340 LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THE [l/QI 



liis large electrical jars through his head, which struck him to the ground, 

 but did him no lasting injury. He had likewise seen a young woman 

 receive a still greater shock or discharge of electricity through her head, 

 which she had inadvertently brought too near the conductor, which 

 knocked her down ; but she instantly got up, and complained of 

 nothing further. This encouraged him to make the experiment on six 

 men at the same time, the first placing his hand on the head of the 

 second, and so on. He then discharged his two jars, by laying his 

 conducting rod on the head of the first man. They all dropped to- 

 gether; thinking they had been struck down, as it were, by some kind 

 of magic, or secret operation of nature; declaring when they rose that 

 they had neither seen the flash, nor heard the report of any discharge. 



For his manner of delivering his philosophical opinions, under the 

 humble appellation of conjectures and suppositions, he makes the fol- 

 lowing apology, more humble still: " I own," (says he, in one of his 

 letters), "that I have too strong a penchant to building hypotheses: 

 They indulge my natural indolence." But indolence was no part of 

 his character; and his success in this method of philosophizing will res- 

 cue it from much of the reproach which has been too liberally cast upon 

 it. Without forming hypotheses, experimental philosophy would only 

 be a jumble of facts, ranged under no heads, nor disposed into any sys- 

 tem. Dr. Franklin, without troubling himself with mathematical specu- 

 lations, or showing any inclination towards them, nevertheless reasoned 

 v.'ith all the accuracy and precision of the deepest mathematician. And 

 although he might be sometimes mistaken where the truth could be de- 

 veloped only by the help of pure mathematics, yet he was rarely mistaken 

 in his mechanical and philosophical deductions. 



Being on ship-board in the year 1757, an accident gave him occasion 

 to observe the wonderful effect of oil, in stilling the waves of the sea. 

 He immediately determined to make experiments to elucidate this new 

 property of oil, which he did with success; and the philosophical world 

 is indebted to him for being now fully acquainted with a fact, which, 

 although not unknown to Plutarch and Pliny, was for ages past known 

 only among the Dutch fishermen, and a few seamen of other nations. 



His inquiries and discoveries were confined to no limits or subjects. 

 Through all the elements : In the Jii-e and in the water, in the air, and 

 in the earth, he sought for and he found new and beneficial kno7vIedge. 



He discovered that unaccountable agitation of the two surfaces in 

 contact, when a quantity of oil floats on water in a vessel. 



He found the pulse-glass in Germany, and introduced it into Eng- 

 land, with improvements of his own. 



He discovered that equal and congenial bodies acquired different de- 

 grees of heat from the sun's rays, according to their different colors. 



His improvements in chimnies, stoves, etc., have been already 

 noticed. 



