C 136 ) 



XXI II. A speculation touching Electric Conduction and the 

 Nature of Matter. By Michael Fakaday, Esq., D.C.L., 

 F.R.S. 



To Richard Taylor, Esq. 



Dear Sill, Royal Institution, January 25, 1844. 



[ AST Friday I opened the weekly evening-meetings here 

 -*-^ by a subject of which the above was the title, and had no 

 intention of publishing the matter further, but as it involves 

 the consideration and application of a few of those main ele- 

 ments of natural knowledge, facts, I thought an account of 

 its nature and intention might not be unacceptable to you, 

 and would at the same time serve as the record of my opinion 

 and views, as far as they are at present formed. 



The view of the atomic constitution of matter which I think 

 is most prevalent, is that which considers the atom as a some- 

 thing material having a certain volume, upon which those 

 powers were impressed at the creation, which have given it, 

 from that time to the present, the capability of constituting, 

 when many atoms are congregated together into groups, the 

 different substances whose effects and properties we observe. 

 These, though grouped and held together by their powers, do 

 not touch each other, but have intervening space, otherwise 

 pressure or cold could not make a body contract into a smaller 

 bulk, nor heat or tension make it larger ; in liquids these atoms 

 or particles are free to move about one another, and in vapours 

 or gases they are also present, but removed very much further 

 apart, though still related to each other by their powers. 



The atomic doctrine is greatly used one way or another in 

 this, our day, for the interpretation of pha3nomena, especially 

 those of crystallography and chemistry, and is not so carefully 

 distinguished from the facts, but that it often appears to him 

 who stands in the position of student, as a statement of the 

 facts themselves, though it is at best but an assumption ; of 

 the truth of which we can assert nothing, whatever we may 

 say or think of its probability. The word atom, which can 

 never be used without involving much that is purely hypo- 

 thetical, is often intended to be used to express a simple fact, 

 but, good as the intention is, I have not yet found a mind that 

 did habitually separate it from its accompanying temptations; 

 and there can be no doubt that the words definite proportions, 

 equivalents, primes, &c, which did and do express fully all 

 the facts of what is usually called the atomic theory in che- 

 mistry, were dismissed because they were not expressive 

 enough, and did not say all that was in the mind of him who 



