Electricity is a powerful physical agent which manifests itself mainly
by attractions and repulsions, but also by luminous and heating effects,
by violent commotions, by chemical decompositions, and many other
phenomena. Unlike gravity, it is not inherent in bodies, but it is
evoked in them by a variety of causes … (Ganot's Physics.)
Electricity and magnetism are not forms of energy; neither are they
forms of matter. They may, perhaps, be provisionally defined as
properties or conditions of matter; but whether this matter be the
ordinary matter, or whether it be, on the other hand, that
all-pervading ether by which ordinary matter is surrounded, is a question
which has been under discussion, and which now may be fairly held to be
settled in favor of the latter view. (Daniell's Physics.)
The name used in connection with an extensive and important class of
phenomena, and usually denoting the unknown cause of the phenomena or
the science that treats of them. (Imperial Dictionary.)
Electricity. . . is the imponderable physical agent, cause, force or the
molecular movement, by which, under certain conditions, certain
phenomena, chiefly those of attraction and repulsion, . . . are
produced. (John Angell.)
It has been suggested that if anything can rightly be called
"electricity," this must be the ether itself; and that all electrical
and magnetic phenomena are simply due to changes, strains and motions in
the ether. Perhaps negative electrification. . .means an excess of
ether, and positive electrification a defect of ether, as compared with
the normal density. (W. Larden.)
Electricity is the name given to the supposed agent producing the
described condition (i. e. electrification) of bodies. (Fleeming
Jenkin.)
There are certain bodies which, when warm and dry, acquire by friction,
the property of attracting feathers, filaments of silk or indeed any
light body towards them. This property is called Electricity, and bodies
which possess it are said to be electrified. (Linnaeus Cumming.)
What electricity is it is impossible to say, but for the present it is
convenient to look upon it as a kind of invisible something which
pervades all bodies. (W. Perren Maycock.)
What is electricity? No one knows. It seems to be one manifestation of
the energy which fills the universe and which appears in a variety of
other forms, such as heat, light, magnetism, chemical affinity,
mechanical motion, etc. (Park Benjamin.)