The occult
Jan Baptist van Helmont (1621). Of the Magnetic Curing of Wounds
Magnetism is a universal agent; there is nothing in it but the name; and it is a paradox only to those who are disposed to ridicule everything, and who ascribe to the influence of Satan all those phenomena which they cannot explain.
Magnetism is that occult influence which bodies exert over each other at a distance, whether by attraction or by repulsion.
This is a great example of an automatic generalization. Magnetism is a particular force, but in the hands of the analogical thinker, it becomes the force. Now all attraction and repulsion, of every kind, is taken as a species of the one universal and generic force of attraction and repulsion.