Van Helmont's works containing his most excellent philosophy, physick, chirurgery, anatomy : wherein the philosophy of the schools is examined, their errors refuted, and the whole body of physick reformed and rectified : being a new rise and progresse of philosophy and medicine, for the cure of diseases, and lengthening of life / made English by J.C. ...

CHAP. LXXXIII. The Magnetick or Attractive Power or Faculty. (Book 83)

AS concerning an Action locally at a distance, Wines do suggest a demonstration unto us: For every kind of Wine, although it be bred out of co-bordering Provinces, and likewise more timely blossoming elsewhere: Yet it is troubled while our Country Vine flowreth, neither doth such a disturbance cease, as long as the Flower shall not fall off from our Vine; which thing surely happens, either from a common motive Cause of the Vine and Wine; or from a particular disposition of the Vine, the which indeed troubles the Wine, and doth shake it up and down with a confused tempest: Or likewise because the Wine it self, doth thus trouble it self of its own free accord, by reason of the Flowers of the Vine: Of both the which latter, if there be a fore-touched conformity, consent, co∣grieving, or congratulation: At least-wise that cannot but be done by an action at a dis∣tance: To wit, if the Wine be troubled in a Cellar under ground, whereunto no Vine perhaps is near for some Miles, neither is there any discourse of the air under the Earth, with the Flower of the absent Vine: But if they will accuse a common Cause for such an Effect, they must either run back to the Stars, which cannot be controuled by our plea∣sures, and liberties of Boldness; or I say, we return to a confession of an Action at a distance: To wit, that some one and the same, and as yet unknown Spirit the Mover, doth govern the absent Wine, and the Vine which is at a far distance, and makes them to talk, and suffer together. But as to what concerns the Power of the Stars; I am unwilling, as neither dare I according to my own liberty, to extend the Forces, Powers, or Bounds of the Stars, beyond or besides the authority of the sacred Text, which saith, it being pro∣nounced from a divine Testimony; That the Stars shall be unto us for Signs, Seasons, Dayes, and Years: By which rule, a Power is never attributed to the Stars, that Wine bred in a forreign Soile, and brought unto us from far, doth disturb, move, or render it self con∣fused: For the Vine had at some time received a Power of increasing and multiplying it self, before the Stars were born: And Vegetables were before the Stars, and the imagin∣ed influx of these: Wherefore also, they cannot be things conjoyned in Essence, one whereof could consist without the other. Yea the Vine in some places, flowreth more timely; and in rainy or the more cold years, our Vine flowreth more slowly, whose Flower and Stages of flourishing, the Wine doth notwithstanding imitate; and so neither doth it respect the Stars, that it should disturb it self at their beck.

In the next place, neither doth the Wine hearken unto the flourishing or blossoming of any kind of Capers, but of the Vine alone: And therefore we must not flee unto an universal Cause, the general or universal ruling air of worldly successive change; to wit, we may rather run back unto impossibilities and absurdities, than unto the most near commerces of Resemblance and Unity, although hitherto unpassable by the Schooles.

Moreover, that thing doth as yet far more manifestly appear in Ales or Beers: When in times past, our Ancestours had seen that of Barley, after whatsoever manner it was boyl∣ed, nothing but an empty Ptisana or Barley-broath, or also a Pulpe was cooked; they meditated, that the Barley first ought to bud (which then they call Malt) and next they nakedly boyled their Ales, imitating Wines: Wherein first of all, some remarkable things do meet in one. To wit, there is stirred up in Barley a vegetable Bud, the which when the Barley is dryed, doth afterwards die, and looseth the hope of growing, and so much the more by its changing into Meal, and afterwards by an after boyling, it despaires of a growing Virtue; yet these things nothing hindring, it retains the winey and intoxicating Spirit of Aquavitae, the which notwithstanding it doth not yet actually possess: But at length in number of dayes, it attaineth it by virtue of a Ferment: To wit, in the one only

bosome of one Grain, one only Spirit is made famous with diverse Powers, and one Pow∣er is gelded, another being left: Which thing indeed, doth as yet more wonderfully shine forth; When as the Ale or Beer of Malt, disturbs it self while the Barley flowreth, no otherwise than as Wine is elsewhere wont to do: And so a Power at a far absent di∣stance, is from hence plain to be seen: For truly there are Cities, from whom pleasant Meadows do expel the growing of Barley for many Miles; and by so much the more power∣fully, do Ales prove their agreement with the absent flowring Barley; in as much as the gelding of their Power, hath withdrawn the hopes of budding and increasing: And at length the Aqua vitae, being detained and shut up within the Ale, Hogs-head, and prison of the Cellar, cannot with the safety of the Ale or Beere wandering for some leagues, unto the flowring eare of Barley, that thereby as a stormy returner, it may trouble the remain∣ing Ale with much confusion. Certainly there is a far more quiet Passage, for a magne∣tical or attractive agreement, among some agents at a far distance from each other, than there is to dream an Aqua vitae wandring out of the Ale of a Cellar, unto the flowring Barley, and from thence to return unto the former receptacles of its Pen-case, and Ale: But the sign imprinted by the Appetite of a Woman great with Child, on her Young, doth fitly, and alike clearly confirm a magnetisme, or attractive faculty its operation at a di∣stance: To wit, let there be a Woman great with Child, which desires another Cherry, let her scratch her Forehead with her Finger; without doubt, the Young is signed in its Forehead with the Image of the Cherry, which afterwards doth every year wax green, white, yellow, and at length looks red, according to the tenour of the Trees: And more∣over, it much more wonderfully expresseth the same successive alterations of maturities: Because the same Young in Spain (where the Cherry-tree flowreth about the end of [the 12th. Month called] February) hath imitated the aforesaid Tragedies of the Cherry, far sooner, than amongst us: And so hereby, an Action at a distance is not only confirmed; But also a Conformity or Agreement of the Essences of the Cherry-tree, in its wooden and fleshy Trunk; a consanguinity, or near affinity of a Being, unfolded on the part by an instantous imagination, and by a successive course of the years of its Kernel: Surely the more learned ought not to reject those things unto the evil spirit, which through their own weakness they are ignorant of: For surely those things do on all sides occur in Na∣ture, the which through our slenderness we are not able to unfold: For to refer whatsoever Gifts of God in Nature our slenderness doth not conceive of, unto the Devil, wants not an insolent rashness: Especially when as all demonstration of Causes, from a former thing or cause, is banished from us, and especially from Aristotle, who was ignorant of whole Nature, and deprived of the good Gift which descendeth from the Father of Lights, unto whom be all honour, and sanctification.