667. It will be well understood that I am giving no opinion respecting the nature of the electric current now, beyond what I have done on former occasions (283. 517.); and that though I speak of the current as proceeding from the parts which are positive to those which are negative (663.), it is merely in accordance with the conventional, though in some degree tacit, agreement entered into by scientific men, that they may have a constant, certain, and definite means of referring to the direction of the forces of that current. [Since this paper was read, I have changed some of the terms which were first proposed, that I might employ only such as were at the same time simple in their nature, clear in their reference, and free from hypothesis. P iv. _On some general conditions of Electro-chemical Decomposition._ 669. From the period when electro-chemical decomposition was first effected to the present time, it has been a remark, that those elements which, in the ordinary phenomena of chemical affinity, were the most directly opposed to each other, and combined with the greatest attractive force, were those which were the most readily evolved at the opposite extremities of the decomposing bodies (549.). 670. If this result was evident when water was supposed to be essential to, and was present in, almost every case of such decomposition (472.), it is far more evident now that it has been shown and proved that water is not necessarily concerned in the phenomena (474.), and that other bodies much surpass it in some of the effects supposed to be peculiar to that substance. 671. Water, from its constitution and the nature of its elements, and from its frequent presence in cases of electrolytic action, has hitherto stood foremost in this respect. Though a compound formed by very powerful affinity, it yields up its elements under the influence of a very feeble electric current; and it is doubtful whether a case of electrolyzation can occur, where, being present, it is not resolved into its first principles. 672. The various oxides, chlorides, iodides, and salts, which I have shown are decomposable by the electric current when in the liquid state, under the same general law with water (402.), illustrate in an equally striking manner the activity, in such decompositions, of elements directly and powerfully opposed to each other by their chemical relations.