\ 



on certain Theoretical Opinions, 53 



priate effects of voltaic currents when in act of transfer from 

 combination with one atom to another ; this transfer being at 

 once an effect and a cause of chemical decomposition, as you 

 have demonstrated. 



32. If polarization in any form can be conceived to admit 

 of the requisite gradations of intensity, which the phenomena 

 seem to demand; would it not be more reasonable to suppose 

 that it operates by means of an imponderable fluid existing 

 throughout all space, however devoid of other matter ? May 

 not an electric current, so called, be a progressive polariza- 

 tion of rows of the electric particles, the polarity being pro- 

 duced at one end and destroyed at the other incessantly, as 

 I understood you to suggest in the case of contiguous pon- 

 derable atoms. 



33. When the electric particles within different wires are 

 polarized in the same tangential direction, the opposite poles 

 being in proximity, there will be attraction. When the cur- 

 rents of polarization move oppositely, similar poles coinciding, 

 there will be repulsion. The phsenomena require that the mag- 

 netized or polarized particles should be arranged as tangents 

 to the circumference, not as radii to the axis. Moreover, the 

 progressive movement must be propagated in spiral lines in 

 order to account for rotary influence. 



34?. Between a wire which is the mean of a galvanic dis- 

 charge and another not making a part of a circuit, the electric 

 matter which intervenes may, by undergoing a polarization, 

 become the medium of producing a progressive polarization 

 in the second wire moving in a direction opposite to that in 

 the inducing wire; or in other words an electrical current of 

 the species called Faradian may be generated. 



35. By progressive polarization in a wire, may not station- 

 ary polarization or magnetism be created ; and reciprocally 

 by magnetic polarity may not progressive polarization be ex- 

 cited ? 



36. Might not the difficulty, above suggested, of the in- 

 competency of any imaginable polarization to produce all the 

 varieties of electrical excitement which facts require for ex- 

 planation, be surmounted by supposing intensity to result 

 from an accumulation of free electric polarized particles, and 

 quantity from a still greater accumulation of such particles, 

 polarized in a latent state or in chemical combination ? 



37- There are it would seem many indications in favour of 

 the idea that electric excitement may be due to a forced po- 

 larity, but in endeavouring to define the state thus designated, 

 or to explain by means of it the diversities of electrical charges, 

 currents and effects, I have always felt the incompetency of 



