18 Eloge of Alexander Volta. 



of life, although, by a strange oversight, no one had attempted 

 to ph)ve its existence. Th^ flattered themselves, in a word, 

 that they had discovered the physical agent which conveys ex- 

 ternal impressions to the smisorium ; which arranges the organs 

 of animals in the order of their intelligence ; and produces the 

 motions of the arnis, limbs, head, and whatever the will has de- 

 termined. These illusions, alas ! were to be of short duration ; 

 the pleasing romance disappeared before the rigorous investiga- 

 tions of Volta. This ingenious philosopher produced convul- 

 sions, not by interposing two different metals between a muscle 

 and a nerve, as Galvani had done, but by causing them touch a 

 muscle only. 



From that moment, the Leyden jar could no longer be ap- 

 pealed to for an explanation. The negative electricity of the 

 muscles, and the positive electricity of the nerves, were pure hy- 

 potheses, without foundation ; the phenomena resembled nothing 

 previously known, and were covered with a veil that seemed im- 

 penetrable. 



Volta, in the mean time, was not discouraged. He imagined 

 that he had found electricity to be the principle of convulsions ; 

 that the muscle was entirely passive, and ought to be consi- 

 dered merely a conductor by which the discharge was effected. 

 With regard to the electrical fluid, Volta had the boldness to 

 suppose that it was the necessary result of the contact of tzm 

 metals, between which the muscle was compressed ; I say of 

 two metals, and not of two plates ; for, according to Volta, 

 without a difference in the nature of the two bodies in contact, 

 no electricity could be evolved. 



The natural philosophers of every country in Europe, as 

 well as Volta himself, adopted at first the views of the discover- 

 er of galvanism. They agreed in considering the spasmodic 

 convulsions of dead animals as one of the greatest discoveries 

 of modern times. A very slight knowledge of the human heart 

 may lead us to suspect, that a theory designed to connect these 

 curious phenomena with the ordinary laws of electricity, would 

 not be admitted by Galvani, and his disciples, without great re- 

 luctance. In truth, the Bolognese school eagerly defended the 

 doctrine of animal electricity, which had become so widely dif- 

 fused without opposition. 



