4 Quarterly German Magazine, 



sists principally in their use as a medium of instruction, and 

 they can be abandoned as soon as they evince themselves as 

 inefficient, or we can find more simple and therefore better 

 ones. 



According to the supposition in question, there are two 

 highly subtile, imponderable and elastic fluids, which are so 

 refined, that we are not able to weigh them in the most ac- 

 curate scales, but infer their existence from their effects. 

 These fluids are called positive and negative electricity. Each 

 has the quality to repel that body, which is impregnated with 

 its own identical fluid, and on the other hand, to attract that 9 

 which possesses the opposite, and this attraction and repulsion 

 take place in inverse ratio to the quadrat of the distance from 

 one another; i. e., if two electrical fluids are twice or three 

 times as far from one another, then their repulsive or attrac- 

 tive influence is only of one fourth or one ninth of the power 

 it would be, were a simple distance between them. 



These two fluids always exist, where solid substance is 

 to be found, they cling to the smallest particles of matter, but 

 nevertheless they are capable of passing from one molecule 

 to the other in one and the same body, as well as from one 

 body to another. Generally these two fluids are present in 

 equal quantities in aU bodies, and the result thereof is, that 

 they cannot exercise any sensible influence outwards. We 

 then caU the bodies neutral-electric or non-electric. When, 

 however, in a body one of the fluids is found in a larger 

 quantity than the other, its stronger effect asserts itself and 

 we call the body electric and indeed positive-electric^ if the 

 positive fluid exists in excess, and negative-electric^ if the ne- 

 gative fluid preponderates. 



Among the means, which effect such an unequal distri- 



(126; 



