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Ye Wizards’ Guide to
Sacred Virgins

Wizards’ Harem Book 1

J Foster Ward

Published by Evil Genius Society

Warning: please read all the way through if you need to be warned
about adult content

Sometime after the invention of gunpowder, magic became obsolete.

While most folks stopped believing in wizards, elves and knights in
shining armor, secret guilds of sorcerers never went away, preparing
to control the world from behind the curtains. Inside their towers
they plotted with spells, summoning spirits and a supply of hoarded
ancient artifacts, trusting they could keep themselves nothing but
myths until it was time was right.
Monsters, shapeshifters, demons, talking swords and magical
potions retreated to the wild places of the world, to be considered
only legends to the ‘civilized’ lands where printers, apothecaries and
bankers became more powerful than warriors, warlocks and rogues.
Now, in the civilized city of Dolorn, with its university, shares in
merchant ventures, elections and cannon-armed warships, the
wizards of the Black Island stir up a war against their rivals in the
southern city of Minandor. Among the newest apprentices of the
Black Isle is a young man called Jackshaide.
Jaks isn’t like most men or even other apprentice wizards; maybe it’s
the magic sword possessed by a demon he found in a junk shop,
maybe it’s the fact he spent his childhood in the underverse, or
maybe it’s just that he seems as irresistible to hot lady ghosts as he
is to young sacred virgins and spirited highland girls.
Oh, but probably it’s the curse from before the dawn of time…
An ancient curse chooses Jaks as its avatar one night and just like
that he must cross half the world on a spell-fuelled mission of
murder, magic and mayhem. Somehow, he is the proud owner of an
arcane artifact so powerful that wizards will soil their robes to get it
back. Jaks will have to battle men and magical creatures in far-
foreign parts where sorcery is still very real.
Put on your +1 underwear of protection from joy-pee, buff your one-
handed skill and free up a spell slot for Bigby’s Fapping Hand,
because it’s about to get medieval. Sexy, weird and hilariously
medieval.
CONTENT WARNING: this story contains adult themes and imagines
a world where today’s cultural norms and civilization wouldn’t cut it.
The protagonist happily uses magical cheats, gun violence, foul
language, and has no problem having sex with sacred virgins or
nubile spirits of saints.
This story contains a harem and is an Adult Fantasy novel.
Other stories from J Foster Ward!

The Last Real Man series:

