Prof. Faraday on the Conservation of Force. 235 



through a thousand combinations, animal, vegetable, mineral — 

 if it lie hid for a thousand years and then be evolved, it is oxygen 

 with its first qualities, neither more nor less. It has all its ori- 

 ginal force, and only that ; the amount of force which it disen- 

 gaged when hiding itself has again to be employed in a reverse 

 direction when it is set at liberty ; and if hereafter we should 

 decompose oxygen, and find it compounded of other particles, 

 we should only increase the strength of the proof of the conser- 

 vation of force ; for we should have a right to say of these par- 

 ticles, long as they have been hidden, all that we could say of 

 the oxygen itself. 



Again, the body of facts included in the theory of definite 

 proportions, witnesses to the truth of the conservation of force ; 

 and though we know little of the cause of the change of pi-oper- 

 ties of the acting and produced bodies, or how the forces of the 

 former are hid amongst those of the latter, we do not for an 

 instant doubt the conservation, but are moved to look for the 

 manner in which the forces are for the time disposed ; or if they 

 have taken up another form of force, to search what that form may be. 



Even cliemical action at a distance, which is in such antithe- 

 tical contrast with the ordinary exertion of chemical affinity, since 

 it can produce effects miles away from the particles on which 

 they depend, and which are effectual only by forces acting at in- 

 sensible distances, still proves the same thing, — the conservation 

 of force. Preparations can be made for a chemical action in the 

 simple voltaic circuit, but until the circuit be complete that action 

 does not occur ; yet in completing we can so arrange the circuit, 

 that a distant chemical action, the perfect equivalent of the do- 

 minant chemical action, shall be produced ; and this result, 

 whilst it establishes the electro-chemical equivalent of power, 

 establishes the principle of the conservation of force also, and at 

 the same time suggests many collateral inquiries which have yet 

 to be made and answered, before all that concerns the conserva- 

 tion in this case can be understood. 



This and other instances of chemical action at a distance, carry 

 our inquiring thouglits on from the facts to the physical mode 

 of the exertion of force ; for the qualities which seem located and 

 fixed to certain p' rticles of matter, appear at a distance in con- 

 nexion with ])articles altogether different. They also lead our 

 thoughts to the conversion of one form of power into another : 

 as, for instance, in the lieut which the elements of a voltaic pile 

 may either show at tlic place where they act by their combustion 

 or combination together ; or in the distance, where the electric 

 spark may be rendered manifest ; or in the wire or fluids of the 

 different parts of the circuit. 



When wc occupy ourselves with the dual forms of power, elec- 



