now, for the first 
 time, makes known electrical conduction the transfer- 
 ence of electrification from an electrified body to one not 
 
400 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 electrified, and the appearance of the electrification in a 
 long conductor at the end opposite to that at which it is 
 produced or, in other words, the apparent instantaneous 
 transfer of electricity from end to end of the line. He 
 had noticed that "if you let down almost to the globe a 
 linen thread suspended from above and try to touch it 
 with the finger or something else, the thread recedes and 
 will not allow the finger to meet it." So he fastens a 
 similar thread, an ell in length, to the end of a sharp 
 stick attached to a table, and allows it to hang vertically 
 and so that its extremities will be situated u a thumb 
 breadth distance from some other body" the nature of 
 which is not material. Now he excites his globe and 
 brings it up to the stick which supports the thread. And 
 then he sees the lower extremity of the thread move up 
 to the adjacent body. 
 
 "By this," he says in one place, "it is demonstrated 
 to the eye that the virtue extends itself in the linen 
 thread even to the lowest parts where it either attracts 
 or is itself drawn" and in another "This experiment 
 ocularly shows that the sulphur globe, having been pre- 
 viously excited by rubbing, can exercise likewise its virtue 
 through a linen thread an ell or more long, and there 
 attract something." 
 
 Here and not in mythical sympathies of widely-sepa- 
 rated magnets was the true beginning of the harnessing 
 of the lightning to compass the annihilation of distance 
 and time. The first telegraph, the first conductor for the 
 transmission of energy by electricity, were there in von 
 Guericke's "linen thread an ell or more long;" and its 
 quivering extremity, swinging to the juxtaposed body, 
 indicated the approach of the excited globe to the distant 
 supporting rod as certainly and by means of the same 
 medium as does the equally swinging spot of light in the 
 receiving station show the varying electrification of the 
 great cable controlled on the other side of the Atlantic. 
 
 Note, moreover, that von Guericke attaches his little 
 
VON GUERICKE'S EXPERIMENTS. 401 
 
 linen line to a ''pointed stick." He had before stated 
 that points, even a person's nose, best attracted the float- 
 ing electrified feather. Having found out the discharging 
 advantage of the point, he thus applies it as the best means 
 of causing the virtue to pass upon the linen thread. 
 
 This is one of the most remarkable examples of thought- 
 ful invention which the history of electricity affords. He 
 conceived the idea that the electrical virtue could be made 
 to pass over a line; that the charge could be imparted to 
 a thin thread conductor by connecting the latter to the 
 sharpened extremity of a fixed support; that the support 
 could be electrified by bringing the rubbed globe into 
 proximity with it; that the end of the hanging thread 
 would, when electrified, move toward and from an adja- 
 cent fixed body, and that therefore a movement to and fro 
 of the excited globe at one end of the line would instantly 
 cause a like vibratory motion of the other end. 
 
 And yet von Guericke had never heard of "Maxwell's 
 laws," or "surface density," or "ether strains and 
 stresses;" but he lived in the seventeenth century, and 
 therefore it is conceivable that he may have made the dis- 
 coveries above outlined. Had he lived in the nineteenth, 
 plenty of people would be ready to argue the opposite, for 
 to these doubting minds no man can now be presumed to 
 have discovered anything if, after the event, it is objected 
 that he was ignorant of the laws which higher intelli- 
 gences think they would have followed had they made the 
 discovery themselves. Besides, there would not be want- 
 ing other keen spirits to recognize a complete anticipa- 
 tion of his revelation of electrical conduction in Bacon's 
 allegation of half a century before, that "it is an ancient 
 tradition everywhere alleged, for example, of secret prop- 
 erties and influxes, that the torpedo marina, if it be 
 touched with a long stick, doth stupefy the hand of him 
 that toucheth it." l 
 
 1 Bacon: Nat. Hist. Cent., x., No. 993. 
 26 
 
402 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 But a still more wonderful discovery is yet to be re- 
 corded. Von Guericke says to rub the sulphur globe with 
 the dry palm of the hand. Then if u you take the globe 
 with you into a dark room and rub it, especially at night, 
 light will result, as when sugar is beaten." 
 
 And that is the first announcement of the electric light. 
 
 He had seen a brush discharge between the electrified 
 globe and his hand, and although he does not connect the 
 two phenomena, he had also heard the snaps and crackling 
 incident thereto. "There is likewise a virtue of sound," 
 he says, u in this globe, for when it is carried in the hand 
 or is held in a warm hand and thus brought to the ear, 
 roarings and crashings are heard in it." 
 
 And thus von Guericke established, to his own satisfac- 
 tion, that the sulphur globe is endowed with many virtues. 
 When thrown by the hand it had momentum or impulsive 
 virtue because of its weight. It drew light bodies to it 
 and expelled others from it, and hence had both the con- 
 servative and expulsive virtues. It had also the sound- 
 ing, lighting and heating (by friction) virtues, but not the 
 turning and directing virtues. But in that it had the 
 conservative and expulsive virtues it was like the earth. 
 It was an electric instead of a magnetic terrella showing 
 that our globe is not a mass of primordial terrene Matter 
 drawing things to itself while directing its own axis by 
 its inherent magnetic quality, but a great electric mass 
 having for its chief characteristic its conservative or at- 
 tractive virtue, and endowed from outside with a capacity 
 whereby its axis is prevented from wabbling; a vast elec- 
 tric machine rotated by the hand of the Almighty and 
 excited by the friction of the solar rays. 1 
 
 1 The first record in the annals of the Royal Society which has any re- 
 lation to electricity is a review of von Guericke's treatise. It was 
 quickly recognized that his sulphur globe was an electric terrella "by 
 which experiment," it is added, "he thinks may be represented the 
 chief virtues he enumerates of our earth," and that "the impulsive, 
 attractive, expulsive and other virtues of the earth, as he calls them, ma) r 
 be ocularly exerted." Phil. Trans., 1672, No. 88, p. 5103. 
 
VON GUERICKE'S DISCOVERIES. 403 
 
 Sucli was the conception which Gtiericke sought to es- 
 tablish. The effort resulted in the discovery of electrical 
 conduction, of electrical polarity, of the transmission of 
 electrification over an elongated conductor, of electric 
 light, of sound produced by electricity, of the discharging 
 capacity of points, of the dissipation of charge by hot air, 
 and of the vibration of a freely-movable body due to its 
 charge and discharge; the first recognition of electrical 
 repulsion as such, a direct suggestion of the identity of 
 electrical attraction and gravity, and the construction and 
 successful use of the first machine for the production of 
 electricity. 1 
 
 And all these accomplishments remained practically, un- 
 noticed until the days of Dufay. Well might that gene- 
 rous discoverer detect in them the cause of subsequent 
 progress, and express his astonishment that they had re- 
 mained so long forgotten. 
 
 1 On peut voir dans le recit abre"ge" de ces experiences, la base et la 
 principe de toutes celles qui ont e"te faites depuis avec le tube et le globe 
 de verre: et on ne peut s'empecher d'etre surpris quelles ayant demeure' 
 si longtemps dans 1'oubli, ou du moins qu'on ne se soit pas avise" de les 
 repeter et de tacher de les porter plus loin. Mem. de 1'Acad. Roy. des 
 Sci., 1733, 25. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE Invisible College in England continued to hold its 
 meetings in Oxford and in Gresham College, but in 1659, 
 upon the fall of Richard Cromwell, the members were 
 scattered, and their gathering-place converted into bar- 
 racks. The advent of King Charles, however, gave them 
 new courage; and in 1660, twenty-one persons, including, 
 among others, Sir Kenelm Digby, Dr. Wilkins and Mr. 
 John Evelyn, regularly organized themselves into a society 
 for the promotion of all kinds of experimental philosophy. 1 
 
 The prospects of the new society were not flattering. 
 At best it might plant a few seeds of sound knowledge of 
 which chance might favor the growth, or maintain a cult 
 which now and then might attract a disciple. But for 
 the great body of the English people, exhausted after 
 twenty years of incessant strife, and still in the turmoil 
 and excitement of the Restoration, physical science prob- 
 ably possessed no more immediate living interest, than it 
 had for the troublesome savages in the Irish bogs. So the 
 new philosophy had little to expect by way of speedy ad- 
 vancement; nor had it the inherent motive power capable 
 of diffusing it through the vast and sodden mass of popu- 
 lar ignorance and indifference; still less the more potent 
 impetus required to effect the substitution of new learning 
 for old, in minds which the latter had saturated and there 
 become stagnant. 
 
 Nevertheless, it numbered among its members such men 
 as John Wallis, the mathematician; John Wilkins, after- 
 wards Bishop of Chester; Seth Ward, later Bishop of Salis- 
 bury; Jonathan Goddard, warden of Merton; Sir William 
 Petty, and most eminent of all, Robert Boyle. And per- 
 
 1 Thomson: Hist. Roy. Society. London, 1812. 
 (404) 
 
GRANDAMICUS AND POWER. 405 
 
 haps because of its fostering care, we hear now and then 
 of a new conceit; such as Hartlib's discovery of the ink 
 which gives a dozen copies on a moist sheet of paper ap- 
 plied to the writing; or Colonel Blount's new plows, or 
 Neale's telescopes, or Greatrex's fire engine, or Petty's 
 double-bottomed ship. 1 Evelyn dines with Wilkins in 
 1654, and admires his ingenious apiaries, so made that the 
 honey can be taken without disturbing the bees, his way- 
 wiser, thermometer and monstrous magnet. 2 A year later, 
 he records seeing a u pretty terrella, described with all the 
 circles and showing all the magnetic deviations." 3 
 
 Gilbert had said that the earth is a magnet and does 
 rotate. The Jesuits, contrariwise, and with characteristic 
 casuistry, had said that the earth is not a big magnet, but 
 merely a magnetical body, and that it does not rotate. 
 Others had admitted that the earth rotates, while denying 
 its inherent magnetic quality. Now comes Father Gran- 
 damicus, 4 from the Jesuit College at Fleche, in France, 
 with an effort to reconcile all difficulties on the new and 
 original basis that the earth is a big magnet, and for that 
 very reason does not rotate, because, like the magnet, it 
 has poles, and no magnet has ever been seen, by its own 
 inherent magnetism, to turn itself around its own poles. 
 But Dr. Power 5 was ready with a "confutation," and, to 
 the credit of the College, he talks of the corporeal efflu- 
 viums of the magnet and the electric about as well as any- 
 body had done before him, and sets the Frenchman right 
 with all the emphasis peculiar to a semi-theological dispu- 
 tation of the times. 
 
 The great impulse which was to start anew the progress 
 
 knight: Hist. England, iv., 174. 
 a Evelyn's Diary. 13 July, 1654. 
 3 Ibid., 3 July, 1655. 
 
 4 Grandamicus: Nova Demonstratio Immobilitatis Terrae petita ex vir- 
 tute magnetica. Flexiae, 1645. 
 
 5 Power: A confutation of Grandamicus, his magnetical tractate de 
 Immobilitate Terrae. London, 1663. 
 
406 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 of English experimental science had not yet, however, 
 been felt. It was to come, if at all, from without, and 
 from without it came, and from a quarter least of all to be 
 anticipated. For the first time in the history of mankind 
 Fashion and Science joined hands. All the benefits which 
 the stern goddess had offered had been as nothing; all her 
 struggles to stir the inertia of the load had been futile; but 
 now a beckon and a nod from the fickle and laughing 
 dame, a touch of the finger, and the mountain moved. 
 
 The Society applied to Charles for a charter. There 
 was no reason why so devoted a band of Royalists should 
 not thus be rewarded, especially as doing so involved no 
 settlement of old pecuniary scores for aid and comfort. 
 So the King not only converted it into the Royal Society, 
 but gave to it, what was far more immediately valuable 
 than the charter, the light of his kingly countenance. 
 The result upon the fortunes of the new philosophy was 
 magical. 1 The Court, in lieu of baiting Puritans, place 
 jobbing, flirting and gambling, fell to discussing the pneu- 
 matic engine, the ponderation of the air, blood transfusion, 
 and the variation of the compass. My Lord Keeper Guil- 
 ford thriftily had barometers constructed for sale in Lon- 
 don, and united with my Lord Chief Justice Hale in mak- 
 ing suitors wait pending the production of obiter dicta on 
 hydrostatics. Prince Rupert invented mezzo-tinto engrav- 
 ing, and set the willingly admiring courtiers to breaking 
 off the tails of the wonderful little drops of glass which he 
 had brought into England, to see them fly to pieces. Even 
 Buckingham found time, amid the pressing claims of wine, 
 women, the gaining table and the stage, to dabble in chem- 
 istry. If one dropped in at Will's it was to find men of 
 fashion discussing telescopes and the Vacuo Boyleano. 
 My lady, in her boudoir, chattered of the shining phos- 
 phorus from Germany, or went in her coach and six to 
 visit the Gresham curiosities, and " broke forth into cries 
 of delight at finding that a magnet really attracted a needle, 
 
 1 Macaulay: Hist, of England, Chap. iii. 
 
CHARLES II. AS A PATRON OF SCIENCE. 407 
 
 and that a microscope really made a fly look as large as a 
 sparrow." Did not that "mighty pretender to learning, 
 poetry and philosophy," the Duchess of Newcastle (and* 
 with her the Ferabosco, with "good little black eyes"), 
 visit the new Society to witness experiments "upon colors, 
 lodestones, microscopes and liquors?" And did not the 
 lyord President receive her (together with the Ferabosco) 
 and escort her to her seat with the mace solemnly borne 
 before? and, let us hope, with a properly straight visage. 
 And her Grace was indeed edified, for "after they had 
 shown her many experiments," records Mr. Pepys, 1 "she 
 cried still she was full of admiration, and departed," Mr. 
 Evelyn being in waiting to hand her to her coach. 
 
 And Mr. Pepys likewise undertakes a little magnetic 
 experimenting on his own account. "This day" (Nov. 
 2d, 1663), he records, "I received a letter from Mr. Bar- 
 low with a terrella which I had hoped he had sent me, but 
 to my trouble I find it is to present from him to my L,ord 
 Sandwich; but I will make a little use of it first, and then 
 give it to him." He kept it nearly a month before deliv- 
 ering to Sandwich, who, he says, received it with great 
 pleasure. 
 
 And as for the king, he set up a laboratory at White- 
 hall and worked in it. He went to the Society's rooms 
 and looked at experiments on the new liquid for staunch- 
 ing the flow of blood. 3 And, when the men of quality 
 came to chat with him of a morning during the porten- 
 tous ceremonies of tying his cravat or combing his wig, 
 they found his Majesty with far less appetite for court 
 gossip than for weather observations. 3 Even at the Coun- 
 cil Board, the royal thoughts were apt to wander from the 
 doings of the Dutch abroad and his last idea for extorting 
 taxes at home, to the new baroscope with which he and 
 his chaplain Beal amused themselves. 
 
 1 Pepys' Diary, May 30, 1667. See also Evelyn's Diary, same year. 
 
 2 Phil. Trans., 1673, No. 96, p. 6078. 
 
 3 Thorpe: Essays on Hist. Chemistry. London, 1894 (Robert Boyle). 
 
408 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Hence it came about because Iris had lent Minerva 
 her wings because Folly had put her shoulder to the 
 load which Reason could not move that a great progress 
 in philosophical thought was made. The Aristotelian 
 physics and the moribund relics of scholasticism expired; 
 the newer vagaries of the Rosicrucians faded into thinner 
 air than even their most refined spirits could breathe. 
 The "sure arguments and demonstrated experiments" 
 for which Gilbert had so strongly pleaded were hereafter 
 to be the only foundation for physical knowledge. And 
 all this, because the touch of that singularly wise, pure 
 and good Charles had made experimental science the 
 mode. 
 
 But however much people betook themselves to the new 
 philosophy because it was fashionable, this was far from 
 being the reason which influenced the king himself. His 
 taste for science was no craving for new diversion, nor did 
 he soon tire of his fancy. His inclination to physical study 
 and experiment was natural. He would have been a good 
 chemist or physicist had he not been king. Sprat, writ- 
 ing five years after the establishment of the Society, tells 
 us that he constantly spurred the members onward to fresh 
 exertion and "provok'd them to unwearied activity in 
 their Experiments by the most effectual means of his 
 Royal example:" that " the noise of Mechanick Instru- 
 ments is heard in Whitehall itself, and the King has 
 under his own roof found place for Chymical Operators." 
 It is the king who u has endowed the College of London 
 with new Priviledges . . planted a Physick Garden under 
 his own eye" and "made Plantations enough, even almost 
 to repair the ruines of a Civil War" the king who offered 
 rewards to "those that shall discover the Meridian," the 
 king who, "acknowledged to be the best Judge amongst 
 Seamen and Shipwrights," set the Society studying the 
 problems of navigation and ship-building. That he was 
 especially interested in magnetism is shown by his pre- 
 sentation of a terrella to the Society a stone which the 
 
THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 409 
 
 members examined twenty-five years later to see whether 
 its poles had changed in position. 1 
 
 "He has frequently committed many things to their 
 search," says the future Bishop, beginning a succession of 
 sentences which insist upon irrelevantly recalling the 
 arraignment of George III. in the immortal Declara- 
 tion "he has referred many foreign rarities to their in- 
 spection: he has recommended many domestick improve- 
 ments to their care: he has demanded the result of their 
 trials in many appearances of Nature: he has been present 
 and assisted with his own hands at the performing of 
 many of their Experiments, in his Gardens, his Parks 
 and on the River . . he has sometimes reproved them for 
 the slowness of their proceedings." 
 
 Nor did he fail to recognize the democracy of science 
 for when the young Society demurred at admitting into its 
 fold John Graunt, citizen of London, the judicious author 
 of the Observations on the Bills of Mortality (the first 
 great work on its subject) because he was a tradesman, it 
 was speedily brought to its senses by a sharp message of 
 disapproval from his Majesty and a curt order "that if 
 they found any more such tradesmen, they should be sure 
 to admit them all without any more ado." 
 
 The importance of the part which the Royal Society 
 played in the development of the new philosophy, and later 
 in that of the new science of electricity, can not be over- 
 rated. Indeed, it may be said that at the very beginning of 
 its career, the sturdy blows which it dealt to witchcraft, sor- 
 cery and demonology, by shattering popular belief in these 
 delusions, did much to emancipate electrical knowledge 
 from the errors with which it was encumbered. But the 
 example, the stimulus, the encouragement, the immediate 
 help, without which its efforts might well have proved 
 fruitless, it owes in no small measure to the king himself. 
 Therefore in estimating the conditions of the philosophical 
 renaissance now under review, it is necessary to remember 
 
 "Phil. Trans., No. 388, p. 344, 1687. 
 
410 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 uot the dissolute, prevaricating, pleasure-loving monarch, 
 whose reign reduced England to the lowest political 
 level she has touched in modern times, but rather the 
 eager student who vied in making experiments with the 
 other members of the Society, and who directed the influ- 
 ence of his great position toward the promotion of knowl- 
 edge and research with a vigorous enthusiasm such as the 
 world had never seen before, and very seldom since, in the 
 occupant of a throne. 
 
 Meanwhile, events happened which, although disastrous 
 to the community in general, tended to advance the new 
 Society and create for it augmented popular interest. The 
 frightful epidemic of plague of 1665, in London, followed 
 by the great fire of 1666, caused all classes to turn to the 
 Royal Society for advice looking to the prevention of such 
 scourges and the rebuilding of the devastated town: this 
 time seriously and earnestly, and not a la mode. And the 
 Society rose to the occasion, and investigated building ma- 
 terials and new modes of construction, roadmaking and 
 the laying out of streets, together with ways and means 
 of destroying infection, and specifics against the dread 
 disease. 
 
 Its enthusiasm matched that of its royal patron. u The 
 Fellows set to w r ork to prove all things that they might 
 hold fast that which was good," 1 remarks Professor De 
 Morgan, satirically, forgetting that this was the first in- 
 stitution in which the idea of progress was distinctly em- 
 bodied. 2 True, they considered whether sprats were young 
 herrings; whether a spider would stay within a circle of 
 powdered unicorn's horn (which it would not); whether 
 barnacles turned into geese; whether diamonds grew in 
 their beds like oysters; and if one should choose to select 
 further absurdities, it would not be difficult to make their 
 proceedings appear grotesque. But this is not only de- 
 
 J De Morgan: A Budget of Paradoxes. London, 1872. 
 2 Buckle: Hist, of Civilization. N. Y., 1877, i. 269. 
 
SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN. 411 
 
 liberately to disregard a long list of experiments which are 
 useful and valuable, but to ignore the famous announce- 
 ment made by Robert Hooke, which is at once a declara- 
 tion of independence of the old philosophy, and a tolling 
 of its knell. 1 
 
 Although Sir Kenelm Digby was of the council (and 
 then in high favor at court, being named in the king's 
 charter as "chancellor to his dearest mother Queen 
 Mary") the Society, even before its regular organization, 
 demolished his magnetic nostrum and apparently did not 
 even think it worth while to consider the report of the 
 "curators of the proposal of tormenting a man with the 
 sympathetic powder" a committee which it appointed in 
 June, 1661. 
 
 Among the members was Dr. (afterwards Sir) Christo- 
 pher Wren, who appears on a different eminence from that 
 which he occupies as the great architect of St. Paul's 
 cathedral in London, and of the graceful spire which 
 throws its shadow across the busiest part of Broadway. 
 He invented the first registering and recording apparatus 
 a weather-gage and clock combined, actuating a pencil 
 over a record surface so that "the observer by the traces 
 of the pencil on the paper might certainly conclude, what 
 winds had blown in his absence over twelve hours space;" 
 the registering thermometer, the pluviometer, balances for 
 determining weight of air, besides many improvements in 
 astronomical instruments; but more interesting to us is his 
 arrangement of a huge terrella in an opening in a flat 
 
 Society will not own any hypothesis, system or doctrine of the 
 principles of natural philosophy, proposed or mentioned by any philoso- 
 pher, ancient or modern, nor the explication of any phenomena, where 
 recourse must be had to original causes (as not being explicable by heat, 
 cold, weight, figure and the like, as effects produced thereby), nor dog- 
 matically define nor fix axioms of scientifical things, but will question 
 and canvass all opinions, adopting nor adhering to none, till by mature 
 debate and clear arguments, chiefly such as are deduced from legitimate 
 experiments, the truth of such experiment be demonstrated invincibly." 
 Weld: Hist. R. S., i. 146. 
 
412 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 board "till it be like a globe with the poles in the hori- 
 zon." This board he dusted over with steel filings 
 "equally from a sieve" and then studied the curves of the 
 filings as they delineated the magnetic spectrum. Sprat 
 tells us that he found that " the lines of the directive vir- 
 tue of the lodestone " are "oval" and that appears to 
 have been another recognition of "lines" of directive vir- 
 tue a conception curiously similar to Faraday's lines of 
 magnetic force. 
 
 Among the other experiments which Sprat records, 
 made prior to 1665, when the Society began the publica- 
 tion of its transactions, are essays "to manifest those lines 
 of direction by the help of needles; to discover those lines 
 of direction when the influence of many lodestones is com- 
 pounded; to find what those lines are in compassing a 
 spherical lodestone, what about a square, and what about 
 a regular figure; to bore through the axis of a lodestone 
 and fill it up with a cylindrical steel." Experiments also 
 were made on lodestones "having many poles and yet the 
 stones seeming uniform;" "on the directive virtue of the 
 lodestone under water," and " to examine the force of the 
 attractive power through several mediums." 
 
 No reform sought by the Society proved of higher mo- 
 ment to the progress of science than that which put an end 
 to the De Natura Rerum treatise. If any one had anything 
 to communicate, it compelled him to do so relevantly and 
 briefly. It ruthlessly rejected dissertations starting from 
 the time of Adam, introductory to a physical fact observed 
 yesterday. It "exacted from all its members a close, 
 naked, natural way of speaking, positive expressions, 
 clear senses, a native easiness, bringing all things as near 
 the mathematical plainness as they can, and preferring the 
 language of artisans, countrymen and merchants before 
 that of wits or scholars." Thence sprang that require- 
 ment which enters into all highly-developed modern sys- 
 tems of Patent Law, that a specification shall not be 
 addressed to the erudite and learned, but shall be written 
 
THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 413 
 
 in such full, clear and exact terms that any person skilled 
 in the art to which it nearest relates shall be able to under- 
 stand it and put it in practice. In a word, the Royal Society 
 completely revolutionized didactic and technical writing 
 and the mode of expressing scientific thought, and thereby 
 did enough, had it immediately afterwards gone out of 
 existence, to earn for itself the perpetual gratitude of man- 
 kind. 
 
 Yet the glowing language of the ode which Cowley ad- 
 dresses to the young Society, in which he compares it to 
 Gideon's band picked out by divine design to do " noble 
 wonders," and predicts its discovery of "New Scenes of 
 Heaven" and "Crowds of Golden Worlds on High," not 
 to mention numerous new countries on earth, by no means 
 commanded universal assent. In fact, the poet especially 
 desires that 
 
 " Mischief and tru Dishonour fall on those 
 Who would to laughter or to scorn expose 
 So Virtuous and So Noble a Design " 
 
 which referred, with direct indirection, to Butler, who 
 lampooned, and to Hobbes who both sneered and thun- 
 dered at the new repository of all wisdom, and to the 
 many others who detested the Baconian method as sub- 
 versive of religion, civil law, reason and true learning. 
 Stubbe, writing to Robert Boyle, beseeches him to con- 
 sider "the mischief it hath occasioned in this once flour- 
 ishing kingdom," and warns him, that unless he season- 
 ably relinquishes "these impertinents" "all the incon- 
 veniences that have befallen the land, all the debauchery 
 of the gentry . . . will be charged on your account" 1 
 Imagine the most pious and amiable of English philoso- 
 phers held to responsibility for the eccentricities of Lady 
 Castlemaine and Mistress Eleanor Gwynne ! 
 
 There was a deal of appropriateness in Mr. Stubbe's 
 solicitude that Boyle should abandon the Society. He 
 
 'Thorpe: Essays on Hist. Chemistry, cit. sup. 
 
414 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 was by all odds the most able man in it its leading 
 spirit; and, at the time of its establishment, easily the 
 most eminent experimental philosopher in the land for 
 Bacon was dead and Newton yet a "sober, silent thinking 
 lad." 
 
 In the year 1658, Caspar Schott, 1 a German Jesuit and a 
 pupil of Kircher, published a voluminous treatise on 
 Universal Magic, in which he described, for the first time, 
 von Guericke's air-pump and discovery of the weight of 
 the air facts which he had learned from von Guericke 
 himself. Schott's work came into Boyle's hands, and he 
 at once saw something which von Guericke apparently 
 had overlooked namely, that important results should 
 follow the study of rarefied air. Thereupon, with the 
 assistance of Robert Hooke, he devised a new and more 
 effective form of air-pump and demonstrated the elasticity 
 or spring of the air, and the law of the relation between 
 gas volume and pressure, which has ever since borne his 
 name. He was the first scientific chemist 2 the first to 
 teach that chemistry was independent of other arts and 
 not a mere adjunct; and the publication of his Skeptical 
 Chemist, in 1661, marked the overthrow of both the 
 Aristotelian and the Paracelsan doctrines of the elements. 
 With him began the new era in scientific research, when 
 its highest aim became the simple advancement of natural 
 knowledge. 3 
 
 In Boyle's treatise* touching the spring of the air (1659^, 
 we find him experimenting upon the lodestone and observ- 
 ing that a vacuum does not prevent the passage of its 
 
 1 Schott: Mag'se Universalis, Naturae et Artis, Pars III. et IV. Her- 
 bipolis. 1658. 
 
 2 And the object of Sir Boyle Roche's famous Hibernicism "The father 
 of modern chemistry and cousin to the Earl of Cork! " 
 
 3 Roscoe & Schorlemmer : Treatise on Chemistry. New York, 1883, 
 i., 10. 
 
 4 See The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, London, 1744. 
 Edited by Thomas Birch. 
 
ROBERT BOYLE. 415 
 
 effluvia. L,ater, in 1663, lie nibs a diamond in the dark 
 "upon my clothes, as is usual for the exciting of amber, 
 wax, and other electrical bodies," when it did "manifestly 
 shine like rotten wood." 1 He believed, as we shall now 
 see, fully in the corporeal nature of the electric effluvium, 
 regarding it as a part of the substance of the electric, and 
 so material a thing that, as he averred, he could smell it. 
 ("Many electrical bodies may, by the very nostrils, be dis- 
 covered.") This seems to have been the first recognition 
 of the peculiar odor of ozone, long subsequently observed 
 by Van Martini, although the substance itself was not dis- 
 covered until 1840 by Schonbein. 
 
 Boyle's conception of the nature of magnetic and elec- 
 tric attraction was by no means an arbitrary hypothesis 
 framed to meet some special physical conditions. Here he 
 differed from Cabseus, Descartes, and even from Von 
 Guericke. He formulated the corpuscular or mechanical 
 philosophy, wherein he neither agreed with the Plenists, 
 as Hobbes and the Cartesians were called, nor with the 
 older Vacuists, who denied the plenitude of the world. 
 His primary concepts were matter and motion matter, 
 apparently, in one primordial substance. By variously 
 determined motion, he believed matterto be divided into 
 parts of differing sizes and shapes, and set moving in dif- 
 ferent ways. Natural bodies of several kinds, according 
 "to the plenty of the matter and the various compositions 
 and decompositions of the principles, are thus formed ; 
 and these, by virtue of their motion, rest, and other 
 mechanical affections which fit them to act on and suffer 
 from one another become endowed with several kinds of 
 qualities," which, acting on the senses, result in percep- 
 tions, and, on the soul, in sensations. The summing up 
 of his philosophy is in the following passage, which cer- 
 tainly, for its time, is wonderfully close to modern 
 thought: 
 
 "I plead only for such philosophy as reaches but to 
 
 1 Birch : The L,ife of the Hon. Robert Boyle. London, 1744. 
 
41 6 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 things purely corporeal, and, distinguishing between the 
 first original of things and the subsequent course of nature, 
 teaches concerning the former, not only that God gave 
 motion to matter, but, in the beginning, He so guided the 
 motions of the various parts of it, as to contrive them into 
 the world He designed they should compose , . . and 
 established those rules of motion, and that order among 
 things corporeal, which we are wont to call the laws of 
 nature. . . . The laws of motion being settled and all up- 
 held by His incessant concourse and general providence, 
 the phenomena of the world, thus constituted, are physi- 
 cally produced by the mechanical affections of the parts of 
 matter and what they operate upon one another, according 
 to mechanical laws." 
 
 Surely it cannot be said that Boyle had not perceived 
 that it was the province of science to concern herself not 
 with matter, but with the changes in matter. "I am apt 
 to think," he avers, u that men will never be able to ex- 
 plain the phenomena of nature while they endeavor to 
 deduce them only from the presence and proportions of 
 such and such material ingredients, and consider such in- 
 gredients or elements as bodies in a state of rest; whereas, 
 indeed, the greatest part of the affections of matter, and 
 consequently of the phenomena of nature, seem to depend 
 upon the motion and contrivance of the small parts of 
 bodies. ' ' 
 
 By this corpuscular or mechanical philosophy Boyle ex- 
 plains such things as he regards as natural phenomena 
 such as heat and cold, tastes, corrosiveness, fixedness, 
 volatility, chemical precipitation, and finally, magnetism 
 and electricity. Thus, heat, he says, is "that mechanical 
 affection of matter we call local motion, mechanically 
 modified" in three ways: first, by the vehement agitation 
 of the parts; second, that the motions be very various in 
 direction; and third, that the agitated particles, or at least 
 the greatest number of them, be so minute as to be singly 
 insensible. 
 
BOYLE'S PHILOSOPHY. 417 
 
 It is singular how the mechanical theory or, as we now 
 term it, the dynamical theory, as applied to heat im- 
 pressed itself upon the philosophers of the seventeenth 
 century. Bacon defines heat as "a motion acting in its 
 strife upon the smaller particles of bodies." Boyle saw 
 clearly that when heat is generated by mechanical means, 
 new heat is called into existence, and believed that the 
 production of heat and electricity were somehow corre- 
 lated. Locke, in his Essay on the Human Understanding, 
 says that "what in our sensation is heat, in the object is 
 nothing but motion." Hooke plainly perceived heat as a 
 vibration, and denies the existence of anything without 
 motion, and hence perfectly cold. Yet it was the Material, 
 and not the Mechanical Theory, which prevailed and 
 which held the beliefs of the world up to our own time. 
 
 When Boyle turns to the study of magnetism, his 
 hypothesis grows obscure. He denies, in the beginning, 
 Gilbert's conception that magnetic qualities flow from the 
 substantial Form of the lodestone, and, on the basis of ex- 
 periments showing the reversal of the poles and the de- 
 struction of magnetism by heat, he concludes that changes 
 in the "pores, or some other mechanical alterations or in- 
 ward disposition, either of the excited iron or of the lode- 
 stone itself," renders it capable or incapable of acting 
 magnetically. 
 
 His subsequent experiments, such as cooling and ham- 
 mering iron rods held north and south, are all old, and 
 are interesting simply as leading him to the more definite 
 dictum that "the change in magnetism communicated to 
 iron may be produced in good part by mechanical opera- 
 tions procuring some change in the texture in the iron." 1 
 
 He is not in nearly so much doubt, however, concerning 
 the mechanical production of electricity. 2 Here he has 
 
 1 Boyle : Experiments and Notes about the Mechanical Production of 
 Magnetism. London, 1676. 
 
 ' 2 Boyle : Experiments and Notes about the Mechanical Origine or Pro- 
 duction of Electricity. London, 1675. 
 
 27 
 
418 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 made many experiments so many indeed that he has 
 learned that their event is "not always so certain as that 
 of many others, being sometimes much varied by seem- 
 ingly slight circumstances, and' now and then by some 
 that are altogether overlooked" which is by no means 
 out of harmony with modern conclusions. Besides, he 
 has the backing of all the preceding philosophers von 
 Guericke alone excepted. There was Gilbert with his 
 effluvia, "like material rods; " Cabseus with his "shrink- 
 ing steams;" Descartes with his "ribbons shooting from 
 the pores of the glass;" Digby and Browne with "unctu- 
 ous filaments" contracting in the cold air; and Gassendi, 
 whom I have hitherto not mentioned, but who imagined 
 emanations which not only entered the pores of the chaff, 
 but became crossed therein, and thus getting a better hold 
 on it, pulled it back with greater force in retracting: every 
 one of these philosophers finding the % electrical effects due, 
 not to a mere quality in Form, but to substantial emana- 
 tions from the attracting body; and thus all seeking to 
 solve the problem in a mechanical way. Heat, says 
 Boyle, building on this foundation, agitates the parts of 
 the body and makes it emit effluvia. Rubbing modifies 
 the motions of the internal parts and gives the body a 
 texture which disposes it to become vigorously electrical. 
 And so it continues even after the exciting cause is re- 
 moved, because some of the heat still remains. On a 
 warm day, he was able to move a pivoted steel needle with 
 an electric no larger than a pea, three minutes after the 
 rubbing had ceased. 
 
 Then he remarks something altogether unaccountable; 
 (although the discovery was not original with him, for it 
 had been observed years before by the Florentine Acad- 
 emy del Cimento) namely, that an electric can apparently 
 be moved by its own steams as he observed by suspend- 
 ing a piece of amber, rubbing it and then causing it to 
 swing so as to follow the rubbing cloth moved before it. 
 He is not at all sure as to what this portends, and in fact 
 
ROBERT BOYLE'S EXPERIMENTS. 419 
 
 is somewhat troubled about it. u His nature," says 
 Humboldt, "was cautious and doubting." "Whether 
 from such experiment one may argue," he says thought- 
 fully, u that it is but, as it were, by accident that amber 
 attracts another body and not this the amber; and whether 
 these ought to make us question if electrics may with so 
 much propriety, as has been hitherto generally supposed, 
 be said to attract, are doubts that my design does not 
 here oblige me to examine." 
 
 So Boyle went on, and added some more things to the 
 list of electrics turpentine gum, and white sapphires, 
 and English amethysts, and emerald (which Gilbert said 
 would not attract), and carnelian and various other sub- 
 stances; which merely swell the list, and are of no im- 
 portance. He comes back for a final blow at the Form 
 theory, by distilling amber to a caput mortuum and show- 
 ing that, as the attractive quality is still present, it cannot 
 be due to the "substantial Form of amber" which has 
 here thoroughly disappeared. 
 
 Boyle's idea of electric attraction having much in com- 
 mon with the hypothesis of corporeal emanations, which 
 we have traced through different theories, it follows, of 
 course, that he did not agree with von Guericke in the 
 incorporeal nature of the expulsive force, but, on the con- 
 trary, refers to electric repulsion very much as Cabseus did 
 long before, in proof of the fact that the briskly-moving 
 steams from the electric physically drive away the at- 
 tracted bodies. But, unlike Cabaeus, he recognized the 
 specific fact of the repulsion, indeed had to do so to reach 
 the idea that the electric operated to "discharge and shoot 
 out the attracting corpuscles" which carried away the 
 chaff, although he finds it difficult to coordinate this action 
 with the attractive effect, and admits that it happens only 
 "at a certain nick of time." l 
 
 1 Boyle : Of the Great Efficacy of Effluviums. 1673. Cap. iv. Works: 
 Birch. Lond., 1744. Vol. iii., 323. 
 
 On the basis of a paragraph, which appeared in 1673, Boyle is very 
 
42O THE INTELLECTUAL RISK IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Boyle closed the series of experiments recorded in his lit- 
 tle treatise of 1675 l the first book entirely on electricity in 
 the English language with the doubts raised by the swing- 
 ing amber unsettled, and, indeed, intensified, for he had 
 encountered the same problem in other and even more enig- 
 matic shapes. He tells us that once when he approached 
 his finger to a down feather which had been attracted by a 
 large piece of amber, the pinnules of the feather applied 
 themselves to the finger "as it had been an electrical 
 body." This was very obscure to him. First he thought 
 that warm "steams" from his person might somehow 
 have caused this attraction, but when he presented to the 
 feather a rod of silver, an iron key, and a cold piece of 
 black marble, the pinnules "did so readily and strongly 
 fasten themselves to these extraneous and unexcited bodies 
 that I have been able (though not easily) to make one of 
 them draw the feather from the amber itself. " But this, he 
 is careful to note, happens only while the amber is suffi- 
 ciently excited to make it sustain the feather, otherwise 
 "neither the approach of my finger nor that of the other 
 bodies would make the downy feathers change their pos- 
 ture. Yet as soon as ever the amber was by a light affric- 
 tion excited over again," the finger attracted the feather. 
 
 He repeated this experiment over and over again, with 
 "years of interval," he says; tried innumerable feathers 
 and substituted brimstone for amber as the electric always 
 
 frequently credited with the original discovery of electrical repulsion. 
 In the same connection he speaks, however, of the observation as one 
 which he " made many years ago, and which I have been lately informed 
 to have long been since made by the very learned Fabri." This was 
 published a year after the appearance of von Guericke's treatise, and 
 hence ten years after the visit of Monconys to Magdeburg. Honore 
 Fabri, the French mathematician, to whom Boyle alludes, did not issue 
 his treatise on Physics untill 1669, so that not only is the actual date of 
 Boyle's reference to the phenomena long after that of von Guericke's 
 discovery, but there is nothing inconsistent with the priority of von 
 Guericke in Boyle's assertions that the fact had long been known to 
 himself and Fabri. 
 1 Cit. sup. 
 
ROBERT BOYLE'S EXPERIMENTS. 421 
 
 with the same result; always the same insoluble problem. 
 He had no more conception of bodies becoming electrified 
 by induction, when brought into the field of an excited 
 electric, than von Guericke had; although both clearly 
 saw the resulting phenomena, and both knew the essential 
 conditions, that the electric must be excited and that the 
 body must be brought within a certain distance of it. Of 
 course, Boyle's finger became electrified by induction 
 oppositely to the amber, and, hence, easily attracted the 
 light pinnules on the down; but that knowledge was in 
 the far future. 
 
 It is not difficult to imagine the host of puzzling ques- 
 tions which forced themselves upon Boyle. So far as he 
 knew, only certain things (the so-called electrics), when 
 rubbed, would attract the feather. Most things would not. 
 Yet here it seemed that after the electric had once seized 
 the down, all sorts of things would attract it, whether 
 electric or otherwise. There was his own finger. He 
 might rub the very skin off of it, and yet it would not 
 attract; but put it near the feather on the amber, and at 
 once it exhibits this astonishing capacity. Was he an 
 electric? If so, why at one time and not at another? If 
 he and the silver rod, and the marble, and the iron key, 
 were all in fact electrics, why would not rubbing arouse 
 the attractive capacity in any of them? and what sort of 
 electrics were they which would attract without being 
 rubbed? How could rubbing a totally distinct and sepa- 
 rate body, such as that lump of amber or brimstone, convert 
 a man's finger into an electric? 
 
 To the ad hominem argument of his own finger became 
 added another, ad feminam, which deepened the mystery. 
 Those were the days of colossal headdresses, when the men 
 encased their craniums in huge full-bottomed wigs; while 
 above every woman of quality arose a complicated struc- 
 ture of curled hair, wire, ribbons, artificial flowers and 
 miscellaneous trinkets. The curling of the hair in wigs 
 naturally made it dry and stiff; and especially so in 
 
422 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 these feminine towers, because the presence of the milli- 
 nery in the edifice precluded the use of lubricants. 
 
 Now, the fine ladies, as I have stated, got into the habit 
 of visiting the Royal Society and witnessing experiments 
 because it was fashionable to do so, and perhaps there were 
 wandering spirits of inquiry pervading the air about that 
 grave institution which sought more attractive lodging- 
 places than existed under the scrubby head-coverings of 
 the philosophers. At all events, one of them made its 
 abode beneath a more than usually alluring head-dress, 
 the owner whereof came to Boyle and told him that her 
 u knotted and combined locks" persisted in flying to her 
 cheeks and sticking there, and demanded to know the why 
 and wherefore of it. Boyle says that he "turned it into 
 a Complemental Raillery, as suspecting there might be 
 some trick in it." Being quickly disabused of that notion, 
 with the characteristic brutality of his sex, he insinuated 
 u sticky paint," but retreated at once before the instantly- 
 ensuing flash of deepened color. Then he attacked the 
 subject philosophically for it was troublesome. The ap- 
 parent electricity of his finger was surprising enough, but 
 to find it in women's cheeks and this time without the 
 intervention of any rubbed amber or brimstone at all 
 was incomprehensible. So he experimented further upon 
 his fair inquisitor. u She is no ordinary virtuosa," he 
 says, doubtless feeling the full conviction of the expres- 
 sion, "and she very ingeniously removed my suspicions 
 (that there was some trick involved), and, as I requested, 
 gave me leave to satisfy myself further by desiring her to 
 hold her warm hand at a convenient distance from one of 
 those locks off and held in the air." 
 
 It remains to the lasting discredit of Boyle that he failed 
 to transmit to fame the name of probably the first woman 
 who thus sacrificed her finery in the cause of electrical 
 science; but to continue: 
 
 u For as soon as she did this, the lower end of the lock, 
 which was free, applied itself presently to her hand, which 
 
ROBERT BOYLE'S EXPERIMENTS. 423 
 
 seemed the more strange because so great a multitude of 
 hair would not have been easily attracted by an ordinary 
 electrical body that had not been considerably large or ex- 
 traordinarily vigorous. This repeated observation put me 
 upon inquiring of some other young ladies whether they 
 had observed any such like thing; but I found little satis- 
 faction to my question, except from one of them eminent 
 for being ingenious, who told me that sometimes she had 
 met with these troublesome locks, but that all she could 
 tell me of the circumstances which I would have been 
 inform'd about was that they seein'd to her to flye most to 
 her cheeks when they had been put into a somewhat stiff 
 curie, and when the weather was frosty." 
 
 And her observation was right. The stiff curling of the 
 hair had electrified it, and for this the frosty weather 
 offered the best of conditions. History was repeating 
 itself. Ages before, an unknown Phoenician woman had 
 seen her whirling amber spindle pick up the leaves and 
 chaff from the ground. Now an unknown Englishwoman 
 saw the same strange attraction, excited by her own light 
 locks, move the hair. And the learned philosopher of the 
 1 7th century to whom she told it first doubted it, and 
 ultimately did not understand what he saw any better 
 than did perhaps the Phoenician wise men five thousand 
 years before-. In fact, man has never put proper faith and 
 credit in woman's discoveries since he accepted Eve's 
 apple. 
 
 As Boyle, with all his ingenuity, could make nothing 
 of the problem, he took refuge in the decrepit mediaeval 
 theory that the occurrence was due to the " effects of un- 
 heeded and, as it were, fortuitous causes," which, of course, 
 as an explanation, is exceeded in logical absurdity only by 
 that which attempts to elucidate an unknown matter by 
 giving an entirely new name to it. One is apt to wonder 
 why he did not attack the difficulty with something of the 
 same enthusiasm and experimental skill which he brought 
 to bear upon his chemical researches. Perhaps the reason 
 
424 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 is that, what with chemistry and pneumatics, and especi- 
 ally theology, he had abundant work to exhaust his ener- 
 gies. If it were not plain that he took a genuine pleasure 
 in sermonizing, and often in evolving homilies concerning 
 the most trivial topics ("on the paring of a summer apple;" 
 "oil drinking water out of the brim of his hat;" "on his 
 horse stumbling," savagely burlesqued by Dean Swift in 
 "Pious Meditations on a Broomstick"), we might be 
 tempted to regard such efforts as misdirected. But no 
 man, having contributed so much to the progress of his 
 age, ever satisfied himself with so harmless an amusement. 
 
 Leave out Boyle's sermons, and the contents of his treat- 
 ises again and again suggest Faraday. The descriptions 
 of his experiments often have the same ladder-like quality. 
 To such investigations as he did devote himself he brought 
 a most untiring persistence. "Never," says Evelyn, who 
 had known him for forty years, "did stubborn Nature 
 come under his inquisition, but he extorted a confession 
 of all that lay in her most intimate recesses; and what he 
 did he as faithfully registered and frankly communicated." 
 "Glasses, pots, chemical and mathematical instruments, 
 books and bundles of papers did so fill and crowd his bed- 
 chamber, that there was just room for a few chairs a 
 small library, as learning more from men, real experiments 
 and in his laboratory, than from books," continues the 
 diarist. Some one who asked to inspect his library, he 
 conducted to a room where he was dissecting a calf. 
 
 Among Americans, Boyle has especial claim to remem- 
 brance, for perhaps to him, more than to any one else, is 
 due the first implanting and encouragement of scientific 
 thought in the struggling colonies. He was the friend of 
 John Winthrop, who joined the Royal Society as a 
 founder, when he came to England in 1662 for the charter 
 of Connecticut. And Winthrop seems to have been our 
 first scientist. Bancroft says of him that he took delight in 
 "the study of nature according to Bacon," in which way 
 he studied Indian corn and told the Royal Society all 
 
THE FIRST ELECTRICAL OBSERVATION IN AMERICA. 425 
 
 about it. Later we find Wiuthrop writing to Boyle from 
 Boston, to inquire whether lightning could kill fish, as the 
 Indians had told him; and Leonard Hoar from Cambridge, 
 about the Indian canoe, aneut which "if you lay your 
 tongue on one side of your mouth it may overset;" and 
 William Penu from Philadelphia, telling him of the val- 
 uable resources of the tracts newly bought from the natives. 
 Through this correspondence, there came to be recorded 
 an observation which mightily disturbed the reverend 
 John Clayton, who had settled in James City in Virginia. 
 He had taken great interest in Boyle's experiments, and 
 had sent him accounts of the great luminosity of the 
 American fire-flies; but the new occurence was far more 
 surprising. It had been communicated to Clayton through 
 the following epistle: 
 
 " MARYLAND, ANNO 1653. 
 
 "There happened about the month of November to one 
 Mrs. Susanna Sewall, wife of Major Nicholas Sewall, of the 
 province aforesaid, a strange flashing of sparks (seem'd to be 
 of fire), in all the wearing apparel she put on, and so continued 
 to Candlemas; and in the company of several, viz., Captain 
 John Harris, Mr. Edward Braines, Captain Edward Poneson, 
 etc., the said Susanna did send several of her wearing apparel, 
 and when they were shaken it would fly out in sparks and 
 make a noise much like unto bay leaves when flung into the 
 fire; and one spark lit on Major Sewall' s thumb-nail, and there 
 continued at least a minute before it went out, without any 
 heat; all which happened in the company of 
 
 " WILLIAM DIGGES." 
 
 Clayton transmitted this to Boyle with the following an- 
 notation : 
 
 "My Lady Baltimore, his mother-in-law, for some time be- 
 fore the death of her son, Caecilius Calvert, had the like hap- 
 pened to her, which has made Madam Sewall much troubled 
 as to what has happened to her. They caused Mrs. Susanna 
 Sewall, one day, to put on her sister Digges' petticoat, which 
 they had tried beforehand and would not sparkle; but at night 
 
426 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 when Madam Sewall put it off, it would sparkle as the rest of 
 her garments did." 
 
 The astonishing" behavior of Madam Sewall's garments, 
 or even of the petticoat of her sister Digges when worn 
 by her, was outrivaled by the performances of Madam 
 Digges herself, concerning which Clayton writes to Boyle 
 in 1684. Whether it was because Madam Sewall had 
 lately departed for England that Madam Digges felt it in- 
 cumbent upon herself to surpass the first-mentioned lady 
 in luminous manifestations, is unknown; but Clayton says 
 that she developed crepitations and shining flames about 
 her person, u aud, M adds the good parson, "how it should 
 transpire through the pores, and not be inflamed by the 
 joint motion and heat of the body, and afterwards so sud- 
 denly to be actuated into sparks by the shaking or brush- 
 ing of the coats, raises much my wonder." 
 
 Such was the first electrical observation in the New 
 World. 
 
 Whether a man of unusual inventive genius is a -product 
 or a factor of the circumstances about him is always a 
 debatable question. We may believe, with Emerson, that 
 souls out of time, extraordinary, prophetic, are born who 
 are rather related to the system of the world than to their 
 particular age or locality, 1 or, contrariwise, with Froude, 
 that even the greatness of a Shakespeare is never more 
 than the highest degree of excellence, which prevails 
 widely, and in fact forms the environment 2 We may 
 regard all invention as inspiration, or maintain that the 
 presence of the divine afflatus is not to be presumed, and 
 that upward progress is, on the whole, more commonly 
 made by way of the beanstalk which springs from the 
 ground than by way of the chariot descending from the 
 skies. 
 
 A just apportionment of honor among men of the same 
 
 1 Worship. Science of History. 
 
ROBERT HOOKE. 427 
 
 time who labor to the same end is the more difficult prob- 
 lem. True, the reward rightfully belongs to him who ad- 
 vances to the goal, and not to the finger-posts which stand 
 still, though pointing the way; that it is the last step 
 which counts, and should count, if it happens to carry one 
 over the border of the promised land. But, on the other 
 hand, the steep path of discovery is never occupied only 
 by finger-posts and a single inspired wayfarer continually 
 shouting "Excelsior." It is always a ladder crowded with 
 a struggling throng, sometimes pushing, sometimes carry- 
 ing one another upward; and the prize is often grasped by 
 the fortunate climber who, from the vantage of other men's 
 shoulders, first perceives it to be within his reach. For 
 each "mute inglorious Milton" the world has held scores 
 of mute inglorious Gilberts and Galileos, with the differ- 
 ence that the unsung songs never helped to the singing of 
 those that were sung, while the stooping backs of such 
 lifelong plodders as penurious, embittered, disease-racked 
 Robert Hooke 1 have over and over again made sturdy 
 treads upon which others of far less merit have scrambled 
 upward to fame and fortune. 
 
 I know of no prototype for Hooke, unless it be Leonardo 
 da Vinci, and the similarity here exists only in the re- 
 markable fecundity of invention which each displayed, 
 due regard being had to the differences in the epochs in 
 which they lived. Hooke illustrates the dictum of Froude 
 as perfectly as Isaac Newton does that of Emerson. To 
 Hooke no one would concede inspiration; to Newton few 
 would deny it. Hooke was the natural complement of 
 Boyle. Matters ethical concerned him not at all; of spirit- 
 uality he had none, and deductive reasoning had little 
 place in his mind; but he devised and made the air-pump 
 with which Boyle discovered his law. He began to con- 
 gee Waller: The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke. London, 
 1705. Durham: Phil. Exp'ts. and Obs'ns. of the late Dr. R. Hooke. Lon- 
 don, 1726. Bib. Britaiinica, article, Hooke. Also Hooke's papers in 
 Phil. Trans. 
 
428 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 trive when a little child; he stopped contriving when old, 
 blind, bed-ridden and dying, his shaking hand refused to 
 feel out to the end the scrawl descriptive of a new instru- 
 ment. He invented as he breathed, because he could not 
 help doing so, and he ceased inventing when he ceased 
 breathing. He cared for nothing else. After he had 
 passed away, when his few earthly belongings were sifted 
 by his fewer friends, they found a large iron chest which 
 had been locked down with the key in it, with a date of 
 the time, by which it appeared to have been shut up for 
 more than thirty years, and the contents amounted in 
 value to many thousands of pounds in gold and silver. 
 In the prime of life, at thirty-seven, when the world 
 looked bright before him, he had conceived a great project 
 that same great project which every inventor has lurk- 
 ing somewhere in his brain to come forth in his benevolent 
 moments of founding a vast laboratory and museum and 
 library containing everything to help every one who needed 
 to be helped in the study of science, every one who had felt 
 the needs which he had felt; but when Hooke found 
 others not only climbing his ladder, but making a ladder 
 of him, he locked up the hoard and waited for the mil- 
 lennium when the inventor and his kind shall dwell in 
 perfect peace, mutual love and harmony, and all their 
 competitions be squared by the Golden Rule; a result even 
 the dim outline of which in the blue of the furthest hori- 
 zon, it is needless to add, we are still as unable as ever to 
 discern. 
 