How to Beat Tomorrow (book 1)
The Apocalypse Watch (book 2)
The Big Weird (book 3)
Shelter Tomorrow (book 4)
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 : Your first curse is free
Chapter 2 : Good wizards make bad husbands
Chapter 3 : A free man is hard to find
Chapter 4 : The Perfect Screwjob
Chapter 5 : Marshfail
Chapter 6 : On the run from the laws
Chapter 7 : Last Haunted House on the Right
Chapter 8 : Between two fiends
Chapter 9 : How to Cheat at Magic
Chapter 10 : A song of quim and dickbiters
Chapter 11 : Family reunion
Chapter 12 : The lights from the window
Chapter 13 : Tack
Chapter 14 : Horrible fruit
Chapter 15 : The Captain’s wife
Chapter 16 : Shore leave
Chapter 17 : Speaker to orcs
Chapter 18 : Demon’s bargain
Chapter 19 : Monkey at a gunfight
Chapter 20 : A wizard’s dream
Chapter 1 : Your first curse is free
The temple of Vigil was a forbidding structure, faced with black
granite, that seemed to shoulder aside smaller temples on the Priest
District. Thick walls slanted slightly inwards so it looked like a
pyramid with the top third sliced off. Black-hooded temple attendants
stood watch at the doors with brass-capped staves, frowning
stoically at the worshippers who shuffled up the steps and into the
dim interior for St Elyssia’s day. One of the few high holy days Jaks
could sneak in with the crowd. Wearing the glamour of Seeming
Stranger he walked right past the attendants as if he belonged. It
shouldn’t have worked, but it did.
Among wizards of the Black Isle it was generally accepted there
were two dozen novice-level spells worthy of study. The glamour of
Seeming Stranger was one of them. Considered among the most
simple of magics, it was nonetheless soul-crushingly difficult to
learn. Working from an instructional copy provided by Kadatheron,
Jaks had spent nearly thirty hours simply transcribing it, and double
that amount of time to fully understand the arcane formulas of
arcane balance required to successfully use the spell. But, motivated
by the potential of a grisly punishment from his wizard master, he
had spent a pair of months in headache-invoking and cramped study
deskbound in a dim chamber to perfect the incantation.
Penetrating the dim cavern of the sepulcher Jaks allowed himself a
few moments to study the interior of the Vigil temple. The pillared
hall was lit with small lamps, the flickering light giving life to the
carved figures of demons, animals and saints that ran along a frieze
where walls met ceiling. Carved ebony screens separated the lay-
worshippers from the priestly rites being prepared beyond the nave.
There was a slight barnyard smell beneath the incense and through
the screens he could catch a glimpse of the sacrificial animals in the
transepts to each side.
But none of these were of any real interest. Instead his attentions
were beyond the altar on the reliquary overlooking the apse. Within
the barred enclosure were the shadowy relics of the temple,
including, it was almost assured, the skeletal remains of Elyssia
herself. Among the kinds of arcane substances of use to a master
wizard like Kadatheron was the powdered remains of saints. When
the dark wizard tasked his apprentice with producing some for his
exam, Jaks had known any failure would likely result in his expulsion
from the Black isle… and life.
He wasted no time. Hugging the glamour around himself like a warm
coat, Jaks shuffled to the side of the crowd and waited for the
ceremony to begin. In no time the high priest climbed the steps of
the altar, in view above the carved screens, and led the worshippers
in a chant of the Vigil; one of the high holy days of Elyssia.
Suckers.
He had more than a usual disdain for cults and godlets, and
especially the many strange and mishappen gods of men. Not simply
because he was a wizard, and wizards and religion should never
meet, but because unlike most folk he had seen the other side, and
was thoroughly disdainful of the underverse, or what these chanting
idiots would call the afterlife.
Certain he would no longer be missed by the busy congregation,
Jaks slipped into the shadows of the columns and found the narrow
staircase leading upwards to the balcony level. Careful to avoid
being seen he circled the altar, looking down on the robed priests as
they dragged a sacrificial cage of weasels to the altar, and made his
way to the reliquary.
The doorway to the chamber of the temple’s artifacts was a locked
gate of bronze bars. While it was possible to use magic to open the
heavy padlock chained across the door, the ability was beyond Jaks.
His arcane chakras already felt swollen and filled with an ache that
would put him in bed with fever for hours even from the single use
of the glamour spell. To risk another at his skill level would invite
unconsciousness or worse. He had a simpler solution – an acidic
solution to be exact.
As the chanting began to ascend in volume to cover the squeals of
animals being sliced apart in the name of piety, Jaks had a chance to
recall the simple matter of getting a phial of acid. It was easier to
steal the alchemical compound from an older student than it was to
get better at magic. Carefully unstopping the glass phial Jaks slowly
dribbled the highly dissolving magical substance over the chain.
Bronze was mostly copper and this admixture would eat through it in
moments.
What he wasn’t prepared for was the sudden release of heat as the
bronze dissolved and he had to step back, scalded by the sudden
flare. The noise was hidden by the dropping of sacrificed animals
into a brazier and billowing smoke that smelled of burned hair and
fat. The temple was really getting riled up now, with dozens of
voices joined together in chants.
But it worked. Carefully removing the chain he slid past the bars and
found himself inside the disused repository for religious artifacts.
Assuming the gold-decorated chest with the obsidian figure of a
burning woman staring up at the moon on the lid would be Elyssia’s
final resting place, Jaks pried open the box and was rewarded by the
crumbling, dry skeleton of the saint herself.
By this time the priests had covered the horrible stench of burning
hair with steaming clouds of incense as it was dumped into censors
swung among the worshippers. It was only then Jaks had his first
real hint of danger.
Fuck. It was powdered extract of blackroot.
Blackroot was a known opiate among southern cultures but mostly
unknown in these parts to non-wizards. And apparently they were
dosing the congregation with it. He’d have to move fast or risk
getting as incapacitated as the rest of them.
Producing a leather satchel Jaks poked among the bones for
something that wouldn’t be missed. Knucklebone perhaps. Maybe a
kneecap. He wouldn’t need much. Finding some fingerbones he
grabbed one, then paused and took a second for himself.
Kadatheron didn’t have to know he’d stolen more; certainly the
master of dark wizards couldn’t fault Jaks for wetting his own beak a
little. Safely depositing the two bones he rolled up the satchel and
secured it beneath his clothes.
It was only then, as the fever sweat of overused magic and
hallucinogenic drugs began to take hold, that he lifted his eyes and
saw her.
Saint Elyssia.
At first she was only a shimmer. A suggestion in the air that he
mistook for the blackroot visions. Then slowly it was as if shadows
coalesced together – like ink drops in a glass decanter of water. The
saint herself swirled into being. Unlike most saints she was the
shapely form of a young woman. Jaks was familiar with the residual
spectral presence of common spirits, but he’d never met a full-on
saint before. The chanting from below seemed to feed her form,
causing her to grow and solidify. Each syllable filling her shapely
body with substance, like a heartbeat pumping blood. Until in
moments she was standing before him, slightly unmoored from the
ground, as if she weighed nothing. Her form – skin, eyes, teeth,
everything – was black as the shadows she was formed from. Like a
sculpture of black glass.
“Are you real?” she asked, the words a soft hiss as if passing
through the veil from the underverse.
“I am, you are not,” Jaks told her kindly. “You’ve been dead these
hundreds of years, Elyssia.”
“Dead? How can I be dead? You know my name?”
“You are Saint Elyssia of the Half-moon. This is your temple. And I’m
sorry, yes, you’re long dead. Don’t you remember?”
It wasn’t unusual for spirits to forget much of their flesh-and-blood
life. They were essentially echoes, trapped in a well.
“I remember… burning…” she said, looking up and far way.
Then as the chanting and braying of a goat being sacrificed grew
louder she seemed to shudder and take on more solidity. Her feet
planted firmly on the ground. Her skin became less like glass, more
like a real girl.
“Yes, it comes back to me now. I fade, as my worshippers forget,
and return as they sing my praise.”
Then her eyes turned sharply to Jaks and he felt a trickle of fear.
How would she react if she knew he was stealing her mortal
remains?
“You…” she stepped closer. “Something is wrong with your aura. You
are of this world, but somehow not.”
“It’s a long story…” he began, but before he could continue the saint
was on him.
She lunged forward, hands outstretched, but not to strangle the life
from him. Her hands roved over his chest and she leaned her face
upwards, brushing her cheeks against his as she stood on her toes.
Even at the age of sixteen he had stood six foot tall.
“You have the warmth of life. Yet you see me, as if I were real. It
has been long decades since any living mortal has seen me…” and
here her cold hand slid inside Jaks’ shirt of touch his chest. “And
even longer since I have been touched.”
Jaks froze, uncertain of whether he should be terrified or aroused at
the purring spirit rubbing herself against him. Perhaps it was the
blackroot smoke, perhaps it was his youthful sexual capacity, or
perhaps it was just that on the scale of things that shouldn’t be
known to mortals, a spectral tryst with the nubile saint made him
more aroused than he had felt in months.
He was instantly hard, and Elyssia felt it, giving a small exclamation
of wonder. Then she parted her thighs, curling one leg around him
and slowly pressed the mound of her sex against him. Obsidian eyes
locked with his, she shivered and gave every indication of
uncontrolled lust as she ground against him.
Jaks needed no further prompting, and all existential questions
vanished from his head. Bending his neck he kissed her lips hard and
Elyssia responded, moaning. Her inside seemed hollow, and as her
lips parted for him she exhaled a cloud of blackroot smoke. With a
single hop she put her arms around his neck, wrapped her legs to
the small of his back and was all over him like a hungry animal,
moaning. Jaks gripped her beneath the thighs – as real and shapely
as any living girl and staggered towards a chest covered in a silken
cloth with smaller boxes and several golden plates stacked on top of
it, gathering dust. Along the way he tripped over a man-tall brass
candle stand, sending it banging into the bars of the reliquary and
pushing a tapestry of a unicorn to swaying, shedding even more
dust.
Jaks panicked, knowing he was discovered, but nothing could
disengage the naked spirit girl clinging to him and tearing his clothes
open. Even worse, she swung one arm behind her, sweeping
everything from the chest and sending it crashing to the floor in a
massive noise.
“Yes, YES! I need it!” she yelled as Jaks tripped, falling on top of her
on the silken covering of the chest.
“You hear? You hear?” the priest demanded of his faithful just below
them. “Elyssia is here! And she is pleased by your idolations!”
It’s not your singing she’s pleased with, Jaks thought to himself as
the saint finally succeeded in unbuttoning his trousers and freeing
his cock.
“Give it to me!” she pleaded. “Hard! It’s been so long.”
“Sing louder!” the priest commanded.
The volume of chanting rose, and Jaks bent Elyssia’s ankles back to
her shoulders before sinking his throbbing horn into her waiting
saintly cunt. He couldn’t help the moan of pleasure that escaped
him. She was tighter and softer than anything he’d ever felt, but
more than that, she seemed to send some mystical current of
energy through their conjoined bodies, lighting him up from the root
of his cock.
“Fuck, yes, MORE!” she demanded.
As the chanting grew louder it seemed to feed into her. The belief of
a temple full of her worshippers making her more solid, more
supercharged, by the moment. Jaks drove into her hard, balls deep
in her sacred gate. Pounding fast. As she moaned and begged,
rattling the bars of the reliquary, making the air shiver, Jaks began to
lose self-control. He pounded her cunny in every position, making
her bellow out in pleasure, until finally as he had her bent over the
silk-covered chest, gripped by the waist, he produced an unearthly
orgasm inside her that transcended the mortal world, shattering the
veil to the underverse.
For a moment as she screamed her ecstasy the entire temple was
plunged into the realm of the celestials. Candles and lamps flared
ten times their brightness and died to smoldering embers, leaving
nothing but the glowing lights of Algothopolis – the city of the
Redeemed on the second plane of the underversal realm of Kaz
Profond. A storm of perfumed wind rushed through the temple from
the sweetwater hurricanes of Algothopolis, drenching the entire
temple.
For a moment Jaks hovered on the edge of being unable to reach his
