ELECTRICITY. 611 



deflect a magnet, to make a magnet, to decompose water, and to pro- 

 duce a spark. 



Dr. Faraday's Views of Statical Electric Induction. 



According to the theories of electricity of yEpinus and Coulomb; 

 which in this Book of our History are regarded as constituting a main 

 part of the progress of this portion of science, the particles of the 

 electric fluid or fluids exert forces, attractive and repulsive, upon each 

 other in straight lines at a distance, in the same way in which, in the 

 Newtonian theory of the universe, the particles of matter are con- 

 ceived as exerting attractive forces upon each other. An electrized 

 body presented a conducting body of any form, determines a new 

 arrangement of the electric fluids in the conductor, attracting the like 

 fluid to its own side, and repelling the opposite fluid to the opposite 

 side. This is Electrical Induction. And as, by the theory, the at- 

 traction is greater at the smaller distances, the distribution of the fluid 

 upon the conductor in virtue of this Induction will not be symmetri- 

 cal, but will be governed by laws which it will require a complex and' 

 difficult calculation to determine as we have seen was the case in the 

 investigations of Coulomb, Poisson, and others. 



Instead of this action at a distance, Dr. Faraday has been led to 

 conceive Electrical Induction to be the result of an action taking pi ace 

 between the electrized body and the conductor through lines of con- 

 tiguous particles in the mass of the intermediate body, which he calls 

 the Dielectric. And the irregularities of the distribution of the elec- 

 tricity in these cases of Induction, and indeed the existence of an 

 action in points protected from direct action by the protuberant sides 

 of the conductor, are the causes. I conceive, which lead him to the 

 conclusion that Induction takes place in curved lines 1 of such contigu- 

 ous particles. 



With reference to this, I may remark that, as I have said, the <li- 

 tribution of electricity on a conductor in the presence of an electrized 

 body is so complex a mathematical problem that I do not conceive 

 any merely popular way of regarding the result can entitle us to say, 

 that the distribution which we find cannot be explained by the Cou- 

 lombian theory, and must force us upon the assumption of an action 

 in curved lines : which is, indeed, itself a theory, and so vague a one 



4 Researches, 1165, &c. 



