We see both the finest magnet and iron ore visited as it were by the same ills and diseases, acting in the same way and with the same indications, preserved by the same remedies and protective measures, and so retaining their properties ... they are both impaired by the action of acrid liquids as though by poison[75] ... each is saved from impairment by being kept in the scrapings of the other. [So] ... form, essence and appearance are one.[76] Any difference between the loadstone proper and the iron proper is due to a difference in the actual power of the magnetic virtue:[77] "Weak loadstones are those disfigured with dross metallic humors and with foreign earth admixtures, [hence one may conclude] they are further removed from the mother earth and are more degenerate." [68] M: pp. xlvii, 309, 328. [69] M: pp. 18, 20, 44, 46, 69. [70] M: pp. 59, 61, 63. [71] M: pp. 60, 63. [72] M: p. 110. [73] M: pp. 60, 61. [74] M: p. 62. [75] M: p. 63. [76] M: p. 60. [77] M: pp. 19, 21, 43, 53, 61, 63, 184. Gilbert's second induction was that they are "true and intimate parts of the globe,"[78] that is, that they are piece of the "materia prima" of all we see about us. For they "seem to contain within themselves the potency of the earth's core and of its inmost viscera."[79] Whence, in Gilbert's philosophy, the earthy matter of the elements was not passive or inert[80] as it was in Aristotle's, but already had the magnetic powers of loadstone. Being endowed with properties, it was, in peripatetic terms, a simple body. [78] M: p. 61. [79] M: pp. 66, 67. [80] M: p. 69. Gilbert is confusing Aristotelian matter and an element. He includes cold and dry, with formless and inert! See also Maier, _op. cit._ (footnote 17). If these pieces of earth proper, before decay, are loadstones, then one may pass to the next induction that the earth itself is a loadstone.[81] Conversely, a terrella has all the properties of the earth:[82] "Every separate fragment of the earth exhibits in indubitable experiments the whole impetus of magnetic matter; in its various movements it follows the terrestial globe and the common principle of motion."[83] [81] M: p. 63; bk. 1, ch. 17. [82] M: pp. 67, 181-183, 235-240, 281-289, 313-314. [83] M: p. 71. See also pp. 314 and 331. It is not clear, at this point, whether he believed a "properly balanced" terrella would be a _perpetuum mobile_. The next induction that Gilbert made was that as the magnet possesses verticity and turns towards the poles, so the loadstone-earth possesses a verticity and turns on an axis fixed in direction.[84] He could now discuss the motions of a loadstone in general, in terms of its nature, just as an Aristotelian discussed the motion of the elements in terms of their nature.