peak; the orgasm so intense it refused to emerge, then he was filling
her insides with a wet storm of his own. Emptying inside her until he
felt like he was turning inside out. The pulsing storm of Algothopolis
continued in gentle waves to match Elyssia’s pleasure, slowly fading
until the middle world returned and the temple withdrew wet and
steamy from the underverse. Everything was normal except for a
lingering sweet scent of perfumed spring rain.
In the silence that followed Elyssia grinned up at Jaks and rolled
over to kiss him once, leaving the taste of blackroot smoke, then she
was gone. Fading fast to nothing but a shadow, and then gone.
Jaks surveyed the disaster of the chamber around him and knew it
was only moments before someone would investigate. His glamour
had long since faded and he had to be away before he was
discovered. Yanking up his trousers, he found his hooded cloak and
threw it on, fleeing the reliquary.
Footsteps were already coming up the narrow staircase so he turned
the other way, finding himself in a long hall with doors opening into
narrow cells for the priests. At the end he discovered an empty
dining hall and past it a kitchen with a single servant dozing by the
fire. In another moment he was out the servant’s entrance, through
the garden and over the wall, safe in the streets of Dolorn.
On the streets, chilled by the night air, he knew he had to get home
fast or his lateness would be missed. And there was the small matter
of returning to a wife after coupling with a spirit. If she spent more
time in his bed, she might have noticed.
Elyssia wasn’t the first bit of spectral bangtail he’d known. His
predilection for chasing ghost tail turned out to mean he had what
mystics used to call the second sight, which was, it was widely
acknowledged among educated Dolorn society, among such things
that did not exist.
That’s how Kadatheron of the Black Island had noticed Jaks; noticing
things that were not there. It was not altogether a good thing but
his sixteen year old self hadn’t understood that.
At the time he was more concerned about the miserable state of his
teenage sex life than potential recruitment into a secret society of
wizards who dabbled in black arts. Black arts that ought not to exist.
The sudden case of sensory shock from being freshly returned to the
real world after ten years trapped in the underverse rated a distant
third.
Ghosts thrived on the sustenance of living memory and that’s why
Elyssia was voracious. In a long eternity between worlds it was a
rare moment she could touch down. Could really be there, because
everyone believed she was there.
If it raised any eyebrows among the Five Points that he spent so
much of his downtime away from the Black Isle, splattering the
insides of figments, they never said so. If they had, he might have
changed his ways. He respected them, more than he did his own
family.
He was suddenly ravenous. Pausing on the half-empty boulevard,
breath forming clouds in the ancient alfar streetlamp on the corner,
he remembered he’d skipped two meals that day. The odds of
coming home to a warm dinner was exactly none.
He skipped between two carriages and followed the light and noise
of a small stall selling skewers of roasted lamb and weak beer. There
were only four stools lined up at the store front, bathed in fragrant
lamb-smelling steam, and they were all full. But some gentleman in
an overly large coat, face wrapped in a scarf and hat pulled down
over his ears got up as Jaks approached. He slid into the empty spot
gratefully.
“Two, with potatoes,” he told the cook and blew on his fingers.
“It’s good, right?”
It was the woman on the chair next to him. He glanced at her and
had a horrible sinking sensation that it was someone he knew.
Jaks cursed silently. He’d purposefully taken the long way round the
temple District to avoid going anywhere near the Cyst of the Storm
bull, and anyone who might recognise him.
“I could eat an entire lamb,” he said neutrally. He did know her!
What was her name?
She was lithe and had a full head of long black curls tied tightly into
two braids down her back. She took a huge bite of kebab wrapped in
flatbread, and smiled around the mouthful as she chewed. Full lips,
heart-shaped face, and the biggest, dark-brown eyes he could ever
recall seeing.
The long black cloak she wore against the cold fell away and he
spotted the skimpy cotton shift she wore beneath it. A short-skirted
ceremonial tunic, belted at the waist. Her arms were covered in
brass bracelets that chimed together as she moved. She was fresh
from rites of the Storm Bull.
The name suddenly came to him: Vivenne. Daughter of High Priest
Taran-Ish, sacred virgin of the local coven of Storm Bull worshippers.
The ceremony he should have been attending with his wife instead
of robbing the Eternal Vigil. Perhaps she didn’t recognise him.
“It’s Jaks, right?” she said. “How is, umm…”
“Xantha?”
“Yes. Her. How is she?”
He paused. Staring at her. How did she know him when he attended
only one ceremony a season, and his wife was so devout she was
there weekly?
“She’s… good.”
“I’m sorry,” she apologized, taking another big bite, talking with her
mouth full. “The dance really takes it out of me, I’m starving.”
Among other things the sacred virgin conducted the bull dance; an
insanely dangerous and skilled type of acrobatics you might see in a
Minandorese hippodrome, where she rode the beast bareback,
sometimes balancing handstands on its horns. Such was the mark of
favor by the Storm Bull that she wasn’t gored and trampled.
He was never more grateful for the timely arrival of food as when his
was plunked down on a wooden platter in front of him. He fished out
a small silver coin and set into his meal.
“Is everything all well with you tonight?” Vivenne asked.
He nodded, trying not to make eye contact.
“There’s… something off about you. A bad color in the edge of your
aura,” she was studying him.
He almost choked. “You have the second sight?” he asked. Only
wizards and real mystics had it. The average priest was about as
adept at magic as an accountant.
“Oh, just a little,” she smiled mischievously. “One time, on a bright
sunny day at high sun, I saw the shape of a woman cross the street.
Bathed in golden light. And when she reached the other side, she
vanished.”
Jaks feigned shock. “You don’t say?”
She leaned conspiratorially close and he was suddenly aware of the
smell of healthy, physically active girl.
“It was a spirit.”
“You don’t say!” Jaks repeated, trying to sound convincingly
surprised.
“Mmmm-hmmm,” she said with a superior smile and took another
bite. “People think they aren’t real, but I believe they are.”
“It’s true, most people say they do not exist,” he said. He had
learned that where possible a wizard never lies, only allows others to
hear what they want.
“So, now you know my secret, why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?”
Vivenne asked.
Jaks ate to buy some time.
“I may just be tired. My studies at the Academy keep me up late.”
That seemed to satisfy her. Until she suddenly asked a fresh
question.
“May I ask you about your marriage? Are you happy?”
Jaks almost choked. “What?”
She seemed slightly embarrassed. “It’s only that… my father wishes
me to become the high priestess. That I should be sent away for
three years to study at the temple in Collat. And never marry.
Never… know a man or life that isn’t dedicated only to the Storm
Bull.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Do you?”
“You’re curious?”
“I want to know is it worth it? What will I miss?”
“Well for starters, there’s the way she snores at night. Also gargles
salt water for what feels like an hourglass every night. You get to
avoid that.”
He’d answered honestly but she laughed. Assumed he was joking.
He smiled. No one knows what you’re thinking when you smile.
“Anything else?”
“Cold feet at night. Picking your clothes out of a tree after you’ve
had a fight. Scraping food from the ceiling when you serve her a
meal with onions in it.”
She laughed harder.
“But, sex is amazing, and boning makes up for everything else.”
She bit her lip, suddenly serious. The moment hung in the air. Shit.
“Is it… is it really so good?”
Jaks remembered who he was talking to. Taran-Ish would have his
balls for discussing his daughter’s virginity. And Xantha would have
his dick in a vice.
“No,” he laughed and to his relief she joined him. “I mean, yes, it’s
good, but it happens like once every two months, so…”
“Two months!” she blurted out.
“Yeah…”
She leaned close to whisper. “But my father oils the rope springs of
my mother’s bed at least three times a week! Isn’t two months very
long?”
Jaks had the sudden knowledge that he had misjudged some vital
part of how normal his marriage was. If the frequency Xantha boned
him was so… below average… then what else about his fake normal
life was fooling no one? And in that moment he remembered the
relics inside his clothes, his apprenticeship and that he had to be
home.
“I have to go,” he said. “I don’t feel well. I thought food would help
but its only made it worse.”
“Wait!” Vivenne said, touching his arm as he abruptly got off his
stool. “Let me help you.”
“I’m fine.”
“You aren’t. Let me give you the Storm Bull’s blessing, it’s the least I
can do.”
Jaks hesitated. This was a terrible idea. But the warmth of her hand
on his arm made him sit down.
“I promise this won’t hurt,” she said.
Standing up, the girl stood behind him and began to chant softly
under her breath. Then as she prayed, she placed both palms flat on
the small of his back. They moved as she continued, first to his
spine, then shoulders, then the back of his skull and finally pressed
to his forehead, so her arms were almost wrapped around him. He
felt the warmth of her body inside the little tent formed by her cloak
and at the same time felt a cool sensation running down the back of
his neck and into his limbs. A tingling of well-being as the girl
cajoled a blessing from the Storm Bull and eased his anxiety by the
smallest fraction.
“There you go,” she said softly from behind his ear.
“Much obliged,” Jaks muttered. He almost knocked her down as he
got up quickly and fled the shop for home.
Grievious wept, he thought to himself, forcing all thoughts of how
warm and gentle she had been from his mind. What a mantrap!
Ignore it. Bigger problems. Xantha, secret identity, mission for his
master, dark secrets of ancient magic. Those were the things he
should be worried about, not some…
…pretty, warm, kind, svelte…
Stop it!
Truth be told Jaks barely understood how little he belonged in the
land of the living. On that fateful first meeting his new master had
told him there was no going back once he accepted an
apprenticeship and Jaks eventually understood it was a warning. For
weeks he had desperately searched for the catch. What was the
down-side? Then he got it; he understood that most normals saw
the isolation from society itself as the problem.
Relief had flooded him. The less he had to do with the rest of the
world, the better. The Black Pentagram of the Five Points held the
monopoly on all the hard stuff and isolation was less a trade-off than
it was a bonus.
No, the hardest part of being accepted by the Black Island was that
it had to be secret. More than that, he had to have a secret identity.
To look normal. To fit in with the blind and dumb folk who walked
the streets around him every day, never seeing the things he did.
Jaks crafted a life of boredom around himself. Did his best to
disguise what he was with such effort that he forgot he was doing it
most days. It culminated in being courted by – and marrying –
Xantha.
In hindsight he had perhaps overdone it.
He rationalized marriage as the most normal human choice he could
make. She was a strange girl of a strange family who unstoppably
insisted he violate her nubile form. It seemed too good to be true.
One summer evening he had her panties off in her bedroom and for
the first time in his young life, Jaks lost his cherry to a real girl and
became just like all the other meatboys.
Instant secret identity. All for the price of his dignity in a wet,
squirming wrestle. He didn’t even pack a sheepgut jacket for the
deed. His arcane lessons later taught him the continual dalliance
with spirit figments had certainly killed his dickmilk with their
spectral radiation. Which was a dubiously lucky break.
But he continued to date the girl and, in a misguided attempt to be
more like normal humans, married her a year ago. In Dolorn the
poor married young, the rich suffered engagements of a decade,
and his family greatly disapproved of his union. Had in fact disowned
him when he told them he would marry Xantha.
Turning onto the street with the long, dismal row of brick houses,
Jaks forced himself not to run. To seem calm. To not habitually touch
the wallet of saint’s bones tucked beneath his clothes. He saw the
light in the window. Knew Xantha would be awake. What would he
find when he entered the door? The sweet girl he had courted, or
the raging wife plagued by bad dreams who would accuse him of
abandoning her?
When his parents had cut him off Jaks had shrugged. He had
greater things to worry about and didn’t particularly care. His
parents seemed shocked when he told them it was fine by him. He
would have done anything to move away to the big city. Including
marry Xantha.
He stopped on the step to his home, preparing for the worst. This
was the price.
But he’d forgotten what it was supposed to have bought him.

