ELECTRICITY IN RELATION TO SCIENCE. 497 

 ELECTEICITY IN RELATION TO SCIENCE.* 



By Prof. WILLIAM CEOOKES. 



THE third annual dinner of the Institution of Electrical En- 

 gineers was held at the Criterion on Friday, November 13th, 

 Prof. William Crookes, the president, was in the chair. In pro- 

 posing the toast of the evening, " Electricity in relation to Sci- 

 ence," Prof. Crookes delivered the following speech : 



We have happily outgrown the preposterous notion that re- 

 search in any department of science is mere waste of time. It is 

 now generally admitted that pure science, irrespective of prac- 

 tical applications, benefits both the investigator himself and 

 greatly enriches the community. *'It blesseth him that gives, 

 and him that takes." Between the frog's leg quivering on Gal- 

 vani's work-table and the successful telegraph or telephone there 

 exists a direct filiation. Without the one we could not have the 

 other. 



We know little as yet concerning the mighty agency of elec- 

 tricity. " Substantialists " tell us it is a kind of matter. Others 

 view it, not as matter, but as a form of energy. Others, again, 

 reject both these views. Prof. Lodge considers it " a form, or 

 rather a mode of manifestation, of the ether." Prof. Nikola Tesla 

 demurs to the view of Prof. Lodge, but thinks that "nothing 

 stands in the way of our calling electricity ether associated with 

 matter, or bound ether." Higher authorities can not even yet 

 agree whether we have one electricity or two opposite electrici- 

 ties. The only way to tackle the difficulty is to persevere in ex- 

 periment and observation. If we never learn what electricity is, 

 if, like life or like matter, it should remain an unknown quantity, 

 we shall assuredly discover more about its attributes and its 

 functions. 



The light which the study of electricity throws upon a variety 

 of chemical phenomena — witnessed alike in our little laboratories 

 and in the vast laboratories of the earth and the sun — can not be 

 overlooked. The old electro-chemical theory of Berzelius is su- 

 perseded, and a new and wider theory is opening out. The facts 

 of electrolysis are by no means either completely detected or co- 

 ordinated. They point to the great probability that electricity is 

 atomic, that an electrical atom is as definite a quantity as a chemi- 

 cal atom. The electrical attraction between two chemical atoms 

 being a trillion times greater than gravitational attraction is 



* Speech delivered at the third annual dinner of the Institution of Electrical Engi- 

 neers, London, November 13, 1891. 

 VOL. XL. — 36 



