Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 Vol 2.djvu/256

Rh other; and we are not aware of any other fluid, but light, and electricity possessing the power of instantaneously traversing space; nor can we attribute such force and destructive power to any other body in nature. But here another question very difficult of solution arises. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and electricity, usually occur together or are separated by very short intervals in varying order of succession. Ought we then to attribute the earthquake to the volcanic eruption, or to electricity, (elettricismo), or to both?

The last opinion will not be admitted, by one who has considered the famous sentence of Maupertuis, that nature only exerts her least strength, or, to use Aristotle's words, who was the originator of the sentiment, "She does not do with more, that which she could do with less." I can see into what a circle, into what an abyss, that mind will fall, which wants to reason here à priori, or by creating hypotheses. To say that the earthquake may be occasioned by volcanic combinations, arguing from such analogy as occurs on a small scale, and the fact that earthquakes have either preceded or followed eruptions is surely not absurd, but very reasonable. Nor can we tell how far human knowledge, with regard to natural facts, would extend if we abandoned induction and analogy. But arguing in this way, and from various electrical experiments, remembering the nature of the fluid, which tends always to diffuse itself equally; the meteors which preceded or followed this earthquake of which we are treating, we might ascribe this phenomenon, at least from its visible eflfects, different from those of that which desolated Calabria in the past century, to electricity, which appears to us as inexhaustible as the light from the sun. Therefore, in my opinion, we may reasonably conclude that the electric fluid has displayed its power in the numerous and difierent degrees of affinity which various subterraneous substances bear to this fluid.

Among the correlative and subsequent phenomena I have not mentioned the earthquake which took place in Rodi on the 15th of December, nor the fog which enveloped Paris on the 19th of the same month. These circumstances, or at least the second one, may have had no connection with our earthquake, although it is

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