OF ELECTRICITY. 195 



less, a great ocean of light, or when sombre with the 

 mighty aspect of the dire tornado, we can constantly 

 detect the struggle between the elements of matter to 

 maintain an equilibrium of electrical force. 



Diffused throughout matter, electricity is ever active ; 

 but it must be remembered that although it is evidently 

 a necessary agent in all the operations of nature, that it 

 is not the agent to which everything unknown is to be 

 referred. Doubtless the influence of this force is more 

 extensive than we have yet discovered ; but that is an 

 indolent philosophy which refers, without examination, 

 every mysterious phenomenon to the influence of elec- 

 tricity. 



The question, what is electricity ? has ever perplexed, 

 and still continues to agitate, the world of science. 

 While one set of experimentalists have endeavoured to 

 explain the phenomena they have witnessed, upon the 

 theory that electricity is a peculiar subtile fluid pervad- 

 ing matter, and possessing singular powers of attraction 

 and repulsion, another party find themselves compelled 

 to regard the phenomena as giving evidence of the action 

 of two fluids which are always in opposite states ; while 

 again, electricity has been considered by others as, like 

 the attraction of gravitation, a mere property of matter.* 

 Certain it is, that in the manifestations of electrical phe- 

 nomena we have, as it appears, the evidence of two con- 

 ditions offeree; but of the states of positive or negative, of 

 vitreous or resinous electricity, we have a familiar expla- 

 nation in the assumption of some current flowing into or 



* Traite de Physique : M. Biot, vol. vii. Becquerel : Annales 

 de Chimie, vol. xlvi.-xlix. Faraday's Experimental Researches in 

 Electricity, 2 vols., 1830-1844. A Speculation touching Electric 

 Conduction and the Nature of Matter: by Michael Faraday, 

 D.C.L., F.R.S. ; Philosophical Magazine, vol. xxiv., 183(5. 

 Objections to the theories severally of Franklin, Dufay, and Ampere, 

 with an attempt to explain Electrical Phenomena by statical or 

 undulatory polarization : by Robert Hare, M.D., Emeritus Pro- 

 fessor of Chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania. 



