376 Prof. Faraday on Electric Conduction. 
in streams, which discharge to each other in the mass. Now 
such charge is not connected with electrolysis; the condition of 
electrolyzation is that the electricity pass through the water and 
do not stop short in it. The mere charge of the water give us 
no idea where any constituents set loose by electrolysis can be 
evolved, and yet conduction is largely concerned in the act of 
charging. A shower of rain falls across a space in the atmos- 
phere subject to electric action, and each drop becomes charged ; 
spray may be thrown forth from an electrified fountain very 
highly charged ;—conduction has been eminently active in both 
cases, but I find it very difficult to conceive how that conduction 
can be electrolytic in its character. 
When drops of water, oppositely electrified, are made to ap- 
proach each other, they act by convection, i. e. as carriers of elec- 
tricity; when they meet they discharge to each other, and the 
function of conduction is for the time set up. When the water 
bubble, described p. 372, is taken out of the sphere of induction, 
the opposite electricities about p and m neutralize each other, 
being conducted through the particles of the water. Are we to 
suppose in these cases that the conduction is electrolytic? if so, 
where are the constituents separated, and where are they to ap- 
ar? It must be a strong conviction that would deny conduc- 
tion proper to electrolytes in these cases; and if not denied here, 
what reason is there ever to deny it absolutely. ge 
The result of all the thought I can give to the subject isa 
suspended judgment. I cannot say that I think conduction 
proper is as yet disproved in electrolytes; and yet I cannot say 
that I know of any case in which a current, however weak, 
being passed by platinum electrodes across acidulated water does 
not bring them into a polarized condition. It may be that when 
metallic surfaces are present, they complete by their peculiarities 
the condition necessary to the evolution of elements, which, 
under the same degree of electrification would not be evolved if 
the metals were away; and, on the other hand, it also may be 
that after the metals are polarized, and a consequent state of re- 
active tension so set up, a degree of conduction proper may occur 
between them and the electrolyte simultaneously with the elec- 
trolytic action. There is now no doubt that as regards elec- 
trolysis and its law, all is as if there were butelectrolytic conduc- 
tion; but, as regards static phenomena (which are equally 1m- 
portant) and the steps of their passage into dynamic effects, 1t 18 
probable that conduction proper rules with electrolytes as with 
other compound bodies: for it is not as yet disproved, 18 Sup 
ported by strong presumptive evidence, and may essential. 
Yet so distant are the extremes of electric intensity, and so infi- 
nitely different in an inverse direction are the quantities that 
may and do produce the essential phenomena of each kind, that 
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