 Robert Hooke was indeed the typical inventor. To say 
 that his inventions are numbered by hundreds conveys 
 little in these days of inventive attenuations. Their 
 diversity, however, was extraordinary, and now and 
 then an idea flashes out which, in the light of after dis- 
 covery, is surprising. From Boyle's air-pump he turns to 
 the flying machine, tries to construct "artificial muscles," 
 and then a contrivance to raise a man by "horizontal 
 vanes a little aslope to the wind," toward which last there 
 
ROBERT HOOKE' S EXPERIMENTS. 429 
 
 is a tendency now to come back. He experimented in 
 about every known branch of physics, but he shone most 
 as a contriver of measuring instruments. In this respect 
 no predecessor approaches him in ingenuity and skill; very 
 few have since equaled him. He was the first curator of 
 the Royal Society, and whenever anything was to be in- 
 vestigated, it was Hooke who evolved the mechanical 
 devices for doing so. Clocks and chronometers, astronom- 
 ical apparatus in great variety, instruments for measuring 
 specific weight, refraction, velocity of falling bodies, freez- 
 ing and boiling points, strength of gunpowder, vibrations 
 of dense bodies, degrees on the earth, magnetism, and so 
 on through such a variety and multiplicity of mechanisms 
 that it may be imagined that of the many 'scopes, 'graphs, 
 and meters which now sharpen the senses of modern physi- 
 cists, few exist in which something originally emanating 
 from Hooke' s tireless brain cannot be found. His volute 
 spring, opposing and counterbalancing the motion of a 
 rotary arbor in all positions, which made the pendulum 
 clock into the portable chronometer, now weighs the pres- 
 sure of the electric current, and in the same way has ren- 
 dered electrical instruments portable. 1 And as for the 
 foreshadowing of modern achievements, we are told by 
 Richard Waller, secretary of the Royal Society, his bi- 
 ographer and immediate personal friend, that u he shewed 
 a way of making musical and other sounds by the striking 
 of the teeth of several brass wheels proportionally cut as 
 to their numbers and turned very fast round, in which it 
 was observable that the equal or proportional strokes of 
 the teeth, that is 2 to i, 4 to 3, etc., made the musical 
 notes, but the unequal strokes of the teeth more answered 
 to the sound of the voice in speaking" which is remark- 
 
 1 Butler in Hudibras alludes to Hooke's spiral spring and its effects in 
 the lines: 
 
 " And did not doubt to bring the wretches 
 To serve for pendulums to watches 
 Which, modern virtuosi say, 
 Incline for hanging every way." 
 
430 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 ably suggestive of the principle and operation of the 
 phonograph. 
 
 Hooke's essay on the method of improving natural phil- 
 osophy is a forecast of possibilities replete with suggestion. 
 ''There may be a possibility," he says, "that by otocous- 
 ticons 1 many sounds very far distant (I had almost said as 
 far off as some planets) may be made sensible. I cannot, 
 I confess, myself so far throw off prejudice as not to look 
 upon it as a very extravagant conjecture; but yet methinks 
 I should have the same thoughts of a conjecture to find out 
 a help for the eye to see the smaller parts and rocks of the 
 moon and to discover their height and shadow, before I 
 had seen or known the excellent contrivance of telescopes." 
 So, perhaps, he might not have thought the telephone or 
 even the photophone or the hearing of explosions in the 
 sun quite so marvelous as did those who came after him. 
 
 He affirmed that electric light is due to the same cause 
 as heat that is, internal motion in the parts of the body. 
 To produce electric luminosity, however, it is not enough, 
 he says, merely to cause this internal motion, but certain 
 bodies such as diamonds, sugar, black silk, clean warmed 
 linen, or a cat's back must be rubbed and agitated up 
 to a certain degree, and then "the more you rub it the 
 more it shines, and any little stroke upon it with the nail 
 of one's finger when it so shines, will make it seem to 
 flash." That was written in 1680, and it appears to have 
 
 ^tocousticons were probably speaking tubes, an invention as old as 
 the Egyptians, and then newly coming into vogue. Burton (Anat. Mel., 
 part 2, \ 2, mem. 4.), speaks of them as serving to aid hearing, as tele- 
 scopes do sight. Evelyn (Diary, 13 July, 1654), notes a hollow statue 
 contrived by Bishop Wilkins, ' ' which gave a voice and uttered words by 
 a long, concealed pipe which went to its mouth, whilst one speaks 
 through it at a good distance," something after the fashion of the talking 
 head of Albertus Magnus. The aroused interest in the transmission of 
 sound resulted in the invention of the speaking trumpet by Sir Samuel 
 Morland in 1671. Butler's lines in Hudibras 
 
 "And speaks through hollow empty soul 
 
 As through a trunk or whispering hole- 
 allude to this. 
 
ROBERT HOGKK ON ELECTRIC LIGHT. 431 
 
 been the first recognition of the electric flash the spark 
 in contradistinction to the glow. This was also the first 
 attempt to explain light electrically caused, as being in 
 common with all light a "peculiar kind of internal motion 
 of the particles of a body," but specifically due to the 
 nature of the body itself, the mode of exciting the motion 
 (rubbing) and the degree of excitation produced. More- 
 over, he went further and asserted that there is "an inter- 
 nal vibrative motion of the parts of the electric bodies, and 
 so soon as ever that motion ceases, the electricity also 
 ceases " so that, not only did he find the particular mani- 
 festation of electricity as light due to vibration, but as- 
 cribed the entire electrical phenomenon, even when 
 appearing as attraction, to the same cause. 
 
 Hooke's theory of light, following substantially that of 
 Descartes, and involving the assumption that space is 
 filled with something that transmits light instantaneously, 
 was overthrown by Roemer's observations of Jupiter's 
 moons in 1676, resulting in a determination of the velocity 
 of light. 1 Then came Newton's emission theory, which 
 yielded to the now-accepted undulatory hypothesis of 
 Young; but, none the less, such concepts of the electrical 
 phenomena as Hooke made were a long way ahead of the 
 " unctuous steams" and "rebounding effluvia" which had 
 preceded them. 
 
 So far as is known, Hooke made no electrical or mag- 
 netic discovery of major importance. The catholicity of 
 his work was against his doing so. It is seldom that the 
 inventor who expends his energy in an infinitude of de- 
 tails ever leaves behind him any one great monumental 
 achievement. There is an apparent gap between the end- 
 less mechanical refinements of Hooke's multitudinous in- 
 struments and his dynamical theories of heat, light and 
 electricity, which it seems should be filled by tangible ac- 
 complishments of a higher order than the former. If he 
 did so, he concealed them; and again revealed another one 
 
 'Tyndall: On Light. London, 1875, 45. 
 
432 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 of those strange characteristics which often drive the in- 
 ventor to hiding his work from the world, as a bird hides 
 her eggs from the serpent. 
 
 u He was in the beginning of his being made known to 
 the learned," says Waller, "very communicative of his 
 philosophical discoveries and inventions, till some acci- 
 dents made him, to a crime, close and reserved. He laid 
 the cause upon some persons challenging his discoveries 
 for their own, taking occasion from his hints to perfect 
 what he had not; which made him say he would suggest 
 nothing till he had time to perfect it himself, which had 
 been the reason that many things are lost which he af- 
 firmed he knew." 
 
 The Royal Society was not the first of the institutions 
 for the promotion of experimental science, the organiza- 
 tion of which followed as a consequence of the renewed 
 interest in physical discovery which, in the last half of the 
 century, spread throughout Europe. In 1657 the Floren- 
 tine Academy del Cimento was established under the im- 
 mediate patronage of Prince Leopold, of Tuscany, (a 
 potentate whose interest in natural science rivaled that of 
 Charles), and attracted to itself many of the most eminent 
 Italian philosophers. Its transactions were not published, 
 however, until 1667, when it went out of existence; so that 
 the exact dates when the experiments recorded were 
 made, cannot be assigned. Although the researches in- 
 cluded the first demonstration of the incompressibility of 
 water, and mainly related to air pressure, physical condi- 
 tions in vacuo and effects of high and low temperatures, 
 those on electricity and magnetism which are interspersed 
 show notable insight and skill. 
 
 In magnetism, many attempts were made to find a sub- 
 stance which would cut off the influence of the lodestone, 
 but without avail; and the Academy records that the vir- 
 tue is neither barred nor impaired by any interposed body, 
 
THE FLORENTINE ACADEMY. 433 
 
 solid or fluid, except a plate of iron and steel. Of the 
 electrical experiments one is of great importance, for it is 
 the same which so much puzzled Robert Boyle. The 
 Academy, however, was by no means mystified, nor need 
 Boyle have been so had he read the clear description of it 
 which was already in the archives of the Royal Society, 
 to which the transactions of the Florentine Academy had 
 been solemnly presented by emissaries from Leopold in 
 1667. How important this experiment was, will now soon 
 appear; meanwhile, note how clear the Florentine philoso- 
 phers' perception of it, in contrast to Boyle's obscurity. 
 
 " It is commonly believed," they say, 1 "that amber at- 
 tracts the little bodies to itself; but the action is indeed 
 mutual, not more properly belonging to the amber than 
 to the bodies moved, by which also itself is attracted; or 
 rather it applies itself to them. Of this we made the exper- 
 iment, and found that the amber being hung at liberty by 
 a thread in the air, or counterpoised upon a point like a 
 magnetical needle, when it was rubbed and heated, made 
 a stoop to those little bodies which likewise proportionally 
 presented themselves thereto and readily obeyed its call." 
 Such was the first announcement of the mutual attraction 
 of electrified bodies corresponding to the mutual attrac- 
 tion of magnet and iron which Gilbert had recognized. 
 
 Let us now recall some facts which, to the intelligent 
 student of physics attending the meetings of the Royal So- 
 ciety toward the end of the I7th century, might seem as 
 fairly well established. 
 
 Standing apart by themselves, he perceives four things, 
 each able to control mechanically other things even at a 
 distance and without apparent means of communication. 
 These are first, the sun which controls the earth ; second, 
 
 'Saggi di Naturali Esperienze fatte nell'Accad. del Cimento. Flor- 
 ence, 2d ed., 1691. Waller: Essayes of Nat. Exp'ts made in the Acade- 
 mic del Cimento. London, 1684, 128. 
 28 
 
434 INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 the earth which controls the moon and all sublunary bodies; 
 third, the electric which controls all light objects; and 
 fourth, the magnet which controls iron or steel. The at- 
 traction between sun and earth, or earth and moon, is suf- 
 ficiently accounted for to most people of the time as a 
 creative act. The fall of a stone to the ground, our stu- 
 dent might consider to be the return of a part to its origin, 
 source or reservoir. But electrics and the lodestone he 
 knows to be physical outlaws. True, there is a choice of 
 several theories wherefrom to select, but on the whole, no 
 law seems exactly to reach them, and one is quite safe in 
 holding that they act for the same reason that the dogs in 
 good Dr. Watts' verse (if it had then been written), de- 
 light to bark and bite; "for 'tis their nature to." But 
 what is actually seen to be true, concerning either lode- 
 stone and iron or electric and its objects? This; that when 
 the two bodies (as stone and iron) are placed one in prox- 
 imity to the other, although separated by a considerable 
 interval, not only will the stone influence the iron, but 
 the iron will influence the stone. Gilbert had already 
 described what he called the mutual concourse of lode- 
 stone and iron, and Boyle had as plainly seen the swing- 
 ing amber, in its turn, attracted by the rubbing cloth. 
 Thus both had observed, and others were now observing, 
 the two ends, so to speak, of what happened, the inherent 
 attractive power of the magnet or electric at one extremity 
 and the movement of the attracted body at the other. 
 
 Still another fact is also perceived, namely, that around 
 the electric there is a certain space or field in which light 
 bodies are either attracted or repelled, and similarly that 
 around the magnet there is also a certain space or field 
 within which iron is attracted, like effects not appearing 
 upon bodies located outside of these fields. That the 
 power of magnet and electric is inherent to and resides in 
 the substance of each, is commonly believed. How that 
 power became exerted was, as we have seen, the subject 
 of many speculations, all of which, generically considered, 
 
ACTION AT A DISTANCE. 435 
 
 had now become reducible to two that there are physical 
 emanations from stone or electric which come into contact 
 with the attracted body and so move it, or that there are 
 no emanations, no material linkage of any sort, but that 
 either magnet or electric has the capacity of u action at a 
 distance," a term which obviously merely describes with- 
 out explaining. As measuring instruments had increased 
 in numbers, and experimental tests had become more 
 rigorous, so the emanation doctrine had lost ground, for 
 the simple reason that the imagined effluviums refused to 
 reveal themselves, and correspondingly the u action at a 
 distance" notion had gained in favor. Hence it is not 
 uncommon at this time, when Mr. Isaac Newton announces 
 his great discovery of universal gravitation, to consider the 
 magnet and electric as possessed of a certain occult capacity 
 for moving far- off objects. In other words, people had be- 
 gun to realize that they did not know anything about the 
 matter, in which circumstances a little mystery has, in all 
 ages, been regarded as quite human, and not unconducive 
 to the preservation of a proper self-respect. 
 
 When Newton fell into the famous reverie in his garden, 
 the magnetical-cosmical theory which Gilbert had pro- 
 posed had been for some time moribund. The modification 
 of it which Kepler had adopted had preserved its vitality 
 somewhat, although Kepler had used it for little else than 
 a scaffolding. It had not served Gilbert's purposes in lend- 
 ing any material support to the Copernican doctrine now 
 firmly established, and in fact had acted rather to divert 
 attention from the experiments on which it was founded, 
 and so to obscure rather than enhance its author's fame. 
 There was also a strong inclination among English phil- 
 osophers, never stronger than just before Newton's advent, 
 to reject all explanations of the movements of the planets 
 based on analogies and guesses, and in place thereof to 
 regard their motions and relations as consequent upon 
 physical laws, and capable of mathematical determination. 
 Hooke was so far in the van of this thought that when 
 
436 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Newton's discovery was announced lie claimed it as al- 
 ready his own, though without sufficient grounds. 
 
 While the Gilbertian theory would probably have soon 
 succumbed to the changed conditions, the Newtonian 
 conception more directly led to its disappearance, not by 
 refuting so much as by displacing it. Why, is best shown 
 by tracing the contrast between the two theories, and at 
 the same time this will bring us by the shortest route to 
 the vantage ground whence Newton's remarkable part in 
 the development of electricity can be most clearly dis- 
 cerned. 
 
 "The force which emanates from the moon," says Gil- 
 bert, "reaches to the earth, and in like manner the mag- 
 netic virtue of the earth pervades the region of the moon; 
 both correspond and conspire by the joint action of both 
 according to a proportion and conformity of motions." 1 
 Newton says that the earth draws the moon and the moon 
 the earth. 
 
 "The earth," continues Gilbert, "has more effect be- 
 cause of its superior mass." "The motion which the 
 moon receives from the earth bears to the motion which 
 the earth receives' from the moon the same proportion as 
 the mass of the earth bears to the mass of the moon," says 
 Newton, with mathematical brevity. 
 
 1 Gilbert: Physiologia Nova. Amsterdam, 1651. 
 
 Bishop Wilkins, writing in 1638, says: 
 
 "This great Globe of Earth and Water hath been proved by many 
 Observations to participate of Magnetical Properties. And as the Load- 
 stone does cast forth its own Vigour round about its Body, in a Magnet- 
 ical Compass, so likewise does our Earth. The difference is, that it is 
 r.nother kind of Affection which causes the Union betwixt the Iron and 
 Loadstone from that which makes Bodies move unto the Earth. The 
 former is some kind of nearness and similitude in their Natures, for 
 which Philosophy, as yet, has not found a particular Name. The latter 
 does not arise from that peculiar Quality whereby the Earth is properly 
 distinguish'd from the other Elements, which is its Condensity. Of 
 which the more any thing does participate, by so much the stronger will 
 be the desire of union to it. So Gold and other Metals which are most 
 close in their Composition are likewise most swift, in their Motion of 
 Descent." The Discovery of a New World. 
 
THE THEORIES OF ISAAC NEWTON. 437 
 
 And thus both Gilbert and Newton agree that earth and 
 moon attract one another, and in proportion to the quan- 
 tity of matter in each. So much for similarities which 
 are certainly striking enough. 
 
 But Gilbert regarded the earth as emitting a magnetic 
 virtue, and the moon (which he does not suppose to be a 
 magnet) also as emitting a virtue, but of a different nature. 
 Here Newton differs and moves ahead. The attractive 
 power in the members of the solar system, he declares, is 
 no different, but of the same nature in all, for it acts in 
 each in the same proportion to the distance and in the 
 same manner upon every particle of matter. 
 
 Not even is this power new or unfamiliar. It is u one 
 no different from that existing on earth which we call 
 gravity." With what was then called gravity, Gilbert 
 was well acquainted, for he tells how the earth not only 
 attracts magnetic bodies but also "all others in which the 
 primary force is absent by reason of material" u And 
 this inclination," he adds, u in terrene substances is com- 
 monly called 'gravity.' " It must not be forgotten, how- 
 ever, that Gilbert had never assumed that the gravity of 
 the earth could control aught but earthly things. It could 
 make a stone fall to the ground to "the source, the mother 
 where all (parts of the, earth) are united and safely kept." 
 The idea that mother earth could govern by her gravity 
 attraction "th' inconstant moon" never entered his head. 
 
 The magnetic attraction of that great magnet, the earth, 
 on the other hand, was to him a different attribute alto- 
 gether; and it was not at all difficult to imagine the colos- 
 sal enclosing sphere of magnetic virtue as sufficiently 
 enormous to "pervade the regions of the moon." 
 
 But that was imagination, which rigorous proof pushed 
 aside as a great steamer displaces fog. Then it was grav- 
 ity which became colossal, and, under the mighty concep- 
 tion of Newton, grew into an attraction as broad as the 
 universe itself existing between all masses, all sorts of 
 matter, always, everywhere; between worlds as well as be- 
 
438 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 tween sand grains. As a cause it explained all of the 
 observed effects, and "more causes," said Newton senten- 
 tiously, "are not to be received into philosophy than are 
 sufficient to explain the appearances of nature." The 
 magnetic attraction of the earth, in any event, he regarded 
 as "very small and unknown." 1 To argue whether our 
 little globe governs its littler satellite by magnetism or 
 electricity or any other power, virtue, agency, or force, 
 became needless when the mode in which the Almighty 
 had ordered the mechanism of all worlds stood definitely 
 revealed. 
 
 So vanished Gilbert's theory. The sun's 
 
 "Magnetic beam, that gently warms 
 The universe and to each inward part, 
 With gentle penetration, though unseen 
 Shoots invisible virtue ev'n to the deep," 2 
 
 gilded the pages of the great epic and then disappeared, 
 to return only in later days when light and electricity and 
 magnetism began to be as one. 
 
 So Newton proved that whatever other influence elec- 
 tricity and magnetism may exert as cosmical forces, it is 
 not necessary to assume the action of either to account 
 for the motions of the planets. And as no one had 
 hitherto seen, for either, any other useful purpose except 
 the ordering of the heavenly bodies, it followed that this 
 left them with their "occupation gone;" a mere nebulous 
 cloud of facts and fancies gathered about the nucleus 
 which Gilbert had segregated from the pre-existing chaos. 
 But then, just as such a body a vagrant new-born world 
 perhaps finding itself within the control of a greater orb, 
 becomes under Newton's precepts a satellite, forever after 
 pursuing its orderly round in the celestial mechanism; so, 
 at his bidding, this unrelated mass of knowledge fell into 
 its appointed place and became obedient to the reign of 
 
 'Principia, B. III., Prop xxxvii. 
 2 Paradise Lost, Book III. 
 
ISAAC NEWTON. 439 
 
 law. There is no event in this history more significant, 
 more epoch-making, than this. 
 
 It will be remembered, that among the fundamental 
 principles of physics are the three laws of motion which 
 Newton formulated; the first stating the effect of force 
 upon a body left to itself; the second defining the relation 
 of the change of motion of the body to the force impressed, 
 and the third that perennial stumbling-block to all the 
 perpetual-motion seekers of the past and most "new 
 motor" contrivers of the present that action and reaction 
 are equal and in contrary directions. This last obviously 
 defines the effect of the action of two bodies one upon the 
 other that of the first upon the second being equaled by 
 the contrary reaction of the second upon the first; or, to 
 borrow Newton's own illustration, "If you press a stone 
 with your finger, the finger is also pressed by the stone. 
 If a horse draws a stone tied to a rope, the horse will be 
 equally drawn back toward the stone; for the distended 
 rope, by the same endeavor to relax or unbend itself, will 
 draw the horse as much toward the stone, as it does the 
 stone toward the horse, and will obstruct the progress of 
 the one as much as it advances that of the other." 1 
 
 Under this law, Newton makes the first close linkage of 
 gravity, electricity and magnetism. If the sun draws a 
 planet, so that planet draws the sun; if the amber draws 
 chaff, so that chaff draws the amber; if the lodestone draws 
 iron, so the iron draws the stone. The law is the same 
 for all. It is the law of stress. 2 
 
 But the bond is closer than this. He mentions the com- 
 mon habit of referring the reacting forces to that body of 
 
 1 Principia, Axioms or Laws of Motion. 
 
 2 " Every force, in fact, is one of a pair of equal opposite ones one 
 component, that is of a stress either like the stress exerted by a piece 
 of stretched elastic, which pulls the two things to which it is attached 
 with equal force in opposite directions and which is called a tension; or 
 like the stress of compressed railway buffers, or of a piece of squeezed 
 india rubber, which exerts an equal push each way and is called a pres- 
 sure." (Lodge.) 
 
440 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 the two which is least moved; as when we call the attrac- 
 tion of sun and planet the attractive power of the sun. 
 Yet more correctly, he says, we should regard the force as 
 acting between the sun and earth, between the sun and 
 Jupiter, between the earth and moon, for both bodies are 
 moved by it, in the same manner as when tied together by 
 a rope, which shrinks on becoming wet, and so draws 
 them each one to the other. Equally true is this another 
 link forged of electrical and magnetic attractions; for al- 
 though as to the nature of this he has no hypothesis to 
 offer ( u Hypotheses non fingo," is his motto everywhere), 
 yet concerning it he says, if we would speak more cor- 
 rectly, and not extend the sense of our expressions beyond 
 what we see, we can only say that the neighborhood of a 
 lodestone and a piece of iron is attended with a power, 
 whereby the lodestone and the iron are drawn toward each 
 other; 1 and the rubbing of electrical bodies gives rise to a 
 power whereby those bodies and other substances are mu- 
 tually attracted. Thus, we would also understand in the 
 power of gravity, that the two bodies are mutually made 
 to approach each other by the action of that power. 2 
 
 Such was the first suggestion that the seat of electric 
 and magnetic forces is not in the electric, or the substance 
 attracted by it, or the magnet, or the iron, but in the in- 
 tervening medium; whatever the last may be. 3 
 
 1 " I made the experiment on the lodestone and iron. If these placed 
 apart in proper vessels are made to float by one another in standing 
 water, neither of them will propel the other; but by being equally at- 
 tracted, they will sustain each other's pressure and rest at last in an equi- 
 librium." Principia cor. vi. 
 
 2 Pemberton: A view of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy. London, 1728, 
 
 254- 
 
 3 "We may conceive the physical relation between the electrified bodies, 
 either as the result of the state of the intervening medium, or as the re- 
 sult of a direct action between the electrified bodies at a distance. If we 
 adopt the latter conception, we may determine the law of the action, but 
 we can go no further in speaking on its cause. If, on the other hand, 
 we adopt the conception of action through a medium, we are led to in- 
 quire into the nature of that action in each part of the medium. . . . 
 
 If we now proceed to investigate the mechanical state of the medium 
 
NEWTON ON LINKS OF FORCE. 441 
 
 But he does not stop here. To follow him further we 
 must look backward to find the ladder he is climbing; for 
 Newton has a way of not leaving his ladders readily avail- 
 able, and sometimes he is charged with pulling them up 
 after him. 
 
 When Peregrinus placed his bit of iron in different posi- 
 tions on the lodestone globe, he saw it stand upright at the 
 poles, and at various inclinations between poles and equa- 
 tor. Gilbert, three centuries afterward, observed the same 
 thing; but neither perceived that a line drawn lengthwise 
 through the needle in all its positions would be curved and 
 extend between the poles. Porta, multiplying the piece 
 cf iron many times in the form of filings sprinkled about 
 the stone, saw them branch out from the poles like hairs, 
 but not in continuous curves; while to Cabseus they seemed 
 to fall into lines more plainly curved, but still not arching 
 from pole to pole. Then came Descartes, who found what 
 all had missed, namely, that not only did the filings fall 
 into regular curved lines from pole to pole, but that their 
 arrangement in such lines in that intervening space must 
 be the effect of some force there existing and acting on 
 them. This Christopher Wren had also seen, and Sprat, 
 in recording his experiment, even refers to the "lines of 
 directive force." Not only did Descartes note these lines 
 arching between opposite poles of the same magnet, but 
 as extending between the poles of two magnets and seem- 
 ingly connecting them. These curves, which the filings 
 traced for Descartes, occupy the magnetic field or Gilbert's 
 orb of virtue, and, when so rendered visible, map it. And 
 
 on the hypothesis that the mechanical action observed between electri- 
 fied bodies is exerted through and by means of the medium, as in the 
 familiar instances of the action of one body on another, by means of the 
 tension of a rope or the pressure of a rod, we find that the medium must 
 be in a state of mechanical stress. . . . 
 
 The nature of this stress is, as Faraday pointed out, a tension along 
 the lines of force combined with an equal pressure in all directions at 
 right angles to these lines." Maxwell: A Treatise on Electricity and 
 Magnetism. 3d ed. London, 1892, vol. I., 63. 
 
442 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 as a piece of iron placed in the lodestone's field becomes 
 itself a magnet by induction, these lines extend through 
 the intervening space between the stone and the iron. 
 
 Now turn to Newton, remembering that it was the 
 action-at-a-distance theory which confronted him as the 
 current explanation of attraction. He says: 
 
 u That gravity should be innate, inherent, essential to 
 matter, so that one body may act upon another at a dis- 
 tance through a vacuum, without the mediation of any- 
 thing else by and through which their action and force 
 may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an 
 absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical 
 matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into 
 it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly 
 according to certain laws; but whether this agent be ma- 
 terial or immaterial, I have left to the consideration of my 
 readers." 1 
 
 Again and again Faraday quotes this passage. As Tyn- 
 dall says, 2 he loved to do so. 
 
 He found from it, to use his own words, that Newton 
 was u an unhesitating believer in physical lines of gravi- 
 tating force." 3 But in his co-ordination of electricity, 
 magnetism and gravity under the law of action and reac- 
 tion, Newton makes himself even clearer as to this, than 
 in the passage which Faraday selects. For what is the 
 imaginary rope connecting the two bodies and contracting 
 to draw them together but the direct expression of a phy- 
 sical line, not only of gravitating, but of electric and mag- 
 netic force? He not only sustains the last indirectly, as 
 Faraday seems to intimate, but directly. 4 
 
 1 Third Letter to Dr. Bentley. Horsley: Opera. London, 1782, vol. 
 iv., p. 438. 
 
 2 Tyndall: Faraday as a Discoverer. N. Y., 1873. 
 
 8 Bxp'l. Researches, 3305. Dec., 1854. Jan., 1853, vol. iii., 507. 
 
 4 "The attractive virtue (of magnetic bodies) is terminated nearly in 
 bodies of their own kind that are next them. The virtue of a magnet is 
 contracted by the interposition of an iron plate and is almost terminated 
 
FARADAY ON LINKS OF FORCE. 443 
 
 The law of action and reaction is true of electric, mag- 
 netic, as well as of gravitating attraction. The seat of 
 the attracting power is in the interval between the bodies, 
 whether electric, magnetic, or gravitating; and it is ex- 
 erted in every case along lines of physical force. Such 
 was Newton's discovery. 
 
 It was reserved for Faraday to direct renewed attention 
 to the part taken by the medium, or as he called it, the 
 dielectric, existing between electrified bodies, and to point 
 out the nature, and properties of the lines of force extend- 
 ing between these bodies and indicating the state of strain 
 existing in this intervening space. Amplifying upon 
 Newton, he inferred the existence of both magnetic and 
 electric lines of force " from the dual nature of the powers 
 (electricity and magnetism), and the necessity at all times 
 of a relation and dependence between the polarities of the 
 magnet and the positive and negative electrical surfaces. 1 
 
 To pass beyond Newton's conception, in his time, was to 
 struggle against the limits of the human intellect. So 
 Faraday, in his epoch, dashed against the same barriers, 
 only to recoil baffled, but never disheartened. The effects 
 of the physical lines of force could be observed and dealt 
 with experimentally; but their intimate nature remained, 
 and still remains, unknown. That electricity and gravity 
 and magnetism might be but manifestations of but one 
 great controlling power pervading all matter was Newton's 
 conception. For this power, throughout his whole life, 
 Faraday searched. In this quest he made all his great 
 discoveries. 2 Again and again, he exhausts the matchless 
 powers of his imagination and his consummate experi- 
 mental skill upon the problem, only to fail. The genius 
 
 at it; for bodies further off are not attracted by the magnet so much as by 
 the iron plate." Principia, b. iii., prop, xxiii. Bence Jones: Life and 
 Letters of Faraday. London, 1870, ii., 279. 
 
 1 Faraday: Observations on the Magnetic Force. Proc. R. Inst., Jan. 
 21, 1853. Expl. Researches, vol. iii., 506. 
 
 2 Bence Jones: Life and Letters of Faraday, London, 1870, vol. ii, 484. 
 
444 THF < INTEU,ECTUAI RISK IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 which established the interconvertibility of electricity and 
 magnetism could not identify gravity with either elec- 
 tricity or heat; and yet he felt this identity to exist, 
 despite the negative experimental results. And so he left 
 the world, even as Newton had left it, richer by vast 
 accomplishments, challenging posterity to the grandest 
 achievement to which the human intellect can aspire the 
 revelation of the unity of all natural force. 1 
 
 "Electricity is often called wonderful, beautiful; but it 
 is so only in common with the other forces of nature," 
 writes Faraday, among his lecture notes. "The beauty 
 of electricity, or of any other force, is not that the power is 
 mysterious and unexpected, but that it is under law, and 
 that the taught intellect can even now govern it largely. 
 The human mind is placed above and not beneath it."' 2 
 And the first mind which brought it into subjection to law 
 was that of Isaac Newton. 
 
 The medium pervading space, Newton regarded as an 
 ether; filling the universe "adequately without leaving 
 any pores, and, by consequence, much denser than quick- 
 silver and gold," 3 yet offering an inconsiderable resistance 
 to planetary motion. As it was questioned how such a 
 medium could at the same time be both subtle and dense, 
 he refers the critic to the electric and the magnet. "Let 
 him also tell me," says Newton, "how an electric body 
 can, by friction, emit an exhalation, so rare and subtle, 
 and yet so potent, as by its emission to cause no sensible 
 diminution in the weight of the electric body, and so be 
 expanded through a sphere whose diameter is above two 
 feet, and yet to be able to agitate and carry up leaf copper 
 or leaf gold at the distance of above a foot from the electric 
 body;" and as for the magnet, he points out that its ema- 
 nations are capable of passing through glass without meet- 
 ing apparent resistance or losing force. 
 
 1 Bence Jones: Mrs. Somerville to Faraday, ii, 424. 
 
 2 Ibid.: The Life and Letters of Faraday, London, 1870, vol. ii, 404. 
 8 Newton: Optics. Qy. 22. 
 
NEWTON'S ELECTRICAL EXPERIMENTS. 445 
 
 The recorded electrical experiments made by Newton 
 are few, and are separated by long intervals of time. The 
 earliest one was made in 1675, l when he found that a tele- 
 scope glass, a couple of inches in diameter, mounted in a 
 ring so as to be held about a third of an inch above the 
 table on which it was placed flatwise, would, when rubbed 
 on its upper side, attract bits of paper, etc., lying beneath 
 it; and that the paper would vibrate up and down between 
 glass and table for some time after the rubbing ceased. 
 The Royal Society, to which this was communicated, tried 
 to repeat the experiment and failed. Newton then discov- 
 ered that not only were better results secured by using a 
 larger glass disposed barely a sixth of an inch distant from 
 the table, but that the nature of the substance with which 
 the glass was rubbed appeared to influence its excitation. 
 This last seems to have impressed him, as well it might, 
 for it was an entirely new observation. He says that he 
 obtained twice as much excitement of the glass when he 
 rubbed it with his gown as he got on rubbing it with a 
 napkin; and he advises the Society not to use linen or soft 
 woolen, but "stuff whose threads may rake the surface of 
 the glass." The Society, curiously enough, obtained the 
 best results by employing a "scrubbing brush made of 
 short hogs' bristles," "the haft of a whalebone knife," 
 and finally resorted to merely scraping the glass with the 
 finger-nails. This experiment of Newton appears to be 
 the first suggestion of the different effects attending the 
 rubbing of the electric with dissimilar bodies, a subject 
 which became of great importance through the subsequent 
 brilliant research of Dufay. 
 
 The principal discovery in magnetism resulting from 
 actual experiment which belongs to the early days of the 
 Royal Society, is the first production of artificial magnets 
 
 'Horsley: Isaaci Newtoni, Opera. London, 1782, vol. iv., 373. 
 
446 THE INTELLECTUAL RISK IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 by Sellers in 1667. l It was of course old to magnetize 
 iron needles by rubbing them with the lodestoue ; and 
 that even a succession or chain of armatures could be 
 rendered magnetic by induction from a single stone, both 
 by actual contact and through simple location in the field, 
 had been known for ages. Sellers, however, had been 
 rubbing needles on the stone to find out the conditions 
 under which they would become most strongly mag- 
 netized; and he made up his mind that the needle's 
 strength or direction did not depend so much upon 
 u fainter or stronger touches on the stone nor the mul- 
 tiplicity of strokes" as upon "the nature of the steel 
 whereof the needle is made, and the temper that is given 
 thereunto." So he tried all sorts of steel, .and finding the 
 magnetism apparently permanent in his needles, easily 
 made the succeeding step which was to regard the mag- 
 netized steel itself in the same light as the lodestone ; or, 
 in other words, as an artificial magnet "which u shall take 
 up a piece of iron of two ounces weight or more ; and 
 give also to a needle the virtue of conforming to the mag- 
 netic meridian without the help of a lodestone or anything 
 else that has received virtue therefrom." 
 
 As the century drew to its close, the growing commerce 
 of England created an urgent demand for more definite 
 knowledge concerning the variation of the compass. In 
 1580, William Burrowes determined the variation in Lon- 
 don to be 11 15^ to the East. Edmund Gunter, the in- 
 ventor of the scale and rule which bears his name, found 
 that, in 1622, it had diminished some five degrees. Gel- 
 librand, Gunter's successor in the Chair of Astronomy at 
 Gresham College, observed that it had become reduced 
 some two degrees more. In 1640, Henry Bond, a teacher 
 of navigation in L-ondon, published 'his Seaman's Calen- 
 dar, showing the progressive nature of this secular varia- 
 tion, and in 1668 issued a table predicting, though in- 
 accurately, its changes in London for the next forty-eight 
 
 il. Trans., No. 26, 478, 1667. Abridg., vol. i., 166. 
 
EDMUND HALLEY. 447 
 
 years. But who actually discovered the secular variation 
 is not certainly known. Bond attributes the honor to 
 John Mair other contemporary authority to Gellibrand, 
 who at least has the preponderance of assent in his favor. 1 
 
 The whole subject of compass variation, however, was 
 thoroughly studied by Dr. Edmund Halley, 2 a mathema- 
 tician and astronomer of great ability, who proposed the 
 odd theory to account for it, that the earth has four mag- 
 netical poles, two near each geographical pole, and that 
 the needle is governed by the pole to which it happens to 
 be nearest. Unfortunately, however, the observed changes 
 in the variation itself over certain periods of time inter- 
 fered so greatly with this doctrine that it became evident 
 to Halley that the notion of four fixed poles would not 
 meet the observed conditions. Thereupon he evolved a 
 still more striking supposition, to the effect that the earth 
 really consists of two concentric magnetic shells, each hav- 
 ing poles differently placed and not coincident with the 
 geographical poles. Then as the poles on the inner shell 
 "by a gradual and slow motion change their place in re- 
 spect to the external, we may give a reasonable account 
 of the four magnetic poles, as also of the changes in the 
 needle's variations." 
 
 It is hard to believe that the imagination could exercise 
 such control in the days of Newton. Yet the theory at- 
 tracted considerable attention and had even great vitality, 
 for in 1698, thirteen years after he had proposed it, Halley 
 induced William III. to appoint him a captain in the Navy 
 and give him command of a ship, in order to make long 
 voyages for the express purpose of establishing the truth 
 of his supposition. He made two voyages to various parts 
 
 : Dr. Wallis (Phil. Trans., 1702, No. 278, 1106), says that "at about the 
 beginning of the reign of Charles I., Gellibrand caused the great concave 
 dial in the Privy Garden at Whitehall, which is still remaining, to be 
 erected in order to fix a true meridian line. 
 
 2 Phil. Trans., No. 28, p. 525, 1667; No. 148, p. 208, 1683; No. 195, p. 
 563, 1692. 
 
448 
 
 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and came back not 
 with the desired proof exactly, but with a useful chart ex- 
 hibiting the variation of the needle in many parts of the 
 world, and the general law of its phenomena 1 . 
 
 1 Brewster: Treatise on Magnetism. Edinburgh, 1836, p. 13. 
 
 DAIANCE'S TITI,E PAGE. 
 
 NOTE. A curious illustration of the mixture of old and new ideas con- 
 cerning magnetism which existed at the end of the seventeenth century 
 is found in the title page of Balance's "Traitte* de l ? Aiman," published 
 in 1687, which is here reproduced in fac simile. 
 
BALANCE'S TREATISE. 449 
 
 The lodestone, disposed in a bowl after the mode suggested by Neckam 
 and Peregrinus, and marked with a longitudinal directing line, appears 
 floating in front of the vessel, which the mariner, holding a rudder in 
 one hand and a compass in the other, is about to board. The goddess, 
 who appears to be advising him, points to the Great Bear, represented 
 by the actual animal in the heavens, with the Pole Star situated at his 
 tail, and also to a compass and a dipping needle, while in her left hand 
 she has a sounding line. The idea evidently intended is that the divinity 
 is advising the sailor to avail himself of all these means of guidance. 
 There is also shown on the left a suspended armed lodestone, supporting 
 at one pole a series of keys, and at the other a number of iron plates, 
 this being possibly designed to indicate in some way the strength and 
 consequent trustworthiness of the magnet. 
 
 29 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 FOUR years after trie foundation of the English Royal 
 Society, Colbert, the astute and far-seeing minister of 
 Louis XIV, perceived in the gatherings of philosophers 
 which were still held at the houses of Thevenot and others, 
 the possible nucleus of a great national institution, capa- 
 ble of advancing science and the industries of France. 
 The Royal Academy of Sciences was therefore duly estab- 
 lished by royal command in 1666, and with princely gen- 
 erosity, intended to be in marked contrast with what 
 English Charles did not do, Louis endowed the new 
 body with ample funds for its future experiments, and 
 added pensions and rewards for deserving members. 
 Thus equipped, the philosophers had nothing to do but 
 startle the world with the magnitude and originality of 
 their discoveries, to the making of which they might now 
 devote themselves without troubling as to cost. 
 
 At first they proceeded slowly. The original members 
 were chiefly mathematicians, and experiments can hardly 
 be said to have begun until the physicists were admitted. 
 Then they went at it with a will. They experimented in 
 concert, with results fully equal to such as might reason- 
 ably be expected to follow the production of Shakespeare's 
 tragedy with a chorus of simultaneous if not concordant 
 Hamlets. There was no gathering in a room and read- 
 ing one another asleep with interminable papers, suitable 
 only for the phlegmatic plodding English. The sessions 
 were held in the laboratory. Nature should be made to 
 yield up her secrets by the combined efforts of several 
 brains attacking her stronghold simultaneously, like the 
 concentrated fire of a battery. They needed no Charles to 
 suggest subjects and spur them on. Indeed, when Louis 
 
THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 451 
 
 the Magnificent and Monsieur the Dauphin and le Grand 
 Conde, attended by a gorgeous retinue, came in state to 
 visit them, it was the king himself who, after intrepidly 
 withstanding several chemical lectures, remarked that he 
 had "no need to exhort them to work, for they were doing 
 it enough for themselves. " 
 
 So they kept on experimenting manfully, and quarrel- 
 ling fiercely; and their activity was prodigious. The re- 
 sults of these practical labors appeared principally in the 
 shape of dissertations on abstract mathematics, and they 
 fill ten volumes of "Anciens Memoirs." Still, as long as 
 Colbert lived, the philosophers were protected, and experi- 
 mental science as they viewed it flourished. 
 
 But when Louvois became Minister, matters took a new 
 turn. If the work of the Academy thus far was properly 
 defined as experimental, then Louvois soon showed the 
 most opposite, and hence theoretical, disposition. When 
 the public-spirited king decided to improve the landscape 
 at Versailles with more indispensable cascades and the 
 erection of a much-needed additional mountain, it was 
 Louvois who told the members that they were paid to work, 
 and set them at such theoretical tasks as aqueduct build- 
 ing, pipe laying' and surveying. He made La Hire and 
 Picard supervise the building and engineering, Thevenot 
 plan watercourses, and Mariotte attack the problems of 
 water supply. When there was not sufficient of this sort 
 of theorizing to do at Versailles, Conde* invited them to 
 theorize in the same fashion at Chantilly. 
 
 Besides, the haut monde of Paris had heard of the new 
 fashion at Whitehall, and how all the great English 
 milords and miladies were besieging the Royal Society. 
 Should the Court of the Grand Monarque be distanced in 
 a matter of la mode? Immediately were the mathema- 
 ticians invited to calculate the chances in every gambling 
 game in vogue, in "quinque nova," in "le hoca" and 
 "le lansquenet." Sauveur, however, who too com- 
 placently evolved a surely winning system adapted to "la 
 
452 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 barsette" in his capacity of "mathematician to the 
 Court" found himself abruptly invited into the closet of 
 his irate sovereign, and given distinctly to understand that 
 the royal prerogative included secrets of that sort, and 
 that kings were not to be left subject to the run of luck 
 ordained to common people. "What was the Royal 
 Academy for, if" etc., etc.? 
 
 Every one knows how Louis went to the wars, dragging 
 poor Racine from his theatre to write history as he made 
 it, and Perrault and Roemer and Mariotte and Blondel, 
 regardless of the fact that some were mathematicians and 
 others astronomers, to study bombs and ballistics. It was 
 sufficient for Louis that they were all scientific persons. 
 About the only philosopher of eminence whom he let 
 alone was Cassini, and that because the astronomical 
 observations in progress were useful for the Navy. It is 
 perhaps not altogether surprising that in these circum- 
 stances the Academy, as one of its historians remarks, 
 "lost its lustre and fell into a languor." There it re- 
 mained until De Ponchartrain reorganized it in 1699, 
 mainly after the bureaucratic system, so dear to the Gallic 
 heart, and with such singular astuteness that it at once 
 provided a variety of new offices for hangers-on of the 
 Court. Thus inspired with new life, it proceeded to dis- 
 pute the Newtonian theories for the next half century, and 
 patriotically stuck to Descartes and his vortices long after 
 they had become abandoned by Holland, Germany and 
 St. Petersburg. 1 
 
 All of this accounts for the fact that one may turn over 
 the pages of the ten volumes of Anciens Memoirs before 
 noted yes, and those of many of the later tomes of the 
 Histoire de P Academic Royale and find little or nothing 
 to show that French philosophy had ever heard of the dis- 
 coveries of Boyle or Hooke, or even of the German, Von 
 Guericke. Yet in that (to us) dreary waste of antiquated 
 natural history, anatomy and mathematics, there may be 
 1 Maury: L'Aiicietme Academic des Sciences. Paris, 1864. 
 
PICARD' s LUMINOUS BAROMETER. 453 
 
 found a short note, barely filling a printed page, which 
 contains the suggestion which was the original cause 
 which started the whole scientific world to puzzling over 
 the wonders of the electric light. 
 
 The terrestrial measurements which enabled Newton to 
 correct his calculations concerning the moon and to verify 
 his belief in the effect of the earth's gravity thereon, were 
 made by Jean Picard, a priest and an astronomer of re- 
 markable ability. It was Picard who informed the Royal 
 Academy of a curious effect which he had observed in the 
 barometer which he employed in the Paris Observatory. 
 The instrument of that time w r as merely a glass tube 
 closed above, open below, exhausted of air and inserted, 
 open end downwards, in a cup of mercury: the metal, of 
 course, rising in the tube under the atmospheric pressure. 
 Picard observed that when the instrument itself was 
 moved so as to cause the mercury to vibrate in the tube, a 
 light appeared in the empty portion of the latter, clearly 
 visible in the dark, It is said that he first saw it while 
 carrying the apparatus in his hands from one part of the 
 observatory to another after nightfall. At all events, there 
 was no mistaking the luminosity which was a sort of 
 broken glow above the quicksilver, and which appeared 
 best when the mercury descended quickly. The note, 
 which bears the date of 1675, adds that efforts had been 
 made (combined experiments, probably) to find other 
 barometers which would behave similarly, but not one 
 had been encountered; that it had been resolved to ex- 
 amine the matter in every possible way, and that the 
 future discoveries would be set forth in detail. 1 The 
 same cheerful confidence which the king had shown con- 
 cerning coming developments in general, is here reflected 
 with regard to what was going to be found out about this 
 singular light. 
 
 'Mem. de 1'Acad. Roy. des Sciences. Paris, 1730, vol. x., p. 556. 
 
454 TH ^ INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 But the years went by, and if the discoveries were made 
 nobody mentioned them, and the strange light which 
 Picard had seen in the barometer was as little remembered 
 as the glow which Guericke had obtained years before 
 from his sulphur ball. 
 
 There had been known, since the beginning of the 
 century, a mineral, sometimes termed the Bologna stone, 
 sometimes the Bononian stone, from the place of its dis- 
 covery, which would become luminous in the dark. 1 It had 
 been accidentally found by one Casciorolus, a shoemaker 
 who had deserted his trade for alchemy, and who gave it 
 the name of "lapis Solaris," because, from its illuminating 
 properties, he conceived it especially suitable for the trans- 
 mutation of silver into gold the alchemical sol. As the 
 Italian chemists seem to have agreed in this opinion, the 
 stone soon became in great demand and brought fabulous 
 prices, which were maintained despite the claim of Potier, 
 a French chemist, that he could produce it artificially. In 
 1666, the English Royal Society records the death of a 
 clergyman who was said to have exclusively possessed the 
 art, without communicating it to any one. 
 
 The value placed upon the substance which was 
 barium sulphide, frequently used now as a basis for the 
 so-called luminous paint incited the chemists to endeavor 
 to imitate it; with the result that, at about the time of 
 Picard' s observation of the light in his barometer, Brand, 
 of Germany, produced a light-giving substance from 
 animal excretions, and sold the secret of its manufacture 
 to KrafFt. Krafft named it "phosphorus" and took it to 
 England, where it was exhibited to the king, and, as we 
 have already seen, it constituted one of the most interest- 
 ing of the Gresham College curiosities. In Germany, 
 Kunkel, who learned of it from KrafFt, published, in 1678, 
 a pamphlet describing it, and the interest excited in Eng- 
 
 ^eckmann: A History of Inv'ns and Discoveries. 3d ed., 1817, vol. 
 iv., 419. Roscoe and Schorlenimer: A Treatise on Chemistry. N. Y., 
 1883, vol. i., 457. * 
 
THE MERCURIAL PHOSPHORUS. 455 
 
 land spread rapidly over the continent. It was termed 
 "phosphorus mirabilis," "phosphorus igneus," and some- 
 times "light magnet" although the last name is often 
 also applied to the Bologna stone. 
 
 The effect of this discovery was to draw especial atten- 
 tion to all substances which appeared to be naturally 
 luminous, and decaying fish, sea-water and glow-worms, 
 sparks produced by abrasion, the heating of metals to red- 
 ness by friction or impact, were all studied as allied effects, 
 because all of them gave light. Boyle made the subject 
 one of special research; and in aid thereof Clayton sent 
 him huge fire-flies from Virginia, and told him about the 
 sparks which flashed from Madam Sewall's petticoats. 
 
 It is curious to observe- how frequently the accidental 
 acquirement of a book precedes the making of a train of 
 discoveries. A little tract on barometers, which happened 
 to have in it an account of Picard's observation, fell into 
 the hands of John Bernouilli, who was then professor of 
 mathematics at Groningen. 1 Bernouilli made up his 
 mind that here was a way of producing light naturally, 
 without the aid of any chemical phosphorus at all; but as 
 the word "phosphorus" was then applied to any substance 
 which became luminous without combustion, he called 
 Picard's phenomenon the "mercurial phosphorus," and, 
 in June, 1700, gives the results of his own experiments on 
 the subject in a letter to Varignon, then a member of the 
 French Academy. The ensuing consequences are a warn- 
 ing against hasty deductions, and besides exhibit the wis- 
 dom of the profound remark of Mr. Diedrich Knicker- 
 bocker, that " it is a mortifying circumstance which greatly 
 perplexes many a painstaking philosopher that nature 
 often refuses to second his most profound and elaborate 
 
 1 See Martin and Chambers: The Phil. Histy. and Memoirs of the R. 
 Acad. of Sci., Paris. London, 1742. 
 
 Histoire de 1'Acad. R. des Sci., from 1666 to 1699. Paris, 1733. 
 
 Histoire de 1'Acad. R. des Sci., for years 1700 to 1707. Paris, 1701 to 
 1708. With accompanying memoirs. Bernouilli's letters are here pub- 
 lished in full. 
 
456 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 efforts; so that, after having invented one of the most in- 
 genious and natural theories imaginable, she will have the 
 perversity to act directly in the teeth of his system, and 
 flatly contradict his most favorite positions." 1 
 
 Bernouilli gave not only an elaborate explanation of 
 the effect in accordance with the Cartesian theory, by as- 
 suming different matters respectively entering the vacuum 
 through the glass from without and arising from the mer- 
 cury within and then clashing together (i-n which he was 
 quite safe, seeing that he was communicating with the 
 Cartesian stronghold) ; but also laid down numerous pre- 
 cautions, which he said it was indispensable to observe in 
 order to reproduce the effect. This last rather surprised 
 the Frenchmen, because Cassini for one had been getting 
 light from his barometer for the last six years without 
 troubling himself with any precautions at all. And 
 Picard's old instrument had been taken to pieces by De la 
 Hire and set up over again, and sometimes it had given 
 light and sometimes refused to do it, from apparent sheer 
 wilfulness. In fact Cassini and De la Hire had compared 
 notes, and even thought they found differences in the sort 
 of light which their respective barometers yielded. How- 
 ever, it was thought best to follow Bernouilli's directions, 
 with the unexpected sequel that the apparatus so made 
 refused to glow at all while more people began to pro- 
 duce instruments which behaved beautifully. 
 
 Bernouilli, on being informed, calmly modified his 
 requirements, insisting, however, upon absolutely pure 
 mercury and total exclusion of air. But old barometers 
 obviously containing air bubbles still persisted in glowing. 
 Then Bernouilli himself discovered that the vacuum was 
 not needed, and that mercury shaken in an ordinary vial 
 shone finely. The French Academy seems to have been 
 unable to reproduce this, and Bernouilli investigated the 
 matter far enough to reach firm ground. He found that 
 so long as the mercury was fairly pure he could get lumi- 
 
 1 Irving: Knickerbocker History of New York. 
 
FRANCIS HAUKSBEE. 457 
 
 nosity with certainty in the vial; and stranger still, that 
 when the vial contained air, the light appeared like sparks 
 "which arise simultaneously and perish almost at the 
 same time;" but when the vial was exhausted of air "the 
 light is like a continuous flame which lasts incessantly 
 while the quicksilver is in agitation." The least hu- 
 midity, even the perspiration of the hand, would put the 
 light out. 
 
 Bernoulli's discovery was hailed in Germany with en- 
 thusiasm. It was supposed that he had invented a new 
 mode of mechanical illumination which might perhaps 
 render candles and lamps things of the past. And he 
 probably so believed himself, for he seems then to have 
 had no conception of the real cause of the glow. 
 
