Page:Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 2 (1841).djvu/416

404 are however precisely the reasons why the investigation is brought to a degree of simplicity which is not surpassed in any branch of natural philosophy, and is altogether adapted to secure incontrovertibly to mathematics the possession of a new field of physics, from which it had hitherto remained almost totally excluded.

The chemical changes which so frequently occur in some, generally fluid, portions of a galvanic circuit, greatly deprive the result of its natural simplicity, and conceal, to a considerable extent, by the complications they produce, the peculiar progression of the phænomenon; they are the cause of an unexampled change of the phænomenon, which gives rise to so many apparent exceptions to the rule, frequently even to contradictions, in so far as the sense of this word is itself not in contradiction to nature. I have distinctly separated the consideration of such galvanic circuits in which no portion undergoes a chemical change, from those whose activity is disturbed by chemical action, and have devoted a separate part to the latter in the Appendix. This total separation of two parts forming a whole, and, as might appear, the less dignified position of the latter, will find in the following circumstance a sufficient explanation. A theory, which lays claim to the name of an enduring and fruitful one, must have all its consequences in accordance with observation and experiment. This, it seems to me, is sufficiently established with respect to the first of the parts above-mentioned, partly by the previous experiments of others, and partly by some performed by myself, which first made me acquainted with the theory here developed, and subsequently rendered me entirely devoted to it. Such is not the case with regard to the second part. A more accurate experimental verification is in this case almost entirely wanting, to undertake which I need both the requisite time and means; and therefore I have merely placed it in a corner, from which, if worth the trouble, it may be drawn hereafter, and may then also be further matured under better nursing.

By means of the first and third fundamental positions we obtain a distinct insight into the primary galvanic phænomenon in the following way. Imagine, for instance, a ring everywhere of equal thickness and homogeneous, having, at any one place, in its whole thickness, one and the same electrical tension, i.e. inequality in the electrical state of two surfaces situated close to each other, from which causes, when they have come