***
Chapter 2 : Good wizards make bad
husbands
The morning after retrieving his piece of St Elyssia, Jaks rolled out of
bed to the sound of his wife’s rapid prayers from the altar to Storm
Bull she’d set up in the main room of the little townhouse. For the
hundredth time since he’d been wed, he wished he could afford
something larger than the long, narrow rooms of the two-story
apartment in the shabby south-eastern corner of Dolorn.
He’d grown up in Rose Town, an outlying community a day’s ride
from the city proper, named with typical alfar flair. His grandfather
had been a bargeman, plying the waterways that fed cargo into the
metropolis to the south. A giant of a man, by all accounts. His own
father, also a hulking figure, did a stint in the river marines as a
youth and hated it before mustering out to start his own business as
a cabinetmaker.
Jaks knew he shared the same brute’s frame but was continually
berated for his bookish habits. Like most respectable families, his
parents had paid a substantial chunk of their income to see their
youngest child into the Dolorn Academy where an odd bookworm
might still learn a profession of means. Alchemy was an acceptable
vocation for a young person in the city. Studying ancient lore was a
quaint pastime and a waste of an education. Which was exactly
what Jaks had done to spite them.
Xantha was done praying and into lighting little incense sprigs.
He crawled from bed, literally. The mattress was several thicknesses
of quilted cotton on the wooden floor that you could pick up cheap
in Little Breezetown where weird shops cooked stinking dishes of
rice and noodles. He’d carried it home among the weird vegetables
and stomach-churning vats of live atrocities they liked to eat.
Southlanders bred the creatures in big stone reservoirs from samples
smuggled in the bilge water of the ships that transported the amber-
skinned refugees of far off lands. Within the first month the mattress
had compressed paper-thin and every morning was an exercise in
coaxing his numb body to standing.
A quarter glass later and he had voided himself, splashed down with
cold water and picked the cleanest smelling clothes from the somber
pile of off-blacks piled in the bottom of the clothes press. Still Xantha
wasn’t finished praising the hopping goddess.
He wished that he wasn’t plagued by traitorous and blasphemous
thoughts that if his wife was perhaps a little less pious she would
have time for more housekeeping. He should, he knew, be equally
responsible for the state of their dreary home. In these times when
so little of someone’s worth was decided by physical brawn alone,
women had rightfully taken their place beside men in all manner of
work.
The traitorous voice of Morgo spoke in his head:
Married less than three months and she already wants your seed,
Morgo grumbled. That seem hypocritical to you?
Shut up, Jaks eyed the narrow sword in the plain scabbard standing
in the corner of the room.
Morgo was the thing that inhabited his sword. He’d picked the
weapon up cheap in a second-hand in a curios shop. He’d assumed
the price reflected the small amounts of rust beneath the grips, and
not the sliver of a previous owner’s spirit. Technically Morgo wasn’t a
spirit so much as he was an imp; a malicious bit of soul sent back to
the middle world. Probably for being too unpleasant for even the
underverse. Morgo refused to give personal details but judging by
his attitude he would have been better off living fifty or a hundred
years ago, when men with a sword were real men and women
couldn’t own property.
I’m just sayin, a woman who insists on an equal education and
thinks women should be able to vote aspires to nothing more than
bouncing plump babies.
Jaks watched Xantha from where she knelt by the altar. She was
scandalously naked, as she preferred much of the time, and his
desire for her took hold. Her slim, shapely body was more than
pleasing. What did he care about anything else when his nights
could be filled with such a spirited wife?
Well… when the mood struck her. She was more often than not, too
distracted for that. He pushed the thoughts aside. He was late. He
passed Xantha where she knelt at the home altar and picked apart
some of last night’s roast chicken, a slab of day-old bread and a
handful of dried fruit. The milk smelled bad and the light beer was
mostly flat. He took a full mug of cold water instead.
By the time he’d finished eating Xantha was smiling and wrapping
her tiny body around him. She came to barely his collarbone. Curly
blonde hair and eyes that seemed icy blue when her pale face
flushed with excitement or, more often lately, fury over some other
familial misunderstanding. Her skin was pale, her breasts small yet
shapely, and the way her naked sex pressed to his leg was
impossible to ignore.
For a moment he warmed to her touch, gripped her tightly and tried
to kiss her.
“You should greet the goddess,” she said as she dodged his kiss and
hugged him.
“I’m late,” he said around a mouthful regret.
“Still. You should.” When he simply didn’t reply she went on, an edge
to her voice. “You’ll be there tonight then?”
“Be where tonight?”
“The Compassion of the Bull, the whisper of devotion, remember?”
she said, anger tinging her voice as she stood back. All warmth was
gone. That blue in her eyes was steely.
The Compassion was one of the endless cult ceremonies. It was
expected, of course, that anyone from a good family was a religious
man. The kindly gods were all openly worshipped in Dolorn, from
Absolve to Zephyr. It even included a fair number of semi-reputable
gods that didn’t respect the proper antinomial stance of enlightened
religion, like the divine undulate. Storm Bull attracted what was best
described as witches to her cult. His grandmother would’ve jabbed a
needle in her eye and drank hemlock if she’d known Jaks had
converted to witchcraft, but in his generation, it was becoming more
common.
“Classes run late tonight, you know that,” he reminded her gently.
Such was the lot of a newly married man.
“You’ll come straight home afterwards?”
“I was thinking of stopping to meet with the professor after; a group
of us were going to discuss some of Dangrek’s treatises in the pub.”
“You bastard,” Xantha instantly burst into tears.
Jaks tried not to recoil from his new bride. The kind and caring
female form was suddenly transformed into a naked fury, face a
mask of a gorgon.
“You’d rather do anything to spend time with your friends than be
with me! I’m your wife, you should want to do things that I consider
important too!”
She was equal parts furious and despondent. A blubbering mass of
rage. Some spittle actually flew out of her mouth towards the end.
“Of course, dear,” he found himself holding her.
She cried until she left a wet spot through to his clothes to the skin
and clung to him. He was beyond forgivably late now. He’d have to
tell Kadatheron something, but what?
And more importantly, what terrible mistake had he made by taking
a wife. Any wife would have been a challenge for someone like him,
but Xantha was no anywoman. There was something not right with
her. He knew it. Had perhaps thought it would be to his advantage if
she was strange enough herself she wouldn’t mind the peculiarities
that came with his profession. But what could a man do? He
assumed he loved her.
Was this another hole left in him from his childhood? Had it had
simultaneously made him less human and more than human?
“I’ll be home right away. Of course.” But wasn’t this what a husband
did?