 Before long the news reached the Royal Society. 
 Hooke was then incapacitated for arduous work by both 
 age and illness, and Francis Hauksbee, 1 who held the office 
 of curator of experiments, undertook to investigate the 
 matter. Little is known concerning Hauksbee further 
 than that he had already achieved reputation as an experi- 
 mentalist. His first recorded researches bear date 1705, 
 and he seems to have been a persistent student until he 
 died, some seven years later. That he was a man of un- 
 usual genius in original research is abundantly shown. 
 His mind was philosophical, and but little influenced by 
 the prevalent hypotheses which to many seemed axiomatic. 
 To him is due not merely the recognition of the effect of 
 Newton's reduction of electric phenomena under general 
 law, but the almost instant perception that the next log- 
 ical step was the seeking of "the Nature and Laws of 
 Electrical Attractions" which "have not yet been much 
 considered by any." He invented a form of air-pump that 
 is still known by his name; but his fame ought to rest, 
 and deservedly, upon his extraordinary electrical experi- 
 ments now to be recounted. 
 
 1 Hauksbee: Physico Mechanical Experiments on Various Subjects. 
 London, 1709. See also his communications to the Royal Society in 
 years 1705 to 1712 inclusive. 
 
458 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 His starting-point is the strange light seen in the mer- 
 curial barometer, the cause of which it is his task to dis- 
 cover, lyike Bernouilli, he calls it the "mercurial phos- 
 phorus." Iii common with others, he believes the radi- 
 ance to be due to some quality of the mercury, brought 
 into action by the peculiar conditions of vacuum, or agita- 
 tion, or both. The Cartesian theory had few adherents 
 among the English philosophers of the time, and certainly 
 Hauksbee was not among them. 
 
 From the moment he begins his experiments (1705) the 
 results astonish him. It must be borne in mind that, at 
 the outset, he had no suspicion that the mercury light had 
 anything to do with electricity. As I have already stated, 
 these odd luminosities, which did not appear to be the 
 immediate consequence of actual burning, were all grouped 
 together, and the effort was often made to refer them to 
 some common origin. Even Newton 1 held this belief. 
 "Do not all bodies," he asks, "which abound with terres- 
 trial parts, and especially with sulphurous ones, emit light 
 as often as those parts are sufficiently agitated; whether 
 that agitation be made by heat, or by friction, or percus- 
 sion, or putrefaction, or by any vital motion on any other 
 cause? As, for instance, sea- water in a raging storm; 
 quicksilver agitated in vacuo; the back of a cat or neck 
 of a horse, obliquely struck or rubbed, in a dark place; 
 wood, flesh and fish, while they putrefy; vapors arising 
 from putrefied waters, usually called Ignes Fatui; stacking 
 of moist hay or corn growing hot by fermentation; glow- 
 worms and the eyes of some animals by vital motions; the 
 vulgar phosphorus, agitated by the attrition of any body or 
 by the particles of the air; amber and some diamonds, by 
 striking, or pressing, or rubbing them; scrapings of steel, 
 struck off with a flint; iron hammered very nimbly till it 
 become so hot as to kindle sulphur thrown upon it." Ob- 
 viously there was no more reason why Hauksbee, in the 
 beginning, should have supposed the barometer light to be 
 
 1 optics. Q. 8. 
 
HAUKSBEE'S LUMINOUS FOUNTAIN. 
 
 459 
 
 kindred to the amber light or cat's-back light, than to the 
 light due to the striking of flint and steel. In fact, as will 
 be apparent further on, his impressions evidently were that 
 the last-named alliance was the most probable. 
 
 The question which had been most debated bore upon 
 the need of a vacuum existing in the vessel which con- 
 tained the mercury, and to that he first directs attention. 
 He proves almost immediately that, by allowing air to 
 rush through quicksilver in an ex- 
 hausted receiver, he can convert 
 the liquid metal into a jet dash- 
 ing in drops in every direction 
 against the sides of the vessel, and 
 looking, as he says, "like one 
 Great Flaming Masse." Then he 
 permits mercury to flow downward 
 into an exhausted receiver so as 
 to strike a rounded glass surface 
 therein and so become spread. A 
 shower of fire appears; luminous, 
 however, only (his observation is 
 very quick) "where it strikes the 
 glass in its fall." Now he lets in 
 three pounds of mercury at once 
 in a cascade, and then u the light 
 darted thick from the crown of the 
 included Glass like Flashes of 
 Lightning." 
 
 They were flashes of lightning, 
 and this was the first suggestion of that great identity by 
 one who was building far better than he ever knew. 
 
 The behavior of the light is curious. When the mer- 
 cury falls into a vacuum, there is a gentle, uniform glow; 
 but when it pours into air, the sparks dance between 
 the glistening drops. What are the sparks? Certainly, 
 
 HAUKSBEE'S LUMINOUS 
 MERCURIAL FOUNTAIN. 1 
 
 1 Reproduced in fac simile from s'Gravesaude's Elements of Natural 
 Philosophy. 4th ed. 1731. 
 
460 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 concludes Hauksbee, whose fascination with his work 
 shows itself now in every line of his description, that 
 sort of light does not resemble the little bluish radiance in 
 the barometer ! What is it? 
 
 He undertakes to find out by noting the conditions un- 
 der which he can produce a similar light. He arranges a 
 piece of amber so that he can revolve it swiftly in contact 
 with a pad of woolen cloth within his exhausted glass 
 vessel. The light appears; he can see it at a distance of 
 three or four feet. It is brighter as the vacuum increases; 
 but then the amber begins to burn and the woolen scorches. 
 Did the heat so produced make the light? 
 
 Try flint and steel, and see, his active brain answers. 
 A steel ring is made to revolve in the glass vessel and a 
 bit of flint is pressed against it. Before the air is ex- 
 hausted the sparks fly in showers, but as the air-pump 
 draws out the reluctant atmosphere they fade and finally 
 disappear, and only a just perceptible luminous ring where 
 the stone touches the whirling metal at last remains. No; 
 it is not the flint and steel light which needs the air this 
 unearthly glow, which thrives best when the air is gone. 
 
 Singular, that this light, so like the lightning, should 
 have been produced in an exhausted glass bulb, and 
 almost two hundred years ago ! 
 
 Hauksbee now determines that the mercury light on the 
 whole is more like the amber glow than like the corusca- 
 tions flying from the steel; but as amber is resinous and 
 inflammable he substitutes glass as the material to be 
 rubbed, and makes a new discovery. The light in the ex- 
 hausted receiver becomes purple; but, as the air is let into 
 the vessel, it fades, turns reddish, and then gray very 
 feeble when the vessel is full of aii. It is odd how the 
 color changes as more or less air is admitted; odder still 
 that there should be flashes and no longer a glow when the 
 woolen rubber is soaked with a saltpeter solution. He 
 rubs glass on glass, glass on oyster shells, oyster shells on 
 woolen, sometimes in vacuo, sometimes in air; puzzling 
 
HAUKSBEE'S ELECTRIC MACHINE. 461 
 
 continually over the varied results, for it is difficult to tell 
 when the light comes from the high heating of these sub- 
 stances, due to friction, and when not. 
 
 At last a novel idea strikes him. Why rub glass in a 
 glass vessel exhausted of air ? Why not rub the exhausted 
 glass vessel itself? At once he mounts a glass globe in a 
 
 HAUKSBEE'S ELECTRIC MACHINE. 1 
 
 sort of lathe, sets it whirling, and holds his hand to the 
 surface. The results, in point of brilliancy, overtop those 
 of all predecessors. 
 
 1 Reproduced in reduced fac simile from Hauksbee's "Physico-Mechan- 
 ical Experiments on various subjects containing An Account of several 
 Surprizing Phenomena touching Light and Electricity." London: 1709. 
 The wavy lines on the globe are evidently intended to represent the play 
 of light therein. 
 
462 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 The light, still purple, is "so great that large print, 
 without mucli difficulty, could be read by it, and at the 
 same time the room, which was large and wide, became 
 sensibly enlightened, and the wall was visible at the re- 
 motest distance, which was at least ten feet." As he lets 
 air into the globe the radiance diminishes; but something 
 of the meaning of what he sees begins to dawn upon him. 
 He notices a similarity between the mercury light and this 
 glow of the glass the difference is as great "between the 
 light in the globe exhausted and the light produced when 
 the globe was empty of air, as between the lights produced 
 from mercury when the experiment was made in vacuo 
 and in the open air." 
 
 It was fortunate for Hauksbee that he was experiment- 
 ing in the days of good Queen Anne, and showing all these 
 marvelous things to the Royal Society, which had done 
 more to overthrow superstition and especially belief in 
 witchcraft and sorcery in England than perhaps any other 
 of the great civilizing forces. Conceive of Scotch James 
 hearing with complacency of a man who makes spots of 
 light appear under his fingers as he touches a glass bottle; 
 who says, "Nay, while my hand continued upon the 
 glass the glass being in motion if any person approached 
 his fingers toward any part of it in the same horizontal 
 plane with my hand, a light would be seen to stick to 'em at 
 the distance of about an inch or thereabouts without their 
 touching the glass at all." A light, a corpse-light, cling- 
 ing to the very hands of the foolhardy wretch who ven- 
 tured near the infernal apparatus of this prince of wizards, 
 might well be the royal conclusion, followed by a dispo- 
 sition of Mr. Hauksbee which would have left the world 
 ignorant that he had ever thus exhibited the electrification 
 of the human body by induction from his glass globe. 
 
 But, as I have said, these were the days of Queen Anne, 
 when Marlborough was returning in triumph from Ramil- 
 lies, and England and Scotland were uniting, and other 
 great political events happening, all proving how greatly 
 
HAUKSBEE AND HIS TIMES. 463 
 
 the times had changed; and as to this last it is significant 
 that Hauksbee's treatise and the Tatler newspaper the 
 first real Anglo-Saxon newspaper which did not get its 
 home news by way of the Dutch appeared in the same 
 year. One not unnaturally follows such a chronicle of 
 physical discovery as this, tracing the struggles of men to 
 wrest from unwilling nature her secrets, often forgetting 
 that the achievements or the failures are correlated to other 
 and widely different events peculiar to especial ages and 
 times. True, such research merely reveals natural laws 
 which are the same yesterday, to-day and forever; and 
 whether this is done a hundred years earlier or later, or 
 brings to the discoverer fame or a fagot, cannot alter 
 the ultimate supremacy of the truth. Yet there is a great 
 world living and moving outside the walls of the labora- 
 tory and influencing in his every act the man that is within 
 it, sometimes to encourage, oftener to dishearten. It has 
 had a great deal to do with the rise of electrical knowledge, 
 mainly in the way of prevention; but never before have its 
 ignorance and credulity and superstition strewn fewer ob- 
 stacles in the pathway. Mr. Hauksbee's hands may glow 
 and his fingers may sparkle with the ineffectual fires of the 
 excited glass, without fear of a change to the flames of 
 Smithfield. Perhaps his future associate in the Royal So- 
 ciety, the Reverend Cotton Mather, resident in New Eng- 
 land, might feel moved to offer him the joys of martyrdom 
 were his lights flashing in Boston instead of in London; 
 but in Old England, the England of Steele and Addison 
 and Swift of Isaac BickerstafFe and Sir Roger de Coverley 
 and Gulliver even Mr. Hauksbee's neck-cloth may become 
 as u fiery" as it likes without provoking the grewsome sum- 
 mons of the witch-finder. Besides, his (< Physico-Mechan- 
 ical Experiments," and the first volume of Mr. Addison's 
 Spectator own the same noble patron, John, Lord Somers, 
 sometime President of the Royal Society and Lord Chan- 
 cellor of England; a good and stalwart bulwark at home, 
 even if across the Atlantic, in Cotton Mather's land, that 
 
464 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 growing settlement, New York, is eyeing him suspiciously 
 as an accomplice of her most picturesque pirate, Captain 
 Kidd. 
 
 Mr. Hauksbee, however, bending over his globe, is 
 uttering new, and even more fervid expressions of amaze- 
 ment and admiration. His lights are becoming fantastic, 
 branching here and there, dashing against the crystal 
 walls, while his notions are being turned so completely 
 around, that he is beginning to believe that this illumina- 
 tion and that given by the mercury are, after all, very much 
 alike. Certainly both seem to come from glass, and, as he 
 says, "one might conjecture with some probability that the 
 
 HAUKSBEE'S ELECTRIC GLOW. 1 
 
 light produced proceeds from some quality in the glass 
 (upon such as friction or motion given it), and not from 
 the mercury, upon any other account than only as does a 
 proper body, which by beating or rubbing on the glass, 
 produces the light." 
 
 Observe how easy it is after the event to foresee conclu- 
 
 1 Reproduced in fac simile from s'Gravesande's Elements of Natural 
 Philosophy, 4th ed., 1731. There is no picture of the electric glow given 
 in either of the two editions of Hauksbee's treatise. s'Gravesande's work 
 from which Dr. Desaguiliers made the translation above noted, appears 
 to have been published not long after Hauksbee's second edition, so that 
 the present illustration is a fairly near contemporary representation of 
 the phenomenon. 
 
HAUKSBEE' s EXPERIMENTS. 465 
 
 sions. Hauksbee has found that the rubbed glass glows, 
 mercury rubs glass, glass is an electric excited by rubbing; 
 ergo, says the Keen Intelligence, glancing at this page 
 and bounding unerringly to the inevitable sequel, he has 
 discovered the mercurial light to be electric. That, how- 
 ever, is what the Keen Intelligence would have done in 
 Hauksbee' s place; but it should be remembered that minds 
 differ, and Hauksbee' s was not of the superior nineteenth 
 century, but of the inferior eighteenth century variety; 
 and hence, unable as yet, despite all that has happened, 
 to harbor the notion that electricity has anything to do 
 with the matter at all. So we must follow him a little 
 further in his gropings. 
 
 Serious physical discoveries, untinged by any trace of 
 levity, have a way of getting into that stage in which 
 Charles Lamb records the cooking of roast pig to have 
 long remained before the important fact was revealed that 
 it was not necessary to burn down a whole house in order 
 to roast that succulent animal. 
 
 The imagination always recoils from abstractions, and 
 insensibly links an idea with the particular thing in which 
 it happens first to* be embodied, or through which it first 
 came to be known. Consequently when Hauksbee desires to 
 test his explanation of the light as due to the friction of 
 mercury on glass, he goes back to the barometer, although 
 that instrument, as a barometer, had nothing to do with 
 the effect; just as people all over Europe, for a considerable 
 time, depopulated the frog ponds, under the notion that 
 Galvani's discovery could not be made manifest except 
 through the actual frogs' legs. He rubs the empty tube 
 above the mercury with his fingers, and then again he sees 
 the light, which follows his fingers without any motion of 
 the quicksilver at all. That brings him to Newton's ex- 
 perimentthe attraction of the bits of leaf brass and paper 
 by rubbed glass although he does not recognize it as New- 
 ton's, because he has reached it by his own independent 
 reasoning, and, in fact, has re-invented it. Then he be- 
 30 
 
466 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 gins to forge the link between the rubbed glass giving 
 light and the rubbed glass attracting scraps of paper, and 
 suspects that both phenomena are electrical. 
 
 But now new questions crowd upon him. The light 
 appears and the attraction is exercised outside of the glass. 
 The supposed emanations producing both can be cut off 
 by moist air or even by fine muslin, not because of any in- 
 herent property in either air or cloth, but and here he uses 
 a well-known word in modern electrical language because 
 there is an interposition of something which acts as a " re- 
 sistance. " 
 
 The belief that all these effects are governed by law is 
 uppermost in his mind, and so he says that, u the effluvia, 
 how subtle soever they can be imagined to be, are yet body 
 and matter, and must therefore be liable to the common 
 laws of bodies, which is to be resisted in some proportion to 
 the strength and density of the medium. ' ' At once he seeks 
 to "find in what manner such a motion is propagated and 
 in what figure or sort of track it went along." A chance 
 observation spurs him on. He has held the rubbed tube 
 to his face and felt, with amazement, the electric wind 
 from the dense charge at its extremity, making "very 
 nearly such sort of strokes upon the skin as a number of 
 fine limber hairs pushing against it might be supposed to 
 do." 
 
 As he rubs his tube, the light breaks forth and crackles 
 like green leaves in the fire. The substitution of a solid 
 glass rod for the tube, makes little difference in the effect. 
 Rubbing the tube by hand is awkward, so he arranges a 
 glass cylinder in his lathe and revolves it, noticing now 
 not only the purple light, but again the sensation of a cur- 
 rent or wind striking his finger held near "with some 
 force, being easily felt by a kind of gentle pressure, though 
 the moving body was not touched with it by near half an 
 inch." The object lesson is plain. If whatever that is 
 which seems to come from the glass is so powerful that it 
 can be felt, it ought to be able to influence bodies which 
 
ELECTRIC LINES OF FORCE. 467 
 
 are placed in it perhaps just as the wind moves the 
 weather-cock, or causes a flag to stand out in its current. 
 He places a semicircle of wire having a number of woolen 
 threads hanging from it, transversely over his glass cylin- 
 der. The threads at first are perpendicular. Then as the 
 cylinder is rotated, no pressure of the hand being exerted 
 upon it, the threads are blown aside all in one direction 
 by the wind or eddy caused by the revolving glass; but, 
 as soon as he places his hand on the cylinder to rub it, the 
 threads immediately straighten, and every one of them 
 assumes a radial position pointing to the axis of the cylin- 
 der, while the light and the cracklings are simultaneously 
 seen arid heard. He changes the position of the threads, 
 sometimes fastening the semicircle of wire below the 
 cylinder, and then the threads are compelled to stand up 
 and point to the axis; and sometimes he places the cylin- 
 der vertically with the semicircle horizontal, and then the 
 threads stand out horizontally, thus proving that the force 
 in the space about the cylinder is strong enough to direct 
 the threads in straight lines despite the tendency of the air 
 to swing them aside. The extension of the threads cer- 
 tainly depends "upon the action of some matter whose 
 direction is in straight lines toward the glass." There 
 was a recognition, clearly and plainly, of the lines of elec- 
 tric force for he says that when a body is interposed be- 
 tween the threads and the glass u they lose their regular 
 extension and hang as their own weight causes them." 
 
 Now follows a discovery of capital importance, but 
 which to Hauksbee is a complete puzzle. He disposes 
 two glass globes within an inch of each other, but mounted 
 in separate lathes so that they can be rotated independ- 
 ently. He exhausts the air in one and applies his hand 
 to the unexhausted globe. Then he sees the light appear, 
 not only on the globe that is rubbed, but on the exhausted 
 globe which is not rubbed. But he soon finds that motion 
 of both globes is not necessary, and that he has only to 
 bring near to the excited globe a vacuum tube to see the 
 
468 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 light at once flash therein. This he supposes to be due to 
 the frictional action of the effluvia emanating from the 
 rubbed electric, but in fact it was a demonstration of 
 electric induction. 
 
 After many more experiments variations of one kind 
 and another he is confirmed in his belief of the effects 
 happening in the field of force, and states it in the follow- 
 ing explicit terms: It is (the italics are his own) 
 
 u Not only a Communication, but a Continuity of the 
 Matter which occasions the Motion of the Threads. The 
 Progress of it seems to be in a straight and direct track ; 
 in which the Matter is push'd by the shortest Course from 
 the Approached Body to the Threads that are shaken by it. 
 And if the Threads are mov'd by influence of any Matter 
 emitted from the Glass, it appears to be impossible to ex- 
 plain how they should be so, and at such distances, with- 
 out a Continuity, So that the Case seems to be thus: 
 That the Effluvia pass along, as it were, in so many Phys- 
 ical Lines or Rays ; and all the Parts that compose them, 
 adhere and joyn to one-another, in such manner, that 
 when any of 'em are push'd, all in the same lyine are 
 affected by the Impulse given to others. " 
 
 It is not necessary to review his concluding experiments 
 in detail, although some of them, such as the outlining of 
 his hand in fire on the inside of a globe partly lined with 
 sealing-wax, and the movements of threads electrified 
 within the cylinder following that of his finger outside of 
 it, are striking enough. The research extended over four 
 years, interrupted at times by other investigations, mainly 
 in pneumatics. It was a brilliant piece of work, and 
 probably the first thoroughly scientific investigation of 
 electrical phenomena. 
 
 Hauksbee's achievements attracted great attention. 
 Newton, after the publication of his Optics in 1704, ex- 
 perimented on a glass globe for himself, and the results ap- 
 pear in the second edition of that work, which was 
 published in 1717. He also felt the electric wind dashing 
 
DR. WALL. 469 
 
 against paper, and saw the sheet "become lurid like a glow 
 worm." l 
 
 In 1708, Dr. Wall, 2 who evidently disagreed with 
 Hauksbee's conclusions as to the electric nature of the 
 barometer light, evolved a hypothesis concerning the 
 amber about as odd as that which Father Grandamicus 
 had proposed to account for the earth's rotation. Gran- 
 damicus said that the earth does not rotate because it is a 
 magnet, and Wall asserts that the amber attracts, not be- 
 cause of its electrical quality, but because it is "a natural 
 phosphorus, a mineral oleosum coagulated with a mineral 
 acid of spirit of salt." Wall, however, attains immortality 
 neither for his theories nor for his experiments, but for 
 an expression. Hauksbee, long before, had heard the 
 crackles and had likened the fires in his glass globe to 
 flashes of lightning. Wall, rubbing a large piece of amber 
 and seeing the sparks and hearing the noise, however, 
 says: " Now I doubt not, but on using a longer and larger 
 piece of amber, both the cracklings and light would be 
 much greater, because I have never yet found any crack- 
 ling from the head of my cane, though it is a pretty large 
 one: and it seems in some degree to resemble Thunder and 
 Lightning." It is a pity that Wall's far-fetched notion 
 that the amber is phosphorus, and its light that of phos- 
 phorus, should cast a shadow on his title to being the first 
 who saw in the electric spark and detonations the effects 
 of Jove's armory in miniature. 
 
 Bernouilli, to whom Frederick of Prussia, on the recom- 
 mendation of Leibnitz, then President of the Berlin 
 Academy of Sciences, had presented a gold medal, worth 
 forty ducats, as a reward for his discovery, denied Hauks- 
 bee's explanation of the mercury light. It is needless to 
 review his contentions; they went the way of the learned 
 arguments whereby the Italian ecclesiastics in Galileo's 
 time sought to eliminate the moons of Jupiter. 
 
 The progress of electrical discovery had now reached one 
 
 Optics. Q. 8. 'Phil. Trans., No. 314, p. 69, 1708. 
 
470 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 of those temporary halting-places which are easily dis- 
 cernible in looking back over its path. The latest problem 
 had apparently been solved. To many it no doubt ap- 
 peared that all the capabilities of the rubbed electric had 
 been revealed. It had given light, attracted and directed 
 threads, yielded effluvia sensible to the touch and trans- 
 mitted its virtue to other bodies near it so as to cause them 
 to glow. No new possibilities were in sight. For nearly 
 twenty years no one sought for any, and the very few ex- 
 periments that are recorded merely thrash over old straw. 
 The philosophical world was devoting all its energies to 
 the digestion of the colossal intellectual banquet which 
 Newton had spread before it. 
 
 ( 'A masterpiece of English charity" is what old Fuller 
 says of it that ancient foundation of James L, in the 
 chapel whereof the boys of Grey Friars school and the 
 fourscore old pensioners of the Hospital used to assemble 
 on Founder's Day listening to the prayers and psalms. 
 
 Who does not know Thackeray's description of the 
 place? It is one of those old Charterhouse brethren whom 
 I have now to call back; an old brother who sat on the 
 same old benches in the ancient chapel, and who passed 
 away and gave place to another old brother, and he to an- 
 other, and another, long before Thackeray's time, and one 
 whom, if we may credit what another philosopher high 
 in favor in court said about him, was a testy and crusty old 
 gentleman. But philosophers high at court, and philoso- 
 phers who are poor brothers, rarely appreciate all one an- 
 other's excellences; and besides, the young Cistercians had 
 a much better opportunity of knowing this particular poor 
 brother than the dignified gentry at Whitehall. For 
 Stephen Gray never hung up his chief critic, the Reverend 
 Joseph Desaguiliers, tutor to his Royal Highness, by the 
 neck and heels and drew sparks from him and that is 
 what he did, besides many other astonishing things, to the 
 
STEPHEN GRAY. 471 
 
 Grey Friars lads; and we may be quite sure, not without 
 their entire consent and approbation. 
 
 There is no biographer to tell Gray's history, however 
 curtly. His memorial is hidden in the early volumes of 
 Philosophical Transactions 1 the annals of the Royal So- 
 ciety which are seldom read except through some one's 
 abridgments. He appears there first during the halt 
 period in 1720, and evidently with Boyle's experiments on 
 the feminine head-gear in mind, says that he has made 
 leather and parchment and paper and hair and feathers 
 and threads all electrical by rubbing them, so that it al- 
 most looks as if he had procured one of those towering 
 structures of millinery and, after dissecting it, had electri- 
 fied every bit of it in detail. Then he disappears for nine 
 years, and we do not know what he was doing in that in- 
 terval any more than before his sudden advent, although 
 it is said that in his early days he devoted much attention 
 to optics. When he returns to view in February, 1732, and 
 recounts his discoveries of the preceding three years, he 
 dates his letter to the Society from the Charterhouse, and 
 the presumption follows that the world has shown him its 
 seamy side, and that after fifty years of struggle, he wel- 
 comes the peaceful asylum and sober garb of the poor 
 brethren. But it would be altogether wrong to suppose 
 that he utters any note of repining. On the contrary, it 
 is evident that he is now in possession of facilities for do- 
 ing work in which he delights; and besides, he has two 
 good friends, one a well-to-do country gentleman, the 
 other resident in London and a member of the Society; 
 and, better still, both cordially sympathetic in all his aims 
 and endeavors. He spends his summers with them, and 
 makes the house of one of them the scene of a great dis- 
 covery, and worthy of a commemorative tablet, if it could 
 be now identified. 
 
 'Gray's papers are as follows: Phil. Trans., 1720, vol. 31, p. 104; 1731, 
 vol. 37, p. 18; 1732, vol. 37, pp. 285, 397; 1735, vol. 39, pp. 16, 166; 1736, 
 vol. 39, p. 400. 
 
472 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 A fine laboratory fitted with delicate and costly appar- 
 atus, skilled workmen at one's call, and unlimited capital 
 to draw upon, did not fall to the lot of the electrical dis- 
 coverer of Gray's time. There were no electrical shares 
 quoted on the world's exchanges in those days, and what- 
 ever the magnetizers may have gained, no one had ever 
 made a penny out of electricity, or even perceived channels 
 whereby profitably to lead other people to lose pounds. 
 Therefore, no one supplied Gray with means pecuniary or 
 otherwise for the prosecution of his work. But that did 
 not trouble him. There were his fishing-rods and his 
 canes, the kitchen poker and cabbages and pieces of brick ; 
 hemp twine was cheap, and by getting along with these he 
 could economize sufficiently to acquire the more expensive 
 part of his apparatus, a little silk and a few glass tubes. 
 If a suspended boy was wanted, no doubt there were 
 plenty of the Grey Friars lads willing enough to undergo 
 the astonishing experiences which the old brother con- 
 trived for them. 
 
 Up to this time no one (Von Guericke excepted, and he 
 forgotten) had thought to inquire whether the electric 
 virtue could be made to pass from one body to another. 
 This Gray did, and came to do so through the idea sug- 
 gesting itself that if Hauksbee's glass tube could com- 
 municate light to another object by its electric quality, 
 why could it not communicate the quality itself? in which 
 case the body receiving the virtue would have the same 
 property of attracting and repelling light bodies as the ex- 
 cited tube. It also struck him that if this could be done, 
 u the attractive virtue might be carried to bodies that were 
 many feet distant from the tube." 
 
 He procures a glass tube about a yard long and a little 
 over an inch in diameter. To keep out the dust, he puts 
 corks in the ends an expedient which turns out to be the 
 quickest possible means of revealing exactly what he was 
 looking for. Now he rubs the tube in order to excite it 
 electrically, and to his surprise he finds that feathers and 
 
GRAY'S EXPERIMENTS. 473 
 
 pieces of foil fly as readily to the cork in the end of the 
 tube as to the tube itself and thus it was plain that the 
 virtue had instantly passed from glass to cork. 
 
 He at once attacks the second part of his problem: 
 how far will this virtue travel? Into the cork in the 
 glass tube he inserts a wooden rod four inches long, hav- 
 ing an ivory ball which he u happened to have by him " 
 at its end. The ball attracts brass foil when the tube 
 is rubbed. Gradually he increases the length of the rod, 
 then substitutes for it a wire until the sagging of the 
 latter makes it troublesome to handle, and then he hangs 
 the ball from the tube by a long piece of hemp thread. 
 Still no change in the attractive power, despite the dis- 
 tance between ball and tube. 
 
 All this is so far beyond his expectations that it seems 
 to him that the effect must in some measure depend upon 
 the nature of the ivory ball; so he takes it off and substi- 
 tutes other objects. He has no store of rare chemicals to 
 draw upon; but the street and courtyard yield him bits of 
 brick and stone and tiles and chalk; and the garden, dif- 
 ferent vegetables and plants; and his purse a gold guinea, 
 a silver shilling and a copper halfpenny. After he has 
 tried all these things always with the same result he 
 looks about his chamber and finds the fire shovel, and the 
 tongs and the poker, and the tea-kettle (which works just 
 the same whether full of water or empty), and his silver 
 pint- pot. By this time he considers the question suffi- 
 ciently settled, and gets out his fishing-rod to see if the 
 virtue will go over even so long an object as that. But it 
 does and over other rods fastened thereto; and how much 
 further it might travel he cannot tell, because his little 
 chamber is not large enough to let him use a series of rods 
 over eighteen feet in length. 
 
 The month of May, 1729, has now come, and Gray is 
 glad to exchange the bricks and mortar of London for the 
 country fields. His "honored friend, John Godfrey, 
 Esq.," of Norton Court, near Faversham, Kent, has in- 
 
474 TH ^ INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 vited him thither, and, to the joys of a country life, Gray 
 has the added felicity of plenty of room. The rod is 
 lengthened to thirty-two feet, and gives way to thread, so 
 that he can stand on Godfrey's balcony and swing the 
 ivory ball attached to its lower end over the scraps of foil 
 on the ground, thirty-four feet below. As he can find no 
 higher elevation, he concludes to suspend his experiments 
 until his return to London and try them in the dome of 
 St. Paul's, where he could get just ten times the above 
 altitude. He had thought of a horizontal line of thread, 
 and had tried one looped to a beam in order to suspend 
 the ball. But then the ball refused to attract, because, as 
 he says, the electric virtue runs to the beam and not to the 
 bail. 
 
 Instead of going back to the Charterhouse, he proceeds 
 to Otterden Place, the residence of "Gran vile Wheler, 
 Esq., member R. S., with whom I have the honor to be 
 lately acquainted," and takes with him a little glass tube 
 "in order to give Mr. Wheler a specimen of my experi- 
 ments." 
 
 But the moment Wheler sees what has been done, he 
 wants much more than a specimen, for his interest is en- 
 thusiastic. In fact, he develops a desire more burning 
 even than that of Gray himself to find out how far the elec- 
 tricity will travel. He insists upon a long horizontal line 
 being put up immediately. Gray tells him that it will be 
 useless, for the virtue will run off at the supports. Then 
 says Gray, "he proposed a silk line to support the line by 
 which the electric virtue was to pass. I told him it might 
 be better upon the account of its smallness, so that there 
 would be less virtue carried from the line of communica- 
 tion." Gray therefore had already found out that the con- 
 ductivity of his line depended upon its "smallness," and 
 that the smaller it was the less virtue it would carry. 
 
 There is a gallery eighty feet long in Wheler's house, 
 and there Wheler, and all his servants helping him, speed- 
 ily stretch a packthread line over taut silk threads. The 
 
ELECTRICAL CONDUCTION AND INSULATION. 475 
 
 virtue seemingly has no more trouble in traversing eighty 
 feet than as many inches; and then the line is carried 
 backward and forward to increase its length, until it meas- 
 ures over three hundred feet, when the silk threads break 
 under its weight. However, that is easily repaired, thinks 
 Gray, substituting metal wire for the silk; but now, to his 
 dismay, the attraction of the ball disappears. No matter 
 how vigorously they rub the tube, apparently no virtue 
 from it goes upon the line, for the bits of brass foil under 
 the ball at the far end remain motionless. Wheler's 
 happy suggestion of the silk thread supports, now results 
 in a great discovery. Why silk? 
 
 u We are now convinced," says Gray, "that the success 
 we had before, depended upon the lines that supported the 
 line of communication being silk, and not upon their being 
 small." 
 
 More than a century before, Gilbert had cut off electric 
 attraction by interposing silk or water between the electric 
 and the attracted body; and this had been done by Hauks- 
 bee, and, in fact, all the later experimenters. So also 
 the latter believed that substances were divided into elec- 
 trics and non-electrics, although the list of the former was 
 constantly increasing. But no one before had recognized 
 the fact that the electric virtue would apparently refuse to 
 pass over certain substances while freely traversing others, 
 and this even when the first were short bodies and the sec- 
 ond very long. In other words, Gray had discovered the 
 difference between the electric conductivity of bodies de- 
 pending on the substances composing them, and had 
 found in silk threads this conductivity so small as to be 
 inconsiderable. Some bodies evidently conveyed elec- 
 tricity and some did not, and those which did not could 
 be used to prevent the electrical virtue escaping from 
 those which did. Here began the world's practical and 
 useful knowledge of electrical conduction and insulation. 
 
 Wheler's ingenuity rose to the occasion, and, by multi- 
 plying the silk threads, he managed to make the line 
 
476 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 outgrow the gallery. Then he erected the first aerial line 
 of communication on poles, extending over his land for a 
 distance of 650 feet. The weather was warm it was July 
 and the experimenters were ablaze with enthusiasm. In 
 fact, they exerted themselves so much in running from 
 one end of the line to the other, Wheler now rubbing the 
 tube and Gray watching the bits of foil, and then vice 
 versa, that, suddenly, in the late afternoon, when the 
 attraction ceased for the day, Gray naively remarks that it 
 could not positively be said whether this was "caused by 
 the dew falling or by my being very hot, but I rather im- 
 pute it to the latter." 
 
 After discovering that the virtue could be made to travel 
 from the tube over three lines simultaneously, to Mr. 
 Wheler' s "great parlor, little parlor and hall," Gray de- 
 parts, leaving Wheler to expend his excitement in electri- 
 fying l 'a hot poker, a live chicken, a large map and an 
 umbrella." 
 
 In the fall of 1729 the discovery that the virtue will 
 travel from tube to line and then over the latter without 
 direct contact of the tube or, in other words, by induction 
 is made. Then follow further researches into the elec- 
 trification of different bodies. Gray charges a soap-bubble 
 and makes it attractive. By means of hollow and solid 
 suspended wooden cubes he demonstrates the important 
 fact that the charge is resident on the surface of the elec- 
 trified body, for ''no part but the surface attracts." Then, 
 in the spring of 1730, he suspends a boy, and finds that 
 when the tube is rubbed and held to the boy's feet, the 
 leaf brass is vigorously attracted by the boy's face, thus 
 demonstrating the conductibility of the human body. It 
 is, doubtless, not pleasant to the urchin to feel the fire 
 pattering against his cheeks, but Gray encourages him to 
 bear it manfully, because should he turn the back of his 
 head the virtue, says the discoverer, would be greatly "cut 
 off by the short hair." 
 
 In the fall of 1730 Wheler again appears with his un- 
 
ELECTRIC INDUCTION. 477 
 
 quencliable desire for longer lines, and one of 866 feet, is 
 successfully used; but Gray has seemingly satisfied him- 
 self on this subject, for, after several months' silence, he 
 reappears in June, 1731, with a host of new experiments, 
 depending mainly upon his discovery that it is possible to 
 insulate electrified bodies by placing them on cakes of 
 resin. This gives more employment for the Charterhouse 
 lads, who are hung up on hair lines and stood up on 
 blocks, and electrified tubes are applied to them in all 
 sorts of ways, which need not here be detailed. 
 
 A year later, 1732, Godfrey and Wheler are both pressed 
 into service to aid him in making experiments to show in- 
 duction; and these lead him to the conclusion that u the 
 electric virtue may not only be carried from the tube by a 
 rod or line to distant bodies, but that the same rod or line 
 will communicate that virtue to another rod or line at a 
 distance from it, and by that other rod or line the attractive 
 force may be carried to other distant bodies." And thus 
 was proved for the first time that an electrified line could 
 induce a charge on another line; and, in fact, Gray found 
 that this induction would take place over distances as great 
 as a foot between the two lines. 
 
 Gray's experiments had now extended over three years, 
 during which time, despite the attention which results so 
 novel and unprecedented naturally excited, no one had 
 appeared to rival him. Dr. Desaguiliers, writing some 
 years after Gray's death, finds an explanation of this in 
 Gray's irascible temperament and intolerance of opposi- 
 tion, and gives as an excuse for the long withholding of 
 his own observations that their publication would probably 
 have caused Gray to abandon the research. Nevertheless, 
 when the field was entered, Gray welcomed the interloper, 
 and, so far from relaxing his efforts, continued them to the 
 end of his life with a pertinacity rivaling that of Hooke. 
 At all events, if such solicitude as Desaguiliers manifests 
 was sufficient to deter the English philosophers from in- 
 dependent investigation, it at least seems not to have ex- 
 
478 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 tended across the channel ; for, in the spring of 1733, 
 Charles Francois de Cisternay Dufay 1 began his famous 
 work. 
 
 Dnfay was then thirty-five years of age, and perhaps as 
 widely different from Gray as one man can be from an- 
 other. To the broadest general culture and knowledge of 
 the world he united a charming personality, a keen wit, 
 and exquisite tact, the last never better exhibited than 
 when, instead of antagonizing Gray, he managed to con- 
 vert the sensitive philosopher into a cordial and communi- 
 cative friend and colleague. He had been educated as a 
 soldier, and was a lieutenant in the Picardy regiment at 
 the age of fourteen; but his natural taste was for scientific 
 study, and not at all for military life. He exchanged 
 arms for diplomacy, and the latter for science. In his 
 brief lifetime of forty-one years (he died in 1739) he made 
 himself a chemist, an anatomist, a botanist, a geometri- 
 cian, an astronomer, a mechanician, an antiquary, and an 
 electrician, and in every one of these varied capacities 
 shone with unusual brilliancy. The French Academy 
 then recognized only six subjects as worthy of public dis- 
 cussion, namely, chemistry, anatomy, botany, geometry, 
 astronomy, and physics. Dufay, says Fontenelle, 2 in his 
 celebrated eulogy, was the only man of his time who con- 
 tributed to the Academic annals investigations in every 
 one of these branches. His early studies on the Bologna 
 stone and phosphorus resulted in the discovery that all 
 stones containing salts of lime become luminous on cal- 
 cination; his essay on the magnet, published in 1728, the 
 phenomena of which he regarded as in accordance with 
 the Cartesian theory, epitomizes all existing knowledge 
 
 *See Dufay's eight original memoirs. Histoire de 1' Acacia" mie Royal 
 des Sciences, Paris, for years 1733, 1734 and 1737. 
 
 2 Fontenelle: Eloge de M. Dufay. Hist, de 1'Acad. Roy. des Sciences, 
 1739- 
 
DUFAY'S EXPERIMENTS. 479 
 
 on the subject. In the spring of 1733 he learned, with 
 absorbing interest, of the achievements of Gray and 
 Wheler, and determined at once to prosecute them further 
 and in entirely new directions. 
 
 At the very outset he makes a discovery which over- 
 throws the distinction between electrics and non-electrics, 
 and brings to an end the efforts to enlarge the list of the 
 former, which had continued ever since the time of Gil- 
 bert. The number of different substances which he tests 
 is legion all sorts of woods and stones, especially all 
 those materials which earlier investigators had been un- 
 able to electrify. Some he finds require more u chafing or 
 heating" than others; some, such as the gums, he cannot 
 so treat without rendering them viscid; while the electrifi- 
 cation of the metals is so slight that he doubts whether he 
 has really recognized it: but in the end he announces that 
 all bodies (the metals and soft substances excepted) are 
 endowed with the property which for ages was supposed 
 to be peculiar to the amber, or, in other words, become 
 electrics by themselves (electriques par eux-memes). 
 
 Then he turns to Gray's experiments on conduction and 
 verifies them, but in so doing his attention becomes con- 
 centrated upon the supports for the electrified body Gray's 
 silk strings and cakes of resin. He varies the material 
 of which these supports are made. Pieces of metal, or 
 wood, or stone, on wooden or metal standards, he could 
 not electrify by bringing the excited glass tube near to 
 them, but when he substituted glass supports then he 
 could do so. Immediately it dawns upon him that the 
 possibility of electrifying a body does not depend upon the 
 nature of the body itself so much as upon its being insu- 
 lated, so that the virtue cannot escape from it. Again he 
 collects a great variety of objects woods and stones and 
 amber and agate, even oranges and books and red-hot 
 coals and placing them, one after another, on the glass 
 standards, brings the rubbed glass tube near to them, 
 when every one of them becomes electrified; and what 
 
480 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. . 
 
 is still more curious, the very ones, the metals, which it 
 was most difficult or apparently impossible to charge 
 simply by rubbing them, now receive more electricity than 
 all others on mere approximation, of the excited tube. 
 Here are two capital discoveries made at the very thres- 
 hold of his labor. 
 
 This is not altogether unusual, as many a later investi- 
 gator can testify. Long study and thought produces a 
 sort of mental polarization that somehow dulls the percept- 
 ive faculties, or results in an intellectual inertia which 
 renders it difficult for the mind to turn itself out of the 
 path in which it has been moving. And, as a consequence, 
 the power of original thought, of invention, is apt to 
 weaken even in those most highly gifted with creative 
 genius, unless the brain-work be differently directed for a 
 time, or wholly intermitted for a period of rest. There 
 seems to be no exhaustion of energy, for the thinking 
 mechanism may continue its operation, although fruit- 
 lessly, with even greater assiduity than ever. It is rather 
 a new condition of the apparatus which causes a change 
 in the quality of its accomplishment. Therefore when a 
 new mind not polarized attacks the problem, it is very 
 apt not only to perceive solutions which evade the recog- 
 nition of those which have long grappled with it, but to 
 see the most prominent and general ones first. It is an in- 
 cident of progress, and apparently a necessary one, that 
 obstacles shall be attacked by a succession of new minds; 
 and it constantly happens that a new mind without exper- 
 ience is often more potent in overcoming them than one 
 rich with accumulated knowledge. 
 
 Gray had almost instantly discovered that electricity 
 would pass from the excited body to one not excited: from 
 the glass tube to the cork. Dufay also at once finds all 
 bodies capable of electrification. Gray was halted by doubts 
 as to the effect of the physical conditions of the body to which 
 the charge is communicated. So Dufay similarly pauses be- 
 cause of misgivings as to the influence of color these not 
 
DUFAY'S EXPERIMENTS. 481 
 
 of his own suggestion, but because Gray had said that 
 among electrified bodies physically alike, those which are 
 red, orange, or yellow, attract very much more strongly 
 than those which are blue, green or purple. Dufay saw 
 in this not merely a possible cause of error in his future 
 researches, but a suggestion that there might be a relation 
 between electricity and light, if the former had a capacity 
 for color selection. For both reasons, he proceeds. 
 
 His initial experiments seem to confirm Gray decisively. 
 Of nine suspended ribbons (black, white and the rainbow 
 colors), the rubbed glass tube attracts the black first and 
 the red last. White gauze and black gauze intercept the 
 electric virtue, while gauzes of the rainbow hues, the. red 
 especially, allow it to pass. Dufay presses on to the 
 broader question, fully believing that he is on the track of 
 a startling discovery. 
 
 If color alone exercises the effect, it can make no differ- 
 ence, he argues, whether the hue be natural or artificial: 
 whether it appear on the rose-leaf or on a painting. So 
 he tries the flowers and the signs fail. The scarlet gera- 
 nium responds to the attracting glass as readily as does the 
 purple pansy the green leaves as quickly as the white 
 petals of the lily. Perhaps there is something in the inher- 
 ent quality of these vegetable substances which interferes. 
 Clearly the crucial test requires pure color, and that is only 
 in the rainbow. 
 
 He directs a sunbeam through a prism, and spreads it 
 out into its gorgeous spectrum, and distributes therein 
 white ribbons, so that the sun paints one red, another 
 orange, another yellow, and so on through nature's color 
 box. But the ribbons act like the flowers. No one of 
 them responds to the electric pull any more than does an- 
 other. The notion that electric attraction could tear the 
 sunbeam to pieces, and change it from white to red by 
 drawing out the blue rays, was only a delusion. 
 
 Then Dufay went back to his colored ribbons and wet 
 them and their differences vanished. He heated his 
 
482 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 gauzes and the virtue went through black or red with equal 
 facility. He had been misled by the dressing which the 
 makers had put in the ribbons to give them body: that was 
 all the color exerted no influence. 
 
 Perhaps this left him in something of a questioning 
 attitude toward Gray's other conclusions, for he begins to 
 investigate long-distance transmission anew; and finally 
 reaches the conclusion that the substances which are most 
 difficult to electrify such as metals or wet objects best 
 convey the virtue; while on the other hand, those easiest 
 excited amber or silk can hardly be got to convey it at 
 all. He puts up a packthread line 1256 feet long, and wets 
 it ; and the electricity traverses it with the same freedom 
 with which it nowadays runs along wet telegraph poles, or 
 escapes from the wires which touch the dripping foliage. 
 For Gray's silk supports, he substitutes glass tubes and 
 masses of Spanish wax, and thus, for the first time, uses 
 solid insulators upon an electric line of communication. 
 The new principle destroyed the non-electric and the 
 electric as distinctive significations it made non-electrics 
 into " conductors, " and electrics into "non-conductors." 
 
 Gray had shown how one line may electrify another 
 placed near it. Dufay varies this by placing two short 
 lines, respectively six and eight feet in length, end to end 
 with an air-space intervening. W/hen the gap is a foot 
 wide he says that the attraction, despite the shortness of 
 the lines, is as weak as if the virtue had traversed the con- 
 tinuous length of 1256 feet. Nevertheless it seems to him 
 that the charge can escape from line to air, and therefore 
 he says, coining the word, the necessity is apparent that 
 the transmitting cord should be u insulated." 
 
 He has meanwhile remarked that if he touches the ball 
 hanging at the end of his electrified line, it refuses to at- 
 tract; the electricity, he says, being dissipated through 
 him to the floor. But suppose he touches it with a small 
 
 1 " Que la corde dont on se sert pour transmettre au loin l'lectricit soit 
 isolie." 
 
DUFAY' s EXPERIMENTS. 483 
 
 body, itself insulated. Then the ball loses only a part of 
 its electricity, which goes to the last-named body. Conse- 
 quently he says, the volume of the electrified ball must be 
 considered. If too large, the virtue reaching it becomes 
 too extended to act quickly; if not large enough, it will not 
 take all that is brought to it by the cord. These were the 
 first perceptions of the distribution of an electric charge on 
 a conductor. Gray had found it resident on the surface. 
 
 Dufay now emulates the English philosopher in sus- 
 pending people by silk lines and electrifying them; but he 
 soon discards children and suspends himself. Then he 
 compares the sensation caused by an electrified tube near 
 his face to that of a spider-web drawn over it, and for the 
 first time feels the pricks and burns of the electric sparks 
 as they dart from his fingers. He believes them to be fire, 
 and, as such, altogether different from the hitherto seen 
 glow. 
 
 His is a nimble mind, and it leaps from one subject to 
 another with marvelous rapidity. But this is necessary; 
 for he is not only breaking a new path, but rebuilding the 
 old one. As he meets a new problem he discovers that the 
 vantage ground from which he must proceed is infirm. 
 That necessitates re-examination of the foundation facts; 
 and in this way he finds himself side by side with Von 
 Guericke, contemplating the singular behavior of the 
 feather which the sulphur globe drives away, and which, 
 nevertheless, like the moon, always turns the same face. 
 Dufay lets fall some gold-leaf upon his excited tube and 
 sees it repelled in the same way, avoiding the tube as he 
 chases the fragments around the room. But if, mean- 
 while, he rubs the tube, the leaf comes to it and goes 
 away from it alternately, following the motion of the hand. 
 When the leaf touches the tube, he says, it becomes elec- 
 trified thereby by communication. Yet obviously it is re- 
 pelled. Therefore all electrified bodies first attract bodies 
 that are not electrified, communicate to them their own 
 electricity, and that done, repel them. Nor will the latter 
 
484 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 be again attracted until, having touched some other body, 
 the acquired electricity is lost. This, which Von Guericke 
 saw, is now explained by Dufay. 
 
 But Dufay went a little further and imagined a whirl, a 
 field of force, around the tube, and figured to himself the 
 action going on there and not in the body of the tube. 
 The attracted body, on touching the tube and becoming 
 electrified, acquires a field of its own, the two fields repel, 
 and so long as that of either body remains the same, the 
 relative position of the two is unchanged. But if the field 
 of the attracted feather, for example, is dissipated, the 
 feather falls back to the tube ; if the field of the tube is 
 varied, as it is by the hand moving from one end of the 
 tube to the other, then the feather swings to and fro, fol- 
 lowing the changes caused. 
 
 It is while examining the repulsive action of the glass 
 tube that Dufay accidentally notes an effect which he says 
 " disconcerted me prodigiously ;" and well it might, for it 
 seemed to be subversive of every conclusion which he had 
 hitherto formed concerning the behavior of electrified 
 bodies. He is watching a bit of gold-leaf float in the air 
 under the repulsion of his excited glass tube. It occurs to 
 him to see what it will do when subjected to the action of 
 two electrified bodies ; and therefore he rubs a piece of 
 gum-copal and brings it to the leaf. To his utter astonish- 
 ment the leaf, instead of retreating from the electrified 
 gum, as it certainly did from the electrified glass, adheres 
 to it. He tries the experiment again and again, but in 
 every instance the leaf is drawn by the gum or by amber 
 or by Spanish wax, while it is repelled by the glass tube. 
 Yet a second glass tube or a piece of rock crystal brought 
 near the leaf exercises the same repelling effect as the orig- 
 inal tube. 
 
 This was Dufay's most important discovery. "I cannot 
 doubt," he says, "that glass and crystal operate in exactly 
 the opposite way to gum-copal and amber ; so that a leaf 
 repelled by the former because of the electricity which it 
 
VITREOUS AND RESINOUS ELECTRICITIES. 485 
 
 contracted will be drawn by the latter. And this leads me 
 to conclude that there are perhaps two kinds of different 
 electricities" 
 
 Further tests confirm the belief, and he announces that 
 electrified glass repels electrified glass, or all bodies re- 
 ceiving electricity therefrom, and attracts electrified amber 
 and all bodies to which its charge has been communicated. 
 In other words, he had established the fundamental law 
 that similarly-electrified bodies repel, while dissimilarly- 
 electrified bodies attract one another. 
 
 He calls the electricity yielded by glass vitreous, and 
 that derived from the rubbed gum resinous; because 
 "glass and copal are the two substances which have led 
 me to the discovery of the two different electricities." 
 
 Thus Dufay had found that all bodies may become elec- 
 tric either by direct communication or by induction; that 
 the so-called electrics are the least suitable to convey the 
 virtue; that the electric light may appear as fire or burning 
 sparks, and that there are two different kinds of electricity, 
 of which one attracts bodies repelled by the other; and 
 that bodies, if similarly charged, repel, while attracting if 
 dissimilarly electrified. These are only his more important 
 conclusions; others, although ingenious and original, re- 
 late to details which need not be entered into here. 
 
 In December, 1733, Dufay wrote a brief synopsis 1 of the 
 long memoirs which he had already published in the 
 annals of the French Academy, and sent it to the Duke 
 of Richmond and Lenox for presentation to the Royal 
 Society and (with characteristic diplomacy) to Mr. Gray, 
 u who works on this subject with so much application and 
 success, and to whom I acknowledge myself indebted for 
 the discoveries I have made, as well as for those I may 
 possibly make hereafter, since it is from his writings that 
 I took the resolution of applying myself to this kind of ex- 
 periments." Whether in all the history of discovery there 
 exists a more handsome recognition than this of the work 
 
 il. Trans., No. 431, p. 258, 1733. 
 
486 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 of a prior student may well be doubted. It is a custom 
 which nowadays in the struggle for profit is too often for- 
 gotten. At all events Gray's heart was won. He ceremon- 
 iously salutes Monsieur Dufay and felicitates himself that 
 his experiments should have been confirmed by so judicious 
 a philosopher; and, no doubt, in the quietude of his little 
 chamber at Grey Friars, wonders if it is really u poor 
 brother" Gray, with his experiments with the tea-kettle 
 and the pint-pot and the fishing-poles and threads, who is 
 receiving these compliments from the distinguished French 
 scientist through the Royal Society and his Grace of 
 Richmond. 
 
 But he was invigorated much invigorated. And be- 
 sides, what Dufay had said about the burning sparks 
 piqued his curiosity immensely. Out came the poker and 
 the tongs, and the fire shovel, too, this time, to be hung 
 up on silk threads and the crackling sparks produced, of 
 which last a small boy was made to suffer the pain, even 
 through his stockings. The next victim was a large 
 white rooster, replaced by a sirloin of beef, and finally an 
 iron rod astonished him beyond measure by exhibiting the 
 true brush discharge, "rays of light diverging from the 
 point, " and hissing. Pewter plates, iron balls, dishes of 
 water, were all pressed into service. The flames were real, 
 and they burned and crackled and exploded. u The effects 
 at present," says Gray, "are but in minimis, but in time 
 there may be found out a Way to collect a greater Quan- 
 tity of it, and consequently to increase the force of this 
 Electric Fire, which by several of these experiments (si 
 licet magnis componere parva) seems to be of the same 
 Nature with that of Thunder and lightning." 
 
