to be funda- 

 mentally 



wrong. 



theory. 



}Jg «N GALVANISM AND EI,E«TRICITT. 



■when its ten- pansion on bodiej, as in gliding along a nonconductor, in 



den y to ex- traversing a nonconducting medium, in a vacuum, &c, it 



pan<1 s so le- ° ° ' 



strained by a assumes in part the state of light. This attraction of ad- 



monc -iiducting nes ; on ; g always the result of the tendency of the fluid to 



medium, a? to J ... . 



exercise the expand, and of the restraining action of the air. 



-Attraction of r £ Q re t urn to the theory of electricity, beside that Sym- 



idhesion. , > n « .« , « 



Objections to mer s, namely the hypothesis of two fluids, or rather of 



the hypothesis three, the resinous, vitreous, and both combined, is more 

 *i two fluids, ' , ' 



complicated ; and that we perceive no difference between the 



two fluids in respect to their action, for the operator can only 

 judge by the comparison and opposition of these fluids, whe- 

 ther he have excited the one or the other, a circumstance 

 which has nothing analogous to it in natural philosophy; 

 which is sh^wn this hypothesis is fundamentally overturned by the fact, that 

 glass and resin excite both the electricities indifferently, ac- 

 cordingly as they are rubbed with substances more or less 

 conducting than themselves. The Franklinian theory on 

 the contrary is simple, adapted to the nature of things, and 

 agrees with the received doctrine of the exercise of material 

 powers ; its attractions and repulsions are effects of the same 

 cause, and the natural result of an elastic fluid, eager for an 

 equilibrium, the opposite states of which, in order to find 

 this equilibrium, rush from the place where it is plus toward 

 that where it is minus, carrying with it the substances on 

 which they are excited, if these substances be light, and 

 freely suspended, or movable. It is never repulsion there- 

 fore, but always attraction, that causes the motiou of these 

 substances, which in the ball electrometer separate by the 

 communication of positive electricity, for the purpose of de- 

 positing the excess of their fluid on the sides of the glass, 

 in which this excess has excited a state of defect ; and by 

 the communication of negative electricity, to repair their 

 defect of fluid from the same sides of the glass, in the sub- 

 stance of which this defect has excited a state of excess. 

 The same thing takes place in the air: besides, the separa- 

 tion in both cases is necessary for the formation of the op- 

 posite atmosphere, without which no electrical charge can 

 r« i -nere ^ }C established or retained, and no discharge take place. In 

 .ur.i to the other cases of alternate attraction and repulsion, as in 

 that of an insulated ballon me rsed in the atmosphere of an 



electrified 



Atvftys arts 

 h-; auraction, 



