"The calamita, or loadstone that attracts iron,
produces many bad fantasies in man. Women fly from this stone. If,
therefore, any husband be disturbed with jealousy, and fear lest his
wife converses with other men, let him lay this stone upon her while she
is asleep. If she be pure, she will, when she wakes, clasp her husband
fondly in her arms; but if she be guilty, she will fall out of bed, and
run away."
When I first read this wonderful passage, I could not easily conceive
why it had remained hitherto unregarded in such a zealous competition
for magnetical fame. It would surely be unjust to suspect that any of
the candidates are strangers to the name or works of rabbi Abraham, or
to conclude, from a late edict of the Royal Society in favour of the
English language, that philosophy and literature are no longer to act in
concert. Yet, how should a quality so useful escape promulgation, but by
the obscurity of the language in which it was delivered? Why are footmen
and chambermaids paid on every side for keeping secrets, which no
caution nor expense could secure from the all-penetrating magnet? Or,
why are so many witnesses summoned, and so many artifices practised, to
discover what so easy an experiment would infallibly reveal?
Full of this perplexity, I read the lines of Abraham to a friend, who
advised me not to expose my life by a mad indulgence of the love of
fame: he warned me by the fate of Orpheus, that knowledge or genius
could give no protection to the invader of female prerogatives; assured
me that neither the armour of Achilles, nor the antidote of Mithridates,
would be able to preserve me; and counselled me, if I could not live
without renown, to attempt the acquisition of universal empire, in which
the honour would perhaps be equal, and the danger certainly be less.
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