^•66 Dr. Hare's Second Letter to Prof. Faraday. 



tricity, nor at all questions any of the theories respecting that 

 subject." 



^2. Owing to this avowed omission to state your opinions 

 as to the nature of electricity, as prehminary to the statement 

 of your " theory" and because I was unable to reconcile that 

 theory with those previously accredited, I received the impres- 

 sion that you claimed no aid from any imponderable principle. 

 It appeared to me that there was no room for the agency of 

 any such principle, if induction were an action of contiguous 

 ponderable particles consisting of a species of polarity. It 

 seemed to follow that what we call electricity, could be no- 

 thing more than a polarity in the ponderable particles, directly 

 caused by those mechanical, or chemical frictions, movements 

 or reactions, by which ponderable bodies are electrified. You 

 have correctly inferred that I had not seen the fourteenth 

 series of your researches, containing certain paragraphs (38). 

 From them it appears that the polarity, on which so much 

 stress has been laid, is analogous to that which has long been 

 known to arise in a ponderable body, about which the electric 

 equilibrium has been subverted by the inductive influence of 

 the electricity accumulated upon another such body. This is 

 clearly explained in paragraph 4 of your letter, by the illus- 

 tration, agreeably to which three bodies. A, B, C, are situ- 

 ated in a line, in the order in which they are named, in prox- 

 imity, but not in contact. " A is electrified positively, and 

 then C is uninsulated." It is evident that you are correct in 

 representing that, under these circumstances, the extremities of 

 B will be oppositely excited, so as to have a reaction with any 

 similarly excited body, analogous to that which takes place 

 between magnets ; since the similarly excited extremities of 

 two such bodies would repel each other, while those dissimi- 

 larly excited would be reciprocally attractive. Hence, no 

 doubt, the word polarity is conceived by you to convey an 

 idea of the state of the body B. If I may be allowed to pro- 

 pose an epithet to convey the idea which I have of the state 

 of a body thus electrified, I would designate it as an electro- 

 polar state, or as a state of electro-polarity. 



43. It does not appear to me, that in the suggestion of the 

 electro-polarity, which we both conceive to be induced upon 

 the body B (4), so long as it concerns a mass of ponderable 

 matter, there is any novelty. The only part of your doctrine 

 which is new, is that which suggests an analogous state to be 

 caused in the particles of the bodies through which the induct- 

 ive power is propagated. Admitting each of the particles of 

 a dielectric, through which the process of ordinary induction 

 takes place, to be put into the state of the body B, it does not 



