Page:The Philosophy of Earthquakes, Natural and Religious.djvu/95

Rh vibratory and electric ſtate, by heat and drineſs? we muſt needs acquit the internal of the earth from the charge of theſe ſuperficial concuſſions. How then is the ethereal fire crouded together, or excited, ſo as to cauſe them; ſeeing in our ordinary electrical experiments, we make uſe of friction?

But that friction alone does not excite electricity, we know from the obvious experiment of flint and ſteel, where the ſuddenneſs of the ſtroke, and hardneſs of the matter does it. Another method of exciting it, is the letting off a number of great guns, which ſo crouds the ethereal fire together, as to electrify glaſs windows; obſerv’d by my friend the reverend Dr. Stephen Hales. The aurora borealis, auſtralis, all kind of coruſcations, meteors, lightning, thunder, fire-balls are the effects, and may reciprocally be the cauſe of electricity; but how in particular we know not. Come we to the animal world, we muſt needs aſſert, that all motion voluntary, involuntary, generation, even life itſelf: all the operations of the vegetable kingdom, and an infinity more of nature’s works, are owing to the activity of this electric fire, the very ſoul of the material world. And in my opinion, ’t is this alone, that ſolves the famous queſtion, ſo much agitated with the writers in medicin, about the heat of the blood. How theſe, how earthquakes are begun, propagated, we arc yet to ſeek. We