JOHN FREKE. 571 



more than the same indication of resemblance made by 

 his predecessors. 



What these men really did was to make so happy a sug- 

 gestion that other men were led to seek reasons in support 

 of it. And as the truth was in it, it lived. 



Early in 1746, John Freke, 1 of the Royal Society and 

 surgeon to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, announced the 

 first hypothesis asserting, and attempting physically to 

 explain, the actual identity of lightning and electricity. 

 Observing that there was no change produced in the 

 instruments for electric generation due to their production 

 of electricity, he maintained that they had no more to do 

 with the development of the electrical matter than a pump 

 has with the development of water. The electrical matter 

 he regarded as fire composed of similar particles, tending 

 to adhere at certain distances apart, and impregnating the 

 air. If the particles, however, be forced together, reduc- 

 ing these intervals, then the fire becomes more or less 

 violent according to the degree of compression. 



41 Now," he says, "as by human contrivance here is more 

 of the fire crowded together than in its natural state, it is 

 no wonder in this confinement, if that which, as water 

 unconfined, should be gentle and beneficent, should, with 

 all the power that belongs to it, break out at the first door 

 which is opened for its passage from this tortured state. 

 . . . Lightning, which is produced by a great quantity 

 of the elementary fire driven together, is of the same 

 nature with electricity (which is no other than factitious 

 lightning), for it will kill without a wound and pass 

 through everything, as this seems to do." JThe celestial 

 fire, he says, amassed by any cause and enveloped, per- 

 haps, and retained in this disturbed state, discharges 

 itself finally with the explosion which we call thunder. 



1 Freke: An Essay to show the cause of Elec'y, etc. Lond., 1746. 

 See also British Magazine, Oct., 1746, 300; London Magazine, Nov., 

 1746, 573. Essai sur la Cause de 1'Elec. (Trans, of 2d Ed., with supple- 

 ment), Paris, 1748. 



