185 
I pointed out in the Philosophical Magazine so long ago as 
June, 1838, and have since leisurely and fully verified. The 
science of electricity is in a very anomalous condition, from 
which this system seems appointed to extricate it. In the 
latter part of the last century experiments were made by the 
Hon. H. Cavendish, and since that time by Sir W. S. Harris, 
over which both those philosophers abstained from theorizing, 
for the simple reason that neither of them could comprehend 
how it was that while electricity only doubled in quantity, the 
force with which it acted increased in the duplicate ratio. 
This truth it first fell to my lot to naturalize, and it is now so 
well known as a fact as to be generally received without 
question, although as a law it is still held to be an anomaly. 
The late Sir W. S. Harris, accustomed to treat forces as causes, 
and finding them in electrical cases to be unequal to the ob- 
served effects , put electrical forces through an imaginary 
“reverberation” to magnify them ; and a contemporary mathe- 
matician still multiplies the electrical forces ff as in opposite 
mirrors ” under the same necessity. Strange physical principles 
these to adopt, and with no better end than to perpetuate our 
intellectual blindness ! As we are now reading physics, the 
simple explanation lies in the appointment of the duplicate ratio 
of intensity by the moral volition; after which only can the 
measurable effects have measurable causes to be compared with. 
It was before noticed that distance causes force to vary in its 
effect; and now we witness the electrical attraction a second 
time varying, not in its effect by reason of distance as before, 
but in absolute intensity, because of variations in the quantity 
of electricity. A double and a triple quantity, the distance 
being given, acting with four times and nine times the force ; 
a result which it is impossible we can conceive to come from 
anywhere but direct from the Creator's mind, and for which 
we shall learn abundant reason when we look into the pheno- 
mena of nature. Now, if these evidences prove anything at 
all, they must prove a distinction between electricity and electrical 
force ; for one and the same thing cannot vary in different 
ratios. How unfortunate, then, was Faraday, when he worked 
only with forces, throwing overboard the matter of electricity, 
because he found it embarrassing. And how deplorable is 
now the position of his followers to whom he could only be- 
queath despair as a reward for their only too unquestioning 
discipleship ! 
If electricians were left alone with electricity, I have no 
doubt the requisite elements of the science would soon be 
acknowledged and restored ; but, unfortunately, its destinies 
are wielded by other philosophers from whom we have no 