 From that time on, Gray and Dufay maintained com- 
 munication with a degree of friendliness which leads Fon- 
 tenelle to wish that it might always typify the intercourse 
 of the two great nations to which they severally belonged, 
 and to add, with pardonable exaggeration, that "they en- 
 lightened and animated one another, and together made 
 
GRAY AND DUFAY. 487 
 
 discoveries so strange and surprising that their respective 
 beliefs in them perforce rested solely upon their mutual 
 assurances." But, in fact, neither afterwards made any 
 especially important discovery. It was not long before 
 Gray died. He had wandered off into the old belief which 
 von Guericke held, that somehow the planets were con- 
 trolled by electrical influence, and he fancied he could 
 make an apparatus in which a sphere would of its own 
 accord revolve from west to east around an electrified body. 
 But he was stricken unexpectedly, and he could tell Dr. 
 Mortimer, the Secretary of the Royal Society, who at- 
 tended his death-bed, only a few disjointed ideas, mingled 
 with expressions of a hope u that God would spare his life 
 a little longer, so that he should, from what these phe- 
 nomena point out, bring his electrical experiments to 
 greater perfection." But it was ordained otherwise, and 
 he passed away on February I5th, 1736. 
 
 Dufay's last memoir is dated in 1737, and expresses his 
 broadest view of the great phenomena which he had 
 so well studied. "Electricity," he says, "is a quality 
 universally expanded in all the matter we know, and 
 which influences the mechanism of the universe far more 
 than we think." He has left his monument in the mag- 
 nificent Jardin des Plantes which he organized, and so 
 made every student of Nature his debtor, His solicitude 
 that the full meed of honor due to the poor brother of the 
 Charter house should be yielded never failed; and when 
 the world shall pay its tribute in enduring marble and 
 brass to the memory of Stephen Gray, electrician, it will 
 find no words more fitting to place upon it than those of 
 his generous and brilliant rival: 
 
 "He was almost alone in England in pursuing his ob- 
 ject. To him we owe the most remarkable discoveries 
 pertaining to it; so all those who love Nature and her 
 \vork must infinitely regret him." 
 
488 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Apart from the discoveries in which they resulted, the 
 researches of both Gray and Dufay are remarkable for their 
 inductive character and the absence of dogmatizing on the 
 nature and cause of electricity. Concerning the last, 
 opinions were undergoing radical change. Shortly after 
 Hauksbee's experiments were published, Dr. s'Gravesande, 
 Professor of Mathematics at Leyden, issued one of the 
 earliest, if not the earliest, didactic work in which elec- 
 tricity is treated as a branch of physics, and there gives it 
 as his ultimate conclusion, based on preceding experi- 
 ments, that there is an atmosphere excited in rubbed glass 
 by friction, which attracts and repels light bodies, and also 
 that out of the glass, fire is forced ; but he does not regard 
 either the atmosphere or the fire as electricity, which he de- 
 fines as "that property of bodies by which (when they are 
 heated by attrition) they attract and repel lighter bodies at 
 a sensible distance." 
 
 The experiments of Gray and Dufay showed the light 
 and the fire to be as much an electrical phenomenon as the 
 attraction and repulsion; but Dufay 's discovery of the dual 
 nature of electricity had undermined the old conception of 
 material emanations, while definitely establishing no new 
 theory in its place. 
 
 After the death of Dufay appears Dr. Desaguiliers, a 
 man of considerable prominence in the Royal Society. He 
 had never found it expedient to discourse about electrical 
 matters so long as either Gray, whom he seems to have 
 disliked, or Dufay survived; but afterwards he contributes 
 many papers to the Philosophical Transactions, in which 
 he collects a great mass of experiments, chiefly in the na- 
 ture of cumulative evidence. He invented the term "elec- 
 trics per se," which, for a long time afterwards, was used 
 to designate those bodies which could be made electric by 
 rubbing them, although it was nothing but a polyglot 
 translation of Dufay's term u e*lectriques par eux-memes." 
 He also first used the word ''conductor," applying it to 
 the string over which the electricity passes, and also was 
 
DR. DESAGUILIERS. 489 
 
 the first to electrify running water. Gilbert, of course, 
 had made his rubbed amber attract a water-drop; the 
 Florentine Academy, by like means, had drawn oil up into 
 little viscous strings, and Gray had electrified soap-bubbles; 
 but Desaguiliers found that, when he let water run in a 
 stream out of a copper fountain, he could render the jet 
 electric, so that it would attract thread, by merely holding 
 the rubbed tube above the fountain, and when he applied 
 the tube to the stream, he could draw it sidewise into a 
 curve, or even cause it to fall outside of the vessel placed 
 to receive it. He also appears to have been the first to 
 conceive of atmospheric electricity, and to point out that 
 a cloud or mass of vapor may be an electrified body. He 
 had already recognized that air may be rendered electrical; 
 and supposed it to be made up of electric particles con- 
 stantly repelling one another. He imagined that the air- 
 current which flows along the surface of the ocean is 
 electrical in proportion to the heat of the weather, and 
 that, as he had seen little particles of water leap up in 
 spray to the excited tube, so he conceived the watery par- 
 ticles of the sea to rise to meet the excited air particles, and 
 then, being of the same electricity, to be repelled by them, 
 so that u a cubic inch of vapor is lighter than a cubic inch 
 of air." In the recognition by Hauksbee and Wall and 
 Gray of the similarity of the crackling electric spark to the 
 thunder and lightning, and in this hazy conception of 
 Desaguiliers of electrically-charged clouds and atmosphere, 
 we can now begin to perceive the drift of thought leading 
 toward Franklin's great discovery. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 AN assemblage of despotisms, big and little, engaged in 
 constant bickerings and dissensions among themselves, and 
 involved in foreign wars which drained every resource, 
 formed the loosely-coherent German Empire of the eigh- 
 teenth century. For the first forty years of this period, as 
 might well be expected, German progress in physical science 
 was far behind that of England, France or Italy. Learned 
 societies had, however, been established, the most impor- 
 tant of which was the Leopoldine or Collegium Naturale 
 Curiosorum, modeled on the English Royal Society ; but 
 their existence was precarious, and their work little more 
 than the gathering and glossing of the records of discover- 
 ies made abroad. The partial adoption of the Gregorian 
 calendar by the Protestant States of Germany in 1700 is 
 said to have led to the foundation in that year of the Berlin 
 Royal Society of Sciences by Frederick I. of Prussia; but 
 the real motive was that especially pompous king's desire 
 to imitate and rival Louis XIV. of France. 
 
 It soon became apparent that to organize a philosophical 
 society is one thing, and to find members of genius for it, 
 another. The latter were manifestly wanting. Even the 
 gigantic intellect of a Leibnitz in the Presidential chair 
 could not leaven the entire mass. Hence its existence 
 remained merely nominal until 1711, when a solemn open- 
 ing of its proceedings was held; and it started on what 
 might have been from that time a useful career. But a 
 couple of years later, the sergeant king, who had less use for 
 learned societies than for giant grenadiers, succeeded to 
 the throne, and encouragement failed. 
 
 In 1715, Weidler of Wittenberg, and Leibknecht of Gies- 
 sen, were still studying the mercurial phosphorus. The 
 
 (490) 
 
ELECTRICAL PROGRESS IN GERMANY. 491 
 
 authority of Bernoulli! remained potent against Hauksbee's 
 plain demonstration of the electrical nature of the barome- 
 ter light, although Leupold reconstructed Hauksbee's 
 machine, and verified many of his conclusions. Little 
 volumes of transactions in Latin printed at long intervals, 
 became the sole sign of the continued animation of the Ber- 
 lin Society. One electrical dissertation here appears writ- 
 ten by Johan Jacob Schilling 1 in 1734, wherein he details 
 experiments made with the rubbed tube; but they are of 
 minor consequence, and merely go to show how prevalent 
 was the belief that the electrical action resided in an at- 
 mosphere around the excited body, although Schilling's 
 particular conception of his atmosphere involves its rare- 
 faction by the heat due to the friction incident to rubbing 
 the tube, and subsequent condensation on cooling. 
 
 Von Guericke was famous only for his pneumatic dis- 
 coveries, fixed in the popular mind by his theatrical display 
 of the Madgeburg hemispheres resisting the pull of many 
 horses. His electrical discoveries, unimportant by con- 
 trast, and described in but a few terse paragraphs in his 
 book, were forgotten or misunderstood in his own country; 
 while the foreign philosophers (always excepting the 
 liberal and cultured Dufay, whose appreciation of Von 
 Guericke we have seen), regarded Germany very much as 
 the British literati looked upon the United States seventy 
 years ago as a Nazareth whence little good might be 
 expected to come. 
 
 The year 1742 probably marks the beginning of the 
 singular and sudden interest in things electrical which 
 arose in Germany, and which swiftly reached a stage of 
 feverish enthusiasm.* It differed widely from the per- 
 
 1 Schilling: Misc. Beroliniensia, Tome x., 3, 4. 
 
 2 See Gralath : Geschichte der Elektrizitat. Versuche und Abhandlun- 
 gen, der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Dautzig. I. Theil. Dantzig, 
 1747- 
 
 Priestley : History of Electricity. London, 1767, and later editions. 
 
 Fischer : Geschichte der Physik. Band V. Gottingen, 1804. Hoppe's 
 Geschichte der Elektrizitat, 1884, and Poggendorff's Geschichte der 
 Physik, 1879, follow these works. 
 
492 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 functory craze which had taken possession of the English 
 aristocracy at the behest of Charles. It had still less re- 
 semblance to the combined onslaught of the French phil- 
 osophers which was designed to take all of Nature's 
 secrets by storm. It was distinctively popular. It was 
 the first instance many times since repeated of the 
 intelligent portion of an entire community regarding with 
 absorbing wonder the working of electric powers. 
 
 No unexpected desire for electrical knowledge in gen- 
 eral had been born. The German naturalists were familiar 
 with progress abroad during the last fifty years, but had 
 shown no emulative spirit. The new motive force now 
 came not from them, but from the people; and the people, 
 in all times and in all ages, have never failed to respond to 
 an appeal to their sense of the marvelous to a conviction 
 that something new has been found something at once 
 new and incomprehensible. The masses had cared little 
 for Hauksbee's lights, and less for the vagrant virtue on 
 Gray's lines, assuming that the knowledge of either per- 
 colated to them; but when it came to be noised about that 
 the strange radiance which the English and French phil- 
 osophers were exhibiting was fire, fire which flamed in 
 jets from the ends of rods, or, more wondrous still, leaped 
 from the tips of men's fingers that was a matter for every 
 one's personal concern. For fire was then believed to 
 be a material substance phlogiston and while perhaps 
 it might exist in iron bars and inanimate things of that 
 kind, and be forced visibly to come out of them by fric- 
 tion, as well as by heating, no one had ever supposed that 
 it resided in the human body and could be compelled to 
 escape, with an accompaniment of sparks and crackles, 
 from one's person. It was the idea of a human being 
 becoming such a torch that stirred the Teutonic mind to 
 its profoundest depths. The impetus which electrical 
 science had received from the fancy of a dissolute king 
 was nearly spent: now progress was resumed with renewed 
 vig:or under that due to the astonishment and wonder 
 
GEORGE MATTHIAS BOSE. 493 
 
 which the latest electrical manifestations had created in 
 the now thoroughly awakened Germans. 
 
 The activity of the German investigators is not reflected 
 in the annals of the Berlin Academy, but in a host of indi- 
 vidual treatises issued so closely together in point of time 
 that it is impracticable to determine, from their often con- 
 tradictory statements, the chronological sequence in which 
 the recorded discoveries were made. It is even doubtful 
 to whom is due the credit of accomplishing the work which 
 began the new era; some contemporary writers according 
 it to Christian August Hausen, others to George Matthias 
 Bose. The achievement itself involved no new discovery; 
 but, in the light of its consequences, its history is im- 
 portant. 
 
 Bose l was a teacher in L,eipsic and master of an " exper- 
 imental college. n So slow was the diffusion of scientific 
 knowledge at the time that the memoirs of the French 
 Academy, containing the account of Dufay's experiments 
 made in 1733-4, did not reach him until three years later. 
 He had already studied electricity sufficiently to appreciate 
 keenly the discoveries of the French scientist, and to be 
 eager to repeat them. No glass tube of proper size was 
 available in all Leipsic, and Bose's straitened means pre- 
 vented his procuring one from Paris. There stood, how- 
 ever, in his laboratory a large distilling apparatus, the 
 retort of which was of glass, and capable of holding six or 
 seven gallons. Upon the nozzle of this vessel Bose's eye 
 fell one day, and in an instant the sacrifice was made, and 
 the long-desired tube was in his hands. It is singular that 
 Dufay, with all his acumen, should not have perceived the 
 disadvantages incident to the use of the tube, which re- 
 quired constantly renewed rubbing, and worked always 
 with diminishing effects. Bose's fresher perceptions recog- 
 nized them quickly, and his mind at once recurred to the 
 rotary glass globe of Hauksbee and Newton as a much 
 more convenient apparatus for generating electricity. But 
 
 , Tentamina Electrica. Wittenberg, 1744. 
 
494 TH E INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 he had no globe, and saw no chance of obtaining one, until 
 the old still suddenly revealed itself in a new light. There 
 was the noseless glass retort; big, but all the better for 
 that, for perhaps the effects would be stronger. Down 
 came the vessel to be mounted lathe fashion, and the re- 
 sults, as I shall shortly relate, were amazing. 
 
 Meanwhile Hausen, 1 who was a professor of mathematics 
 at the Leipsic Academy, and lectured there on electricity, 
 while using the glass tube in one of his demonstrations, 
 inveighed against its inconvenience, when a student re- 
 minded him of the Hauksbee globe. Hausen at once con- 
 structed such an apparatus, and, by means of a large 
 crank-wheel and belt, made it possible to rotate the sphere 
 very rapidly. Both Hausen and Bose now found, at about 
 the same time, that not only could a practically contin- 
 uous supply of electricity thus be obtained, but one of 
 much greater strength than had hitherto been known. 
 Hausen suspended a boy with his toes in proximity to the 
 globe, and drew sparks from his fingers. Bose disposed 
 twenty soldiers in line, with hands touching, and admin- 
 istered a shock to all of them at once. Hausen remarked 
 the sulphurous odor of the electrical discharge, and distin- 
 guished three kinds of electric light due respectively to 
 the " spark," the "brush" and the "glow," as the phe- 
 nomena are now termed; but he was before all a theorist. 
 He announced that the electric field is formed of vortices of 
 electric matter, caused by its being attracted and repelled in 
 oppositely convex curves, that the vortex becomes a spiral 
 around a rubbed tube, and that all electric action is due 
 to the influences of vortices upon vortices, or vortices upon 
 matter. 
 
 In the light of modern conceptions Hausen's hypothesis 
 of the identity of his so-called electric matter with the 
 ether of Newton and Huyghens is remarkable. He con- 
 siders ether to be electric matter, because both glow as 
 soon as the proper motion is impressed; and from this he 
 
 1 Hausen: Novi Profectus in Historia Electricitatis. Leipsic, 1743. 
 
BOSK'S EXPERIMENTS. 495 
 
 advances to the assumption that solidity, fluidity, expan- 
 sibility, electric and magnetic forces, density, light, sound, 
 heat, etc., have all a common origin in ether or electric 
 matter motion. The drawing of fire from the person 
 shows the presence of this same matter, he maintains, in 
 the blood; and hence it may be the seat of the soul, or at 
 least exercise control of the sensory faculties. Hausen 
 died in 1743, leaving his conceptions far from developed 
 and his experimental researches unfinished. 
 
 Bose ) on the other hand, was no theorist. His temper- 
 ament unfitted him for abstract speculation, and he ex- 
 pressly avoids committing himself to any electrical theory, 
 preferring merely to formulate questions for others to 
 answer. But he was a genius. No one knew better the 
 art of playing to the gallery; in fact, in the great electrical 
 drama he created the part of the "modern wizard," and it 
 is doubtful whether any one since has ever excelled him in 
 it. He set jets of fire streaming from electrified objects, 
 and exhibited them to the people who flocked to his labor- 
 atory. He invited guests to an elegant supper-table loaded 
 with silver and glass and flowers and viands of every de- 
 scription, and, as they were about to regale themselves, 
 caused them to stand transfixed with wonder at the sight 
 of flames breaking forth from the dishes and the food and 
 every object on the board. The table was insulated on 
 pitch cakes, and received the discharge from the huge 
 glass retort which was revolved in another room. He in- 
 troduced his ardent pupils to a young woman of transcend- 
 ent attractions, and as they advanced to press her fair 
 hand, a spark shot from it accompanied by a shock which 
 made them reel. Others, who had the boldness to accept 
 his challenge to imprint a chaste salute upon the damsel's 
 lips, received therefrom a discharge which Bose says 
 " broke their teeth;" but Bose here either exaggerates 
 more than usual, or else neglects to explain how the young 
 lady bore her share of the injury. 
 
 Meanwhile he had become professor of physics at Wit- 
 
496 THK INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 tenberg and an Imperial Count Palatine, so that his for- 
 tunes had evidently improved. He was now certainly 
 producing the most powerful electrical discharges that had 
 ever been seen, and popular excitement (and his own) con- 
 cerning them was rapidly increasing. His constant desire 
 was stronger effects, and with this object he sacrificed a 
 large telescope in order to obtain its metal tube, some 
 twenty-one feet in length. When he brought this close to 
 his revolving globe the sparks leaped to it in great profu- 
 sion, and finally, when it barely touched the glass, a ring 
 of intense light appeared at the place of contact, while the 
 discharge from the tube itself was powerful enough to 
 knock a dollar from between his teeth, and cause a wound 
 whenever it was allowed to strike the exposed skin. 
 
 He had now added to the electric machine, for the first 
 time, the prime conductor. The tube was first held to the 
 globe by hand, but afterwards suspended by silk cords. It 
 collected the charge from the excited glass by a number 
 of threads resting upon the revolving surface, performing 
 the same functions as the numerous points of the collect- 
 ing comb in the modern frictional machine. 
 
 It will be remembered that one of the discoveries which 
 Dufay believed possible and desired to make, but in which 
 he failed, as he conceived, because of the omission of some 
 necessary precaution, was the proof of the identity of the 
 electric spark with actual fire. Bose, in 1743, had reached 
 sufficient faith in this to suggest the question anew, but 
 then announced no proof. In January of 1744 the reor- 
 ganized Academy of Sciences was formally opened in Ber- 
 lin before an assembly of all the notabilities of the king- 
 dom, and an address on electricity was delivered by Dr. 
 Christian Friedrich L,udolfF, in the course of which he 
 exhibited the attractive effect of a rubbed glass tube upon 
 water, and the apparent projection of the sparks from the 
 tube to the liquid. While performing this experiment it 
 occurred to him to substitute for the water some highly 
 inflammable fluid, and see what effect the sparks flash- 
 
THE ELECTRIC SPARK AND FIRE. 497 
 
 ing from the end of a metal rod would have upon it. Ac- 
 cordingly he brought to the rod a spoonful of previously- 
 warmed sulphuric ether, which instantly, to the amazement 
 of the entire assembly, burst into flame. There could now 
 be no doubt that the electric spark and fire were the same. 
 The resulting notion that the human body might thus be a 
 miniature volcano created a profound impression, and pop- 
 ular excitement over the subject increased. Lectures on 
 electricity were in great demand; exhibitions of electrical 
 phenomena drew large audiences; even at the didactic 
 discourses at the colleges the populace flocked to the halls 
 and crowded the students out of their seats. 
 
 Daniel Gralath, writing at the time, records electrical 
 experiments as in progress in the palaces of kings and 
 princes and in the castles of the great. Meanwhile L,u- 
 dolff continued his work, and ignited alcohol and turpen- 
 tine in the same way, and is said even to have drawn the 
 kindling sparks from pieces of ice and snow. It may here 
 be noted that he turned his attention from this subject to 
 that of the luminous barometer, and with his research ends 
 even the German belief in the phosphorescent character of 
 the mercury light, for he affirms it positively to be elec- 
 trical. 1 
 
 The news of Ludolff's exhibition drew immediately 
 from Bose a claim to prior discovery, not only of the elec- 
 tric ignition of liquids, such as alcohol and ether, but of 
 butter, resin, sealing-wax, sulphur, and a great variety 
 of light and inflammable materials. These, being pre- 
 viously partly melted, he set on fire, not merely by the 
 discharge from rods, but by the sparks from men's fingers. 
 Then he turned to gunpowder, and succeeded in exploding 
 it after getting it in a state so as not to be scattered by 
 the discharge from the rod. Thus he made the first step 
 toward the electric fuse, now a necessity in every mine, 
 every quarry, every fort and every war-ship. 
 
 1 Hist, de 1'Acad. Roy. des Sciences et Belles Lettres. Berlin, 1746 and 
 1750. 
 
 32 
 
498 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 In fact, with Bose the language of ordinary narrative 
 seems to have become inadequate for the expression of his 
 electrical achievements ; and hence he followed the ex- 
 ample of Leibnitz, who celebrated the discovery of phos- 
 phorus in pompous Latin verse, and became the author of 
 the first of electrical poems. 1 Its opening canto is dedi- 
 cated to Frederica Louise, Margravine of Brandenburg, and 
 it epitomizes other people's discoveries; but the second 
 part, under the frankly egotistical motto, "nunc mea sola 
 cano," is entirely devoted to the celebration of his own. 
 By judicious degrees he proceeds from things remarkable 
 to things surprising, reaches the explosion of powder, 2 and 
 then winds up with the announcement of an achievement 
 calculated to throw the discoveries of every one else com- 
 pletely in the shade. He had found out, he said, how to 
 reproduce, around any one's cranium, the halo or glory 
 with which the old painters encircled the heads of saintly 
 personages. It was necessary simply to place the indi- 
 vidual on a cake of pitch and electrify him from a large 
 globe, when a lambent flame, rising from the pitch, would 
 first spread around his feet, and then gradually rise to his 
 head, until the whole body would appear bathed in a 
 heavenly glow ; or if he were seated in a chair suspended 
 by silken ropes, "a continual radiance or corona of light 
 appears encircling his head." 3 
 
 In Germany this astonishing claim was accepted, and 
 Bose certainly exhibited people with flames about them. 
 In England, however, where jealousy of both Gallic and 
 
 : Die Elektrizitat, nach ihrer Entdeckung imd Fortgang mit 
 poetischer feder entworffen. Wittenberg, 1744. 
 
 2 " Des Pulvers dorm era d Schwartz wird auf zwolf Zoll belebt, 
 
 Das es dem Metall, und denen Fingern klebt. 
 
 Dock schmeltz es. Sieh dich fur. Lass deine Funcken strahlen. 
 
 Es fangt, blitzt, donnert, ziindt, und knallt zu tausend mahlen." 
 
 3 " Wie man die Heiligen, ja selbst die Engel mahlt, 
 
 Wie das gemeine Volck von einem Irrwisch prahlt, 
 
 So steht mein Held alsdenn in einem Schimmer-Glantze, 
 
 In einem feurigen. fast fiirchterlichen Krantze." 
 
BOSK'S EXPERIMENTS. 499 
 
 Teutonic achievements was now beginning to show itself, 
 the electricians determined to test the matter, and to that 
 end, as Priestley remarks, "went to a great deal of ex- 
 pense." Ultimately Dr. Watson, of whom there will be 
 much to say hereafter, procured a huge cake of pitch, 
 three feet high, mounted it himself, and submitted to 
 vigorous electrification, with no better result than the cob- 
 web sensation and a slight tingling of the scalp. A sharp 
 correspondence followed between Watson and Bose, ending 
 in the discomfiture of the latter and the admission that his 
 boasted discovery was a mere trick ; the beatification, as he 
 called it, being produced by dressing the electrified person 
 in a suit of concealed armor having many points, at which 
 the brush discharge appeared. The older German his- 
 torians either omit this episode in Bose's career, or else 
 treat Bose's claims as mere "poetic license," on a par with 
 his offer to shock an entire army if some one would fur- 
 nish it. 
 
 Bose tried to increase the strength of the discharge by 
 multiplying the number of rotating globes in his machine, 
 and asserts that he obtained especially vivid sparks from 
 an apparatus constructed of three globes, varying in diam- 
 eter from ten to eighteen inches, and a beer glass. By 
 like means he produced, in exhausted vessels, glow dis- 
 charges which he says, "flowed, and turned, and wandered 
 and flashed," so that "no name is so applicable to them as 
 that of Northern Lights." This was the first suggestion 
 of the electrical origin of the Aurora Borealis. So power- 
 ful, says Bose, were the discharges from the multiple globe 
 machine, that the blood escaping from the opened vein of 
 an electrified person appeared "lucid like phosphorus," 1 
 and escaped faster, because of the electrification. In fact, 
 water spouting from an electrified fountain flowed more 
 freely than before. Thus came to light the principle now 
 embodied in the Thomson siphon-recorder and other ap- 
 
 1 Phil. Trans., No. 476, p. 419, 1745. 
 
.500 THE INTELLECTUAI, RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 paratus, in which the flow of ink to a record surface is regu- 
 lated by the electrifying charge. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact that, despite the progress which 
 had been made in electrical knowledge since the time of 
 Gilbert, no one had demonstrated any practical utilization 
 of it. Of course, the discoveries made were the founda- 
 tion of modern useful developments; but, at the period 
 now under review, they had not been recognized as meet- 
 ing any human need. Perhaps it was enough that they 
 should have freed themselves from the ancient atmosphere 
 of mysticism which surrounded all electrical effects, and 
 had come to be clearly distinguished as purely natural 
 happenings. From this, however, came the noteworthy 
 sequel, that as popular familiarity with them increased, so 
 far from its bringing with it indifference or sated curiosity, 
 its accompaniment was augmented wonder. And this in 
 turn led to the query, soon the demand, whether the new 
 force could not be made to do its part in the world's work. 
 Because those who ask it seldom have any conception how, 
 or in what channels, such utilization is possible, this ques- 
 tion, in the beginning of a new art, always takes the form 
 of li cui bono;" and, moreover, as it often bears rather the 
 aspect of belittling the importance or merit of the achieve- 
 ment than of evincing a desire that it shall be conclusively 
 answered, the discoverer is as likely to retaliate with such 
 counter demands as that the utility of mosquitoes or earth- 
 quakes shall first be explained, as he is to adopt Faraday's 
 advice and silently proceed to u endeavor to make it use- 
 ful;" or Franklin's genial philosophy summed up in the 
 famous reply of u What is the use of a baby?" 
 
 So when the Germans had digested the feast of marvels 
 which Bose and others spread before them, instead of glori- 
 fying the philosophers they manifested an inclination to 
 taunt them with the uselessness of human fireworks, and 
 such electrical shows generally. The man who answered 
 
JOHANN GOTTLOB KRUGER. 50! 
 
 these flings did it in a curious way. His name was Joliann 
 Gottlob Krtiger, of Halle, a doctor and professor of philos- 
 phy and medicine; and his medium, an address delivered 
 in the fall of 1743, to his students who had asked him 
 to explain his views concerning possible utilizations of 
 electricity. It is witty, prophetic, and pre-eminently the 
 utterance of a sage, whose philosophy is indicated by his 
 epigram that the philosopher's life consists in "trying to 
 understand what you do not see, and not believing what 
 you do." u What's the use of bugs, fleas and grasshop- 
 pers?" he demands, exemplifying the usual resentment of 
 the closet student, yet in the next breath repeating, "God 
 only knows what the ingenious heads of our time will get 
 out of 'it all." "It is too early," he says, " even to try to 
 venture explanations or predictions." But he believes 
 curious prescience that the "Germans have laid the 
 foundation, the English will erect the building, and the 
 French will add the decorations." And as to what utiliza- 
 tions of electricity there may be in store, " if it must have 
 some practical use, it is certain, that none has been found for 
 it in Theology or Jurisprudence, and therefore where else 
 can the use be than in Medicine?" 
 
 Here begin the modern efforts to apply electricity to the 
 curing of human ills. Not magnetism, for that, as we have 
 seen, was used therapetitically at periods of remote anti- 
 quity; but with Kriiger apparently starts the idea that 
 electricity can be beneficially employed^in the healing art. 
 
 It was one fraught with especial difficulties at the time, 
 because of the imperfection of the electrical machine, 
 which was then nothing more than a globe, or possibly 
 two or three globes, of glass, seldom provided with Bose's 
 prime conductor, and excited by the contact of the opera- 
 tor's dry palm. Nevertheless, Kriiger urges his students 
 to investigate. He has heard it rumored that certain elec- 
 trified bodies will not decay because they attract only 
 "balsamic vapors" from the air. The ''true human 
 body," he says, "is not electric of itself, nor can it be 
 
502 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 made so by rubbing; but only by the approach of the elec- 
 tric glass;" but consider, he urges, the immense value of 
 such a discovery as that electricity will prevent wasting or 
 decay of the human frame "what reward would be too 
 great for the discoverer ?' ' 
 
 Not only, he says, does electricity make blisters on the 
 skin, but it is apparently propagated through the entire 
 body. Clearly, therefore, by means of electricity, changes 
 can be caused in the most hidden parts of the frame. L,ost 
 health may perhaps be thus restored, or present health 
 maintained, if the application be made at the proper time 
 and in the proper way. Hence does it not follow that 
 electrification is a new curative agent ? 
 
 He conjectured that electrification of the body would 
 augment the circulation of the blood, and cause contrac- 
 tions of the solid parts, and regretted that so little was 
 known on the subject that no one could exactly predict 
 what internal bodily changes would occur a statement 
 which can still be made with little qualification. 
 
 In the spring of 1744, Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein, 1 
 of Halle, made the first experiments on the living body to 
 determine the effects of electricity. He observed at once 
 a marked increase in the pulse-beats, and the accelerated 
 circulation predicted by Kriiger, and also the contractile 
 and irritating effect of the discharge upon the muscles. 
 Sparks leaping from the blood running from the opened 
 vein of an electrified man to a tin dish placed to receive 
 the flow, added to the general conviction that electricity 
 was a material substance in the body. Kratzenstein began 
 to administer the discharge as a specific for all congestive 
 ailments rheumatism, malignant fevers and the plague 
 and claimed to have made remarkable cures of lameness 
 and palsy, one woman with a lame or stiff finger being 
 relieved in fifteen minutes. Lange, 2 who followed in 
 
 1 Kratzenstein : Abhandlung von dem Nutzen der Elek. in der Arznei- 
 wissenschaft. (Gralath, cit. sup., 296.) 
 
 2 Lange: Wochenliche Hallische Anzeigen, xxiv., An., 1744. 
 
MYSTERIOUS SPARKUNGS. 503 
 
 Kratzenstein's path, in the same year announced that such 
 fingers could be restored so completely as to fit them for 
 the piano forte. Quelmalz l soon after evolved a theory 
 that electric matter, nervous fluid and the Newtonian 
 ether, are all of the same nature. 
 
 Meanwhile, the notion that fire exists in the human 
 body, capable of being kindled or at least expelled by 
 electrification, finding a support in the opinions of the 
 German physicians, began to spread throughout Europe. 
 In England, Dr. Henry Miles 2 at once associated with it 
 the sparkling frock of Mrs. Susanna Sewall, concerning 
 which Clayton had written to Boyle from Maryland in 
 1683, an d exhumed other instances of mysterious bodily 
 illuminations, notably the " Mulier Splendens," described 
 by Bartholinus, of Copenhagen, and the remarkable 
 lights which Dr. Simpson had recorded in 1675 as ap- 
 pearing on the combing of hair, the currying of a horse, 
 or the rubbing of a cat's back an effect which he ascribed 
 to ' ' fermentation. ' ' He might have added the ' 4 miracle ' ' 
 told by Bacon 3 "that a few years since a girl's apron 
 sparkled when a little shaken or rubbed, " although Bacon 
 himself attributed the light to the "alum or other salts 
 with which the apron was imbued, and which, after hav- 
 ing been stuck together and incrusted rather strongly, 
 were broken by the friction." Miles connects such phe- 
 nomena with Gray's mention of the great quantity of 
 electric effluvia received by animals. It was reserved, 
 however, for Paul Rolli, 4 another member of the Royal 
 Society, to give the matter a new turn, well calculated to 
 increase the already-aroused public apprehension. 
 
 An Italian treatise of 1733, written by Bianchini, Pre- 
 bendary of Verona, contained an account of the sponta- 
 neous combustion of the Countess Cornelia Bandi, who, 
 
 1 Quelmalz: Programma Solemnia Inaug. July, 1744. 
 
 2 Phil. Trans., No. 476, p. 441, 1745. 
 8 Novum Organum, ii., xii. 
 
 *Phil. Trans., No. 476, p. 447, 1745. 
 
504 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 having retired one night in good health, was found in the 
 morning a heap of ashes. 1 To this he added other equally 
 gruesome instances, of a poor woman in Paris who, having 
 drunk alcohol for years, "contracted a combustible dispo- 
 sition," and of a Polish gentleman who, over-indulging 
 in brandy, exhaled flames and was consumed. As Miles 
 had already linked together people who sparkled and 
 glowed mysteriously and people who emitted fire when 
 electrified, it remained simply for Rolli to suggest the 
 connection between combustible people and mysteriously 
 sparkling people; and of the latter, research in the ancient 
 books reveals plenty of instances. 
 
 There is Eusebius Nierembergius telling how all the 
 limbs of the father of the Emperor Theodoric exhibited 
 lambent luminosity, and Bartholinus affirming the same 
 of Carlo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua; Licetus asserting that 
 Antony Cianfio, a bookseller of Pisa, when he changed his 
 garments "shone all over with great brightness;" Cardan 
 relating that a friend of his, in like circumstances, "shot 
 forth clear sparkles of fire;" Kircher describing a Roman 
 grotto which possessed the capability of causing fire to 
 "evaporate" from the heads of visitors; Father d'Ovale 
 averring with equal recklessness the existence of moun- 
 tains in Peru on the summits of which not only men, but 
 beasts, became luminous; and Castro's story of the won- 
 derful arms of a Veronese countess, which needed Only 
 the gentle friction of a cambric handkerchief to become 
 resplendent. 
 
 "These flames," remarks the alarming Rolli, "seem 
 harmless, but it is only for want of proper fuel;" and then 
 he proceeds to relate how similar sparkles reduced to ashes 
 the hair of a young man; depicts graphically the discom- 
 forts of a Spanish lady who perspired explosively, and 
 crowns all with a quotation from Albertus Krantzius to 
 the effect that in the time of the crusades "people were 
 
 1 This is the story upon which Dickens bases the episode of the death 
 of Krook in Bleak House. 
 
SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION. 505 
 
 burning of invisible fire in their entrails, and some had 
 cut off a foot or a hand where the burning began that it 
 should not go further." 
 
 Another member of the Society supplemented Rolli with 
 an account of a carpenter who was set on fire by lightning 
 and burned for three days. Still another presented a re- 
 cent instance of a woman who ignited spontaneously be- 
 cause of the gin habit. And then came Dr. Cromwell 
 Mortimer, directly suggesting the electrical fire as a cause 
 of these automatic cremations. "The element of fire," 
 he says, 1 "may ... lie latent in fluid bodies ready to 
 become active as soon as it meets with air, or even to 
 kindle if it meets with sulphureous particles under proper 
 conditions. . . . Animals appearing more susceptible of 
 electric fire than other bodies greatly confirms these con- 
 jectures of the phosphoreal principles, and probably being 
 rendered electric to any high degree might prove a dan- 
 gerous experiment to a person habituated to the use of 
 spirituous liquors or to embrocations with camphorated 
 spirit of wine." 
 
 Thus a new factor was added to those which were grad- 
 ually bringing both philosophers and people to a sort of 
 nervous exaltation, which is especially recognizable in the 
 exaggerated statements that soon filled the reports of the 
 experiments of the German scientists. They seemed to be 
 possessed with a feverish desire to intensify the strength 
 of the discharge, and all their energies were directed to 
 devising, for this purpose, improvements in the electrical 
 machine. "Such a prodigious power of electricity," says 
 Priestley, "could they excite from their globes, whirled 
 by a large wheel and rubbed with woolen cloth or a dry 
 hand . . . that if we may credit their own accounts the 
 blood could be drawn from the finger by an electric spark, 
 the skin would burst, and a wound appear as if made by 
 caustic." 
 
 One result is that the records now become mere descrip- 
 
 1 Phil. Trans., No. 476, p. 473, 1745. 
 
506 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 tions of this and that apparatus mostly experimental and 
 of no consequence. Andrew Gordon, a Scotch Benedictine 
 monk and a teacher in Erfurt, substituted a glass cylinder 
 for the glass globe commonly employed. Johann Hein- 
 rich Winkler, professor of Greek and Latin in the Univer- 
 sity of Leipsic, replaced the dry palm of the hand with a 
 leather cushion rubber adjusted to the glass by springs, 
 and rotated the cylinder by a cord passing around its axle 
 and connected at its ends respectively to a foot treadle and 
 an elastic rod. By this means he managed to revolve his 
 cylinder six hundred and eighty times per minute, and 
 thus not only had the extreme satisfaction of producing 
 brighter sparks and more severe shocks than any of his 
 rivals, but of being able to do so, as he says, in any 
 weather, no matter how damp. 
 
 He vied with Bose in wonder working, by lighting spir- 
 its in the presence of a large assembly, by sparks emitted 
 from his fingers, and devised a machine which he termed 
 a u Pirorganon," which is a tangle of little cylinders be- 
 tween which sparks are supposed to pass, and to form 
 fanciful figures such as a winged wheel, etc. It was the 
 first attempt to outline designs in electrical glow. 1 He 
 was of an inquisitive mind, and I am inclined to think 
 that he was the first who undertook to discover the speed 
 with which electricity travels. At all events he suspended 
 a cord 120 feet in length, which he considered amply long 
 for his purpose, so that, returning on itself, the ends came 
 within a few feet of one another, got some one to hold a 
 tray of gold-leaf under one extremity, while he, fixing his 
 eyes upon the gold-leaf and standing electrified upon his 
 pitch cake, suddenly grasped the other extremity. "It is 
 absolutely impossible, " he says with great emphasis, u to 
 distinguish any interval of time between the touching of 
 the cord and the instant when the gold-leaf begins its 
 movement." 
 
 Later, he devoted himself entirely to evolving new elec- 
 
 1 Phil. Trans., No. 493, p. 497, 
 
GORDON'S INVENTIONS. 507 
 
 trical theories. He imagined a subtle electric matter forc- 
 ing its way through bodies to which it is "proper," and in 
 which it is inherent, and evaporating to form an atmo- 
 sphere around them. This matter moving in right lines 
 is not subject to central forces, runs like a fluid, and con- 
 tains particles of fire. He speculated also concerning the 
 elasticity of electricity, but settled nothing; and in fact 
 the more he theorizes the less profitable becomes the task 
 of summarizing his numerous treatises so that it need not 
 be further pursued. 1 
 
 The popular demand for practical utilizations of electric- 
 ity was growing more peremptory. The first to respond 
 to it was the monk Gordon. It was Gordon who invented 
 the electric bell not the contrivance now known by that 
 name, but two gongs and a metal ball suspended by silk 
 lines in proximity to one another. The ball, on being 
 electrified, moved to one gong, struck it, was repelled to 
 strike the other, which again repelled it, and so on. 
 Likewise it was Gordon who invented, the first electric 
 motor curiously enough on exactly the same principle as 
 the first steam motor the aelopile of Hero of Alexandria. 
 It was a metal star pivoted at its center, and having the 
 ends of its rays slightly turned to one side, all in the same 
 direction. The reaction of the electric discharge at the 
 points whirled the star around on its pivot, just as the steam 
 turns the selopile of Hero, or the escaping water rotates a 
 modern* outflow turbine wheel. And Gordon also first used 
 electricity for deadly purposes for he killed many a chaf- 
 finch to show the power of the sparks from his machine. 
 Nor did he disdain to compete in wonders with the wizard 
 Bose, for when the latter conveyed electricity from one 
 man to another over a distance of six feet by means of a 
 jet of water, Gordon ignited spirits by a similar electrified 
 stream, and left people lost in astonishment over the para- 
 dox of water setting things on fire. 
 
 I Winkler: Gedanken von den Eigenschaften, Wirkungen und Ur- 
 sachen der Elektricitat, !,eipsic, 1745; Die Eigenschafteu der Elektrischen 
 Materie, Leipsic, 1745. 
 
508 THE INTELLECTUAI, RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 At about the same time, 1745, appeared the proposal to 
 utilize electric light, made by Gottfried Heinrich Grum- 
 mert, of Biala, Poland, who claimed to have found that 
 a vacuum tube, after being set in glow through prox- 
 imity to a powerfully electrified conductor, could, after a 
 period of rest, be made to glow again without being re- 
 electrified probably by rubbing, as Hauksbee had done 
 the same thing. This, however, he proposed to use "in 
 mines and places where common fires and lights cannot be 
 had,'' so that, in his notion, there is the germ both of 
 electric illumination and the safety lamp. One other dis- 
 covery closes the list of all that are worth especially not- 
 ing among the many which fill the German treatises of 
 the day, and that marks the first step in electro-chemistry. 
 Kriiger learned from Hausen of the sulphurous odor of the 
 electric glow, due, as is now known, to the conversion of 
 the oxygen of the air into ozone, and recalling the bleach- 
 ing power of sulphur, determined to try whether electricity 
 could cause discharge of color. He exposed red poppy 
 leaves, and they quickly turned white ; blue and yellow 
 flowers blanched after some hours. 
 
 While the activity of the English philosophers had not 
 been equal to that of the Germans, it had continued, 
 and Dr. William Watson, apothecary and member of the 
 Royal Society, made the first of his remarkable commu- 
 nications to that body in the spring of 1745. Watson's 
 researches of that year, while mainly devoted to repetitions 
 of the German experiments, were by no means barren of 
 interesting results. He demonstrated the importance of the 
 metallic conductor in the electrical machine in collecting 
 the discharge, and concentrating it at a point. He ignited 
 hydrogen by the electric spark (the beginning of electrical 
 gas-lighting) and fired a musket by the same means; but 
 perhaps his most important revelation for the time was 
 that spirits electrified in a metallic spoon could be fired by 
 the touch of a non-electrified person just as well as an elec- 
 trified person could in like manner ignite non-electrified 
 
ELECTRICAL FIRE. 509 
 
 spirits. Watson called the last an effect of the attractive 
 power of electricity, and the first a result of its repulsive 
 power, an arbitrary hypothesis which served temporarily 
 to satisfy curiosity. 
 
 But in the end the deductions tended to throw existing 
 theories into greater confusion than ever. Here were in- 
 flammable substances ignited, not by sparks emanating 
 from persons, and presumably due to the incorporeal fire 
 set loose, but by sparks apparently engendered in the sub- 
 stances themselves and proceeding to persons, so that, by 
 electrical means, not only could fire be driven out of one's 
 body, but be equally well driven into it. The natural 
 deduction was that if fire could in this way be poured into 
 the human system, the less spirituous liquor contained in 
 that system the better, if people did not want to be con- 
 verted into involuntary bonfires. This was ^before the era 
 of temperance agitation, otherwise the promoters of the 
 cause might thus have found, ready at hand, a powerfully 
 deterrent argument; for if one sort of fire would ignite a 
 toper another kind might be equally efficacious, and a 
 spark from one's pipe might do as much mischief as the 
 flash from the electrical machine. In fact, however, it 
 may be doubted whether any one drank a drop the less, 
 despite the alarming possibilities suggested. 
 
 The philosophers -of both England and Germany had 
 now materially improved their electrical machines, which 
 were yielding discharges hitherto unrivalled in strength. 
 The similarity of the electrical flashes to lightning was 
 commonly remarked, and when Gordon killed birds by 
 them, another resemblance to Jove's bolt was recognized. 
 As for explanatory theories, sentiment and opinion con- 
 cerning not only electrical principles, but regarding the 
 fundamental doctrines of matter and force, had undergone 
 a great change. "At Paris," says Voltaire, referring to 
 his visit to England in 1727, u you see the universe com- 
 
510 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 posed of vortices of subtle matter; at Condon we see noth- 
 ing of the kind. With you it is the pressure of the moon 
 which causes the tides of the sea; in England it is the sea 
 which gravitates towards the moon . . . Among you Car- 
 tesians, all is done by impulsion; with the Newtonians, it 
 is done by attraction of which we know the cause no 
 better." In 1728, according to Voltaire, there were not 
 twenty Newtonians outside of England. But now, sixteen 
 years later, the mathematical prize questions proposed by 
 the French Academy naturally brought the Cartesians and 
 Newtonians into conflict, and not infrequently the Acad- 
 emy impartially divided its rewards between them. Its 
 last act of homage to the Cartesian system was performed 
 in 1740, when the prize on the question of the tides was 
 distributed between Daniel Bernouilli, Euler, Maclaurin 
 and Cavallieri the last of whom endeavored to amend 
 the Cartesian hypothesis on the subject. In 1744, Daniel 
 Bernouilli declared himself even more Newtonian than 
 Newton, for he expressed belief that matter may have been 
 created simply through the law of universal attraction, 
 without the aid of any gravific medium or mechanism. 1 
 
 With the acceptance of the Newtonian doctrine came a 
 tendency to imitate the mental attitude which had led to its 
 conception. The logic of physical experiment was now 
 more than ever the final arbiter. Newton's declaration 
 ''hypotheses non fingo" tended to check the inclination 
 of speculative minds to evolve new electrical theories. 
 Some like Kriiger and Bose declined to formulate any, 
 others sought to explain only specific happenings, and 
 others offered hypotheses tentatively and in the inter- 
 rogative form. 
 
 It might well be imagined that conceptions as to the na- 
 ture and cause of electricity in such conditions would soon 
 become involved in contradictions and confusion. Wink- 
 ler's theory that a solid electrical matter inherent to bodies 
 driven always in right lines from their pores by rubbing 
 
 1 Whewell: History of the Inductive Sciences, ii., 198, et seq. 
 
ELECTRICAL THEORIES. 511 
 
 them, and forming a more or less dense atmosphere about 
 them, has little resemblance to Nollet's hypothesis of the 
 effluence and affluence of a subtle universal matter capable 
 of self-inflammation by the "shock of its own beams"; 
 while differing radically from both is Watson's provis- 
 ional notion that electricity is a force analogous to mag- 
 netism, moving in right lines and not subject to refraction, 
 and yet "in common with light, when its forces are col- 
 lected and a proper direction given thereto upon a proper 
 object, producing fire and flame." In all of them, however, 
 can be traced something of the Newtonian ether of that 
 most subtle matter which Newton described as pervading 
 and lying hid in all gross bodies; u by the force and action 
 of which spirit, the particles of bodies mutually attract one 
 another at small distances and cohere when in contact, and 
 electric bodies operate at greater distances as well as by 
 repelling and attracting the neighboring corpuscle, and by 
 which light is emitted," 1 and all sensation excited. 
 
 Such was the state of affairs when a discovery of the 
 highest moment, made by different observers in different 
 places, so nearly in point of time that the later observation 
 happened to gain the earliest publicity, startled all civil- 
 ized Europe. 
 
 In the fall of 1745, the German artisans, and especially 
 those of Leipsic, probably recognized that the electric ma- 
 chine had come into good market demand. So simple was 
 the apparatus, and so astonishing its effects, that people 
 who made no pretence to being scientific bought it out of 
 curiosity, and amused themselves by repeating at home 
 the experiments which the philosophers publicly exhibited 
 in the lecture rooms and laboratories. When a device is 
 thus taken to the popular bosom, so to speak, the predic- 
 tion may safely be hazarded that before long some one in 
 an unexpected quarter will discover or invent something 
 
 ^rincipia, B. iii. 
 
512 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 concerning it which the philosophers have never thought 
 of or completely missed. And the more complex the in- 
 tellectual gymnastics of a certain class of these erudite per- 
 sons around it, the more certain it seems to be that the 
 discoverer will be found to have solved the problem either 
 by his simple wits or by accident and his wits combined. 
 
 It is not unlikely that among the more thoughtful stu- 
 dents of electricity were some who did not look with favor 
 upon the universal effort directed to the production of 
 more and more powerful discharges. A maximum sooner 
 or later must be reached possible improvements in ma- 
 chines must terminate some time and then what? There 
 was nothing to show that the shocks which shook every 
 joint in a man's body were capable of any effects, different 
 in kind, from those which he could easily bear. More- 
 over, the electrical action came and went like tie light- 
 ning quicker than in the twinkling of an eye. Nothing 
 could be more fugitive, nothing less utilizable, than force 
 exerted under such conditions as this. Could it be im- 
 prisoned? Who would dare suggest the possibility? Who 
 would risk the ridicule sure to follow the conception that 
 the subtle electrical matter which, whether identified with 
 the Newtonian ether or not, the philosophers agreed to be 
 capable of penetrating all substances, could in some bonds 
 be "cabined, cribbed, confined?" Even if one could im- 
 prison it, how was an explosive emanation, shooting in 
 right lines in all directions and never moving continuously 
 in a definite path, to be caught? The attempt would be 
 as idle as trying to box a sunbeam in a soap bubble. 
 
 It being now, perhaps, sufficiently clear that not only 
 did the knowledge of the time offer no way of practically 
 confining or accumulating electricity, but that, on the con- 
 trary, the idea thereof would have been scouted on all 
 sides as contrary to every respectable hypothesis and hence 
 necessarily absurd, the conditions for the doing of the thing 
 were manifestly ripe, and accordingly it was done. 
 
 On the nth of October, 1745, Dean Von Kleist of the 
 
VON KLEIST'S EXPERIMENTS. 513 
 
 Cathedral of Cainin in Pomerania, completed certain ex- 
 periments, concerning which on the following 4th of 
 November he felt sufficiently sure to send an account of 
 them to Dr. Lieberkulm in Berlin. And in December he 
 forwarded other descriptions to Dr. Kriiger in Halle and to 
 Archdeacon Swietlicki of the Church of St. John in Dant- 
 zic, and later to Winkler and others. Lieberkulm 1 re- 
 ported the facts to the Berlin Academy, Kriiger printed 
 the letter as an appendix to his book, 2 and Swietlicki, hav- 
 ing communicated the intelligence to his dozen or so co- 
 members of the little Physical Society of Dantzic, some of 
 the latter tested the matter experimentally and sent back 
 word to Von Kleist that his apparatus would not work. 3 
 All of the others kept silent, for they appear to have 
 reached the same conclusion. 4 
 
 Now what Von Kleist did, according to his own story, 
 is this: Up to the present time, he says, 2 it has not been 
 recognized that sparks and streams flow of themselves out 
 of electrified wood, but that in order to make a light ap- 
 pear, something unelectrified must be approached. But 
 all that is needed now to show the sparks is to insert a 
 spool on which wire is wound in a glass tube. Wood and 
 tube, however, must be warm and dry. If further an iron 
 nail be placed in the spool, then the flames will stream 
 sometimes from the metal and sometimes from the wood. 
 That was the first step. The next was to place a nail or a 
 wire in a narrow-necked medicine vial shaped like a 
 Florentine flask and to electrify the nail. Strong action, 
 he says, follows, especially if mercury or alcohol be in the 
 vial ; and when he takes the vial from the machine a 
 flaming pencil of light breaks forth, which continues burn- 
 
 1 Priestley: History of Elec'y. London, 1767. 
 
 2 Kriiger: Geschichte der Erde. Halle, 1746. 
 
 'Gralath: Nachricht von Einigen Electrischen Versuchen. Versuche, 
 etc., der Natnrforschendeii Gesellschaft in Dantzig, vol. I. Dantzic, 1747. 
 
 4 Winkler: Die Starke der Elektrischen Kraft des Wassers. 
 1746. 
 
 33 
 
514 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 ing while he walks sixty steps. He can even electrify the 
 apparatus, take it into another room and ignite alcohol 
 with it. If, while electrified, the nail be touched with the 
 finger, the resulting shock shakes the arm and shoulder. 
 No one can imagine the strength of the shock : that 
 yielded by a vial four inches in diameter containing liquid 
 is so great that no man would care to endure it a second 
 time. It scatters spirits without igniting them, and hurls 
 the spoon from one's hand. The electrification lasts for 
 twenty-four hours. Bose would never dare brave the kiss 
 of a Venus so armed. 
 
 This is Von Kleist's own recital, merely condensed ; and 
 so far it is Hamlet without the prince. I have preferred, 
 however, to present it in this way so as to show how Von 
 Kleist himself regarded the matter. He first sees only 
 electrified wood which gives sparks of itself; then a nail 
 which is very powerfully electrified; then that something 
 that is electrified can be carried about from one place to 
 another; that it gives a flame, ignites alcohol, and delivers 
 tremendously strong shocks , and that it holds its electrifi- 
 cation for twenty- four hours. 
 
 But the strangest thing of all he keeps for the end. 
 Electrify the bottle as strongly as you can, put it on the 
 table, and touch the nail or wire entering it with the finger, 
 and it only hisses. It cannot then be got to kindle spirits. 
 In fact, none of these terrible shocks or bright sparks can 
 be got from it unless it is held in the hand. 
 
