444 



THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



which established the interconvertibility of electricity and 

 magnetism could not identify gravity with either elec- 

 tricity or heat; and yet he felt this identity to exist, 

 despite the negative experimental results. And so he left 

 the world, even as Newton had left it, richer by vast 

 accomplishments, challenging posterity to the grandest 

 achievement to which the human intellect can aspire the 

 revelation of the unity of all natural force. 1 



"Electricity is often called wonderful, beautiful; but it 

 is so only in common with the other forces of nature, 

 writes Faraday, among his lecture notes. "The beauty 

 of electricity, or of any other force, is not that the power is 

 mysterious and unexpected, but that it is under law, and 

 that the taught intellect can even now govern it largely. 

 The human mind is placed above and not beneath it." 7 

 And the first mind which brought it into subjection to law 

 was that of Isaac Newton. 



The medium pervading space, Newton regarded as an 

 ether; filling the universe "adequately without leaving 

 any pores, and, by consequence, much denser than quick- 

 silver and gold," 3 yet offering an inconsiderable resistance 

 to planetary motion. As it was questioned how such a 

 medium could at the same time be both subtle and dense, 

 he refers the critic to the electric and the magnet. "Let 

 him also tell me," says Newton, "how an electric body 

 can, by friction, emit an exhalation, so rare and subtle, 

 and yet so potent, as by its emission to cause no sensible 

 diminution in the weight of the electric body, and so 

 expanded through a sphere whose diameter is above two 

 feet, and yet to be able to agitate and carry up leaf copper 

 or leaf gold at the distance of above a foot from the electric 

 / body;" and as for the magnet, he points out that its ema- 

 nations are capable of passing through glass without meet- 

 ing apparent resistance or losing force. 



1 Bence Jones: Mrs. Somerville to Faraday, ii, 424. 



2 Ibid.: The Life and Letters of Faraday, London, 1870, vol. ii, 404. 

 'Newton: Optics. Qy. 22. 



