All of the tiny particles of which it is composed turn and shift until their north poles all point more or less approximately in the direction of the magnetic force.
"When that happens the block itself becomes a magnet, filled with and surrounded by a field of magnetic energy; instinct with it.

Outwardly it has not moved; actually there has been prodigious motion." "But it is not conscious motion," I objected.
"Ah, but how do you know ?" he asked.

"If Jacques Loeb* is right, that action of the iron molecules is every bit as conscious a movement as the least and the greatest of our own.

There is absolutely no difference between them.
"Your and my and its every movement is nothing but an involuntary and inevitable reaction to a certain stimulus.

If he's right, then I'm a buttercup--but that's neither here nor there.