 Small wonder that Von Kleist at once began to question 
 what new capability of the human body had thus come to 
 light, and that this aspect of the discovery should have 
 seemed more important to him than the astounding reve- 
 lation that electricity could apparently be bottled for a day 
 at a time. How it affected the Dantzic philosophers can 
 easily be imagined from the results. They undoubtedly 
 regarded Von Kleist's warning that the bottle must be 
 held in the hand as involving some delusion, for how 
 could hands control the strength of any electrical dis- 
 
THE LEYDEN JAR. 515 
 
 charge? So they put alcohol and a wire in a bottle and 
 electrified it, and put it down and contemplated it, and saw 
 nothing, and wrote to Von Kleist that his apparatus, what- 
 ever it was, must be of peculiar strength, as theirs would 
 not work. And Von Kleist answers naively that he has 
 never seen any apparatus but his own, and hence cannot 
 draw comparisons, but that he has not found the least 
 difficulty in his performances, and in fact has made an 
 excellent little contrivance out of a thermometer tube four 
 inches long, containing water and a wire tipped with a 
 lead ball, which lights spirits satisfactorily and sometimes 
 gives two discharges. Hitherto he has spoken of his de- 
 vice only generally as a machine; now he names it the 
 u Electrical Thermometer," a designation which it has 
 never borne. 1 
 
 The title which it has received, and how it came so to 
 be known, is now to be told. Meanwhile the Dantzic 
 philosophers, with such new light as Von Kleist afforded, 
 returned to the charge, and at their task for the present I 
 leave them. 
 
 The two most eminent physicists of Holland, during the 
 
 1 The weight of evidence from all sources examined is in favor of the 
 foregoing account of the discovery of the Leyden jar; but a passage in 
 one of Winkler's treatises (Die Eigenschaften der Electrischen Materie 
 mid des Electrischen Feuers, etc., Leipsic, 1745), which bears date the 
 20th of August, 1745, and hence some months prior to Von Kleist's 
 formal communication of his experiment to Lieberkuhn and others, 
 indicates that Von Kleist not only made the experiment considerably 
 before this time, but essayed to describe it to Winkler. Winkler's under- 
 standing of it was evidently not clear, for in discussing the strengthening 
 of electric sparks, he says that he placed iron and brass tubes of different 
 lengths one upon another, and hung a large hollow copper ball from 
 them, electrifying all together, and getting stronger sparks than when a 
 single tube four ells long was employed. He then notes that Von Kleist 
 has bound together two iron rods and got similar results, and adds: "The 
 electrical sparks from metal were especially strengthened if the metal 
 object were placed on silk cords in such a way that either the object 
 itself or an iron rod hanging therefrom reached the surface of water, 
 which in a thin glass vessel was electrified while resting upon a silk net." 
 
516 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 period under review, were Wilhelm Jacob s'Gravesande 
 and Peter Van Musschenbroeck. To them is due the in- 
 troduction of experimental philosophy and the Newtonian 
 doctrines into the country, and the establishment of sys- 
 tematic study of these subjects in the University of Leyden. 
 
 s'Gravesande was rather a mathematician than a physi- 
 cist, and Van Musschenbroeck, 1 who was originally his 
 pupil and protege, became, under his guidance, a remark- 
 ably able teacher and experimentalist rather than an in- 
 vestigator. As an instructor, it may be said without 
 exaggeration, that kings vied with one another for the 
 possession of him. He held the chair of philosophy in the 
 University of Duisberg; then in that of Utrecht. From the 
 latter Denmark sought to entice him to Copenhagen, the 
 English king to Gottingen, and the king of Spain vainly 
 offered the tempting salary of 20,000 florins per year. The 
 simple request of his native town proved more potent than 
 all these allurements, and he left Utrecht to succeed Wit- 
 tich as professor of philosophy in the Leyden University, 
 where he remained for the rest of his life, adding to the 
 number of his multifarious physical treatises, and attract- 
 ing crowds of students from all over Europe, despite the 
 dazzling inducements to abandon his chosen field held out 
 by the king of Prussia and the empress of Russia. One 
 recognizes something characteristically Dutch in the solid- 
 ity of attainments and persistent fixity of purpose which 
 Van Musschenbroeck above all else possessed, just as some- 
 thing typically French is apparent in the dazzling abilities 
 and captivating style of the Abbe Nollet, whose celebrity 
 at that time, in France at least, even exceeded that of the 
 Leyden professor. 
 
 Jean Antoine Nollet was an abbe of the ancien regime, 
 not even ordained a priest, but assuming a minor order, 
 and with it the ecclesiastical garb and name of abbe, as 
 many another brilliant man had done, not for the sake of 
 the vocation, but for social distinction and security of posi- 
 
 1 Nouv. Biographic Generale, 37. 
 
ABBE: NOLLET. 517 
 
 tion about the court, which otherwise might prove unat- 
 tainable to the simple student of science, letters or art. 
 Dufay had been his preceptor, guide and friend, and left 
 him stamped with his own charming qualities, to which 
 Nollet added an individual genius for simplifying and ex- 
 pounding physical science, which made his lecture-rooms 
 at Versailles the resort of the gay French court; and this, 
 not because he had become tutor to Monsieur the Dauphin, 
 nor even because his experiments were astonishing, but 
 because his talk was delightful and witty. There is many 
 an old print representing the Abbe in his curled wig and 
 skull cap, with his black gown barely concealing the richly- 
 laced coat and rapier beneath, daintily conducting Madame 
 la Marquise to the electrical machine, where, to the edifi- 
 cation of the other assembled grandes dames, she will re- 
 ceive, with a little grimace, a little shock which will not 
 disarrange a patch on her face, nor disturb a fold of her fur- 
 belows; or, perhaps, inviting Monsieur le Comte to wit- 
 ness the spirits burst into flame beneath his sword point, 
 or to laugh at the overthrow, by the fierce discharge, of 
 some stolid serf wearing the king's uniform. Indeed 
 there was no startling experiment of Hauksbee, Gray, 
 Dufay or Bose which Nollet did not repeat, and in many 
 instances on a scale greater than the originator had ever 
 attempted. 
 
 There was a great contrast between this French philoso- 
 pher of the salon and the Dutch philosopher pedagogue: 
 as different from one another as both were from that Ger- 
 man ''wizard" Bose; and yet alike in each being a phil- 
 osopher, which Von Kleist, whose discovery has contrib- 
 uted so much to the immortality of the memories of both 
 of them, certainly was not. 
 
 But, at the time when Van Musschenbroeck wrote his 
 famous letter to Re'aumur, which Nollet made public in 
 France, neither writer nor promulgator had ever heard of 
 the Pomeranian Dean and his medicine vial. The Brit- 
 ish Magazine, the Universal Magazine, the London Maga- 
 
518 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 . fa Jiteur Iwenit 
 
 tfecit 
 
 ABBE; NOI.I<ET EXHIBITING GRAY'S EXPERIMENT OF THE 
 ELECTRIFIED BOY. 1 
 
 1 Reproduced in fac simile from the frontispiece of Nol let's Essai sur 
 T ^lectricit^ des corps. Paris, 1746. The boy is suspended on silk lines 
 and electrified by the excited glass tube held by the lecturer, so that his 
 hand attracts bits of loose foil on the table below. 
 
THE LEYDEN JAR. 519 
 
 zine, the Gentleman's Magazine, even the Newcastle Jour- 
 nal and the Caledonian Mercury, and perhaps dozens of 
 other public prints in England, were giving the new elec- 
 trical discoveries as part of the regular news of the day, as 
 fast as they were told by those who made them; but jour- 
 nalistic enterprise of that sort had not yet reached the Con- 
 tinent, and for quick intelligence the private letter was 
 still the best and safest medium. 
 
 In January, 1746 (the Dantzic philosophers still puzzling 
 over Von Kleist's instructions), Musschenbroeck wrote to 
 Reaumur as follows: 1 
 
 "I wish to inform you of a new, but terrible experiment, 
 which I advise you on no account personally to attempt. 
 I am engaged in a research to determine the strength of 
 electricity. With this object I had suspended by two blue 
 silk threads, 2 a gun barrel, which received electricity by 
 communication from a glass globe which was turned 
 rapidly on its axis by one operator, while another pressed 
 his hands against it. From the opposite end of the gun 
 barrel hung a brass wire, the end of which entered a glass 
 jar, which was partly full of water. This jar I held in my 
 right hand, while with my left I attempted to draw sparks 
 from the gun barrel. Suddenly I received in my right 
 hand a shock of such violence that my whole body was 
 shaken as by a lightning stroke. The vessel, although of 
 glass, was not broken, nor was the hand displaced by the 
 commotion: but the arm and body were affected in a man- 
 ner more terrible than I can express. In a word, I believed 
 that I was done for." 
 
 He then proceeds to say that the shape of the vessel is 
 unimportant, but that he believes that a thin white glass 
 five inches in diameter would possibly give a shock strong 
 enough to kill. The person receiving the discharge may 
 
 1 Memoire de 1'Acad. Roy. des Sciences, 1746, Paris. 
 
 2 Gordon imagined that he discovered that blue silk threads insulated 
 better than any others, and for this reason every one about this time was 
 using them. 
 
520 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 stand on the floor, and must either hold the jar in one hand 
 and excite sparks with the other, or he may place the jar 
 on a piece of metal on a table, and touch the metal with 
 his hand, bringing a finger of the other hand to the wire. 
 Of course this experiment is the same as that of Von 
 Kleist, and goes further, for it eliminates the necessity of 
 supporting the vessel in the hand, while making it clear 
 that the seat of the effect is not in the body, as Von Kleist 
 
 THE I,EYDEN EXPERIMENT. 1 
 
 supposed, and as the Dantzic philosophers evidently re- 
 fused to suppose, but in the apparatus, and that when 
 one hand touches the wire which enters the jar (and ex- 
 tends down into the water therein), and the other hand 
 touches the metal plate on which the jar rests, a path for 
 the discharge is made through the body of the operator. 
 
 1 Reproduced in reduced facsimile from Winkler's Die Starke der 
 Electrischen Kraft des Wassers in glasernen Gefassen. Leipsic, 1746. 
 
THE LEYDEN JAR. 521 
 
 Other letters from Leyden, especially from Allamand, 1 
 Van Musschenbroeck's colleague and assistant, soon 
 brought further details for the Professor's first communi- 
 cation was evidently written while he was still suffering 
 from the nervous prostration following the shock; and he 
 was doubtless entirely in earnest in his remark that he 
 would not undergo the experience again for the Crown of 
 France; although he did do so, and with even worse re- 
 sults than before. The observation was made by acci- 
 dent, Van Musschenbroeck's object, some say, being to 
 ascertain whether the charge on electrified bodies could 
 be prevented from dissipation by contact with water 
 others that he was examining the capacity of water for 
 receiving and propagating electricity. Allamand avers 
 that the shock deprived him of breath for some 'minutes ; 
 but the most important part of Allamand' s communication 
 to Nollet is his ascription of the credit of the actual dis- 
 covery to one Cunaeus, a scientific amateur, who, he says, 
 observed the effects while repeating at home certain ex- 
 periments which Van Musschenbroeck and Allamand had 
 shown him. The evidence, however, in support of 
 Cunaeus, is not only weak, but in details contradictory, 
 and it seems safer to conclude with the Abbe* de Mangin, 
 who, in his history written contemporaneously with the 
 event, declares that the claim for Cunseus is u a mere 
 stratagem devised "by -people envious of Musschenbroeck 
 for the purpose of depriving him of a part of the glory 
 which was justly due him" -pace, of course, Von Kleist. 
 At all events, whether originating with Van Musschen- 
 broeck or Cunseus, it is certain that the attention of the 
 world was first attracted to the discovery by the letter 
 which Musschenbroeck wrote and Nollet published; and, 
 as that information came from Leyden, the discovery be- 
 came known sometimes as the Musschenbroeckian, oftener 
 as the Leyden experiment, while the contrivance itself 
 
 1 Mem. de 1'Acad. Roy. des Sciences, 1746. 
 
522 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 was called, and to this day bears the name of the L,eyden 
 jar. 
 
 To return now to the Dantzic Society, or rather to 
 Daniel Gralath, who was at work in its behalf. In Feb- 
 ruary of 1746, Von Kleist sent a final epistle, which seems 
 to have clarified matters; so that ten days later, Gralath 
 definitely finds that the jar must be held in one hand and 
 its wire touched with the other, and ascribes the long de- 
 lay to Von Kleist's failure to make this plain in the 
 beginning. Gralath soon after hears of the L,eyden ex- 
 periment, and at once advocates Von Kleist's claim to the 
 discovery, naming the proceeding the "Kleistian strength- 
 ening experiment," and the jar, the "strengthening 
 machine." But it was too late the infant had already 
 been christened, and the world refused, justly or unjustly, 
 to sanction the change of cognomen. 
 
 Gralath's experiments were, however, fraught with new 
 discovery. In common with Musschenbroeck he records 
 the great power of the discharge, which he says gave some 
 people the nose-bleed, and acted like a lightning stroke; 
 but announces that the thinner the glass of which the bot- 
 tle is made, the stronger are its effects: that he has suc- 
 ceeded in retaining the charge in it for three days (but 
 here Von Kleist excels him, for in his hands the bottle 
 worked well even after eight days' inaction) ; and that, al- 
 though the bottle might seem to be completely discharged 
 so that no trace of electricity is manifest, nevertheless, 
 after a short period of rest it once more yields vivid sparks. 
 
 The difficulty which minds moving in a rut always find 
 in getting out of it, is well exemplified in the manner in 
 which the philosophers dealt with the new apparatus. 
 Despite its singular capacities, they saw in it only a con- 
 trivance for producing shocks stronger than their machines 
 would yield, and bent their energies to testing the effects. 
 Nollet killed birds with the discharge, noting that on dis- 
 section they exhibited the same condition of ecchymosis 
 shown by people struck by lightning. Gralath destroyed 
 
THE FIRST ELECTRICAL MEASURING INSTRUMENT. 523 
 
 life ill beetles and worms ; but not succeding in so doing 
 in birds, sought still further to intensify the discharge, and 
 thus reached the idea of combining the effects of several 
 jars, which he placed in metal pans, with their lead balls 
 in contact with the prime conductor of his machine, while 
 from each pan a wire proceeded to a copper globe placed 
 within sparking distance of the conductor. This was the 
 first grouping of electric generators in battery, in which 
 they were obviously disposed in parallel, or multiple arc 
 an arrangement which for some time was the only one 
 known. 
 
 Gralath now killed birds easily, and reports minutely on 
 the physiological changes produced ; but, as he saw that 
 whatever the effects of these strong discharges might be, 
 no certain knowledge as to them could be obtained unless 
 their strength could be measured, he turned his efforts to 
 contriving a measuring instrument. But he soon found 
 the difficulties insuperable. What should be the standard? 
 What the unit? What was really to be measured the at- 
 tractive power of the charge, or the striking energy of the 
 discharge? He arranged near a scale-pan, which he main- 
 tained in a non-electrified state, an iron rod which com- 
 municated with his machine the rod being adjustable 
 nearer to or further from the scale-pan, and attracting the 
 latter when electrified. The attractive force of the rod 
 was counterbalanced by weights in the opposite pan. His 
 factors were the distance of the electric machine from the 
 apparatus, the distance of the rod from the scale-pan and 
 the balancing weights ; and he tabulates his results, arriv- 
 ing at the conclusion that with the rod distant half an inch 
 from the scale-pan, the ratio of attractive force, when the 
 electric machine was at maximum distance from the appa- 
 ratus, to that existing when the machine was at minimum 
 distance therefrom, was as 74 to 44 ; and that this inverted 
 represented the relative strengths of the corresponding dis- 
 charges. He had no faith in his deduction, which, he 
 says, requires proof by long trials and experiment, and 
 
524 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 confines himself to remarking that, if a natural law con- 
 necting attraction and spark energy should be established, 
 his contrivance would be an "Electrometer," adapted to 
 measure both the attractive force and the sparks, and that 
 it would be of great use, and free this branch of philosophy 
 from many uncertainties. Such was the first attempt to 
 measure electricity, to-day the most modern of all electri- 
 cal arts. 
 
 The records of the Leyden jar experiments which now 
 appear are devoted more to graphic descriptions of the 
 physical sufferings of over-zealous philosophers than to the 
 announcement of new discoveries. Winkler modified the 
 apparatus by winding an iron chain around the bottle, and 
 connecting it to a metal plate near the prime conductor of 
 his machine; the wire from within the bottle also being 
 connected to the same conductor. His letter to the Royal 
 Society recounts his convulsions, the agitation of his blood, 
 the supervention of an ardent fever, and the evil result at- 
 tending the curiosity of his better-half, who, taking the 
 shock a second time, was afflicted with nosebleed. Nollet 
 entertained the French king by transmitting the discharge 
 through 180 of his guards, "who were all so sensible of it 
 at the same instant that the surprise caused them all to 
 spring up at once." This however, was outdone by the 
 performance of the Carthusian monks in Paris, who formed 
 a line 900 feet long u by means of iron wires of propor- 
 tionable length between every two, and consequently far 
 exceeding the line of the one hundred and eighty guards. 
 The effect was that when the two extremities of this long- 
 line met in contact with the electrified vial, the whole 
 company at the same instant of time gave a sudden spring, 
 and all equally felt the shock." 
 
 It is not difficult to understand why the electrical his- 
 tories of de Mangin, Secondat, Priestley, d'Alibard, Gra- 
 lath and others, written near to the time of the discov- 
 ery of the Leyden jar, hail it as a great advance, because 
 of its capabilities in the production of discharges of unpre- 
 
THE ELECTRICAL CIRCUIT. 525 
 
 cedented strength. The writers of fifty years ago, how- 
 ever, find in the supposed storing or accumulating pro- 
 perties of the contrivance its chief value, and for that 
 cause assign to it a high place among the great electrical 
 inventions. From the modern point of view the historical 
 importance accorded to the Leyden jar or condenser seems 
 disproportionate when the relatively minor part which it 
 plays in existing applications of electricity is recalled; but, 
 on the other hand, the immediate reason for the great pro- 
 moting influence which it exerted upon electrical progress 
 at the time of its advent is not found wholly in the mag- 
 nifying power and the accumulating property of the con- 
 trivance. As ensuing events soon showed this influence 
 rests, and perhaps chiefly rests, upon the fact that by 
 means of the Leyden jar came the first recognition of an 
 electrical circuit. 
 
 The discharge of the electric machine, like that of the 
 rubbed glass tube, had hitherto been delivered from the 
 globe either directly to the object to be electrified or to a 
 metal prime conductor (usually a suspended gun barrel), 
 and thence to the object the latter being insulated on a 
 pitch cake or by suspension on silk strings. Because the 
 Dantzic philosophers had supposed that the Leyden jar 
 would act in the same way, they regarded it as a failure 
 when, on being merely laid on the table, it refused to 
 deliver its spark to an object brought near to it. As 
 soon, however, as Gralath and others understood that the 
 charged jar must rest in one hand, while the other touched 
 the ball upon the end of its inserted wire, the recognition 
 of a circuitous path, to which the electricity of the jar was 
 confined, was complete. That path included both the jar 
 and the human body. When, for the holding hand, a 
 metal pan in which the jar rested, or a chain enwrapping 
 the jar, was substituted, communicating by wire with the 
 ball, then the path became a metallic circuit, and the sup- 
 posed influence of the human bod}'' per se was eliminated. 
 In that path the electricity seemed to be present, and not 
 
526 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 elsewhere. Here then was the electric matter not only 
 seemingly shut up in a jar, but retained in a definite con- 
 tinuous circuit. 
 
 It was not long before experiments on the L,eyden jar, 
 due to mere curiosity to witness the strength of the dis- 
 charge, began to give place to more rational investigation. 
 Then it became manifest that a great change had taken 
 place, and that the progress of thought was to be different 
 from ever before. The field of research had suddenly 
 broadened, and now new paths, opening in all directions, 
 lost themselves in the mists of the new horizon. The old 
 way continued onward in far perspective, but nowhere on 
 the shadowy circle was there a sign to show that the goal 
 whither it was believed to tend the discovery of the ulti- 
 mate nature of electricity was a whit the nearer. Of 
 these paths one led apparently to the solution of the 
 mysteries of the wonder-working jar ; another to the 
 revelation of the capabilities of the force confined in the 
 circuit ; to the hiding-place of a potent weapon where- 
 with to combat all ills and diseases, a third seemed 
 directed; while a solitary finger-post pointed, not to the 
 low-lying fog, but straight upward to the clouds upward 
 to the very home of the lightning. Many such ways 
 stood open, but of them all, to the foregoing were appar- 
 ently the most inviting. Into the first two flocked the 
 electricians, and into the third the physicians. The fourth 
 remained for awhile untraversed, awaiting the advent of a 
 philosopher who just then was regulating municipal affairs 
 for the staid citizens of far-off Philadelphia. 
 
 The European electricians worked assiduously. Their 
 experiments are legion. The records especially of those 
 devoted to correcting their own mistakes would fill huge 
 volumes, but do not, thanks to the mercilessly winnowing 
 rules of the Royal Society and the French Academy 
 ordinances which were enforced by public opinion outside 
 of the circles of those learned bodies as effectively as 
 within them. There are no big folios and massive quartos 
 
NOLLET'S EXPERIMENTS. 527 
 
 of the eighteenth century devoted to electrical treatises. 
 People who wrote on electricity were forbidden to write 
 sermons; and people who wrote sermons could not write 
 on electricity. Dr. Priestley was the only exception; but 
 even his ponderous history is a mere brochure for the 
 author of 346 books, mainly theological. 
 
 It is not necessary here to epitomize, however briefly, 
 the contents of the many little books which appeared in 
 Europe during the two years immediately following the 
 advent of the Ley den jar. Some, like the anonymous 
 Venetian work, 1 which begins by recounting the gallant 
 adventures of a pair of young soldiers in the charming city 
 of the Adriatic, and ends by making them listeners to an 
 elaborate dissertation on electricity as a part of the polite 
 conversation in somebody's palace, are quaintly curious. 
 Nollet is developing more and more startling experiments 
 with what seems to be constantly augmenting ingenuity. 
 He turns to the electric light, and places glass flasks ex- 
 hausted of air directly upon the metal conductor, which he 
 connects by a chain with the globe of his electric machine. 
 Sometimes the flask bursts into glow, and luminous 
 aigrettes shoot from the metal cap and stop-cock. If he 
 brings his fingers to the exterior the flames divide as if to 
 meet them. Sometimes a single powerful stream flows 
 from the end of the rod, and when he touches the latter 
 with his finger a spark leaps forth, and "at the same in- 
 stant the vessel is filled with so brilliant a light that all 
 objects near it are made distinctly visible/' so that he 
 adds, enthusiastically, u A more natural representation of 
 the lightning flashes which precede or accompany thunder 
 could not be found." 
 
 The effect of electricity on vegetables and animals he 
 essays to test by direct experiment. He plants mustard 
 seeds in two receptacles, and maintains one in an electri- 
 fied state for eight days. "The electrified seeds," he says, 
 "had all sprouted at the end of that time, and had stalks 
 
 1 DelP elettricismo ossia delle forze elletriche. Venice, 1746. 
 
528 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 fifteen or sixteen lines in height, while but two or three 
 of the non-electrified plants had appeared above ground, 
 and even these had steins not more than three or four 
 
 ABBE NOLLET'S EXPERIMENTS ON ELECTRIC LIGHT IN VACUUM 
 
 FLASKS. 
 
 1 Reproduced in reduced fac simile from Nollet's Recherches sur les 
 Causes Particulieres des Phenomenes Electriques. Paris, 1749. The 
 glass globe being set in rapid rotation is electrically excited by the pres- 
 sure of the hands against it, and the electrification passes from globe to 
 chain and thence to the conducting rods, and exhausted flasks. 
 
NOLLET'S EXPERIMENTS. 529 
 
 lines high." He has no doubt that electricity accelerates 
 vegetation, although it seems to him that the plants thus 
 forced are not as hardy as those which grow under natural 
 conditions. 
 
 ABBE NOLLET'S EXPERIMENTS IN ELECTRIFYING ANIMALS AND 
 VEGETABLES. 1 
 
 1 Reproduced in reduced fac simile from Nollet's Recherches sur les 
 Causes Particulieres des Phenome"nes Electriques. Paris, 1749. The 
 hand on the right holds a vessel of water, which trickles slowly from the 
 spouts turned away from the electrified chain, but is projected in jets 
 from those in proximity thereto. 
 
 34 
 
530 THE INTELLECTUAL RISK IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Then he turns to animals. Two cats, "each four months 
 old, of nearly the same size, and fed alike," are placed in 
 cages, one of them being near the conductor of the electric 
 machine, which is excited for some hours. Both the elec- 
 trified cat and the non-electrified cat lose weight, but the 
 electrified cat loses the most, about 54 grains. Nollet 
 thinks this may be due to "difference in temperament," 
 although he admits that the cats went placidly to sleep, 
 except when he gave them shocks. Then he electrifies 
 pigeons and small birds, and finally persons, and concludes 
 that in all cases there is a loss in weight due to "transpira- 
 tion;" but when he attempts to treat actual maladies he 
 fails. "The paralytics, experiencing no relief which 
 would sustain their patience (for some is necessary in 
 order that they may undergo this sort of torture), com- 
 plained bitterly," and the Abbe abandons for the time his 
 high hopes of thus relieving suffering humanity. 
 
 The great majority of experiments now contemporane- 
 ously recorded, however, are of little interest. A better 
 idea of the thought and achievement of this period can be 
 had by following the work of a few men, whose superior 
 intelligence, or better facilities, or both, led their thought, 
 for a short time only, to bring forth all the fruit that is 
 worth garnering. 
 
 Winkler discovered that when electricity had several 
 paths to choose from, it appeared to traverse the one which 
 was composed of the material which conducted best, and 
 that is all that need be said now about him. The two 
 philosophers who most attract and hold attention are rivals 
 Louis Guillaume L,e Monnier, the younger, in France, 
 and Dr. William Watson in England. At this time no one 
 pretended to understand why the Leyden jar behaved as it 
 did. First, it could be electrified by the ordinary globe 
 machine or rubbed tube; second, it yielded an extraordi- 
 narily strong shock and bright spark; and third, it did this 
 last only when its exterior was connected in circuit with 
 its interior. In entering upon a new inquiry, it is often 
 
LE MONNIER/S CIRCUIT. 531 
 
 as efficacious, for the purpose of starting, to challenge an 
 existing theory as to propound a new one. Thus did L,e 
 Monnier. Dufay had stated in substance that conductors 
 cannot be electrified unless supported on non-conductors. 
 The Ley den jar, says L,e Monnier, 1 nmst be an exception 
 to Dufay's principle, for it can be electrified, although it 
 is supported on the hand, which is a conductor. That 
 shows us, at once, that Le Monnier and he probably re- 
 flected the idea of the French philosophers generally sim- 
 ply considered the jar as an electrified mass, regardless of its 
 diverse materials. For him the objective point is less the 
 jar, than the circuit. He states the principle of it: "All 
 bodies are electrified by means of a vial of water fitted to 
 a wire," if "placed in any curved line connecting the ex- 
 terior wire and that part of the bottle which is below the 
 surface of the water " but passes at once to something re- 
 markable. Hitherto everything to be electrified was in- 
 sulated on pitch cakes or silk supports. What astonishes 
 L,e Monnier now is, if 200 men be placed hand in hand 
 the end individuals touching the inserted wire and the 
 bottom of the bottle respectively a violent concussion is 
 felt by all at once; and this equally well, whether they are 
 all mounted on cakes of resin or stand on the floor; equally 
 well when they are connected by iron chains; equally well 
 whether the chains dip in the water or lie on the ground, 
 and the electricity runs equally well now he abolishes the 
 men through a wire a league long, "though a part of it 
 dragged on the wet grass, went over channel hedge or 
 palisades and over ground newly ploughed up." He even 
 bends a bar of iron to touch the two points of the jar, and 
 observes that it does not acquire more electricity when 
 held by silk lines than when supported in the hand. 
 Strange, he thinks, how "the electricity will stay in the 
 path thus made for it, without either running off or be- 
 coming absorbed." 
 
 1 Phil. Trans., No. 481, p. 247, 290. Memoirs de 1'Acad. Roy. des Sci., 
 1746. 
 
532 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 There was an ornamental octagonal pond in the Tuiler- 
 ies gardens of those days, which measured about an acre 
 in extent. Around the semi-circumference of this Le 
 Monnier disposed an iron chain so that its ends came 
 diametrically opposite one another. These ends were 
 held respectively by two observers, one of whom dipped 
 his disengaged hand in the water. The other, across the 
 basin, held in his free hand an electrified Leyden jar, the 
 inserted wire of which he thus presented to an iron rod 
 which entered the water, and was supported on a cork 
 float. Thus early in 1746, a circuit was made including 
 both water and a metallic conductor, over which passed 
 the discharge of the jar, so that the two observers were 
 simultaneously shocked. 
 
 Lake other experimenters who had dealt with long 
 conductors, Le Monnier sought to measure the velocity 
 with which the electric matter ran over them, but without 
 avail; nor was he any more successful in finding out what 
 impelled it at a speed which he estimates to be at least 
 u thirty times that of the velocity of sound in air." He 
 made up his mind, however, that the electric matter is 
 communicated to bodies in proportion to their surfaces, 
 and not in proportion to their masses. 
 
 The conclusions of Le Monnier appear to have been re- 
 garded by the English electricians as a challenge. Wat- 
 son was now their leader, and his response was ready. Le 
 Monnier had dealt with the jar as a mere electrified mass, 
 operating to increase the shock or spark, for some reason, 
 unknown. Watson, 1 in reply, declares that it owes its 
 capabilities to the accumulation of electrical matter within 
 it this happening because the glass acts as a barrier and 
 prevents the electrical matter escaping from the water as 
 it is supplied thereto by the inserted wire. We shall see 
 changes in these notions soon. Meanwhile, as for the rest 
 of Le Monnier's observations, they merely prove, says Wat- 
 
 1 Phil. Trans., No 482, p. 388. Watson: Exp'ts. and Obs'us. on Elec'y. 
 3d ed. London, 1746. 
 
WATSON ON THE LEYDEN JAR. 533 
 
 son, "what I have myself found out," that the electricity 
 will always describe the shortest circuit between the electri- 
 fied water and the wire of the vial which contains it, "and 
 this operation respects neither fluids nor solids, as such, 
 but only as they are non-electric (conducting) matter. 
 Thus this circuit," he adds, tracing it and using the word 
 to name the path provided by LeMonnier, "consists of the 
 two observers, the iron chain, the line of water and the 
 iron rod in the floating cork." 
 
 Watson 1 is now well in the van. The German and the 
 French electricians, preferring to follow the leadership of 
 Winkler and Nollet, are devoting themselves chiefly to 
 contriving variations of experiments already decisive, and 
 so to heaping up a great mountain of cumulative proof. 
 Watson shows that if the amount of water in the jar is in- 
 creased even to four gallons, the stroke is not augmented 
 in strength ; that iron filings therein answer as well as 
 water, and mercury as well as iron filings. The specific 
 gravity of the material in the jar he thus discovers has no 
 influence. He states that the Ley den vial "seems capa- 
 ble of a greater degree of accumulation of electricity than 
 anything we are at present acquainted with ... by hold- 
 ing its wire to the globe in motion, the accumulation being 
 complete, the discharge runs off from the point of the wire 
 as a brush of blue flame." 
 
 Watson now, as the result of all his observations, pro- 
 pounds a theory which was generally accepted by the 
 English philosophers. Historically, and in the light of 
 immediately ensuing events, it is of especial importance. 
 
 The hypothesis affirms the existence of an electrical 
 
 1 Watson's papers of this period in Phil. Trans, are: No. 478, p. 41, 
 read February 6, 1746 ; No, 482, p. 388, read January 29, 1747 ; No. 484, 
 p. 695, where there is added to his paper of Februry 6, 1746, "A Sequel 
 to the Experiments and Observations," etc., read October 30, 1746. The 
 principal papers were separately published. Experiments and Observa- 
 tions, 3d Ed., London, 1746. Sequel to Experiments and Observations, 
 2d Ed., London, 1746 : An acccount of the experiments made by some 
 gentlemen of the Royal Society, etc. London, 1748. 
 
534 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 ether, much more subtle than common air, and passing to 
 a certain depth through all known bodies. It has the 
 property of air, of moving light objects, and is likewise 
 elastic, this last fact being shown by its extending itself 
 around excited electrics, by its increasing the motion of 
 fluids, by the apparent influx of electrical fire to all bodies 
 and by its giving violent shocks to the human frame. 
 
 With this ether all bodies are normally charged. If, 
 however, a body be excited, then the normal conditions 
 are disturbed, so that the ether in the nearest unexcited 
 non-electric tends, by its elasticity, to move to the excited 
 body where it accumulates. In so doing it carries light 
 bodies with it, which accounts for electrical attraction. 
 
 Applying this idea to an electrified Leyden jar held in 
 one hand of an observer, who touches with the other the 
 metal gun-barrel on which it is suspended by its inserted 
 wire, Watson maintains that, on the explosion which fol- 
 lows, the man (nearest conductor) instantly parts with as 
 much fire from his body as is accumulated in the water of 
 the jar and in the gun barrel; the fire rushing violently 
 through one arm to the water, through the other to the 
 barrel. Then as much fire as the man has lost is imme- 
 diately and with equal violence replaced from the floor of 
 the room. Hence, and for both reasons, the shock. This 
 flux, he further says, may be prevented, and its effects are 
 not seen, when the glass containing the water is too thick, 
 or if the man stand on an insulator, or if the points of con- 
 tact between his (conducting) hand and the jar which it 
 holds are fewer. The last limitation, it may be observed 
 in passing, proved suggestive; for Dr. Bevis, a member 
 of the Royal Society, promptly showed that the greatest 
 number of contact points would be obtained by coating the 
 exterior of the jar with sheet lead or so-called tin foil. 
 This suggestion was adopted, as it was found that a person 
 who merely touched this coating with a small wire ob- 
 tained as strong a shock as if the whole hand rested against 
 the exterior of the uncoated bottle. 
 
WATSON'S ELECTRIC AL THEORY. 535 
 
 Watson's " sequel" is dated October 2Oth, 1746, and was 
 read before the Royal Society ten days later. Reduced to a 
 few words, his theory is simply that the exciting of an elec- 
 tric causes the advent thereto of fire from the nearest ad- 
 jacent conductor, and that the latter regains an amount 
 equal to that lost. " By asserting," he adds, "that that 
 we have hitherto called the effluvia does not proceed from 
 the glass *or other electrics per se, I differ from Cabseus, 
 Digby, Gassendus, Brown, Descartes and the very great 
 names of the last as well as the present age." 
 
 It may be conceded that Watson supposed that what he 
 calls the elastic electric ether became more dense in one 
 body and less dense in another; but it will be observed that 
 there is no principle of equilibrium here involved. He 
 imagined that the man touching the charged Leyden jar 
 parted, immediately with his fire, and immediately re- 
 gained it from the floor. But no matter how highly 
 charged the jar, if, according to Watson's notion, he stood 
 on a pitch cake, or even had dry soles to his shoes, the flux 
 to him from the floor would thereby be prevented, and the 
 jar would give him no shock which is of course erroneous; 
 for the man's body, no matter on what it is supported, ob- 
 viously closes the circuit between the inside and outside 
 of the jar. 
 
 Enough has now been stated to show what Watson's 
 theory actually was in the fall of 1746. I shall recur to it 
 hereafter. 
 
 The physical advance accomplished may now be noted. 
 Van Musschenbroeck had found, and Watson had likewise 
 recently re-verified the fact, that the thinner the glass of 
 the jar the stronger the shock. Watson alone had found 
 that the greater the area of the conductors in contact with 
 the glass, again the stronger the shock. Two of the three 
 conditions upon which depend the capacity of a condenser 
 had thus been discovered : namely, the thinness of the 
 dielectric stratum between the coatings, and the size of the 
 coatings themselves. The third (specific inductive capa- 
 city of the dielectric) was still far in the future. 
 
536 THK INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 So much for the jar. Now as to the circuit. By mid- 
 summer of 1747, Watsoii had gained a comprehensive idea 
 of the law of resistance, and states it thus : 
 
 "This circuit, where the non-electrics (conducting sub- 
 stances), which happen to be between the outside of the 
 vial and its hook, conduct electricity equally well, is 
 always described in the shortest route possible ; but if they 
 conduct differently, this circuit is always forme'd through 
 the best conductor, how great soever its length is, rather 
 than through one which conducts not so well, though of 
 much less extent," in other words, he had established and 
 now announced that the resistance of a conductor to the 
 passage of electricity is proportional to its length, and, 
 other things being equal, depends upon the material of 
 which it is composed. 
 
D K FRAN KLIN . 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE printer's boy, who had landed hungry, footsore 
 and all but penniless at the Market Street wharf in Phila- 
 delphia, after a hard journey by both sea and land from 
 Boston, was now, twenty-three years later, the chief citi- 
 zen of the growing town. To no one did that community 
 then owe so much as it did to Benjamin Franklin. 1 The 
 once runaway apprentice had organized its police, founded 
 its school (destined afterwards to become one of the great 
 universities of the world) devised for it a system of fire 
 protection, established its Philosophical Society and its 
 public library (the first in the colonies), printed its books 
 and its newspapers, supplied it with concentrated worldly 
 wisdom in the maxims of Poor Richard, served it in var- 
 ious official capacities, and invented for it the stoves to 
 which it still clings. Of the magnificent services which 
 he was later to render, not to his town, but to his country, 
 Franklin, at forty years of age, had doubtless no anticipa- 
 tion. The time seemed to him near at hand when he 
 might relinquish some of the many tasks imposed upon 
 him when the grind of money-getting might cease, and 
 when with the modest fortune which tireless endeavor and 
 patient frugality had brought to him, he might turn, not 
 to idleness, but to work which, through the pleasure it af- 
 forded, bore no resemblance to toil. As his inclinations 
 were to philosophic study, this it was now his ambition 
 uninterruptedly to pursue. 
 
 ! I have followed the autobiography of Franklin as edited by the Hon. 
 John Bigelow, in his fine edition of Franklin's Works, N Y., 1889. Par- 
 ton's Life and Times of Franklin, New York, 1864, has a chapter (vol. 
 i, c. ix.) devoted to "Franklin and Electricity," but the errors in it are 
 many. Weems* biography is chiefly a work of pure imagination. 
 
 (537) 
 
538 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 In the year 1746, while revisiting Boston, Franklin met 
 there a Doctor Spence, lately arrived from Scotland, who 
 exhibited to him some crude electrical experiments. 
 Spence' s apparatus was meagre, and his skill small; but 
 the subject was entirely a new one to Franklin, and it sur- 
 prised and delighted him. 
 
 Meanwhile the circulating library which he had estab- 
 lished several years before had attained the dignity of a 
 corporation under a charter granted, in 1742, by John 
 Penn, Thomas Penn and Richard Penn, "absolute Pro- 
 prietaries of the Province of Pennsylvania and the counties 
 of Newcastle, Kent and Sussex upon the Delaware," and 
 was known as the Library Company of Philadelphia. 1 As 
 a matter of course, this institution drew its supply of books 
 from England for colonial publications were few and far 
 between; and it was especially fortunate in possessing in 
 London, rather as its benefactor and friend than as its 
 agent, Peter Collinson, a merchant having extensive busi- 
 ness relations with the American colonies, and a mem- 
 ber of the Royal Society. Collinson was in the habit of 
 gathering, not only books, but news and transmitting the 
 same to the Library Company; and occasionally the mem- 
 bers of the latter, in return, would send to Collinson ac- 
 counts of remarkable natural events occurring in their 
 vicinity. It was a common custom in those days for for- 
 eigners and non-members of the Royal Society to report 
 such happenings or the results of their own new experi- 
 ments to members, so that the latter might offer them to 
 the Society, which, if it approved, caused the accounts to 
 be published in the official transactions. In this way 
 for instance, Joseph Breintnall, a member of the Library 
 Company, communicated through Collinson to the Royal 
 Society, under date of Feb. 10, 1746, his experiences fol- 
 lowing a rattlesnake bite. Collinson himself was a botan- 
 ist of high reputation. Through him a system of exchange 
 
 1 A catalogue of the books belonging to the Library Company of Phila. 
 1769. 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 539 
 
 of horticultural products was maintained between England 
 and the colonies, and into the latter 1 on his recommenda- 
 tion, the culture of flax, hemp, the silk-worm and the wine 
 grape was introduced. 
 
 The electrical experiments of Dr. Watson and his new 
 theory accounting for them, created no small stir among 
 the British philosophers, as may readily be imagined, and 
 in fact stood unrivalled as a topic of scientific interest. In 
 the fall of 1746, Watson republished his "experiments and 
 observations" and also his sequel thereto in book form, and 
 to the former added a preface in which he urges the prose- 
 cution of similar investigations by others, while replying 
 to the still-prevalent cry of "what is the use of it?" 2 
 
 "It must be answered," he says, "that we are not as 
 yet so far advanced in these discoveries as to render them 
 conducive to the service of mankind. Perfection in any 
 branch of philosophy is to be attained but by slow gradua- 
 tions. It is our duty to be still going forward; the rest we 
 must leave to the direction of that providence which we 
 know assuredly has created nothing in vain. But I make 
 no scruple to assert that notwithstanding the great ad- 
 vances which have been made in this part of natural phil- 
 osophy within these few years, many and great properties 
 remain undiscovered. Future philosophers (some perhaps 
 even of the present age) may deduce from electrical experi- 
 ments uses entirely beneficial to society in general." 
 Furthermore, in order to show with what facility such re- 
 search can be conducted, he states that his experiments 
 "were all made with glass tubes about two foot long, the 
 bore about an inch in diameter," and gives some simple 
 directions as to warming and drying the tube before rub- 
 bing it. 
 
 Watson's books were sent over to the Library Company 
 by Collinson, together with such a tube as Watson de- 
 
 1 Stephen: A Dict'y of Nat'l Biography. London, 1887, vol. xi. 
 ' 2 Watson: Experiments and Observations. London, 1746. 
 Watson: Sequel to Experiments and Observations. London, 1746. 
 
540 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 scribes, probably very soon after the reading of Watson's 
 sequel to the Royal Society in October, 1746. He added 
 directions for using the glass. Franklin, being already 
 interested, eagerly seized the opportunity of repeating the 
 experiments which he had seen in Boston; and then, as he 
 gained skill, performed those described in Watson's 
 pamphlets. The attention of his friends to whom he ex- 
 hibited these wonders became enlisted to such a degree, 
 and the news of them spread so widely, that before long, 
 his house was continually filled with curiosity seekers. 
 As he had no fancy for indefinitely repeating these per- 
 formances merely as a show, and a very decided one for 
 pressing ahead to discover new marvels, he presented sev- 
 eral tubes which he had caused to be blown at the glass 
 house to his friends, and invited them to "divide a little 
 this incumbrance with him." The advice given by 
 Watson doubtless acted as a spur to others as well as to 
 Franklin; but instead of each pursuing his own researches, 
 those most interested came together, and before long, a 
 quartette composed of Franklin, Kbenezer Kinnersley, 
 Thomas Hopkinson and Philip Sing united their efforts. 
 If Kinnersley was not Franklin's equal, in point of scien- 
 tific knowledge and experimental ability, he ranked but 
 little below him. He had been educated in England, and 
 
 o 
 
 had emigrated to Philadelphia, where he was eking out a 
 rather precarious existence teaching school, at the time he 
 became Franklin's coadjutor. The letters of Franklin to 
 Collinson bear frequent testimony to his ingenuity, and as 
 will hereafter be seen, he played no inconsiderable part in 
 spreading knowledge of the new science throughout the 
 colonies. Hopkinson was the first president of the Ameri- 
 can Philosophical Society, and Sing was one of its mem- 
 bers. These four men were the " we" to whom Franklin 
 alludes in his early letters as directly participating in tile 
 " Philadelphian experiments." 
 By the latter part of March, I747, 1 Franklin, having be- 
 
 1 Experiments and Observations on Electricity made at Philadelphia, in 
 
FRANKLIN ON POINTED CONDUCTORS. 541 
 
 come satisfied that his colleagues and himself had made 
 some really new discoveries, wrote, under date of the 28th 
 instant, to Collinson, so advising him and expressing the 
 intention of soon sending him an account of them ; adding 
 that he "never was before engaged in any study that so 
 totally engrossed my attention and my time as this has 
 lately done," and that, during some months past, he has 
 had "little leisure for anything else." 
 
 On July n, 1747, Franklin fulfills his promise, and the 
 story is told to Collinson of the first electrical discoveries 
 made in America. Immediately at the very threshold 
 is foreshadowed the great achievement which left Frank- 
 lin's name immortal. The initial announcement refers to 
 u the wonderful effect of pointed bodies both in drawing 
 off and throwing off the electrical fire." 
 
 It was no novelty to electrify pointed conductors. Von 
 Guericke had done so, and Gray and Dufay and the Ger- 
 mans. Hauksbee had seen the glow at his finger-tips. 
 The fire hissing from the ends of iron rods is abundantly 
 pictured in the old engravings of the apparatus of Winkler 
 and Nollet and Watson. But that was not the achieve- 
 ment which Franklin relates. 
 
 He electrified a small cannon ball, and suspended a bit 
 of cork near to it by a silk string. The cork, after touch- 
 ing the ball, was repelled to a few inches' distance and 
 maintained in that position. When he brought the point 
 of a steel bodkin, held in his hand, in the vicinity of the 
 ball, however, the cork fell back against the ball and was 
 no longer repelled by it. The little metal rod thus seemed 
 to conduct the electric atmosphere away from the iron: to 
 draw it off, as Franklin says. 
 
 There is no doubt in Franklin's mind as to the part 
 taken by the sharpened end of the rod. In the dark, a 
 light gathers around it like that of a fire-fly or glow-worm; 
 
 America, by Benjamin Franklin, LL. D., and F. R. S. The fifth ed., 
 London, 1774. A list of the various editions of Franklin's electrical 
 papers will be found in Mr. P. L,. Ford's Bibliography of Franklin. 
 
542 THE; INTELLECTUAL RISE: IN ELECTRICITY 
 
 but if the extremity be blunt, then the light is not seen 
 unless it be brought very near to the globe. 
 
 The circumstances surrounding this attack upon the 
 problems of electricity were novel. In Europe men had 
 become skillful electricians, apparatus had been brought 
 to a condition of refinement, and the keenest philosophical 
 minds had seemingly exhausted their powers in proposing 
 explanatory theories. Every investigator of electricity 
 worked under the potent influence of this highly-developed 
 environment. 
 
 On the other hand, in the colonies there was virtually 
 no environment at all in any wise corresponding in charac- 
 ter. The knowledge of past achievement possessed by 
 Franklin and his colleagues was probably all drawn from 
 Watson's pamphlets, Collinson's brief letters and Spence's 
 crude experiments. And this was perhaps fortunate, for 
 had they been better posted, they would probably have 
 deemed impracticable, in the beginning, efforts which 
 ultimately ended in success. They seem to have copied 
 nothing from European sources not even the electrical 
 machine, which they re-invented. The tubes which Frank- 
 lin caused to be made at the glass house were of common 
 green glass, thirty inches long and as large as could be 
 grasped in the hand. Rubbing them with buckskin, as 
 he says, was fatiguing exercise; and it was for greater con- 
 venience that Philip Sing made the glass into a globe, and 
 taking the hint from his grindstone, gave it an axle and 
 crank. 
 
 Not being aware of the multitude of earlier theories, and 
 unable to reconcile Watson's hypothesis with the showing 
 of experiment, it was inevitable that the Philadelphia ex- 
 perimenters should seek for themselves some other explan- 
 ation of the strange and novel effects before them. Thus 
 came into existence, at the very outset of their research, 
 the Franklinian theory, and it is first announced in the 
 same letter to Collinson in which is described the u draw- 
 ing off" action of the pointed rod. It gained a wider ac- 
 
FRANKIJN'S THEORY OF ELECTRICITY. 543 
 
 ceptance than any electrical hypothesis hitherto proposed. 
 It may almost be said to have become the world's theory, 
 and to have retained a certain ascendency even to the pres- 
 ent time; for it is the most easily thinkable of all to the 
 non-mathematical mind. There is probably no electrical 
 fluid running along conductors and accumulating like 
 water in a tank; but that idea of it is imbedded in the lan- 
 guage and in every-day thought, and the hydraulic analo- 
 gies maintain the vitality of the conception. Indeed, 
 whether the time will ever come when the world will cease 
 to imagine electricity as an actual fluid, may well be 
 doubted. 
 
 The theory which Franklin announced assumed the 
 electrical fire to exist in all bodies as a common stock. If 
 a body acquired more than its normal amount, he termed 
 it "plus" or positively electrified. If it lost some of its 
 normal amount, he regarded its condition as u minus" or 
 negatively electrified. The common stock of electrical fire 
 in all bodies he held to be in a state of equilibrium, and 
 into this common stock the fire from a positively or over- 
 electrified body will flow, while from the common stock 
 the fire will flow to a negatively or under-electrified body. 
 Thus, imagine, says Franklin, three persons, each having 
 his normal equal share of electrical fire. u A, who stands 
 on wax and rubs the tube, collects the electrical fire from 
 himself into the glass; and his communication with the 
 common stock being cut off by the wax, his body is not 
 again immediately supplied. B (who stands on wax like- 
 wise), passing his knuckle along near the tube, receives the 
 fire which was collected by the glass from A; and his com- 
 munication w r ith the common stock being likewise cut off, 
 he retains the additional quantity received. To C stand- 
 ing on the floor, both appear to be electrified; for he hav- 
 ing only the middle quantity of electrical fire, receives a 
 spark upon approaching B, who has an over quantity; but 
 gives one to A, who has an under quantity. If A and B 
 approach to touch each other the spark is stronger, because 
 
544 TH 3 INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 the difference between them is greater. After such touch 
 there is no spark between either of them and C, because 
 the electrical fire is reduced to the original quantity. If 
 they touch while electrizing, the equality is never de- 
 stroyed, the fire only circulating." B therefore is posi- 
 tively or plus electrified, and A negatively or minus. 
 
 The fire may be circulated, says Franklin, and "you 
 may also accumulate or subtract it upon or from any body 
 as you connect that body with the rubber or with the re- 
 ceiver (tube), the communication with the common stock 
 being cut off." 
 
 Franklin's chief concepts, therefore, are first, the normal 
 state of equilibrium of the common stock of electrical fire 
 in all bodies; second, that this equilibrium may be dis- 
 turbed, so that a body, by reason of the disturbing action, 
 may have fire given to it or taken away from it; and third, 
 that, after the disturbing action ceases, the reaction is a 
 transference of the fire back to the original state of equi- 
 librium. The fluid analogy readily suggests itself. The 
 common stock of electrical fire may be represented by the 
 atmosphere. If air be accumulated above atmospheric 
 pressure in a vessel, it will escape therefrom into the 
 aerial ocean until the pressure without and within the ves- 
 sel is equalized. If air be exhausted from a vessel, the 
 atmosphere from without will rush into that vessel again 
 until the pressure outside and the pressure inside are the 
 same. 
 
 The staid people of Philadelphia, however, do not flock 
 to Franklin's house to listen to his theories, but to witness 
 his experiments; and, indeed, he and his colleagues are 
 as alive to the marvelous aspect of it all as Bose himself. 
 The electrical fire leaps "like lightning," writes Franklin, 
 around the gilt ornaments on china plates, or on the sides 
 of books, or around the mirror and picture frames. Philip 
 Sing contrives little pasteboard wheels which are driven 
 like wind-mills when brought near the rubbed tube. 
 Franklin lights candles just blown out, by drawing a spark 
 
FRANKLIN'S LEYDEN JAR EXPERIMENTS. 545 
 
 amidst the smoke between the wire of the Leyden vial 
 and the snuffers. By the aid of the vial he "increases 
 the force of the electrical kiss vastly," and even the cork 
 ball, vibrating like the end of Guericke's thread, between 
 the L,eyden jar and a conductor near by, is blackened and 
 given legs of linen thread, to make it into a counterfeit 
 spider which appears, to quote the genial philosopher once 
 more, "perfectly alive to persons unacquainted." The 
 words are almost identical with those which Porta, nearly 
 two centuries earlier, had used to describe the strange 
 behavior of the iron filings in the magnet field, and the 
 astonishment which their movements created among the 
 bystanders. 
 
 Two months later, Franklin sends Collinson a second 
 letter, in which he describes the Leyden jar as electrified 
 positively within and negatively without, and marvels 
 that these two states of electricity the plus and minus 
 should be "combined and balanced in this miraculous- 
 bottle ! situated and related to each other in a manner that 
 I can by no means comprehend!" He also connects his 
 plus and minus theory with the phenomena of attraction 
 and repulsion, by stating that "when a body is electrified 
 plus it will repel a positively electrified feather or small 
 cork ball. When minus (or when in the common state) it 
 will attract them, but stronger when minus than when in 
 the common state, the difference being greater." 
 
 This is all hypothetical; yet it leads, through Franklin's 
 conviction that the equilibrium of the bottle is restored by 
 exterior communication between its inside and outside, to 
 a discovery of great moment, though he himself never 
 lived to realize its importance. 
 
