In our conceptions and reasonings regarding the forces of nature, we perpetually make use of symbols which, when they possess a high representative value, we dignify with the name of theories. Thus, prompted by certain analogies, we ascribe electrical phenomena to the action of a peculiar fluid, sometimes flowing, sometimes at rest. Such conceptions have their advantages and their disadvantages; they afford peaceful lodging to the intellect for a time, but they also circumscribe it, and by-and-by, when the mind has grown too large for its lodging, it often finds difficulty in breaking down the walls of what has become its prison instead of its home.[1] No man ever felt this tyranny of symbols more deeply than Faraday, and no man was ever more assiduous than he to liberate himself from them, and the terms which suggested them. Calling Dr. Whewell to his aid in 1833, he endeavoured to displace by others all terms tainted by a foregone conclusion. His paper on Electro-chemical Decomposition, received by the Royal Society on January 9, 1834, opens with the proposal of a new terminology. He would avoid the word 'current' if he could.[2] He does abandon the word 'poles' as applied to the ends of a decomposing cell, because it suggests the idea of attraction, substituting for it the perfectly natural term Electrodes. He applied the term Electrolyte to every substance which can be decomposed by the current, and the act of decomposition he called Electrolysis. All these terms have become current in science. He called the positive electrode the Anode, and the negative one the Cathode, but these terms, though frequently used, have not enjoyed the same currency as the others. The terms Anion and Cation, which he applied to the constituents of the decomposed electrolyte, and the term Ion, which included both anions and cations, are still less frequently employed.