Our observations have shown that the emergence of the electric state, whether it be caused by friction or galvanically, depends on matter entering into a condition in which its cohesion is loosened – or, as we also put it, on its being turned into ‘dust’ – and this in such a way that the escaping levity remains dust-bound. This picture of electricity now enables us to give a realistic interpretation of certain phenomena which, in the interpretation which the physicist of the past was bound to give them, have contributed much to the tightening of the net of scientific illusion.