“ There can hardly be a doubt but that all the phenomena of magnetism, like those of electricity, may be explained on the hypothesis of one ethereal fluid, which is condensed or redundant in the positive pole, and deficient in the negative; a theory that accords best with the simplicity and general nature of the laws of creation; nevertheless, Poisson has adopted the hypothesis of two extremely rare fluids, pervading all the particles of iron, and incapable of leaving them. ”

“ As has been truly said, it is no easy matter to form an adequate idea of Nollet’s theory of electricity, which was opposed at the time by almost all the eminent electrical philosophers of Europe. He asserted that when an electric is excited, electricity flows to it from all quarters, and when it is thus affluent, it drives light bodies before it. Hence the reason why excited bodies attract. When the electricity is effluent the light bodies are of course driven from the electric, which in that condition appears to repel. ”

“ This experiment of the explosion of water, which I believe was first made by that most ingenious electrician, Father Beccaria, may account for what we sometimes see in a tree struck by lightning, when part of it is reduced to fine splinters like a broom; the sap vessels being so many tubes containing a watery fluid, which, when reduced to vapour, sends every tube lengthways. And, perhaps it is this rarefaction of the fluids in animal bodies killed by lightning or electricity, that by separating its fibres renders the flesh so tender and apt so much sooner to putrefy. ”

“ The magnetic nature is proper to the earth and is implanted in all its real parts ... there is in the earth a magnetic strength or energy (vigour) of its own ... thus we have to treat of the earth, which is a magnetic body, a loadstone. An iron rod held in the hand is magnetized in the end where it is grasped and the magnetic force travels to the other extremity, not along the surface only but through the inside, through the middle.... Iron instantly receives from the loadstone verticity and natural conformity to it, being absolutely metamorphosed into a perfect magnet. ”

“ Anyone who enters on the perilous paths of Bibliography realizes, sooner or later, the truth that “of the making of books there is no end.” But there was a beginning: and if the Bibliography of Electricity promises to stretch onward into the future in endless line, at least its backward reach might seem to be finite in date. ”

“ The forces appeared to be such as Kepler had dreamt of in the infancy of mechanical conceptions, rather than such as those of which Newton had established the presence in the solar system, and such as he, and all his successors, had supposed to be the only kinds of force which exist in nature. The north pole of the needle moved as if it were impelled by a vortex revolving round the wire in one direction, while the south pole seemed to be driven by an opposite vortex (called by Wollaston vertiginous magnetism and considered by Mr. Barlow as the result of tangential action) . ”

“ The exhibits of President Dwight are:
“An artificial spider animated by the electric fire so as to act like a live one; a shower of sand which rises again as fast as it falls; a leaf of the most mighty of metals suspended in the air, as is said of Mahomet’s tomb; electrified money which scarce anybody will take when offered to them; a curious machine, acting by means of the electric fire, and playing a variety of tunes on eight musical bells.”
This broadside of 1751 appears to antedate any other similar notice of electrical experiments. ”

“ Galvanism is the basis of all the processes of the organic world.... God did not make man out of nothing, but took an elemental body then existing, an earth-clod or carbon, moulded it into form, thus making use of water, and breathed into it life, viz. air, whereby galvanism or the vital process arose.... Organization is produced by the co-operating process of light and heat. The ether imparts the substance, the heat the form, the light the life.... The life of an inorganic body is a threefold action of the three terrestrial elements, in which three processes galvanism consists. ”

“ One of his biographers says that Oersted was lecturing one day to a class of advanced students, when, as a means of testing the soundness of the theory which he had long been meditating, it occurred to him to place a magnetic needle under the influence of a wire uniting the ends of a voltaic battery in a state of activity. “In galvanism,” said he, “the force is more latent than in electricity, and, still more so in magnetism than in galvanism; it is necessary therefore to try whether electricity, in its latent state, will not affect the magnetic needle.” ”

