A letter to Prof. Faraday. 7 
the charging apparatus. Discharge is the return of the parti- 
cles to their natural state, from their state of tension, whenever 
the two electric forces are allowed to be disposed of in some other 
direction.” As you have not previously mentioned any particu- 
lar direction in which the forces are exercised during the preva- 
lence of this constrained condition, Iam at a loss as to what — 
meaning I am to attach to the words “some other direction.” 
The word some, would lead to the idea that there was an uncer- 
tainty respecting the direction in which the forces might be dis- 
posed of; whereas it appears to me that the only direction in 
which they can operate, must be the seeaie of that by which 
they have been induced. 
The electrified particles can only “ return to their natural state” 
by retracing the path by which they departed from it. I would 
: t that for the words “to be disposed of in some other di- 
rection,” it would be better to substitute the erent * to com- 
pensate each other by an adequate communication.” 
Agreeably to the explanation of the phenomenon of coated 
electrics afforded in the paragraph above quoted (1300), by what _ 
process can it be conceived that the opposite polarization of the 
surfaces can be neutralized by conduction through a metallic 
wire? If I understand your hypothesis correctly, the process 
which the polarization of one of the vitreous surfaces in a | 
produces an opposite polarization in the other, is precisely the 
same as that by which the electricity applied to one end of the 
wire extends itself to the other en 
I cannot conceive how two processes severally producing re- 
sults so diametrically opposite as insulation and conduction, can 
be the same. By the former, a derangement of the electric 
equilibrium may be permanently sustained, while by the other, 
all derangement is counteracted with a rapidity almost infinite. 
But if the opposite charges are dependent upon a polarity indu- 
ced in contiguous atoms of the glass, which endures so long as 
no communication ensues between the surfaces; by what con- 
ceivable process can a perfect conductor cause a discharge to 
_ take place, with a velocity at least as great as that of the solar 
light? Is it conceivable that all the lines of “ contra-induction”’ 
or depolarization can concentrate themselves upon the wire from 
. each surface so as to produce therein an intensity of polarization 
Ct to the concentration ; and that the opposite ey 
“ey : 
Ae 
- $f > Ih he 
ri a 
Pio eo | : -= 
* & 
ei us 
* 
