[65] Researches, Arts. 465, 469.
[66] 495.
Faraday’s opinion, and, indeed, the only way of expressing the results of his experiments, was, that the chemical elements, in obedience to the direction of the voltaic currents established in the decomposing substance, were evolved, or, as he prefers to say, ejected at its extremities.[67] He afterwards states that the influence which is present in the electric current may be described[68] as an axis of power, having [at each point] contrary forces exactly equal in amount in contrary directions.
[67] 493.
[68] 517.
Having arrived at this point, Faraday rightly wished to reject the term poles, and other words which could hardly be used without suggesting doctrines now proved to be erroneous. He considered, in the case of bodies electrically decomposed, or, as he termed them, electrolytes, the elements as travelling in two opposite directions; which, with reference to the direction of terrestrial magnetism, might be considered as naturally east and west; and he conceived elements as, in this way, arriving at the doors or outlets at which they finally made their separate appearance. The doors he called electrodes, and, separately, the anode and the cathode;[69] and the elements which thus travel he termed the anïon and the catïon (or cathïon).[70] By means of this nomenclature he was able to express his general results with much more distinctness and facility.
[69] 663.
[70] The analogy of the Greek derivation requires catïon; but to make the relation to cathode obvious to the English reader, and to avoid a violation of the habits of English pronunciation, I should prefer cathïon.
But this general view of the electrolytical process required to be pursued further, in order to explain the nature of the action. The identity of electrical and chemical forces, which had been hazarded as [299] a conjecture by Davy, and adopted as the basis of chemistry by Berzelius, could only be established by exact measures and rigorous proofs. Faraday had, in his proof of the identity of voltaic and electric agency, attempted also to devise such a measure as should give him a comparison of their quantity; and in this way he proved that[71] a voltaic group of two small wires of platinum and zinc, placed near each other, and immersed in dilute acid for three seconds, yields as much electricity as the electrical battery, charged by ten turns of a large machine; and this was established both by its momentary electro-magnetic effect, and by the amount of its chemical action.[72]
[71] Researches, Art. 371.