“The stone magnet is believed by many to owe its name to Magnesia....” We consider, however, the opinion of the Hermetists to be the correct one. The word magh, magus, is derived from the Sanscrit mahaji, meaning the great or wise ... so the magnet stone was called in honour of the Magi, who were the first to discover its wonderful properties. Their places of worship were located throughout the country in all directions, and among these were some temples of Hercules, hence the stone—when it became known that the priests used it for their curative and magical purposes—received the name of Magnesian or Herculean stone. Socrates, speaking of it, says: “Euripides calls it the Magnesian stone, but the common people the Herculean” (Plato, “Ion”—Burgess—Vol. IV. p. 294). In the same Vol. I. of “Isis Unveiled” we are likewise informed that Electricity in the Norse legends is personated by Thor, the son of Odin, at Samothrace by the Kabeirian Demeter (Joseph Ennemoser, “History of Magic,” London, 1854, Vol. II.; J. S. C. Schweigger, “Introd. to Mythol. through Nat Hist.,” Halle, 1836), and that it is denoted by the “twin brothers,” the Dioskuri. Also that the celestial, pure fire of the Pagan altar was electrically drawn from the astral light, that magnetic currents develop themselves into electricity upon their exit from the body, and that the first inhabitants of the earth brought down the heavenly fire to their altars (J. S. C. Schweigger in Ennemoser’s “Hist. of Magic,” Vol. II. p. 30; Maurus Honoratus Servius, “Virgil,” Eclog. VI. v. 42).
B.C. 321.—Theophrastus, Greek philosopher, first observed the attractive property of the lyncurium, supposed by many to be the tourmaline, and gave a description of it in his treatise upon stones (“De Lapidibus,” sec. 53; or the translation of Sir John Hill, 1774, chap. xlix.-l., p. 123). This crystal was termed lapis lyncurius by Pliny in his “Nat. Hist.,” and lapis electricus by Linnæus in his “Flora Zeylanica” (U. Aldrovandus, “Mus. Metal.”; Philemon Holland, “The Historie of the World,” commonly called “The Naturall Historie of C. Plinius Secundus,” London, 1601).
Theophrastus and Pliny speak of this native magnet as possessing, like amber, the property of attracting straw, dried leaves, bark and other light bodies. The different sorts of loadstones, of which the best were blue in colour (as stated by Taisnier, Porta, Barthol. de Glanville and others), are thus alluded to by Pliny (“Nat. Hist.,” lib. xxxvi. cap. 16): “Sotacus describes five kinds: the Æthiopian; that of Magnesia, a country which borders on Macedonia; a third from Hyettus, in Boetia; a fourth from Alexandria, in Troas; and a fifth from Magnesia, in Asia” (Porta, “Natural Magick,” Book VII. chap. i.). He further says that iron cannot resist it; “the moment the metal approaches it, it springs toward the magnet, and, as it clasps it, is held fast in the magnet’s embrace.” It is by many called ferrum vivum, or quick iron.[6]
Claudian speaks of it as “a stone which is preferred to all that is most precious in the East.... Iron gives it life and nourishes it” (Claudian, Idyl V; Ennemoser, “Hist. of Magic,” Vol. II. p. 27).
Hippocrates, the father of medical science, calls it “the stone which carries away iron.”
Epicurus, an Athenian of the Ægean tribe, says: “The loadstone or magnet attracts iron, because the particles which are continually flowing from it, as from all bodies, have such a peculiar fitness in form to those which flow from iron that, upon collision, they easily unite.... The mutual attraction of amber and like bodies may be explained in the same manner.”
Hier. Cardan intimates that “it is a certain appetite or desire of nutriment that makes the loadstone snatch the iron....” (“De Subtilitate,” Basileæ, 1611, lib. vii. p. 381).
Diogenes of Apollonia (lib. ii. “Nat. Quæst.,” cap. xxiii.) says that “there is humidity in iron which the dryness of the magnet feeds upon.”
Cornelius Gemma supposed invisible lines to stretch from the magnet to the attracted body, a conception which, says Prof. Tyndall, reminds us of Faraday’s lines of force.
Lucretius accounts for the adhesion of the steel to the loadstone by saying that on the surface of the magnet there are hooks, and, on the surface of the steel, little rings which the hooks catch hold of.