 Here is the experiment. A wire is fastened to the lead 
 coating of the jar and extends upwards so as to stand 
 parallel to the wire which enters the jar. A cork, sus- 
 pended on a silk thread, is placed between these wires, and 
 the jar is electrified and placed on wax. Then, says 
 Franklin, the cork "will play incessantly from one (wire) 
 35 
 
546 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 to the other 'till the bottle is no longer electrified; that is, 
 it fetches fire from the top to the bottom (inside to outside) 
 of the bottle 'till the equilibrium is restored." 1 
 
 Never before has the electrical fire shown itself in the 
 circuit other than as a spark, a shock, an explosion, in- 
 stantaneous "with a violence and quickness inexpressible." 
 Now Franklin is effecting this restoration of equilibrium 
 slowly. He is breaking up the explosion, so to speak, into 
 a great many little successive explosions. A very small 
 amount of the fire passing from wire to ball is enough to 
 electrify the latter, so that the wire will repel it. It 
 swings over to the opposite wire, to which it delivers its 
 charge, and swings back again. And thus it may go on 
 vibrating to and fro, until it has ferried over all the fire 
 which disturbs the electrical equilibrium between the out- 
 side of the jar and the inside. With this experiment (com- 
 monly cited as illustrating "electrical convection ") begins 
 the evolution of the electric current; the forging of the link 
 between the Ley den jar and the voltaic cell. 
 
 The state of political affairs in Philadelphia when this 
 second letter was written (September, 1747) had become 
 critical. Trouble had arisen, several years before, between 
 England and Spain, as to the right to gather salt at Tor- 
 tugas and cut logwood at Cam peachy. Volunteers had 
 been raised in Pennsylvania for an invasion of Cuba, but 
 the colony would not take any measures to put itself in a 
 state of defense, even when war had broken out, not only 
 with Spain, but with France also. The Quakers of Phila- 
 delphia, in pursuance of their peculiar tenets, would 
 neither fight themselves, nor openly provide means for 
 others to fight. 2 On the day following that on which 
 Franklin's first letter to Collinson is dated, a French priva- 
 teer, anchored off Cape May, and her crew plundered houses 
 within twenty miles of Philadelphia. Still the Quakers 
 refused to provide any means of defense. Shortly after- 
 
 1 See Fig. II. of Franklin's illustration on page 561. 
 2 McMaster: Benjamin Franklin as a man of Letters, N. Y., 1887. 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 547 
 
 wards another French privateer sailed up the Delaware, and 
 within a fortnight Spanish privateers followed. The city 
 was terror-stricken, but the assembly remained obdurate 
 and would provide neither men nor money, arms nor forts. 
 The result was that Franklin stopped making electrical 
 experiments, wrote "Plain Truth," a pamphlet which de- 
 picted the horrors of war in a way that mightily stirred up 
 the people; raised money; built a battery and organized a 
 regiment. Fortunately no occasion rose for testing the 
 efficiency of the safeguards, for the war was ended by the 
 treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in October, 1748. 
 
 Franklin now definitely determined to retire from busi- 
 ness and devote himself to the study of electricity. He 
 sold his newspaper, almanac and printing-house to David 
 Hall. The sum thus realized, added to the fortune which 
 he had amassed, and the revenue derived from places 
 which he held under the crown and the colony, gave him 
 abundant resources to enable him to live the life he most 
 desired, and which he described as "leisure to read, study, 
 make experiments and converse at large with such ingen- 
 ious and worthy men as are pleased to honor me with their 
 friendship or acquaintance." Meanwhile he had pur- 
 chased the apparatus which Dr. Spence had imported, and 
 had added some better instruments which the Proprietaries 
 had sent over from London. Thus well equipped and 
 relieved from all pressing cares, Franklin renewed his 
 researches; and at this task I leave him, in order to note 
 the progress which in the interim the European philoso- 
 phers had made, and the reception which his plus and 
 minus theory encountered in England. 
 
 Watson's hypothesis prevailed in Great Britain. On the 
 continent, where international animosities had full play, 
 there was confusion. "As the French say," writes a 
 member of the Royal Society in the fall of I746, 1 "there 
 
 J Phil. Trans., No. 481, p. 247. 
 
548 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 are so many of what they term "bizarreries," or unaccount- 
 able phenomena in the course of electrical experiments, 
 that a man can scarce assert anything in consequence of 
 any experiment which is not contradicted by some unex- 
 pected occurrence in another;" and the same correspondent 
 quotes the famous naturalist De Buffon as saying, that the 
 whole subject of electricity is "not yet sufficiently ripe for 
 the establishment of a course of laws, or indeed of any cer- 
 tain one, fixed and determinate in all its circumstances," 
 which is significant in view of the persistence with which 
 Abbe Nollet was advocating his favorite effluence doctrine, 
 to which allusion has already been made. 
 
 L/emomiier had (probably in Watson's eyes) committed 
 the indiscretion of announcing discoveries which Watson 
 insisted he himself had in petto. The natural philosopher 
 while sometimes, like other humanity, apt to indulge in 
 the wish, "Pereant male qui ante nos nostra dixissent," 1 
 has a better method of self assertion, at hand which has 
 the merit of being useful. It consists simply in making 
 additional experiments, which, even if they go to sup- 
 port the discovery of one's rival, completely eclipse, by 
 their magnitude or striking character, those on which the 
 latter has rested his conclusions. There is much sagacity 
 in this, because human nature is very apt to link the great 
 results to the great object lessons, and not to the little 
 ones, especially after time has befogged the chronology. 
 Thus did Watson, with respect to Lemonnier; in dealing 
 with Franklin, as we shall see later, he adopted a different 
 course, equally favorable to himself, and equally tinctured 
 with worldly wisdom. 
 
 'Less sententiously, but perhaps as well said in Chevalier D'Aceilly's 
 version ; 
 
 "Dis-je quelque chose assez belle 
 L J antiquite* tout en cervelle 
 Pretend 1 avoir dite avant moi, 
 Ce*st une plaisante donzelle! 
 Que ne venait-elle apres moi ? 
 J'aurais dit la chose avaiit elle! " 
 
WATSON'S ELECTRICAL CIRCUIT. 549 
 
 L,emonnier had apparently caused electricity to traverse 
 the pond in the Tuileries gardens. This Watson deter- 
 mined to outdo; and, not without some misgivings, pre- 
 pared to make the "commotion," as he calls it, felt across 
 the River Thames. With the aid of several members of the 
 Royal Society he laid a wire along Westminster Bridge a 
 distance of some twelve hundred feet and carried its ends 
 to the water edge. On the Westminster side of the river 
 one of the company held the wife in his left hand and 
 touched the water with an iron rod held in his right. On 
 the Surrey side, a second person held the extremity of the 
 wire in his right hand and a charged Leyden jar in his left 
 the ball of the jar being touched by a third observer, 
 who also grasped an iron rod dipping into the river. All 
 three individuals felt a smart shock the instant the circuit 
 was closed, and alcohol on one bank of the stream was 
 fired by electricity discharged on the other. 
 
 This experiment, which was repeated with various 
 changes in detail, was made in July, 1747. Martin Folkes, 
 then president of the Royal Society, the Karl of Stanhope, 
 and other distinguished persons, took part in it ; and 
 this alone would have attracted public attention even if 
 the results had not been of such great philosophical inter- 
 est. Watson, however, cared nothing for the sensational 
 or popular side of the achievement. The observation 
 which seemed to him of most importance was the great 
 advantage which wire, as a conductor, possesses over chain 
 for "the junctures of the chain not being sufficiently 
 close . . . caused the electricity in its passage to snap and 
 flash at the junctures where there was the least separation, 
 and these lesser snappings in the whole length of the 
 chain lessened the great one at the gun barrel," which 
 formed a terminus of the line. This suggested to him 
 the possibility of sending the discharge over circuits of 
 wire and water even greater than 2400 feet in length; 
 so he changed the scene of his operations to Stoke-New- 
 ington, where the windings of the New River gave him 
 
550 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 (although the two extreme points were distant, in a straight 
 line, but 2800 feet) a water course nearly 8000 feet in 
 length. Here a wire, from the outer coating of a L,eyden 
 jar, disposed in the window of a house overlooking the 
 river, was led over the meadows to the distant point, 
 where, as before, an observer held its end in one hand, 
 and established communication with the water with the 
 other. A second wire from the window went directly to 
 the river, so that it was necessary merely to bring the 
 house end of this wire to the ball of the jar to discharge 
 the latter. The experiment was successful but a new 
 question arose from it, because it had been noticed that 
 the u commotion " traveled over the circuit even when the 
 distant end of the wire did not communicate with the 
 water but with the land, touching the earth at a distance 
 of even twenty feet from the stream. Was the electrical 
 circuit formed throughout the windings of the river, or 
 by way of the much shorter path through the meadows? 
 Tests showed that the meadow-earth would conduct, and 
 this was supposed to be due to its damp condition. At ail 
 events, thought Watson, the matter must be tested. So 
 observers, at the ends of a wire about 500 feet long, were 
 insulated on pitch cakes and told to touch the ground 
 with their iron rods. The shocks from ajar in the circuit 
 were felt smartly by both. That, and similar trials, settled 
 the matter of the feasibility of making the earth a part 
 of the circuit, and made further experiments on long 
 water-courses needless. 
 
 Watson had noticed that when the wire running across 
 Westminster Bridge touched wet stones the shock trans- 
 mitted seemed to lose strength, and that the same result 
 happened when it lay on wet grass. He surmised at once 
 that a leakage of the charge thus took place from the 
 wire. He now provided a circuit nearly four miles in 
 length, being two miles of wire supported on dry sticks 
 and two miles of earth. The observers at the distant 
 stations fired muskets to notify the man at the jar when 
 
WATSON'S EXPERIMENTS ON LONG CIRCUITS. 551 
 
 they wanted the discharge to take place. The shock was 
 so severe that some of them demurred to receiving it 
 through their bodies, although they found amusement in 
 the antics of the astonished countrymen whom they per- 
 suaded to join hands with them. 
 
 Successful transmission over a four-mile circuit u a 
 distance without trial too great to be credited" left 
 Watson wondering how far the commotion would actually 
 manifest itself, and what experiments he should try in 
 order to find out. If he could determine the velocity of 
 electricity, then perhaps he could form some idea of the 
 length of circuit which would serve to test the matter. 
 He attacked that problem very much as L,emonnier had 
 done, by endeavoring to make a comparison between the 
 speed of the commotion and the velocity of sound; but the 
 effort was as unavailing as that of his French rival, and 
 his conclusion the same; that the transmission of elec- 
 tricity u over any of the distances yet experienced is nearly 
 instantaneous." 
 
 None the less, however, had Watson invented and used 
 the circuit of wire and earth which, in later years, proved 
 of such great value in long telegraph lines. But no in- 
 telligence was sent electrically over Watson's wire. The 
 shock of the jar made the observers jump and that was 
 all. No one thought of transmitting shocks at varying 
 intervals so as to signal intelligence by them. There was 
 not the slightest notion of telegraphic communication 
 present in Watson's mind. He was merely seeking to 
 discover how far the "commotion" would travel, and in 
 that way to obtain some knowledge of its strength and 
 speed. 
 
 Next to having one's discoveries prematurely made by 
 another, nothing is more disconcerting than to have some- 
 body else bring home the conviction that the fundamental 
 hypothesis upon which one has based a whole series of 
 creditable deductions and experiments is probably wrong. 
 However excellent the last may be in themselves, they 
 
552 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 are left in the air, so to speak, and something must be 
 done without delay to replace the shattered underpinning, 
 a task often requiring much ingenuity and some subtlety. 
 Watson had already suffered the first annoyance at the 
 hands of Lemonnier. When Collinson gave him Frank- 
 lin's letters, he found that the second was also to be en- 
 countered. He could not dispute Franklin's conclusions, 
 because he was himself convinced that they explained 
 matters very much more reasonably than did his own. 
 He felt instinctively that if he had only thought of them 
 he would have promulgated them without hesitation. 
 Unfortunately he had not done so. In brief, he was will- 
 ing to admit the validity of Franklin's theory, but unwill- 
 ing to concede the invalidity of his own. 
 
 The communication which Watson sent to the Royal 
 Society in January, 1748, would have been more in har- 
 mony with the reputation of its brilliant and ingenious 
 author had he shown in it greater candor. As it was, his 
 chosen course precipitated a controversy which has re- 
 tained vitality to the present time, and which has engen- 
 dered dissensions exhibiting British insularity in some of 
 its least agreeable phases. Without seeking to revive it 
 here, it will suffice to say that Watson found, in his own 
 mind, arguments which justified him in affirming that his 
 theory, as a whole and radically, had always been the same 
 as that propounded by Franklin, although a suspicion of 
 salving his conscience is unavoidable when it is found that 
 afterwards he really reverses his hypothesis in detail to 
 make it accord. His partisans saw in the first proceeding 
 reason for ascribing to him, rather than to Franklin, the 
 full credit for originating the plus and minus doctrine; and 
 in the second, only proof of ingenuous willingness on the 
 part of the most eminent philosopher in the kingdom to 
 defer to any one, however humble, rather than permit 
 conclusions presented by him to retain the semblance 
 of inaccuracy. But even an advocacy which included that 
 of the all- knowing Whewell, and left its mark in the 
 
NEW THEORIES OF ELECTRICITY. 553 
 
 abridgments of the Philosophical Transactions, cannot 
 overcome the plaiir meaning of Watson's own words, writ- 
 ten before he had ever heard of Franklin, which have re- 
 mained in the records of the Royal Society, The unpre- 
 judiced student of to-day will perhaps find in the idea of 
 electrical equilibrium in all bodies a sufficient distinction 
 between the Franklinian and Watsonian theories, even 
 if, in view of other differences, he does not finally regard 
 the two hypotheses as diametrical opposites. 
 
 New theories now began to crop up on every hand. 
 Benjamin Wilson supposed an electric matter, composed 
 of Newtonian ether, light and other material particles 
 "that are of a sulphurous nature," existing more or less in 
 all bodies, and moving with such exceeding velocity that, 
 when that motion is checked by the near approach of an- 
 other body, a sudden rarefaction of the air causes an explo- 
 sion attended with the dissipation of the electric matter in 
 flame. John Elicott asserted that electric phenomena are 
 due to effluvia which are attracted by all other bodies, but 
 the particles of which are mutually repellent. Boulanger 
 conceived an electric fluid, consisting of the finer parts of 
 the atmosphere, which crowded upon the surfaces of elec- 
 tric bodies when the grosser parts had been driven away 
 by the friction of the rubber. Nollet further amplified his 
 doctrine of the affluence of electric matter driving all light 
 bodies before it by impulse, and its effluence carrying 
 them back again, and supposed in every body to which 
 electricity is communicated the existence of two sets of 
 pores, one for the emission of the effluvia, and the other 
 for the reception of them ; for the spirit of Descartes was 
 still lingering in France. Du Tour improved upon 
 Nollet's theory by assuming a difference between the 
 affluences and effluences, and considered that the particles 
 are thrown into "vibrations of different qualities." 
 
 It would be easy, but useless, to add to this list. Priest- 
 ley well describes the condition of affairs in saying that 
 many hypotheses were no more than the beings of a day, 
 
554 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 and were no sooner started than their authors found them- 
 selves compelled, upon the appearance of a new fact, to 
 remodel or reject them. They were, as a rule, the off- 
 spring of limited knowledge, promulgated because they 
 happened to fit specific phenomena with which their pro- 
 posers were acquainted, and not reached by any rigorous 
 system of induction from accumulated and well-chosen 
 facts. 
 
 Through all of them, however, one clearly defined idea 
 now begins to show itself that of an electrical fluid; first 
 regarded as identical with fire, afterwards distinguished 
 therefrom. And because Franklin dealt with this fluid in 
 the simplest possible way, considering merely the quantity 
 of it, recognizing no varieties in it, and, in brief, treating 
 it from a purely material, almost mechanical, standpoint, 
 his conception replaced all others and survived them. 
 
 To return, however, to Watson, who had resumed ex- 
 perimenting upon the L,eyden jar, and who was now en- 
 deavoring to increase its strength, which, as he says, he 
 succeeds in doing to an astonishing degree by using three 
 vials coated with sheet lead and containing each some 
 fifty pounds of shot. The wires which entered these were 
 connected by an iron rod which in turn communicated 
 with the gun-barrel prime conductor of an electric ma- 
 chine. The coatings were also connected by small wires, 
 all of which were united to a tail wire. Watson amused 
 himself in fact, from this time on nearly all electrical ex- 
 periments assume rather an entertaining character by 
 concealing the charged jars in his room and running the 
 tail wire from them through the carpet, so that it would be 
 invisible to any one standing on it, and then completing 
 the circuit by touching the gun barrel with his finger. In 
 this way he astonished his visitors with unexpected shocks 
 coming from no visible source. It will be observed that 
 his three jars were still connected in multiple arc, or 
 parallel, relation, a fact of especial significance in view 
 of the steps taken by Franklin immediately after receiving 
 Watson's pamphlet, in which this experiment is described. 
 
BEVIS' IMPROVEMENTS ON THE LEYDEN JAR. 555 
 
 Meanwhile Dr. Bevis, who had advised Watson to coat 
 the outside of the jar with sheet lead instead of holding it 
 in his hand, again tells him of another and capital improve- 
 ment. Bevis had coated both sides of a thin pane of glass 
 about a foot square with leaf silver, and had found that, 
 after charging the glass in the usual way, a person touch- 
 ing both silver coatings received a shock as strong as from 
 a half-pint vial of water. Watson had hitherto supposed 
 that the strength of the discharge of the jar was due solely 
 to the " great quantity of non-electric (conducting) matter" 
 contained in it; but here only about six grains of silver 
 .had been used to cover the glass, so that the quantity was 
 exceedingly small and thus that hypothesis fell. But the 
 Leyden jar, in the shape in which it is still commonly 
 known, resulted. Watson coated a cylindrical jar of thin 
 glass with leaf silver inside and out, and obtained an ex- 
 plosion equal in strength to that of his three lead-covered 
 vials in parallel ; and evolved a new theory, which ascribed 
 the effect u not so much to the quantity of non-electrical 
 matter contained in the glass, as to the number of points 
 of non-electrical contact within the glass and the density 
 of the matter constituting those points, provided this matter 
 be in its own nature a ready conductor of electricity." 
 
 The more powerful discharges which still larger jars 
 gave him and the ease with which they traversed non-in- 
 sulated conductors, encouraged Watson to make another 
 attempt to find out the velocity of electricity by bringing 
 both ends of a long circuit wire to a single observer; but, 
 although the circuit measured 12,276 feet in length, he was 
 again obliged to record the fact that the passage of the 
 "commotion" cannot be regarded as other than instan- 
 taneous. 
 
 Watson's account of these latest experiments was pub- 
 lished in book form in the fall of 1748, and the diligent 
 Collinson duly dispatched it to Franklin. The avidity 
 
556 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 with which it was read by that philosopher and his col- 
 leagues is plainly shown by the contents of the next letter 
 which Collinson received. The Americans now saw 
 that they were fully as far advanced as the British elec- 
 tricians, and that each party was as likely to make im- 
 portant discoveries as the other. Franklin had recognized 
 this fact in his preceding letter, wherein he stated that the 
 rapidity of the progress in England half discouraged him 
 from writing further on the subject, lest his communica- 
 tions should contain nothing new or worth reading. The 
 news in Watson's paper that Dr. Bevis had already devised 
 the pane of glass coated with sheet metal as a substitute 
 for the jar, is, therefore, something of a disappointment; 
 and Franklin even excuses himself for mentioning it, 
 although he thought to have communicated it as a novelty 
 since u we tried the experiment differently, drew different 
 consequences from it, and as far as we know, have carried 
 it farther." 
 
 There seems to be no reason for this diffidence on 
 Franklin's part. It does not appear certain that Bevis' 
 invention antedated his own on the contrary, the multi- 
 plicity of Franklin's experiments go to show that he may 
 well have used the coated glass before Bevis. But the 
 American colonist of those days had a respect for the 
 mother country that was controlling, and which made it 
 almost instinctive for him to assume that knowledge 
 moved westward, and not in the reverse direction. 
 
 Franklin's letter of 1748, in point of historical interest, 
 is of the highest importance. Kinnersley's discovery that 
 the Leyden jar can be electrified as strongly by sparks de- 
 livered to the outside as to the inside, begins it; so that it 
 opens with an assertion than which nothing could be 
 more disconcerting to the European electricians who still 
 persisted in the belief that the electrical fire entered the 
 water within the jar, and became somehow entangled 
 there. Franklin, following, shows how, if the inside of 
 one insulated jar be connected to the outside of another, an 
 
THE " SERIES" CONNECTION. 557 
 
 explosion and shock follows, and both jars are discharged; 
 how half the charge in an electrified jar will go to a non- 
 electrified jar; how jars are oppositely electrified according 
 as the charge is imparted to the inside or the outside, and 
 how the suspended cork ball will continue vibrating be- 
 tween the hooks on the ends of the inserted wires of two 
 oppositely-charged jars, u fetching the electric fluid from 
 the one and delivering it to the other, till both vials are 
 nearly discharged." 
 
 It will be remembered that when Winkler or Watson 
 desired to combine the strengths of two or more L,eyden 
 jars, they arranged the latter in the parallel or multiple 
 arc relation. Franklin, studying the charging process, 
 now suspends "two or more vials on the prime con- 
 ductor, one hanging on the tail of the other, and a wire 
 from the last to the floor." "An equal number of turns 
 of the wheel," he says, "shall charge them all equally, and 
 every one as much as one alone would have been; what 
 is driven out at the tail of the first serving to charge the 
 second; what is driven out of the second charging the 
 third, and so on. By this means a great number of bottles 
 might be charged with the same labor and equally high 
 with one alone, were it not that every bottle receives new 
 fire and loses its old with some reluctance, or rather gives 
 some small resistance to charging." 
 
 That is the first announcement of the arrangement of 
 electrical sources in the series or tandem relation an in- 
 vention which, as will now be seen, Franklin immediately 
 turned to practical account. 
 
 Meanwhile he made a little series of experiments which, 
 for neatness and exquisite ingenuity, remind one of 
 Dufay, which show incidentally how the coated pane 
 came to the inventor under circumstances entirely differ- 
 ent from those which led to its suggestion by Bevis, and 
 which ended in the famous Franklinian battery. 
 
 The question which especially puzzled Franklin was 
 where the charge went in the jar, and how there could 
 
558 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 be produced therein, at the same time, a plenum which 
 u presses violently to expand, and the hungry vacuum 
 (which) seems to attract as violently in order to be filled." 
 He had theorized about it: so had Watson and everybody 
 else since the jar had been discovered: just as the world 
 had theorized about the amber before Gilbert; just as the 
 world always finds it so much easier to explain Nature's 
 workings by the vibration of its own brain molecules than 
 to let the workings explain themselves. Where is the 
 charge in the L,eyden jar? In the man who holds it, said 
 Von Kleist. In the water, said Musschenbroeck. In 
 the inner conducting coating, said Watson and so on. 
 Franklin proceeded to pull the jar to pieces. 
 
 First. He put it on glass, so that the charge could not 
 run away during the dissection. Then he pulled out the 
 cork and the inserted wire, and taking the bottle in one 
 hand, put a finger of the other near the water within. A 
 spark passed. Therefore the cork and wire had nothing 
 to do with the matter. 
 
 Second. He recharged the bottle, put it again on glass, 
 drew out cork and wire and poured out the water into 
 another jar, also standing on glass. Now, if the charge 
 was in the water, that second jar should give a shock. It 
 did not. There was no electricity in the water at all. It 
 must either have been lost by decanting, or must still 
 remain in the first jar. If it was in the latter, the jar 
 should give its shock when fresh water was poured into it. 
 He poured some in u out of a tea-pot." The jar worked 
 perfectly. So the water had nothing whatever to do with 
 the matter, and the charge must be either in the glass or in 
 the outer coating of the jar (either the hand or lead foil), 
 for the simple reason that there were no other parts of the 
 apparatus left. 
 
 Third. He laid a pane of glass flat on his hand, and 
 put a lead plate on it: the glass, like the wall of the jar, 
 now stood between two conducting layers hand and lead. 
 He electrified it, and got a shock on touching the lead 
 plate. The form of the jar was therefore immaterial. 
 
FRANKLIN'S ELECTRICAL BATTERY. 559 
 
 Fourth. He placed the glass between two plates of 
 lead less in area than the pane, and electrified the glass 
 between them by electrifying the uppermost lead. Then 
 he took the glass from between the lead plates and found 
 that, on touching it here and there with the finger, he ob- 
 tained "very small pricking sparks, " but a great number 
 of them might be taken from different places. There was 
 no sign of electricity in the lead. The moment he put the 
 glass back between the plates and connected the latter 
 through his body, a violent shock ensued. 
 
 And so he concludes that " the whole force of the bottle, 
 and power of giving a shock, is in the glass itself: the non- 
 electrics in contact with the two surfaces serving only to 
 give and receive to and from the several parts of the glass: 
 that is, to give on one side and take away from the other, " 
 and he compares the metal coatings to the "armature of a 
 lodestone to unite the force of the several parts." 
 
 The road was now clear to the construction of the 
 battery. It was made of eleven large plates of sash glass 
 armed with thin leaden plates, with the giving side of one 
 pane connected to the receiving side of the other, but pro- 
 vided with a contrivance "to bring the giving sides after 
 charging into contact with one long wire and the receivers 
 with another, which two long wires would give the force 
 of all the plates of glass at once through the body of any 
 animal forming the circle between them." As Franklin 
 supposed that the greatest effects would be gained with 
 the plates in parallel, he placed them in series for charg- 
 ing, and so encountered a resistance which he says 
 "repels the fire back again on the globe;" and thus, in 
 the beginning, the battery did not prove as efficient as he 
 expected. Afterwards, however, he wrote "there are no 
 bounds (but what expense and labor give) to the force man 
 may raise and use in the electrical way: for bottle may be 
 added to bottle, and all united and discharged together as 
 one, the force and effect proportioned to their number and 
 size. The greatest known effects of common lightning 
 
560 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 may, I think, without much difficulty be exceeded in 
 this way." 
 
 Kinnersley, .the ingenious, now appears with a variety 
 of amazing toys. He has made a magic picture of King 
 George with a golden crown on his head, and arranged 
 Leyden jar fashion, so that he who touched the gilded 
 frame and at the same time irreverently sought to grasp 
 the crown received a violent shock. ' ' God preserve him, ' ' 
 says the loyal Franklin, in mentioning the King's name; 
 but a few years later, men were indicted in Philadelphia 
 for sedition for saying just the opposite. There is also the 
 electrical jack a horizontal, wooden, pivoted disk, having 
 insulated brass thimbles around its edge which succes- 
 sively touch the wire of a charged jar and are repelled, 
 thus turning the disk; "and if a large fowl," adds Frank- 
 lin, u were spitted on the upright shaft, it would be car- 
 ried round before the fire with a motion fit for roasting." 
 
 A much more elaborate electric motor was made from a 
 circular sheet of glass, coated on both sides and pivoted to 
 turn horizontally. The coatings alternately communi- 
 cated with bullets fixed at equal distances on the circum- 
 ference of the glass. Fixed near the disk were glass 
 supports carrying brass thimbles, and near these last the 
 bullets passed as they were carried around by the disk. 
 The wheel being charged, the bullets were alternately re- 
 pelled and attracted by the thimbles. Franklin says that 
 it ran for half an hour at a time at a speed of twenty turns 
 a minute, and Kinnersley applied it to ringing chimes and 
 actuating orreries. This was the first application of elec- 
 tricity to performing useful mechanical work. Father 
 Gordon's little reaction wheel had merely spun around and 
 driven nothing. 
 
 The summer of 1749 was now at hand, and the Philadel- 
 phia experimenters determined to suspend work until after 
 the hot weather. Franklin, who does not conceal his re- 
 gret that u we have been hitherto able to produce nothing 
 in this way of use to mankind," ends his letter to Collin- 
 
FRANKLIN'S EXPERIMENTS. 561 
 
 son with his oft-quoted forecast of an electrical pleasure 
 party when "turkey is to be killed for our dinner by the 
 electrical shock, and roasted by the electrical jack before a 
 
 FRANKLIN'S ILLUSTRATIONS OF HIS EXPERIMENTS. 
 
 1 Reproduced in reduced fac simile from the folding plate in Franklin's 
 New Experiments and Observations on Electricity made at Philadelphia 
 36 
 
562 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 fire kindled by the electrical bottle; when the healths of all 
 the famous electricians in England, Holland, France and 
 Germany are to be drank in electrified bumpers, under the 
 discharge of guns from the electrical battery." 
 
 He had then no prescience of the great discovery which 
 he was so soon to make. It may be said that the fulness 
 of time was at hand, the environing conditions were all 
 favorable, and that if the identity of the lightning and the 
 electrical spark had not been shown by Franklin, others, 
 
 in America Part I., 2nd ed. London, 1754. This picture became the 
 frontispiece in the later editions of the work. Figs. I, II, III, IV, and 
 V, are described in Franklin's letter to Collinson, dated July 28, 1747; 
 Fig. VI in letter IV to Collinson, and Figs. VII, VIII, IX and X, in the 
 "Opinions and Conjectures" sent Collinson in 1750. Fig. I represents 
 a Leyden bottle () which whenever touched by the finger attracts the 
 thread (b) suspended from the wire (a). Fig. II shows a suspended cork 
 (c) vibrating between the wires (e) (e), one of which enters the bottle 
 and the other is connected to a ring of lead upon which the bottle stands. 
 In Fig. Ill, the bottle rests on wax and is discharged by electrically con- 
 necting the interior and exterior by means of the wire (h] held in a 
 sealing wax handle (g}. Fig. IV represents a bottle surrounded by a 
 ring of lead (i) connected by a conductor with the knob () on the in- 
 serted wire such a bottle says Franklin, 'cannot be electrified; the 
 equilibrium is never destroyed." In Fig. V, the jar rests on a book 
 having a gilded design on its cover; a wire (m) touches the gilding and 
 may be brought into contact with the knob of the bottle. " Instantly," 
 says Franklin, M there is a strong spark and stroke and the whole line of 
 gold which completes the communication between the top and bottom 
 of the bottle will appear a vivid flame, like the sharpest lightning." 
 
 Fig. VI is intended to show that particles at the surface of water are 
 less strongly held by cohesion than others in the body of the fluid, and 
 hence when the water is electrified are more easily repelled and thrown 
 off. Fig. VII illustrates Franklin's description of the partition of a 
 charge or "electrical atmosphere" from a Leyden jar to two suspended 
 "apples or two balls of wood" and between the objects themselves. 
 Fig. VIII is in illustration of Franklin's supposition that " electrified 
 bodies discharge their atmospheres upon electrified bodies, more easily 
 and at a greater distance from their angles and points than from their 
 smooth sides." Fig. IX is the first representation of the lightning rod. 
 Fig. X represents Franklin's " electrical fish " a piece of Dutch metal, 
 cut in the shape shown, which flies to the prime conductor of the electric 
 machine and keeps "a continued shaking of its tail like a fish so that it 
 seems animated." 
 
ANCIENT SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT LIGHTNING. 563 
 
 by sheer force of circumstances, would have proved the fact 
 at about the same period. When an invention is claimed 
 to have leaped full-armed from the mind, when it has no 
 discernible ancestry or evolution, this argument may find 
 some application. But can any one read the preliminary 
 experiments which have now been detailed, or note 
 Franklin's reflections on the drawing power of points or 
 the tremendous force of the battery discharge, without 
 recognizing that, guided as by some controlling power, he 
 was unerringly moving toward the goal, even if he knew 
 it not himself? 
 
 Jets of blinding flame leaping across black and angry 
 skies, deafening peals of thunder reverberating from the 
 mountain-sides and echoing amid the clouds, the swift 
 obliteration of life, buildings bursting into flame, great 
 rocks and trees shattered all this to the old world meant 
 the warfare of gods upon gods, or the fearful retribution 
 visited by- offended Deity upon rebellious man. The 
 thunderstorm became the symbol of divine wrath. Its 
 tremendous effects offered the only realization of the 
 majesty of the divine presence. The law is given amid 
 the thunders and lightnings of Sinai. The voice of God 
 is the thunder and he u directeth his lightnings to the ends 
 of the earth." 
 
 As the ages passed the superstitions clustered thicker 
 and thicker about the thunderbolt, and the dread of it 
 deepened. "From lightning and tempest, from plague, 
 pestilence and famine" so the prayer for delivery comes 
 down to us, with the lightning first on the lips. It was 
 for naught that the philosophers sought to explain it by 
 natural causes. Zeus launched his fiery missiles long 
 after Aristotle described them as moist exhalations burst- 
 ing out of moist clouds. What protection could there be 
 against so fearful a visitation save invocation of the 
 divine mercy for what shield could the puny arm of 
 man interpose against the might of the Almighty? 
 
564 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 We shall go far astray if the great force of such a belief 
 be not kept steadily in view throughout any effort we may 
 make to discover possible knowledge of the ancients 1 re- 
 garding the nature of lightning or the provision of safe- 
 guards against it. It is useless to search the annals of an 
 intensely religious or superstitious people to discover 
 either physical explanations or material defenses. Equally 
 unavailing is it to assume that a wrong interpretation of 
 u the cause of thunder " could result in an adequate means 
 of protection. The only rational basis for entertaining 
 the notion that some knowledge may have existed in re- 
 mote times must be found in the supposition that chance 
 circumstances under which the lightning-stroke was ap- 
 parently warded off were recognized and reproduced em- 
 pirically. If, for example, it were perceived that the lofty 
 trees of a forest were struck oftener than those of less 
 growth, it would not be difficult to conclude that the 
 erection of high towers, spires, minarets, or obelisks in 
 the vicinity of low buildings might result in providing 
 scape-goats or sacrifices upon which the celestial fire might 
 wreak its vengeance, leaving the more important human 
 habitations unharmed. 2 
 
 Nothing is so difficult as prophecy before, nothing so 
 easy as prophecy after the event; and the history of the 
 lightning-rod has many an instance of the latter. The 
 Temple of Jerusalem, says one archaeologist, 3 was fully 
 protected, because Josephus 4 records that on the roof there 
 
 ^ee Salverte: Philosophy of Magic. N. Y., 1847, vol. ii., p. 150, in 
 which there is an extended discussion on the electrical phenomena em- 
 ployed by the magicians, with many references to ancient writings. 
 
 2 Under such a theory as this it may perhaps be possible, for example, 
 to account for the two thousand ancient pagodas, which are now falling 
 into ruin in China, and which, although apparently useless, act. as the 
 Chinese geomancers claim, "to drawdown every felicitous omen from 
 above, so that fire, water, wood, earth and metal will be at the service of 
 the people, the soil productive, trade prosperous, and everybody sub- 
 missive and happy." Williams: The Middle Kingdom, ii, 747. 
 
 3 Michaelis: Mag. Scient. de Gottingen, 3d yr., 5th I To., 1783. 
 
 4 Josephus: Bel. Jud. adv. Rom., Lib. v, c. xiv. 
 
ANCIENT SUGGESTIONS OF LIGHTNING PROTECTION. 565 
 
 were many points, similar to those which appear on the 
 Roman temples of Juno, and that pipes ran from the roof 
 to caverns in the hill on which the building was situated. 
 The Jewish historian assigns for the points the somewhat 
 prosaic function of perches for the birds, and it requires no 
 especial effort to conceive that the pipes served to lead off 
 rainwater. But, says the acute inventor of the new 
 hypothesis, the temple was never struck by lightning 
 during a thousand years; it cannot be conceded that 
 those points were put there for the benefit of the birds; 
 the ignorance of Josephus in this respect is merely "proof 
 of the facility with which the knowledge of important 
 facts is forgotten;" and indeed, it is inconceivable "that 
 the advantage to be derived from them (the points), had 
 not been calculated upon." 
 
 Such prophets always take unnecessary pains. It would 
 have been far simpler to have said that King Solomon, 
 out of his exceeding wisdom, knew all about lightning- 
 rods, just as earlier writers asserted his familiarity with 
 the mariner's compass: although any supposition in the 
 premises has the fatal defect of ignoring the sacrilege 
 which the profoundly-devout Jew would surely have seen 
 in such an attempt to make the roof of the temple into 
 a sort of sieve to keep out the troublesome manifestations 
 of the Deity who dwelt in its sanctuary. 
 
 The folk-lore of almost every nation has its legends re- 
 counting the drawing of fire from heaven. The skill of 
 Prometheus in bringing down the lightning (a fable which 
 sets Rabelais wondering what has become of the art), the 
 death of Zoroaster by lightning in response to his own 
 prayer, the descent of the vestal fire from the clouds, have 
 furnished many a poet with a fertile theme. Occasionally 
 the old writers are curiously suggestive: Iviican, 1 for 
 instance, when he says that u Aruns collected the fires of 
 lightning dispersed in the air and in the midst of noise 
 buried them in the earth;" or Ctesias, in his description 
 
 1 Pharsalia, i., 606. 
 
566 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 of the Indian iron which dissipates clouds, hail and whirl- 
 winds. But they are all vague and shadowy. If one 
 attempts to follow the roads down which such stories 
 have come, he will find that they all lead, not to Rome, 
 but to her great rival, Etruria. 
 
 As I have already pointed out, in tracing the history of 
 the compass, the Etruscans were indefatigable students of 
 meteorology. Their augurs were weather-wise, and ex- 
 ceedingly skillful in recognizing impending changes, and 
 in predicting them. They distinguished three kinds of 
 lightning-flashes, according to the gravity of their effects; 
 and eleven different species of lightning itself. Certain 
 lightnings, they held, came out of the earth and rose 
 perpendicularly others shot from the sky and struck 
 obliquely. Under the guise of worship of Jupiter Elicius, 
 they claimed actually to bring down the lightning, and 
 taught the secret of it to King Numa, whose successor, 
 Tullus Hostilius, seeking to repeat the ceremony from 
 the instructions left by Numa, made some error and 
 paid the penalty with his life. 1 Tarchon, the founder of 
 the ancient Etruscan theurgism, is said to have protected 
 his dwelling by surrounding it with white bryony a be- 
 lief in the efficacy of which plant, after the lapse of ages, 
 still prevails in modern India. 2 
 
 Gradually there grew up a sort of pseudo-fulgtiral 
 science. Constantine the Great, several years after his 
 conversion to Christianity, made a law authorizing the 
 Romans to consult the aruspices when an edifice had been 
 struck by lightning. L,ater still (A. D. 408), when Rome 
 was besieged by Alaric the Goth, certain Etruscan magi- 
 cians offered to extract the lightning from the clouds and 
 direct it against the camp of the Barbarians. Innocent, 
 the bishop, was willing that the experiment should be tried; 
 but the Senate here literally u more pious than the pope " 
 
 1 Pliny, ii., 55. 
 
 2 Columella: lib. x., 346, 7. Salverte. Phil'y of Magic. N. Y., 1847, ii., 
 152. "Fulmineo periit imitator fulminis ictu." Ovid: Met., xiv,, 617, 618. 
 
THUNDER AND LIGHTNING. 567 
 
 refused to sanction an act which appeared to it almost 
 equivalent to the public restoration of Paganism. 1 Down 
 through the Middle Ages the control of thunder and light- 
 ning was a part of the recognized equipment of the 
 sorcerer or witch so that Prospero's 
 
 To the dread rattling thunder 
 Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak 
 With his own bolt, 
 
 bespeaks no more than ordinary thaumaturgic skill. 
 
 Literature, ancient and modern, abounds in allusions to 
 atmospheric electrical phenomena long before their true 
 nature was known. Pliny describes St. Elmo's Fire as 
 well as Shakespeare does. 2 Seneca, 3 and Caesar,* and Livy 5 
 all record spears with flames at their points in the Roman 
 camp, and Fynes Morison sees the same fires on the staves 
 of Montjoy's horsemen at the siege of Kinsale, in 1601 f the 
 ancient Romans and the modern Scot being as ignorant, 
 one as the other, that electricity had anything to do with 
 the strange appearance. It is hardly credible that the 
 force of inverted prophecy could carry any one to the ex- 
 treme of finding in this mention by Caesar and Seneca of 
 the fiery spears pre-knowledge of the Franklinian dis- 
 covery; but such is the fact, and that the argument was 
 sufficient to convince so profound a philosopher as Arago, 7 
 will always furnish an excuse for others whose sense of 
 similitude proves capable of overbalancing their judgment. 
 
 As the world divested itself of the influence of supersti- 
 
 1 Gibbon: Decline and Fall, ii., 122. 
 
 2<< I boarded the King's ship, now on the beak, 
 
 Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin 
 
 I flamed amazement: sometimes I'd divide 
 
 And burn in many places; on the top mast, 
 
 The yards and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly; 
 
 Then meet and join. The Tempest. Act i., Sc. 2. 
 
 3 Quest. Nat., i. * De Bello Af., 6. 
 
 5 Hist., c. ii. 6 Phil. Trans., Vol. 48, 754. 
 
 7 Arago: Eloge Hist, de Alex. Volta, Acad. des Sci., 26 July, 1831. 
 
568 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 tion, the material theory of the lightning which Aristotle 
 had propounded gradually replaced the imaginative one. 
 The flame came to be regarded as fire not ordinary fire, 
 but what Jerome Cardan 1 calls the "fire of fires." Fire, 
 he says, which is hotter than any other differing from 
 any other because the mere touch of it kills the "fire of 
 thunder." It will melt the very money in your purse, 
 and yet so subtly as not to harm the purse itself. It 
 enters the metal and tears it asunder. Then he has this 
 curious passage: 
 
 "And this kind of fire must necessarily have great 
 velocity in solid matter. Indeed, why does the thunder 
 never touch columns or sink ships? It seldom touches 
 them, although once I saw in Florence, at the great 
 church, a column broken and shattered by the thunder; 
 but it does not strike them often, nor throw them down, 
 because the blow glances because of the rotundity. Sim- 
 ilarly, it seldom strikes the bottoms of ships, because it 
 cannot penetrate more than five cubits below the surface 
 of the earth; and the bottom of the ship is low and the 
 mast is high, and this last is often struck. A certain 
 remedy against thunder is to hide in deep caverns, and 
 this is more sure than to crown oneself with sealskin or 
 the skin of an eagle, or to carry a hyacinth stone; for it is 
 said that these things are not touched by thunder. But I 
 have known a laurel to be injured by thunder in Rome." 
 
 Observe that in Cardan's time the idea of possible pro- 
 tection against lightning had become thinkable thanks, 
 perhaps, to the Reformation and the power is supposed 
 to lie in the hyacinth stone, "which protects men from 
 the thunder;" and this "is no small power, seeing the 
 many noble personages who have thus suddenly perished 
 Zoroaster, King of the Bactrians; Capaneus, in the 
 Theban War; Ajax, after the destruction of Troy; Anas- 
 tasius, the Emperor, in the 27th year of his reign; Carus, 
 also, and other emperors. Let us consider how this can 
 
 1 De Subtilitate, Lib. ii. 
 
OLD BELIEFS ON NATURE OF LIGHTNING. 569 
 
 happen. Either the hyacinth prevents the thunder from 
 coming, or it directs the judgment of whoever carries it, or 
 it simply prevents him who has it from being injured, even 
 if struck. These are the only ways. To be struck by 
 thunder and not hurt is incredible and, besides, the 
 authors have not said this, but that the thunder does not 
 touch the possessor. To hinder the thunder coming is a 
 still greater miracle;" and finally the wise Cardan arrives 
 at the conclusion that the stone can act only by making 
 the heart strong and wise and joyful, so that the owner 
 thereof keeps out of peril. Such was lightning protection 
 and the philosophical notion of the nature of lightning in 
 
 1556. 
 
 A few years, and it is Shakespeare's time. Note the 
 question which he gives to the crazed L,ear 
 
 " First let me talk with this philosopher, 
 What is the cause of thunder?" 1 
 
 and answers through Brutus, and Ariel, and Volumuia 
 
 "Exhalations whizzing in the air." 2 
 
 " The fire and cracks 
 Of sulphurous roaring. " 3 
 
 " To charge thy sulphur with a bolt 
 Which should'st but rive an oak." 4 
 
 The lightning was then believed to be a burning sulphur- 
 ous vapor; sulphurous because it caused the air to smell 
 like sulphur a circumstance which Boyle noticed in the 
 rubbed amber, and made no more mental connection be- 
 tween it and the lightning odor than Kriiger did after him. 
 A little later and we shall find that the idea of guarding 
 against the lightning crosses Ben Jonson's erratic orbit 
 
 " Sir shall I say to you for that hat . . it is proof 
 Against thunder and enchantment " 5 
 
 1 King Lear, Act Hi., Sc. 4. 2 Julius Caesar, Act i., Sc. 2. 
 
 3 Tempest, Act i., Sc. 2. 'Coriolanus, Act v., Sc. 3. 
 
 5 Cynthia's Revels. 
 
570 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 and afterwards the seeker for such allusions will find a 
 harvest of them which space does not permit me to gather 
 here. 
 
 By the end of the seventeenth century the explanation 
 of lightning which prevailed up to Franklin's time was 
 fully formulated. Dr. Wallis believed it to be due to the 
 detonation of a mixture of nitrous and sulphurous vapors 
 in the air the conditions being similar to those occurring 
 during the explosion of gunpowder, in which substantially 
 the same elements are present. I^ater opinions differed as 
 to the nature of the exploding gases and their mode of 
 generation in the atmosphere; but the general consensus 
 regarded the lightning and the thunder as the celestial 
 artillery the explosion and the report occurring in the 
 same way as in earthly fire-arms. 1 
 
 Early in the eighteenth century Hauksbee compared 
 the flickering lights in his globe to the lightning flash, 
 and Dr. Wall saw in the cracklings and sparks of rubbed 
 amber a resemblance, in some degree, to thunder and 
 lightning; and Gray, following the same thought, con- 
 ceived the electric fire and lightning to be "of the same 
 nature." But these were the merest conjectures. That 
 of Wall is equally true of the discharge of a fire-arm. 
 Gray's conception that the electric fire is "of the same 
 nature" as the lightning is consonant with the common 
 belief that fire is an element, and therefore the same 
 everywhere; so that his assertion amounts to nothing 
 
 1 To show how a precisely similar idea is often reached by entirely 
 different paths, it may here be noted that Dr. Dionysius Lardner, writing 
 in 1844 (see Manual of Electricity, ii., 165), after noting the many in- 
 stances collected by Arago of the sulphurous odor following a lightning 
 stroke, and the detection by Liebig of nitric acid in rain water, says "it 
 would be a curious and interesting result of scientific investigation to de- 
 monstrate that the thunder of heaven elaborates in the clouds the chief 
 ingredients of the counterfeit thunders which man has invented for the 
 destruction of his fellows. ' ' 
 
JOHN FREKE. 571 
 
 more than the same indication of resemblance made by 
 his predecessors. 
 
 What these men really did was to make so happy a sug- 
 gestion that other men were led to seek reasons in support 
 of it. And as the truth was in it, it lived. 
 
 Early in 1746, John Freke, 1 of the Royal Society and 
 surgeon to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, announced the 
 first hypothesis asserting, and attempting physically to 
 explain, the actual identity of lightning and electricity. 
 Observing that there was no change produced in the 
 instruments for electric generation due to their production 
 of electricity, he maintained that they had no more to do 
 with the development of the electrical matter than a pump 
 has with the development of water. The electrical matter 
 he regarded as fire composed of similar particles, tending 
 to adhere at certain distances apart, and impregnating the 
 air. If the particles, however, be forced together, reduc- 
 ing these intervals, then the fire becomes more or less 
 violent according to the degree of compression. 
 
 u Now," he says, "as by human contrivance here is more 
 of the fire crowded together than in its natural state, it is 
 no wonder in this confinement, if that which, as water 
 unconfined, should be gentle and beneficent, should, with 
 all the power that belongs to it, break out at the first door 
 which is opened for its passage from this tortured state. 
 , . . Lightning, which is produced by a great quantity 
 of the elementary fire driven together, is of the same 
 nature with electricity (which is no other than factitious 
 lightning), for it will kill without a wound and pass 
 through everything, as this seems to do." The celestial 
 fire, he says, amassed by any cause and enveloped, per- 
 haps, and retained in this disturbed state, discharges 
 itself finally with the explosion which we call thunder. 
 
 1 Freke: An Essay to show the cause of Elec'y, etc. Lond., 1746. 
 See also British Magazine, Oct., 1746, 300; London Magazine, Nov., 
 1746, 573. Essai sur la Cause de 1'Elec. (Trans, of 2d Ed., with supple- 
 ment), Paris, 1748. 
 
572 .THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 It is needless to discuss Freke's supposition, because, 
 almost immediately following him, came Winkler, 1 with a 
 theory still more highly elaborated, in which the like- 
 nesses between electricity and lightning were pointed out 
 with remarkable detail. He demands "whether the 
 shock and spark of strengthened electricity is a kind of 
 thunder and lightning," and proceeds to answer the query 
 at length. 
 
 The lightning-stroke, he explains, is enormously more 
 powerful than the electric spark; but that is no proof that 
 they are of different natures. Even if a man had never 
 seen fire and explosion except from a cannon, would he 
 fail to recognize, in the discharge of a boy's pistol, the 
 same effects, but in weaker degree? The lightning- 
 stroke and the electric spark are alike in rapidity. Add 
 together the detonations of many electric sparks, and the 
 noise may be augmented. So in the lightning, which 
 may consist of an immense number of such sparks, the 
 combined explosion of all causes the sound of thunder. 
 Lightning moves through the air in a zigzag or serpentine 
 path; so does an electric spark in passing over moist 
 insulators. The lightning-flash is sometimes multiple 
 like a collection of rockets; so is the discharge between 
 iron cylinders. The lightning-flash will lay hold of solid 
 bodies and melt them even when enclosed and without 
 injuring the envelope (Cardan's coins melted in their 
 purse); the spark will reach non-electrics, through insu- 
 lators. It will pass through one's clothes, or electrify 
 metal enclosed in paper. True we cannot burn houses 
 and trees, or kill men and animals, by the spark; but not 
 all kinds of lightning do this, hence the spark may re- 
 semble some particular variety. 
 
 Winkler's conclusion is that the atmosphere contains 
 matter in great quantities, derived from exhalation and 
 evaporation, going on at the earth's surface. It abounds 
 
 1 Winkler: Die Starke der Electrischen Kraft des Wassers in Glaserueii 
 Gefassen, etc. Leipsic, 1746, c. x. (Preface dated Sept. 6, 1746.) 
 
NOLLET ON LIGHTNING. , 573 
 
 ill sulphurous, mercurial and nitrous vapors, the particles 
 of which, rising and falling, are continually rubbing 
 against one another. The rubbing of the sulphurous 
 particles generates electric matter, which may lie quiet 
 until some chance shock develops the conditions for dis- 
 charge and explosion, and then the sulphurous and nitrous 
 vapors are burned, and there is besides a conduction of 
 electricity along the particles which are non-electric. 
 This is the substance of a long and somewhat obscure 
 dissertation which ends with the statement : 
 
 "It appears, therefore, that the electric sparks which 
 through art may be excited are the same in material, 
 nature and mode of production as the lightning flashes 
 and strokes, and that the only difference exists in the 
 relative strengths and weaknesses of their operation. " 
 
 Such was the development of the idea in England and 
 Germany. In France, nearly two years later (August 9, 
 1748), Abbe* Nollet published a treatise on physics 1 in 
 which, in due course, he deals with the nature of light- 
 ning. He describes the " matter of thunder " as a " mix- 
 ture of exhalations capable of self-ignition on fermentation 
 or by shock, and the pressure of clouds which the winds 
 violently agitate and drive together. When a consider- 
 able portion of this mixture takes fire, it causes an ex- 
 plosion stronger or weaker according to the quantity or 
 the nature of the ignited materials, or according to the 
 obstacles which present themselves to its sudden ex- 
 pansion." He regards also the lightning-stroke as due to 
 an ignited gas which always rends the cloud like an ex- 
 plosive bomb. With this theory, however, he is not 
 satisfied, and merely gives it as the one which is generally 
 accepted. Then he adds the following oft-quoted passage: 
 
 "If any one should take upon him to prove from a well- 
 connected comparison of phenomena, that thunder is in 
 the hands of nature what electricity is in ours, that the 
 wonders which we now exhibit at our pleasure are little 
 
 1 Nollet: 1,690113 cle Physique. Paris, 1746, vol. iv., 315. 
 
574 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 imitations of those great effects which frighten us, and 
 that the whole depends upon the same mechanism; if it is 
 to be demonstrated that a cloud, prepared by the action 
 of the winds, by heat, by a mixture of exhalations, etc., is 
 opposite to a terrestrial object; that this is the electrized 
 body, and at a certain proximity from that which is not: 
 I avow that this idea, if it was well supported, would give 
 me a great deal of pleasure; and in support of it, how 
 many specious reasons present themselves to a man who 
 is well acquainted with electricity. The universality of 
 the electric matter, the readiness of its action, its inflam- 
 mability and its activity in giving fire to other bodies, the 
 property of striking bodies externally and internally, even 
 to their smallest parts, the remarkable example we have 
 of this effect in the experiment of Leyden, the idea which 
 we might truly adopt in supposing a greater degree of 
 electric power, etc. ; all these points of analogy, which I 
 have been some time meditating, begin to make me be- 
 lieve that one might, by taking electricity for the model, 
 form to oneself in relation to thunder and lightning more 
 perfect and more probable ideas than such as have been 
 offered hitherto. " 
 
 This was written in the year 1748. It adds nothing new 
 toward the solution of the question of whether the light- 
 ning and electricity are the same or even similar. It is 
 simply to the effect that the keen and skilful electrician 
 who wrote it has concluded that the arguments before him 
 are sufficient, in his opinion, to warrant some one in be- 
 ginning experiments to determine whether the idea has 
 any foundation in truth or not. It certainly does not aver 
 that he himself has done anything in the premises beyond 
 meditating, or has made a single experiment in pursuit of 
 the object, or even knows what experiments to make or 
 how to attack the matter. The sum and substance of it 
 all is that the problem is not on its face absurd and is 
 worth investigating. 
 
