Page:A history of the theories of aether and electricity. Whittacker E.T. (1910).pdf/102

 enable them to act upon each other. It appears, therefore, that heat possesses the property of augmenting the polarity of these bodies."

Berzelius accounted for Volta's electromotive series by assuming the electrification at one pole of an atom to be somewhat more or somewhat less than what would be required to neutralize the charge at the other pole. Thus each atom would possess a certain net or residual charge, which might be of either sign; and the order of the elements in Volta's series could be interpreted simply as the order in which they would stand when ranged according to the magnitude of this residual charge. As we shall see, this conception was afterwards overthrown by Faraday.

Berzelius permitted himself to publish some speculations on the nature of heat and electricity, which bring vividly before us the outlook of an able thinker in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The great question, he says, is whether ✓ the electricities and caloric are matter or merely phenomena. If the title of matter is to be granted only to such things as are ponderable, then these problematic entities are certainly not matter; but thus to narrow the application of the term is, he believes, a mistake; and he inclines to the opinion that caloric is truly matter, possessing chemical affinities without obeying the law of gravitation, and that light and all radiations consist in modes of propagating such matter. This conclusion makes it easier to decide regarding electricity. "From the relation which exists between caloric and the electricities," he remarks, "it is clear that what may be true with regard to the materiality of one of them must also be true with regard to that of the other. There are, however, a quantity of phenomena produced by electricity which do not admit of explanation without admitting at the same time that electricity is matter. Electricity, for instance, very often detaches everything which covers the surface of those bodies which conduct it. It, indeed, passes through conductors without leaving any trace of its passage; but it penetrates non-con-