ELECTRICITY. 101 



electrical effect, where, if a close investigation be instituted, 

 and the materials chosen in a state for exhibiting minute 

 changes, evidence of molecular change will not be detected ; 

 thus, excepting those cases where infinite simally small quan- 

 tities of matter are acted on, and our means of detection fail, 

 electrical effects are known to us only as changes of ordinary 

 matter. It seems to me as easy to imagine these changes to 

 be effected by a force acting in definite directions, as by a 

 fluid which has no independent or sensible existence, and 

 which, it must be assumed, is associated with, or exerts a 

 force acting upon ordinary matter, or matter of a different 

 order from the supposed fluid. As the idea of the hypothetic 

 fluid is pursued, it gradually vanishes, and resolves itself into 

 the idea of force. The hypothesis of matter without weight 

 presents in itself, as I believe, fatal objections to the theories 

 of electrical fluids, which are entirely removed by viewing 

 electricity as force, and not as matter. 



If it be said that the effects we have been considering 

 may still be produced by a fluid, and that this fluid acts upon 

 ordinary matter in certain cases, polarising the matter af- 

 fected or arranging its particles in a definite direction, whilst 

 in others, by its attractive or repulsive force, it carries with 

 it portions of matter ; yet, if the fluid in itself be incapable 

 of recognition by any test, if it be only evidenced by the 

 changes which it operates in ponderable matter, the words 

 fluid and force become identical in meaning ; we may as well 

 say that the attraction of gravitation or weight is occasioned 

 by a fluid, as that electrical changes are so. 



When, as is constantly done in common parlance, a house 

 is said to be struck, windows broken, metals fused or dissipa- 

 ted by the electrical fluid, are not the expressions used such 

 as, if not sanctioned by habit, would seem absurd ? In all 

 the cases of injury done by lightning there is no fluid per- 

 ceptible ; the so-called sulphurous odour is either ozone de- 

 veloped by the action of electricity on atmospheric air, or the 



