Prof. Faraday on Electric Conduction. 107 



to appear ? It must be a strong couvictiou that would deny 

 conduction proper to electroljftes in these cases; and if not 

 denied here, what reason is there ever to deny it absolutely ? 



The result of all the thought I can give to the subject is a 

 suspended judgement. I cannot say that I think conduction 

 proper is as yet disproA-ed in electrolytes ; and yet I cannot say 

 that I know of any case in which a current, however weak, being 

 passed by platinum electrodes across acidulated water, does not 

 bring them into a polarized condition. It may be that when 

 metallic surfaces are present, they complete by their peculiarities 

 the condition necessary to the evolution of elements, which, 

 under the same degree of electi-ification, would not be evolved if 

 the metals were away ; and, on the other hand, it also may be 

 that after the metals are polarized, and a consequent state of 

 reactive tension so set up, a degree of conduction proper may 

 occur between them and the electrolyte simultaneously with the 

 electrolytic action. There is now no doubt that as regards elec- 

 trolysis and its law, all is as if there were but electrolytic con- 

 duction; but, as regards static phaenomena (which are equally 

 important) and the steps of their passage into dynamic effects, 

 it is probable that conduction proper rules with electrolytes as 

 with other compound bodies ; for it is not as yet disproved, is 

 supported by strong presumptive evidence, and may be essential. 

 Yet so distant are the extremes of electric intensity, and so in- 

 finitely different in an inverse direction are the quantities that 

 may and do produce the essential phaenomena of each kind, that 

 this separation of conductive action may well seem perfect and 

 entire to those whose minds are inclined rather to see conduction 

 proper replaced by electrolytic conduction, than to consider it as 

 reduced, but not destroyed; disappearing, as it were, for elec- 

 tricity of gi'eat quantity and small intensity, but still abundantly 

 sufficient for all natural and artificial phaenomena, such as those 

 described, where intensity and time both unite in favouring the 

 final results required. 



But we must not dogmatise on natural principles, or decide 

 upon their physical nature without proof; and, indeed, the two 

 modes of electric action, the electrolytic and the static, are so 

 different yet each so important, the one doing all by quantity at 

 very low intensity, the other giving many of its chief results by 

 intensity with scarcely any proportionate quantity, that it would 

 be dangerous to deny too hastily the conduction proper to a few 

 cases in static induction, where water is the conductor, whilst it 

 is known to be essential to the many, only because, when water 

 is the electrolyte employed, electrolytic conduction is essential 

 to every case of electrolytic action. 



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