chemical Agencies of Electricity. 41 
When two bodies repellent of each other act upon the same 
body with different degrees of the same electrical attracting 
energy, the combination would be determined by the degree ; 
and the substance possessing the weakest energy would be 
repelled ; and this principle would afford an expression of the 
causes of elective affinity, and the decompositions produced 
in consequence. 
Or where the bodies having different degrees of the same 
energy, with regard to the third body, had likewise different 
energies with regard to each other, there might be such a 
balance of attractive and repellent powers as to produce a 
triple compound ; and by the extension of this reasoning, 
complicated chemical union may be easily explained. 
Numerical illustrations of these notions might be made- 
without difficulty, and they might be applied to all cases of 
chemical action ; but in the present state of the enquiry, a 
great extension of this hypothetical part of the subject would 
be premature. 
The general idea will, however, afford an easy explanation 
of the influence of affinity by the masses of the acting sub- 
stances, as elucidated by the experiments of M. Berthollet ; 
for the combined effect of many particles possessing a feeble 
electrical energy, may be conceived equal or even superior to 
the effect of a few particles possessing a strong electrical 
energy : and the facts mentioned, page 25, confirm the sup- 
position : for concentrated alkaline lixivia resist the transmis- 
sion of acids by electricity much more powerfully than weak 
ones. 
Allowing combination to depend upon the balance of the 
natural electrical energies of bodies, it is easy to conceive that 
mdcccvii. G 
