Part 2 (1/2)

[33] _Ibid._, pt. 1, ch. 10. See also ch. 4.

[34] _Ibid._, pt. 1, ch. 10.

[35] However, he may not always have approved of him. See M:74; ”Overinquisitive theologians, too, seek to light up G.o.d's mysteries and things beyond man's understanding by means of the loadstone and amber.”

In the _Idiota de sapientia_ the Cardinal used the image of the magnet and the iron to provide a concrete instance of his ”coincidentia oppositorum,” to ill.u.s.trate how eternal wisdom, in the Neoplatonic sense, could, at the same time, be principle or cause of being, its complement and also its goal.[36]

Si igitur in omni desiderio vitae intellectualis attenderes, a quo est intellectus, per quod movetur et ad quod, in te comperires dulcedinem sapientiae aeternae illam esse, quae tibi facit desiderium tuum ita dulce et delectabile, ut in inerrabili affectu feraris ad eius comprehensionem tanquam ad immortalitatem vitae tue, quasi ad ferrum et magnetem attendas. Habet enim ferrum in magnete quoddam sui effluxus principium; et dum magnes per sui praesentiam excitat ferrum grave et ponderosum, ferrum mirabili desiderio fertur etiam supra motum naturae, quo secundum gravitatem deorsum tendere debet, et sursum movetur se in suo principio uniendo. Nisi enim in ferro esset quaedam praegustatio naturalis ipsius magnetis, non moveretur plus ad magnetem quam ad alium lapidem; et nisi in lapide esset major inclinatio ad ferrum quam cuprum, non esset illa attractio. Habet igitur spiritus noster intellectualis ab aeterna sapientia principium sic intellectualiter essendi, quod esse est conformius sapientae quam aliud non intellectuale. Hinc irraditio seu immissio in sanctam animam est motus desideriosus in excitatione.

By virtue of the principle that flows from the magnet to the iron--which principle is potentially in the iron, for the iron already has a foretaste for it--the excited iron could transcend its gravid nature and be preternaturally moved to unite with its principle.

Reciprocally, the loadstone has a greater attraction to the iron than to other things. Just as the power of attraction comes from the loadstone, so the Deity is the source of our life. Just as the principle implanted in the magnet moves the iron against its heavy nature, so the Deity raises us above our brutish nature so that we may fulfill our life. As the iron moves to the loadstone, so we move to the Deity as to the goal and end of our life.

In _De pace fidei_, Cusa[37] again used the iron and magnet as an example of motion contrary to and transcending nature. He explained this supernatural motion as being due to the similarity between the nature of the iron and the magnet, and this in turn is a.n.a.logous to the similarity between human spiritual nature and divine spiritual nature. As the iron can move upward to the loadstone because both have similar natures, so man can transcend his own nature and move towards G.o.d when his potential similitude to G.o.d is realized. Another image used by Cusa was the comparison of Christ to the magnetic needle that takes its power from the heavens and shows man his way.[38]

[36] Nicholas of Cusa (Nicolaus Cusaneus), _Nicolaus von Cues, Texte seiner philosophischen Schriften_, ed. A.

Petzelt, Stuttgart, 1949, bk. 1, _Idiota de sapientia_, p.

306 (quoted in Gilbert, M:104). It is interesting that Cusa held that the loadstone has an inclination to iron, as well as the converse!

[37] Cusa, _Cusa Schriften_, vol. 8, _De pace fidei_, translated by L. Mohler, Leipzig, 1943, ch. 12, p. 127.

[38] Cusa, _Exercitationes_, ch. 7, 563 and 566, quoted in, F. A. Scharpff, _Des Cardinals und Bischofs Nicolaus Von Cusa Wichtigste Schriften in Deutscher Uebersetzung_, Freiburg, 1862, p. 435. See also Martin Billinger, _Das Philosophische in Den Excitationen Des Nicolaus Von Cues_, Heidelberg, 1938, and _Cusa Schriften_ (see footnote 37), vol. 8, p. 209, note 105. Gilbert (M: p. 223) called the compa.s.s ”the finger of G.o.d.”

The Elizabethan Englishman Robert Norman also turned to the Deity to explain the wonderful effects of the loadstone.[39]

Now therefore ... divers have whetted their wits, yea, and dulled them, as I have mine, and yet in the end have been constrained to fly to the cornerstone: I mean G.o.d: who ...

hath given Virtue and power to this Stone ... to show one certain point, by his own nature and appet.i.te ... and by the same vertue, the Needle is turned upon his own Center, I mean the Center of his Circular and invisible Vertue ... And surely I am of opinion, that if this would be found in a Sphericall form, extending round about the Stone in Great Compa.s.s, and the dead body Stone in the middle therof: Whose center is the center of his aforesaid Vertue. And this I have partly proved, and made visible to be seen in the same manner, and G.o.d sparing me life, I will herein make further Experience.

Again, one can infer that the heavens impart a guiding principle to the iron which acts under the influence of this Superior Cause.

One of the points made in St. Thomas' argument on motion due to the loadstone was that there is a limit to the ”virtus” of the loadstone, but he did not specify the nature of it. Norman refined the Thomist concept of a bound by making it spherical in form, foreshadowing Gilbert's ”orbis virtutis.”

Gilbert's philosophy of nature does not move far from scholastic philosophy, except away from it in logical consistency. As the concern of Aristotle and of St. Thomas was to understand being and change by determining the nature of things, so Gilbert sought to write a logos of the physis, or nature, of the loadstone--a physiology.[40] This physiology was not formally arranged into definitions obtained by induction from experience, but nevertheless there was the same search for the quiddity of the loadstone. Once one knew this nature then all the properties of the loadstone could be understood.

[39] h.e.l.lmann, _op. cit._ (footnote 6), Norman, bk. 1, ch. 8.

[40] M: p. 14.

Gilbert described the nature of the loadstone in the terms of being that were current with his scholarly contemporaries. This was the same ontology that scholasticism had taught for centuries--the doctrine of form and matter that we have already found in St. Thomas and Nicholas of Cusa. Thus we find Richard Hooker[41] remarking that form gives being and that ”form in other creatures is a thing proportionable unto the soul in living creatures.” Francis Bacon,[42] in speaking of the relations between causes and the kinds of philosophy, said: ”Physics is the science that deals with efficient and material causes while Metaphysics deals with formal and final causes.” John Donne[43]

expressed the problem of scholastic philosophy succinctly:

This twilight of two yeares, not past or next, Some embleme is of me, ...

... of stuffe and forme perplext, Whose _what_ and _where_, in disputation is ...

As we shall see, Gilbert continued in the same tradition, but his interpretation of form and formal cause was much more anthropomorphic than that of his predecessors.

Gilbert began his _De magnete_ by expounding the natural history of that portion of the earth with which we are familiar.[44]