ELECTRICAL THEORIES. 511 



them, and forming a more or less dense atmosphere about 

 them, has little resemblance to Nollet's hypothesis of the 

 effluence and affluence of a subtle universal matter capable 

 of self-inflammation by the "shock of its own beams"; 

 while differing radically from both is Watson's provis- 

 ional notion that electricity is a force analogous to mag- 

 netism, moving in right lines and not subject to refraction, 

 and yet "in common with light, when its forces are col- 

 lected and a proper direction given thereto upon a proper 

 object, producing fire and flame." In all of them, however, 

 can be traced something of the Newtonian ether of that 

 most subtle matter which Newton described as pervading 

 and lying hid in all gross bodies; u by the force and action 

 of which spirit, the particles of bodies mutually attract one 

 another at small distances and cohere when in contact, and 

 electric bodies operate at greater distances as well as by 

 repelling and attracting the neighboring corpuscle, and by 

 which light is emitted," 1 and all sensation excited. 



Such was the state of affairs when a discovery of the 

 highest moment, made by different observers in different 

 places, so nearly in point of time that the later observation 

 happened to gain the earliest publicity, startled all civil- 

 ized Europe. 



In the fall of 1745, the German artisans, and especially 

 those of Leipsic, probably recognized that the electric ma- 

 chine had come into good market demand. So simple was 

 the apparatus, and so astonishing its effects, that people 

 who made no pretence to being scientific bought it out of 

 curiosity, and amused themselves by repeating at home 

 the experiments which the philosophers publicly exhibited 

 in the lecture rooms and laboratories. When a device is 

 thus taken to the popular bosom, so to speak, the predic- 

 tion may safely be hazarded that before long some one in 

 an unexpected quarter will discover or invent something 



1 Principle, B. iii. 