 Such, in brief, were the conditions which existed when 
 
FRANKLIN ON LIGHTNING. 575 
 
 Franklin began his immortal work. Yet it has been con- 
 tended, over and over again, that there was really nothing 
 left for Franklin to do; that if Gray and Wall had not sub- 
 stantially discovered the identity of electricity and light- 
 ning, Nollet (for Freke and Winkler seem to have been 
 generally overlooked) certainly did so. So easy is it thus 
 to argue, when stimulated by pride of opinion and inter- 
 national rivalries. 
 
 Of the rise and progress of the idea in Europe Franklin 
 probably had no knowledge. In I737 1 he quotes with ap- 
 proval the theory of Dr. Lister, that "the material cause 
 of thunder, lightning and earthquakes is one and the 
 same, namely, 'the inflammable breath of the pyrites, 
 which is a subtle sulphur and takes fire of itself.' " Lister 
 regarded thunder and lightning as due to sulphur fired in 
 the air, and earthquakes to the same substance ignited 
 underground. u Why there may not be thunder and light- 
 ning underground in some vast repositories," comments 
 Franklin, "I see no reason, especially if we reflect that 
 the matter which composes the noisy vapor above us exists 
 in much larger quantities underground." The conception 
 of the electrical nature of lightning seems to have come to 
 him at the very outset of his electrical studies, and then 
 to have been formulated in writing; but he refrained from 
 communicating it to Collinson until experiment brought 
 him assurance. Then, in the early summer of 1749, he 
 despatched the first of the two famous papers in which his 
 discovery is made known to the world. 
 
 The theory developed in this essay is interesting, not 
 because of its inherent truth for Franklin himself aban- 
 doned it not long afterwards but as showing the path 
 over which his mind moved. It furnishes, moreover, a 
 striking instance of the deductive, as distinguished from 
 the inductive, method of reasoning. The ocean is assumed 
 
 1 Pennsylvania Gazette. 
 
576 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 to be a compound of water particles (non-electric) and salt 
 particles (electric per se), which, rubbing together, pro- 
 duce electrical fire, which collects on the surface and is 
 luminous at night. It is also assumed that because the 
 surface is electrified the particles of water are repelled, and 
 these, rising, carry with them the electrical fire and form 
 clouds which retain their electrified state until an oppor- 
 tunity arises for them to communicate their fire to other 
 bodies. 
 
 This is obviously pure supposition, although a remark- 
 ably bold and dexterous one, as we shall see by following it 
 a little further. 
 
 The electrified cloud is swept over the land by the wind. 
 It encounters a mountain which, being less electrified, 
 attracts it. The electrical fire at once leaves the mass of 
 vapor, with a sudden flash and report, while the particles 
 of water instantly coalesce and fall in rain. If a succes- 
 sion of such clouds become dammed by a mountain ridge, 
 then the first cloud, after yielding its own fire to the peaks, 
 takes the fire of the second cloud, and thus the fire passes 
 from cloud to cloud as far back as they may extend. Like 
 effects occur when an electrified cloud, rising from the sea, 
 meets a non-electrified cloud rising from the land the 
 particles of the first cloud open on losing their fire, the 
 particles of the second close on receiving it, and then fol- 
 lows a concussion, a flash and downpour. 
 
 Such is the bridge which Franklin built. It may be 
 asked wherein it differed from the equally ideal structures 
 which Winkler and Freke had reared. In this; that it led 
 somewhere. All three suppositions were far wide of the 
 truth all three frail and imperfect; but two of them were 
 mere piers jutting out into an unknown gulf, while the 
 third spanned it, at least long enough for some knowledge 
 to be gained of the new land beyond. 
 
 Now Franklin moves forward beyond all the world, and 
 the result is best given in his own quaint words: 
 
 ** As electrified clouds pass over a country, high hills 
 
FRANKLIN ON LIGHTNING. 577 
 
 and high trees, lofty towers, spires, masts of ships, chim- 
 neys, etc., as so many prominences and points, draw the 
 electrical fire and the whole cloud discharges there. 
 
 "Dangerous therefore, is it to take shelter under a tree 
 during a thunder-gust. It has been fatal to many, both 
 man and beasts. 
 
 "It is safer to be in the open field for another reason. 
 When the clothes are wet, if a flash in its way to the 
 ground should strike your head, it may run in the water 
 over the surface of your body; whereas if your clothes are 
 dry, it would go through the body, because the blood and 
 other humors containing so much water are more ready 
 conductors. Hence a wet rat cannot be killed by the ex- 
 ploding electrical bottle, when a dry rat may." 
 
 The great generalization is here yet encumbered with 
 a tremendous "if." The course of orderly evolution from 
 his very first experiment, which proved the capacity of 
 points, when placed in the vicinity of electrified bodies, to 
 draw off the electric fire noiselessly and quietly, had now 
 led him to the belief that the same result would happen if 
 the electrified body were a cloud and the point a tree or 
 spire; z/" lightning and electricity were the same, //"both 
 were under control of the same laws. 
 
 But where was the physical proof? Where was the 
 evidence that clouds are ever electrified, or that the fire in 
 the sky is an electric flash, or that there is in fact any 
 electricity in the atmosphere at all ? He had merely sup- 
 posed all this. No one knew better than he that the sea- 
 born clouds, bursting with electrical fire, floated about 
 only in his imagination. No one could better anticipate 
 the derision which would be provoked by the unsupported 
 assertion that the fierce blazes of the thunder-gust lay 
 latent in the soft depths of the snowy couriers of the air, 
 ready to obey the same control as the little sparks and 
 crackles yielded by his globes and jars. There was the 
 crux, ^the lightning be electricity, then but is it? 
 
 How was that to be found out? 
 37 
 
578 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 From the bold conjectures of Wall or Gray or Hanks- 
 bee ? From the fruitless hypotheses of Winkler or Freke 
 no better, if as good as his own? From Nollet's wish 
 that somebody would attempt the test? Do not all the 
 prophecies after the event which Franklin's detractors 
 have solemnly made on the strength of these prior specula- 
 tions seem destitute of substantial basis ? 
 
 Whether Franklin at the outset fully realized the mag- 
 nitude of the consequences depending upon the resolution 
 of the question, may be doubted. A more emotional 
 nature than his might have done so and been overwhelmed 
 when success became apparent. As it was, he probably 
 never looked upon himself as one set apart to dispel a 
 terror of the ages, to destroy the power of a scourge which 
 had lashed all humanity since the world was peopled: he 
 was prosaically trying to utilize the new knowledge. 
 Furthermore, if there is any one characteristic of the man 
 which shines forth in all his writings, at least until great 
 age weakened his faculties, it is that of thinking straight. 
 He sees the problem before him clean and clear he never 
 loses sight of it he never grows misty or confused he 
 makes for the goal steadily, persistently, and by what 
 seems to him to be the most direct path. And, at the 
 very threshold, he differs from European philosophers. 
 
 Look back at their experiments and their theories. 
 Every one of them has his eyes fixed on his globes and his 
 jars. Every one of them is making the electricity which 
 he produces the model. Every one of them is hunting 
 for resemblances to the lightning in exhausted receivers or 
 on the edges of wet tea cups, or in his little circuits. And 
 the most they got out of it all was that the little sparks 
 and the little crackles and the little glow and the light- 
 ning seemed to be of the same " nature" the meaning- 
 less answer of both the ignorant and the philosopher. 
 Their question was is electricity lightning in miniature? 
 
 Such Franklin did not do. He turned from the bottles 
 and the wires and looked straight into the face of Nature. 
 
WHAT IS LIGHTNING? 579 
 
 Of a summer's evening he watched the soft radiance 
 glimmer fitfully from one pink vapor wreath to another, 
 or silently bathe the distant horizon again and again in 
 golden glow. He saw the cold fires of the Aurora waving 
 like fingers beckoning men to find them in the frozen 
 North-land. He saw the great, heavy clouds sweeping in 
 from the sea and forming their serried columns upon the 
 mountain-flanks. He saw them crowd into the gorges, 
 and break against the peaks, rolling back in scattered 
 fragments to form new cohorts to hurl themselves once 
 more upon the eternal rock. He saw the lightnings shiv- 
 ering and seething in their fleecy masses, or leaping out, 
 hissing and snake-like, to rend the stone battlements and 
 send the avalanches rattling down the precipices. . He 
 heard the crash of the warring forces of earth and sky, the 
 fury and turmoil of the never-ending battle of the clouds 
 and the mountains, roaring and resounding from steep to 
 steep until its deep diapason died away amid a thousand 
 echoes and left the earth shuddering. 
 
 The great poet of his race had already idealized the spirit 
 of the air that did these things. Franklin's invocation 
 lay not to the imprisoned imps in the bottles, but to 
 "Ariel and all his quality." 
 
 All through the summer of 1749 he kept at work, reso- 
 lutely holding himself aloof from political allurements. 
 Kinnersley helped him. His procedure is methodic; his 
 trials and conclusions are noted without a shadow of emo- 
 tion or a sign that their author knew himself to be speedily 
 Hearing his goal. His question was not, What is electric- 
 ity? but, What is lightning? His object, a physical mode 
 of making nature herself answer; not a collection of anal- 
 ogies and resemblances from which a reply might, with 
 more or less certainty, be inferred. These, however, it 
 was necessary to gather in order to perceive what the cru- 
 cial experiment ought to be. Therefore, he seeks out 
 every feature in which the electrical effects produced by 
 his machines agree with the lightning, and sets them all 
 
580 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 down categorically. Here is the list noted in his diary 
 under date of November 7th, 1749 : 
 
 "Electrical fluid agrees with lightning in these particu- 
 lars: i. Giving light. 2. Color of the light. 3. Crooked 
 direction. 4. Swift motion. 5. Being conducted by 
 metals. 6. Crack or noise in exploding. 7. Subsisting 
 in water or ice. 8. Rending bodies it passes through. 9. 
 Destroying animals. 10. Melting metals, u. Firing in- 
 flammable substances. 12. Sulphurous smell." 
 
 In all these things the agreement of lightning and elec- 
 tricity is perceptible by the senses. Yet it does not nec- 
 essarily follow that they are identical. That can only be 
 resolved by determining whether they obey the same laws 
 under the same conditions. 
 
 There is one fact which he has recognized to his com- 
 plete satisfaction, and that is, that the so-called electrical 
 fluid of his jars and globes is attracted and drawn off by 
 points. Here there is a direct apparent control of the 
 fluid. He has no evidence that lightning possesses what 
 he calls a similar property of being attracted. But if it 
 has, if it will come out of a cloud to go to a point, as the 
 electric fluid seemingly comes out of his glass globe, that 
 shows that the same fluid is in the cloud and in the glass. 
 The necessary test for the identity of lightning and elec- 
 tricity is now plain. He ends his minute thus: "Since 
 they agree in all the particulars wherein we can already 
 compare them, is it not probable that they agree likewise 
 in this? L,et the experiment be made!" 
 
 In July 1750, Franklin sends to Collinson the most elab- 
 orate and longest of all his communications. It is one 
 which he regarded as of especial importance, and for that 
 reason asks Collinson to convey it to "our honorable Pro- 
 prietary," to show to him that his "generous present of a 
 compleat electrical apparatus" had been put to good use. 
 In it, he describes the making of the proposed experiment, 
 though only in miniature. But the results so completely 
 confirm his anticipations, that he is willing to base upon 
 
FRANKLIN'S EXPERIMENTS. 581 
 
 it definite instructions how to make the actual trial itself, 
 and to leave the performance to others, whose facilities for 
 carrying it out might be better than his own. This self- 
 abnegation shows itself everywhere throughout Franklin's 
 scientific career. No one could have been more destitute 
 of pride of opinion than he, no one more totally free from the 
 desire of profit in any form to himself, no one more purely 
 single-hearted in the devotion of his genius to the good of 
 all men. 
 
 The little experiment, as usual, was made with homely 
 apparatus. He hung up an old-fashioned pair of brass 
 scales by a twisted cord attached to the middle of the beam 
 so that the pans, as the cord untwisted, would move round 
 in a horizontal circle. He suspended the pans from the 
 beam by silk threads instead of the usual chains, so as to 
 insulate them. On the floor, and in such position that the 
 scale-pans would move over it in their path, he set up an 
 old metal punch, on end. Then he electrified one scale- 
 pan. 
 
 Now, as this pan came over the punch, it was attracted 
 and moved down to the iron, and when near enough the 
 charge would pass from pan to punch with a snap and 
 crack. But if a sewing-needle were u stuck on the end of 
 the punch, its point upwards, the scale, instead of drawing 
 nigh to the punch and snapping, discharges its fire silently 
 through the point and rises higher than the punch. Nay, 
 even if the needle be placed upon the floor near the punch, 
 its point upward, the end of the punch, though so much 
 higher than the needle, will not attract the scale and re- 
 ceive its fire, for the needle will get it and convey it away 
 before it comes nigh enough for the punch to act." Of 
 course, the scale pan here represented the electrified 
 cloud, and the punch the building or mountain which 
 might be struck by the spark, did not the needle draw it 
 harmlessly off. 
 
 This description is the preface to the two famous para- 
 graphs which were destined to place Franklin first among 
 living philosophers. 
 
582 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 ( 'I say," lie declares, "if these things are so, may not 
 the knowledge of this power of points be of use to man- 
 kind in preserving houses, churches, ships, &c., from the 
 stroke of lightning,by directing us to fix on the highest 
 parts of those edifices upright rods of iron made sharp as a 
 needle, and gilt to prevent rusting, and from the foot of 
 those rods a wire down the outside of the building into the 
 ground, or down round one of the shrouds of a ship and 
 down her side till it reaches the water? Would not these 
 pointed rods probably draw the electrical fire silently out 
 of a cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and 
 thereby secure us from that most sudden and terrible 
 mischief? 
 
 u To determine the question, whether the clouds that 
 contain the lightning are electrified or not, I would pro- 
 pose an experiment to be tried where it may be done con- 
 veniently. On the top of some high tower or steeple, 
 place a kind of centry-box big enough to contain a man 
 and an electrical stand. From the middle of the stand let 
 an iron rod rise and pass bending out of the door, and then 
 upright twenty or thirty feet, pointed very sharp at the 
 end. If the electrical stand be kept clean and dry, a man 
 standing on it when such clouds are passing low, might be 
 electrified and afford sparks, the rod drawing fire to him 
 from a cloud. If any danger to the man should be ap- 
 prehended (though I think there would be none) let him 
 stand on the floor of his box and now and then bring near 
 to the rod the loop of a wire that has one end fastened to 
 the leads, he holding it by a wax handle ; so the sparks, if 
 the rod is electrified, will strike from the rod to the wire, 
 and not affect him." 
 
 When Collinson received that paper, he recognized at 
 once that here was no ordinary discovery, and that how- 
 ever ingenious or interesting Franklin's ideas may hitherto 
 have been concerning the nature of the electric fire, the 
 behavior of jars and such matters, this announcement re- 
 duced every past item of electrical knowledge to compara- 
 
THE PUBLICATION OF FRANKLIN'S LETTERS. 583 
 
 tive insignificance. For not only was this the first great 
 utilization of everything that had been learned from the 
 rubbed amber and its posterity, but the importance of it 
 as a safeguard to life and property was inestimable. 
 Hitherto the Royal Society had not been unfavorably 
 disposed to Franklin, and even Watson, in appropriating 
 his honors, did so in a considerate and even laudatory 
 way. But when Collinson came with this story and 
 wanted the Society to consider it, he met with prompt re- 
 buff and even derision. The whole matter was regarded 
 as too visionary for serious discussion by the Society, 
 whatever individual members might think about it. 1 
 
 The calm indifference with which Franklin accepted 
 this turn of affairs found no reflection in the breast of Col- 
 linson, who, on the contrary, developed a most unquaker- 
 like spirit of antagonism. He was now determined that 
 not only should these last papers of the American phil- 
 osopher be published, but that the earlier letters already 
 received should go to the world, whether the Royal Society 
 put their imprint on them or not. And to this he was 
 urgently incited by Dr. Fothergill, who cordially under- 
 took to assist him. 
 
 So he offered the letters to Cave Cave, the lordly 
 owner of the Gentleman's Magazine; Cave, the typical 
 Grub Street publisher, who regarded ^50 as an adequate 
 bait for the highest literary genius the Cave of Dr. 
 Samuel Johnson, who looked upon his very abode at St. 
 John's Gate with respectful awe; and Cave refused them 
 place in those sacred pages, although he was filling the 
 latter with long diatribes from nobodies about the latest 
 humbugs in "medical (!) electricity." But Cave had an 
 eye to profit, and while unwilling to imperil the fortunes 
 of his magazine by admitting such heterodox matter, 
 
 1 Nevertheless a bri^f notice of Franklin's electrified cloud theory 
 found place in the transactions very shortly afterwards, through a report 
 on it by Dr. William Stukely, who had heard the first letter to Collinson 
 publicly read at some gathering. Phil. Trans., 496, 601. 
 
584 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 he saw no reason why he should not issue it as a separate 
 publication price two shillings and six pence; especially 
 as no outlay on his part was required, and all the revenue 
 was to come solely to him. Thus the collection came to 
 be published in 1751. 
 
 Meanwhile Franklin was pursuing the even tenor of his 
 way, and not only all the Philadelphians, but the people 
 of far-distant Boston and New York and Charles Town 
 were manifesting increased interest in his astonishing 
 proceedings. Cadwallader Golden, in New York, had 
 opened correspondence with him and had become prac- 
 tically his disciple; so had James Bowdoin, in Boston, 
 afterwards Governor of the colony. If his house had 
 hitherto been a rendezvous for all the sight-seers in Phila- 
 delphia, it was now more attractive than ever. He killed 
 turkeys with the discharge from large L,eyden jars, and 
 once, by accident, in the same way, nearly killed himself. 
 To Golden he writes that he has "melted brass pins and 
 needles, inverted the poles of the magnetic needle, given 
 a magnetism and polarity to needles that had none, and 
 fired dry gunpowder by the electric spark." He dwells 
 upon the powerful effects of the Leyden jar battery, and 
 adds: "So we are got beyond the skill of Rabelais' devils 
 of two years old, who . . . had only learned to thunder 
 and lighten a little round the head of a cabbage." Then 
 people got the notion, probably from news of some curious 
 discoveries said to have been made in Italy, that electricity 
 was the universal panacea; and Franklin found himself 
 besieged by invalids. Governor Belcher, of New Jersey 
 (aged 70, drinks small beer and half a bottle of Madeira 
 daily, and is "tremulous"), begs Franklin to send him 
 the electrical apparatus in order that he may treat himself, 
 and bewails its breakage on the road. 1 Paralytics come to 
 him in large numbers, and he gave them all the same 
 remedy the united shock of two six-gallon glass jars 
 through the affected limb, three times a day; but he never 
 
 1 N. Y. Col. Records, viii., 7. 
 
KINNERSLEY'S LECTURES. 585 
 
 saw any advantage after the fifth day, when the patients 
 u became discouraged, went home, and in a short time re- 
 lapsed." In fact, Franklin is not disposed to accord to his 
 shocks even the first small improvement which appeared ; 
 which he thinks rather due to the u exercise in the 
 patients' journey and coming daily to my house, or from 
 the spirits given by the hope of success enabling them to 
 exert more strength in their limbs." 1 
 
 By this time he determines that something must be 
 done to assuage popular curiosity in a more wholesale 
 manner. Kimiersley, who had been assisting him in his 
 experiments, needed remunerative employment. He was 
 well familiar with all Franklin had accomplished. The 
 plan developed is told in the following advertisement 
 which soon appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette: 
 
 " Notice is hereby given to the Curious that on Wednes- 
 day next, Mr. Kinnersley proposes to begin a course of 
 Experiments on the Newly Discovered Electrical Fire, 
 containing not only the most curious of those that have 
 been made and published in Europe, but a considerable 
 number of new ones lately made in this City, to be accom- 
 panied with methodical lectures on the nature and proper- 
 ties of that wonderful element." 
 
 There were two of these discourses which Franklin had 
 written. Kinnersley himself fitted up the apparatus with 
 characteristic ingenuity, and thus equipped, the first lec- 
 turer on science in the New World began his tour. From 
 Philadelphia he went to Boston, where the venerable walls 
 of Faneuil Hall resounded with the cracks and snaps of 
 his jars and globes, long before they echoed the impas- 
 sioned eloquence of the orators of the Revolution. His 
 experiments, writes Governor Bowdoin to Franklin, "have 
 been greatly pleasing to all sorts of people that have seen 
 them." In New York and in Newport the exhibitions 
 created a genuine sensation the citizens especially mar- 
 better to Prin gle, Dec. 21, 1757. 
 
586 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 veling at his showing of how houses and barns could be 
 (perhaps) protected from the lightning. 
 
 In the intervals of his lectures, Kinnersley used his ap- 
 paratus for further experimenting, and in the spring of 
 1752, he re-discovered the different electricities of sulphur 
 and glass the resinous and vitreous electricities of Dufay 
 concerning which neither he nor Franklin appears to 
 have had any earlier knowledge. He communicated this 
 at once to Franklin, who repeated the experiments, and at 
 first concluded that the different attractions and repulsions 
 observed proceeded rather from the greater or smaller 
 quantities of the fire obtained from different bodies, than 
 from the fire being of different kinds or having different di- 
 rections; but subsequently he conceded that a glass globe 
 charges positively and a sulphur one negatively. He did 
 not probe into this, however, with his accustomed energy. 
 Another and weightier matter was on his mind, and he 
 had no relish for new research until the question which it 
 raised could be settled. His letters had been published in 
 Europe, but as yet no one had made the experiment. Could 
 he not do it himself? 
 
 He had already canvassed the possibilities of doing so, 
 but had given up the idea because there were no hills or 
 other natural elevations about Philadelphia, and no edifices 
 higher than ordinary dwelling-houses. He believed it 
 necessary to place his pointed rod on some lofty peak or 
 high tower; but in all Philadelphia there was not even a 
 church-spire ; indeed, he might have traversed the whole 
 province of Pennsylvania without finding one. True, the 
 vestry of Christ Church by slow degrees had made up its 
 collective mind some time to build a steeple, but that 
 notion had faded into the dim distance when the war broke 
 out. Franklin was now seeking to revive the project. A 
 lottery had been established to procure the needful funds, 
 both for the structure and the bells, and he watched with 
 impatience the incoming subscriptions and the taking of 
 chances, in the hope that enough money would soon be 
 
THK FRENCH LIGHTNING ROD EXPERIMENTS. 587 
 
 raised to erect his long-desired pinnacle. But the receipts 
 were small and their advent slow. Waiting was tedious 
 all other experiments seemed so tame beside this one. 
 Kinnersley was drawing off the popular excitement ; the at- 
 tractions of political life began to look once again very fas- 
 cinating. 
 
 The summer came a bad season for electrical experi- 
 menting, as he was well aware. He would put it all aside 
 until the old interest should revive with different condi- 
 tions, when the news came from across the sea that the ex- 
 periment had been tried! Tried by the first philosophers 
 in France under the auspices of the French King himself. 
 Tried with magnificent and unquestionable success, and 
 that all Europe was ringing with it. 
 
 He needed all his philosophy now. 
 
 How had they done it? 
 
 Cave, with characteristic prudence, had issued but a few 
 copies of the pamphlet containing Franklin's letters ; and 
 now, as nearly a year had elapsed, and no notice of it had 
 been taken, was doubtless applauding his own foresight. 
 Some one, however, had sent a copy to De Buffon in Paris, 
 and he perceived instantly that here was something both 
 extraordinarily novel and extraordinarily strange. He 
 persuaded D'Alibard to translate the work into French a 
 task very imperfectly done, but not so obscurely as to pre- 
 vent the quick-witted Frenchmen from seeing the import- 
 ant nature of the discoveries, and the logical skill which 
 had been exhibited in their announcement. D'Alibard's 
 book sold tremendously doubtless to the agony of Cave, 
 who got no profit out of it. The probability of success 
 of the Philadelphia!! experiments was the staple of con- 
 versation everywhere ; from the meetings of the phil- 
 osophers it spread to the gatherings of the beau monde 
 from the salons to the Court to the King and the result 
 was his Majesty's command that Franklin's experiments 
 should be repeated before him. 
 
588 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 The Duke D'Ayen placed at the King's disposal his 
 chateau at St. Germain. De Lor, master of experimental 
 philosophy, was selected to make the exhibition, and Louis 
 watched with the keenest interest the great sparks from the 
 cascade (series) battery and the performances of the various 
 ingenious contrivances which Franklin describes in his 
 early letters to Collinson. 
 
 Meanwhile, De Lor, De Buffon and D'Alibard, having 
 got together, found themselves agreeing that the experi- 
 ment of all others was that of the pointed rod. They did 
 not show that to the King, doubtful perhaps of its success; 
 but De Lor and D'Alibard each separately undertook to 
 test the matter. 
 
 D'Alibard, in a garden at Marly la Ville, about eighteen 
 miles from Paris, had erected a sharply-pointed iron rod 
 an inch in diameter and forty feet high. This rod was 
 insulated at its base, which rested upon a table, arranged 
 within a small cabin, to the posts of which last the rod 
 was also secured by silk ropes. A thunder storm not being 
 immediately at hand, D'Alibard employed an old dragoon, 
 one Corffier, to watch the apparatus, and provided conve- 
 niently at hand a brass wire mounted in a glass bottle for 
 a handle, with which to draw off the sparks from the rod, 
 if it should become electrified, as he hoped would be the 
 case. Some days elapsed, and when the thunder-gust did 
 come, Corffier was on guard alone. Instead of waiting for 
 D'Alibard' s arrival, he concluded to try the experiment 
 himself, and so, grasping the wire, he presented it to the rod. 
 The sparks flew, with loud reports. CorfBer dropped the 
 wire in terror, and shouted to his neighbors to send at once 
 for the village priest, for the fierce flame and the sulphur- 
 ous odor were clearly infernal. 
 
 The ecclesiastic came in full run, with the villagers in 
 throngs at his heels. The hail-storm was terrific, but, as 
 all believed CorfBer had been killed, no one minded it. 
 CorfBer, however, was found uninjured, and, as the good 
 Prior of Marly had no fear of the machinations of the fiend, 
 
FRANKLIN'S KITE EXPERIMENT. 589 
 
 lie began to experiment for himself by drawing sparks with 
 the brass wire. 
 
 "I repeated the experiment at least six times in about 
 four minutes in the presence of many persons," he writes 
 to the absent D'Alibard, "and every time the experiment 
 lasted the space of a pater and an ave" He managed to 
 touch the rod himself and got a rather severe shock; but he 
 wrote the letter to D'Alibard and sent it off by Corffier be- 
 fore he left the scene. 
 
 " Franklin's idea ceases to be a conjecture," says D'Ali- 
 bard, in concluding his report to the French Academy 
 u here it has become a reality." 
 
 De Lor, in Paris, followed, on May i8th, with an iron 
 rod 99 feet high, from which he drew off sparks freely dur- 
 ing: a thunderstorm. 
 
 Such was the intelligence which reached Franklin. It 
 is not difficult to imagine the amazement with which he 
 received it. True, these French philosophers had osten- 
 sibly made the experiment but how? 
 
 With rods, one of which would not overtop buildings in 
 Philadelphia, and the other, though twice as high, still, in 
 his belief, far from being sufficiently lofty. That sparks 
 had been drawn from rods which ended in the air close to 
 the earth's surface, and not within hundreds of feet of the 
 clouds was not conclusive. This was the experiment in 
 one sense, and yet, in another, it was not. It showed that 
 the rods had become electrified but not necessarily that 
 the lightning had electrified them or had passed over them. 
 
 Again the question pressed upon him could he not 
 make the test himself? This time a way flashed across his 
 mind one of the boldest conceptions ever imagined by 
 man. Why not cause the fierce fires of the heavens to de- 
 scend so that he may place them side by side with the puny 
 sparks and flashes of his globes and jars and so see the 
 identity? Why not send up a kite into the very heart of the 
 thunder-cloud, and bring the lightning down on its cord? 
 
590 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Two light strips of cedar placed crosswise, and a large 
 thin silk handkerchief secured to them at its corners 
 such was the kite. To the top of the upright stick of the 
 cross was fastened a sharp wire about a foot long. The 
 twine was of the usual kind; but he provided a piece of 
 silk ribbon and a key the first to attach to the twine and 
 to hold in his hand after he had raised the kite, as some 
 possible protection against the lightning running through 
 his body the other to be secured at the junction of ribbon 
 and twine, to serve as a convenient conductor from which 
 to draw sparks if they came. 
 
 He had not long to wait for a thunderstorm in that hot 
 summer weather. As he saw it gathering he betook him- 
 self accompanied only by his son, then a young man 
 twenty-two years of age to the open commons. He de- 
 sired no other assistant he had confided his intentions to 
 no one else. The experiments of the Frenchmen had con- 
 vinced them, perhaps, but not him. He proposed to be 
 satisfied now. 
 
 It has been said that he kept his own counsel concern- 
 ing this, because he feared ridicule should he fail. There 
 is no basis for that. Why should he, who had borne 
 already with perfect equanimity the derision of the Royal 
 Society, fear more of it? Many a time before he had done 
 things, many a time afterwards he did others, which made 
 him the very butt of sneers and scoffs; but his serenity re- 
 mained unbroken. Why should he fear ridicule now ? 
 Nor was there anything else that he feared not even 
 death. And with death he now believed he was to stand 
 face to face. 
 
 All his past work had taught him this. He had seen 
 the furious shock blot out life from animals, he had felt it 
 in his own body rack him almost into insensibility. He 
 had said, over and over again that if potent enough it 
 would be instantly fatal. He was now going to lead into 
 his hand the fearful fire of the thunderbolt. 
 
 He knew nothing of the laws of conduction. If the 
 
IDENTITY OF LIGHTNING AND ELECTRICITY PROVED. 591 
 
 lightning could descend that cord, how much of it would 
 so come there was nothing to tell. Every presumption 
 pointed to an out-pour of living flame which would infalli- 
 bly kill. And yet, if his theory was right, the electrical 
 fluid should be drawn from the cloud and flow down with 
 harmless vigor. 
 
 No man ever confronted what he must have believed to 
 be terrible danger with more superb heroism. No man 
 ever led a forlorn hope, or faced a hail of bullets, with more 
 unflinching bravery. No man ever so calmly, so philo- 
 sophically, staked his life upon his faith. 
 
 The great clouds roll up from the horizon, and the gusts 
 grow fitful and strong. As Franklin and his boy disen- 
 tangle the kite from its cords and tail, and get it in posi- 
 tion for ascent, the thunder mutters nearer, and the rain 
 begins to patter upon the grass. A swishing blast comes 
 over the meadows, the kite feels it and rises swiftly, 
 swooping this way and that as the air-currents catch it. 
 The rain now falls heavily, and the mist begins to close in. 
 There is a friendly shed at hand, and Franklin, drenched, 
 takes refuge under it. The kite, heavy with water, is sail- 
 ing sluggishly, except when the gusts set it moving in 
 spirals. 
 
 A huge low-lying black cloud traveling over him sud- 
 denly shoots forth forked flame, and a crash of thunder 
 shakes the very earth. The pour is now in sheets; again 
 the blaze, again the rattling explosion. The kite is mov- 
 ing upward, for Franklin is quickly unwinding the cord. 
 It is soaring straight into the black mass, from which the 
 flashes are now rapidly coming, and in which it soon 
 becomes invisible. 
 
 Quietly Franklin is arranging the silk ribbon and the 
 key. This done, he watches the cord close to him. There 
 is no sign yet to guide him. Has he failed ? Suddenly he 
 sees the little loose fibres of the twine erect themselves. 
 He has not failed, but the moment has come. Without a 
 tremor he advances his knuckle to the key. And then a 
 
592 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 little crack, a little spark the same little crack and the 
 same little spark which he had taken a hundred times 
 from his glass tube and the great discovery is complete, 
 his name immortal. 
 
 As the kite dashes through the masses of vapor hurrying 
 over him, he touches the key, and again and again the 
 conquered lightning returns, as it were, a caress even 
 submitting to be caged in the Leyden jar like the common 
 electricity from his rubbed globe. 
 
 And, as the storm abates, the thunder dies away on the 
 horizon, the clouds sweep off toward their ancient enemies, 
 the mountains, and the kite moves lazily in the blue ; 
 while on the thankful, upturned face of the man gleams 
 the glad sunshine which he had thought never to behold 
 again. 
 
 "It is a dogma of faith that the demons can produce 
 wind, storms, and rain of fire from heaven. The atmo- 
 sphere is a battlefield between angels and devils . . . The 
 aspiring steeples around which cluster the low dwellings 
 of men are to be likened, when the bells in them are ring- 
 ing, to the hen spreading its protecting wings over its 
 chickens : for the tones of the consecrated metal repel the 
 demons and arrest storms and lightning." 
 
 So wrote the Angelic Doctor centuries before the days 
 of Franklin. Those whose minds were still filled with 
 the superstitions of a bygone age, clung to their belief in 
 the efficacy of the church bells, and denounced the light- 
 ning rod as a sacrilege ; nay, even as an awful defiance of 
 Heaven, if it were placed upon a house of worship. Abbe 
 Nollet, forgetting the philosopher in the ecclesiastic, de- 
 clared it to be " as impious to ward off God's lightnings as 
 for a child to resist the chastening rod of the father." In 
 vain it was urged that as the rain fell alike upon the just 
 and unjust, so the thunderbolt shattered with equal im- 
 partiality the steeple of the Christian church or the min- 
 
THE SUPERSTITION OF THE BELLS. 593 
 
 aret of the mosque of Mahomet. Good people, in their 
 zeal for their convictions, retorted that the presence of the 
 infernal contrivance ^consecrated the lofty spire and in- 
 vited its destruction; and this not only because of the 
 affront offered the celestial powers, but for the purely 
 physical reason that the lightning sought the conductor, 
 and so became directly attracted to the place which other- 
 wise it might harmlessly pass by. The failure of some of 
 the first-erected rods to protect, through defective construc- 
 tion or imperfect earth connections, gave color to these 
 arguments. Nevertheless, the spikes bristled on the pin- 
 nacles, and man learned " to sleep fearless of the thunder.' 1 
 
 The epoch of the intellectual rise which I seek to chron- 
 icle, here reaches its end. The establishment of the iden- 
 tity of electricity and lightning marks its conclusion, and 
 at the same time brings to culmination the long series of 
 events whereby the single incomprehensible effect observed 
 in the lodestone and the amber gradually grew into recog- 
 nition as a world force, subject to universal law and per- 
 vading all nature. It had lived and persisted and grown 
 mighty, steadily rising over all antagonisms, even as the 
 points of Franklin's rods reared themselves toward the 
 clouds, far above the jarring clangor of the bells. 
 
 " Vivos voco, 
 Mortuos plango, 
 Fulgurafrango, ' ' 
 
 sang the resounding throats in the steeples as of old, while 
 the lightning, laughing at their vociferations, silently and 
 safely followed the slender iron to the ground. 
 
 "The truth of science has ever had not merely the task 
 of evolving herself from the dull and uniform mist of 
 ignorance, but also that of repressing and dissolving the 
 phantoms of the imagination, which ever rise up in new 
 and tempting shapes, and which, not being of her, crowd 
 38 
 
594 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 
 
 before and around her and embarrass her in every way." 
 So said the Master of Electricity. Nor does he picture all 
 her task; for there is mental inertia to be overcome and 
 conditions to be created, whereby minds are rendered will- 
 ing to conceive as possible, things contradicting experi- 
 ences or habits of thought, long established and familiar. 
 
 How fraught with these difficulties, how impeded by 
 these obstacles, has been the intellectual rise in electricity, 
 and yet how persistently, how inevitably it has moved on- 
 ward of this, some imperfect idea may perhaps be glean-ed 
 from these pages. After all, they recount but one of the 
 many struggles of the human mind clearly to perceive, and 
 so perceiving to understand, something which it intui- 
 tively recognizes as written in the great book of Nature. 
 Whether it be a woman of Syria, in a bygone age, cur- 
 iously watching the chaff leap to her amber spindle, 
 whether a degraded Indian of the Orinoco idly rubbing the 
 dry stalks of the Negritia to see them attract lint; whether 
 a Franklin striving to fathom the secret of the clouds, the 
 perception is the same, the effort to understand the same; 
 and the object of all is the deciphering of Nature's mes- 
 sage told in the amber and the vine and the atmosphere. 
 It is in intellectual force alone that the differences appear. 
 It is before the steadily augmenting power of the intellect 
 that Nature yields one by one the keys to her enigmas. 
 
 Before those still unopened we may wait and wonder; 
 wondering as the savage Hurons wondered before the 
 magnet which the Jesuits brought to them; wondering as 
 the Greeks wondered before the mysteries of Samothrace; 
 wondering as we wonder now, when beyond the little 
 horizon of our knowledge we think we discern the great 
 dim shadow of the universal all-pervading force. 
 
 Men wait for times, but times oftener wait for men. 
 The intellectual advance is not marked by the almanac, 
 but by change in mind. At its extremes stand the savage 
 and the sage not yesterday and to-day. So in the future, 
 
 1 Faradav. 
 
THE LESSON. 595 
 
 as in the past, as the intellect waxes greater and more 
 potent, will it read ever new, ever greater teachings in 
 the eternal handiwork. 
 
 Thus the lesson of this record, and of all kindred others 
 in the broad fields of science, may well be taken to heart, 
 for none is more reassuring. Man-made systems may fall. 
 Apostles of degeneration may find, in the things which 
 make tip the environment of the hour, signs of impending 
 decay. But he who turns to the history of intellectual en- 
 deavor in the study of Nature will learn that when mind 
 thus faces the purity of the Infinite it does not and cannot 
 degenerate. Rather will he see in the constant effort to 
 reveal the truth, an influence always making for the good 
 always neutralizing the tendency to evil always vast in 
 uplifting power. 
 
 Nor will this be but a safe and complacent optimism; 
 for his too will be the abiding faith, that while ignorance 
 and error and superstition may hinder, while the light of 
 science falsely so called may mislead, until progress may 
 appear to cease and even the way seem lost, still the ad- 
 vance of the intellect is continuing constantly, surely, 
 steadily, and in God's own time it must show. 
 
 When electricity and lightning were known to be one, 
 the end seemed to have come, and the tidings which the 
 amber and the magnet had to tell were believed of all 
 men to have been told to the last syllable. But the book 
 had only been opened. We have read much very much 
 from it since. As the rise in ourselves continues, so, 
 with equal pace, shall we read on. 
 
INDBX. 
 
 Abarbanel, 29. 
 
 Academy, del Cimento, exp'ts of, 
 432; French, on Great Pyramid, 
 58; of Sciences, French Royal, 
 formation of, 378, 450. 
 
 Acmon, 22. 
 
 Add ison, refers to Strada's magnetic 
 teleg'h, 384- 
 
 Adsiger, Peter, 192. 
 
 Advancement of Learning, criti- 
 cisms on Gilbert in Bacon's, 328. 
 
 ^5gean Sea, iron on coasts of, 22. 
 
 Aelfred, King, 114. 
 
 Affaitatus, Fortunius, 211. 
 
 Age of iron, 20. 
 
 Agricola, George, describes gnomes, 
 25 ; on amber, 241. 
 
 Air pump, Boyle's exp'ts on, 414; 
 Guericke's, 389 ; Hauksbee's, 457. 
 
 Akenside, refers to Strada's teleg'h, 
 384. 
 
 Akkadians, connection of, with 
 Chinese, 63. 
 
 Albertus Magnus, on lodestone, 158, 
 308. 
 
 Aldrovandus, collections of, 342. 
 
 Alexander of Aphrodiseus, 93, 303. 
 
 Alexander the Great, campaigns, 38. 
 
 Alexandria, Univ'y of, 44. 
 
 Alfonso X., laws of, in. 
 
 Allamand, describes Leyden Jar, 
 521. 
 
 Altaic nations, 61. 
 
 Amalfi, 1 1 6. 
 
 Ambassadors, Chinese legend of 
 the, 69. 
 
 Amber, ancient trade routes of, 15; 
 ancient use of, for decoration, 16; 
 and lyncurium identical, 43; As- 
 clepiades on, 52; attraction, Agri- 
 cola on, 247; attraction, Cardan 
 on, 249; attraction, distinguished 
 by St. Augustine, 89; attraction, 
 Fracastorio on, 241; attraction, 
 first Chinese knowledge of, 74; 
 attraction, first obs'd by Syrian 
 
 women, 17; attraction of water 
 by, 310; attraction, Plutarch on, 
 50; Baltic, 15; black, 43; Boyle 
 distils to caput mortuum, 419; 
 called "harpaga," 17; deposits 
 of, 15; disc'y of, in lake dwellings, 
 ii ; Galen on, 52; Greek legends 
 of, 74; in ancient China, 74; in 
 ancient Greek literature, 16; in 
 Egyptian temples, 52; insects in, 
 17; lack of, in Egypt, 52; -soul, 
 not conceived by Thales, 34; St. 
 Augustine distinguishes attraction 
 of, 89; Theophrastus on, 40. 
 
 Amplitude, sun's, 198. 
 
 Amulets, lodestone, 25. 
 
 Anatomy, in Gilbert's time, 262. 
 
 Anatomy of Melancholy, Burton's, 
 368. 
 
 Anchor, invention of, 59. 
 
 Animals, Nollet's exp'ts on electri- 
 fying, 527. _ 
 
 Annals of China, national, 65. 
 
 Anthony of Bologna, 188. 
 
 Antiphyson, 93. 
 
 Apellikon of Teos, 43. 
 
 Apollonius Pergaeus, 44. 
 
 Appulus, William, 117. 
 
 Apuleius, on Thales, 35. 
 
 Arab compass, no. 
 
 Arabian Nights, story of magnetic 
 rocks in the, 96. . 
 
 Arabs, in Spain, 108; on magnetic 
 rocks, 100; early ' navigation of, 
 103. 
 
 Archimedes, 44; sphere of, 166. 
 
 Aristotle, Arabic treatises of, 157; 
 deductive method of, 39; estab- 
 lishment of school of, 38; on 
 Thales, 33, 34; on water soul, 34; 
 phil'y of, followed by Gilbert, 282; 
 referred to by Bacon, 279; rela- 
 tion of Gilbert to, 270; says noth- 
 ing about amber-soul, 35. 
 
 Armature, first vibrating, 49, Gal- 
 ileo on the, 345, 348; Gilbert's, 
 288. 
 
 (597) 
 
598 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Arsinoe, lodestone roof in temple 
 
 of, 44- 
 
 Arundel, Lord, his magnet, 333. 
 Aryans, the, 61. 
 
 Ascham, on Italian learning, 334.. 
 Asclepiades on use of amber, 52. 
 Astrolabe, 179, 215. 
 Astronomy of Chinese, 79. 
 Attraction, theories of, prevalent in 
 
 1 7th century, 433. 
 Attractive point, Norman's, 214. 
 Aurora, Bose suggests elec. origin 
 
 of, 499. 
 
 Averrhoes, on amber attraction, 156. 
 Azieros, 22. 
 
 Aztec ignorance of iron, 21. 
 Azimuth compass, 181. 
 
 B. 
 
 Babylonia, connection of Chinese 
 with, 63. 
 
 Bacon, Francis and Descartes, 356 ; 
 and Gilbert, 317 ; criticisms on 
 Gilbert, 321-322 ; definition of 
 heat, 417; indebtedness to Gilbert, 
 319, 329; inductive method of, 330; 
 invective against Gilbert, 327; ob- 
 serves shock of torpedo, 401 ; on 
 learning of his time, 334; on med- 
 icine, 253; on truth, 311; physi- 
 ological remains, 324; reference to 
 Aristotle, 279; reference to elec- 
 trics, 325: relation to old and new 
 phil'y, 331; treatise on magnet, 
 326. 
 
 Bacon, Roger, 160; on Peregrinus, 
 165. 
 
 Bailak Kibdjaki, no; on mag. 
 rocks, 100. 
 
 Bak tribes in China, 63. 
 
 Bandi, Countess, spont. combustion 
 of, 503- 
 
 Barlowe, Dr. W., 316, 336, 337; con- 
 troversy with Ridley, 338; mag. 
 discoveries and relations to Gil- 
 bert, 340. 
 
 Barometer, Picard's luminous, 453. 
 
 Battery, Franklin invents series, 
 556, 559; first electrical, 523. 
 
 Beal, telegraphic predictions, .387. 
 
 Beauvais, Vincent de, on magnet, 
 158. 
 
 Bede, on magnet, 115. 
 
 Bellerophon, suspended horse of, 46. 
 
 Bell, Gordon invents elec., 507 ; 
 Schwenter's mag., 383. 
 
 Bells, alleged lightning protection 
 by, 592. 
 
 Belus, magnets in temple of, 29. 
 
 Bercy, Hugo de, 157. 
 
 Bernouilli, John, 455, 469. 
 
 Betham, Sir W., 56. 
 
 Betulae, 56. 
 
 Bevis, Dr., imp'ts on I<eydeu jar, 
 534, 555- 
 
 Bible of Guyot de Provins, 152. 
 
 Birds as guides at sea, 106, 113. 
 
 Blanco, Andrea, map of, 197. 
 
 Bleaching, elec. discovered by 
 Kriiger, 508. 
 
 Bologna stone, 454. 
 
 Bond on compass variation, 446. 
 
 Bononian stone, 454. 
 
 Boodt, De, disputes mag. teleg'h, 
 383; on lychnites, 43. 
 
 Bose, George Matthias, 493; "beati- 
 fication," 498; electrical poem, 
 498; electrifies water jets, 499; 
 experiments, 495 ; ignites gun- 
 powder by elec'y, 497; invents 
 prime conductor and obtains 
 powerful discharges, 496; suggests 
 elec. origin of Aurora, 499. 
 
 Bowdoin, correspondence with 
 Franklin, 585. 
 
 Boy, Gray's exp'ts with suspended, 
 476. 
 
 Boyle, Robert, 404 ; additions to 
 electrics, 419 ; compared with 
 Hooke, 427; correspondence with 
 American scientists, 425; corpus- 
 cular theory, 416; disputes Gil- 
 bert, 417; elec. and mag. theories, 
 415; electrical doubts, 421; Bve- 
 lyn's estimate of his character, 
 424; experiments, 420 ; first sci- 
 entific chemist, 414; not original 
 discoverer of elec. repulsion, 420; 
 observes mutual att'n of electrics 
 and rubber, 418; observes odor of 
 rubbed electric, 415; on mech'l 
 production of elec'y, 418; on Van 
 Helmont, 375; primary concepts, 
 415; sermonizing, 424; theory of 
 elec. repulsion, 419. 
 
 Brand, discovers phosphorus, 454. 
 
 Bremond on Mahomet's coffin, 47. 
 
 Britain, magnet known in ancient, 
 114. 
 
 Browne, Sir Thomas, 380; exp'ts on 
 mag. telegraph, 386; on garlic 
 myth, 143. 
 
 Bruno, Giordano, 267, 333. 
 
 Buffon, De, declares elec'y unripe 
 for fixed laws, 548; on Franklin's 
 exp'ts, 587. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 599 
 
 Burrowes, on compass variation, 446. 
 Burton, Robert, 371, 377. 
 
 c. 
 
 Cabaeus, Nicolaus, 349; criticises 
 Gilbert, 350; discovers elec. re- 
 pulsion, 351; elec. theory, 351; 
 on Garzoni's discoveries, 229; on 
 mag. spectrum, 352; on mag. tele- 
 graph, 385; theory compared with 
 that of Boyle, 419. 
 
 Cabiri, 23, 25. 
 
 Calamitico, el, 204. 
 
 Cambridge Univ'y in time of Gil- 
 bert, 261. 
 
 Canal, Necho's failure to build, 58. 
 
 Cardan, Jerome, 243; differentiation 
 of amber and magnet, 249; Gil- 
 bert's attitude toward, 280; on 
 lightning, 568. 
 
 Cardinal points, Chinese and Chal- 
 dean names similar, 63; Etruscan 
 inv'n of, 59; named by Charle- 
 magne, 133; named by Flemish 
 sailors, 133. 
 
 Cart, Chinese south-pointing, 67, 69, 
 71, 72, 73, 81. 
 
 Casciorolus discovers Bologna stone, 
 
 454-. 
 Cassini, astronomical obs'ns, 452; on 
 
 mercury light, 456. 
 Castor and Pollux, 23. 
 Catullus, des'n of spinning, 18. 
 Cave publishes Franklin's papers, 
 
 585. 
 
 Cecco d'Ascoli, 203. 
 Cedrinus, on mag, suspension, 45. 
 Celmis, 22. 
 Cephisis, Lake, 17. 
 Cesare, disc'y of magnetism induced 
 
 by earth, 227. 
 
 Cesi, founds Lyncei Academy, 342. 
 Chadids, 382. 
 Chain of lodestone, 24. 
 Chaldeans, Chinese civilization 
 
 from, 63. 
 
 Challoner, Sir T., 339. 
 Chamberlain's letters, Gilbert men- 
 tioned in, 264. 
 Chariot, south -pointing see Cart, 
 
 Chinese south-pointing. 
 Charge, Dufay on distribution of, 
 
 483- 
 Charlemagne, names cardinal 
 
 points, 133. 
 Charles II., interest in physical 
 
 science, 406, 407, 408. 
 Charletou, Dr. Walter, 373, 376. 
 
 Charter-house, the, 470. 
 
 Chaucer on compass points, 191. 
 
 China, amber in ancient, 74; burn- 
 ing of books in, 66; first ships 
 built in, 78; first south-pointing 
 chariots in, 67; iron in ancient, 
 73; magnetic rocks on coasts of, 
 98; nucleus of, 64; original set- 
 tlers of, 63; pagodas in, 564; 
 Phoenician voyages to, 77; south- 
 pointing carts, lost art in, 71; 
 Tchoii dynasty in, 68; voyages to, 
 in 675 B. C., 56. 
 
 Chinese, ancient navigation of, 77; 
 astronomy, 79; characteristics, 77, 
 81, 82; chronology, 65; connec- 
 tion with Akkadians and Baby- 
 lonians, 63; discover compass 
 variation, 76; first knowledge of 
 amber, 74; same of lodestone, 72; 
 geomancers, 76; junks, 77, 78; 
 inventions, 80; legend of ambas- 
 sadors, 67; mariner's compass, 75, 
 76, 85, 189; south-pointing char- 
 iots, 67, 69, 71; superstitions about 
 compass, 105; voyages to Japan, 
 etc., 78; worship of magnet, 80. 
 
 Cherif-Edrisi, 100. 
 
 Chow, King of, 70. 
 
 Chronology, Chinese, 65-67. 
 
 Circuit, first elec., 525; Lemonnier's 
 water and metal, 532; Watson's, 
 across the Thames, 549. 
 
 Claudian, poem on magnet, 93; par- 
 odied by Strada, 383. 
 
 Clayton, letter to Boyle, 425. 
 
 Clement of Alexandria, 45. 
 
 Clutcher, name for amber, 17. 
 
 Clycas, 45. 
 
 Coition, magnetic, 276. 
 
 Colchester, 260. 
 
 Colden, Cadwallader, 585. 
 
 College, The Invisible, 379. 
 
 Collegium Naturale Curiosorum, 
 490. 
 
 Collinson, Peter, 538, 583. 
 
 Colonne, poem of Guido, 156. 
 
 Columbus, Christopher, 195; mag- 
 netic discoveries of, 200, 202; the- 
 ory of compass, 199. 
 
 Combustion, cases of spontaneous, 
 
 503- 
 
 Compass, Mariner's, alleged use in 
 building Great Pyramid, 57; An- 
 cient Finn, 141; Appulus on, 117; 
 Arab, no; attributed to Egyptians, 
 57; to ancient Greeks, 54; to King 
 Solomon, 55; to Phoenicians, 54; 
 
6oo 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Compass (continued.) 
 
 to various ancient people, 53; Azi- 
 muth, 181; boxing the, 187; Chin- 
 ese, first marine, 189; Chinese 
 obs'n of variation of, 76; Colum- 
 bus' alteration of, 196; Columbus' 
 disc'y of variation of, 200; Colum- 
 bus' theory of, 199; derivation of 
 word, 133; design of card, Etrus- 
 can, 60; De Vitry on, 154; dip or 
 inclination of, 210; disc'y of dip 
 of, 209; early Spanish, in; errors 
 in Columbus', 201; evolution of, 
 131; Finn, 140; first des'n of, 128; 
 garlic effect on, supposed, 143; 
 Gilbert on storage in meridian, 313; 
 Gilbert's electroscope resembles, 
 304; governed by earth's poles, 
 277; Guyot de Provins on, 153; in 
 time of Peregrinus 179; Lullycn, 
 791; Neckam's des'n of, 128; non- 
 mag, metal in, 183 ; Norman's 
 disc'y of dip, 2:5; Norse penalty 
 for falsifying, 144; not Chinese 
 inv'n, 85; not derived by Arabs 
 from Chinese, 105; old mode of 
 using, 130; Peregrinus', 180; Porta 
 on protecting needle of, 238; pun 
 ishment for tampering with, 144; 
 secular variation of, 446; sugges- 
 tion of telegraphy by, 239; tele- 
 graph, Schwenter's and others', 
 382; unknown to Saracens, 109; 
 variation of, 196 ; William the 
 Clerk's poem on, 150 ; Wisbuy 
 origin of, 146. 
 
