50 Dr. Hare's Letter to Prof. Faraday 



electricity of the charging apparatus. Discharge is the return 

 of the particles to their natural state, from their state of ten- 

 sion, whenever the two electric forces are allowed to be dis- 

 posed of in some other direction." As you have not previously 

 mentioned any particular direction in which the forces are 

 exercised during the prevalence of this constrained condition, 

 I am at a loss as to what meaning I am to attach to the words 

 " some other direction." The word some, would lead to the 

 idea that there was an uncertainty respecting the direction in 

 which the forces might be disposed of; whereas it appears to 

 me that the only direction in which they can operate, must be 

 the opposite of that by which they have been induced. 



22i The electrified particles can only "return to their natural 

 state" by retracing the path by which they departed from it. 

 I would suggest that for the words " to be disposed of in some 

 other direction" it would be better to substitute the following, 

 " to compensate each other by an adequate communication" 



23. Agreeably to the explanation of the phenomenon of 

 coated electrics afforded in the paragraph above quoted (1300), 

 by what process can it be conceived that the opposite polari- 

 zation of the surfaces can be neutralized by conduction through 

 a metallic wire ? If I understand your hypothesis correctly, 

 the process by which the polarization of one of the vitreous 

 surfaces in a pane produces an opposite polarization in the 

 other, is precisely the same as that by which the electricity 

 applied to one end of the wire extends itself to the other end. 



24. I cannot conceive how two processes severally produ- 

 cing results so diametrically opposite as insulation and con- 

 duction, can be the same. By the former, a derangement of 

 the electric equilibrium may be permanently sustained, while 

 by the other, all derangement is counteracted with a rapidity 

 almost infinite. But if the opposite charges are dependent 

 upon a polarity induced in contiguous atoms of the glass, 

 which endures so long as no communication ensues between 

 the surfaces ; by what conceivable process can a perfect con- 

 ductor cause a discharge to take place, with a velocity at least 

 as great as that of the solar light? Is it conceivable that all 

 the lines of " contra-induction " or depolarization can concen 

 trate themselves upon the wire from each surface so as to 

 produce therein an intensity of polarization proportioned to 

 the concentration ; and that the opposite forces resulting from 

 the polarization are thus reciprocally compensated ? I must 

 confess, such a concentration of such forces or states, is to me 

 difficult to reconcile with the conception that it is at all to be 

 ascribed to the action of rows of contiguous ponderable par 

 tides. 



