266 DR. FARADAY'S EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCHES IN ELECTRICITY. (SERIES XIV.) 



1671. That the particles when polarized are in a forced state, and tend to return 

 to their normal or natural condition. 



1672. That being as wholes conductors, they can readily be charged, either hodily 

 or polarly. 



1673. That particles which being contiguous are in the line of inductive action can 

 communicate or transfer their polar forces one to another more or less readily. 



1674. That those doing so less readily require the polar forces to be raised to a 

 higher degree before this transference or communication takes place. 



1675. That the ready communication of forces between contiguous particles con- 

 stitutes conduction, and the difficult communication insulation ; conductors and in- 

 sulators being bodies whose particles naturally possess the property of communica- 

 ting their respective forces easily or with difficulty, and bodies having these differences 

 just as they have differences of any other natural property. 



1676. That ordinary induction is the effect resulting from the action of matter 

 charged with excited or free electricity upon insulating matter, tending to produce 

 in it an equal amount of the contrary state. 



1677- That it can do this only by polarizing the particles contiguous to it, which 

 perform the same office to the next, and these again to those beyond ; and that thus 

 the action is propagated from the excited body to the next conducting mass, and 

 there renders the contrary force evident in consequence of the effect of communica- 

 tion which supervenes in the conducting mass upon the polarization of the particles 

 of that body (1675.). 



1678. That therefore induction can only take place through insulators ; that in- 

 duction is insulation, it being the necessary consequence of the state of the particles 

 and the mode in which the influence of electrical forces is transferred or transmitted 

 across such insulating media. 



1679. The particles of an insulating dielectric whilst under induction may be com- 

 pared to a series of small magnetic needles, or more correctly still to a series of small 

 insulated conductors. If the space round a charged globe were filled with a mixture 

 of an insulating dielectric, as oil of turpentine or air, and small globular conductors, 

 as shot, the latter being at a little distance from each other so as to be insulated, then 

 these would in their condition and action exactly resemble what I consider to be the 

 condition and action of the particles of the insulating dielectric itself. If the globe 

 were charged, these little conductors would all be polar; if the globe were discharged, 

 they would all return to their normal state, to be polarized again upon the recharging 

 of the globe. The state developed by induction through such particles on a mass of 

 conducting matter at a distance would be of the contrary kind, and exactly equal in 

 amount to the force in the inductric globe. There would be a lateral diffusion of 

 force (1224. 1297.)* because each polarized sphere would be in an active or tense re- 