***

He caught the horse-drawn trolley that ran east-west, curving along

the King’s Street from one end of the city to the other. King’s Street
was the first major road that kept roughly to the gentle curve of the
great bay that Dolorn humped up against. It ran from the run-down
ghetto of crime where he lived full on to the central core of
magnificent marble palaces, temples and merchant factors that were
the wonder of the world. Not far from his home it crossed one of the
massive bridges over the muddy river known locally as the Royal
Canal, and in the distance was the edifice of the Faery King’s donjon
nearly 800 years old.
But the days when alfar blood ran so strong they were considered
immortal were already drawing to a close, even then. Those fey
creatures had slowly retreated from contact with their sworn allies.
As man grew, so the alfar declined. They were going the way of the
woolly rhinoceros. When Xantha finally got her offspring off him he
might be telling his grandchildren what alfar had looked like because
they’d never seen one.
In days gone by the users of arcane arts had been shamans who
dabbled in rune-lore huddled inside hide yurts just below the tundra
line. Followed the Vurdam on their pillaging, conquering march of
empire from the north all the way to more civilized, and less easily
subjugated, lands like Dolorn. Cultured by their exposure to one of
the three oldest cities in the world had changed them. Those first
shamans had given way to fractious sorcerer brotherhoods and the
victors of those wars became terrible hierophants of arcane-fueled
megalomania. Those few hadn’t filled a child’s closed casket when
they were finally put down.
Then five hundred years ago the survivors – secretive, insane and
insanely powerful – had created a slate-black pentagram tower in
the Dolorn harbor which had not previously had an island, let alone
an obsidian fortress. The black pentagram had appeared overnight
and lesser magicians and hedge-shamans had fled town. The alfar
who had built the city, their power waning inside their palaces, could
not be bothered to deal with the arcane interlopers on their
territories and did nothing.
In these enlightened days the Black Pentagram did not officially exist
of course, despite its unchanging presence on the cityline. Just a
story, the people of Dolorn told themselves. Legends exaggerated by
children. Nor did anyone believe wizards existed. Alchemy, yes, of
course. The guilds of newly educated arcane philosophers had
largely replaced that mystical wrong-thinking here in the western
world. And good riddance. Through alchemy the magical energies of
ley lines had been revealed. The essence of magical creatures, those
that remained, were dissected, stuffed and mounted in parlors of the
well-off. Magic spellwork itself was the much-maligned fakery of
charlatans or the primitive ju-ju of sub-humans in far foreign parts of
the world.
However, a number of lord mayors of Dolorn had risen from
obscurity to political power in an almost miraculous way. Common
people guffawed the ancient laws still on the books against
necrocide, yet despite the hilarity of laws against magical murder, a
surprising number of disputes from the over-moneyed and
underpowered remnants of the patrician class ended with one
member a pile of smoking ashes inside a locked room, or sometimes
a still-living puddle of bubbling goo, if the price was right. No one
wondered why cheap talismans, enchanted constructs and minor
artefacts could be imported at great cost from less civilized cities like
Laudsdawn to the north; but Laudsdawn’s wizard merchants
mysteriously were foiled at every attempt to subvert the local
Another random document with
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connected by a string passing over the junction of the planes, so that
when one descends the other ascends, 315 they must move through
equal spaces on the planes; but on the plane which is more oblique
(that is, more nearly horizontal), the vertical descent will be smaller
in the same proportion in which the plane is longer. Hence, by the
Aristotelian principle, the weight of the body on the longer plane is
less; and, to produce an equality of effect, the body must be greater
in the same proportion. We may observe that the Aristotelian
principle is not only false, but is here misapplied; for its genuine
meaning is, that when bodies fall freely by gravity, they move quicker
in proportion as they are heavier; but the rule is here applied to the
motions which bodies would have, if they were moved by a force
extraneous to their gravity. The proposition was supposed by the
Aristotelians to be true of actual velocities; it is applied by Jordanus
to virtual velocities, without his being aware what he was doing. This
confusion being made, the result is got at by taking for granted that
bodies thus proved to be equally heavy, have equal powers of
descent on the inclined planes; whereas, in the previous part of the
reasoning, the weight was supposed to be proportional to the
descent in the vertical direction. It is obvious, in all this, that though
the author had adopted the false Aristotelian principle, he had not
settled in his own mind whether the motions of which it spoke were
actual or virtual motions;—motions in the direction of the inclined
plane, or of the intercepted parts of the vertical, corresponding to
these; nor whether the “descending force” of a body was something
different from its weight. We cannot doubt that, if he had been
required to point out, with any exactness, the cases to which his
reasoning applied, he would have been unable to do so; not
possessing any of those clear fundamental Ideas of Pressure and
Force, on which alone any real knowledge on such subjects must
depend. The whole of Jordanus’s reasoning is an example of the
confusion of thought of his period, and of nothing more. It no more
supplied the want of some man of genius, who should give the
subject a real scientific foundation, than Aristotle’s knowledge of the
proportion of the weights on the lever superseded the necessity of
Archimedes’s proof of it.
2 Mr. Drinkwater’s Life of Galileo, in the Lib. Usef. Kn. p. 83.

We are not, therefore, to wonder that, though this pretended

theorem was copied by other writers, as by Tartalea, in his Quesiti et
Inventioni Diversi, published in 1554, no progress was made in the
real solution of any one mechanical problem by means of it. Guido
Ubaldi, who, in 1577, writes in such a manner as to show that he had
taken a good hold of his subject for his time, refers to Pappus’s
solution of the problem of the Inclined Plane, but makes no mention
of that of 316 Jordanus and Tartalea. 3 No progress was likely to
occur, till the mathematicians had distinctly recovered the genuine
Idea of Pressure, as a Force producing equilibrium, which
Archimedes had possessed, and which was soon to reappear in
Stevinus.
3 Ubaldi mentions and blames Jordanus’s way of treating the
Lever. (See his Preface.)

The properties of the Lever had always continued known to

mathematicians, although, in the dark period, the superiority of the
proof given by Archimedes had not been recognized. We are not to
be surprised, if reasonings like those of Jordanus were applied to
demonstrate the theories of the Lever with apparent success. Writers
on Mechanics were, as we have seen, so vacillating in their mode of
dealing with words and propositions, that their maxims could be
made to prove any thing which was already known to be true.

We proceed to speak of the beginning of the real progress of

Mechanics in modern times.

Sect. 2.—Revival of the Scientific Idea of Pressure.—Stevinus.—

Equilibrium of Oblique Forces.

The doctrine of the Centre of Gravity was the part of the

mechanical speculations of Archimedes which was most diligently
prosecuted after his time. Pappus and others, among the ancients,
had solved some new problems on this subject, and Commandinus,
in 1565, published De Centro Gravitatis Solidorum. Such treatises
contained, for the most part, only mathematical consequences of the
doctrines of Archimedes; but the mathematicians also retained a
steady conviction of the mechanical property of the Centre of
Gravity, namely, that all the weight of the body might be collected
there, without any change in the mechanical results; a conviction
which is closely connected with our fundamental conceptions of
mechanical action. Such a principle, also, will enable us to determine
the result of many simple mechanical arrangements; for instance, if a
mathematician of those days had been asked whether a solid ball
could be made of such a form, that, when placed on a horizontal
plane, it should go on rolling forwards without limit merely by the
effect of its own weight, he would probably have answered, that it
could not; for that the centre of gravity of the ball would seek the
lowest position it could find, and that, when it had found this, the ball
could have no tendency to roll any further. And, in making this
assertion, the supposed reasoner would not be 317 anticipating any
wider proof of the impossibility of a perpetual motion drawn from
principles subsequently discovered, but would be referring the
question to certain fundamental convictions, which, whether put into
Axioms or not, inevitably accompany our mechanical conceptions.

In the same way, Stevinus of Bruges, in 1586, when he published

his Beghinselen der Waaghconst (Principles of Equilibrium), had
been asked why a loop of chain, hung over a triangular beam, could
not, as he asserted it could not, go on moving round and round
perpetually, by the action of its own weight, he would probably have
answered, that the weight of the chain, if it produced motion at all,
must have a tendency to bring it into some certain position, and that
when the chain had reached this position, it would have no tendency
to go any further; and thus he would have reduced the impossibility
of such a perpetual motion, to the conception of gravity, as a force
tending to produce equilibrium; a principle perfectly sound and
correct.

