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Ch. 1: Introduction

Ch. 1: Introduction Page of 377 Ch. 1: Introduction Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
36 NATURAL HISTORY OF PRECIOUS STONES, &c.
wives; some appease storms at sea; others heal sicknesses; others preserve the head and the eyes.' And to sum up all, whatever benefit can be thought of for mankind, the same can be brought about through the virtue of stones. It must however be understood that in stones there is sometimes a single virtue, sometimes two, three, or several; and these virtues do not subsist in consequence of the beauty of the stone, for some of the most efficacious stones are extremely ugly and yet possess very great virtue; whereas others are very beautiful and yet possess no virtue at all. On which grounds it is held amongst the most famous doctors as an indubitable and established truth, that virtues subsist in stones, as they do in other things, but as to the manner in which they subsist, there is a diversity of opinion. One theory is that of the Pythagoreans, who hold that virtues subsist in all things, and proceed from a soul; and maintain that stones as well as all inferior things are endowed with souls. They pretend also that souls can enter, and can leave a different substance by means of the soul's opera­tions, in the same manner as the human intellect extends itself to the objects of the understanding, and the imagina­tion to the objects of the imagination, Thus, with respect to stones, they hold that the souls of the stones extend themselves to man by means of the proximity of the par-, ticular stone; and so impress their peculiar virtues upon the substance of the man: and they explain that the virtue in stones is operative through the means of the soul, in the same way as fascination takes plaoe from the glance of the eye, through the means of the soul. They assert that it is through the sight that the soul of a man or of another animal enters into a man or another animal and affects the action of that animal; which same fascination, or " stroke" is believed to come not from the sight only, inasmuch as the act of sight takes place by receiving im-
Ch. 1: Introduction Page of 377 Ch. 1: Introduction
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