 Condenser, Franklin's plate, 556. 
 
 Conduction, electric discovered by 
 Guericke, 399; magnetic, Gilbert 
 on, 289. 
 
 Conductor, Desaguiliers proposes 
 name, 488; magnetic, first sug- 
 gestion of, 47; prime, inv'd by 
 Bose, 496; or non-electric, 482. 
 
 Constantine, law of, concerning 
 lightning, 566. 
 
 Convection, electrical, 545. 
 
 Copernican theory, 267. 
 
 Copernicus, Nicolas, 267. 
 
 Corffier shocked by lightning, 588. 
 
 Corrichterus, his mag. unguent, 37. 
 
 Corybantes, 23. 
 
 Cowley, poem on R. Society, 413. 
 
 Creagus, 159. 
 
 Creation, prehistoric account of, 164. 
 
 Crows, as guides at sea, 113. 
 
 Ctesias, suggestion of lightning pro- 
 tection, 565 . 
 
 Cunaeus, inv'n of Leyden jar as- 
 cribed to, 521. 
 
 Curetes, 23. 
 
 Current, first suggestion of mag- 
 netic, 47. 
 
 D. 
 
 Dactyls, Idean, 22. 
 
 Balance, treatise on magnet, 448. 
 
 D'Alibard translates Franklin's pa- 
 pers, 587 ; exp'ts on lightning- 
 rod, 588. 
 
 Dantzic, philosophers, exp'ts of, 
 514; physical society of, 513. 
 
 De Augmentis, criticisms of Gilbert 
 in Bacon's, 328. 
 
 De Beauvais. See Beauvais. 
 
 De Bercy. See Bercy. 
 
 De Boodt. See Boodt. 
 
 De Buffon. See Buffon. 
 
 De Fantis. See Fantis. 
 
 De la Hire. See La Hire. 
 
 De Lor. See Lor. 
 
 De Magnete, Bacon's "remains" 
 taken from Gilbert's, 325. 
 
 De Monmor. See Monmcr. 
 
 De Natura Rerum, Lucretius' poem, 
 47; Neckam's treatise, 123. 
 
 Denmark, Iron Age in, 21. 
 
 D'Epinois, Gautier, poem of, 156. 
 
 Desaguiliers, Dr. Joseph, 470; exp'ts 
 of, 488 ; on atmospheric elec'y, 
 489. 
 
 Descartes, Rene, 356 ; copied by 
 Digby, 378; magnetic theory, 359; 
 mag. theory compared with that 
 of Plutarch, 51; method compared 
 with that of Bacon, 356; on elec- 
 trics, 364; on mag. spectrum, 362; 
 theory abandoned in France, 510; 
 theory compared with that of Lu- 
 cretius, 48; vortex theory of, 357. 
 
 De Subtilitate, Cardan's work, 246. 
 
 Diamond, alleged attraction of, by 
 iron, 281; alleged magnetism of, 
 238; alleged screening effect, 88. 
 
 Diaz, Bartholomew, voyage of, 205. 
 
 Digby, Sir Kenelm, 376; elec. the- 
 ories of, 378; replies to Browne, 
 380. 
 
 Digges, Madam, her sparkling frock, 
 
 425- 
 
 Digges, Sir Dudley, 339. 
 Digges, William, letter concerning 
 
 Mrs. Sewall, 425. 
 Diocles, 41. 
 Diogenes Laertius, 34. 
 Dionysius, 59. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 601 
 
 Dioscorides on magnet, 92 ; on 
 ligurius, 42. 
 
 Dioscuri, the, 23. 
 
 Dip of magnetic needle, 209, 210; 
 Affaitatus' supposed disc'y of, 
 211; Gilbert on, 213; Hartuianu's 
 disc'y of, 209 ; Norman's disc'y 
 of, 215, 217. 
 
 Drebbel, Cornelius Van, 44, 192. 
 
 Dufay, Charles Franfois. 478; broad 
 view of elec'y, 487; discovers vit- 
 reous and resinous elec'y, 484; 
 electrifies himself, 483; electrifies 
 metals, 479 ; exp'ts on colored 
 objects, 481; on distribution of 
 charge, 483; no distinction be- 
 tween electrics and non-electrics, 
 479; sends letter to R. Society, 
 485; recognition of Gray's work, 
 485; tribute to Gray, 487; uses 
 solid insulators, 482 ; verifies 
 Gray's exp'ts on conduction, 479. 
 
 Du Tour on Nollet's theory, 554. 
 
 E. 
 
 Earth, field of force of, Gilbert on, 
 292; magnetism induced by, 227; 
 return circuit disc'd by Watson, 
 550. 
 
 Eclipse at time of Thales, 34. 
 
 Effluvium, electric, Cabseuson, 351; 
 Gilbert on, 308; magnetic, 292. 
 
 Egypt, absence of Science in an- 
 cient, 31; iron in, 28, 58; lack of 
 amber in ancient, 52; mag. sus- 
 pension in, 45 ; opening of, to 
 commerce, 30; religion of ancient, 
 31; vending machines in ancient, 
 87. 
 
 Egyptians, ancient, ignorance of 
 magnet of, 27; alleged knowledge 
 of compass by, 57; voyages of, 58. 
 
 Electorius, 42. 
 
 Electrical, first use of word, 339. 
 
 Electric and magnetic motion com- 
 pared, 311; attraction, theories of, 
 307; attraction, Gilbert on, 308; 
 bell, inv'd by Gordon, 506; light, 
 see Light, electric; Machine, Gor- 
 don's, 506 ; Hauksbee's, 461 ; 
 Guericke's, 395 ; Winkler's, 506 ; 
 Motor, Gordon's, 507. 
 
 Electricity and lightning, Frank- 
 lin's exp'ts on identity of, 580, et 
 seq.; Freke on identity of, 571; 
 Nollet on identity of, 573; Wink- 
 ler on identity of, 572; and mag- 
 netism linked by Newton with 
 
 gravity, 439; atmospheric, De- 
 saguiliers theory of, 489; Frank- 
 lin's theory of, 576; beginning of 
 modern, 299; Boyle on mech'l 
 production of, 418; Digby on, 
 378; dual nature of, found by 
 Dufay, 484; and by Kinnersley, 
 586. 
 
 First application to medicine, 
 501-2; first attempt to measure, 
 523; first book on, in English, 
 420; first distinguished from mag- 
 netism by St. Augustine, 89; first 
 notice of, by R. Society, 402; first 
 use of word, 373. 
 
 Gordon kills animals by, 507; 
 Franklin's theory of, 643; Ger- 
 mans regard as fire, 492; Greene's 
 poetical references to, 369; Hau- 
 sen's theory of, 494; Jonson's ref- 
 erence to, 368; new theories of, in 
 I747> 5535 Quelmalz, theory of, 
 503; resinous and vitreous, dis- 
 covered by Dufay, 484; s'Grave- 
 sande's definition of, 488; speed 
 of, Lemonnier's attempt to meas- 
 ure, 532; Watson's attempt, 551; 
 Winkler's attempt, 506; Watson's 
 theories of, 507, 534. 
 
 Electrics, and non-electrics, Dufay 
 on, 479; Bacon on, 325; become 
 non-conductors, 482; Boyle's ad- 
 ditions to, list of, 419; Eoyle ob- 
 serves mutual attraction of elec- 
 tric and rubber, 418; Browne's 
 exp'ts on, 381; Cabaeus' additions 
 to list of, 350; Descartes on, 364; 
 Gassendi on attraction of, 418; Gil- 
 bert's list of, 299; Gilbert on 
 nature of, 307; mutual attraction 
 of, obs'd by Acad. del Cimento, 
 433; naming of, 302; per se, 488. 
 
 Electrida, 17. 
 
 Electrides, 16, 17. 
 
 Electro-magnetism, word coined 
 
 by Kircher, 365. 
 
 I Electrometer, first use of word, 524. 
 i Electron, 16. 
 
 | Electrum, in Egypt, 52; lake, 17. 
 I Elicott, John, elec. theory of, 554. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, learning in time 
 of, 332-334; legacy to Gilbert 265. 
 
 Emerson, R. W M on genius, 426. 
 
 Emperor First, Chinese, 66. 
 
 England in time of Elizabeth, 334; 
 in time of Hauksbee, 463. 
 
 Ephesus, mag. suspension in temple 
 of, 46. 
 
602 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Epicurus on attraction, 51. 
 Erasmus on ligurius, 42. 
 Eridanus, amber on shores of, 17. 
 Erigena founds scholasticism, 118. 
 Ether, Newtonian, 511. 
 Ethiopia, iron in, 22 
 Etruria, amber in, 15. 
 Etruscans, the, 59; design oVjcct 
 
 like compass card, 60; genesis of, 
 
 62; on lightning, 566. 
 Euclid, 44. 
 
 Euripides, Oeneus of, 24. 
 Eustachius, 262. 
 Evax, 42. 
 Evelyn, John, 378, 407, 424. 
 
 F. 
 
 Fabri, Honore, 420. 
 
 Fallopius, 262. 
 
 Fanshawe, Lady, on Digby, 379. 
 
 Fantis, Antonio de, 192. 
 
 Faraday, and Gilbert, 293; efforts to 
 connect gravity and magnetism, 
 442; on Newton's lines of force, 
 442. 
 
 Fathers of Church, on magnet, 90. 
 
 Ferabosco, the, visits R. Society, 
 407. 
 
 Ficino, Marsilio, mag. theory of, 
 240. 
 
 Field of force, Descartes on, 359; 
 development of, 218; Dufay on, 
 483; Gilbert on, 272, 291; iron fil- 
 ings in, 50 ; Lucretius on, 48 ; 
 magnetic and electric, 434; Max- 
 well on, 440 ; Newton on, 440 ; 
 Peregrinus on, 172, 207; Porta on, 
 235; Sarpi on, 227. 
 
 Figure-head, inv'n of the, 59. 
 
 Finland, conquest of, 137. 
 
 Finns, the, 59, 83; and Lapps, 139; 
 magic of, 138; superstitions con- 
 cerning, 139; use of compass by, 
 
 .139- 
 
 Finno-Ugric family, 59. 
 
 Fire, ancient records of atmos- 
 pheric, 568 ; electrical, 509 ; Ger- 
 mans regard elec'y as, 492. 
 
 Flesh magnet, the, 159. 
 
 Fludd, Dr. Robert, 375. 
 
 Fluid theory of elec'y, Franklin's, 
 544- 
 
 Form, Aristotelian, 276, 282, 419. 
 
 Fountain, Desaguiliers' electrified, 
 489. 
 
 Fracastorio, Jerome, amber theory 
 of, 241; Gilbert's attitude toward, 
 280; on mag. rocks, 204. 
 
 France, condition of phys. science 
 in, in 1 7th cent'y, 452; 'Franklin's 
 exp'ts repeated in, 587; learned 
 societies in, 378. 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 537; advises 
 Collinson of discharging effect 
 of points, 541 ; correspondence 
 with Colden, Bowdoin and Belch- 
 er, 585; electrical exp'ts on Ley- 
 den jar, etc., 543, 544, 545, 55^, 
 558; on identity of lightning and 
 elec'y, 580; on points, 541; on 
 suspended scale pan, 582; experi- 
 ments repeated in France, 587; 
 invents plate condenser and series 
 battery, 556; kite experiment, 590; 
 lightning rod, 582; papers rejected 
 T)y R. Society and published by 
 Cave, 583; regards lightning as 
 fired sulphur, 575; retires to de- 
 vote himself to elec'y, 547; the- 
 ories of elec'y, 543, 576; theory 
 claimed by Watson, 552 ; uses 
 battery for curative purposes, 585. 
 
 Fra Paolo, 224. 
 
 Frederick I. of Prussia founds Ber- 
 lin Society, 4QO. 
 
 Freke on identity of lightning and 
 elec'y, 571. 
 
 Froude, on genius, 426. 
 
 G. 
 
 Gagates, the, 43, 126. 
 
 Galen on amber, 52; on lodestone, 
 
 92. 
 
 Galileo, abjuration of, 355; con- 
 demnation of, 356; correspond- 
 ence with Duke of Tuscany, 345; 
 experiments on magnet, 345; 011 
 Gilbert's discoveries, 344-345; on 
 magnetic teleg'h, 385. 
 
 Garlic, alleged effect on compass, 
 143; Matthiolus on, 281. 
 
 Garzoni, alleged mag. discoveries 
 of, 229. 
 
 Gassendi, elec. theory of, 418. 
 
 Geomancers, Chinese, 75. 
 
 Germany, physical science in, 490, 
 492. 
 
 Gibbon on Mahomet's coffin, 46. 
 
 Gilbert, William, 258; amber at- 
 traction of water, 310; amber 
 questions, 295; and Aristotle, 270, 
 275; and Barlowe, 340; and Guer- 
 icke, their mag. theories com- 
 pared, 393; and Kouopho, 311; 
 attitude to predecessors, 279; au- 
 thorities quoted by, 2^0. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 6o 3 
 
 Gilbert (continued.) 
 
 Compared by Bacon to Xeno- 
 phanes, 328; comparison of the 
 poles, 277; conception of gravity, 
 437; condemns mag. fallacies, 
 281; continued as court physician 
 by James I., 315; copied by Van 
 Helmout, 373; correlation of elec. 
 with other motions, 309; correla- 
 tion of gravity and magnetism, 
 293; cosmical philosophy, 269; 
 cosmical system, 294; cosmical 
 theory accepted by Kepler, 354; 
 cosmical theory compared with 
 Newton's, 435, 438; criticised by 
 Bacon, 321-322-327; death and 
 burial place, 315; declares earth 
 a magnet, 276; De Magnete, his 
 treatise, 260; De Magnete rec'd 
 in Italy, 343; De Mundo Novo, 
 his treatise, 260, 316, 318; dis- 
 coveries recapitulated, 312-313. 
 
 Education of, 259; elec. effect 
 of atmospheric conditions noted, 
 305; elec. and mag. motions com- 
 pared, 311; electroscope, 303; em- 
 bellishments in De Magnete, 268; 
 errors as to variation, 273; fail- 
 ures in observation, 312; field of 
 force discussed, 272, 291; form 
 and matter theory, 276; free phil- 
 osophizing of, 310; generation of 
 lodestone, 287; inductive method 
 of, prior to Bacon, 330; influence 
 of Aristotle on, 282; insulation, 
 308-310; list of electrics, 299; list 
 of non-electrics, 305. 
 
 Magnetic discoveries of, 288; 
 magnetic repulsion, 285; mag- 
 netic theory of, 276; disputed by 
 Boyle, 417; Matter and Form, 
 284; Meteorologia of, 329; methods 
 of thought of, 266; "nature" dis- 
 cussed, 285; nature of electric, 
 307; negative conclusions regard- 
 ing elec'y, 306; nomenclature, 
 301; orb of virtue, 272; compared 
 with obs'ns of Porta and Pere- 
 grinus, 351; Owen's epigram on, 
 341; predecessors referred to, 287; 
 portraits and works, 260; post- 
 humous volume, 316, 318; pro- 
 posed addition to De Magnete, 
 316; referred to by Bacon, 318; 
 residence and society, 263; rela- 
 tions to Queen Elizabeth, 262, 
 264; relations to Sarpi, 344. 
 
 Scaliger's criticism, 341; ter- 
 
 rella of, 277; terrestrial attraction 
 of moon, 292; theory of elec. at- 
 traction, 308; theories, cosmical, 
 269, 294; theories compared with 
 those of Peregrinus, 278; con- 
 demned by Kircher, 366. 
 
 Gioja, Flavio, 187. 
 
 Glanvil, encyclopaedia of, 160; tele- 
 graphic predictions, 387. 
 
 Gnomes of Middle Ages, 25. 
 
 Goddard, Jonathan, 404. 
 
 Goose, Kircher's genesis of solan, 
 
 365- 
 Gordon, Andrew, elec. inventions, 
 
 506 et scq. 
 Gottland, 134. 
 Gralath, Daniel, exp'ts on Leyden 
 
 jar and elec. measuring inst's, 
 
 522 et seq. 
 Grandamicus, mag. theory of earth, 
 
 405. 
 
 Graunt, John, refused admission to 
 R. Society, 409. 
 
 Gravity, and magnetism, Gilbert 
 on, 293 ; Newton co-ordinates 
 elec'y and mag'n with, 442. 
 
 Gray, Stephen, 470; and Dufay, 486; 
 Du fay's tribute to, 487; his friends, 
 Godfrey and Wheler, 473; exp'ts 
 on brush discharge, 486; on charge 
 resident on surface, 476; on con- 
 duction, 474; on elec. induction, 
 477; on glass tube, 472; on hair, 
 etc., 471; on similarity of elec. 
 discharge to thunder and light- 
 ning, 486; planetary theory and 
 death, 487. 
 
 Greeks, amber in literature of, 16; 
 amber trade of, 16; compass at- 
 tributed to, 54; emigration to 
 Egypt, 30; iron working of, 23; 
 nature worship of, 31. 
 
 Greene, Robert, literary references 
 to mag'n and elec'y, 369. 
 
 Grote, on philosophy of Aristotle, 
 39; of Thales, 37. 
 
 Grummert, utilization of elec. light, 
 5c8. 
 
 Guericke, Otto von, 388; and Gil- 
 bert compared, 393; believes earth 
 to be animate, 393; discovers dis- 
 charging effect of points, 398; 
 elec. conduction, -99; elec. light, 
 402; sound due to electrification, 
 402; elec. repulsion obs'd by, 397; 
 elec. terrella of, 395; forgotten in 
 i8th cent'y, 491; hypothesis of 
 virtues, 392 ; invents air-pump, 
 
604 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Guericke (continued.) 
 
 414; invents elec. machine, 395-6; 
 
 treatise de Vacuo Spatio, 391. 
 Guilford, Lord, sells barometers, 
 
 406. 
 
 Guiiiicelli, poem of, 155. 
 Gunpowder ignited by elec'y, 497; 
 
 lightning compared to explosion 
 
 of, 570. 
 Guyot de Provins, 152. 
 
 H. 
 
 Hair, elec. attraction of, obs'd by 
 Boyle, 422. 
 
 Hakewill, 384. 
 
 Hale, Lord, on hydrostatics, 406. 
 
 Halley, Dr. Edmund, 447. 
 
 Hammering, magnetization by, 290. 
 
 Hartmann, disc'y of dip, 209. 
 
 Harpaga, 17. 
 
 Hauksbee, Francis, 457 ; electric 
 machine, 461; exp'ts on elec. in- 
 duction, 467; on elec. light, 460; 
 on lines of force, 467; on lumi- 
 nous fountain, 459. 
 
 Hausen, Christian August, 493. 
 
 Healing by first intention, Browne 
 on, 381. 
 
 Heat defined as mode of motion, by 
 Bacon, Boyle, Locke and Hooke, 
 417; destruction of magnetization 
 by, 227, 237. 
 
 Hebrews, iron working by, 29. 
 
 Heliades, legend of, 16. 
 
 Helmont, John Baptist Van, 372. 
 
 Henry, Prince, the Navigator, 194. 
 
 Heraclea, 27. 
 
 Heraclean stone, 24, 27. 
 
 Herculean stone, 24, 27. 
 
 Hero, 44. 
 
 Herodotus on Thales, 34. 
 
 Hesiod, amber mentioned by, 16; 
 brass mentioned by, 21. 
 
 History of stones, Theophrastus' , 
 
 39- 
 
 Hippalus, 104. 
 Hipparchus, 44. 
 Hippias, 35. 
 
 Hoang-ti, legend of, 67; reign of, 65. 
 Hoar, Leonard, corresponds with 
 
 Boyle, 425. 
 
 Hobbes, attacks R. Society, 378. 
 Homer, amber mentioned by, 16; 
 
 iron seldom mentioned by, 21; 
 
 knowledge of compass attributed 
 
 to, 54. 
 Hooke, Robert, 427; on elec. light, 
 
 430; on heat as vibration, 417; in- 
 
 ventions of, 428-9; phonograph 
 suggested, 429; spiral spring of, 
 429. 
 
 Hopkinsou, Thomas, 540. 
 
 Horus, magnet termed bone of, 28. 
 
 Huet, Bishop, on Solomon's voy- 
 ages, 55. 
 
 Humboldt on Columbus, 200. 
 
 Humor, elec. attraction ascribed to, 
 308. 
 
 I. 
 
 Iceland, discovery of, 113. 
 
 Ida, Mt., mag. legend of, 19. 
 
 Idean Dactyls, 22. 
 
 Ignition, electric, 496, 507, 508. 
 
 Inclination of compass, 210. 
 
 Induction, electric, Gray's exp'ts 
 on, 477; Hauksbee's exp'ts on, 
 467; magnetic, Descartes on, 361; 
 Norman on, 219; of earth, 227; 
 Peregrinus on, 176; St. Augustine 
 on, 87. 
 
 Inductive method, beginning of, 38; 
 compared with deductive, 356; 
 Gilbert's use of before Bacon, 330; 
 Nichol's definition of, 330. 
 
 Innocent, Bishop, 566. 
 
 Insulation, first use of term, 482; 
 Gilbert on, 308. 
 
 Insulators, solid, used by Dufay, 
 482. 
 
 Inunction, 130. 
 
 Invisible College, 404. 
 
 Ion of Plato, 24. 
 
 lolinus on lychnites, 42. 
 
 Iron, acquired magnetism of, 289; 
 age, 12, 20, 21 ; Aztec and Peruvian 
 ignorance of, 21 ; -clad ships, 
 Norse, 98, 112; decay of, in 
 Egyptian soil, 28; -filings in mag. 
 field, 50, 352, 412; food for mag- 
 net, 238; Hebrew knowledge of, 
 29 ; in ancient China, 73 ; in 
 ancient Egypt, 28, 58 ; mag. 
 screening effect of, 238; mag. 
 separation of, 159; mag. suspen- 
 sion of, 45; mentioned by Homer, 
 21 ; by Hesiod, 21 ; miners in 
 Satnothrace, 23; mines, ancient, 
 22, 27; natural state of, 20; -ore, 
 Gilbert on, 287; Greek deposits 
 of, 25 ; workers, the first, 22 ; 
 working by Finns, 138. 
 
 Irving, W., on Columbus, 201. 
 
 Israelites as iron workers, 28. 
 
 Italy, learning in in i7th cent'y, 
 342. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 605 
 
 J. 
 
 Jade traffic in China, 67. 
 Japan, first Chinese voyages to, 78; 
 
 south-pointing carts first used in, 
 
 Si. 
 Jefferson, Thomas, exp'ts on heat, 
 
 339. 
 
 Jeroboam, golden calves of, 29. 
 
 Jesuits and Sarpi, 228-9. 
 
 Jet, 43, 126, 369. 
 
 Jews, mag. knowledge of, 29. 
 
 John of London, 162. 
 
 Jonson, Ben, refers to magnetism, 
 368; to protection against thun- 
 der, 509. 
 
 Josephus, on protection of temple 
 from lightning, 565. 
 
 Junks, Chinese, 77-78. 
 
 K. 
 
 Kalevala, the, 138. 
 
 Kepler, John, 354.. 
 
 Kinnersley, Ebenezer, 540; elec. 
 lectures of, 585; exp'ts on Leyden 
 jar, 556; invents magic, picture, 
 elec. jack and elec. motor, 560; 
 re-discovers vitreous and resinous 
 elec'y, 586. 
 
 Kircher, Athanasius, condemns Gil- 
 bert's theories, 366; criticizes Gil- 
 bert and Kepler, 355; genesis of 
 Solan goose, 365; Hebrew use of 
 magnet, 29; invents words "mag- 
 netism" and "electro magnet- 
 ism," 365; works, 365. 
 
 Kite experiment, Franklin's, 590. 
 
 Kleist, Dean von, discovery of Ley- 
 den jar, 512. 
 
 Kouopho, 89; and Gilbert, 311; on 
 amber attraction, 74. 
 
 Kratzenstein, Christian Gottlieb, 
 52. 
 
 Kriiger, Johann Gottlob, 501; ob- 
 serves bleaching effect of ozone, 
 508; Von Kleist describes Leyden 
 jar to him, 513. 
 
 L. 
 
 Laertins, Diogenes, 34, 35. 
 La Hire, De, on mercurial light, 456. 
 Lake dwellings, amber in, n. 
 Lange, elec'y for curative use, 503. 
 Lapis lyncurius, 41. 
 Lapis Solaris, 454. 
 Lapps and Finns, 137. 
 Latini, Bruuetto, 162. 
 
 Leakage, magnetic, Descartes on, 
 361. 
 
 Learning, in England and Italy 
 contrasted, 341. 
 
 Legends of magnet, 219. 
 
 Leibnitz on loss of Galileo's mag- 
 net, 349. 
 
 Lemonnier, Louis G., 530. 
 
 Leonardus on black aniber and 
 lyncurium, 42, 43. 
 
 Leopoldine Society, 490. 
 
 Leyden Jar, Bevis' improvements 
 in, 534, 555; described by Muss- 
 chenbroeck to Reaumur, 517; dis- 
 covered by Von Kleist, 512; first 
 elec. circuit recognized in, 525; 
 Franklin's exp'ts on, 545, 558; 
 Gralath's exp'ts on, 522; improved 
 by Watson, 554, 555; in battery, 
 523; invention of ascribed to Cu- 
 naeus, 521; origin of name, 522; 
 Watson's theory of, 534. 
 
 Library Company of Philadelphia, 
 538. 
 
 Light, electric, Bernouilli on, 455; 
 compared to lightning, 459, 469; 
 Dufay finds identical with fire, 
 485 ; Grummert utilizes, 508 ; 
 Guericke discovers, 402; Hauks- 
 bee's luminous fountain, 459 ; 
 Hausen differentiates spark, brush 
 and glow, 494; in vacuum, 460; 
 Ludolff on, 497; Nollet's exp'ts 
 on, 527; Picard observes in ba- 
 rometer, 453. 
 
 Light, Milton on magnetic nature 
 of, 438; theories of Hooke, Des- 
 cartes, Newton and Young, 431. 
 
 Light magnet, the, 455. 
 
 Lightning, and electricity, identity 
 of, Franklin on, 580; Freke, 571; 
 Gray, 486; Hauksbee, 459; Nollet, 
 573; Wall, 469 ; Winkler, 572 ; 
 Cardan on, 568 ; compared to 
 powder explosion, 570; deaths by, 
 568; Franklin's early views on, 
 580; Lester on, 575; Shakespeare 
 on, 569; Wallis on, 570. 
 
 Lightning protection, accidental, 
 564; ancient suggestions of, 565; 
 Ben Jonson's reference to, 569; 
 Franklin on, 576, 582; St. Thomas 
 Aquinas on, 592. 
 
 Lightning rod, denounced by Nol- 
 let, 593; erected by D' A libard and 
 De Lor, 588, 589; Etruscan knowl- 
 edge of, 566; Franklin's des'n of, 
 582. 
 
6o6 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Ligure or ligurian stone, 42. 
 
 Lilly of compass, 60. 
 
 Lincufius, 42. 
 
 Lines of force (see Field of Force\ 
 Descartes on, 359; Hauksbee on, 
 467. 
 
 Lines of magnetic direction ex'd by 
 R. Society, 412. 
 
 Lines of no variation, world divided 
 on, 204. 
 
 Lister, Dr., on lightning, 575. 
 
 Livio Sanuto on mag. rocks, 204. 
 
 Locke, defines heat as motion, 417. 
 
 Lodestone, (see Magnet), and Greek 
 phil'y, 33; Albertus Magnus on, 
 308 ; Chinese worship of, 80 ; 
 Dioscorides and Galen on, 92 ; 
 disc'y of, after iron, 20; Egyptian 
 knowledge of, 58; Egyptian name 
 for, 28; field of force about, 48; 
 first Chinese knowledge of, 72; 
 first mention of attractive prop- 
 erty, 24; Gilbert's armed, 288; 
 Gilbert's terrella, 277; Gilbert's 
 theory of generation of, 287 ; 
 Greek mystery of, 22; Israelite 
 use of, 29; Lady, in Jonson's play, 
 368; legend of disc'y of, 19; nature 
 of, 19; Patristic writings refer to, 
 90; polarity of, 127; prehistoric 
 knowledge of, 20, 63, 83; repulsion 
 by, 49; rings as amulets, 25; St. 
 Augustine on, 87. 
 
 Lor De, exp'ts on lightning, 588- 
 589- 
 
 Louis XIV., endows Royal Acad- 
 emy, 450 ; physical science at 
 court of, 451. 
 
 Louvois, dealings with Royal Acad- 
 emy, 451. 
 
 Lucan, suggestion of lightning pro- 
 tection, 565. 
 
 Lucera, siege of, 165. 
 
 Lucian, amber mentioned by, 16. 
 
 Lucretius, on Bronze age, 26; mag. 
 theory of, 48; on derivation of 
 word "magnet," 25; on filings in 
 mag. field, 50; on jumping rings, 
 49; on mag. field, 48; on "Nature 
 of Things," 47; on Samothracian 
 rings, 24; on vibrating armature, 
 49- 
 
 LudolfT, ignites spirits by elec'y, 
 496; shows mercury light to be 
 electric, 497. 
 
 Lully, Raymond, 190. 
 
 Lychinus, 42. 
 
 Lychnites, 42. 
 
 Lykeum, Aristotle's, 38. 
 Lyncei, Academy of, 342. 
 Lyncis, 42. 
 Lyncuriuni, 41. 
 Lyngurius, 42. 
 Lynx stone, 41. 
 
 M. 
 
 Magdeburg experiment, 385. 
 
 Magellan, voyage of, 206. 
 
 Magic, Finn, 138; rise of, 95. 
 
 Magnesia, foundation of, 26. 
 
 Magnesians, 25. 
 
 Magnet, (see Lodestone), Albertus 
 Magnus on, 158; artificial, made 
 by Sellers, 446; Bacon's treatise 
 on, 324; compound, 290; de 
 Beauvaison, 158; Dioscorides and 
 Galen on, 92; Cardan on, 249; 
 field of force of, shown by Pere- 
 grinus, 208; flesh, 159; Galileo 
 on, 345; Gilbert regards earth as, 
 276; known in early Britain, 114; 
 Latini on, 162; light, 455; Lu- 
 cretius on derivation of name, 25; 
 medical uses of the, 255; myths 
 of the, 219; Paracelsus' curative 
 use of, 222; Patristic writings on, 
 90; Peregrinus on selection of, 
 169; on testing, 170; on finding 
 poles, 170; Porta on measuring 
 strength of, 238; prehistoric 
 knowledge of, 83; Roger Bacon 
 on, 161; so called by Euripides, 
 24; St. Augustine on, 87; wor- 
 shipped by Chinese, 80. 
 
 Magnetes, tribe of, 26. 
 
 Magnetic, cure for wounds, 372; 
 healing, Browne on, 381; inter- 
 communication, 382; Lady, Jon- 
 son's play of, 368; Nuntii, 373; 
 supposed place of pole, 204 ; 
 Rocks, 313; legends of, 367; Fra- 
 castorio on, 204; Livio Sanuto on, 
 204; Maurolycus on, 204; Oviedo 
 on, 204; Ptolemy on, 203; satura- 
 tion, 290; spectrum, Cabaeus on, 
 353; Descartes on, 362; Wren on, 
 412; statesman, Digges so-called, 
 339; synonymous with Herculean, 
 27. 
 
 Magnetical Animadversions, Rid- 
 e y' s , 339- 
 
 Magnetism, and electricity linked 
 by Newton with gravity, 4^9; 
 animal, 372; at end of I7th cent'y, 
 448; by earth induction, 289; Des- 
 cartes on, 361; destruction of, by 
 
INDEX. 
 
 6o 7 
 
 fire, 227; Digby on, 377; Greene's 
 references to, 369 ; induced by 
 earth, 227; Jewish knowledge of, 
 29; mineral, 372; Michell on 
 law of, 236; Peregrinus on law 
 cf, 173; Porta on law of, 235; 
 Sarpi on, 226; Shakespeare on, 
 370; term first used by Kircher, 
 365- 
 
 Magnetite, in ancient China, 73; 
 nature of, 19. 
 
 Magnetization, Gilbert on, 289; of 
 compass needle, 130; of iron in 
 air, 289. 
 
 Magnetizers, the, 372. 
 
 Magnetometer, Gilbert's, 312. 
 
 Magnetotherapy, 24. 
 
 Mahomet's coffin, myth of, 46. 
 
 Maimonides, 29. 
 
 Manetho, on magnet in Egypt, 28. 
 
 Marbodeus, 42; on jet, 43. 
 
 Marcellus Enipiricus ou lodestone, 
 
 93- 
 
 Marco Polo, 189. 
 
 Mariner's compass, sec Compass. 
 
 Mather, Rev. Cotton, 463. 
 
 Matter, Aristotelian, 276, 282. 
 
 Matthiolus, garlic theory of, 281. 
 
 Maundevile on magnetic rocks, 99. 
 
 Maurolycus on magnetic rocks, 204. 
 
 Mausoleus, 46. 
 
 Measuring instrument, first elec- 
 trical, 523. 
 
 Medicine, first application of elec'y 
 to, 501-502. 
 
 Melancthon on magnet, 143. 
 
 Mercurial phosphorus, 455, 490. 
 
 Mercury light, obs'd by Heard, 
 
 453- 
 
 Mersenne, 378. 
 Meteorites as talisman, 57. 
 Meteorologia, Gilbert s, 329. 
 Michell, law of magnetism, 236. 
 Miles, Dr., on sparkling persons, 
 
 503. 
 Milesian doctrine, Theophrastus 
 
 dissents from, 41; philosophy 
 
 (see Thales). 
 
 Milton, reference to sun's "mag- 
 netic beam," 438. 
 Monconys, Balthasar, 388. 
 Mongols, 59, 62, 83. 
 Moiimor, De, 378. 
 Moon, mag. effect of earth on, 292; 
 
 mapped by Gilbert, 329. 
 Mortimer, Dr. Cromwell, on elec. 
 
 fire, 505. 
 Motor, germ of electric, 49; Gordon 
 
 invents electric, 507; Kinners- 
 ley's electric, 560; Peregriuus' 
 magnetic, 167, 177, 182. 
 
 Mountains, magnetic, 96 et seq. 
 
 Musschenbrceck, Peter V., 517. 
 
 Mycenae, amber at, 15. 
 
 Mysticism, 94. 
 
 Mythology, Greek, 31. 
 
 N. 
 
 Nature, Aristotelian use of term, 
 284. 
 
 Navigation, ancient Arab, 103; 
 Chinese, 77; Egyptian, 58; Etrus- 
 can, 59; Greek, 54; Norse, 112; 
 Phoenician, 15, 55; Solomon's, 
 55- 
 
 Navigator's supply, Barlowe's, 336. 
 
 Necho, voyages of, 58. 
 
 Neckam, Alexander, 120; and Pere- 
 grinus compared, 174. 
 
 Newton, Isaac, definition of ether, 
 511; disc'y of univ'l gravitation, 
 435; elec. exp'ts, 445; finds field 
 of force in intervening medium, 
 440; laws of motion, 439; on lines 
 of force, 442; on luminous bodies, 
 458; theory compared with Gil- 
 bert's, 435. 
 
 Nicander, legend of Magnes, 19. 
 
 Nichol, Prof., on inductive method, 
 330. 
 
 Nickel-in-slot machine, ancient, 87. 
 
 Nollet, Jean Antoine, 516; ampli- 
 fies elec. theory, 554; denounces 
 lightning-rods, 593; exp'ts on 
 tight, vegetables and animals, 
 527; on identity of elec'y and 
 lightning, 573. 
 
 Nomads, the, 61. 
 
 Non-conductors, electrics become, 
 482. 
 
 Non-electrics, become conductors, 
 482; Gilbert's list of, 305. 
 
 Norman, Robert, 211, 213. 
 
 Normans, conquest by, 116. 
 
 Norse, legends of mag. rocks, 99. 
 
 Northmen, the, 112. 
 
 Nova Philosophia, Gilbert's, 318. 
 
 Novum Organum, criticisms of Gil- 
 bert in the, 328. 
 
 o. 
 
 Odyssey, supposed reference to 
 
 compass in, 54. 
 CEneus of Euripides, 24. 
 Ophir, voyages to, 55. 
 
6o8 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Orb of coition, Gilbert's, 302. 
 Orb of virtue, Gilbert's, 272-291. 
 Orpheus, 23. 
 Orphic mysteries, 23. 
 Otiosi, Porta's society of the, 231. 
 Otocousticon, 430. 
 Oviedo on mag. rocks, 204. 
 Owen, epigram on Gilbert, 341. 
 Ozone, bleaching effect obs'd by 
 . Kriiger, 508; odor obs'd by Boyle, 
 415; by Hauseu, 494. 
 
 P. 
 
 Panaceas, magnetic, 25. 
 Paracelsus, 220; imitated by Rosi- 
 
 crucians, 372. 
 Paris, Matthew, 157. 
 Paschal, 378. 
 Peiresc, on condition of England, 
 
 334- 
 
 Penn, William, corresponds with 
 Boyle, 425. 
 
 Pensieri of Fra Paolo, 226. 
 
 Pennsylvania Gazette, Kinnersley's 
 adv't in, 585. 
 
 Pepys, account of R. Society, 407; 
 receives terrella, 407. 
 
 Peregrinus, Peter, 165; andNeckam 
 compared, 174; copied by Porta, 
 234; discoveries of, 184; field of 
 force revealed by, 207; Gilbert 
 refers to, 279; theories of, com- 
 pared with those of Gilbert, 278. 
 
 Petty, Sir W., 404. 
 
 Phaeton, legend of, 16. 
 
 Philippe de Thaun, Bestiary of, 119. 
 
 Philosophers, Lsertius' lives of, 34. 
 
 Philosophy, at time of Socrates, 37; 
 beginning of, 33; cosmical in 
 middle ages, 163; of Paracelsus, 
 220; of Thales, 33; rise of Greek, 
 44; scholastic, 118. 
 
 Phoenicians, compass attributed to, 
 54; knowledge of magnet, 56; 
 voyages for amber, 15; voyages 
 in, 697 B. C., 55- 
 
 Phonograph, foreshadowed by 
 Hooke, 429. 
 
 Phoronid, the, 22. 
 
 Phosphorus, 454; mercurial, 455. 
 
 Phrygia, first iron miners from, 22. 
 
 Physicians, mag. knowledge of 
 English, 256. 
 
 Physiological Remains, Bacon's, 
 .324- 
 
 Picard, Jean, observes barometer 
 .light, 453. 
 
 Pirorganon, Winkler's, 506. 
 
 Plato, on amber attraction, 35-36; on 
 lodestone attraction, 24; on con- 
 nection of lodestone and amber, 
 
 37- 
 
 Pliny, denounces Lyngurian stone 
 as myth, 42; legend of amber 
 attraction, 17; of Magnes, 19; on 
 foundation of Magnesia, 26; on 
 gagates, 43; on Heracleau stone, 
 27; on lodestone rings, 25; on 
 lodestone roof, 44; on magnetic 
 repulsion, 51. 
 
 Plutarch, on amber attraction, 50; 
 on mag! repulsion, 51; on Ma- 
 netho, 28. 
 
 Plus and minus electrification, 543. 
 
 Po, amber on shores of, 17. 
 
 Points, discharging effect of, obs'd 
 by Franklin, 541; elec. effect of, 
 obs'd by Guericke, 398. 
 
 Polarity, electrical, obs'd by Guer- 
 icke, 398; magnetic, first sugges- 
 tion of, 127; magnetic, supposed 
 Egyptian knowledge of, 58; mag- 
 netic, supposed Etruscan knowl- 
 edge of, 62; of lodestone, 19; 
 Peregrinus on reversal of, 176; 
 prehistoric knowledge of, 20. 
 
 Pole, magnetic, supposed places of, 
 204; sons of the, 164. 
 
 Poles, ancient ideas of heavenly, 
 164; confusion of magnet and 
 earth's, 158; Gilbert's comparison 
 of the, 277. 
 
 Porta, John Baptista, 230; first no- 
 tion of telegraph, 239; Gilbert's 
 attitude toward, 280; indebted- 
 ness of, to Peregrinus, 234; on 
 magnetic sphere of virtue, 237; 
 relations with Sarpi, 232. 
 
 Portuguese voyages, 194. 
 
 Power, confutation of Grandami- 
 cus, 405. 
 
 Priestley, Dr., on powerful elec. 
 discharges, 505. 
 
 Prima Forma of Aristotle, 283. 
 
 Prime conductor, Bose invents, 496. 
 
 Primum Mobile, 163. 
 
 Principia, Descartes', 365. 
 
 Printing, invention of, 193. 
 
 Prolusiones Academicae of Strada, 
 
 383- 
 
 Prometheus, legend of, 565. 
 Pseudodoxia epidemica, Browne's, 
 
 380. 
 
 Ptolemy on magnetic rocks, 203, 380. 
 Puritans, opposition to physical 
 
 science, 371. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 609 
 
 Pyramid, iron in great, 28; orienta- 
 tion of, 57. 
 
 Q. 
 
 Quakers, refuse to defend Phila, 
 546. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth, relations to Gil- 
 bert, 262-4. 
 
 Quelmalz, elec. theory of, 503. 
 
 R. 
 
 Races, peculiarities of, 61. 
 
 Reaumur, Musschenbrceck's letter 
 to, 517- 
 
 Repulsion, electric, obs'd by Cabaeus, 
 351; Guericke on, 397; laws of, 
 485; magnetic, 48, 51, 285. 
 
 Resinous electricity, Dufay on, 484. 
 
 Resistance, 363. 
 
 Respective point, Norman's, 216. 
 
 Rhea, 22. 
 
 Rhodes, mag. suspension at, 46. 
 
 Ridley, Mark, 338. 
 
 Ridotti, Italian, 342. 
 
 Rings, Samothracian, see Samothra- 
 cian rings. 
 
 Roberval, 378. 
 
 Rocks, magnetic, 96. 
 
 Rolli, on spontaneous combustion, 
 503, 504. 
 
 Rose of the winds, 60, 187, 188, 191. 
 
 Rosicrucians, the, 371. 
 
 Royal Academy of Sciences, foun- 
 dation of, 450; reorganized by de 
 Ponchartrain, 452. 
 
 Royal Society, Berlin, founded by 
 Frederick I., 490. 
 
 Royal Society, English, early exp'ts 
 of, 410; first notice of elec'y, 402. 
 foundation of, 406; influence on 
 new phil'y, 409; insists on original 
 research, 411; its opponents, 413; 
 rejects Franklin's papers, 583; 
 repeats Newton's exp'ts, 445. 
 
 Ruflinus, on magnet, 92; magnetic 
 suspension, 45. 
 
 Runes, Finn, 138. 
 
 Rupert, Prince, inventions of, 406. 
 
 S. 
 
 Sagredo, Gir.n Francesco, 342-343; 
 observes time changes in varia- 
 tion, 367. 
 
 Samothrace, Cabiri in, 23. 
 
 Samothracian rings, 23, 47, 87. 
 
 Sanconiathon, 56. 
 
 Saracens in Spain, 108. 
 
 39 
 
 Sarpi, Fra Paolo, 224; and Porta, 
 232; writes to Galileo about Gil- 
 bert, 343. 
 
 Saturation, magnetic, 290. 
 
 Sauveur, invents gambling system, 
 
 451- 
 
 Scaliger, on Laertius, 35; on Gil- 
 bert, 341. 
 
 Schilling, J. J., exp'ts of, 491. 
 
 Scholastic philosophy, 118. 
 
 Schott, Gasper, describes Guericke's 
 air-pump, 414. 
 
 Schwenter, Daniel, compass tele- 
 graph, 382. 
 
 Sellers, produces artificial magnets, 
 446. 
 
 Semites, characteristics of, 61. 
 
 Septuagint, ligure disc'd in, 42. 
 
 Serapis, magnetic suspension in 
 temple of, 45, 92. 
 
 Series, connection of elec. gener- 
 ators in, 557. 
 
 Sewall, Madam, sparkling frock of, 
 
 425- 
 
 S'Gravesande, W. J., 488, 516. 
 
 Shakespeare, William, on nature 
 of lightning, 569; on St. Elmo's 
 fire, 568; references to magnetism, 
 370. 
 
 Shoo King, the, 66. 
 
 Short circuiting, Descartes on, 361. 
 
 Siderites, 25. 
 
 Silk, filament suspension, 312; Gil- 
 bert's use of, for insulation, 308; 
 Gray's use of, for insulation, 475. 
 
 Silver, attraction of, by lodestone, 
 281. 
 
 Similitudes, Neckam on, 123. 
 
 Simpson, Dr., on elec. sparkling, 
 
 503- 
 
 Sing, Philip, 540-544. 
 
 Siphon recorder, principle of, sug- 
 gested, 499. 
 
 Societies, learned, in France, 378; 
 names of Italian,*232. 
 
 Society, English Scientific in 1660, 
 404; Royal See Royal Society. 
 
 Socrates, philosophy in time of, 37. 
 
 Solomon, voyages of, 55. 
 
 Somers, Lord, 463. 
 
 Sorcery, Finn, 138. 
 
 So-soung on mag. rocks, 98. 
 
 Soul in lodestone, Thales on, 33. 
 
 Sound due to electrification, 402. 
 
 South-pointing carts See Carts, 
 south-pointing. 
 
 Spain, compass in mediaeval, in; 
 in time of Saracens, 107. 
 
6io 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Spark, electric, discovered, 431, 494. 
 
 Sparkling phenomena of human 
 body and apparel, 503, 504. 
 
 Speaking trumpet, inv'n of, 430. 
 
 Spence, Dr., elec. exp'ts of, 538. 
 
 Spider, Franklin's elec., 545. 
 
 Spindle, ancient use of amber as, 18. 
 
 Spontaneous combustion, 503. 
 
 Sprat, T. , on learning in Elizabethan 
 age, 334; on Royal Society exp'ts, 
 412. 
 
 St. Aldhelm on magnet, 115. 
 
 St. Amand, discoveries of, 192. 
 
 St. Ambrose on attraction, 90; mag. 
 mountains, 98. 
 
 St. Augustine on mag. attraction, 
 87; on mag. suspension, 45; dis- 
 tinguishes between mag. and elec. 
 effects, 89. 
 
 St. Brandaen, journey of, 99. 
 
 St. Elmo's fire, 567. 
 
 St. Gregory Nazianzenus on attrac- 
 tion, 90. 
 
 St. Gregory Nyssenus on magnet, 90. 
 
 St. Isidore, Etymologies of, 91; on 
 magnet, 91; on mag. suspension, 
 
 45- 
 St. Jerome on attraction of magnet 
 
 and amber, 90. 
 St. Paul's, Bacon's exp't at, 324; 
 
 Gray proposes exp't at, 474. 
 St. Thomas Aquinas on Form, 283; 
 
 on lightning protection, 592; on 
 
 magnetic attraction, 281. 
 Statue, suspended by magnetism, 
 
 45- 
 
 Steam engine, inv'n of, by Hero, 44. 
 
 Stone of Heraclea, 27. 
 
 Stones, Theophrastus' hist'y of, 39. 
 
 Strada, Prolusiones of, 383. 
 
 Stubbe attacks R. Society, 41 v 
 
 Stukely, Dr., notices Franklin's 
 theories, 583. 
 
 Sun, name of amber derived from 
 that of, 1 6. 
 
 Suspension, magnetic, 45. 
 
 Swift, Dean, parodies Boyle, 424. 
 
 Sympathy and Antipathy, 124. 
 
 Syrian women, observe amber at- 
 traction, 17. 
 
 T. 
 
 Taisnier, John, Gilbert on, 280; on 
 mag. rocks, joi; plagiarisms of, 
 
 ^ I92 ' 
 Tartars, 59. 
 
 Tchoii dynasty in China, 68. 
 Telegraph, beginnings of, 239, 400; 
 
 Browne's exp'ts on, 386; mag. de- 
 scribed by Strada, 383; by Addi- 
 son, Akenside, Cabaeus, Galileo, 
 Hakewill, 384, 385; disputed by 
 de Boodt, 383; predictions of, by 
 Bealand Glanvil, 387; Schwenter's 
 compass, 382. 
 
 Temple, alleged lightning protec- 
 tion of, 564. 
 
 Terrella, Gilbert's lodestone, 277; 
 Guericke's elec., 395 ; sent to 
 Pepys, 407. 
 
 Tertullian on magnet, 90. 
 
 Thales of Miletus, 32; contrasted 
 with Hero, 44; Grote on phil'y of, 
 37; Ivaertiuson, 34; Theophrastus 
 differs from, 41. 
 
 Theamedes, 5 c. 
 
 Theodoritus on magnet, 90. 
 
 Theophrastus, 38 el seq. 
 
 Thermometer, elec., 515. 
 
 Thevenot, 378. 
 
 Timaeus of L/ocri, 37; Plato's, 35, 36. 
 
 Timochares, 44. 
 
 Tourmaline, 41. 
 
 Torpedo, shock of, noted by Bacon, 
 401. 
 
 Tubal Cain, 29. 
 
 Turanian family, 61. 
 
 Typhon, iron called bone of, 28. 
 
 u. 
 
 Ugric family, 61. 
 Umbrians, 59. 
 
 University of Alexandria, 44. 
 Universities, English in time of 
 James I., 333. 
 
 V. 
 
 Vacuum, amber attraction due to, 
 50; Hauksbee's light in, 460. 
 
 Van Drebbel, see Drebbel. 
 
 Van Helmont, see Helmont. 
 
 Van Musschenbrceck, see Mus- 
 schenbroeck. 
 
 Variation of compass, 196; alleged 
 record of, by Andrea Blanco, 197; 
 Burrowes, Bond, Gellibrand and 
 Gunter on, 446; discovered by 
 Chinese, 76; discovered by Colum- 
 bus, 200; Gilbert's errors as to, 
 273; Halley on, 447; line of no, 
 200; time changes in, obs'd by 
 Sagredo, 367. 
 
 Vasco da Gama, voyages of, 105, 
 205. 
 
 Vault, lodestone, 45. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Vegetables, electrifying, Nollet's 
 exp'ts on, 527. 
 
 Vending machine in Egyptian 
 temples, 87. 
 
 Venice and Genoa, rivalry of, 193. 
 
 Versorium, Gilbert's, 303. 
 
 Vesalius, 262. 
 
 Vincent de Beauvais, on mag. rocks, 
 101. 
 
 Virtue, Gilbert on, 272; Guericke's 
 hypotheses of, 392; Neckam on 
 attractive, 125; Peregrin us on 
 magnetic, 177; Porta on magnetic, 
 
 235- 
 
 Vitreous electricity, Dufay on, 484. 
 
 Vitry, Cardinal de, on compass, 154. 
 
 Voltaire on Cartesian and Newton- 
 ian theories, 509. 
 
 Von Guericke, Otto, see Guericke. 
 
 Von Kleist, see Kleist. 
 
 Vortex theory, Descartes, 48, 357; 
 Plutarch on, 51. 
 
 w. 
 
 Wall, Dr., on resemblance of elec'y 
 
 and lightning, 469. 
 Wallis, John, 404; Dr., on lightning, 
 
 57- 
 
 Ward, Bishop, 404. 
 
 Water and earth circuit, Watson's, 
 550; circuit, Lemonniers', 532; 
 electrification of running, 489- 
 499; soul of Thales, 34. 
 
 Watson, Dr. Wm., 508; dealings 
 with Franklin's theory, 552; with 
 Lemon nier's theory, 548 ; de- 
 termines velocity of elec'y to be 
 instantaneous. 551 ; discovers 
 
 water and earth circuit, 550; es- 
 tablishes elec. circuits across 
 Thames and New rivers, 549; ex- 
 poses Bose's beatification, 499; 
 fires spirits by elec'y, 508; ignites 
 gas by elec'y, 508; Leyden jar 
 exp'ts, 532, 533, 554; makes cir- 
 cuit 12,276 ft. long, 555; pro- 
 visional theory of elec'y, 5 1 ; pub- 
 lishes papers, 533; urges elec. 
 research, 539. 
 Wheler, Granvile, exp'ts with Gray, 
 
 474- 
 
 William the Clerk, poems of, 149. 
 Wilkins, Bishop, 404, 430, 436. 
 Wilson, Benjamin, elec. theory of, 
 
 554- 
 
 Winkler, Johann Heinrich, 506; 
 attempts to measure speed of 
 elec'y, 506; elec. machine, . 506; 
 identity of lightning and elec'y, 
 572; Leyden jar exp'ts, 515, 524; 
 theories of elec'y, 507, 511; Von 
 Kleist describes Leyden jar to 
 him, 513. 
 
 Winthrop, John, 424. 
 
 Wisbuy, 134, 146; laws of, 136. 
 
 Wright, Edward, 265, 274, 315, 335. 
 
 Wren, Sir Christopher, 411. 
 
 Worship of nature, Greek, 31. 
 
 X. 
 
 Xenophanes and Xenomanes, Ba- 
 con's comparison of Gilbert to, 
 328. 
 
 z. 
 
 Zoroaster, legend of, 565. 
 
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