Upon this principle thus applied, Stevinus did establish the

fundamental property of the Inclined Plane. He supposed a loop of
string, loaded with fourteen equal balls at equal distances, to hang
over a triangular support which was composed of two inclined planes
with a horizontal base, and whose sides, being unequal in the
proportion of two to one, supported four and two balls respectively.
He showed that this loop must hang at rest, because any motion
would only bring it into the same condition in which it was at first; and
that the festoon of eight balls which hung down below the triangle
might be removed without disturbing the equilibrium; so that four
balls on the longer plane would balance two balls on the shorter
plane; or in other words, the weights would be as the lengths of the
planes intercepted by the horizontal line.
 Stevinus showed his firm possession of the truth contained in this
principle, by deducing from it the properties of forces acting in
oblique directions under all kinds of conditions; in short, he showed
his entire ability to found upon it a complete doctrine of equilibrium;
and upon his foundations, and without any additional support, the
mathematical doctrines of Statics might have been carried to the
highest pitch of perfection they have yet reached. The formation of
the science was finished; the mathematical development and
exposition of it were alone open to extension and change.

[2d Ed.] [“Simon Stevin of Bruges,” as he usually designates

himself in the title-page of his work, has lately become an object of
general interest in his own country, and it has been resolved to erect
a 318 statue in honor of him in one of the public places of his native
city. He was born in 1548, as I learn from M. Quetelet’s notice of him,
and died in 1620. Montucla says that he died in 1633; misled
apparently by the preface to Albert Girard’s edition of Stevin’s works,
which was published in 1634, and which speaks of a death which
took place in the preceding year; but on examination it will be seen
that this refers to Girard, not to Stevin.

I ought to have mentioned, in consideration of the importance of

the proposition, that Stevin distinctly states the triangle of forces;
namely, that three forces which act upon a point are in equilibrium
when they are parallel and proportional to the three sides of any
plane triangle. This includes the principle of the Composition of
Statical Forces. Stevin also applies his principle of equilibrium to
cordage, pulleys, funicular polygons, and especially to the bits of
bridles; a branch of mechanics which he calls Chalinothlipsis.
 He has also the merit of having seen very clearly, the distinction of
statical and dynamical problems. He remarks that the question,
“What force will support a loaded wagon on an inclined plane? is a
statical question, depending on simple conditions; but that the
question, What force will move the wagon? requires additional
considerations to be introduced.

In Chapter iv. of this Book, I have noticed Stevin’s share in the

rediscovery of the Laws of the Equilibrium of Fluids. He distinctly
explains the hydrostatic paradox, of which the discovery is generally
ascribed to Pascal.

Earlier than Stevinus, Leonardo da Vinci must have a place

among the discoverers of the Conditions of Equilibrium of Oblique
Forces. He published no work on this subject; but extracts from his
manuscripts have been published by Venturi, in his Essai sur les
Ouvrages Physico-Mathematiques de Leonard da Vinci, avec des
Fragmens tirés de ses Manuscrits apportés d’Italie, Paris, 1797: and
by Libri, in his Hist. des Sc. Math. en Italie, 1839. I have also myself
examined these manuscripts in the Royal Library at Paris.

It appears that, as early as 1499, Leonardo gave a perfectly

correct statement of the proportion of the forces exerted by a cord
which acts obliquely and supports a weight on a lever. He
distinguishes between the real lever, and the potential levers, that is,
the perpendiculars drawn from the centre upon the directions of the
forces. This is quite sound and satisfactory. These views must in all
probability have been sufficiently promulgated in Italy to influence the
speculations of Galileo; 319 whose reasonings respecting the lever
much resemble those of Leonardo.—Da Vinci also anticipated
Galileo in asserting that the time of descent of a body down an
inclined plane is to the time of descent down its vertical length in the
proportion of the length of the plane to the height. But this cannot, I
think, have been more than a guess: there is no vestige of a proof
given.]

The contemporaneous progress of the other branch of mechanics,

the Doctrine of Motion, interfered with this independent advance of
Statics; and to that we must now turn. We may observe, however,
that true propositions respecting the composition of forces appear to
have rapidly diffused themselves. The Tractatus de Motu of Michael
Varro of Geneva, already noticed, printed in 1584, had asserted, that
the forces which balance each other, acting on the sides of a right-
angled triangular wedge, are in the proportion of the sides of the
triangle; and although this assertion does not appear to have been
derived from a distinct idea of pressure, the author had hence rightly
deduced the properties of the wedge and the screw. And shortly after
this time, Galileo also established the same results on different
principles. In his Treatise Delle Scienze Mecaniche (1592), he refers
the Inclined Plane to the Lever, in a sound and nearly satisfactory
manner; imagining a lever so placed, that the motion of a body at the
extremity of one of its arms should be in the same direction as it is
upon the plane. A slight modification makes this an unexceptionable
proof.

Sect. 3.—Prelude to the Science of Dynamics.—Attempts at the First

Law of Motion.

We have already seen, that Aristotle divided Motions into Natural

and Violent. Cardan endeavored to improve this division by making
three classes: Voluntary Motion, which is circular and uniform, and
which is intended to include the celestial motions; Natural Motion,
which is stronger towards the end, as the motion of a falling body,—
this is in a straight line, because it is motion to an end, and nature
seeks her ends by the shortest road; and thirdly, Violent Motion,
including in this term all kinds different from the former two. Cardan
was aware that such Violent Motion might be produced by a very
small force; thus he asserts, that a spherical body resting on a
horizontal plane may be put in motion by any force which is sufficient
to cleave the air; for which, however, he erroneously assigns as a
reason, 320 the smallness of the point of contact. 4 But the most
common mistake of this period was, that of supposing that as force
is requisite to move a body, so a perpetual supply of force is
requisite to keep it in motion. The whole of what Kepler called his
“physical” reasoning, depended upon this assumption. He
endeavored to discover the forces by which the motions of the
planets about the sun might be produced; but, in all cases, he
considered the velocity of the planet as produced by, and exhibiting
the effect of, a force which acted in the direction of the motion.
Kepler’s essays, which are in this respect so feeble and unmeaning,
have sometimes been considered as disclosing some distant
anticipation of Newton’s discovery of the existence and law of central
forces. There is, however, in reality, no other connection between
these speculations than that which arises from the use of the term
force by the two writers in two utterly different meanings. Kepler’s
Forces were certain imaginary qualities which appeared in the actual
motion which the bodies had; Newton’s Forces were causes which
appeared by the change of motion: Kepler’s Forces urged the bodies
forwards; Newton’s deflected the bodies from such a progress. If
Kepler’s Forces were destroyed, the body would instantly stop; if
Newton’s were annihilated, the body would go on uniformly in a
straight line. Kepler compares the action of his Forces to the way in
which a body might be driven round, by being placed among the
sails of a windmill; Newton’s Forces would be represented by a rope
pulling the body to the centre. Newton’s Force is merely mutual
attraction; Kepler’s is something quite different from this; for though
he perpetually illustrates his views by the example of a magnet, he
warns us that the sun differs from the magnet in this respect, that its
force is not attractive, but directive. 5 Kepler’s essays may with
considerable reason be asserted to be an anticipation of the Vortices
of Descartes; but they can with no propriety whatever be said to
anticipate Newton’s Dynamical Theory.
4 In speaking of the force which would draw a body up an inclined
plane he observes, that “per communem animi sententiam,” when
the plane becomes horizontal, the requisite force is nothing.

