208 Faraday. 



coatings connected with any continued source of the two 

 electrical powers, the ice will charge like a Leyden arrangement, 

 presenting a case of common induction, but no current will pass. 

 If the ice be liquefied, the induction will now fall to a certain 

 degree, because a current can now pass ; but its passing is 

 dependent upon a peculiar molecular arrangement of the particles 

 consistent with the transfer of the elements of the electrolyte in 

 opposite directions . . . As, therefore, in the electrolytic action, 

 induction appeared to bethejfe step,and decomposition the second 

 (the power of separating these steps from each other by giving 

 the solid or fluid condition to the electrolyte being in our hands) ;: 

 as the induction was the same in its nature as that through air, 

 glass, wax, &c., produced by any of the ordinary means ; and as 

 the whole effect in the electrolyte appeared to be an action of 

 the particles thrown into a peculiar or polarized state, I was 

 glad to suspect that common induction itself was in all cases an 

 action of contiguous particles, and that electrical action at a 

 distance (i.e., ordinary inductive action) never occurred except 

 through the influence of the intervening matter." 



Thus at the root of Faraday's conception of electrostatic 

 induction lay this idea that the whole of the insulating medium 

 through which the action takes place is in a state of polarization 

 similar to that which precedes decomposition in an electrolyte. 

 " Insulators," he wrote,* " may be said to be bodies whose 

 particles can retain the polarized state, whilst conductors are 

 those whose particles cannot be permanently polarized." 



The conception which he at this time entertained of the 

 polarization may be reconstructed from what he had already 

 written concerning electrolytes. He supposedf that in the 

 ordinary or unpolarized condition of a body, the molecules con- 

 sist of atoms which are bound to each other by the forces of 

 chemical affinity, these forces being really electrical in their 

 nature ; and that the same forces are exerted, though to a less 



* Exp.Res., 1338. 



t This must not be taken to be more than an idea which Faraday mentioned as 

 present to his mind. He declined as yet to formulate a definite hypothesis. 



