CONSIDERATIONS ON ELECTEICITY. 



Trans' ated for the Smithsonian Institution from the Leipsic periodical '' Aus der Nutur," 



Sfc, 1865. 



There is nothing about which more speculation is indulged than elcctricitv. 

 The word is in every mouth ; yet is there nothing perhaps so little known. 



What, then, is electricity? At this question even the most learned remain 

 silent; but these are at least so honest as not to dissemble their ignorance. 'JMie 

 unlearned would probably answer : electricity is lightning ; and, though nothing 

 is thereby gained, by this explanation the generality are satisfied. But what is 

 lightning"? Natural electricit}'. Let us, then, frankly confess our ignorance; 

 the avowal can incur no reproach. Till now the part of physics whicli deals 

 with electricity has been principally occupied in collecting a mass of isolated 

 facts, which are often without connection with one another. They may be likened, 

 therefore, to single stones awaiting arrangement in a building on some deter- 

 mined plan. These facts in like manner wait to be combined in a science, and 

 connected with one another by means of a general theory. Scarcely has the 

 way thereto been pointed out, though these facts have been grouped together 

 under a number of subordinate laws, as, for instance, the phenomena of electri- 

 cal distribution of statical induction, and the operation of electrical currents upon 

 the magnet and their effect on one another. These are indications by which we 

 must be guided in further advances ; laws which a future more comprehensive 

 theory must connect and explain. Let it, in the mean time, be known that all 

 which has been with great pains wrested from nature still leaves us in the uncer- 

 tainty arising from frequent chasms and insecure hypothesis. 



The consistency of true science demands that experience should have first dis- 

 closed the fundamental facts; that next the inquirer, with eyes aided by every 

 resource of art and with balance in hand, should seek to conciliate with one 

 another, through their relations, the diflferent and often deceptive phenomena 

 which determine those relations. Nor is this all ; on the contrary, here begins 

 the real labor. A law must be found for these empirical facts ; this may be some- 

 times simple, sometimes complex, but must always be a mathematical one and 

 capable of being expressed through formulas. This general law being once 

 found, it remains to deduce all possible consequences from it, and again to verify 

 these consequences by experiment. 



True science is a connection of fundamental facts, with laws which are derived 

 from those facts, and deductions which have been subjected to verification. So 

 long as one of these three stages is wanting the science is not complete. Optics 

 and astronomy have arrived at that point; but how is it with electricity? We 

 still stand in the presence of groups of facts which yet wait to be connected 

 under a general law. 



Let it not be said, then, that electricity is the single science which compre- 

 hends in itself all the rest. Let it not be proclaimed in the streets that our cen- 

 tury, which has called forth the electric telegraph, may sleep in peace, and has 

 nothing more left for it to do. Were it not, on the contrary, more judicious to 

 say that we have as yet scarcely accomplished anything? Better were it cer- 

 tainly for electricity if we kept in reserve a little of our admiration, instead of 

 lavishing it on the consideration of what has already been achieved. Perhaps 