“ Gilbert, a physician, in his Latin treatise on the magnet, not only collected all the knowledge which others had possessed on the subject, but became at once the father of experimental philosophy in this island, and, by a singular felicity and acuteness of genius, the founder of theories which have been revived after a lapse of ages, and are almost universally received into the creed of science. ”

“ The paper containing an account of Canton’s experiments was read before the Royal Society, December 6, 1753. The principle enounced is that “the electric fluid, when there is a redundancy of it in any body, repels the electric fluid in any other body when they are brought within the sphere of each other’s influence and drives it [206] into the remote parts of the body; or quite out of it, if there be any outlet for that purpose. In other words, bodies immerged in electric atmospheres always become possessed of the electricity contrary to that of the body in whose atmosphere they are immerged.” ”

“ Speaking of the aurora borealis, he says “that it is doubtful if its light may not be of an electrical nature. The phenomenon is certainly connected with the general cause of magnetism. The primitive beams of light are supposed to be at an elevation of at least 50 or 100 miles above the earth, and everywhere in a direction parallel to that of the dipping needle; but perhaps, although the substance is magnetical, the illumination, which renders it visible, may still be derived from the passage of electricity, at too great a distance to be discovered by any other test.... ”

“ A Bibliographical History of Electricity and Magnetism covering 4458 years, from 2637 B.C., when Hoang-Ti, Emperor of China, is said to have directed the pursuit of his troops after a rebellious subject by the aid of the compass, up to Christmas Day, A.D. 1821, when Faraday first caused a wire carrying a current to rotate in a magnetic field.
The early centuries are passed over quickly. Homer’s name occurs with quotations from the Odyssey:
“In wondrous ships self-mov’d, instinct with mind,
No helm secures their course, no pilot guides;
Like men intelligent, they plough the tides.” ”

“ He observed that “by holding a finger at a little distance from the amber a crackling is produced, with a great flash of light succeeding it, and, what is very surprising, on its eruption it strikes the finger very sensibly, wheresoever applied, with a push or puff like wind. The crackling is fully as loud as that of charcoal on fire.... This light and crackling seem in some degree to represent thunder and lightning.” ”

“ Richard Owen, Lorenz Oken contends that organism is galvanism residing in a thoroughly homogeneous mass. A galvanic pile, pounded into atoms, must become alive. In this manner, nature brings forth organic bodies. The basis of electricity is the air; of magnetism, metal; of chemism (the name he gives to the influence that produces chemical combination) , salts. The basis of galvanism, in like manner, is the organic mass. Accordingly, whatever is organic is galvanic; whatever is alive is galvanic. Life, organism, galvanism, are one. Life is the vital process ”

“ During the year 1781 William Nicholson had published the first edition of “An Introduction to Natural Philosophy.” In the second section of the third book of the latter work he treats of magnetism, the methods of communicating it, and the variation of the compass. The loadstone, he says, “is a ponderous ore of iron, usually of a dirty black colour and hard enough to emit sparks with steel. It is found in most parts of the world, and possesses a natural magnetism acquired most probably from its situation or position with respect to the earth.” ”

“ Faraday’s paper are, according to Brande, resolvable by induction into the general law; that while every particle of a magnetic body is attracted, every particle of a diamagnetic body is repelled by either pole of a magnet: these forces continue as long as the magnetic power is sustained, and cease on the cessation of that power, standing therefore in the same general antithetical relation to each other as the positive and negative conditions of electricity, the northern and southern polarities of ordinary magnetism, or the lines of electric and magnetic force in magneto-electricity. ”

“ The art of scientific discovery—for it is an art—can be attained in but one way, the way of attainment in all arts, namely, by practising it. In the practice of art, the aspirant may at least learn something that all the textbooks cannot drill out of him, and which will help him in his practice, by the careful examination of the actual ways in which the discoveries of science, now facts of history, were actually made. ”

