^857.] Experimental Relations of Gold to Light 391 



expect to convince ; but I may be allowed to say that I cannot 

 undertake to answer such objections as may be made. I state 

 my own convictions as an experimental philosopher, and find 

 it no more necessary to enter into controversy on this point 

 than on any other in science, as the nature of matter, or 

 inertia, or the magnetization of light, on which I may differ 

 from others. The world will decide sooner or later in all such 

 cases, and I have no doubt very soon and correctly in the 

 present instance. Those who may wish to see the particular 

 construction of the test apparatus which I have employed, may 

 have the opportunity at Mr. Newman's, 122 Regent Street. 

 Further, I may say, I have sought earnestly for cases of lifting 

 by attraction, and indications of attraction in any form, but 

 have gained no traces of such effects. Finally, I beg to direct 

 attention to the discourse delivered by Dr. Carpenter at 

 the Royal Institution on the 12th of March, 1S52, entitled, 

 " On the Influence of Suggestion in modifying and directing 

 Muscular Movement, independently of Volition;" which, 

 especially in the latter part, should be considered in reference 

 to table-moving by all who are interested in the subject. 

 Royal Institution, June 27. M. FARADAY. 



THE BAKERIAN LECTURE. Experimental Relations of Gold 



(and other Metals] to LigJit*. 

 [Received November 15, 1856, Read February 5, 1857.] 

 THAT wonderful production of the human rnind, the undulatory 

 theory of light, with the phenomena for which it strives to 

 account, seems to me, who am only an experimentalist, to stand 

 midway between what we may conceive to be the coarser mecha- 

 nical actions of matter, with their explanatory philosophy, and 

 that other branch, which includes, or should include, the phy- 

 sical idea of forces acting at a distance ; and admitting for the 

 time the existence of the ether, I have often struggled to perceive 

 how far that medium might account for or mingle in with such 

 actions generally ; arid to what extent experimental trials might 

 be devised, which, with their results and consequences, might 

 contradict, confirm, enlarge, or modify the idea we form of it, 

 always with the hope that the corrected or instructed idea would 



* Philosophical Transactions, 1857, p. 145. 



