Mr. Faraday on Static Electrical Inductive Action. 203 
centric shells of conducting matter; or be nine-tenths filled 
with conducting matter, or be metal on one side and shell-lac 
on the other; or whatever other means be taken to vary the 
forces, either by variation of distance or substance, or actual 
charge of the matter in this space, still the amount of action 
is precisely the same. 
Hence if a body be charged, whether it be a particle or a 
mass, there is nothing about its action which can at all consist 
with the idea of exaltation or extinction; the amount of force 
is perfectly definite and unchangeable: or to those who in 
their minds represent the idea of the electric force by a fluid, 
there ought to be no notion of the compression or condensation 
of this fluid within itself, or of its coercibility, as some un- 
derstand that phrase. The only mode of affecting this force is 
by connecting it with force of the same kind, either in the same 
or the contrary direction. If we oppose to it force of the 
contrary kind, we may by discharge neutralize the original 
force, or we may without discharge connect them by the sim- 
ple laws and principles of static induction; but away from in- 
duction, which is always of the same kind, there is no other 
state of the power in a charged body ; that is, there is no state 
of static electric force corresponding to the terms of szmulated 
or disguised or latent electricity away from the ordinary prin- 
ciples of inductive action; nor is there any case where the 
electricity is more latent or more disguised than when it exists 
upon the charged conductor of an electrical machine and 
is ready to give a powerful spark to any body brought 
near it. 
A curious consideration arises from this perfection of induc- 
tive action. Suppose a thin uncharged metallic globe two or 
three feet in diameter, insulated in the middle of a chamber, 
and then suppose the space within this globe occupied by 
myriads of little vesicles or particles charged alike with elec- 
tricity (or differently), but each insulated from its neighbour 
and the globe; their inductive power would be such that the 
outside of the globe would be charged with a force equal to 
the sum of all their forces, and any part of this globe (not 
charged of itself) would give as long and powerful a spark to 
“a body brought near it as if the electricity of all the particles 
near and distant were on the surface of the globe itself. If 
we pass from this consideration to the case of a cloud, then, 
though we cannot altogether compare the external surface of 
the cloud to the metallic surface of the globe, yet the previous 
inductive effects upon the earth and its buildings are the same ; 
and when a charged cloud is over the earth, although its elec- 
