had I not been led unawares, and without previous consideration, by the circumstances of the evening on which I had to appear suddenly and occupy the place of another. Now that I have put them on paper, I feel that I ought to have kept them much longer for study, consideration, and, perhaps, final rejection; and it is only because they are sure to go abroad in one way or another, in consequence of their utterance on that evening, that I give them a shape, if shape it may be called, in this reply to your inquiry. One thing is certain, that any hypothetical view of radiation which is likely to be received or retained as satisfactory, must not much longer comprehend alone certain phenomena of light, but must include those of heat and of actinic influence also, and even the conjoined phenomena of sensible heat and chemical power produced by them. In this respect, a view, which is in some degree founded upon the ordinary forces of matter, may perhaps find a little consideration amongst the other views that will probably arise. I think it likely that I have made many mistakes in the preceding pages, for even to myself, my ideas on this point appear only as the shadow of a speculation, or as one of those impressions on the mind which are allowable for a time as guides to thought and research. He who labours in experimental inquiries knows how numerous these are, and how often their apparent fitness and beauty vanish before the progress and development of real natural truth.
I am, my dear Phillips, ever truly yours,
M. Faraday.
Royal Institution, April 15, 1846.
On Certain conditions of Freezing Water. A Discourse, &c.[1]
[Royal Institution, Friday Evening, June 7, 1850.]
The chief object of the discourse was the great, various, and extraordinary forms of affinity which exist between the particles of water. Having experimentally illustrated the combining power of water, and shown how this attraction passes from a physical to a chemical force, Mr. Faraday confined the rest of his discourse to ice, as being that condition of water in which its particles are allowed to associate with each other without the intervention of foreign matter. Such ice as is now imported
- ↑ Athenæaum, 1850, p. 640. The report is by the author.
