Page:A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism - Volume 1.djvu/15

Rh There are several treatises in which electrical and magnetic phenomena are described in a popular way. These, however, are not what is wanted by those who have been brought face to face with quantities to be measured, and whose minds do not rest satisfied with lecture-room experiments.

There is also a considerable mass of mathematical memories which are of great importance in electrical science, but they lie concealed in the bulky Transactions of learned societies; they do not form a connected system; they are of very unequal merit, and they are for the most part beyond the comprehension of any but professed mathematicians.

I have therefore thought that a treatise would be useful which should have for its principal object to take up the whole subject in a methodical manner, and which should also indicate how each part of the subject is brought within the reach of methods of verification by actual measurement.

The general complexion of the treatise differs considerably from that of several excellent electrical works, published, most of them, in Germany, and it may appear that scant justice is done to the speculations of several eminent electricians and mathematicians. One reason of this is that before I began the study of electricity I resolved to read no mathematics on the subject till I had first read through Faraday's Experimental Researches on Electricity. I was aware that there was supposed to be a difference between Faraday's way of conceiving phenomena and that of the mathematicians, so that neither he nor