2 DR. FARADAY'S EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCHES IN ELECTRICITY. (SERIES XI.) 



character of a first, essential, and fundamental principle. Its comprehension is so 

 important that I think we cannot proceed much further in the investigation of the 

 laws of electricity without a more thorough understanding of its nature ; how other- 

 wise can we hope to comprehend the harmony and even unity of action which doubtless 

 governs electrical excitement by friction, by chemical means, by heat, by magnetic 

 influence, by evaporation, and even by the living being ? \. ^ ru u 



1 163 In the long-continued course of experimental inquiry in which I have been 

 engaged, this general result has pressed upon me constantly, namely, the necessity 

 of admitting two forces, or two forms or directions of a force (516. 517.), combined 

 with the impossibility of separating these two forces (or electricities) from each other, 

 either in the phenomena of statical electricity or those of the current. In asso- 

 ciation with this, the impossibility under any circumstances, as yet, of absolutely 

 charging matter of any kind with one or the other electricity dwelt on my mind, and 

 made me wish and search for a clearer view than any that I was acquainted with, of 

 the way in which electrical powers and the particles of matter are related; especially 

 in inductive actions, upon which almost all others appeared to rest. 



1164 When I discovered the general fact that electrolytes refused to yield their 

 elements to a current when in the solid state, though they gave them forth freely if in 

 the liquid condition (380. 394. 402.), I thought I saw an opening to the elucidation ot 

 inductive action, and the possible subjugation of many dissimilar phenomena to one 

 law For let the electrolyte be water, a plate of ice being coated with platma foil 

 on its two surfaces, and these coatings connected with any continued source of the 

 two electrical powers, the ice will charge like a Leyden arrangement, presenting a 

 case of common induction, but no current will pass. If the ice be liquified, the in- 

 duction will fall to a certain degree, because a current can now pass ; but its passing 

 is dependent upon a peculiar molecular arrangement of the particles consistent with 

 the transfer of the elements of the electrolyte in opposite directions, the degree of 

 discharge and the quantity of elements evolved being exactly proportioned to each 

 other (377 783 ) Whether the charging of the metallic coating be effected by a pow- 

 erful electrical machine, a strong and large voltaic battery, or a single pair of plates, 

 makes no difference in the principle, but only in the degree of action (360.). Common 

 induction takes place in each case if the electrolyte be solid, or if fluid chemical ac- 

 tion and decomposition ensue, provided opposing actions do not interfere ; and it is 

 of high importance occasionally thus to compare effects in their extreme degrees, for 

 the purpose of enabling us to comprehend the nature of an action in its weak state, 

 which may be only sufficiently evident to us in its stronger condition. As, therefore 

 in the electrolyte, induction appeared to be the frst step, and decomposition the second 

 (the power of separating these steps from each other by giving the solid or fluid con- 

 dition being in our hands) ; as the induction was the same in its nature as that 

 through air, glass, wax, &c. produced by any of the ordinary means ; and as the 

 whole effect in the electrolyte appeared to be an action of the particles thrown into 



