OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 337 



and which was manifested by a convulsive motion 

 produced in the muscle. To this phenomenon he 

 gave the name of animal electricity, an unfortunate 

 epithet, since it tended to restrict enquiry into its 

 nature to the class of phenomena in which it first 

 became apparent. But this circumstance, which 

 in a less enquiring age of science might have exer- 

 cised a fatal influence on the progress of knowledge, 

 proved happily no obstacle to the further develope- 

 ment of its principles, the subject being immedi- 

 ately taken up with a kind of prophetic ardour by 

 Volta, who at once generalized the phenomena, re- 

 jecting the physiological considerations introduced 

 by Galvani, as foreign to the enquiry, and regarding 

 the contraction of the muscles as merely a delicate 

 means of detecting the production of electrical ex- 

 citements too feeble to be rendered sensible by any 

 other means. It was thus that he arrived at the 

 knowledge of a general fact, that of the disturbance 

 of electrical equilibrium by the mere contact of dif- 

 ferent bodies, and the circulation of a current of 

 electricity in one constant direction, through a cir- 

 cuit composed of three different conductors. To 

 increase the intensity of the very minute and deli- 

 cate effect thus observed became his next aim, nor 

 did his enquiry terminate till it had placed him in 

 possession of that most wonderful of all human in- 

 ventions, the pile which bears his name, through 

 the medium of a series of well conducted and lo- 

 gically combined experiments, which has rarely, if 

 ever, been surpassed in the annals of physical 

 research. 



(374.) Though the original pile of Volta was feeble 



