Now, by magnetism in its widest sense, I mean the first and simplest _differential_ act of Nature, as the power which works in _length_, and produces the first distinction between the indistinguishable by the generation of a _line_. Relatively, therefore, to fluidity, that is, to matter, the parts of which cannot be distinguished from each other by figure, magnetism is the power of fixity; but, relatively to itself, magnetism, like every other power in Nature, is designated by its opposite poles, and must be represented as the magnetic axis, the northern pole of which signifies rest, attraction, fixity, coherence, or hardness; the element of EARTH in the nomenclature of _observation_ and the CARBONIC principle in that of _experiment_; while the southern pole, as its antithesis, represents mobility, repulsion, incoherence, and fusibility; the element of air in the nomenclature of observation (that is, of Nature as it appears to us when unquestioned by art), and azote or nitrogen in the nomenclature of experiment (that is, of Nature in the state so beautifully allegorized in the Homeric fable of Proteus bound down, and forced to answer by Ulysses, after having been pursued through all his metamorphoses into his ultimate form.(14)) That nothing real does or can exist corresponding to either pole _exclusively_, is involved in the very definition of a THING as the synthesis of opposing energies. That a thing _is_, is owing to the co-inherence therein of any two powers; but that it is _that_ particular thing arises from the proportions in which these powers are co-present, either as predominance or as reciprocal neutralization; but under the modification of twofold power to which magnetism itself is, as the thesis to its antithesis.