Faraday as a Discoverer. 45 
tion with the inducing current. It appeared as if the current 
on its first rush through the primary wire sought a purchase 
in the secondary one, and, by a kind of kick, impelled back- 
ward through the latter an electric wave, which subsided as 
soon as the primary current was fully established. 
Faraday for a time believed that the secondary wire, though 
quiescent when the primary current had been once established 
was not in its natural condition, its return to that condition 
being declared by the current observed at breaking the circuit. 
He called this hypothetical state of the wire the electro-tonic 
state: he afterward abandoned this hypothesis, but seemed to 
return to it in later life. The term electro-tonic is also preser- 
