ON GALVANISM AND ELECTRICITY. 



or other substance, the insulation is made by the substance 

 itself; and, to preserve it, the charged part must always be 

 kept from any communication with the ground. But fetus 

 pile has nothing to iio with the ground : it can neither take 

 any thing from it, nor give any thing to it, its charge being 

 fixed by its discharge, and vice versa. It is only in cases 

 where the pile would be exhausted by furnishing its fluid to 

 decoin pose a substance, as to convert the two elements of water 

 into gas, &c. ; or to compose one, by raising the tempera- 

 ture ; or lastly to make an explosion through air, and for this 

 purpose transform itself into light and heat ; that the pile 

 can reestablish its charge, or rather its. natural state, at the 

 expense of the ground. In this case its not being insulated Uninsulatei 

 would be advantageous, rather than otherwise: and in fact, P ile ' retains i» 

 as I have already made public, an uninsulated pile retains *^ ""^ 

 its energy much longer than another that is insulated. 

 I shall not say however in what way I conceive this restora- 

 tion can take place in an apparatus, which for its revival has 

 the resource of decompositions of heat [decompositions calo- 

 ri(]u?s] by its plates. 



I cannot conceive how in France, the seat of an academy u .1 - * 



J Hypothesis 01 



that admits only strict deductions, the dualist electric theory, two electric 

 or that of two fluids, is still maintained in preference; and fluKls * 

 this in a more extravagant sense than that of Symmer him- 

 seif, who was the author of it. In the hypothesis of two op- 

 posite electricities, what in fact are two fluids of the same 

 nature, that repel each other? What are opposite powers 

 (which naturally must endeavour to destroy each other, 

 without being much concerned about the substances, that 

 are interposed between them), which, applied to the parti- 

 cles of bodies, tend with the greatest energy to disunite their 

 elements? as if the electric fluid, which in the case of its 

 being set in motion, or in its operation, dees not adhere to 

 bodies, unless it enters into combination with them, but 

 glides over their surfaces with the rapidity of lightning; and 

 which in its state of rest keeps itself on the surface of the 

 bodies to which it adheres; and diffuses itself in zones, or 

 strata of opposite states, which mutually enchain or destroy 

 |be activity of each other, in bodies to which itdoes notadhere; 

 could exercise the least action in these cases. This supposed 



conflict 