5 Epitome Astron. Copern. p. 176.

The confusion of thought which prevented mathematicians from

seeing the difference between producing and preserving motion,
was, indeed, fatal to all attempts at progress on this subject. We
have already noticed the perplexity in which Aristotle involved
himself, by his endeavors to find a reason for the continued motion
of a stone 321 after the moving power had ceased to act; and that he
had ascribed it to the effect of the air or other medium in which the
stone moves. Tartalea, whose Nuova Scienza is dated 1550, though
a good pure mathematician, is still quite in the dark on mechanical
matters. One of his propositions, in the work just mentioned, is (B. i.
Prop. 3), “The more a heavy body recedes from the beginning, or
approaches the end of violent motion, the slower and more inertly it
goes;” which he applies to the horizontal motion of projectiles. In like
manner most other writers about this period conceived that a
cannon-ball goes forwards till it loses all its projectile motion, and
then falls downwards. Benedetti, who has already been mentioned,
must be considered as one of the first enlightened opponents of this
and other Aristotelian errors or puzzles. In his Speculationum Liber
(Venice, 1585), he opposes Aristotle’s mechanical opinions, with
great expressions of respect, but in a very sweeping manner. His
chapter xxiv. is headed, “Whether this eminent man was right in his
opinion concerning violent and natural motion.” And after stating the
Aristotelian opinion just mentioned, that the body is impelled by the
air, he says that the air must impede rather than impel the body, and
that 6 “the motion of the body, separated from the mover, arises by a
certain natural impression from the impetuosity (ex impetuositate)
received from the mover.” He adds, that in natural motions this
impetuosity continually increases by the continued action of the
cause,—namely, the propension of going to the place assigned it by
nature; and that thus the velocity increases as the body moves from
the beginning of its path. This statement shows a clearness of
conception with regard to the cause of accelerated motion, which
Galileo himself was long in acquiring.
6 P. 184.

Though Benedetti was thus on the way to the First Law of Motion,
—that all motion is uniform and rectilinear, except so far as it is
affected by extraneous forces;—this Law was not likely to be either
generally conceived, or satisfactorily proved, till the other Laws of
Motion, by which the action of Forces is regulated, had come into
view. Hence, though a partial apprehension of this principle had
preceded the discovery of the Laws of Motion, we must place the
establishment of the principle in the period when those Laws were
detected and established, the period of Galileo and his followers. 322
 CHAPTER II.

Inductive Epoch of Galileo.—Discovery of the Laws of Motion in Simple

Cases.

Sect. 1.—Establishment of the First Law of Motion.

A FTER mathematicians had begun to doubt or reject the authority

of Aristotle, they were still some time in coming to the
conclusion, that the distinction of Natural and Violent Motions was
altogether untenable;—that the velocity of a body in motion
increased or diminished in consequence of the action of extrinsic
causes, not of any property of the motion itself;—and that the
apparently universal fact, of bodies growing slower and slower, as if
by their own disposition, till they finally stopped, from which Motions
had been called Violent, arose from the action of external obstacles
not immediately obvious, as the friction and the resistance of the air
when a ball runs on the ground, and the action of gravity, when it is
thrown upwards. But the truth to which they were at last led, was,
that such causes would account for all the diminution of velocity
which bodies experience when apparently left to themselves and that
without such causes, the motion of all bodies would go on forever, in
a straight line and with a uniform velocity.

Who first announced this Law in a general form, it may be difficult

to point out; its exact or approximate truth was necessarily taken for
granted in all complete investigations on the subject of the laws of
motion of falling bodies, and of bodies projected so as to describe
curves. In Galileo’s first attempt to solve the problem of falling
bodies, he did not carry his analysis back to the notion of force, and
therefore this law does not appear. In 1604 he had an erroneous
opinion on this subject and we do not know when he was led to the
true doctrine which he published in his Discorso, in 1638. In his third
Dialogue he gives the instance of water in a vessel, for the purpose
of showing that circular motion has a tendency to continue. And in
his first Dialogue on the Copernican System 7 (published in 1630), he
asserts 323 Circular Motion alone to be naturally uniform, and retains
the distinction between Natural and Violent Motion. In the Dialogues
on Mechanics, however, published in 1638, but written apparently at
an earlier period, in treating of Projectiles, 8 he asserts the true Law.
“Mobile super planum horizontale projectum mente concipio omni
secluso impedimento; jam constat ex his quæ fusius alibi dicta sunt,
illius motum equabilem et perpetuum super ipso plano futurum esse,
si planum in infinitum extendatur.” “Conceive a movable body upon a
horizontal plane, and suppose all obstacles to motion to be removed;
it is then manifest, from what has been said more at large in another
place, that the body’s motion will be uniform and perpetual upon the
plane, if the plane be indefinitely extended.” His pupil Borelli, in 1667
(in the treatise De Vi Percussionis), states the proposition generally,
that “Velocity is, by its nature, uniform, and perpetual;” and this
opinion appears to have been, at that time, generally diffused, as we
find evidence in Wallis and others. It is commonly said that
Descartes was the first to state this generally. His Principia were
published in 1644; but his proofs of this First Law of Motion are
rather of a theological than of a mechanical kind. His reason for this
Law is, 9 “the immutability and simplicity of the operation by which
God preserves motion in matter. For he only preserves it precisely as
it is in that moment in which he preserves it, taking no account of
that which may have been previously.” Reasoning of this abstract
and à priori kind, though it may be urged in favor of true opinions
after they have been inductively established, is almost equally
capable of being called in on the side of error, as we have seen in
the case of Aristotle’s philosophy. We ought not, however, to forget
that the reference to these abstract and à priori principles is an
indication of the absolute universality and necessity which we look
for in complete Sciences, and a result of those faculties by which
such Science is rendered possible, and suitable to man’s intellectual
nature.
7 Dial. i. p. 40.

8 p. 141.

9 Princip. p. 34.

The induction by which the First Law of Motion is established,

consists, as induction consists in all cases, in conceiving clearly the
Law, and in perceiving the subordination of Facts to it. But the Law
speaks of bodies not acted upon by any external force,—a case
which never occurs in fact; and the difficulty of the step consisted in
bringing all the common cases in which motion is gradually
extinguished, under the notion of the action of a retarding force. In
order to do this, 324 Hooke and others showed that, by diminishing
the obvious resistances, the retardation also became less; and men
were gradually led to a distinct appreciation of the Resistance,
Friction, &c., which, in all terrestrial motions, prevent the Law from
being evident; and thus they at last established by experiment a Law
which cannot be experimentally exemplified. The natural uniformity
of motion was proved by examining all kinds of cases in which
motion was not uniform. Men culled the abstract Rule out of the
concrete Experiment; although the Rule was, in every case, mixed
with other Rules, and each Rule could be collected from the
Experiment only by supposing the others known. The perfect
simplicity which we necessarily seek for in a law of nature, enables
us to disentangle the complexity which this combination appears at
first sight to occasion.

The First Law of Motion asserts that the motion of a body, when
left to itself will not only be uniform, but rectilinear also. This latter
part of the law is indeed obvious of itself as soon as we conceive a
body detached from all special reference to external points and
objects. Yet, as we have seen, Galileo asserted that the naturally
uniform motion of bodies was that which takes place in a circle.
Benedetti, however, in 1585, had entertained sound notions on this
subject. In commenting on Aristotle’s question, why we obtain an
advantage in throwing by using a sling, he says, 10 that the body,
when whirled round, tends to go on in a straight line. In Galileo’s
second Dialogue, he makes one of his interlocutors (Simplicio),
when appealed to on this subject, after thinking intently for a little
while, give the same opinion; and the principle is, from this time,
taken for granted by the authors who treat of the motion of
projectiles. Descartes, as might be supposed, gives the same reason
for this as for the other part of the law, namely, the immutability of the
Deity.
10 “Corpus vellet recta iter peragere.” Speculationum Liber, p.
160.

