Page:A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism - Volume 2.djvu/194

 CHAPTER III. ON THE INDUCTION OF ELECTRIC CURRENTS.

528.] discovery by Örsted of the magnetic action of an electric current led by a direct process of reasoning to that of magnetization by electric currents, and of the mechanical action between electric currents. It was not, however, till 1831 that Faraday, who had been for some time endeavouring to produce electric currents by magnetic or electric action, discovered the conditions of magneto-electric induction. The method which Faraday employed in his researches consisted in a constant appeal to experiment as a means of testing the truth of his ideas, and a constant cultivation of ideas under the direct influence of experiment. In his published researches we find these ideas expressed in language which is all the better fitted for a nascent science, because it is somewhat alien from the style of physicists who have been accustomed to established mathematical forms of thought.

The experimental investigation by which Ampère established the laws of the mechanical action between electric currents is one of the most brilliant achievements in science.

The whole, theory and experiment, seems as if it had leaped, full grown and full armed, from the brain of the 'Newton of electricity. It is perfect in form, and unassailable in accuracy, and it is summed up in a formula from which all the phenomena may be deduced, and which must always remain the cardinal formula of electro-dynamics.

The method of Ampère, however, though cast into an inductive form, does not allow us to trace the formation of the ideas which guided it. We can scarcely believe that Ampère really discovered the law of action by means of the experiments which he describes. We are led to suspect, what, indeed, he tells us himself, that he