108 HISTORY OF GALVANISM. 



dicular to the other, is of itself sufficient to perplex 

 the mind ; as we have seen in the history of the 

 electrodynamical discoveries. But Mr. Faraday 

 appears to have seized at once the law of the phe- 

 nomena. "The relation," he says 12 , "which holds be- 

 tween the magnetic pole, the moving wire or metal, 

 and the direction of the current evolved, is very 

 simple, (so it seemed to him,) although rather diffi- 

 cult to express." He represents it by referring 

 position and motion to the "magnetic curves," which 

 go from a magnetic pole to the opposite pole. The 

 current in the wire sets one way or the other, 

 according to the direction in which the motion of 

 the wire cuts these curves. And thus he was ena- 

 bled, at the end of his Second Series of Researches 

 (December, 1831), to give, in general terms, the 

 law of nature to which may be referred the extra- 

 ordinary number of new and curious experiments 

 which he has stated 13 ; namely, that if a wire move 

 so as to cut a magnetic curve, a power is called 

 into action which tends to urge a magnetic current 

 through the wire ; and that if a mass move so that 

 its parts do not move in the same direction across 

 the magnetic curves, and with the same angular 

 velocity, electrical currents are called into play. 



This rule, thus simple from its generality, though 

 inevitably complex in every special case, may be 

 looked upon as supplying the first demand of phi- 

 losophy, the law of the phenomena ; and there- 



12 First Series, Art. 114. " Art, 236204. 





