Coition is firmer and swifter than repulsion and separation in * equal magnetick substances. That magnetick substances are more sluggishly repelled than they are attracted is manifest in all magnetical experiments in the case of stones floating on water in suitable skiffs; also in the case of iron wires or rods swimming (transfixed through corks) and well excited by a loadstone, and in the case of versoria. This comes about because, though there is one faculty of coition, another of conformation or disposition, repulsion and aversion is caused merely by something disposing; on the other hand, the coming together is by a mutual alluring to contact and a disposing, that is, by a double vigour. A disponent vigour is often only the precursor of coition, in order that the bodies may stand conveniently for one another before conjunction; wherefore also they are turned round to the corresponding ends, if they can [not][181] reach them through the hindrances. [Illustration] If a loadstone be divided through a meridian into two equal parts, the separate parts mutually repel one another, the poles being * placed directly opposite one another at a convenient and equal distance. They repel one another also with a greater velocity than when pole is put opposite pole incongruously. Just as the part B of the loadstone, placed almost opposite the part A, repels it floating in its skiff, because D turns away from F, and E from C; but if B is exactly joined with A again, they agree and become one body {101} magnetical; but in proximity they raise enmities. But if one part of the stone is turned round, so that C faces D and F faces E, then A pursues B within its orbe until they are united. The Southern parts of the stone avoid the Southern parts, and the Northern parts the Northern. Nevertheless, if by force you move up the Southern cusp of a piece of iron too near the Southern part of the stone, the cusp is seized and both are linked together in friendly embraces: because it immediately reverses the implanted verticity of the iron, and it is changed by the presence of the more powerful stone, which is more constant in its forces than the iron. For they come together according to their nature, if by reversal and mutation true conformity is produced, and just coition, as also regular direction. Loadstones of the same shape, size, and vigour, attract one another mutually with like efficacy, and in the opposite position repel one another mutually with a like vigour. Iron rods not touched, though alike and equal, do yet often act * upon one another with different forces; because as the reasons of their acquired verticity, also of their stability and vigour, are different, so the more strongly they are excited, the more vigorously do they incite. Pieces of iron excited by one and the same pole mutually repel * one another by those ends at which they were excited; then also the opposite ends to those in these iron pieces raise enmities one to another.