concerned in the Phenomena of ordinary Electricity, i^c. 135 



itself? Is it affinity independent of matter, separated from and 

 no longer a property of matter, an existence ])er se ? These are 

 questions not devised for the pm-pose of procuring startling ad- 

 missions, but difficulties which natui-ally present themselves and 

 demand an explanation. It answers no good purpose and means 

 nothing, to reply that electricity and affinity are different exhi- 

 bitions of the same power. 



Well, granting that electricity is all these things, one of its 

 properties, insisted on as contradistinguishing the frictional from 

 the voltaic modification, is its high intensity. If, then, fric- 

 tional electricity be affinity at a high degree of intensity, how 

 comes it to pass that its decomposing powers are so trivial com- 

 pared with its intensity ? How is it explicable, that, in the elec- 

 trotype process, a single pair of plates will reduce many ounces 

 of copper from its solution in a few days, the intensity of any 

 electricity in operation being so feeble as to be inappreciable ; 

 while the utmost power of the largest electrical machine would 

 absolutely never effect the same object ? Why is the most feeble 

 intensity of voltaic electricity so effective, when the intensity of 

 frictional electricity, perhaps a hundred times more energetic, is 

 comparatively powerless, and required the ingenuity of a Wol- 

 laston or a Faraday to make it act at all ? In this argument the 

 consideration of quantity may be omitted ; we do not recognise 

 quantity of affinity; all we are acquainted with is strength or 

 intensity of affinity. Were it granted that the affinity which 

 holds together the elements of a grain of water is electricity 

 amounting to a flash of lightning, as supposed by Faraday, then 

 indeed the attraction might be understood to be so intense as to 

 resist decomposition by frictional electricity ; for in that case a 

 vast quantity would be concentrated within a small bulk. But 

 were this true, how could frictional electricity, under any circum- 

 stances, decompose water ? 



In this view of the subject, it is most strange that, although 

 a wire of zinc and a vfire of platinum joined can decom- 

 pose acidulated water voltaically, the utmost power of a large 

 electrical machine, acting through the same wires connected with 

 both conductors, will prove ineffectual, unless some devices be 

 made use of which altogether change the character of the pro- 

 ceeding; and even then the effects are trifling. The enor- 

 mous power of a hydro-electric machine is necessary to procure 

 the decomposition, with voltaic arrangement of the elements. 

 Here, then, Faraday's law fails, namely, that "the chemical 

 power of a current is in direct proportion of the absolute quan- 

 tity of electricity which passes*." It is true that he makes the 

 case of water when acted on by common electricity an exception 

 * Researches, par. 821. 