Sect. 2.—Formation and Application of the Notion of Accelerating

Force.—Laws of Falling Bodies.
 We have seen how rude and vague were the attempts of Aristotle
and his followers to obtain a philosophy of bodies falling downwards
or thrown in any direction. If the First Law of Motion had been clearly
known, it would then, perhaps, have been seen that the way to
understand and analyze the motion of any body, is to consider the
325 Causes of change of motion which at each instant operate upon
it; and thus men would have been led to the notion of Accelerating
Forces, that is, Forces which act upon bodies already in motion, and
accelerate, retard, or deflect their motions. It was, however, only
after many attempts that they reached this point. They began by
considering the whole motion with reference to certain ill-defined
abstract Notions, instead of considering, with a clear apprehension
of the conditions of Causation, the successive parts of which the
motion consists. Thus, they spoke of the tendency of bodies to the
Centre, or to their Own Place;—of Projecting Force, of Impetus, of
Retraction;—with little or no profit to knowledge. The indistinctness
of their notions may, perhaps, be judged of from their speculations
concerning projectiles. Santbach, 11 in 1561, imagined that a body
thrown with great velocity, as, for instance, a ball from a cannon,
went in a straight line till all its velocity was exhausted, and then fell
directly downwards. He has written a treatise on gunnery, founded
on this absurd assumption. To this succeeded another doctrine,
which, though not much more philosophical than the former, agreed
much better with the phenomena. Nicolo Tartalea (Nuova Scienza,
Venice, 1550; Quesiti et Inventioni Diversi, 1554) and Gualter Rivius
(Architectura, &c., Basil, 1582) represented the path of a cannon-ball
as consisting, first of a straight line in the direction of the original
projection, then of an arc of a circle in which it went on till its motion
became vertical downwards, and then of a vertical line in which it
continued to fall. The latter of these writers, however, was aware that
the path must, from the first, be a curve; and treated it as a straight
line, only because the curvature is very slight. Even Santbach’s
figure represents the path of the ball as partially descending before
its final fall, but then it descends by steps, not in a curve. Santbach,
therefore, did not conceive the Composition of the effect of gravity
with the existing motion, but supposed them to act alternately;
Rivius, however, understood this Composition, and saw that gravity
must act as a deflecting force at every point of the path. Galileo, in
his second Dialogue, 12 makes Simplicius come to the same
conclusion. “Since,” he says, “there is nothing to support the body,
when it quits that which projects it, it cannot be but that its proper
gravity must operate,” and it must immediately begin to decline
downwards.
11Problematum Astronomicorum et Geometricorum Sectiones vii.
&c. &c. Auctore Daniele Santbach, Noviomago. Basileæ, 1561.

12 P. 147.

326 The Force of Gravity which thus produces deflection and

curvature in the path of a body thrown obliquely, constantly
increases the velocity of a body when it falls vertically downwards.
The universality of this increase was obvious, both from reasoning
and in fact; the law of it could only be discovered by closer
consideration; and the full analysis of the problem required a distinct
measure of the quantity of Accelerating Force. Galileo, who first
solved this problem, began by viewing it as a question of fact, but
conjectured the solution by taking for granted that the rule must be
the simplest possible. “Bodies,” he says, 13 “will fall in the most
simple way, because Natural Motions are always the most simple.
When a stone falls, if we consider the matter attentively, we shall find
that there is no addition, no increase, of the velocity more simple
than that which is always added in the same manner,” that is, when
equal additions take place in equal times; “which we shall easily
understand if we attend to the close connection of motion and time.”
From this Law, thus assumed, he deduced that the spaces described
from the beginning of the motion must be as the squares of the
times; and, again, assuming that the laws of descent for balls rolling
down inclined planes, must be the same as for bodies falling freely,
he verified this conclusion by experiment.
13 Dial. Sc. iv. p. 91.

It will, perhaps, occur to the reader that this argument, from the
simplicity of the assumed law, is somewhat insecure. It is not always
easy for us to discern what that greatest simplicity is, which nature
adopts in her laws. Accordingly, Galileo was led wrong by this way of
viewing the subject before he was led right. He at first supposed, that
the Velocity which the body had acquired at any point must be
proportional to the Space described from the point where the motion
began. This false law is as simple in its enunciation as the true law,
that the Velocity is proportional to the Time: it had been asserted as
the true law by M. Varro (De Motu Tractatus, Genevæ, 1584), and by
Baliani, a gentleman of Genoa, who published it in 1638. It was,
however, soon rejected by Galileo, though it was afterwards taken up
and defended by Casræus, one of Galileo’s opponents. It so
happens, indeed, that the false law is not only at variance with fact,
but with itself: it involves a mathematical self-contradiction. This
circumstance, however, was accidental: it would be easy to state
laws of the increase of velocity which should be simple, and yet false
in fact, though quite possible in their own nature. 327
 The Law of Velocity was hitherto, as we have seen, treated as a
law of phenomena, without reference to the Causes of the law. “The
cause of the acceleration of the motions of falling bodies is not,”
Galileo observes, “a necessary part of the investigation. Opinions
are different. Some refer it to the approach to the centre; others say
that there is a certain extension of the centrical medium, which,
closing behind the body, pushes it forwards. For the present, it is
enough for us to demonstrate certain properties of Accelerated
Motion, the acceleration being according to the very simple Law, that
the Velocity is proportional to the Time. And if we find that the
properties of such motion are verified by the motions of bodies
descending freely, we may suppose that the assumption agrees with
the laws of bodies falling freely by the action of gravity.” 14
14 Gal. Op. iii. 91, 92.

It was, however, an easy step to conceive this acceleration as

caused by the continual action of Gravity. This account had already
been given by Benedetti, as we have seen. When it was once
adopted, Gravity was considered as a constant or uniform force; on
this point, indeed, the adherents of the law of Galileo and of that of
Casræus were agreed; but the question was, what is a Uniform
Force? The answer which Galileo was led to give was obviously this;
—that is a Uniform Force which generates equal velocities in equal
successive times; and this principle leads at once to the doctrine,
that Forces are to be compared by comparing the Velocities
generated by them in equal times.

Though, however, this was a consequence of the rule by which

Gravity is represented as a Uniform Force, the subject presents
some difficulty at first sight. It is not immediately obvious that we may
thus measure forces by the Velocity added in a given time, without
taking into account the velocity they have already. If we
communicate velocity to a body by the hand or by a spring, the effect
we produce in a second of time is lessened, when the body has
already a velocity which withdraws it from the pressure of the agent.
But it appears that this is not so in the case of gravity; the velocity
added in one second is the same, whatever downward motion the
body already possesses. A body falling from rest acquires a velocity,
in one second, of thirty-two feet; and if a cannon-ball were shot
downwards with a velocity of 1000 feet a second, it would equally, at
the end of one second, have received an accession of 32 feet to its
velocity.

This conception of Gravity as a Uniform Force,—as constantly and

328 equally increasing the velocity of a descending body,—will
become clear by a little attention; but it undoubtedly presents
difficulty at first. Accordingly, we find that Descartes did not accept it.
“It is certain,” he says, “that a stone is not equally disposed to
receive a new motion or increase of velocity when it is already
moving very quickly, and when it is moving slowly.”

Descartes showed, by other expressions, that he had not caught

hold of the true notion of accelerating force. Thus, he says in a letter
to Mersenne, “I am astonished at what you tell me, of having found,
by experiment, that bodies thrown up in the air take neither more nor
less time to rise than to fall again; and you will excuse me if I say
that I look upon the experiment as a very difficult one to make
accurately.” Yet it is clear from the Notion of a Constant Force that
(omitting the resistance of the air) this equality must take place; for
the Force which will gradually destroy the whole velocity in a certain
time in ascending, will, in the same time, generate again the same
velocity by the same gradations inverted; and therefore the same
space will be passed over in the same time in the descent and in the
ascent.

Another difficulty arose from a necessary consequence of the

Laws of Falling Bodies thus established;—the proposition, namely,
that in acquiring its motion, a body passes through every
intermediate degree of velocity, from the smallest conceivable, up to
that which it at last acquires. When a body falls from rest, it begins to
fall with no velocity; the velocity increases with the time; and in one-
thousandth part of a second, the body has only acquired one-
thousandth part of the velocity which it has at the end of one second.

This is certain, and manifest on consideration; yet there was at

first much difficulty raised on the subject of this assertion; and
disputes took place concerning the velocity with which a body begins
to fall. On this subject also Descartes did not form clear notions. He
writes to a correspondent, “I have been revising my notes on Galileo,
in which I have not said expressly that falling bodies do not pass
through every degree of slowness, but I said that this cannot be
known without knowing what Weight is, which comes to the same
thing; as to your example, I grant that it proves that every degree of
velocity is infinitely divisible, but not that a falling body actually
passes through all these divisions.”

The Principles of the Motion of Falling Bodies being thus

established by Galileo, the Deduction of the principal mathematical
consequences was, as is usual, effected with great rapidity, and is to
be found 329 in his works, and in those of his scholars and
successors. The motion of bodies falling freely was, however, in
such treatises, generally combined with the motion of bodies Falling