“ He was acquainted with the well-known action of the magnet on iron, but he understood—as even at this day some understand—that it was caused by the atmosphere. New experiments have made us seriously doubt this. He did not pay attention to the proportion of the magnetic forces as compared with the distances of iron, to the discovery of which the efforts of present philosophers are directed but in vain. He saw, however, that the facility or difficulty of attraction depends upon the size of the iron (maximum and minimum) . ”

“ One of his biographers calls him “the Galen, the Ibn Sina, the Fernel of his age.” Another remarks that he was, perhaps, the greatest physician of modern times: “A man who, when we contemplate his genius, his erudition, the singular variety of his talents, his unfeigned piety, his spotless character, and the impress which he left not only on contemporaneous practice, but on that of succeeding generations, stands forth as one of the brightest names on the page of medical history, and may be quoted as an example not only to physicians, but to mankind at large. ”

“ Nollet is the first one who published the close relationship existing between lightning and the electric spark. This he did during the year 1748, in the fourth volume of his “Leçons,” already alluded to and from which the following is extracted: “If any one should undertake to prove, as a clear consequence of the phenomenon, that thunder is in the hands of nature what electricity is in ours—that those wonders which we dispose at our pleasure are only imitations on a small scale of those grand effects which terrify us, and that both depend on the same mechanical agents ... ”

“ When different paths are offered to the escape of electricity, it chooses the best conductor; so does lightning. Electricity fires combustibles; so does lightning. Electricity fuses metals; so does lightning. Lightning rends bad conductors when it strikes them; so does electricity when rendered sufficiently strong. Lightning reverses the poles of a magnet; electricity has the same effect.”
[195]
Franklin had, likewise, published at about the same period the plan for an experiment to ascertain from elevated structures whether the clouds that contain lightning are electrified or not. ”

“ If we except the discovery of the [475] laws of the induction of electric currents, made about ten years later by Faraday, no advance in the science of electricity can compare for completeness and brilliancy with the work of Ampère. Our admiration is equally great, whether we contemplate the clearness and power of his mathematical investigations, the aptness and skill of his experiments, or the wonderful rapidity with which he elucidated his discovery when he had once found the clew. ”

“ Every created being possesses his own celestial power and is closely allied with heaven ... the spirit is everywhere diffused; and the spirit is the medium of magnetism ... it is not the spirits of heaven and of hell which are masters over physical nature, but the soul and spirit of man which are concealed in him as the fire is concealed in the flint.”
The above-named work of Van Helmont was “translated, illustrated and ampliated,” in 1650 by Dr. Walter Charleton, physician in ordinary to King Charles I, under the name of “A Ternary of Paradoxes.” ”

“ Naturalists have hitherto merely abandoned one erroneous hypothesis for another, in considering the nature of the electric fluid. Some have regarded it as identical with heat; while others have been led to consider it as a modified caloric. The disciples of Stahl ascribed it to the nature of their phlogistic or, at least, supposed it to be a fluid abundantly provided with that principle. Henley conjectured it to be phlogistic, when in a state of repose, and fire, when in a state of activity. Among the moderns, several have been found who have declared it to be an acid ”

“ It was, in fact, under the influence of such ideas, that Oersted was led to his discovery. Ampère showed that the explanation was to be found in an opposite direction. He discovered the ponderomotive action of one electric current on another, and, by a series of well-chosen experiments, he established the elementary laws of electro-dynamic action, starting from which, by a brilliant train of mathematical analysis, he not only evolved the complete explanation of all the electro-magnetic phenomena observed before him, but predicted many hitherto unknown. ”

“ How far these observations and experiments go to establish the doctrine of a magnetic effluvium flowing through the earth, or from one end of a magnet to the other, must be left to the reader’s judgment and opinion. We are apt to laugh at the subtil matter of Descartes and the aether of Euler, as occult qualities, which modern philosophy will not admit into its creed, but this effluvium is a subtil matter, an aether, equally as inexplicable and as equally out of the reach of our five senses to scrutinize ”