52 Dr. Hare's Letter to Prof. Faraday 



we perceive properties, the existence of which cannot be 

 otherwise explained, are we not warranted, if we notice more 

 properties than can reasonably be assigned to one kind of 

 matter, to assume the existence of another kind of matter ? 



29. Independently of the considerations which have hereto- 

 fore led some philosophers to suppose that we are surrounded 

 by an ocean of electric matter, which by its redundancy or 

 deficiency is capable of producing the phenomena of me- 

 chanical electricity, it has appeared to me inconceivable that 

 the phsenomena of galvanism and electro-magnetism, latterly 

 brought into view, can be satisfactorily explained without 

 supposing the agency of an intervening imponderable medium 

 by whose subserviency the inductive influence of currents or 

 magnets is propagated. If in that wonderful reciprocal re- 

 action between masses and particles, to which I have alluded, 

 the polarization of condensed or accumulated portions of in- 

 tervening imponderable matter, can be brought in as a link 

 to connect the otherwise imperfect chain of causes ; it would 

 appear to me a most important instrument in lifting the cur- 

 tain which at present hides from our intellectual vision, this 

 highly important mechanism of nature. 



30. Having devised so many ingenious experiments tending 

 to show that the received ideas of electrical induction are 

 inadequate to explain the phsenomena without supposing a 

 modifying influence in intervening ponderable matter, should 

 there prove to be cases in which the results cannot be satis- 

 factorily explained by ascribing them to ponderable particles, 

 I hope that you may be induced to review the whole ground, 

 in order to determine whether the part to be assigned to con- 

 tiguous ponderable particles, be not secondary to that per- 

 formed by the imponderable principles by which they are 

 surrounded. 



31. But if galvanic phenomena be due to ponderable (im- 

 ponderable!) matter, evidently that matter must be in a state of 

 combination. To what other cause than an intense affinity be- 

 tween it and the metallic particles with which it is associated, 

 can its confinement be ascribed consistently with your estimate 

 of the enormous quantity which exists in metals ? If "a grain 

 of water, or a grain of zinc, contain as much of the electric fluid 

 as would supply eight hundred thousand charges of a battery 

 containing a coated surface of fifteen hundred square inches," 

 how intense must be the attraction by which this matter is 

 confined ? In such cases may not the material cause of elec- 

 tricity be considered as latent, agreeably to the suggestion of 

 GErsted, the founder of electro-magnetism ? It is in combina- 

 tion with matter, and only capable of producing the appro- 



