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



1701. This conclusion is founded on several considerations. Thus if we observe 

 the insulating and conducting power of elements when they are used as dielectrics, 

 we find some, as sulphur, phosphorus, chlorine, iodine, &c., whose particles insulate, 

 and therefore polarize in a high degree ; whereas others, as the metals, give scarcely 

 any indication of possessing a sensible proportion of this power (1328.), their par- 

 ticles freely conducting one to another. Yet when these enter into combination they 

 form substances having no direct relation apparently, in this respect, to their ele- 

 ments ; for water, sulphuric acid, and such compounds formed of insulating elements, 

 conduct by comparison freely ; whilst oxide of lead, flint glass, borate of lead, and 

 other metallic compounds containing very high proportions of conducting matter, 

 insulate excellently well. Taking oxide of lead therefore as the illustration, I con- 

 ceive that it is not the particles of oxygen and lead which polarize separately under 

 the act of induction, but the molecules of oxide of lead which exhibit this effect, all 

 the elements of one particle of the resulting body, being held together as parts of one 

 conducting individual by the bonds of chemical affinity, which is but another term 

 for electrical force (918.). 



1702. In bodies which are electrolytes we have still further reason for believing in 

 such a state of things. Thus when water, chloride of tin, iodide of lead, &c. in the 

 solid state are between tlie electrodes of the voltaic battery, their particles polarize 

 as those of any other insulating dielectric do (1164.) ; but when the liquid state is 

 conferred on these substances the polarized particles divide, the two halves, each in a 

 highly charged state, travelling onwards until they meet other particles in an oppo- 

 site and equally charged state, with which they combine, to the neutralization of 

 their chemical, i. e. their electrical forces, and the reproduction of compound par- 

 ticles, which can again polarize as wholes, and again divide to repeat the same series 

 of actions (1347.)- 



1703. But though electrolytic particles polarize as wholes, it would appear very 

 evident that in them it is not a matter of entire indifference how the particle po- 

 larizes (1689.), since, when free to move (380, &c.) the polarities are ultimately distri- 

 buted in reference to the elements; and sums of force equivalent to the polarities, and 

 very definite in kind and amount, separate, as it were, from each other, and travel 

 onwards with the elementary particles. And though I do not pretend to know what 

 an atom is, or how it is associated or endowed with electrical force, or how this force 

 is arranged in the cases of combination and decomposition, yet the strong belief I 

 have in the electrical polarity of particles when under inductive action, and the bear- 

 ing of such an opinion on the general effects of induction, whether ordinary or elec- 

 trolytic, will be my excuse, I trust, for a few hypothetical considerations. 



1704. In electrolyzation it appears that the polarized particles would (because 

 of the gradual change which has been induced upon the chemical, i. e. the electrical 

 forces of their elements (918.)) rather divide than discharge to each other without 

 division (1348.) ; for if their division, i, e. their decomposition and recombination, be 



