"A spark of Heaven power."
In the construction of the Mountain Supporter you will have perceived
that we were greatly aided by our extended knowledge of electricity.
Before my reign, although electricity was used for some purposes, the
existence of varieties in electricity, and the manifold uses to which
their wondrous powers could be applied, were unknown.
Electricity was not then utilised for locomotion either on land or sea,
or for raising ponderous bodies to an immense height, or in the various
products of manufacture and art, or, in short, for any of the almost
innumerable purposes where the various electricities are now employed,
either separately or in combination.
This could not well be otherwise; for beyond a contrivance like your
Leyden jar, for collecting "air electricity," no means of collecting,
still less concentrating, electricity of any kind then existed.
The belief once generally entertained was, that there were but two
electricities, or rather two varieties of the same electricity, one
repellent and the other attractive, answering in a measure to your terms
of positive and negative. Some, indeed, thought that several different
kinds existed; but the renowned electricians--truly great men, for they
had opened the gates of science--proclaimed that all electricities were
in reality one and the same, modified only by accidents.
They referred to certain phenomena always resembling each other in
whatever way the electricity producing them might be generated; and they
argued, with an appearance of truth, that the electricity which produced
these similar phenomena must be one and the same: for, asked they, are
not like causes indicated by like effects? The principle was right, but,
as was subsequently shown, the application and the conclusion were
wrong. The error had arisen from the fact that electricities of every
kind possess certain properties in common: thus, air electricity enters
into the composition of them all. These common properties produce
phenomena varying only in degree, but so similar to each other that, in
the absence of further knowledge, the electricians concluded that their
theory was correct, and, in consequence, many valuable discoveries were
retarded for centuries.