242 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sphere. Meteoric waters absorb it at the moment of their condensa- 

 tion. These results are absokitely new, to our knowledge, and are the 

 fruits of an entirely original labor. 



-- 



THE MODERN DEVELOPMENT OF FARADAY'S CON- 

 CEPTION OF ELECTRICITY.* 



By Professor H. HELMHOLTZ. 



THE majority of Faraday's own researches were connected, directly 

 or indirectly, with questions regarding the nature of electricity, 

 and his most important and most renowned discoveries lay in this field. 

 The facts Vhich he has found are universally known. Nevertheless, 

 the fundamental conceptions by which Faraday has been led to these 

 much-admired discoveries have not been received with much consid- 

 eration. His principal aim was to express, in his new conceptions, 

 only facts, with the least possible use of hypothetical substances 

 and forces. This was really a progress in general scientific method, 

 destined to purify science from the last remnants of metaphysics. 

 Now that the mathematical interpretation of Faraday's conceptions 

 regarding the nature of electric and magnetic force has been given by 

 Clerk Maxwell, we see how great a degree of exactness and precision 

 was really hidden behind his words, which to his contemporaries ap- 

 peared so vague or obscure ; and it is astonishing in the highest de- 

 gree to see what a large number of general theories, the methodical 

 deduction of which requires the highest powers of mathematical analy- 

 sis, he has found, by a kind of intuition, with the security of instinct, 

 without the help of a single mathematical formula. 



The electrical researches of Faraday, although embracing a great 

 number of apparently minute and disconnected questions, all of which 

 he has treated with the same careful attention and conscientiousness, are 

 really always aiming at two fundamental problems of natural philoso- 

 phy : the one more regarding the nature of physical forces, or of forces 

 working at a distance ; the other, in the same way, regarding chemical 

 forces, or those which act from molecule to molecule, and the relation 

 between these and the first. 



The great fundamental problem which Faraday called up anew for 

 discussion was the existence of forces working directly at a distance 

 without any intervening medium. During the last and the beginning 

 of the present century the model after the likeness of which nearly all 

 physical theories had been formed was the force of gravitation acting 



* The Faraday Lecture, delivered before the Fellows of the Chemical Society in the 

 Theatre of the Royal Institution, London, on Tuesday, April 5, 1881, by Professor Helm- 

 holtz. Abstract revised by the author. 



