342 LAUGEL'S PROBLEMS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 



Electricity ? It is one which has tried, but vainly, the 

 genius of many philosophers of our time, Faraday 

 among the latest. True genius like his can afford to 

 admit failure, and is ever ready to make the confession. 

 The question still remains unsolved ; a problem for the 

 labours or, it may be, for some felicitous accident 

 of the future. We have spoken of electricity as an 

 element, but this term does nothing more than shelter 

 elementary ignorance of its nature. With all our various 

 knowledge of electrical phenomena, the first letters are 

 yet wanting to the alphabet of the science. We speak 

 of positive and negative electricity, of poles and cur- 

 rents, of induction, of quantity and intensity, of electro- 

 magnetic actions, &c., but we still conceive and define 

 these conditions solely by their effects. The question 

 still recurs, What is Electricity ? 



No step can be made to its answer without facing 

 another question. Is Electricity a material agent, 

 special in its endowments as such ? Or is it merely a 

 property or condition of matter, deriving its phenomena 

 from the atomic and molecular changes which matter in 

 its many known forms is ever undergoing ? To halt 

 before this question is virtually to suspend enquiry. 

 But have we not cogent reason, taking the largest 

 view of the phenomena, for regarding electricity as 

 itself a material element ? The methods by which we 

 elicit, accumulate, and conduct it, whatever theoretical 

 difficulties they involve, are far better comprehended 

 upon this hypothesis than under the vague view of 

 their depending on atomic actions of the bodies electri- 

 cally affected. To speak of polar states or chemical 



