ELECTRICITY. "281 



The more profoundly we scrutinize her ope- 

 rations, the more we discover of simplicity and 

 unity of power amidst all her diversified move- 

 ments and transformations. Who could have 

 suspected without a general survey of the widely 

 extended provinces of nature, that the aggre- 

 gation of liquids into spherical drops, and their 

 adhesion to solids, are resolvable into the same 

 power that determines the solidity and rotundity 

 of the earth ? which causes rain to descend from 

 on high, rivers to flow towards the sea, and 

 planets to revolve around the sun? yet these 

 various movements were traced by Newton to one 

 arid the same law. 



What can be more unlike to the mass of man- 

 kind, than the opposite forces of attraction and 

 repulsion, contraction and expansion ? Yet I 

 have proved that they are both produced by one 

 and the same agent ; which in certain propor- 

 tions binds the atoms of ponderable matter to- 

 gether, as in cohesion and chemical union ; 

 while in other proportions it diminishes or de- 

 stroys their cohesion, as in liquefaction, vapori- 

 zation, combustion, &c., by which the forms, 

 properties, and powers of all bodies are perpe- 

 tually changed. I have shewn that combustion 

 is the disengagement of that principle by which 

 the earth is maintained in its present form ; that 

 it is for ever flowing from the sun throughout 

 the solar system ; and that as it is the spring of 



