Page:A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism - Volume 1.djvu/340

 of the vessel and of all within it will be instantly raised, but however long and however powerfully the vessel be electrified, and whether the body within be allowed to come in contact with the vessel or not, no signs of electrification will appear within the vessel, nor will the body within shew any electrical effect when taken out.

But if the vessel is raised to a high temperature, the body within will rise to the same temperature, but only after a considerable time, and if it is then taken out it will be found hot, and will remain so till it has continued to emit heat for some time.

The difference between the phenomena consists in the fact that bodies are capable of absorbing and emitting heat, whereas they have no corresponding property with respect to electricity. A body cannot be made hot without a certain amount of heat being supplied to it, depending on the mass and specific heat of the body, but the electric potential of a body may be raised to any extent in the way already described without communicating any electricity to the body.

245.] Again, suppose a body first heated and then placed inside the closed vessel. The outside of the vessel will be at first at the temperature of surrounding bodies, but it will soon get hot, and will remain hot till the heat of the interior body has escaped.

It is impossible to perform a corresponding electrical experiment. It is impossible so to electrify a body, and so to place it in a hollow vessel, that the outside of the vessel shall at first shew no signs of electrification but shall afterwards become electrified. It was for some phenomenon of this kind that Faraday sought in vain under the name of an absolute charge of electricity.

Heat may be hidden in the interior of a body so as to have no external action, but it is impossible to isolate a quantity of electricity so as to prevent it from being constantly in inductive relation with an equal quantity of electricity of the opposite kind.

There is nothing therefore among electric phenomena which corresponds to the capacity of a body for heat. This follows at once from the doctrine which is asserted in this treatise, that electricity obeys the same condition of continuity as an incompressible fluid. It is therefore impossible to give a bodily charge of electricity to any substance by forcing an additional quantity of electricity into it. See Arts. 61, 111, 329, 334.